trying harder

“Do you see where that tree branch used to go all the way over across the stairs?”

 Her eyes rolled upwards, dry and swollen. A branch floated in the dark grey night sky, its end abrupt, crude and blunt. Her day had started with car trouble, turned into work trouble, strayed off the path into domestic trouble and now had turned into personal trouble. She had opened her mouth when she should have kept it shut. But of course he would argue that not talking about the difficult things would have the same outcome as a conversation that went poorly.

“I see it.” Her voice was thick and nasal, pathetic sounding to her own ears.

“That branch used to go all the way over to the stairs, cast shade, shelter. They cut it down to let the grass grow underneath it. And now there’s no branch and no grass. But I remember.” He flicked the cherry of his cigarette carelessly on the concrete. “The problem with having a good memory is I remember when there was more. Now there’s less and people just shrug and move on. But I remember.”

She sat in silence, the conversation that had happened inside replaying over and over again in her memory. She had tried everything to talk to him in a way that she thought was non-threatening, in a way that she thought would lead to understanding, but he had blocked her at every turn. She desperately wanted to convey her lack of judgement but also convey her need for connection. Every angle she tried to get around the corner to the matter just made him angrier and more obstinate, and his words cut deeper and deeper as she tried harder and harder to get to the heart of the matter. Finally he asked “What’s the real issue here? What are you actually trying to say?”

She composed herself somewhat and tried to steady her voice. “Earlier in the evening we were laughing and having fun and talking about things we have in common and enjoying ourselves. You were flirting with me. You slapped me on the ass and told me all the things you were going to do to me. Then you had that one last drink and you slipped into yourself, and you came to bed and immediately passed out, and I felt ignored and rejected. I feel like I’m not important. I feel like you don’t feel for me the same way I feel for you.” There it was, the shit she wasn’t supposed to say.

His face almost immediately softened, just a touch. “Well, that was… easier,” he said. She struggled to stop crying, hating herself for doing it. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, “I’m just trying to stop crying.”

“Why?” He looked puzzled. “If that’s how you feel then that’s how you feel.”

But what she felt at that moment was betrayed, confused, hurt, pushed aside for what? To make more room for misery? Anger? Resentment? Fuck that. She didn’t want to even convey emotion to a person who would make her feel those things. She had already done this before – not even that long ago. She wasn’t about to put everything on the table to be utterly heartbroken again.

“You don’t belong to me,” he said, “You belong to someone else and that’s okay, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But it means you can’t be the one to save me, you can’t be the one to help me.” 

How was he supposed to know about the four nights a week she spent staring at her bedroom wall trying to mentally fix every physical and emotional problem he had? How was he supposed to know about the money she was squirreling away every slim week for the drought she knew was coming, money that had been depleted by unexpected expenses? How was he supposed to know about her worry-filled, chain-smoking nights spent trying, trying, to make something out of nothing? It had worked for her a million times, she had gotten herself out of a million jams, why couldn’t she do this for him, the man she loved, almost more than anyone else on earth? 

She had been keeping secrets. 

His words burned in her stomach and nauseated her. Her tears were hot and embarrassing, especially now that she wasn’t sure she was comfortable enough around him to shed them. She felt even more naked than she actually was. “I just don’t know if I want you to see them,” she said, and that’s when he stood up. “Okay. Well, you do what you’re gonna do, and I’m gonna go outside and smoke.”

Her insides twisted as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her breasts were soaked with tears and she could barely bring breath through her nose. She felt silly. Unattractive. Ineffective. All things she wasn’t used to feeling and things he had never made her feel, not until tonight.

Finally she sat up, wiped her face with aching hands. Fuck this, she thought. I’m not letting this shit go, and I’m not letting him get away like that. And I’m not going away like that. 

That was when she stepped outside to sit down and he started talking about the branches.

++

“I have a long history of failing at this kind of conversation. It’s a turning point.”

“How so?”

“Well, how do you measure change?”

“I’m still not following you.”

“Well, something has to have already changed for us to be having this conversation.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s good then.”

Her slim fingers snubbed out her cigarette against the metal walls of the coffee tin kept explicitly for this purpose. “Can we try something?”

He looked at her. “Yeah?”

“We have to go back to the bedroom for that.”

She stood up and walked past him, her hand grazing his on her way to open the door. He gripped her hand lightly as he stood up, almost for support. After they entered she closed the apartment door behind her and turned to him. Her hands wrapped around the back of his head and brought him closer for kisses he didn’t deflect. They were there for mere minutes before she padded back to the bedroom with him in tow.

They stripped their clothes unceremoniously, her at the end of the bed and he at the side. She climbed in first, he followed, their heads touching, their whole bodies touching lengthwise. “What are we gonna do?” he asked.

“Try harder.” she replied.

Then there was kissing, insistent and purposeful. She had already decided that she was going to get something that she wanted. Their tongues rolled against each other and his hand made a familiar path down to her, plunging into her almost immediately. She gasped – quietly, they weren’t alone in the apartment – against his forehead and cleared her throat. “You’re going to do something for me,” she said. 

“What?”

“You’re going to go down on me,” she said, and he didn’t move or make a sound. No nodding, no acquiescence, just the firm and persistent pressure of his fingers against her clit and slit. She shivered once again at his touch. But that’s not how I want to come, she thought, and grasped his arm to roll him over on top of her. 

He used that moment to push her legs high against her chest and bring his head to her pussy. His breath was hot on her clit and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning. She was honestly surprised that she was as aroused as she was, she expected not to be able to come back from the conversation that they had had earlier. But maybe he was right – maybe things had changed a little. And what she needed to be at that moment was something more like the woman he had met, before they fell in love, before things changed – unattached, unconcerned, selfish. 

“I know you don’t like the drinking,” he had mentioned a few weeks ago in passing. “But right now I want to drink, and I am being selfish, because I know it puts distance between us.”

Fuck your distance, she thought as she tangled her hands in his hair. I’m putting you here now. I’m making you be here now. I’m fucking selfish.  It seemed as if he could read her thoughts, his tongue swirling around and cupping her clit like it was the most natural movement. She couldn’t stop her hips from bucking up to meet him and he responded in kind by pushing her down and taking control of her, blowing gently over her wetness. She grabbed the headboard and came then, with force and no small amount of movement, almost savagely holding his head against her crotch. He then plunged his fingers into her pussy, into her ass, his other hand grasping her thigh so hard she could feel the mark she would see later. She came again and again in breathless succession, trying unsuccessfully not to make a sound. It was several minutes before she noticed he no longer had both his hands on her – he was touching his cock, trying to will it into service. 

“Oh, you think any part of this is about you?” she smirked, pushing him away from her with a sweep of her thigh. He fell onto his back and murmured something about no, not really. She bent forward and kissed him deeply, tasting herself on his lips and tongue, teasing him with her own. 

Mere minutes after she pulled away from him he was snoring, dead to the world. She was alone with her thoughts, and now they were focused solely on herself.

I just have to try harder, she mused. I just have to do more. I just have to invest in something…gym time, seducing him, date night, something. I just have to try.

It was a refrain that kept repeating as she opened her computer. And maybe I need to be a little selfish, too.

The cursor only blinked in place for a moment. It was going to be easy to write.