Quick note: There are allusions to abuse in this chapter, nothing is detailed but I did want to put a warning out there.
She clutched the wine bottle as if it would keep her from floating away. She'd imagined herself in his story and that was stupid. She knew him but only vaguely, certainly not enough to admit attraction or arousal. Yet here she was, wet enough she worried she'd soak right through her jeans. But he'd brought up her husband. Unintentionally, sure, but if anyone could quell her arousal and make a wet pussy dry, it was her ex.
"I regret getting married." She took a breath in anticipation of him leaning forward. His hands were clasped in front of him again and she wanted to stare at them, to study them, and imagine how they would feel on her. Was all his talk just talk or had he really earned the right to be so cocksure?
"Well, you got divorced. That counts for something doesn't it?"
"We didn't get divorced for the right reasons. Hell, we didn't get married for the right reasons."
"Tell me."
"This regret is certainly a despair." She took another long swig of her wine, hoping it would bring her some semblance of courage. "We met shortly after I graduated college. I'd planned on getting a masters degree but things happened and bills needed to be paid. So, I got a job instead. He was one of my co-workers. He was in law school at the time. He was older than me. By just three years but he'd experienced so much more of life than I had and I was enamored with everything he knew.
"I wasn't like the girls at your school, not only did I take my 'V-Card' to college, I left with it." She heard him take a deep intake of breath. Had he heard this one before? "So of course he was enamored with me too. Now, I've never been a beauty queen, clearly, but -"
"No." There it was again. That hard voice. If he used it to make her go over to him, she would. She would do anything he said if he said it in that voice.
"What did I say
now
?"
He gave her a hard stare. On anyone else it might have been frightening but he could never frighten her. He never had. Wherever she knew him from she knew she could trust him. She knew he only wanted her happiness, her safety, her...
"Are you not gonna answer me, now?"
"You know what you did."
She rolled her eyes. The clouds were still swirling in the sky, blocking the moon and stars. Plenty of time must have passed now. The others should have been here. If she had her phone she could call them to make sure they hadn't gotten lost.
She
almost had. "I'm not, though. By definition a beauty queen is conventionally attractive. We're talking blonde hair, blue eyes, 5' 5", 36-26-36, enjoys long walks on the beach, and wants nothing more than world peace. I hit maybe one of those."
A slow smile spread across his face and his eyebrows raised. "Do you hate long walks on the beach or world peace?"
"Oh. I suppose I hit none of those."
He laughed, his eyes nearly closing as they crinkled at the corners. "You can't keep getting away with disrespecting yourself by being funny."
"Who was joking?"
His smile settled. "So, what? Older man grooms the impressionable young girl?"
His tone was joking. She hated being honest sometimes, but she felt she had no choice. "Yes."
His smile slipped. "I'm just curious. What is his full name and where does he currently live?"
She rolled her eyes but it warmed her heart he was willing to even ask. "I guess we can't count it as grooming, though. I was in my twenties. I'd heard about sex and stuff plenty but experiencing it? Never. I knew logically that it was supposed to feel good for everyone involved. I knew people had been interested in me but I didn't just want to feel wanted. I wanted to feel loved. That's where I messed up." She almost added that she shouldn't have ever thought herself someone worthy of love but she knew this almost-stranger would object. As if he really knew her.
"So," she continued, "he showered me with affection. While we worked together we flirted but that was normal. Then he asked me to go to dinner and my dumbass assumed he meant as friends. So, I went. We talked about law school and his family and his cats. He was sweet enough. He paid for the meal. He asked me about my family and then we got to talking about how I was raised. How I wasn't allowed to wear makeup until I was out of the house. How my mother'd once told me that if I ever cut my hair she'd disown me. How I'd gone to church twice a week once I hit puberty to make sure the devil didn't turn me into one of his hormonal whores. It was a fun childhood...and he listened intently.
"We went out a few more times and each time he seemed a little less sweet. He'd comment on some woman's outfit. Call her names. Say what a shame it is girls didn't wait until marriage anymore. One night, we were at the state fair and he'd said that same shit again and I was tired enough that I asked him if he'd ever had sex. You know what he said, don't you?"
She watched his face harden as she spoke. Watched the muscles in his arms bulge as his hands tightened around his bottle. "He said it was different for men. That women were...that they needed to stay pure. That men could sleep with whoever they wanted because they didn't accept someone into them the way women did."
