Human

"Why you spent all night with him." Ben mumbled in his hand. "I didn't ask because I know, and I'm not ready to hear it out loud. I'm not... fortified. Like you'd say."

Barb drew her hand back. "You know? You don't--"

"He's, what, a few years shy of thirty? I'm guessing his down time was, like, a minute. You were getting it good for hours."

"Why were you with Candace all night... after being with her all day?"

Ben looked up, angry. "Couldn't wait to go on the attack again, huh? I'm not the--"

Barbara had her hands up, pleading. "That wasn't an attack. Like I said, I understand. It's killing me, but I get it. No, I mean, what kept you there? The sex? Was she better than me? Did you enjoy your time with her more than with me? 'Cause I don't believe that."

Insanely, Ben couldn't stop a grin. "Like you said, no false modesty, huh? Well, she does know what she's doing. And she was... grateful when I knocked on her door. Honestly, that was surprising."

"Shouldn't be. It doesn't matter though, because I'm better." Barbara smirked, and, for an instant, Ben saw that spicy little co-ed he'd fallen in love with on their first date. "So that's not why you kept fucking her. You kept fucking her because you had something to prove. A goal."

"Jesus. What'd you have to prove then?"

"The first time? Not a damn thing. I was a drool-on-herself idiot that'd let things build for too long and nursed a grudge against her too-perceptive husband and drank too much at exactly the wrong time. Hell, I barely remember the drive to his place." She paused. "And... yeah. There was some leopard print." Barb was shaking her head, like she was hearing a bad joke. "We... had sex. It was sweaty. It was... okay. I think." She shrugged. "And it was quick, and I was hammered. Then... dammit, then the mists cleared and I thought I did have something to prove."

"I almost don't want to know. I can't imagine it'll help."

"I'll keep it to myself, if that's what you want."

"Fuck it. Just say it."

Barbara nodded, but she was quiet for at least twenty seconds before she kept going. "I will never be able to say sorry enough for what happened, but I feel it in every cell. I love you with everything in me, but what I did that night... wasn't about you. Not... not directly."

She looked at her husband, and when he twirled a finger for her to keep going, she nodded again. "The first round was because of... pressure that'd built, like I said. It's not an excuse, but it's the reason. Then... god I'm sorry... then the booze wasn't as much a factor, and I was left with the horror of knowing that I'd cheated. With a douchebag. At that point, dammit, at that point my panic and self-preservation took over and I told myself that Todd was as master seducer. That he had to be a sex god, and I was helpless under his spell."

"So when he poked at you for another round..."

"I... do you really...?" She groaned. "Okay, okay. I... mounted him that time, instead of just... bent over and hiked up my dress. I thought, if I was helpless, then I was helpless. Helpless women, women who are victims of a strong personality... they go with the flow, I guess. They're, I dunno, they're conquered, or some bullshit."

"Too many romance novels, Barb. That's insane."

"That's something you figure out in the light of day. At night, still fucked in the head, with a dick inside you, you stop thinking." She was rocking back and forth then, her nervous energy spilling out like her words. "It was the worst possible combination; the dam was burst with the first rut, the asshole was determined, and I had this idea that, if I was cheating on the perfect husband, then I must have been helpless to do so. That was the story I clung to so I didn't have to face myself. That was what I had to prove."

"And you proved it All. Fucking. Night??" Ben slammed his fist down on his chair.

"I was asleep all fucking night! I passed out after we bumped uglies, I think maybe three times! I'd been swimming in gin, what do you expect? The shame of what I did will last my whole life, I know that, but the act itself? It lasted, I guess, like fifteen minutes total. Fifteen minutes of mediocre sex that I'm already forgetting. Fifteen minutes, and now I'm on life support."

She was crying then, and Ben had to fight hard to stop himself from holding her. "Knowledge isn't power, my love, it's a curse. I know it, because right here, right now, I'm goddamned Einstein. I see all the equations, and my heart is breaking for both of us."

"I don't see them." Ben threw up his hands. "I really don't. Enlighten me. Tell me what you've figured out."

"That neither of us is who the other thought they were."

Ben had to admit, that one he didn't see coming. She had balls, he had to give her that. "I'm not the person you thought I was. Me?"

