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You aren’t sure which stage of grief you were in when you married Leon. Depression, maybe. Because in the span of a year, you lost both of your parents and your fiancé–the former at the hands of an icy road and an unbarricaded ditch, the latter because you couldn’t get over the former fast enough and were being a real ‘wet blanket’.
Acceptance? Accepting that your life would never look the way you planned, no matter if you happened to fall in love again and have a family of your own, if you finished grad school, if you somehow adopted yourself out to an elderly couple as makeshift relatives to fill the gaping hole in your heart.
Or maybe an entirely new stage–a witch’s brew made from a nervous breakdown plus trauma bonding plus no one left in your circle to tell you not to make a life altering decision while still in mourning. But your life was already altered irrevocably, and you needed a roof over your head, and the man couldn’t catch a break. He was grieving his wife while trying to take care of a two-month old baby and it all seemed too bleak.
Unfortunately, you agreed to the situation when you were in that psychedelic limbo of life–that age where you can make a stupid mistake and completely justify it one night, then wake up the next morning with a year’s worth of wisdom just plopped into your brain. Perhaps there really is a switch that goes off when you hit a certain age. You can be totally adamant that you know what you want your life to look like and know exactly who you are and want to be, then you blow out the candles on your birthday cake and the smoke singes your nostrils on the way up to your brain and poof!
Maybe you do want children of your own. Maybe you do want a man in your life who never makes you second-guess his everlasting, undying, patriotic pledge type of love for you. Maybe it was out there if only you had given it another chance and just waited.
But you had one failed relationship and the rest of your life went down the drain with it, or so you thought. One bastard cheats because you were too sad to let him between your legs, you return the ring, you lose your home, and your life is over. The only thing left for you to do is enter a marriage of convenience with a man you hardly know and to take care of a child that isn’t yours.
You love her like she is, though.
“Whatchu thinking about?”
She’s too astute. Nothing slips under her radar. At four years old, the kid is far too advanced for her own good. Maybe she gets it from her father. Maybe not…
“Could ask you the same thing. You haven’t touched your dinner, missy.” That pasta she begged you to make with the special white sauce she treats like ambrosia of the gods. It comes from a glass canister and is typically on sale at the grocery store. You hope she’s as easy to please when she’s sixteen and wants a car, or when she wants to turn down a full-ride scholarship to go to follow her friends to a different college.
Ella picks up the stem of the fork, just twirling the utensil around the bowl of sauce and soggy wheat. “I’m not hungry.”
“Would you eat a powdered donut?”
Her eyes light up, baby blues glistening with joy. She gets that same look in her eyes that her father does whenever he sees her smile. “Yes.”
“Then that means you’re hungry.”
You’re sure it doesn’t, and that trick is usually told the other way around with a much healthier alternative like an apple or a protein bar, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“Oh,” she says, dimmed eyes falling to her uneaten dinner.
“Eat up.”
Ella looks up at you, and you arch a brow back. You had almost convinced her to take a bite when the sound of a lock clicking echoes through the corridor. Her ears prick up and she slides off the barstool, tiny feet carrying her at a superhuman pace out of the kitchen and toward the front door.
“Daddy,” you hear her shout, the twinkling sound followed by Leon’s voice greeting his daughter. After three years of living in this house, being a mother to his child in all but name, being his wife in nothing but, you still aren’t comfortable joining in on their exchanges of affection. Greeting him at the door with a kid between you was probably something he imagined doing with his wife one day, not with you. It seemed intimate of a moment to involve yourself in, already feeling like an intruder.
The two of you lived separate lives, the only overlap being Ella and the house, which you rarely shared. He was always gone, snatched up by work, sometimes for weeks, other times for months. Even then, your bedrooms were separated by a long hallway, a pair of doors that were always shut, and two sets of locks that were always turned. Romantic.
Leon didn’t know anything about you when the two of you met that evening. Claire had taken the baby for the night so he could try out the group therapy she had recommended–a session specifically for those that are grieving the loss of loved ones. He knew she wouldn’t let up unless he went. Plus, he fit the bill.
You did too. A girl whose life had just about crumbled to pieces in the span of a year, losing her parents, her fiancé, the house she was living in, her car. A real mess, he thought, when he first saw you furrowing your brows at the circle of empty chairs in the church basement. Your hair was wild, windswept, and tucked behind your ears, your aflame from the whistling winter chill, your nose dripping from the cold, chin tucked into a scarf wrapped haphazardly around your neck.
Before you could ask if you were in the right place, expecting to walk into a room full of other dumpster fires, all huddled in a circle sobbing about their grief, the same as him, he told you the fact of the matter.
“You got the wrong time too, huh?” He was already sitting in one of the chairs, legs spread, elbows on his knees as he watched you approach, the rubber soles of your boots squelching on the lacquered floor.
