She wasn’t bothered by his perceived failings, and, unbeknownst to Ryan, about two years ago she’d discovered the healing power of the shower head massager. This discovery had led to finding an orgasm on her own. Unbeknownst to both of them, simultaneous orgasms had occurred on multiple separate occasions. A win, indeed, just perhaps not the win they’d reached for, as the orgasms had occurred in separate rooms.
Maybe she ought to tell him?
Maybe they could shower together.
Freddie Mercury implored them not to stop him now, and insisted that because he was traveling at the speed of light, they call him Mr. Fahrenheit. Ryan’s eyes blinked open. Blurry. He rubbed them. In the distance, he could hear the shower. He turned to his phone, which now wanted to make a supersonic woman of him, and tapped the triple zzzs to give himself nine more minutes of peace. His tap amounted to a shove, and the phone disappeared behind the nightstand.
We fell asleep, he realized. Fuck.
He ran a hand through his hair and counted the strands that came out with it. Twelve today. Seven of them still tan. Only seven. Can’t stop the march of time, bucko, he told himself. Got to get a handle on other things, though, they’re all spiraling out of control.
Feet on the floor, good start.
Ryan sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, hands propping his chin up. His morning wood asserted itself, but he regarded it as nothing more than a nuisance that would have to make itself scarce before he could use the toilet.
He lifted a sheet of yellow note paper off the nightstand, covered in several hand written lines of text. Their mantras. Lines that they’d worked out with Dr. Petrillo. A snake-oil lifeline out of the hole.
“So, we just say this stuff?” Jennifer had asked after they’d finished working it out with their doctor less than a month prior.
“When you both feel that the time is right, you’ll decide to make the change.” Petrillo had told them over tented fingers, a clichéd pose that made the quality of the content that much more dubious.
Jennifer had dismissed the mantras out of hand on the way home from his office. The paper had sat, folded, in the same spot on his nightstand for the ensuing weeks. Ryan didn’t hold much hope either, but something had to change.
The shower stopped and Jennifer emerged. He watched her preen in the mirror.
“Today is the day we change our lives,” Ryan read.
Jennifer poked her head out of the bathroom, electric toothbrush in her mouth, eyes wide, perplexed, a look on her face that silently asked “Really?”
“When we leave this bedroom today, nothing will ever be the same.” He looked up again from the paper and shrugged.
Jennifer spat.
“We’re moving forward,” he said.
“Getting older, certainly,” she added.
“I know, it’s—”
“It’s silly, Ryan.”
“We fell asleep last night instead of having the sex we both claim to want.” He threw his hands up and waved the paper at her. “I’m willing to give it a try. Are you?”
Her comically smug expression, accented by lips covered in toothpaste foam, hung and grew serious. She nodded.
“Then, today is the day we change our lives,” he asserted.
“Nothing will ever be the same.” She waved her hand in a circular motion. “Etcetera.”
Ryan smiled at his wife, seeing the vaguest glimmer of hope in the smile she returned. “We change because we choose to do so. We change because we are no longer…”
“We’re no longer content to be ‘just okay.’” She sat on the bed next to him. The fresh, crisp scent of her shampoo wafted into his nostrils.
He’d always thought her the most beautiful woman, never once doubting his love for her. His commitment, though… There sat doubt. “For someone who doesn’t hold much stock, you sure seem to know the text,” he poked at her.
Jennifer stuck her lower lip out and cocked her jaw. In a flash of naked flesh, she grabbed the paper. “You don’t?”
He knew the words too. That night in Petrillo’s office had been a mild form of catharsis, the kind of night where you realize all the things you want to say and what you want to change, but can’t quite make it happen. He’d read the mantras over and over again on the ride home, as Jennifer drove in silence. “Because ‘just okay’ is no way to live.”
“It’s not acceptable anymore.”
“Because it’s not what we want from our lives. Right?”
Jennifer nodded, sincerity in her eyes, but also a tinge of desperation. He knew the desperation well, because it had crept up on him, too. From the outside looking in, their marriage looked fine, healthy. At least, no more at-risk than anybody else’s. They rarely fought, certainly not in public. They were nice to each other, affectionate. All outward appearances normal. Internally, though, when the chips were down, they’d both felt an upsetting certainty: This is how friends feel toward each other, not lovers, not husband and wife. This is how roommates feel. Roommates that occasionally get around to sex when the urges reach critical mass.
“We can do this,” said Ryan, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.
“We can do this.” Jennifer sounded even less sure of herself, but they held eye contact a moment before she changed the subject. “Don’t forget, the party at Barbara and Noah’s is tonight.”
The promise of the moment gone, Ryan flopped onto his back on the bed, sighing theatrically.
“You knew about this. I thought you wanted to—”
“It’s been a long week,” he griped
“I know,” she said, moving her hands to her hips, a comical stance of nude defiance.
“Do we really need to go?”
Jennifer threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know, Ryan. Isn’t this the day we, you know, live?”
Ryan scowled.
2
“We’ll stay an hour, maybe two,” said Ryan, fishing a grocery bag stuffed with chips and dip out of the back seat.
“I don’t know, hon,” Jennifer slung her purse over her shoulder and held a hand out for one of the bags, but Ryan shook his head. “It seems like we’re always the first ones to head out at—”
“We work, they know that.”
“They all work too.”
She held her hands out again, this time with more insistence. He relented and slung one of the grocery bags around her right wrist. They both took a deep breath and turned towards Barbara and Noah Watkins’ house, set far enough back on the lot to allow its upper middle class mini McMansion status to play its intimidation game with those who weren’t able to park in the driveway.
Jennifer began to stride across the lawn, but Ryan didn’t follow. After a moment she looked back at her husband, standing in the moonlight, two Jewel grocery bags at his side, shoulders slumped, hair falling in his face a bit, and there, for a fleeting second, she felt the stirring that has been so long slumbering, that bit of warmth, the tingle. Let’s just skip this party and go home and fuck… Stop this making love pressure and just go fuck for chrissakes!
But the words didn’t leave her lips. Instead she half smiled at Ryan, and he half smiled back.
“Are you driving us home tonight?” she asked him as he joined her on the front porch.
“Do you want to drink?”
“I don’t know.”