"Well... no. You're not." She reached for him again, and he pulled back. She nodded though, like she expected it, and it set him simmering. "I'm still not blaming you. I'll never blame you for my screw up, I'm not a psychopath... despite what you're thinking now. But this last day has popped every pretty bubble that my head used to be filled with. The first is that, even though I can't imagine myself without you, can't even picture myself without your form next to me... I betrayed you. I fucking stabbed you in the heart after you warned me what was coming. After you told me you saw what I saw too, but purposely ignored. That's a rough illusion to lose, the sense of your own virtue. Everyone at least starts off as the hero of their own story."

"And I haven't lost that sense, if that's what you're about to say." Ben was trying to control his breathing. "Candy, right? That was necessary. You're too intelligent to not know why I did that. You as much as said it."

"Because I needed to feel the pain you were. Not guilt, but loss. Yeah. After a day and night to do nothing but face the truth... I agree. Mostly."

"Mostly, huh. But...?"

"But you're lying now. To yourself more than me." Barbara was composed then. The tears dry. "You were telling yourself that, if we still had a future together, I'd have to know what you went through. I'd have to feel the pain, or else I'd just cause it again. Which makes sense, and I love you so, so much for that, because it shows you still... want that. Want me." Her voice dropped. "At least some."

"The lie, then?"

"Is that it's the only reason you had sex with another woman. The rest, maybe even the biggest, though I hope not, is that you were wounded, and you needed to lash out. Something was taken from you, so you had to take. Balance." She looked long and hard at him. "Revenge. Pure and simple. That's not... I never thought you had that in you."

Barbara was right. Ben knew it. He would never forget hate-fucking Candy until she kicked him out of her place. Then, that night, with a charity he didn't deserve, she let him back in when he returned... and he hadn't learned a damned thing. Even a screaming orgasm isn't enough for any sane woman to put up with the kind of anger he'd been taking out on her, and the rest of the night spent in a motel should have torn the scales from his eyes on that one.

Still, it would have taken a crowbar and sodium pentothal to get him to admit it in that moment, so he just kept his peace.

Barb wasn't fooled, he knew that, and she kept going. "That's the book of fairytales that was closed on my end. That my husband was perfect. That he wouldn't use pain as a weapon, that he wouldn't go to an innocent bystander and treat her like the corner whore. That he wouldn't forget his children and abandon them all night..."

"Like their mother did?"

"Like their mother did." She nodded, miserable. "We're the same after twenty years, but in the awful ways too. I'm stupidly cruel, you're reflexively cruel. It's harsh, and it's fair, and you know it."

"You took it from yourself. About... three times. I think."

Barbara tilted her head, confused now. "It? What's it? Three... I don't..."

"My virtue." He chortled bitterly. "My hero status, in your eyes. Before you laid it out just now, I saw it. You asked me three separate times how I couldn't... know you. Your soul, I guess." He shrugged. "You wondered how I couldn't see that you're dying inside, how I didn't understand that you fully regretted what you did, and how I could ask if you even want forgiveness. Your confusion was clear as day. You were genuinely shocked that I wasn't just... reading your mind."

"Because you always have."

"I never have. Barb, perfect didn't get torn away, tunnel vision did. You always do this. You always tell me that I should already know the answer whenever I ask you a question, and then ignore it when I get pissed about that. You think your idea of my perfection was that I was a saint. The truth is, you just thought we were closer than we've ever honestly been."

Her eyes went wide, and, in a flash, they were underwater. "No. No, no, no... don't say that... you can't say that..."

"The fortress was built with holes." Ben had to look away. "No ram needed."

"Noooo..." With a distraught cry, she lurched and grabbed both his hands in hers, squeezing tight. "I see it, you're giving up. God, please no. Don't give up."

"Barb, now it's not even about what you did." Ben let her keep gripping him. Let her have that, at least. "Not anymore. Not really. I believe you that it was a mistake you wish never happened, I do, but, goddamn, it was the skylight opening up! Everything's exposed now, and it's..."

"Real?" She was blubbering, trying to keep a modicum of coherency intact. "It's real, it's us... and you can't stand it? Okay, you're right; I never listen. And I'm right; you lash out on instinct. And it doesn't matter. We... we're..."