“What?” You asked.
He checked his watch, a chunky black timepiece on his wrist. “It starts at seven-fifteen, not six-thirty.” A tidbit of information he found out after also walking into an empty room, walking back out to double-check the flyer tacked to the door. Sure enough…
You chuckled in disbelief as you fished a pair of mittens out of your coat pockets, sliding the knit accessories back onto your shaky hands. “You’ve got to be kidding.” And maybe you were about to cry. Leon remembers how the whites of your eyes suddenly got glassy and your chin began to tremble.
“I’m kind of known for my jokes, but this unfortunately isn’t one of them.”
Another laugh. It was a more genuine sound than the other. You took another step toward the circle, approaching an empty chair, your hands finding the back of it as you leaned forward. “You know, this is probably a sign.”
“How’s that?” He leaned against the metal back of his seat, folding his arms across his chest.
“I didn’t really want to come to this thing, but my friend said she’d pay me twenty dollars if I showed up. Maybe this is my sign to leave.” You shrugged. “I can tell her I showed up at the wrong time, brain fog, ya’ know?”
He huffed.
“But I do need that twenty dollars, I guess.” Your eyes fell to the ground and you smiled, another lifeless chuckle leaving your chest as you attempted to contain it by sinking your teeth into your bottom lip. “What do you think I should do?”
Leon just shrugged and tilted his head. “How bad do you need that twenty dollars?”
“A better question is how bad do I need therapy.”
His gaze faulted to the floor between his boots, then back up to you. “This isn’t therapy.”
“Then what is it?”
“Just a place for people to vent and cry and talk about how sad they are and how miserable life is.”
Your shoulders shuddered as you let out a humored breath. “That’s my cue to leave.”
You did leave that night, but the next week, at seven o’clock, fifteen minutes before the session that both of you were obviously planning to attend, he ran into you at a coffee shop down the street from the church. The two of you decided to mutually forgo the group-cry, and settled in a booth to converse one-on-one instead.
He told you about his wife, who passed unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm six weeks after bringing their daughter, Eleanor into the world. How his job is as inconsistent as it is dangerous, and that he’s thankful for the bereavement leave he’s been so graciously (the sarcasm was strong there) given so he can take care of his infant, though he still has no idea what he’s doing. He mentioned something about her waking up every two hours, screaming and thrashing, after a month or two of sleeping peacefully through the entire night, to which you recommended a special trick that never once let you down. You had nannied for a family to put yourself through college and knew all the secrets–a real baby whisperer.
In turn, you vented to him about your parents’ untimely death, how much of an asshole your fiancé turned out to be, and how stupid you were to live with him and not save up for a rainy day in the case that he found someone else and kicked you out to move her in. Nowhere to live, no family to rely on, and a job that hardly pays enough for groceries but has connected you with friends that have shown you a great amount of kindness in letting you crash on their couch for the time being.
The two of you were alike in your desperation, among other things. It wasn’t long before you offered to help him take care of his daughter if he gave you a place to stay. He needed help, and wanted his daughter to have a strong mother figure in her life, and you needed a pillow. The marriage was just a formality, to stop questions from being asked. To provide some sort of normalcy to his child’s life. And because of that desire, none was left for either of you.
And Leon still can’t quite forgive himself for that.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
This is how most of your conversations go, though the two of you have lived together for over three years and you both wear rings on your fingers that presuppose a life of marital bliss, mutual exchanges of comfort, and lifelong affection. You signed up for it, quite literally, scribbling your name on a marriage certificate after outlining the terms and conditions in what seemed more like a brainstorming session in a conference room than a proposal. But perhaps, somewhere in your grief-dumbed mind and beneath the shimmering innocence of your youth, you thought things would change.
You truly believed being a live-in nanny-slash-stand-in-mother to a man with the emotional vulnerability of a brick wall who wasn’t home for long enough to notice that you changed your hair and painted the living room walls a different color, would fall in love with you. He’d go from touching your elbow–at the most–to exploring every inch of your body while the two of you made sweet, sweaty love in a shared bed. He’d have your picture on his bedside table instead of a depiction of his late wife admired and prayed to nightly like a shrine on an altar.
“She didn’t eat dinner?” His brows furrow as he catches sight of the untouched bowl on the kitchen island. Ella took off to the play room upstairs, promising to return once she found the thing she wanted to show her dad. You can hear the pitter-patter of her feet above your head as she navigates the room.
“Nope,” you say, watching as he pulls out a low ball glass and a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard, pouring himself a shot, downing it in one toss before setting the cup in the sink, turning on the faucet to rinse it out. “She said she wasn’t hungry. But to be honest, I think she filled up on the snacks I gave her after her ballet class. Rookie mistake.”
