The Perils of Love Ch. 07

It might seem like such a simple thing. But, considering such closeness had been absent for so long, I was deliriously happy when it returned. I could feel her warmth. I could smell her hair. I could feel her body move as she breathed. I got goosebumps when her fingers idly traced up and down my thigh as we watched the movie.

A few weeks later, she snuggled next to me in our bed after we'd turned the lights out.

"Gary," she said, "can I tell you something?"

"Of course," I said.

"Ashton really messed me up."

"I can only imagine, honey. Remember⁠—"

"I know. You're not him. You're like the total opposite of him. I know I've … I have held myself back from you, and it's not been fair⁠—"

"In your own time, baby," I interrupted.

She chuckled. "Shut up , will ya?"

"Sorry," I said, softly caressing her shoulder.

"I've not been fair to you. I've not been fair to either of us. But I need you to … to know that I want you to be intimate with me. I don't want to deny you," she said tenderly, but I could still sense nervousness in her voice.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Talk to me, Sunny. Talk to me. I don't want to make you uneasy. Just … talk to me, baby."

"Touch me?" she said, "Please … go slow?"

"I'm yours, Sunny. Show me. Take my hand and guide me. I'm yours. And … honey?"

"Yeah?"

"Please don't let me do anything that makes you uncomfortable. I don't want to scare you."

She placed my hand on her breast. I softly stroked it, listening carefully to her breathing for any signs of concern or discomfort. I heard none. I stroked her nipple lightly through her pajamas and her breath reacted nicely. Her nipple hardened and I softly rolled it between my thumb and finger, pulling lightly at it. She asked me to unbutton her top.

I shimmied down under the covers and nuzzled into her other breast, taking its nipple into my mouth. I suckled, pressing her nipple with my tongue before adding suction and drawing it out.

"Yeah, sweetheart. That feels nice," she whispered as she softly stroked my hair with her fingers.

I ran my hand down her tummy, under her shorts, and stroked between her legs. I entered under the elastic at the leg and brought her, though very slowly, to a small orgasm.

She cried, holding me close to her.

"I needed to know I'm not totally messed up," she said.

"I'm yours, and you're mine. Nothing's going to change that, Sunny. You're my wife, and I'll die for you."

I held her while she wept softly.

"I love you so much, Gary. Thank you for being so patient with me."

"Thank you for saying that. I kind of need to hear things like that," I whispered to her. "I love you more than anything in this world."

I held her until I felt her breathing slow into sleep. I forced myself to stay awake, as I had a number of nights the previous months, just holding my wife in my arms. My love was mine again. I wasn't going to take her for granted. I needed her closeness and often refused to sleep through it.

I seldom tried to woo her into sex because, well, I'd been rejected so many times before that it was extremely difficult for me to try again. I was gun shy. Even though things had changed much for the better, the fear of a repeated rejection kept me at bay.

She noticed it, and I explained my worries to her.

She made a promise that she'd initiate more frequently until I got my confidence back. And she did. She'd gotten quite good at it, at least for a while, until different awkward moments became an issue.

The whole process made an incredible turn when she sprung some news on me one Saturday evening.

"We're going to do something special for our twenty-fifth anniversary."

"Of course we are, but I haven't yet come up with an idea for what we could do."

"I have, and I've already booked something."

"What ?"

"Huzzah!" She grinned and did a jazz-hands thing.

I looked at her in surprise. "Well? Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?" I laughed at her display.

"You and I still aren't fully reconnected. We aren't, and I admit it. Things have been just too … off kilter.

"I've decided we're going to an all-inclusive resort for a week and see if we can maybe push each other's reset buttons."

"Sunny, why didn't you ask me about this first? Those kinds of places are expensive. How much is it going to cost for the four of us?"

"Four?" she didn't acknowledge my frustration. "No, baby, it'll only be the two of us. Martin and Jill are going to house-sit and keep an eye on the girls."

"They agreed to that? They've barely been married a year!"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"They're newlyweds! They're going to take care of two kids for a week?"

"Yeah, why not?"

