Day 8
On the first full Monday of her marriage, Caitlyn Stanford arose in equal parts anticipation and dread.
She was still having pangs of readjustment when she woke up and found herself in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar place, but there was always the comfort of a very familiar set of arms. Waking up with Jon meant that the day started off right. The only problem was that he had to get up at six every morning—"It's one of the downsides of being a responsible adult," he joked—so 'waking up' was limited to stirring as his arms disengaged, giving him a muzzy kiss, and then wandering back off to sleep. There was never time to share sex, not on that schedule, which also made her sad; morning sex was very pleasant, especially when half-asleep. She had half a mind to wake him up early one day just to do him, but she didn't think he'd appreciate that later in the day.
The end result was that when Caitlyn actually awoke, it was in a cold, still bed that was missing its best feature: her husband.
It was a little after eight in the morning—early, for her, but then they had gone to bed early to make love and then make sure Jon had enough sleep. She'd originally entertained the idea of getting up once he'd drowsed off and continuing her studies, but she'd been far too comfortable. Jon had a way of relaxing her that she'd never experienced before; part of it was just his presence, but part of it was the orgasms too.
He once told me that I should learn to masturbate as a form of stress relief. I just rolled my eyes at him at the time, but... If I had known...
It had been a comfortable weekend, to be sure. They'd ended up spending most of it up in Jon's room, studying, practicing, replying to incredulous phonecalls and e-mails from their friends, and trolling Craigslist for job offers and such, coming out only for the necessities of food and church on Sunday. They'd also gotten 'distracted' (as Caitlyn liked to think of it) by each other on a fairly regular basis. She was still rather reticent about the whole thing—there was something fundamentally icky about sex—but it always felt incredibly good, and there was something good about the ickiness as well. Though she tried to resist—and even succeeded at times!—inevitably she would get drawn back to him, to his body and his kiss and that wonderful hardness between his legs, and then something would happen, and there'd be another used condom to dispose of and she would have to try and remember where she'd left off with her work. Good thing the church music had been easy.
The good news was, her first final was tomorrow, on Tuesday, and she had nothing on her schedule for today except for some harp practice. The bad news was, a single day of studying for a final was probably not going to be sufficient.
I think I see why most students get married in the summer.
She had her harp back. She had had him since she was eleven, and his name was Gabriel. Her father had swung by unexpectedly with a car-load of her things—still demanding payment, but at least willing to return them to their true owner. He had been bullish on the check; he was an accountant, it was where Caitlyn had gotten it, and money was serious business to him. Eventually Jon's parents had agreed to pay the sum, with Jon to pay them back the moment their joint-account checks arrived. Caitlyn had a hunch that an extra $5,000 or so might accidentally end up on the repayment check. Ultimately, she was just glad to get her harp back. Gabriel was now set up in the upstairs den next to Jon's bedroom.
It was the first day of finals at Greenfield too, but Jon had managed to convince his singing group to hold a short concert of Christmas music, as a sort of holiday-cheer-cum-distraction-from-finals experience. Caitlyn wasn't sure how he'd managed to do so, but everyone was amenable, even though it meant that some of them would be up late tonight, studying. (
Just like I'll be, probably.
) Caitlyn was, of course, invited—if not by Jon, then certainly by her friends Zach and Christa Crane—but what made her both excited and worried was that two more people from her graduating class, Brandon and Meredith Chambers, had made arrangements to drive up and attend as well. Christa had also mentioned in passing that some of her other high school friends might come with them, but she had been vague about it and Caitlyn didn't know them in any case.
The Cranes were both at Greenfield's Religious Studies program, chasing the degrees necessary to become music ministers, but Caitlyn went to Shellview State now, and she basically hadn't seen them since they'd all graduated college in June. It was a reunion she welcomed and dreaded in equal measure. She had been fairly close with Meredith and Christa and Brandon, but their lives had simply gone in different directions; the summer between their junior and senior year, the Chamberses married so that little Laurelyn would be born into a wedded family if not conceived by one, and at the reception afterwards Zach proposed to Christa. From then on, those three had been looking forward, worrying not just about studies but nebulous futures that they were now trying to create. Caitlyn had mostly had studies and parental insanity to dwell on, but a ray of light as well: a man named Jonathan Stanford, whom she'd seen around the music department a lot. The revelation of her suicidal nature had gone to him some months before, and he was the only person she knew there, aside from the bride, groom, best man and maid of honor (all of whom were having their own interpersonal escapades). It was at that wedding that Jon drew her quietly aside and told her something about how he felt towards her. Nowadays, they considered it their first date.