He chuckles, then glances at you, leaning over the sink, his arms extended, the heels of his palms supporting him on the marble counter. He’s wearing the bead bracelet you helped Ella make for him, a string of multicolored shapes and “Best Dad” spelled out in white blocks with black letters. “You got any plans tonight?”
You almost laugh. When the two of you were setting the parameters of this…arrangement…he made sure you knew you were always free to explore other options outside the marriage for whatever needs you may have. You tried once or twice to pick up men at bars or clubs when you went out with friends, but it never felt right, not when you knew Leon was back at home, despite the fact that he wasn’t waiting up for you.
So you’re telling me I can see other men?
If that’s what you need, then yeah, I’m not gonna stop you. This won’t be physical, so if you want to get that from someone else, that’s fine.
And what about you? Will you sleep with other women?
I’m not sleeping with anyone.
“No,” you say. You haven’t answered that question positively in almost a year. “You?”
He hasn’t either.
“No.” Leon shakes his head.
You wonder how much longer he can continue on like this–a grown man, obviously still virile and healthy, without any physical or emotional intimacy. Doesn’t he crave it? Or has he long turned those feelings off, having had and lost them in the same decade?
It happened once, a complete system failure that neither of you have spoken a breath of since. Ella was young, only just having switched from sleeping in the bassinet by your bed to the crib in her room, and you and Leon had just recently exchanged vows at the courthouse. That night, he had come home from an overseas assignment, posture slacking with wounds up and down his back and sides that you tended to with inexpert care, polishing them with salve and bandaging them with gauze and medical tape.
His arms wrapped around your waist as he hung his head down and cried.
I can’t do it anymore.
And he didn’t speak for the rest of the night save for a few muffled grunts and restrained huffs as he thrusted into you with the conviction of someone who is trying not to feel. It was awkward. He was tense the whole time, leaving your bedroom after he cried her name as he finished, never to mention it again. Then, he left for three months for, what you later found out, was an assignment he volunteered for, some sort of self-flagellation to rid his body of the guilt bubbling inside it.
“You should get out more. I worry about you being cooped up in here all day.”
You shrug. “I get out plenty.”
You drive her to and from preschool, run all the errands, take her to all her activities. That’s not ‘getting out’.”
“No, that’s being a parent,” you say matter-of-factly, folding up a dish cloth to drape over the oven rail. You worry for a moment that calling yourself that would be overstepping in some way, not technically a parent, not even really a step-parent in all capacities. But Leon just nods solemnly, a thin-lipped smirk at the corner of his mouth as his eyes fall to the floor. Then they rise back up to meet your own.
“And you’re good at it.” He turns around to now lean his seat against the counter, folding his arms. “I’m grateful for what you do and I know it doesn’t leave room for much else. But, I’m worried about you, and I don’t know, maybe you should take some time for yourself this weekend. Get out on the town. Tomorrow’s Saturday, I’m not working. I’ll watch her.”
“Get out on the town?” You repeat, raising a brow. “To do what?”
“Whatever you want. Get your nails done, go shopping, go get a…whatever they do at spas. Up to you. I feel bad keeping you here without–” He cuts himself off, voice trailing into nothingness. Without…paying you? That’s one of the many intricacies of this situation. He gives you room and board, leaves you and Ella wanting nothing, providing you two with everything you could need or want. And yet, as satisfying as that would be to a mother taking care of her own child, you’re less of that and more of a nanny that should be paid by the hour. But you never asked to be put on his payroll, nor desire it now. You love Ella as though she’s your own flesh and blood, and compared to how you were living before, Leon’s little house in the suburbs is a palace.
You tilt your head, rolling the idea around back and forth between the walls of your brain. “No point in getting a manicure…or buying new clothes,” you say as you gesture to the marker stains around your cuticles and the white drips of pancake batter still on your shirt from breakfast this morning. He chuckles. “Plus, I promised Ella we’d go to the park tomorrow morning, and build a pillow fort in the living room. You can come if you want to.”
“To the park? Or are you just enlisting my help in the construction of your fort?”
“Both?”
There’s something so revitalizing about a Spring morning. Dewdrops coat the blades of grass that tickle your feet, half-way to bare now that the weather permits sandals. Mornings are bright, not too hot, with just enough warmth from the sun to cut the breeze that turns bitter and biting in the shade.
It’s Saturday, and the park is bustling with smiles and the twinkling sounds of joyful children, running on the playground, their giddy feet carrying them across mulch and concrete.
Packing Ella in the car wasn’t difficult, not when she was released from the shackles of school for a couple days, her seatbelt promising fun and whimsy, not the four walls of her classroom. She doesn’t hate school. In fact, she likes it, and does really well, but there’s nothing a kid wants to do less than spend eight hours a day, five days a week, being told what to do, even if they enjoy it.
