Affairytale : A Memoir Read online

  An eternal blissful kiss.

  The kind of kiss that even when it ends, your soul remembers, the kind of kiss that plays in your mind for all of eternity, the kind of kiss that a man gives a woman when his instincts to roam have been tamed. His breath was sweet, his tongue minty, and his intention was clear.

  He was loving me.

  I felt it, I heard it, I even believed it, at the time. But there was still a voice deep inside me reminding me that when it’s too good to be true, it probably is. It was that voice that never allowed me to fully feel what he was offering. It was that voice that made me question his every word and touch a hundred times over. I laid my head on top of his shoulder and he wrapped me in his arms. Layer by layer, tighter and tighter until he enveloped all of me.

  “Grant, is this for real?” I asked.

  “It is for me.”

  “Sometimes I feel like you’re still holding back. I mean, I understand why you would be, but…I feel like there’s so much more to us than we talk about; I feel like we have something that most people only dream of but never get to experience. Do you feel that way too?”

  “C.J.,” he said quietly, “I feel it. Trust me, I feel it. And I’ll keep showing you if you let me. I won’t hold back anymore.” He interlaced his fingers behind the sensitive skin of my lower back and melted into me. “It’s you baby,” he whispered with his lips on my skin, “I can’t believe it’s you and that you’re really here.”

  “I’m sorry I put you in this position,” I said, my voice strained. “I wish we didn’t have to sneak around.”

  “It’s kinda fun,” he said with a devious grin.

  “Will you still want me when I’m not so taboo?”

  “Of course,” he gushed, “Baby, don’t even think like that. I’ll always want you. I don’t like sneaking around either, but let’s do what we have to so we can be together.”

  “Grant, I don’t want to be with Levi. It was just too hard to leave. I know that’s not an excuse to stay but…” I trailed off, I couldn’t finish, couldn’t admit to how big of a coward I was. How I’d stayed only because I was too afraid to leave. “I don’t love him like a wife should love her husband,” I said. “I haven’t for as long as I can remember. In fact, I don’t even like him anymore. I need you to know that when I go home, I don’t have sex with him. I haven’t had sex with him for months, and before that, it was just pity sex anyway.” I shook my head, embarrassed at the dysfunctional marriage I’d helped to create and had been too afraid to get out of.

  “Baby, it shouldn’t be like that,” he moved in to seduce me. “With us…” he said, looking through my eyes and into my soul, “it won’t be like that. I promise.” He held my face in his hands, “You do know how much I care about you, don’t you?”

  I turned up my palms, eternally insecure, gesturing for him to tell me as many times as he could possibly tolerate. “I care about you more than you know,” he said.

  Is that code for I really care about you but don’t love you?

  He must have sensed my need for never ending reassurance. He gripped me tight to his body. “I need you, C.J.,” he said. “I want you in my life. I’ll take care of you if you let me, and Dani too.”

  More than anything, I wanted him to take care of me, and Dani too, if the time came for that. I had to get out of my marriage first and I had to do it by myself. He couldn’t be involved in that, not any more than he already was.

  “I’ll never tell you what to do,” he said, “and I would never ask you to do anything. I want to be with you, and I’m here for you, for whatever you need. I’ve waited this long, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, you have,” I said. “But you don’t have to wait anymore. I’m yours, my home is with you.”

  After another blissful kiss, he led me back through the plastic hanging doorway, past the work cars; Spy1, Spy3, and into the foyer outside his office. The light was still on and the door was cracked open.

  “Is this your office?” I asked and took a step forward anxious to gather any intel into his tightly guarded private life. “Let me see.”

  He squeezed my hand and pulled me away from the door, “Don’t go in there.”

  “Why not?” I pushed open the door, and my jaw dropped onto the filthy floor.

  Red flag, red flag!

  “Oh my God! This is a disaster,” I gasped. “It looks like wild monkeys live here. How in the hell do you find anything?” I stood in one place, the only place to stand, and I circled around.

