Authors: Isabell Lawless
“I'm glad you're home, babe. I just want you to rest and take it easy. I'll make us some warm coffee and we'll have some of that cheesecake my mom put in the fridge before we got home.”
He slowly moved over and crouched down on the floor in front of Danielle, rested his stubbled chin on her pulled up legs. Hugging her legs. It felt good feeling the strands of his short beard push through her leggings and touch the skin of her leg. It felt like her man. It felt safe.
“We're home and we're safe. You're alive. That's all that matters, and from here on it can only get better as I see it. No rush. We'll take it step by step. If you want to talk I'm all ears, but if you don't I'm okay with that too. We can always take up the doctor's offer to see a therapist. You've been through a lot in just a few days and it will take time to recover from it all.”
With a soft squeeze of her knee he pushed himself back up. Letting his hand linger a second, transferring the heat of his palms onto her leg. He was a furnace, always warming her up in time of need.
He pulled the thick blanket away from the armrest of the chair and covered her up. Every single piece of her was bundled tightly, until only her face was showing. Her long blonde hair fell gently from its hold on the back of her head, strand by strand it fell softly down the side of her face.
“I'm making us coffee, babe.”
He kissed the top of her head, brushed his lips over her strands of light hair, breathing in the scent. Knowing she was finally safe and at home with him. He wouldn't let anything ever happen to her again. Not on his watch. Precaution and always being a step ahead were his new mottos.
The coffeemaker spluttered away in the distance. The warm aroma of coffee made its way into the living room. Clanking of cups and plates spread through the house, and she found the sounds the most peaceful she had ever heard. Home. She was home with her love. Familiar sounds of knowing she was safe and in a place where there were no threats, only calmness. In their own cocoon of love and happiness. Separated from the rest of the world.
Her weary eyes stayed half open catching Andy walking in from the kitchen, balancing two cups of steaming coffee and two plates stacked with cheesecake on her belated grandmother's silver tea tray. He sat it down to rest on the low coffee table in the middle of the room, and waited for Danielle to grab hold of her blanket, wrapped around her shoulders, and move over to the couch to be right next to him.
With cups in hands and plates filled with delicious strawberry cheesecake on their laps, they leaned back against the soft suede fabric of the blue couch. The only sound in the house came from Andy's dessert fork digging through both portions of cake, feeding Danielle piece after piece. Blowing off the hot steam rising up from her coffee, he helped her hold up the cup to her mouth. With the pad of his thumb he swiped away a lonely drop of dark coffee remaining on her lower lip.
She could get used to this treatment; having a tall, muscular, good looking man taking care of her every need, sitting close to her on the couch, feeding her delicious desserts. What more could a woman need? She would for sure be satisfied. Maybe some light petting wouldn't be bad, and some cold sparkling wine. But on the whole, that lifestyle could work out perfectly.
“Thanks for feeding me.” She smiled, licking of the last sweet smudge of creamy cheesecake from her lips. “I'm not sure I could even grab a fork, yet hold a cup of coffee in my hands with these bandages.”
With a small grin, that didn't reach her eyes, she held up both hands in the air in front of her, showing off white bandages the thickness of winter gloves for a Montana winter. The nurse had put them on, and had continued to smile at Andy the whole time. She wasn't too shabby at wrapping her hands up nicely though. Perhaps she wasn't as evil as she first thought. Good thing Andy hadn't even given her as much as a look back.
“Not to talk about the pain of just moving the muscles in my hands.” She tried to wiggle her fingers, but let out a painful groan when the movement went through torn muscle fibers of her hands. They fell flat on her lap, and she swallowed hard.
'How long would it take for the pain to go away'?
She thought.
“I guess you'll have to help me with a lot of things I can't do, I guess. Like...” She thought for a bit, suddenly staring into Andy's eyes. “Oh no, like... embarrassing things! Shit. We need to hire a hospice nurse or something!”
Panic sipped through her startled voice by the second, as she realized all the things she actually used her hands for, daily.
“What?” Andy seemed highly amused by this. “I'm your husband, I'll help you with anything and everything. What's so embarrassing?” He answered with nothing but calmness in his voice.
“But, but, I need to go to the bathroom and you know.... do stuff.”
Her voice came out as a whisper, a light pink color dashed over her cheeks and spread to her ears. She wasn't even brave enough to look him in the eyes saying it, but saw him sport a light twitch on one side of his lips.
“Babe,” He said, putting the fork down on his plate, placing it on the table at the foot of the couch. “I've seen and touched ever single wonderful part of your body, for years, so I have no problem doing what you seem to ask me to do. Those body parts you're talking about, I've seen them. I've touched them. I've even tasted you there. A lot. I might even know your body better than you do. Do you know how many times I've seen everything in detail down there? I know every nook and cranny between your legs.”
“Too much information!” She yelled. Not being able to use her hands to cover her face, she just shut her eyes closed. Trying to shake away the information about her lady parts that he was feeding her.
“Just think of us as a really, really old couple who has know each other for so long that everything we do should be seen as normal. Like you once told me when
I
got embarrassed, 'If I can lick you behind your balls, I can do anything', remember that?” He chuckled and Danielle's eyes filled up with humor rather than shame. Her eyes popped opened and she stared back at him, sitting there on the couch facing her, with a smile on his lips.
“Shut up!” She giggled. “This is not the same thing at all. This isn't anything fun you'll have to do. Why don't you just build a robot hand or something from your scrap metal parts in the garage, put it in the bathroom for me to use when I need to go instead of having to call you in there like some kid going potty. Having you wipe my... my... I can't even say it!”
