The Empty Jar(47)

So after our dinner, a meal full of foods rich in nutrients and elements proven most beneficial to the immune system and liver function, I help my wife to the sofa, cover her legs with a blanket and tell her, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to pick out a movie.”

She smiles, never questioning me when I tell her what I’m doing.

Early on in our relationship, we discovered that we have many things in common, including a love for the same type of music. We grew up to hair bands and Lena still counts Bon Jovi as her all-time favorite group. She knows every song they’ve ever released by heart and she’s always wanted to see them in concert. She had an opportunity when she was in high school, but an odd snow storm made it impossible for her to get there. Since then, we’ve never made catching a show a priority.

I wish we had. I wish I’d made it a priority.

As with so many things, though, we put it off thinking there would be plenty of time for that later.

Later.

Such a common word. So meaningless most of the time.

Only there aren’t going to be too many more laters for us, so I have to “make hay while the sun shines” as my grandmother used to say. That’s why, by seven PM, I’m tugging a wig into place and yanking on leather pants that are guaranteed to chafe my ass.

********

Lena



I’m resting my head against the curved neck pillow Nate bought me when the familiar tune of one of my favorite songs begins to play, quite loudly, from the house speakers. I raise my head and open my eyes just in time to see my crazy husband slide by the doorway in his sock feet. He’s a blur of black leather pants, a ripped shirt and a dirty blond wig. And he’s holding his old steel guitar.

My smile is wide and immediate. His “look” coupled with the music perfectly conveys who he’s supposed to be.

Jon Bon Jovi.

Pushing myself into a sitting position, I watch the door for my Bon Jovi to reappear. When he does, he’s pretending to pluck the strings of his guitar to the beat of the song. His face is screwed up in a rocker-intense way and I nearly laugh out loud at his antics.

Finally Nate makes his way into the room. And when the lyrics started, he begins to lip sync to Bad Medicine.

He pretend-serenades me with words of his addiction to my love, curling his upper lip in just the right way and banging his head when the music demands it. As I take in my husband’s “mighty fine ass,” stretching out the black leather to perfection, his still-chiseled abs, highlighted by the tears in his shirt, and his always-handsome face, I think to myself that this concert has to be even better than the real thing.

Nate is my real thing. He has been from the moment I met him. From out first kiss, standing outside the apartment I was renting right after I finished school. The night was cool and the air was damp, and Nate was my fire. I knew then that I was lost. That I would always feel lost without him.

And now I know that if I were able to live another hundred years, I would always feel the same way. He completes me. He’s my other half. My soulmate. The other piece to the puzzle of my heart.

When the song ends, I throw back the blanket, intending to use what little is left of my daily energy supply to show my husband just how much I love him. But before I can haul my awkward body into a standing position, the notes to another song begin to play.

I recognize it immediately. My heart goes from racing with the thrill of my husband’s performance to a painful thump, beating along with the tune of a bittersweet love song.

I settle back against the cushions to wait for what promises to be an unforgettably heartbreaking performance.

Nate crosses the room to me, tugging the wig from his head and kneeling in front of me. When the lyrics of Always should’ve begun, I don’t hear Bon Jovi. I hear only the deep, scratchy voice of my husband as he sings each verse for me.

It’s all for me.

The pledge each word is meant to be takes on a whole new meaning as I stare into Nate’s green, green eyes. They shine with a love unlike anything I’ve ever known. Surely he must see the same thing when he looks at me. Surely he can see it. Surely he can see my heart in my eyes. It’s there. It beats only for him. And it will until it beats no more.

As the music begins to crescendo, Nate’s eyes fill with tears, tears I know mirror my own. As he sings to me of what he’d do for me, of the price he’d willingly pay, I take his face in my hands and I kiss him, silencing his pain the only way I know how—by taking it with my own.

I devour his words, swallowing them whole and making them a part of my soul. I ravage his mouth, memorizing the curve of his lips and the texture of his tongue. I consume his love, feeding on it like fuel to a starving engine.

Gently, but with an urgency neither of us deny and neither of us wants to, Nate pulls me to the floor and tears my clothes from my, bearing me, body and soul, to his hungry eyes and hungrier hands. We make love in that way that people who don’t have time or might get caught do—with utter desperation.

And when we lay spent in each other’s arms, Nate sings the rest of the song to me as my tears pepper the skin of his chest.

********

I wake with a start, confused for a moment by my surroundings. I recognize the entertainment center, but it’s sideways and why am I on the living room floor?

Then it all comes back to me in a rush and I smile, turning until I can see the face of my husband, who rests quietly behind me, probably listening to me breathe.