I stared at her, not understanding how she didn't grasp my concern.

"What's wrong with you?" She laughed.

"Babe," she continued, "we were basically still newlyweds when the kids came to live with us, and Martin's older now than as I was when it all happened, and we didn't volunteer like they have.

"Martin proposed the idea. Last month, when we were at their apartment for dinner, he pulled me into the kitchen and said, 'You and Gary need to get away for a while. Your silver anniversary is coming up in a few months. You two definitely need to go get lost.'

"He said he talked with Jill about it before he brought it up with me and she was thrilled with the idea. Mandy and Anna are old enough they pretty much take care of themselves. All I care about is having someone we trust keeping an eye on things. Plus, the girls love Jill to death. She'll probably take them shopping and stuff, so, of course, they will need some spending money."

"So you're being serious."

"I'm dead serious. You and I are going to the Caribbean for a week. Just you and me, in a luxury bungalow, being waited on hand and foot with personal butler service. There are bars everywhere, even our own in the bungalow. It's all included. Food, drink, everything.

"Imagine a huge pool, a gorgeous beach, your personal goddess with her gorgeous husband, all on a gorgeous island. What could be better?"

She chuckled as she did a slow pirouette and snaked her hands over her waist and hips then reached for my hands.

"I don't know. The way you're looking at me makes me wonder if we'd ever leave the room, but … you're on to something. I think that's exactly what we both need. Will they knock off some of the price if we don't drink a lot? You hardly drink anything."

"I don't care if we don't leave the room. That might be sort of the point, right? And don't get ahead of yourself, my love. I don't drink a lot because I usually have too much stuff going on to throw caution to the wind. But if I know I've not got a damn thing to worry about, I plan on getting shit-faced by ten in the morning."

I laughed hard as she hugged me to her.

"I want to do something else while we're there, if it's okay with you," she said.

"What's that?"

"I want to renew our vows. No big foofaraw. A simple thing. Something, you know … simple."

I held her at arm's length and looked at her smile.

"Jeez, Sunny. Damn it if that's not the best idea I've heard in a long time. Let's do it. Let's do it all. It'll be another honeymoon."

"Yeah. A honeymoon in the Turks and Caicos ain't a bad idea, huh?"

"Not at all," I agreed with a grin.

"But listen, sweetheart," she prompted, "I really, really want you to … No. No, baby, I'm telling you to go see your doctor about your concerns. I don't want you to have any worries. I want you to get your confidence back, okay? You need it. We need it."

It was a touchy subject. I thought I was way too young to be worried about what was going on. I attributed my lack of ability to performance anxiety, and it led to the point where Sunny had stopped initiating intimacy because it'd often leave me physically frustrated.

Yeah. So there it is.

I admit it.

I was finding it very difficult to get physically aroused. My mind and heart were certainly in it, but my body often refused to go along.

"Embarrassed AF" doesn't begin to describe what it felt like to need to talk to a doctor about something like that, but if we were going to spend almost eight thousand dollars on a week of luxury, I finally decided at my wife's urging to "man up," so-to-speak.

Since I'd seen him three times a year for the previous fifteen, I was very comfortable with my endocrinologist, but he declined to consult with me on the matter. He told me to either talk to my general practitioner, or he'd refer me to a urologist.

Thankfully, I was able to request an appointment through my GP's online portal which spared me the humiliation of having to tell a receptionist that I thought I had ED. But, of course, the first thing they ask you when you check in at the front desk is, "What do you need to see the doctor about today?" with a waiting room full of other patients within earshot.

"I'll tell him when I see him," was all I could think to answer.

"Sure. No problem."

She wrote something on my chart I couldn't see.

Once I'd been taken to an exam room, a nurse asked, "What's going on, Mr. Miller? What can we do for you?"

I sighed and gave in to the inevitable.

"I'd like to talk to Dr. Garnet about erectile dysfunction."

She stared at me for several moments. Her chuckles grew into laughs. Those escalated to a full-on witch's cackle. She was waving her hands and the clipboard at me. Her laughter brought tears to her eyes, and I thought she might pass out because she was turning so red.

