All Your Perfects(18)

I kick the covers off me so that I’m sprawled out on the bed. I press one of my hands against my stomach and pull his attention there. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, trailing my fingers upward. “Come back to bed, Graham.”

His jaw is still clenched, but his eyes are following my hand. I watch his struggle as part of him wants to storm out of the room and part of him wants to storm me. I don’t like that he’s not convinced I want him yet, so I roll over onto my stomach. If there’s one thing about me physically that Graham loves the most, it’s the view of me from behind. “I want you inside me, Graham. That’s all I want. I promise.” I lie.

I’m relieved when he groans.

“Dammit, Quinn.” And then he’s on the bed again, his hands on my thighs, his lips against my ass. He slips one hand beneath me and presses it flat against my stomach, lifting me enough so that he can easily slide into me from behind. I moan and grasp the sheets convincingly.

Graham grips my hips and lifts himself up onto his knees, pulling me back until he’s all the way inside me.

I no longer have the patient Graham. He’s a mixture of emotions right now, thrusting into me with impatience and anger. He’s focused on finishing and not at all focused on me and that’s exactly how I want it.

I moan and meet his thrusts, hoping he doesn’t recognize that the rest of me is disconnected to this moment. After a while, we somehow move from both being on our knees, to me being pressed stomach first into the mattress as all his weight bears down on me. He grips my hands that are gripping the sheets and I relax as he releases a groan. I wait for him to fill me with hope.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he pulls out of me, pressing himself against the small of my back. Then he groans one final time against my neck. I feel it meet my skin, warm and wet as it slides down my hip and seeps into the mattress.

Did he just . . .

He did.

Tears sting at my eyes when I realize he didn’t finish inside me. I want to climb out from under him, but he’s too heavy and he’s still tense and I can’t move.

As soon as I feel him begin to relax, I attempt to lift up. He rolls over onto his back. I roll away from him, using the sheet beneath me to wipe myself clean. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and I swipe at them angrily. I am so angry I can’t even speak. Graham just watches me as I try to conceal the anger I’m feeling. And the embarrassment.

Graham is my husband, but tonight he was a means to an end. And even though I tried to convince him otherwise, he just proved that to himself by not giving me the only thing I wanted from him tonight.

I can’t stop the tears from falling, but I try anyway. I pull the blanket up to my eyes and Graham rolls off the bed and grabs his pants. My quiet tears begin to turn to sobs and my shoulders begin to shake. It’s not like me to do this in front of him. I usually save this for my long showers.

As Graham grabs his pillow off the bed, part of him looks like he wants to console me while the other part looks like he wants to scream at me. The angry part wins out and he begins to walk toward the door.

“Graham,” I whisper.

My voice stops him in his tracks and he turns around and faces me. He seems so heartbroken, I don’t even know what to say. I wish I could say I’m sorry for wanting a baby more than I want him. But that wouldn’t help, because it would be a lie. I’m not sorry. I’m bitter that he doesn’t understand what sex has become to me over the last few years. He wants me to continue to want him, but I can’t when sex and making love have always given me hope that it might be that one in a million chance I’ll get pregnant. And all the sex and lovemaking that leads to the hope then leads to the moment all that hope is overcome by devastation.

Over the years, the entire routine and the emotions it brings started running together. I couldn’t separate the sex from the hope and I couldn’t separate the hope from the devastation. Sex became hope became devastation.

SexHopeDevastation. Devastation. Devastation.

Now it all feels devastating to me.

He’ll never understand that. He’ll never understand that it isn’t him I don’t want. It’s the devastation.

Graham watches me, waiting for me to follow his name up with something else. But I don’t. I can’t.

He nods a little, turning away from me. I watch the muscles in his back tense. I watch his fist clench and unclench. I can see him release a heavy sigh even though I can’t hear it. And then he opens the bedroom door with ease before slamming it shut with all his strength.

A loud thud hits the door from the other side. I squeeze my eyes shut and my whole body tenses as it happens again. And then again.

I listen as he punches the door five times from the other side. I listen as he releases his hurt and rejection against the wood because he knows there’s nowhere else it can go. When everything is silent again . . . I shatter.





Chapter Seven




* * *





Then


It’s been difficult getting over Ethan. Well, not Ethan per se. Losing the relationship was harder than losing Ethan. When you associate yourself with another person for so long, it’s difficult becoming your own person again. It took a few months before I finally deleted him from my apartment completely. I got rid of the wedding dress, the pictures, the gifts he’d given me over the years, clothes that reminded me of him. I even got a new bed, but that probably had more to do with just wanting a new bed than being reminded of Ethan.