"What?" Ben rasped and didn't fight it when his wife, the mother of his children, his bride and mate, pulled him close and pressed her forehead to his. "What are we, Barb? Meant to be? Soulmates? Lovers with promise writ in the stars or something?"

"Human." The word was a sob. "We're fucking human, and that's all we will ever, can ever be."

"Stop. Just stop." Ben started the first tepid steps in pushing her away. "It's over."

Barb gripped the back of his neck tight and, before he could react, she slid from her seat into his lap, framing him with her knees and pressing their bodies together into an embrace. He ached from it, all through him, and the breath in his ear that carried her whisper was a furnace on his skin.

"If I was chasing perfect... it's nothing compared to what you are now."

Ben tried again to push at her, and though he put a bit more effort into it, his arms were noodles and his heart was on another continent. Barbara pulled back a bit, a few inches, enough to take his face in her hands and stare as deeply into him as she could.

"Tell me what you'll find if you take this nose from me." She ran a finger down the object of her plea. "What you'll get when you take these lips from me." Now the digit pressed on his mouth. "Tell me what this face deserves, and how you'll claim it. Tell me who you'll give it to that you can be sure will never do you wrong. Will never say something insensitive. Will never believe the incorrect thing about you. Will never make a mistake... small, or... or devastating."

Barbara clenched her teeth to try to contain a particularly bitter moan. "Tell me what she'll look like, this person who will take my spot? Please, please, if you ever loved me, tell me what I could never be! Tell me what exists out there that will cradle you and protect you and keep you from ever feeling hurt ever again!"

"Barb..." Her name was a razor through sliding out his throat, and his fingers in her hair were steel vices.

"Tell me, because, if she's real, I'll love her forever for giving you what I just can't."

Ben squeezed his eyes shut and began shaking his head. "What can I even say right now? How can I get past this? How can I live with what I know?" Ben wished he knew if that was rhetorical or not.

"A second at a time." Barb had her cheek on his shoulder then, and was running her hands up and down his back. "Heartbeat after heartbeat of choosing to accept me. Of watching me, of... of evaluating me... and deciding if I'm worth the risk. You'd have to decide that our life together wasn't a lie, and outweighs the things inside both of us that are terrible. You have to decide that we can be better."

She pulled back and kissed him softly for a good, long time before breathing again. "You'll have to trust that I'm better than my weakest moment, and I'll endure every black look, every bitter word that I have coming... because I'll have to trust that you're better than the world wants you to be."

In his arms, Ben could feel his wife go limp, as if those words were all she'd had left in her. They stayed like that for a time; her still in his lap, and him softly stroking her back, each unwilling to break the spell. Unwilling to let life take that timeless, gossamer moment from them.

But life is relentless, and time can't be stopped.

"Ben, my beloved Ben... what's going to happen?"

The whisper was the sound of an exposed, raw nerve.

Time comes. Life demands... and Ben was just a man, helpless before its cold face.

__________

Barbara leaned against the door frame, taking in the sight of Cynthia's new pool, to the side of the new house, in that new upscale neighborhood that her best friend's family had relocated to only a couple weeks before. She could hear the other housewarming guests milling about behind her inside, but it was the noises, and the vision, of her two daughters splashing around with their friends that caught her attention and trapped it.

They were bubbly and happy, and seeing those faces--the shape of those noses and mouths that were so heart-wrenchingly familiar--started the countdown on a batch of tears that was also, sadly, very familiar for her lately.

"It's nice, they're nice... but you want to come back inside?" Barbara felt Cynthia's hand on her shoulder before the question came. "Lots of people, also nice, would love to talk with you. Catch up." A pause. "Get an update on the hermitage."

It was a joke, and Barbara knew it. Still, she suddenly resented her friend with a sharpness that was staggering. Luckily, it was there in a flash and gone just as quickly when sanity reasserted itself. With a smile only partially forced, she patted the woman's hand affectionately. "Ugh, people suck." She turned to catch her friend's face. "We're all the worst."

Cynthia grinned. "A couple little girls out there might destroy that theory."

"Nah. They're not people, they're angels." Barb's grin was depressingly poignant. "I'm a person, and you know what I've done? I've used them shamelessly. Didn't even hesitate."

