The Unexpected End Of Love

Author's Note: I would imagine that not many people will enjoy reading about the remembrances of life that come with death. I didn't particularly enjoy writing it, but I needed to; there are two people who know why. One will never read this, and to the other, cor meum in aeternum. At least this was written with honesty.

Earlier stories about these characters are probably not necessary to read, but will provide some background, especially "The unexpected start of love."

Thank you to Kate7891 for some excellent suggestions during the preparation of this story.

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Dexter sat by Jen's side as she died.

He knew that today would be her last. The cancer, originally found in her breast, had spread to her liver and bone, and from there things went quickly. There was surgery, radiation, chemo, and then nothing else to do. The predictable stages of grief had swept through Dexter until all that was left was the acceptance of her life, love, and now the pale horse of Death barreling toward him. He spent those final weeks constantly by her side, taking a leave from running his now-large and diversified landscaping company to sit and talk with her while she slid in and out of consciousness, a drip of Dilaudid in her arm that got stronger every few days to ease her pain.

The room now was dark, waiting for the sun to rise. Dexter had decided to let her pass in their home, and for the past two days they had been side-by-side in the bedroom they shared for the past twenty-two years. The cute little colonial that Dexter had stayed in after the divorce from his first wife Ashley, and that Jen moved into about 6 months after they had met. Over time, they had re-decorated rooms one-by-one to make them theirs. Jen never pressed these changes; it was always Dexter, reaching out to connect with Jen in different ways, wanting to be close to her in a house that was a home to both of them.

He sat with her that final day and told her stories of their time together. He wanted her to leave with memories of love to take with her wherever she was going. The old brown leather chair that had been there from the beginning was snugged up against the bed, while on the other side stood a small array of medical equipment the hospice nurses used on their daily visits. Despite that, their room still felt as calm and loving as the first night they had shared it.

Dexter looked down at Jen with tears in his eyes again and said, "Do you remember our first night in this room?"

"I was afraid I would fall in love with you the first time we met, sitting on your front steps. I tried so hard to convince myself that I just needed to get laid, but I knew from right away that something was different. I felt so calm around you, like I could do anything. You remember all that stuff I told you about my childhood, and how my father used to beat the shit out of me, and my mom ignored me? I never laughed or felt happiness back then. I didn't know what it was. I married Ashley because she was like my parents; I understood it. It made sense to me. We never connected and I never felt intimacy. I never could trust anyone because of my parents, and then after Ashley left me for that guy, I thought it was all over for me. I guess I learned that trust and love didn't exist. Not for me anyway. But you stayed close every time I felt alone, you saw me as beautiful when I felt ugly, you showed me how much I meant to you when I felt worthless. You shared your vulnerability with me. You helped sooth all that pain from my past, and then you helped me understand trust, and then it was there. You saved me. You gave me happiness for the first time in my life."

He stopped to take a deep, calming breath.

"That first night," he smiled through the tears weaving tracks down his stubbled cheeks, "You remember the neighbors going at it? Twenty-some years later and I can still hear them in my head like it's yesterday. I wonder whatever happened to them. Probably 90 and still going at it." The thought brought a pang of grief to Dexter. "Talk about setting the mood for us, although I think the mood was already pretty well set..."

"I remember everything about that night. Every small detail. Eating spaghetti together on the back patio, the fire we build, all of it. Jesus Jen, I don't think I ever told you how terrified I was when we came up here that first time. I knew if we had sex, I'd be lost in love with you. I think I already was. I was scared I couldn't perform because I so nervous," he paused, his eyes seeing something far away, "Then again, you always did look amazing in jeans. I'll miss that. How you could put beat up old clothes on and look so fucking good. Do you remember that first Halloween where you dressed as a zombie? How does that make a guy horny?" Dexter let his thoughts go back to their first night together.

"I didn't fall in love because we had sex. It was the second you touched me, when we hugged and you took all that fear away. It felt like you never wanted to let me go. I still feel that hug every second of every day. It never stopped for me. It never will."