So, weekends are special. They’re filled with trips to the park, the museum, the science center. And this Saturday is especially wonderful because it’s her father in the front of the car, not just you, driving her to a day of play.
In the house, she picked out her outfit, dressed herself, attempted to negotiate with you over her bringing a toy to the park, and then calmed herself down when you told her ‘no’.
“They’ll get dirty,” Leon said as he walked into her bedroom, taking the stuffed animal and doll from her hands and setting them down reverently on the dresser. “Or you’ll lose them, and that won’t be fun for any of us.” He rolled his eyes with you, and you laughed.
“Are you coming with us?” Ella asked him as you walked her through the steps to tying her shoes. Almost. The bunny looks more like a lopsided elephant with one ear, but those overachieving knots aren’t going anywhere.
Leon turns his gaze to you. “If that’s alright?”
“Of course.”
Ella didn’t stop babbling the entire car ride, talking a big game about how she was going to do the monkey bars all by herself, and go down the big slide that scared all the other kids. Leon just nodded along, feeding her bravery with reassurances. Little did he know, he would be enlisted in going down said slide with her, and be the one to hold her up while she swung from the bars.
The playground is bustling when the two of you arrive, walking through the gate, immediately finding a place to sit down as Ella bolts toward the see-saw. Leon settles onto the bench beside you, leaning back as he intently tracks his daughter’s form through the tinted lenses of his glasses while she navigates the park. He’s dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a dark gray, v-neck t-shirt, a pair of sunglasses folded on the neckline, pulling down to reveal a patch of skin just below his collarbone. You try not to look, but he catches you.
At first, Leon makes a comment about the weather, and you politely respond, complimenting the sky in its clarity. Then, the conversation slowly shifts to Ella’s performance in school, how smart she already is even as a preschooler, him owing it all to you and the way you’ve brought her up to be so inquisitive, so curious and creative–his glittering compliments only ceasing when a woman approaches and interrupts.
She stands in front of you both with her hip jutted, one hand resting above it, and once she gets close enough to take in the details of Leon’s face, and the hard-earned muscles that extend from his shirt, her expression softens, scowl growing into a smile.
“Oh hi,” she says, not bothering to even glance out of the corner of her eye at you, gaze solely affixed to Leon beside you. She’s beautiful with long, dark hair that cascades down her back in perfectly groomed tendrils, and deliciously bronzed skin. A jealous thought races through your mind, and before you can dwell on it, Leon unfolds his arms and wraps one around your shoulders as casually as he would put his car in park.
It sends a chill down your spine, cooling you off as the buttery sun warms your face.
A flat ‘hello’ is all he gives in response.
“Does the little blonde girl with braids and a pink shirt belong to you?”
Your heart begins to race, thinking of all the ways she could have gotten hurt on the equipment, expecting to hear of a cracked skull or broken leg.
“Yes,” you and Leon reply in unison, and the woman’s attention is finally dragged to your face for only a fleeting second before she turns it back to your husband.
“What’s going on?”
She ignores you, extending a hand to Leon which he hesitantly shakes. “I should introduce myself. My name is Stephanie. My little boy is the one in the green hat over there.” Stephanie points across the mulch to a boy around Ella’s age playing especially viciously with the toy shovels in the sandbox, trying to bend the plastic tool in his hand as he kicks particles into the air. Leon asks her to get to the point in the nicest way possible. “Your daughter punched my son in the face.”
“What?”
“Yeah, right in the nose. Just thought I’d come over here to ask for an apology for my son. He’s pretty upset and in our house, we teach our kids to say ‘sorry’ when they hurt others, so it would send the wrong message to him if she didn’t say it.”
“Did you witness this?” He asks. The woman shakes her head.
“No, but my son isn’t a liar. He told me that she hit him right in the face.”
“I’ll go talk to her,” you say to Leon, the two of you exchanging a glance that reads as a storm of both annoyance and undeniable responsibility. The woman seems like a stuck-up cunt, but your kid allegedly punched hers in the face and you’ve been backed into a corner.
Leaving Leon with Stephanie, you stand up from the bench, eyes immediately running across the playground, finally landing on Ella sitting on a swing behind the vast jungle gym. Her eyes are dry but the expression on her face is pure dejection, her sweet rosebud lips puckered into a frown, her blonde brows knit together as she studies the mulch beneath her feet.
“Miss Eleanor Kennedy,” you croon, approaching with grace. She doesn’t look up from the ground as she listlessly holds onto the rails of the swing. “Would you mind telling me what happened with a certain boy in a green baseball cap?” Crouching down, you hold yourself up with a hand on the metal pole of the swingset, looking up at the face she has tilted toward the earth.