Still holding his coffee cup close to his chest, he was cracking up loudly by now, and tilted his head backwards letting his loud laugh bounce of the walls in the room.
“Alright. If I can't handle wiping your
ass
, I promise you don't have to ask me twice about that robot hand you had in mind. Just stick to a solid diet and we should be fine babe.” Cute. Not so much.
“Now, what I wanted to talk about has nothing to do with bathroom visits or other home logistics. I wanted to see if you felt like talking to me about what really happened that night.” His voice went soft, caressing every word his tongue brought out.
“I haven't heard you say anything about it, except our baby talk back at the hospital. I just keep replaying that evening in my head, over and over again, seeing things I wish had never happened to you. And please don't tell me you're fine or that you're okay, because that's not a valid answer to a thing like this. I'm just going to say it out loud... you were raped, and I had to watch it all happen. You had to go through it, feel it, and I had to watch you and everything he did to you.”
The silence stretched between them. He simply watched her nervously moving around on the couch, rubbing both his thumbs on the rim of the coffee cup. She stared down at her hands in her lap. She knew he waited her out. Taking another sip of his coffee and putting his arm on the back of the couch, opening himself up to her. After several minutes she hinted with her chin for a taste from his cup, and he helped her take a long sip before putting it back down on his lap. It was time, she had to say something. That's what the therapist at the hospital had told her as well, “If you can't write it down, speak it out, to someone who is willing to listen.”
“Most of all I feel embarrassed, I think. How could I ever have been in a relationship with a person who could do anything like this to anyone? My judgment of people must have been terribly off if I couldn't see that when I met him. I'm embarrassed that you think what he did to me was something I used to enjoy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I'm embarrassed that you have to be married to someone with an ex-boyfriend like that, and finally, I'm embarrassed and sad that our sex life might be ruined because of all of this. That's what I'm feeling. Embarrassed. About everything. Just... shame.”
No words came from his side of the couch. Instead he almost looked angry. With a sudden movement forward, placing the coffee cup on the table in front of him, he turned towards her on the couch, eyes blazing.
“You have nothing, do you hear me, nothing, to be embarrassed about. None of this is your fault. Do you understand? None of it. He did this TO you, not WITH you.” He snapped back at her. “Now, I'm sorry. I'm not angry with you, I'm just mad because... I don't know... I just thought you knew me better than that.”
A few minutes passed between them, until he leaned back on the couch once again facing her.
“We have our whole life to rebuild and recover from this, it's not like we're on a time schedule here. And when it comes to our sex life...well, don’t worry about it. It will work sooner or later. Having sex with you is just one of many wonderful things of being with you.”
“But, you're a guy.” She interrupted. “You're famous for it. Always horny, always in need of sex. What if you grow tired of waiting for me and, well, sleep with someone else?” Her sentence finished on a whisper. He gently put his right hand on her cheek, feeling her lean into his touch without saying a word.
“Babe, when I met you I knew I could stop looking for anyone else because I had found the best thing in the world. Something that was perfect for me. And when we got married, I remember the minister talking to us privately in his office about what it meant to be in a marriage and what relationships were truly about. Now, I don't believe in promising anything under some God that I don't believe exists, but I have the greatest faith in my commitment to you, and I know you feel the same thing for me. When I say I love you, it doesn't just mean I think you look hot, or that you turn me on, or that the sex is great. For me it means that I never need to worry about your feelings for me, or that you'll cheat on me one day like certain people have done before. It means...” He looked at her, trying to find the perfect words for what he wanted to say. Then he continued.
“Let me put it like this... I see us walking through life together on a road that isn't completely straight. It goes up and it goes down, back and forth, and once in a while it's as stretched out and clear as an empty freeway, where we push down the gas pedal and have a blast. But there are no roads that go on like that forever. Right? They always change direction, and sometimes it's hard to see around the corner of every curve. I find that exciting. Don't you? Not really knowing what's ahead of us, but that we travel this road together, fix broken things on the way, and learn new things about each other. That's what I love about being with you, and I don't want any other person in the passenger seat. In my heart, I've always had that seat reserved for you, even before I even knew I did. And as an added bonus to all that, you have the most amazing rack in the universe. In fact, if you walked around topless people everywhere would be in awe of your assets. Plus, you make a hell of a bacon wrapped meatloaf with mashed potatoes that I could never survive without.”
Score. There was her funny guy, always putting a smile on things too difficult to talk about. And as simple as that they hugged. For minutes. Perhaps even hours. The coffee turned cold and the cheesecake that was left on their plates was forgotten.
When Danielle opened her eyes a while later there was just darkness surrounding them in the living room. The sound of Andy's light snoring woke her up. Her head tilted in a strange position against his chest where they were half sitting half laying on the couch. “
It must be at least midnight?”
She thought.
“And, damn it, I have to go to the bathroom. God damn it.”
Not wanting to disturb Andy, she slipped slowly out from underneath his arm, and pushed down the blanket from her shoulders only to move it on top of him. She tip toed to the bathroom down the hallway, determined to take care of her own business without having to call him in like a toddler being potty trained.
The house was quiet and the clock on the stove shone bright green telling her it was already 1:30 in the morning. The bathroom was one of the renovated rooms down the hallway, but turning on the light switch on the wall seemed to be more of an obstacle than she first anticipated. She tried to raise her elbow for the switch, then tried to push it back down when the suction fan started instead of the ceiling light. Damn, it all just seemed so ridiculous. She ended up letting the light be turned off and simply sat down on the toilet in peace.