He hung his head, letting his chin rest on his chest, and allowed sadness and loss to envelope him. Dexter had learned over these past weeks that if he embraced the grief, it could be healing for him. He let it wash over him like a wave in the ocean to take away the acute pain, leaving him clean again. The deeper pain would always be with him, and he knew that was part of love. He couldn't have one without the other anymore.

He looked up, his painful reverie past, and grinned. "You agreed to sleep over that first night if I had sex with you again in the morning. If I recall correctly, we had sex about an hour later, again in the middle of the night, and in the morning. The sheets were torn off the bed and when we finally woke up, do you remember our legs being stuck together and we peeled them apart? That was the about the funniest thing I've ever seen! I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard," The smile faded and Dexter rubbed his palms across his thighs, a habit that calmed him down.

"I always got so happy when you'd call or text me at work, sometimes just to remind me that you were still there and thinking about me. If I never told you, that meant so much to me, and I don't think a day will go by that I don't check my phone hoping to see your name."

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The cellphone tucked between the seat of the grumbling backhoe and Dexter's groin buzzed. He shut down the hoe and turned off the tractor to check the message.

'I am sooooooo horny. I'm climbing the walls!' it said.

A little picture of a smiling Jen was next to the text, long, sun-lightened brown hair swept over her shoulder and her blue eyes creased with laughter. Three years older than when they had first meet and he still got butterflies around her. A love affair that had grown from the debris of their first wrecked marriages and Dexter's history of childhood trauma. An unlikely outcome that gave everyone that knew them hope that some sad stories have happy endings.

The time stamp on the text said 11:27 a.m. He was removing tree stumps around an industrial building with a backhoe while most of his landscaping crew re-surfaced a local baseball field when her text came through. She had left before Dexter this morning for an early meeting at her law firm, and as the backhoe sputtered to silence, he wondered again how she managed to sit through meetings day after day. She had said to him once in response to this "So how can you dig up people's yards on a loud, smelly tractor all day long?" His indignation came through when he answered "I do a lot more than that," and Jen crinkled her face up in that way that said 'do you realize what you just said?' Dexter hugged her and said "Ok, I know you do so much more than meetings." Jen pressed herself close and whispered "I think I should do you."

Dexter texted back, a single thick finger laboriously touching letters one at a time, "Better go take care of business then." The phone whooshed to acknowledge the text being successfully sent, and he leaned back to lose himself in the quiet and sun and breeze of perfect summer weather. Her text had guided him back to the memory of their first night together. Their connection had been so strong from the very beginning that physical intimacy came naturally; not sex, not making love, but profound connection between two people. The sense of trust and safety that Dexter had needed so desperately after so many years of feeling isolated and alone. Everything about Jen pulled him out of that lonely world, and the first night they had sex left Dexter truly in love for the first time in his life.

The buzzing phone jarred him back to the present. "Can't. Still in that mtg. Going to duck you tonight." Dexter smiled at the auto-correction. He thought of several (what he considered) funny responses, but she beat him with her follow-up text. "Baby, I'm gonna make u quack. Out." The word 'out' was her code that she had to stop texting and attend to whatever was going on at work.

Dexter sat on the tailgate of his work truck to eat lunch. The truck was painted a deep forest green, with a side logo reading "Dexter's Landscaping -- We cut grass, not people". Not many people got the reference to the Showtime series 'Dexter', but he thought it was funny anyway. Jen and Dexter had a long-standing tradition that the first one out of the house made lunch for the other. As former athletes, they both had a deep competitive streak that often led to interesting games of one-upmanship. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was their equivalent to a white flag, although the winner ended up with a bad lunch.