"What? A man as young as you is having trouble getting hard ? Are you a poor old fart with a dead little pecker? This is the funniest thing I've heard in months!"

She laughed so hard the legs of her scrubs darkened when she pissed herself.

No, of course that's not what happened, even though I'd convinced myself I would be summarily humiliated.

She'd only said, "Sure, Mr. Miller. Let me get your blood pressure and pulse." She spoke so evenly it stunned me.

My BP was 117 over 82, and my pulse was 74. Both were a touch higher than my normal, which I attributed to the stress of the moment.

About five minutes later, my doctor came in and thankfully shut the door before he spoke.

"The dreaded ED, huh? I'm surprised you held out this long to come chat."

"Huh?" I said, dumbfounded.

"You're damn-near fifty years old. Even though you're in fantastic shape, it happens. It's nothing to worry about.

"You're maybe the third guy this month to come talk to me. It's not a HIPAA violation for me to tell you that you're the oldest of the three. The fact that you've had diabetes for more than twenty years isn't helping you. How long did it take you to convince yourself to come have 'the chat?'"

"I didn't. My wife did. It's been … um … an issue for maybe six months."

"Six months is sooner than most guys hold out. Most suffer for a couple of years. Yeah, it's a bit of an uncomfortable subject, but, hey. It's a real thing. It's medical. It's addressable.

"I'm sixty-three. The little blue pill had barely made its debut when it hit me. The brand-name is still very pricey.

"You wouldn't believe how swallowing the equivalent of a one-hundred-dollar bill would cause so much anxiety for guys that it still wouldn't work. A generic was finally made available a few years ago, and it's two or three dollars per dose or less. Same exact stuff, but the no-risk price seems to make it work a lot better for a lot of guys."

My doctor's straightforward and completely frank discussion made my embarrassment disappear. He spent at least ten minutes talking to me.

"They only list this as a side effect, but I will tell you it's more like a bright green traffic light. You'll know it's in your system and ready to work when your sinuses get stuffy."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. And if that signal bothers you, a little snort of oxymetazoline spray will take care of it. I'll prescribe you twenty milligrams. It's the lowest dose. You can take up to five tablets. That'd be one hundred milligrams, but only step up one at a time if lower doses don't work. Send a message via the portal when you find what works best, and I'll change the strength to match, okay?"

I raced to the pharmacy and had the prescription filled immediately. I bought a bottle of the over-the-counter nasal spray my doctor recommended, too. Just in case.

When I returned home, I related to Sunny the whole experience. I also told her why, because of the way the medicine works, I'd need about a half hour's notice which I admitted was not the best for spontaneity.

"Well, alrighty then. We've got nothing going on tonight since the girls are at camp, so … take it right now."

She smiled sweetly at me then went back to folding towels.

Holy crap if it didn't work perfectly.

"Baby, I'm yours tonight, okay? You've always made sure to take care of my wants and needs, and tonight you don't need to worry about that. Tonight, I want you to enjoy yourself," she whispered to me after she'd sucked me for a few minutes, happy with my sudden success.

I didn't mention it before, but she was right. When I realized penetration was unlikely, I could usually get Sunny to orgasm by going down on her. But it would often get physically tiresome for me, so I spent a good while researching aids on the net. I registered a burner Gmail account to use to register for a burner Amazon account and shopped for a few things. I had them shipped to a locker instead of to the house because, well, that's how paranoid I am that someone would somehow find out I'd bought sex toys.

Neither of us could believe we'd waited so long to bring such things into the bedroom, because Sunny freaking loves the vibrator I bought. It wouldn't matter if I brought her to a couple of orgasms with my tongue, she'd still often ask me to get the little toy out which would give her orgasms so powerful she'd sometimes spritz my hands, which I was always thoroughly excited to witness.

The feeling of being able to enter her without difficulty or self-doubt gave me the courage to thoroughly and completely enjoy myself with her very vocal encouragements.

Her insistence on my talk with my doctor contributed an awful lot of goodness to our second honeymoon.

