It wasn’t just a matter of chemistry. Increasingly I heard myself talking about being “met,” which was difficult to define. How do you articulate the experience of deep connection that’s possible between two people? What I wanted was nothing less than profound intimacy between our souls, but it was easier to articulate that I wanted him to pull my hair, throw me down, make me beg. Viktor did these things for me, but there was no larger context. Nothing remained of those moments but the memory and a renewed sense of longing. We were building nothing. There would be no milestones in our relationship, no anniversaries.
Several nights a week after Asher was asleep, Jack and I took to the porch to talk about the issues between us. We’d each wrap ourselves in a blanket—or sometimes we shared one big one—and hunker down on our front stoop. We spent countless hours on the porch as things continued to unravel. So many words. So much heartache. These conversations were generally unproductive, never yielding more than a moment of hope or healing, and sometimes they only reinforced or deepened existing wounds, but we persevered. Neither of us seemed to know what else to do.
I wanted emotional intimacy and passionate, connected sex, a collaborative future, and a dynamic relationship that would continue to grow and deepen with time.
What did Jack want? I didn’t know. He still wasn’t offering any answers, so I was left to guess. Maybe he wanted me to be different. Maybe he wanted to go back in time and never open up. Maybe he wanted a divorce. He said it one night on the porch.
“I’ve been thinking about what I would do if we got a divorce…”
It was the second time he had mentioned it in a couple months. I never said it; just the thought made me sick to my stomach.
Kitchen sex wasn’t something Jack and I had ever had but that’s where it started. I was drunker than I meant to be at 6PM. A martini had seemed like a good idea, being that it was Friday, almost summer, and I had a date later. I was ripe and restless. Maybe that’s why I started it.
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