“I’m going to go see if I can get plane tickets sorted for me and Sam,” I say.
Bess waves me away without even looking in my direction. “We have this under control,” she says.
If I allow all this to hurt my heart, it will, I remind myself. If I don’t, it won’t. This is the new normal. And it’s going to be okay.
36
Eli
The first night that Aaron and Sam are gone, we end up with Miles in our room in a portable crib, and we have Kerry-Anne and Trixie, on a blowup mattress that I borrowed from Jake, out in the living room. Jake assured me that it’s actually easier to take care of two little girls than it is to take care of one since they entertain one another, but no one remembered to tell me that Trixie comes with her great big dog, Sally. Sally goes everywhere with Trixie, and that includes to the sleepover at our house. Bess makes a pallet for Sally next to the blowup mattress the girls are on, and the dog settles down next to them. His big tail swishes from side to side as he settles down, and Sam’s cat dives and tries to catch it as it thumps against the floor.
Bess laughs out loud as she gives good-night kisses, as she watches the cat attack the dog. The dog is infinitely patient, as I think is his nature. Eventually, the cat climbs on top of the dog and settles down, and the dog lets him.
“That dog is adorable,” Bess whispers to me as we get ready for bed. She goes out to the living room one last time to make sure the front door is locked tight, and then she comes back and tiptoes on bare feet over to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
I watch her as she unabashedly changes clothes in front of me, going so far as to undress down to her panties. Her naked back is about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I watch in abject fascination as she changes so casually in front of me. I haven’t seen more than Bess’s middle finger in a really long time, so this is all new, and it feels so good.
I make a noise low in my throat that I didn’t even know I was making, and Bess looks over at me as she pulls one of my t-shirts down over her hair. “What?” she says, but she smiles at me. And when she turns, I can see the side of her breast before the shirt falls down to cover her.
“Nothing,” I say with a grin, and I lie back, fling my arm back behind my head, and rest my head on my forearm so I can look at her. Just look at her.
“You made a noise,” she says. “It wasn’t nothing.”
I grin. “If you must know, I was admiring your back.” And your tits.
“All the parts of me you could be admiring, and you pick my back?” She’s still whispering, and so am I, as she tiptoes across the floor and slides between the covers. She doesn’t put on bottoms, and I imagine her bare legs as they slide across the cool sheets and how they probably feel. How they might feel wrapped around mine.
“It’s the only part of you I’ve seen so far. Well, recently at least,” I say as she lies down on her stomach, stuffs her arms under her pillow, and rests her chin on the soft pillowcase so she can look at me. I roll onto my other side so I can look at her, too.
Her cheeks turn rosy. “You want to see more of me, all you have to do is ask.” She leans over and kisses the tip of my nose.
I waggle my eyebrows. “I want to see more,” I say softly.
She glances over toward the portable crib and inches in my direction. “Like what?”
I lift the bottom edge of her t-shirt and drag my eyes down to her lower back. “You used to have a row of freckles right here.” I bend so I can kiss her very softly right at the base of her spine. “Look,” I tease. “There they are.”
“They’re why you started calling me Freckles,” she says.
I shake my head. “No, that was the other ones.”
Her brow furrows. “What other ones?”
I very gently roll her over and lift her shirt, then place tiny kisses at the skin just above her panties. She squirms and lays her hand on the top of my head, gently scratching my head. If there was one thing I missed when she pushed me away, it was her scratching my head. I arch into her hand the way Sam’s cat arches into mine all the time, unrepentant in my needy state.
Without lifting her shirt, I slide my hand under it toward the soft skin just under her breast. “Right here,” I whisper. “You had a line of freckles right here.” I slide my thumb back and forth across the skin just below her breast, and I watch as her nipples grow tight and hard against the fabric of my t-shirt.
“They’re still there,” she whispers, her words breathy and needy.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “Maybe I should check.”
She glances toward the door. “That might not be the best idea.”
I hear giggles coming from the living room and pull my hand back down from under her shirt. I flip onto my side so I can lie with my head on her stomach and look up at her. She tenderly kneads my hair and scalp.
“Does this feel good to you?” she asks, her voice quiet but strong.
“Lying here with you?” I turn and nip the tender skin of her belly and she giggles, her stomach scrunching up involuntarily. “It feels fucking amazing.”
“I meant the head massage,” she clarifies. Her hand is still in my hair, and she’s digging deeply but softly now with her fingertips, gently abrading my scalp.
“That feels good too,” I reply.
Her hand slows its kneading. “This thing we’re doing…is it real?”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
“It just…” She stops and shakes her head. “I just…I’m not sure if this is real.”
I tilt my head so I can look fully into her face. “Does it feel real to you?”
She nods. “It does. But will it last? Or will we mess it up again?”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” I admit.
“Do you still want to try?” she asks, her voice hesitant.
I nod against her stomach. “I do.”
“This time, I’d like to work harder to talk to you about things,” she says.
“Okay, Bess,” I say slowly. This feels like a trap, but I can’t be sure. “You feel like I’m hard to talk to?”
“No, not that…I think I don’t talk to you enough.” She lays her free hand, the one that’s not rubbing my hair, on her chest. “It’s about me. Not about you.”
I lie there and say nothing, because I’m still not sure if this is a trap.
She gets quiet, but it’s not uncomfortable.
“I need to work on including you in decisions,” I tell her, “instead of making them for us.”
“You mean like the baby decision?” she says, and her hand stops moving on my head.
I nod against her stomach again. “Among other things. It just became easier for me, and better for my morale, if I made the decisions on certain topics. I felt like I could get more done if I just…did it.”
Her hand starts to move again. “Because you knew I would argue with you?”
“Partly. And partly because you would have done anything to get pregnant, including putting your own emotional health at risk.”
“We should have had this talk a long time ago,” she says with a soft sigh, but she keeps petting my head.