Maybe it's no wonder we got married in the rush we did. Heck, maybe it's no wonder we started
thinking about
marriage in the rush we did. Though, of course, the sheer luck was that we were compatible at all.
Zach and Christa had gotten married over the summer, after a year's engagement. No children were expected, or planned for that matter; Christa had taken The Pill religiously since she was fourteen, and by her and Zach's best estimations it would be years yet before they were financially and personally ready for offspring. Meredith's surprise pregnancy, announced the April of her junior year, had swept over the school like wildfire; after all, everyone knew that The Pill only failed one woman of thirty. It had taken several conversations with Meredith to straighten things out: Meredith's pill pack had expired without her knowing it, and she and Brandon had unknowingly been having unprotected sex for several months before Laurelyn was conceived. It had been human error, not one of the lotto-style failures. Still, the school at large had no real idea what had happened, and even at her graduation Meredith had been accosted by people who thought she was one of the one-in-thirty.
Caitlyn, Christa, Meredith and Brandon had been the stars of the Music department for their graduating year (ironically, only Christa had actually majored in it), and, before Jon, the quartet was the closest Caitlyn had known to friendship. And this was the talk she had been surrounded with: fertility schedules, diapers, breastfeeding, sex and its consequences, receptions, conceptions, apartments, bills, jobs, taxes... Grown-up stuff. Caitlyn had never joined in; she was the odd one out, the one with nothing to contribute. Ironically, she never felt threatened by the fact that her friends had all gone to the same high school, had known each other twice or thrice as long as they had known her; it was the fact that their talk was so far over her head that did her in. There was a part of their lives she could never be involved in, and she knew it.
Now that had changed.
I've been there. I am there. I'm grown up too. I've... Jeez, what a scary thing to say. That I'm grown up. When did
this
happen? And Meredith skipped a grade too, like me, and she's already a mother. When did growing up become so... Right-now?
But that was all in the future, for her. First she had a lot of studying to get through. A
lot
of studying to get through.
It was tedious work: reviewing, marking down important tidbits, listing questions she would need to answer. This was relatively easy stuff—it was only the first semester of four before she graduated—but but tiring as well. Every now and then she would glance at the clock:
Jon is sitting at his desk,
or,
Jon is on lunch,
or,
Maybe Jon is in the bathroom
, or,
I wish Jon was here.
That one a little more frequently than the others. The truth was, she missed him. She needed the reassurance of his body, of his breath in the room, his voice behind her ear, his presence nearby. She needed him.
She remembered, after one particularly poignant date—the occasion of their first kiss, in fact, which it had taken her months to build up the courage to accept—she had lain in her bed, feeling the gap where (she had a hunch) he ought to be, and thought:
It must get easier after you get married. You must not miss them as much.
Well. I know how wrong
that
was.
It seemed like an eternity before he would arrive, but then she blinked and it was gone, and he was knocking on the door to his own room. "How are ya, babe. Have you been there all day?"
She was sprawled on the floor, books around her every which way. "Yeah. I don't think I remembered to eat."
He scooped her into his arms. "Right. We'd better go out and get you fed before the concert."
"That'll waste money. Let's just not eat and save up."
"That's my silly little girl. Killing herself for grades and money. If I'd've known my girlfriend was such a sadist, I wouldn't've married her."
"Sadist? Doesn't that make me a masochist, someone who enjoys inflicting pain on myself?"
"No, it makes you a sadist, someone who enjoys watching me
writhe
because my wife isn't feeding herself properly."
"Oh, so, it's all about you, is it?" she said, giggling.
"Of course it is," he said, his voice rumbling in her ear pressed against his chest. "It's all about what I want, and what's important to me. And what I want is for my wife to still be here in thirty years, and not six feet under because she forgot to eat, so that I can go on loving her and holding her and caressing her and even having my way with her in bed every now and then."
"Ha. Like you're going to want to have sex with me when I'm fifty."
"Of course I am. I'll always think you're beautiful."
"Even when my hair is white and my face is wrinkled and my breasts sag down to my knees?"
"Even then. Mmm. In fact, that picture is so sexy—" His lips nibbled at her ear, a sure sign of what he wanted and a sure way to set her heart racing. "—I want to have sex with you right now."