She just shrugs, looking awfully adorable in her little jeans and sparkly ballet flats for someone with a mean hook (allegedly).
“Did you hit that boy, Ella?”
She finally looks at you, her big blue eyes wide. It’s so jarring how much she looks like Leon at this moment. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me why?”
She shakes her head, short, blonde pigtails flopping from side to side against the movement.
“Well, you can tell me the details later, but right now, we need to go apologize to him.” You reach out a hand for her to grab, rising to standing to walk her over to the sandbox, where the boy and his mother stand. Ella gawks at your hand, her fire returning.
“No way!” She jumps off the swing and stomps past you toward her father who is now heading to you both. That’s when you see it. A mark in a dotted circle near the nape of her neck, right in the sinew of her shoulder. A red, raw bite mark.
“Leon, look,” you say, catching up to Ella, holding her still by the balls of her shoulders so you can inspect the mark, hoping that your eyes deceive you. He thins his eyes as he walks to your side, eyes honing in on what you’re now certain is a bite.
“Little shit,” he hisses under his breath, shaking his head. He crouches down with a slight groan, holding his daughter’s hands in his. “Can you tell us who did this to you?”
She points to the sandbox at the only boy there, running off any other children with his violent play. “He did.”
“Did he bite you before or after you hit him?” You ask. She tilts her head up to look at you.
“He pushed me down,” is all she gives.
“Should we go talk to his mom about this? Sort this out?” You ask, turning your gaze to Leon. As he stands, he sighs, shoulders rising and falling beneath the breath.
“No. Neither of us were there to see it, and apparently she wasn’t either, so we can’t know what really happened. Let’s just go home and get this bandaged up.”
You place two cupped palms over Ella’s ears. “But he took a bite out of her, Leon. He can’t just get away with that. It drew blood.” You cringe looking down at the mark again, a few pieces of broken skin peeling.
He puts a light hand on your arm. “And she apparently hit him in the face.”
You roll your eyes, crossing your arms. “And he pushed her,” you add in a mumble.
He chuckles lightly. “Do you really think that woman will be rational about this? Look at her.” You follow his gaze to Stephanie, watching the two of you intently with narrowed eyes as her child kicks sand into her shoes. “If you go over there and try to talk things through, it might get out of hand, and something tells me she’s looking for a fight.”
You relent with a long blink. “You’re right. Let’s just go.” With Ella in tow, you and Leon walk toward the gate, Leon stepping ahead to open it for you and Ella to pass through, almost to the finish line before a grating voice appears, approaching beside you.
“Woah, woah, woah. Hey there. Yoo-hoo. Remember me?”
You stop in your tracks, squeezing Ella’s hand before letting it go so she can walk toward her dad. “How could I forget?” You mutter, looking around for her son who is nowhere to be found, probably terrorizing some other defenseless child.
“Were you just going to walk away and ignore this?”
“Look,” you start as Leon comes to your side. “Apparently your son both bit and pushed her, so let’s just call this even.”
She scoffs, her mouth falling open as she puts two dramatic hands on her hips. “I think not. And do you even have any evidence of him ‘pushing’ and ‘biting’ her?” She asks with flamboyant air quotes.
You could turn Ella around and show Stephanie the wound, but you hold her close instead.
“Do you have evidence of her punching your son?” Leon asks. She stutters, spitting out a string of incoherent threats.
“If he told me she punched him, then she punched him.”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Leon says, placing a hand on your back. “Let’s go. Have a good day, Stephanie,” he says with a quick lift and lower of his hand, dismissing the crazed loon in front of you as you bring Ella to your hip and start to walk away.
“My son is not a liar,” she shouts.
You glance over your shoulder. “Well neither is my daughter.”
Leon wasn’t sure he had ever heard you call Ella your daughter, and he contemplated the tectonic shift that happened in his mind as he drove the two of you back home, watching as you picked at your nails and shook your knee until he pulled into the driveway.
He stood silently in the door of the bathroom as he watched you disinfect the bite mark on her neck, which was a lot more shallow than either of you had expected, thankfully. The way your hands treated her with such care. How you cracked jokes and made her giggle while you swiped a bit of salve over the cut skin. When you pulled her into a bear hug, rocking her back and forth, after you placed a large bandage over the wound and kissed it better.
He was sure he had been temporarily blinded over the past few years, only now regaining his sight to see you, the woman he took into his home both out of pity and necessity, as something far more than just a mother figure to his child, and a roommate who decorates his house with pretty things.
Leon felt a latch move into place. A flip of a switch. He had experienced something similar in his twenties, right after the government sunk their nails into him and the second half of his life began, but nothing as strong as this. The complete shift in consciousness was jarring then, and it’s nearly twice as jarring now.