  “I don’t.” He laughed, “It’s a problem. Sometimes it takes me twenty minutes to find my car keys.”

  “Twenty minutes? I’m surprised you find anything at all. You told me you were disorganized, but this isn’t disorganized. This is hoarding.”

  I walked further into the lair of filth—my first peek into his secretive world.

  Not so impressed.

  Half a dozen coffee mugs peppered what I assumed was a desk, each one sprouting its own furry greenish animal. The carpet looked like the floor of a feed lot, littered with dirt and straw, and stacks of paper overflowed from the desk into the garbage, the garbage onto the floor, and the floor to the ceiling. Heaps of who-knows-what was fanned out in every direction smothering most of the walking space. An out of place Terry Redlin print hung crooked on the wall next to an air conditioner that dangled from a few red wires.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here, this is embarrassing,” he said tugging on my shirt.

  “Well it should be,” I snarked, “Don’t you ever throw things away?”

  He walked past me and let out a frustrated groan, then sat down in his office chair and spun in a circle holding his arms out as if to say see…it’s not that bad. He was comfortable in his office filth.

  “You need help,” I said, then stood between his legs. He laid his head to the side as I drew my fingers through his dark, fine hair. I kneaded and squeezed his neck and shoulders while he purred with sounds of pleasure.

  He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes and bed head, “That feels so good, I wish you could stay.”

  “Me too.” I said, then kissed his lips and wriggled out of his grip. I reluctantly walked away, every step in the opposite direction of him felt wrong and painful in so many ways. I leaned against the door frame not wanting to leave. “I miss you when I go—I didn’t know it could be like this.” I shook my head in amazement at what we’d found with each other.

  “I guess this is how it feels when two people find true love.”

  What?

  What did he say?

  Did he just say he loved me?

  I mean, I dreamed he would tell me that, but certainly not this soon, and certainly not until after I’d said it first, or at least until after I was divorced. I was so dumbfounded, I couldn’t respond. I just winked, then turned and walked away.

  Those words, his words, became emblazoned on my heart forever.

  ***

  Cheating on Levi felt right. It felt guilty, and disrespectful, but it still felt right. After my office rendezvous with Grant, I blasted through my front door overconfident and filled with excitement more than I was consumed with remorse. I wasn’t going to take any shit from Levi. He was not going to ruin my secret bliss. Or so I thought.

  That night Levi cornered me as soon as I got to the kitchen. He spattered out some nonsensical fragments about how nobody loves him and how he doesn’t even exist.

  Pity party, table of one.

  Nothing was more off-putting to me than an unconfident man, and Levi had become the most un-confident man I knew. Surely I’d contributed to his unraveling, but it wasn’t me alone who caused his self-destruction.

  Levi would forever be the laid-back, fun guy. I would forever be the sole bearer of decisions at the dentist, the doctor and school conferences; the parent that thinks it’s not okay for our kids to do the things we did as teenagers, that it’s not okay to smoke pot out of a coke can or drive the back country roads just to have a place to drink. I
would forever be the mean mom who says no, after he’s already said yes.

  No matter the amount of conversations, arguments, or attempts at compromise, Levi and I were never going to see eye-to-eye on the things that mattered the most. We would never have conversations about politics; I would vote one way, and he would vote the other. I tried to save for retirement, learn how to invest, and figure out a plan for the rest of our lives, he just never seemed interested. I wanted to travel, to live, and see the world, he liked staying home.

  When I wanted to fix our marriage I came home with books, ideas, and plans for us to find what we’d lost, but he didn’t think anything was wrong. I even tried to change enough for the both of us so he wouldn’t have to. I ignored my innermost feelings and took my mom’s advice instead.

  I laid down and took it.

  In more ways than one. Even when I didn’t want to. But since it wasn’t hurting me, and it made him happy, mom said, it was okay to do that. Sacrifice makes a happy marriage. So I pimped myself out to my husband.

