#chapter Six
He fucks me hard enough to move me on the bed. His fingers encircle my wrist, pinning my hand to the headboard. That hurts a little, but so does the fierce thrust of him inside me.
It all hurts, and I love the pain.
I’m looking into his eyes when I come. He sees my pleasure on my face. Maybe feels it in the clutch of my cunt on him, I can’t be sure. My body moves all on its own, and I can’t control it. I don’t want to. I am lost in desire. Lost in his eyes. I’m lost in Ian, and there’s no finding my way out.
He puts his face against my neck, and I feel his sweat. His grip tightens on my wrist. More pain, this time making me gasp a little. It sends him over but if this was a game of who’s in control, the way he mutters my name when he comes seems to make me the winner.
A minute passes before he loosens his fingers and rolls off me to lay on his back. The soft huff of our mingled breathing is lulling me to sleep when Ian gets up and pads to the bathroom. I hear the toilet flush. He comes out, washes his hands. Rinses his mouth and spits into the sink. I haven’t moved when he comes back to bed. I’m not sure I can. The mattress dips when he slides in beside me.
Ian turns me onto my side and pulls me back against him. Spooning. I tuck my hand under my cheek, my head on the pillow, his warmth behind me and his hand resting lightly just under my breasts. I wait for regret and feel only safe and if not loved, at the very least, adored.
For that moment, adored.
***
“In the morning,” Maura said, “you brought me coffee and a bagel from the place next door. Remember that?”
Ian was silent for a few seconds. Then sighed. “Yes. Of course I do.”
“We ate in bed, and you said you didn’t mind the crumbs because this was a hotel, but when we were in your bed, I’d have to do without breakfast. And what did I say?”
“That you’d make a meal of my…of me.” He could be filthy, there was no doubt of that, but at the same time so charmingly shy.
Maura laughed. “Yes. I said that. And you had to go to your meetings, but you walked me to my car and kissed me goodbye. And you know what I thought just then, Ian?”
Another pause. One second. Another. “What?”
“I thought about how I’d truly believed that it would only be once, but when you kissed me there in the parking lot, in the bright light of morning, I knew there was no possible way I could go the rest of my life without kissing you ever again.”
He laughed at that. “I never thought it would be the only time.”
“No?”
“No. I thought if we did it…if we actually fucked, that it would never end.”
Maura closed her eyes, listening. “But it did. It has.”
He said nothing, but what had she expected him to say? That he loved and wanted her? That he would do anything to be with her? The time for that had come and gone, and more than once.
“Do you want this to be over, Ian?”
“I want you to be happy,” he said.
She believed him. The words were nice. Yet they cut deeper than if he’d simply answered yes.
“I want you to be happy too,” Maura said. “I love you, Ian.”
Again, he said nothing, but the sound of his breathing shifted. She imagined him rubbing his mouth. At least if he were holding back words she didn’t want to hear, she could be grateful for that.
She tried biting back her own words, but they slipped out anyway. She’d always been honest with him and couldn’t seem to stop herself now. “I love you. I want you. I want to be with you, I want to see if we could make it work. For real. Me and you, Ian.”
“You just think you want that.”
Maura set her jaw. “Don’t tell me what I think or what I want. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No. Of course not. You know I don’t.”
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t have any idea what you think, Ian, because you don’t tell me.”
Maura paused, thinking of all the hours they’d spent talking and of the things he had said. Why was it always so much harder to hang onto the positives? So much easier to believe him when he told her ‘no’ and ‘don’t’ and ‘stop.’
“Doublethink,” she told him when he stayed silent. “You know doublethink?”
She heard the soft huff of his breath. “Yes. From that book you gave me. 1984.”
“Yes. Doublethink is the act of accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, simultaneously. I doublethink with you all the time. Because there’s a part of me that knows without a doubt you love me and want me as much as I want you. Part of me knows this as complete truth, that there is no possibility for it to be any other way.”
“And the other part?”
Maura sighed. “That I mean nothing to you and never did. That I have left no impression on you whatsoever. I think I’m immeasurably important to you and insignificant at the same time. Two totally opposite feelings, and I believe them both.”
“What do you want from me?” Anger hard-edged his voice, but that was ok. Better fury than apathy.
“I want you to be miserable without me!” She could be angry, too. “I want you to wake the fuck up and get your shit together.”
She’d pushed him too far. “Get my shit together? The ink’s barely dry on your divorce papers! You said yourself you hadn’t been single since you were eighteen years old. What the hell makes you think I just want to be the next in line?”
That was the trouble of telling someone all your truths. They could use them to tear you apart. Maura drew in a breath, biting her tongue, counting to ten before she could answer him without screaming.
“And why should you ever, ever trust me?” She asked him. “After all, I’m a cheater.”
Ian made a low noise. “I didn’t…that’s not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“But it’s the truth, isn’t it? Goddammit, Ian, can’t you even just…tell me that? If it bothers you?”
“Yes!” He cried. “Fine. Yes. I think about that. How could I trust you? If you did it with me, maybe you’d do it to me. Right? And how do I know that you’re just not afraid of being alone? That I’m not just convenient. Here I am, you already know me —”
“I do know you,” she told him softly. “I know every part of you.”
“What if it just doesn’t work out?”
Maura swiped the tears that had crept unbidden down her cheeks and struggled to keep them from her voice. She’d already given him too much. “How will we ever know if we don’t try?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You think that I don’t really want you. That I don’t know what I want, that you’re just some fantasy for me. Is that it?” She lay back on the pillows and wished the world away. His silence was her answer. “You think I should…what? Be with someone else?”
“Maybe.”
“Ian!” She cried. “Do you want me to be with someone else? You can think about that and not be bothered?”
“It bothers me. Of course it does,” he admitted, and sent her heart leaping into her throat.
“Because you’re worried that I haven’t dated enough?”
“You just got divorced. You shouldn’t leap into anything long-term or serious right away.”
She frowned. “Just because you fucked your way through the dating scene when you got divorced doesn’t mean I want to. Or have to.”
“You should have some time to be with yourself,” he told her firmly. “Find out what you want. Not just jump into the first thing that comes along.”
Maura's eyes narrowed. She listened to the spaces between his words. The things he didn’t say. And, she held onto hope. She doublethought as hard as she could.
I mean everything. I mean nothing.
“Fine,” she said finally. “Then here’s what I’m going to do. I will date other people, if that’s what you want. I will open myself up to the possibilities of finding someone who is not you, or the possibility of ending up alone. But you’re going to do something for me, too.”
“What?” Ian asked, sounding wary.
Maura glanced at the clock. 11:11 Wishing time. She closed her eyes and put out her desire to the universe.
“You’re going to listen to me tell you about every single one of them,” she told him, “until you can’t stand it any more.”
Ian made another of those low noises, discontent. “And then what?”
“Then,” she said, “you’ll either never speak to me again, or you will realize you can’t live without me. Either way, Ian, the way things are right now is going to change.”