"It's like you knew him." She tried to laugh but it caught in her throat. She took a sip of wine. "He also said that it was a man's duty to sleep around, to learn how to please a woman. I wanted to ask him why he wouldn't just ask his wife when they got married but the way he spoke, how his demeanor had already changed, what he..." she shivered despite the fire, "I learned to be afraid of saying the wrong thing that night."
"And still you married him?"
She shrugged. "Any time he hurt me he'd apologize. Tell me he just loved me so much and didn't want me corrupted by wayward thoughts. He'd buy me flowers and chocolate covered strawberries and teddy hers. So, yeah, I married him. Because that's what love was for me. That's what he taught me and who was around and paying enough attention to teach me anything else?" She paused, her heart racing and the fire blazing higher as it reached a fresh log or the wind stoked its fury. She took a breath, quelling that flash of anger as the fire settled back down.
"Our wedding night was horrible. The only good part was that he was quick about it. The entire honeymoon was a nightmare, if I'm honest. I just wanted to get home. He'd become a lawyer ny then and I knew he would be at the office most of the time. He didn't want me to work because we were going to start having babies right away. He even tracked my ovulation and made sure we had sex every night I was ovulating. He didn't want me around my work friends because I had him, what else did I need? My parents were overjoyed, of course. And I was happy because I was loved." She laughed mirthlessly. "But months passed and I wasn't pregnant. We got to a point where we had sex almost every night. Y'know, not once did he use those tricks he'd gotten from sleeping around to make me feel anything other than a desperate need for him to get off me.
"He took me to an obgyn and made sure it was a woman." Now, a genuine smiled bloomed on her fash as she remembered her. "He wanted to make sure he hadn't fucked up and married a barren virgin, I guess. The doctor was beautiful. She had this long dark hair and these deep brown eyes and a mouth that begged to be kissed. I hadn't gotten aroused since I'd been married but the juices were flowing now. She used more care putting a metal speculum in me than my husband did sticking his dick in me. That's the second regret. The one that came because of the first. Well, I suppose there are three, really. He was old school, didn't want to be in the room while the doctor did my exam. I could have told her that I hated it every time. Maybe she would have translated my naivety into the giant fucking red flag I should have seen myself."
He cleared his throat. She couldn't look at him so she kept her eyes on the fire. "You didn't know any better."
"Seems like common sense, though."
"No, it isn't. We have to be taught what love is, especially when our parents fail to show it." He sounded angry. His voice was trembling.
"Maybe. So, my third regret is not kissing her. It would have crossed a million lines but it is my fantasy, right? Or maybe I would have told her and she would have gotten me away. I would have gone to live with her and her husband."
"She was married?"
"Happily, I found out later. She was a doctor and he was the trophy husband but in my fantasy it's a very open marriage."
"Before you go on, do you - are you okay?"
"Oh yeah, I found a friend later on, who I loved. She ended up dying on me," she laughed uneasily as her friend's face came into her mind, "but in the time I knew her she helped me leave him and kept me sane while I went through
intensive
therapy."
"How did she die?"
"Cancer. It happens."
"In so sorry."
She shrugged, looking at the center of the fire. "I believe I'll see her again someday." She had to. She hadn't really believed in much of an afterlife until she lost that friend. She wouldn't have been able to live without the comfort of hope they'd meet again.
He had started picking at the label of his bottle again. "Yeah. That's a nice way to think of it."
"May I continue?"
He smiled, but didn't look up from his bottle. "Of course."
"Thank you." She cleared her throat and sat up. "So, I escape into the arms of a beautiful doctor and her equally beautiful husband. They put me up in the guest bedroom just across the hall from them. The sheets are a gorgeous, claret colored silk. There's a maid, a butler, a chef, a chauffeur, and even a secret room."
"Oh?"
"Of course, it's a large manor. There has to be a secret room. But I get the key, of course. It's handed to me on a delicate silver chain and the doctor tells me that she wants no secrets between us. There's no decompression stage. I'm just...fine now. They tell me I am loved and safe and I believe them. Not the way I believed my husband. No, I feel it in my soul that they are telling me the truth. So, I thrive. I apply to graduate school and tell them I'll be returning to work so that I can pay for it. I did that in real life, but in my fantasy, they refuse to hear it. They encourage me to apply for loans and grants and I do. Later I'd find out they paid all the loans anonymously but they don't want to just outright pay them because they don't want me to feel like a prostitute for what I'm gonna do to them."