Cynthia frowned then, honestly confused, and Barb laughed humorlessly. "It's been six months since..." She took a breath. "Since he left." She grimaced and worked past it. "And from the first day that I got the girls back after they'd spent time at his new place, I grilled them on what was going on with him. Hell, I was so unsubtle, even my innocent little cherubs picked up on what I really was asking after a couple weeks."

"Which is...?"

"If he was seeing anyone new." Barbara began playing with a lock of her fiery hair, suddenly chagrined, even though she and Cynthia were closer than sisters. "I know, it's not Ben. We're not divorced, and he..." She stopped. Was she really about to say that he didn't have it in him when she knew for a fact that it was a lie? Was she already retreating back into a fantasy?

"He's... deeper than that." Cynthia tried to finish for her, and Barbara just let her. No need to air it all out uselessly. Ben was deep, but Ben was good at rationalizing shallow impulses. They both were, she knew that now. The only real question was if one had picked up the trait from the other, or if they developed that little crappy quirk at the same time over the two decades together.

No. The real question was; did it even matter anymore?

"Anyway, the girls didn't try to hide anything from me." Barbara went on, suppressing her melancholy so she could have a real conversation with her friend. "For, I guess like five or so of the last six months, they had no problem saying that their dad was pretty much kicking around alone. Now, well, their lack of practice at lying showed itself, and they stopped answering that particular question. They just say that Ben's... distracted."

"Barbie... I'm not sure what to say." Cynthia's hand tightened on her arm.

Barbara went to pat it again, but found that she didn't want to let it go, and took it in hers to squeeze. To get an anchor. The other hand, though, was busy with wiping at her eyes as they locked onto her friend's. "The paperwork is coming. I can feel it. Six months, Cyn, six months of hope is about to be... to be..." She gulped, then sobbed out her finish. "It's almost over. I know it."

"Come with me."

Barbara was a wreck becoming a disaster at that point, so she didn't question or fight it when Cynthia led her through the house, past the murmurs, and to the door of her husband's office. They stopped then, and Cynthia took her in for a long, heavy moment before talking again.

"Something's inside. Something that may or may not be good for you. I honestly can't say... but I agreed to it." She turned the knob and began opening the door, but stopped at seeing her friend's reaction.

Barbara had stiffened up, every muscle going taut, and her lips curved downward with disgust. "Cyn... no. Just... you can't be doing what I think you're doing."

Cynthia's brow scrunched at the sudden vitriol. "Can't I? You know girl, sometimes I think we share a brain, and sometimes I'm sure we're from different planets. I truly have no idea what you think I've got waiting for you in there."

Barbara narrowed her eyes. "I remember the charity planning with crystal clarity, Cyn. I remember that you were the one who hired the personnel, that you were the one that did all the ice-breaking exercises that were a little too... intimate." She crossed her arms. "I never blamed you. I thought you didn't realize what was happening, but I'm telling you now, if you brought Todd back so I can... can get my rocks off and forget about--"

The punch to her shoulder was light, but it wasn't nothing. "Fuck you. Just... get in there bitch."

Gawping like a beached fish--and rubbing at her shoulder--Barbara watched Cynthia open up the office the rest of the way and vacate the area without another word, bristling like an offended cat, and with just as much drama.

Shaking her head, Barbara decided that, cat-like herself, curiosity was going to win out, and she walked into the office. Then she nearly fainted.

"Shit, Barb... shit. Um... maybe you should sit down." Then he was there, arm around her shoulders, leading her to a sofa against the wall of the expansive room with a tenderness that made her vow right then to keep it together.

"Ben. Jesus, how... why are..." Eyes suddenly wide with panic, the fight became not to keep to together, but to keep from hyperventilating. She rolled her gaze down at her--thus far--husband's hands, sure what she'd see. "Oh god, Cyn, she said it isn't... it might not be good..."

Sure enough, there was a big brown envelope wavering in his loose grip. She covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. For a few seconds, everything was quiet, then she heard a rustling as Ben sat next to her. She moved her hand finally, but she couldn't quite get her lids up. It had to do. "Okay. Okay. I guess... I knew this was coming. I just... I just hope... for the girls..."