Fisher's Light(15)

“Do you want to know why I never wrote you?” he asks, almost like he’s looking right through my eyes and into my soul, knowing exactly what I was thinking. “It wasn’t because I didn’t have time. Plenty of guys over there write to their wives or their girlfriends. The problem was, I just didn’t want to.”

I shake my head back and forth and swipe angrily at the tears falling steadily down my cheeks.

“Stop it. Just stop it. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to be cruel to get me to walk away and it’s not going to work. You can say whatever you want, throw whatever hurtful words at me you think will hit the right mark to make me hate you, but it’s not going to work.”

Pushing myself off of the wall, I press my palms to either side of his face and force his head down so he’s looking me in the eyes.

“You and me against the world, Fisher. It’s always been you and me, and it always will be. I shouldn’t have brought up counseling out of the blue like I did. Whatever you want to do, however you need me to help, I will do it. I will always do anything for you. Let’s just calm down and forget about this for right now. We can go for a walk to the lighthouse, we can do whatever you want. We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

I don’t want to come right out and say that we shouldn’t do this when he’s been drinking, but it’s definitely implied. He’s so quick to anger lately and I never know what’s going to set him off. All I can do is apologize afterwards and pray that he’ll get better, that it won’t always be like this and eventually he WILL get better.

Fisher brings his hands up and rests them on top of both of mine against his cheeks. He leans forward and presses his forehead against mine and I’m able to take a breath for the first time since I came up to the bedroom and saw him packing my things.

I move my hands from his face to the hem of his shirt, sliding my palms underneath the material to feel the hard, warm skin of his abs and chest. Kissing my way down the side of his face, I lightly nip at the skin of his neck, doing whatever I can to bring him back to me, to see me, to feel me. I miss making love to him. I miss the closeness we always share when we connect on that level. All of our problems go away and nothing matters but the two of us. Maybe it’s wrong to try and seduce him now, but I’m out of ideas on how to break through to him. My hands slide over his chest underneath his shirt and my thumbs graze over his nipples as I move my body closer to him.

I should have known better than to let my guard down.

“Oh, Lucy. Sweet, innocent, pathetic Lucy. It’s really cute how you honestly think you’ve been the only one all these years. You were a virgin when we met and sorry, but I prefer a woman with a little more experience to get me through the nights away from home.”

I jerk my hands out from under his shirt, take a step back and stare at him in shock and horror. I’ve always, ALWAYS lived with the insecurities that I’ve never been enough for him physically and sexually, but he’s never made me feel like I was anything but absolutely perfect for him. Is he honestly telling me right now that he hasn’t been faithful? That some other woman warmed his bed and gave him things I couldn’t give while he was away from me? Sure, he had a lot more experience than I did when we met and I hated it. He’s right, I was a virgin, but he helped me lose some of my insecurities by teaching me all the ways to please him and make things feel good for myself. Over the years, we learned each other’s bodies and our sex life has always been good, but I never quite learned how to ask for more, never really understood what more meant. It wasn’t until that night in the kitchen two months ago, the night when he took me with all-consuming passion, that I realized what I truly needed from him. Maybe that’s what he’s always wanted and he hated that I didn’t give it to him. I would have given it to him. I wanted to give it to him more than he even knows, and it kills me to think that he shared that with another woman.

“Congratulations. You did it. You made me hate you,” I tell him as the tears fall silently down my face and he goes back to the bed, closing the lid on the suitcases and zipping them shut.

“Took you long enough,” he says with a sarcastic laugh. “Jesus, how much more shit were you going to put up with before you realized that? You just thought we could live happily ever after on this shithole island, grow old and die here? This place is eating me alive. Every time I come back here, I want to burn the entire f*cking place down. It doesn’t get better when I come home to you, it gets f*cking worse. You and your positivity and always trying to ‘fix’ me. This is it, babe. What you see is what you get, and every time I have to come home it gets darker and darker and I hate this life more and more.”