As he relaxed on the tailgate, legs dangling over the edge, he reflected on all the little 'inside things' that they had built together. A language only they understood. Code words like 'chimichanga,' that meant the speaker was ready to leave a social engagement (although they had to change that particular code word when Jen used it at an office party, saying to Dexter "I have a craving for a chimichanga," and one of her friends jumped on it, "Oh my God, me too! Let's go get Mexican!") There were dozens of secret touches they used that no else understood, each one with a special meaning. If Jen placed her hand on Dexter's hip when she was talking to him in public, he knew it meant that she was feeling especially aroused, and probably came from Jen's habit of holding onto Dexter's hips when they made love. If she put her hands on his chest and stood close, it was to reassure him.

Dexter opened the soft lunch cooler. On top was a small, handwritten note on a yellow Post-It. "D -- Before tonight is over, you're going to be begging! I love you more than anything! -- J"

'Well,' he thought, 'that should make the day creep right along.' He knew it was a gift she gave him to have things to look forward to, even small things. Jen once told him "As great as today is, tomorrow might be even better." A quote from her grandfather and his father before him. He envied how she lived life like it was one unending adventure, and now he was a part of it.

It was 4:30 before he heard from her again.

'Still horny. How about you?'

'Why yes. Yes I am. I'll be home about 7,' he sent back.

'Hurry up,' was all she said.

Dexter entered their house and found a typed note right inside the doorway.

Love of my life,

Come upstairs when you're ready. But here are the rules:

1. Sit in the big brown chair, no clothes

2. You can't touch me or yourself

3. Make no sound, don't say anything, nothing

4. If you make it without touching yourself or making a noise, you will be allowed to do anything you want

5. If you don't, your next orgasm will be followed by a long session of less than comfortable head play

Dexter didn't know if a shower counted as making noise or if they were already started, so he risked a 60 second shower in the downstairs bathroom, not even waiting for the water to warm up. He crept naked up the stairs and slowly opened the door onto a room mostly dark now except for a few candles. Jen was sitting on the edge of their bed wearing a short red lace robe, leg crossed with the hem of the robe provocatively high on her thigh. She was fully made up and her long sandy hair hung down to the middle of her back. Dexter noticed that her finger nails were painted red, and she had on a pair of red satin "fuck me" pumps. She stood when Dexter entered the room, and did a slow pirouette.

"The shoes make my ass look incredible, don't you think?" she said more as a statement than a question. Dexter just nodded in response. "Good boy," she purred, waving him to the brown chair. "I see that your cock appreciates the shoes," and nodded at his growing erection. He raised his eyebrows in assent and sat in his assigned place.

Jen stood in front of him and slipped her hand inside her robe to tease her nipple, her eyes locked on his. Her other hand began to stroke her thigh all the way up to the junction of her legs and back down. Her fingers dancing on her clit before moving away again.

"Shall we see if I'm wet?" she asked, sliding her finger into her pussy and then into her mouth. "I am so ready for something to be inside me." Her smile sultry and provocative. "Oh, baby, you didn't think I meant you, did you? I will admit that your cock looks absolutely breathtaking right now. So hard, I could almost come just thinking about you sliding inside me..." Dexter sat, his hands gripping the arms of the brown leather chair, his cocking now aching for attention.

Jen turned around and bent at the waist, the robe sliding up and over her ass, her pussy inviting Dexter to pleasure it. She looked back over her shoulder, the questioning arch on her eyebrows asking 'are you going to fuck me?' When he didn't move, she shrugged her shoulders and took a large, realistic dildo from underneath a pillow, and still looking back at him, proceeded to run her tongue over the head and slide it into her mouth to lubricate it. She reached down between her legs and pushed the glistening head against her opening and slowly pushed it in. Dexter had never seen something enter Jen from this angle, and he was transfixed as the thick dildo stretched her until it was completely buried, the synthetic balls pushing against her lips and clit.