How much time has he wasted?
“You sleeping in here tonight?” You ask in jest, crawling through the part in the curtains made from blankets, venturing further into the fort. There are still a few dolls and books scattered around the quilt-clad floor, which you move aside to recline on a pillow.
He’s reclined on a flower-shaped pillow you snagged from Ella’s room, his hands clasped behind his head, the stretch pulling up the hem of his shirt to reveal the thinnest strip of stomach, the light dusting of hair atop it. “I might,” he says with a toothless smile, closing his eyes. “It’s actually pretty cozy.”
As if to rectify the events of the morning, you and Leon spent all afternoon constructing one hell of a pillow fort for Ella to enjoy for all of fifteen minutes before she went upstairs to play with her dollhouse, wore herself out setting up and acting out a tea party with her dolls, and was too wiped to say ‘no’ to bedtime. She’s been snoozing for half an hour, and you finally were able to rip yourself away from watching the way her nose twitched as she dreamed.
Instead, you now watch the rise and fall of Leon’s chest as the two of you lie side by side, looking up at the sheet hanging above, the shimmering lights and painted paper stars strung along them.
“Can I ask you a question?”
You cut your eyes to him, tracing the line of his silhouette before he turns to meet you. “Shoot.”
“Are you…um…seeing anyone? Like, a boyfriend, or something?”
You part your lips to speak, but instead, your mouth falls open in pure, unadulterated shock. Then, a maniacal cackle that comes straight from your gut. You glance over at Leon, his eyes affixed to you. “Are you serious?”
He just shrugs, readjusting his head on the pillow, looking up at the ceiling of the fort. “I know we talked about this before and I said I wouldn’t mind if you did. Just thought I’d ask.”
“No, I’m not seeing anyone, Leon. Are you?”
“Oh, no, of course not,” he says quickly and then swallows, his gaze flickering around as he pinches his brows and narrows his eyes, searching the cotton walls as if the words he needs to say will be scribbled on them. “Do you want to?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
The room darkens as the sun sets, the candy-colored sky no longer seeping through the windows, and the lantern at the door of the fort glows orange, illuminating the sheet walls.
“Crazy day, huh?” Is all you think to say, to break through the deafening silence between you, immediately cringing as the words leave your mouth.
“You’re telling me. I’d rather fight BOWs than go through that again.”
You turn your head to look at him, the acronym as foreign to you as helicopter moms are to him. “What?”
“Work stuff,” he says with a tilted laugh, waving a dismissive hand.
“Oh, right.”
You sigh and another wave of silence rolls through the tent, a cacophony of nondescript sounds happening past the pink cloth: the hum of the dishwasher, the light pitter-patter of rain tapping the window, the faint sound of Ella’s white noise machine upstairs.
“Can I kiss you?”
You turn your face to him, blinking yourself awake from what you’re sure was a dream, never having heard those words come from his lips, not certain he even owns them. Perhaps there’s cotton in your ears and you misheard. Perhaps he was speaking another language entirely.
But before you can so much as inhale before asking him to clarify, he shakes his head, sitting up. “Sorry.” A breathy laugh leaves his chest. “I don’t know why I said that. I think I’m just exhausted.” He rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms, the act making a squeaky sound. “Gonna head upstairs.” And a quick ‘goodnight’.
You reach out to grab his arm, interrupting his movements to leave. “Wait, Leon.” He halts under your touch, pivoting slightly to glance over his shoulder. The poor man is tired–plagued with the kind of exhaustion that saws right through the bone. It’s splashed across his face like paint. There are puffy purple crescents beneath his eyes, lash line red and irritated, the glossy whites speckled with veins. And the creases between his brows, across his forehead, are deeper than they typically are, lending to the stress he’s been under recently.
You lean forward, a hand raising to his cheek to caress his aging skin with your thumb. You’re positive you’ve never met a more beautiful man in your life, every feature on his face a perfect marriage of softness and masculinity. “Kiss me.”
He nods, so slightly a tilt you almost miss it, but soon you’re not able to see anything at all, his face eclipsing your entire field of vision. He grabs your cheeks, pressing you deeper into him as he latches onto your lips. The first kiss is deep and slow, one languid movement, your teeth pressed together through flesh. When he pulls away to look at you, all you can see is the storm in his eyes, waves crashing against a rocky cliff within his pelagic irises.
It’s an expression you’ve yet to see from him, something dark and utterly disastrous–something that promises a point of no return.
This time it’s you who initiates, returning to his lips in a kiss that is far more frenzied and hungry than the one before. Four years of grief, of misery, of upheaval. Three-and-a-half of knowing Leon, being a part of his family, living in his house while you toe the line between so desperately wanting more and yet wanting to just disappear from his sight altogether.