We so totally enjoyed the entire week. The food was beyond describable. We enjoyed Wagyu beef, the freshest seafood brought in every day, pork tenderloin which knocked our socks off, and sumptuous desserts that begged us to gain ten pounds each.

Sunny and I enjoyed plenty of beverages, too. I'd never before seen her get stupid-drunk, so I completely enjoyed seeing her let her hair down and have that kind of fun. I'm kind of surprised I remember it myself.

Tipsy sex is fun. It's a lot of fun. Tipsy sex makes for adventurous "just for the hell of it" or "let's try this " sex.

Drunk sex, on the other hand? I'll take a pass on that. Things don't work right when you're three sheets to the wind.

The resort was adults-only. I can't tell you how relaxing it was to exist without any children anywhere .

Yeah, don't tell me I'm a jerk.

Wait until you've been immersed in raising five children for twenty-plus years with another ten to go before you pass judgment. I love my children to death. I love kids in general, but there comes a time when the total and complete absence of them feels like a Utopian existence.

We made at least a dozen friends on the island and remain in contact with a number of couples on Facebook. One of them, it turns out in this incredibly small world, lives just a few miles away. We've had dinner and gone to a few events with them.

The renewal of our vows took place the third day we were there. The senior concierge presided over the honors, and one of the resort's photographers shot hundreds of digital photos. We paid $500 for the service and were sent home with a DVD-ROM full of absolutely outstanding shots. His worst was far better than the best photo taken at our wedding.

There were dozens-upon-dozens of other photos which roaming staff photographers captured at various excursions and events included in the set. One of them was of Sunny and me, on the beach, watching an indescribably gorgeous sunset. She was wearing a beautiful, breeze-swept tropical dress. I was wearing simple Dockers and a muslin shirt. The sunset exhibited the entire spectrum of color, and, as luck would have it, caught a triple-mast sailboat in silhouette on the horizon.

I had that photograph enlarged to a 16x24-inch print for my office. My friend Liv helped me hang and level it.

"You and Sunny have given me a lot of courage. The example that you two set gives Chris and me courage we can make it through whatever trials we might face," she said, showing me her engagement ring again.

"Liv, you're one of my closest friends. Sunny and I want you and Chris to know that you two can confide in us any time either of you feel challenged, okay?"

"Yeah. I know," she said with an earnest smile. "I still can't believe you told Sunny what happened between us in Arizona," she said.

"Yeah. Believe it. If anything, remember it's important to be totally transparent. With anything and everything. Always."

So, yeah. You asked what happened between us. An awful lot of shit , that's what. After the trials we've faced in our twenty-five years of marriage, I don't want to think about what else might happen. I try, every single day, to stand firm in my commitment, renewed during our second honeymoon, to my wife.

For life.

Oh, you saw the billboard, huh?

I only paid for it for a month, so it's been replaced. It still makes me laugh every time I drive past the location where it'd been, though.

All the sign had was a QR Code and a URL to a WordPress site which read:

On December 16, 2017, a less-than-man named Ashton Raynor committed a predatory sexual assault against a woman after chemically incapacitating her. The crime occurred at the Elysian Palace Hotel and Ballroom in Atlanta, Georgia, between the hours of 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM the following morning.

Yeah, he could sue me. But there's two edges to that particular sword.

First, he'd have to name one of us in the suit, which would be as much as an admission of guilt because there's no way in hell he would have been able to figure out who paid for the sign.

And if, somehow, he had the balls to do it anyway, his only charge could be libel. In a civil libel trial, the burden would be on him to prove the crime did not occur. He has no ability to prove it. And we have evidence it did, so it's likely we'd skate through it all.

Not only that, but his own fiancée (yes, he was engaged when it happened) read it and ended their engagement. He's not been able to find gainful employment anywhere since the link has gone viral in social media. How do I know? Because I've been keeping track. Yeah, I'm pretty good at net-stalking.

Like I said, my wife and I will get through it!

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to Follow us so your dashboard will give you updates on new content.