Whatever It Takes (7 page)

“You’ll come back though, right?”  He took my hand in both of his and held it against his chest.  I wanted so much to just fall into his arms and let him hold me.  But my mind was still swimming with images of Lisa and him having sex and at the same time, the thought of being near him turned my insides rancid.

I assured him I would be home before the end of the day and then went to get dressed.  I barely paid attention to the clothes that I threw on and hoped on my way out the door that I at least matched. 

I started the engine to my little black Mini Cooper convertible, dropped the top down, and just drove.  I had no destination in mind.  I could go to Diane and Mike’s, but Mike was still Gavin’s best friend and that could make for an awkward situation.  I could also head over to Yvonne’s but I still wasn’t ready to tell anyone.  For one, I didn’t need anyone else’s input on the situation.  Whatever I was going to do, it would be because I wanted to do it, not because others thought I should.  Also, I felt ashamed.  A part of me felt like people would think there was something wrong with me that led Gavin to cheat. 

All I wanted right now was time to myself to process and to think.  Where do we go from here?  I didn’t know if I could ever get over this and that scared the hell out of me.  I couldn’t imagine my life without Gavin.  After seven years together, he was my rock.  When I was anxious or overwhelmed, he was calm and reassuring.  When I was scared and weak, he was brave and strong.  My life would not make sense without him.

I know he needed me in his life as well.  Where Gavin was my rock, I was his tranquility.  From a very young age, Gavin was driven to become successful.  Probably a product of his father passing away and it being him and his mother his whole life.  He vowed when he was a teenager that he’d always take care of her, and he worked so hard to make that happen.  When Gavin stressed about his job or just the general way things were going in his life, I was able to sit him down, figure out the root of the problem, and help him to see the best way out of it. 

I thought back to last year, the day when his mother lost her battle against breast cancer.  We were sitting in the living room of her home, the home Gavin had grown up in.  I sat next to him on her old, beat-up blue couch, holding his hand and crying quietly.  My mother-in-law was a sweet lady and had loved me just as much as her own son.  I was really going to miss her.

Hospice had arranged for her to be picked up and the last of Gavin’s relatives had just left, so it was only the two of us.  Gavin stayed quiet, his jaw clenched shut, and just stared at the ceiling.  I didn’t think the realization of what had happened had set in yet.

He moved from the couch suddenly and I followed him into her bedroom.  When he entered, he paused for a moment to look at the hospital bed she spent the last week of her life in.  It was empty, the rumpled sheets and her pink blanket gone so that the only thing there was a blue plastic mattress.

Gavin had pulled his gaze from the bed, remembering his purpose for going in there.  He moved to her closet and threw the door open.  Hangers were flung to the side as he searched through her clothes.

“What are you doing, baby?” I had asked him, putting a gentle hand on his arm.

“Looking for an outfit,” he had explained, looking at each item quickly before discarding it.  “We need to find something for her to be buried in, right?”

“We don’t have to do that right now,” I assured him, reaching out to stop him.  “Why don’t you come back out and sit down?  I’ll get you something to drink.”

Gavin had stepped away from the closet and moved back out of his mother’s room but didn’t return to the couch.  Instead, he went into her kitchen and reached into the cabinet above her refrigerator.  Pulling out a phone book, he had set it down on the kitchen table and started flipping through it quickly.

“I need to call a florist, don’t I?” he had asked without looking up from the yellow pages.  “Make arrangements for them for the funeral?  Shit, the funeral, I have to figure out when to have it.  What do we do, have a viewing first and then a service at the church?  Fuck, the church I need to call them.” 

He had gotten out of his seat and went to grab the cordless phone sitting on the countertop.  My heart broke for him.  Just like every other time in his life, he had been worrying about what he should be doing to take care of things, rather than take care of himself and grieve. 

“Gavin,” I had said, and took the phone out of his hand.  “It’s late.  All of this can wait until the morning.” 

He sighed and stammered, “I don’t know...I don’t know what I have to...How do I...“ 

I took his hand and told him, “You don’t have to do anything right now except try to relax.”

He turned towards me and his hand had accidentally knocked over a bouquet of daisies that had been sitting on the counter.  Water spilled out and Gavin reached out just in time to prevent the glass vase from falling to the floor.  He held it in his hands for a moment and then raised it over his head and smashed it on the tile below our feet. 

I jumped back and could only watch sadly as he took his anger and pain out on anything he could reach.  A box of tissues, an empty coffee mug, a magazine, and a can opener were flung across the kitchen.  When Gavin had run out of things to throw, he gripped the edge of the kitchen island, his knuckles turning white, and hung his head. 

I went to him and put my arms around him.  He turned and crushed me tightly to him and then began to cry.       

“Shh,” I had whispered in his ear and tried to soothe him by rubbing his back.  “It’s okay.  I’ll help you, Gavin.  We’ll figure out everything that needs to be done and I’ll help you take care of it.”

I had held him until he relaxed his grip on me and then led him back onto the sofa, positioning us so that he lay with his head in my lap.  I ran my fingers through his hair and lightly scratched his scalp until he seemed calm again.

Taking my hand, he had placed it to his lips and kissed it.  “Thank God you always know what to do, baby,” he had told me.

It infuriated me now that I had no idea what to do.  What did couples do in this situation?  Were we supposed to separate?  I know many would suggest counseling but I swore off shrinks long ago.  My grandparents took me to see one after Stephanie and I moved in with them permanently.  It didn’t take them long to figure out that my obsessive need for order and routine was unhealthy at my age.  I’d freak out over the tiniest of things, like my hair not being exactly how I wanted it or not being able to get the corners of my bed sheets to line up correctly.  They took me to a child psychiatrist and his answer was to medicate me. It took a long time for them to figure out the right meds and dosages, and then I spent the ages of sixteen to eighteen in a half zombie-like state. 