His tongue is needy and hot, pulling your own into a passionate tango of wanton desire. He moans into your mouth, his hands grabbing your waist, pulling you onto his lap in one swift movement.
Instinctively, you begin grinding down on him, your hips moving back and forth, pussy throbbing as his hardened length is dragged against it. You purr in his ear, to which he responds with a grown, instantly flipping you over until your head is once again on a pillow and your back is flush to the floor.
He kisses up and down your neck, traveling even further toward your collarbone, pulling at the neckline of your shirt to gain more uncharted territory across your skin. His lips soothe the burn from his facial hair, and you quiver under both paradoxical sensations.
“Leon,” you say, winning his attention. He looks at you, and a silent agreement passes between you both. It’s going to happen and nothing can stop it now.
He rips your clothes off your body, discarding them among the piles of quilt and blanket, and his hands move to make quick work of his own t-shirt and pants, until he’s in nothing but his briefs. You take a moment to drink up the sheer perfection of his form, and though you’ve seen it on a handful of occasions, there’s no memory that can do the real thing justice. The muscles of his abdomen tense as the cool air hits his skin, and when he comes down to bracket your waist with his fists, his arms flex and you nearly salivate at the bulge of his triceps.
“Are we doing this?” He verbalizes, though the two of you are sure there’s no other way around the feelings that are finally bubbling to the surface.
“We better be. I’m not stopping now,” you confirm, snaking your hand around the back of his head to pull him into one more kiss. While your mouths meet once again in a union of tooth and tongue, his hand creeps between your bodies to slide into your panties. You gasp into his mouth as his fingers find your clit, pads rubbing the bud in circles, dropping to your seam to gather your arousal before returning.
Maybe you’re backed up, or maybe he’s just that good, but it takes no time at all for your legs to shake, your core clenching, the rubber band in your belly to snap. Your hips jolt beneath him, begging for more as he slides his boxers down his thighs, freeing his cock, ready to give you just that. It’s prettier than you remember, and he seems far more eager to use it this time around, the head weeping with anticipation, shaft twitching as he takes it in his fist.
“It’s been a while,” you confess as he gathers more of your arousal on his palm. “I haven’t…not since…” Not since that night between the two of you, and years have passed between then and now. The showerhead and the toys you keep in your night stand couldn’t have prepared you for what’s about to happen.
“Okay, okay,” he says, nodding in understanding as he slides his cock against the moisture on his hand. “We can go slow.” He holds himself above you with his hands on either side of your shoulders as he teases your entrance with his tip, then sliding his entire length up and down your pussy.
“Thank you.”
“Just breathe.” It’s a soft command, and hardly one at that, but you still obey.
You inhale deeply, letting the oxygen travel through your nostrils, expanding your lungs, cleansing and detoxifying your body like you took out all your organs and nerves and gave them a bubble bath.
He watches between your bodies as your hips melt into the mattress. “Like that, yeah. That’s it. Let me in.” You part your legs wider, allowing him full entry into you. And he does it with reverence, sliding in one inch at a time, watching your face for a reaction. “There we go.”
It’s been a while. And he’s much larger than you remember, only half of his length doing the job of stretching you to your limit. “Leon, you’re–”
“You can take it,” he assures, a hand coming up to cup your cheek. “I know you can. Come on, let me all the way in.”
The stretch burns, but the pain slowly seeps into pleasure as muscle memory takes over, reminding your body how to relax, how to take it, how to let it bring you pleasure. He douses you with sweet words of praise, the dulcet tone of his voice adding to the gushing sounds of the act happening between your legs. Another climax is on your horizon, your pussy beginning to squeeze and release around his cock.
“You keep doing that and I won’t be able to pull out.” Another clench of your walls and Leon lets out a sound made from the titter of a laugh and the low rumble of a groan. “You want that? You wanna have my baby? Is that it?”
His words box your ears like a pair of slung fists. They almost don’t register at first, not until you look into his eyes, noticing the complete lucidity inside them, undisturbed by the fog of lust that makes one cry out for gods they don’t believe in, and the mothers they no longer talk to.
“What? No, I–I don’t know,” you stutter. “I–this is–what are we doing, Leon?”
He looks down at the movement, since stalled, between your bodies, his cock still buried deep inside you, now unmoving. “We’re having sex.” It sounds more like a question as though the two of you awoke and suddenly were tangled in a twist of limb and tongue.
You laugh, the muscles of your abdomen tensing as the sound shoots straight from your belly. “Nevermind. Maybe this isn’t the best time to have this conversation.”