"I'm going to do this like you do me," her voice breathy, "so you can see how fucking hot you are." Her eyes held his as she began to deliberately and completely fuck herself with the dildo, the pace slowly picking up until she stopped. "Do you want to see what it looks like when I come?" He nodded. Her hand started to move faster and Dexter could see the dildo glisten in the candlelight. One final time she pushed it all the way, her knees pressed together and started to buckle before she caught herself. "Oh fuck," she grunted, and then slowly started to work the dildo again. "Oh...wow...ok, I'm coming again, I'm coming again..." Her face froze in the agony of pleasure as the orgasm blew its way through her whole body. Dexter could see the dark flush on her face and neck even in the dimness, and was aware of his cock, hard and aching. One last big breath out, and Jen set the dildo on the bed and shuffled behind the chair, putting her arms around Dexter and whispering into his ear. "You can have anything you want now. Anything..."

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Dexter got up to stretch his legs, "I'll be right back." He needed some air, to push the pause button on his emotions if only for a minute.

It was fall and the leaves were in full change, trees exploding with red and orange. The morning weather beautiful and the memories came unbidden as he walked around the neighborhood.

Hi mind went like it often did to the first day they met.

'That was the day you started to show me that you cared more about my happiness than your own. And you let me care more about your happiness than mine, and then it all blended into one...'

He was startled out of his reverie and surprised to find himself back home. 'I must be losing it. Get your shit together,' he chastised himself as he climbed the stairs back to their bedroom. He reminded himself of the advice a therapist had once given him, 'Be gentle with yourself.'

"Do you remember the day Dog died?" Dexter asked as he sat back down in the old brown chair that had borne witness to so much of their lives together. "I know you do. That was a strange day. It all happened so fast. I remember Dog as a puppy, with that puppy smell and feet that smelled like Fritos. When I got lonely after Ashley left, I would lay in bed with her and smell her feet. Somehow it comforted me. Funny I remember that before I remember how much hair she shed."

He paused, looking at the floor, half expecting to see tumble-weed clumps of Dog's hair rolling aimlessly around the bedroom. "I don't know what would have happened if you hated her. I mean, I suppose that's part of why I fell in love with you so fast. Dog loved you right away. I guess that was my permission to love you, too. Oh my God -- remember how she sniffed your crotch that first day? She was all up and in there. Yes, I was, in fact, jealous," the corner of his mouth turned up the smallest bit at the memory.

"I didn't want to lose her and I don't want to lose you." Dexter sagged as another wave of grief crashed over him, "But I'm going to. When she died, I decided to let myself believe she was somewhere better. Like a dog heaven. I don't know. That afternoon I was driving home from somewhere and a fox crossed the road in front of me. Right in the middle of the road, it stopped and looked right at me, and then disappeared into the trees. I had the most certain sense that it was Dog saying 'catch you later, dude.' I always laughed because I thought it was her showing off -- 'See how cool I am now?' It was like she was telling me that she was still ok. Just different. She was a good friend."

He stopped talking and listened to life for a minute. The rhythmic beep of some piece of medical equipment, the random creaks of the house, and bouts of silence. It was the silence that scared Dexter the most, because in the silence was the emptiness of a childhood that he could never fully outrun.

"I think Dog came into my life to teach me that she would wait for me, and to teach me that you would wait for me, too."

Dexter was still for a long time then. He felt heavy, caught in a painful pool of syrup where every breath took effort. Off in the distance, Dexter heard the ring of chimes, and wondered for a second what day it was, what time. Then the chimes again, calling the faithful to their knees. The chimes were closer now, louder, and harsh. His cell phone rang one more time before Dexter picked up to see his daughter's name. Jen's daughter.

"Hi Jennifer," he tried to sound stable for her sake, "Where are you?"

"Hey Dad. How's it going? How are you?" she answered.

"You're not supposed to answer a question with a question," Dexter surprised himself with a laugh, "House rules. But I'm ok. Sitting with mom, keeping her company."

There was a long silence and Dexter could hear Jennifer breathing in deeply, trying to calm herself, he imagined.

"No change?" She asked

"Not really, but she seems peaceful."

"Ok. I just finished my last mid-term, and I'm going to leave in about 20 minutes, so I'll be home in maybe an hour and a half."

"Please drive carefully, ok? Don't speed, it won't help anything," he said, knowing that she would anyway.