I tried another doctor when I was in college and stopped taking my meds.  During the second session he propositioned me for sex.  I left his office and vowed never to see another head doctor again.  Instead, I went to my general physician and told her I had bouts of anxiety.  That was a bit of an understatement but she took pity and gave me a prescription for xanax, which I only took when I felt a panic attack coming on.  Between those and my cigarettes, I managed okay. 

That was until Gavin came along.  After quitting smoking, it wasn’t long before I was taking less and less of the xanax.  He was all the medicine I needed.  What would happen to us if we didn’t make it through this?

Gavin

There are several times when one feels they are experiencing the worst day of their life.   The first time I remember was when I was eight and my little league team had a father and son breakfast.  My Uncle Dominic couldn’t make it and so I went alone, sitting with the coach and his son while others glanced at me filled with pity.

The second time was when Lisa gave me back the engagement ring I had given her and told me she didn’t want to marry me anymore.  Of course now I knew it was the best thing she could have done, but at the time it hurt.

My mother dying would have been next.  I worked so hard my whole life to make sure she was well and taken care of but there was nothing I could do to stop the cancer from killing her. 

Two days ago, though, I swore telling Emma I had cheated was the absolute worst day of my life.  Hurting her that badly hadn’t compared to any other pain I’ve felt in my life but as I sat there and gave her the details of what happened in Denver I thought
this
is the absolute, hands-down worst day of my life.

I didn’t want to relive the experience myself, let alone repeat it to the woman I loved more than anything.  I had spent the last month shoving that shit into the furthest corners of my mind, trying to black it out the way one does with a traumatic event.  But Emma had insisted on knowing all of the details and if that is what she wanted, I had to give it to her.

I remembered the morning I left for the trip.  It had been a Monday and I had to leave the house at the ungodly hour of four a.m. to catch my flight.  Emma and I had had sex the night before, like we always did before I had to go away for work, and she was still naked, sleeping soundly on her side of the bed.  I watched her for just a minute, taking in how lovely she looked, lying on her back, her breasts exposed by the sheet that covered her from only the waist down.  Her dark hair had been fanned out on her pillow and I wondered how I had gotten so lucky to get this beautiful woman to marry me.  I didn’t want to wake her but she had insisted the night before that I did and so I leaned over and kissed her forehead until she stirred.

“I have to leave now, baby,” I whispered.

She stretched and blinked a few times until her eyes focused on me.  “Okay.  Have a good flight and call me when you land.”

“I will,” I promised her and leaned back down to kiss her.  “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” she murmured and then turned to snuggle into my pillow, holding it to her bare chest.  I watched her breath deeply a few times until she was asleep again.

That first day there had been long and tiring.  I remembered calling Emma that night and complaining to her while she listened patiently.

“I swear if I have to explain different retirement packages to these people again I am going to kill myself,” I said to her.  “Hours and hours of this shit and I get to do it all again tomorrow.”

“Just one more day of it and you’ll be back home with me,” she told me.  “What time is your flight on Wednesday?”

“Eleven, I think.  But I’ll have to go into the office for a bit.  I’ll be home around the same time I usually am.”

I had taken a bite out of the burger I had ordered from room service and Emma heard me chewing.

“Are you just eating now?” she asked me.

“Yes.  Haven’t had a chance all day.”

“What are you having?”

“Burger and fries.”

“Gavin, you have a whole menu of yummy hotel food and you choose a burger?  Why not get a steak or fish or something?” she scolded me.

“Ha!” I joked.  “I bet it’s better than what you had today.”

Emma was a good cook but I was better and I knew that with me being away she would not have cooked for just herself.  Her silence told me I was right.  “Come on, babe,” I pushed, “tell me what
you
ate.”

“Ramen noodles,” she mumbled.

“Ugh!  You’re killing me, Em!” I had laughed.  “You might as well of had Spaghetti-O’s.  My mother would be turning over in her grave knowing my wife was eating Ramen!”

“Hey,” she had said, “anyone who has been to college has learned to love Ramen, I’ll have you know.”

“Not me.”

“Well, we can’t all be master chefs now, can we?”

We laughed together and then I told her I missed her.

“It hasn’t even been a day yet, Gav,” she had said.

“I know but after a day like today, you know what I need?”

“What?”

“You riding my cock.”

She had gasped and I smiled, loving how I could take her surprise like that but that she’d be into it.  I didn’t go away for work very often anymore but the last few times I did we had made the time pass quickly by having phone sex.  Even though I’d be home Wednesday night and we had just had sex the night before, I hadn’t seen why we couldn’t have a good time that night.  It’s not like either of us had anything better to do.

She had taken a minute to recover from my blatant confession but then she had whispered, “You like it when I ride your cock, don’t you?”

I dropped my food and got comfortable on the bed, kicking off my shoes and removing my buttondown so that I was just in my slacks and white undershirt. 

“I love it,” I had answered her.  “Where are we?” 

We made the phone sex thing more exciting by placing the fantasy somewhere exotic or thrilling.  One time we were on a beach in Hawaii.  Another, we pretended that we were in the elevator of my office building.

“We’re in my car,” she had said.  “We’re in the back seat and the top is down and we’re parked out in an open field at night.  The air is warm and the only thing we can see are the stars over our heads.  I’m straddling your lap wearing my black dress but it’s pulled up over my hips and I have no panties on.”

Damn, my wife was good at this.

I felt myself instantly harden when she had said she wasn’t wearing panties and I moved my hand down to stroke my cock through my pants.  I closed my eyes and pretended it was Emma’s hand as she spoke into my ear.