His brows cinch together, the skin between them creasing. He glances up and down your face, soaking in each feature, line, and freckle. Then, as if he’s not currently inside you, the knuckle he brushes against your jaw makes you shudder. It’s too tender–too intimate–of a gesture.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, sweetheart.”
You retreat further into the floor, shirking away as if there’s somewhere to go. Nothing but matting and cotton behind your shoulder blades. The pet name is something altogether mystical to your ears, rarely even hearing your first name on his lips. He usually just approaches and starts talking to you or calls out ‘hey’ really loud if he’s trying to reach you from across the house.
His face contorts slightly, almost like a wince as he pulls out just an inch and trusts back in to keep himself hard.
“Say it,” he commands softly from above you, his forearms bracketing your head so he can have a closer, more unobstructed view of your face. “Talk to me.”
“The stuff you were saying, about us–me having your baby? I don’t get it. We…we’re not together.”
Something like a scoff. “We’re married. I think that’s the most two people can be together.”
You roll your eyes. “Not really.”
Definitely a scoff. “Tell that to the IRS.”
You reach up to swat playfully at his arm “Can you be serious, Leon?”
“I am,” he says adamantly. “I want this. I want everything with you–all of it. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it before today, just how amazing and beautiful you are, but I don’t want to waste anymore time…living like this. You deserve more and I…I want more, whatever it is.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” He looks down at the union of your bodies, still tethered together. Swaths of dark blonde hair, long streaked by strands of gray, tickle your chest. When he lifts his head the look in his eyes is so genuine, you have no reason not to believe that this is what he wants, finally coming to his senses after so long living as strangers. “Can I keep making love to you now?”
“Yes,” you say, granting him permission to keep plunging into you, the sheer thought of existing as more than just a ring and a piece of paper making it far too easy. “Please do.”
In the throes of his pleasure, Leon begins talking again. You never would have pegged him as being so loose-lipped within the bedroom (or pillow fort).
“I wanna do it all again with you, and I wanna pay attention this time. I wanna keep loving you like this. Make a baby with you.” His words are interrupted by sharp, staccato breaths as he continues to babble while plummeting in and out of you at a determined pace. “You wanna make a baby with me?”
“Yes, yes,” you gasp out, scratching at his back as his length slides against your front wall. “I want it.”
“Oh fuck. Okay, really?” He sounds surprised, as if all this talk was merely a way for him to rectify the past few years, to butter you up, to redeem himself as a husband and father. But you nod anyway, confirming that fact that you too crave more. You want what you had within arm’s reach once and was ripped away from you. And you want it with him. “Yeah, okay, let me give you a baby. Keep squeezing me like that. Ah, just like that. Come for me.”
Whether it’s the dulcet praises pouring from his lips like maple syrup, or the promise of normalcy with a man who has, in his own strangled way, protected and taken care of you for the last few years, you steadily approach your pleasure. It’s not like fireworks on the Fourth of July, erupting in the air, spewing glittering sparks of plasma through the sky. It’s like a wave on an overcast harbor, slowly building in speed and strength before it rolls onto the shore, lapping against the sand and rock.
He cries out for god, for you, his own climax violently thrashing inside his body, sending electric pulses from his toes to his head, lighting his brain and belly on fire. His fingers dig deeper
With determination, he finishes inside of you with one last roll of his hips and a rumbling growl of a man that hasn’t found such release in far too long.
“Try to keep it in,” he says, slowly pulling out of you, pressing your thighs together while he searches for a pillow on the bed to slide beneath your hips. A trick to facilitate conception, you assume, and though your mind is still sparkling, your vision still slightly blurred at the corners, your legs shaky like strawberry preserves, you wonder how he knows to perform such an act.
It’s difficult to not let your mind wander to thoughts of those days when Leon lived in this house with her, the two of them happily married and wanting to continue their family. Maybe he’s the one that researched the best methods to make it stick.
You’re not a stranger to this feeling–some thick knot in your stomach, woven with threads of guilt. Guilt for marrying the widow of a woman who wasn’t four months in the ground when you and Leon met at that courthouse on his lunch break. Guilt for encroaching on the family that she could have had–that she dreamed about for ten months, if not longer, as she designated a room in the house for her daughter’s nursery, painted the walls pink, and picked out a name.
As months passed after your marriage was signed and sealed, and you dusted off framed pictures of her and Leon, placed on the mantle like an altar, you thought about leaving. Ella wasn’t a year old at the time, and probably wouldn’t remember you if you told Leon you couldn’t handle it and left. Guilt crept in when you pondered that too. He was a mess, and his job necessitated that he work, though they gave him time for bereavement, yet he was hardly present even if he was home. And Ella adored you. You couldn’t leave her. And so you didn’t. And so you won’t.
You can’t. Not now. Not if what Leon’s mumbling in your ear comes true, and you both hope it does.