  I tried to focus on Levi’s good qualities and not his bad. I gave up on living an outgoing, social life and started living like someone I was not with the hope I would settle into it, and save my marriage. But the real me could not be dissolved or stuffed down. Eventually I would always creep back to who I really was.

  It had been eleven years since the first night I met Levi, and five since we’d been married. I’d been with him long enough to know that I’d made a colossal mistake.

  I had to start distancing myself even more, I would need to tell him soon. He couldn’t go on thinking things were fine, oblivious to my detachment and looming disappearance.

  “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love your family anymore? You’re never home,” Levi said as I rummaged through the refrigerator for a late night snack.

  “Bullshit,” I said, hiding behind the condiments, “I’m just not here when you’re here.” I pulled out a jar of pickles. “I take Dani to school and pick her up, every day and I’m with her every night. How dare you say I’m never home.” Glass bottles clanked together as I whacked the door shut with my elbow.

  “I never see you anymore.” Levi said, his voice pleading.

  “Maybe that’s because I want it that way. Look at us, all we do is fight.” I set the pickles on the island and popped the lid.

  “Is there someone else?” Levi said calmly.

  Shit, what did he see? Nothing, I’ve been extra careful, he’s just guessing.

  “No, there’s not someone else,” I scoffed, hostile and defensive. “Don’t you get it?” I yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m. Not. Happy!”

  “Stop it,” he said antagonizing me, “You exaggerate, it’s not that bad.”

  There’s nothing like invalidation to make a wife feel lonely and unheard. I hung my head, thoroughly invalidated…once again.

  “Come here,” Levi said as he extended his arms and took a step toward me. Which inferred that he expected me to go from screaming mad, to spreading my legs. The reality was that his gesture made me go from screaming mad to psychotic anger. My disdain for him oozed from my mouth like a weeping cold sore.

  “Don’t you dare fucking touch me! I’m so sick of this. Sick of you! I don’t want to do it anymore. We’ve tried too many times to get along. Things get better for a few weeks, maybe a month, then we’re back like this again.” I threw my hands up. “You can’t tell me you’re happy. How could you be happy when I don’t even want to sleep with you! I don’t even want to be around you.”

  “So what are you saying?” he said, like a dumb-fuck who hadn’t heard anything.

  “So what am I saying? What am I saying? Are you deaf? I’m saying what I have been saying for years, I. Hate. Our. Marriage. I’m miserable. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not kidding. Not exaggerating. I’m serious. And that you think I’m not serious, makes me fucking enraged! You never listen to me!”

  “Well maybe if we had sex more things would be better.”

  His statement made my insides burn like I was being embalmed alive. “So let me get this straight,” I said, “What you’re saying is that it’s my fault that we don’t get along, because I don’t want to have sex?”

  “Yesss,” He drug out the word as if he’d finally gotten through to me.

  “You are so fucking ignorant, I don’t know why I married you.”

  “Well why did you marry me then?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe if you had made an effort to spend quality time with me once in and a while, and maybe if you weren’t such an invalidating jerk, I’d have wanted to fuck you! But now. No way. It’s over. I’m done.”

  “You won’t even come near me!” He yelled, “How could I have spent time with you? You won’t sit by me. You won’t lay beside me. You won’t even kiss me! I repulse you, how do you think that makes me feel?”

  “You’re right, about all of it,” I said callously. “Why do you want a wife who has such an aversion to you anyway?”

  I ate pickles, crunching them with my mouth wide open, being as vile as I could and contemplating how to end this argument. I was tired. Tired of him, tired of arguing, I was emotionally exhausted, and it was nearing midnight.

  I slid a bottle of white wine off the counter then held it up as if it was on display. “If you can pronounce the name of this wine—I’ll give you a blow job,” I said crunching loud with my mouth open then laughing at myself for even thinking of it. “I’ll give you three tries.”

  Funny how the proposition of a blow job can lift a man from a deep pit of anger to panting like a dog a second flat. I handed the bottle to him. There was no way in hell he was going to get this right, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know. And, there was no way in hell I was even going to kiss him, let alone get him off.

  He looked at the label, “Guu-were…”.

  “Nope,” I said before he could finish, then hung my body over the cold granite.

  “Geez-wore-zat.”

  “Nope. One more try,” I mumbled.

  “Goo-werz-traa…”

  Before he was done with the last pathetic syllable I said, “Nope,” popping the word on my lips just to drive the point home, then walked away and locked myself in the bathroom.

  “Well what is it then?” He yelled through the door.

  I yelled back exaggerating each syllable, “Guh-Voorts-truh-Mee-nur.”

  “That’s what I said!” He yelled at the door.

  I sat on the ledge of the tub.

  This sucks so bad. :(

  I’m having a miserable

  night. I wish I were

  with u. Text if u can.

  I’ll be in the bathroom

  for 5 mins. Otherwise,

  goodnite. :) I’ll text u

  in the morning. :)

  I didn’t wash my face, I sat on the toilet with my knees knocked together, elbows digging into my thighs, and my chin in my hands. I shut my eyes and contemplated sleeping in the bathtub as I waited for the chime.

  Baby, I’m so sorry. I

  promise it will never be

  like that with us. U

  deserve so much more.

  I am always here for u.

  Call or come over

  anytime. P.S. I meant

  everything I said tonight.

  B sure 2 delete. :)

  I didn’t want to delete. I wanted to eat his words, sleep with them, bathe in them. I snuck out of the bathroom, I put in my earbuds, built a great wall of pillows down the center of our king size bed then snuggled under the covers. I tucked my phone under my body and laid on my side. My playlist started with Clair De Lune and I was out by Symphony No. 5.

  ***

  It was Saturday night, Grant was on stage at some bar gig, and it was time to deploy my devious plan to one up his nudie. From in between his sateen sheets I left him a voicemail.

  “Hi baby,” I said, my hands shaking from what I was about to do, “instead of a naughty
picture, I thought I’d leave you this voice mail.”

  My heart beat fast and my insides quivered, I’d never done something so tawdry before. I wanted to back out, but forced myself to take the risk, to push past my boring beige boundaries.

  “I’m in your bed, alone—dreaming about you, wishing you were here so you could touch me. But for now…I’ll just do it myself and pretend it’s you.”

  Chapter 26

  “LOVE MODERATELY. LONG LOVE DOTH SO.

  TOO SWIFT ARRIVES AS TARDY AS TOO SLOW.”

  ―WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO AND JULIET, 2.6.14-15

  Las·civ·i·ous:

  Revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire.

  —Dictionary.com

  Oh yes, I was definitely being lascivious.

  “I’m sliding my fingers into my pink and black lacy panties, the one’s you like, and I’m imagining it’s your capable hands touching me, pleasuring me, circling like this, petting me softly…like this.”

  I paused for dramatic effect, then teased him with a five minute steaming hot erotic tutorial on exactly how to pleasure me.

  “I wish you were here to finish the job, I can’t wait for you to explore all of me.” I threw in a few pleasure filled moans then finished act three.

  U! U naughty, naughty

  girl. :) U sexy vixen.

  Just wait. I will teach U!

  I was getting what I had always wanted, him wanting me, but getting what you want also comes with a crippling fear of losing it.

  ***

  “We told him not to,” Dylan said. “No one else dared to do it, the log was all mossy and slick. It was so stupid. If he fell there was no way we could’ve pulled him out. No one was even down river.”

  “Dylan! Why did you let him do it?” I yelled into the phone.

  “We couldn’t stop him,” Dylan said, “I tried to talk him out of it, I didn’t want him to do it. The snow-pack had just melted and the river was raging through the gorge. I couldn’t even look at him while he was out there.”

  “Where was this?” I asked. “Where are you?”