His figure bobbed in the dark, nodding.
“I’m even willing to be sorry I wasn’t a bit more diligent in checking up on you,” she took a deep breath, feeling the urge to lash out at him. Let it pass, bring it down. “But I will not apologize for enjoying myself. For doing what you told me I should, for myself. For feeling pleasure, for myself. Should I have sat downstairs in the dark with you because you were feeling unappreciated?”
A long pause. “No.”
“Then what would you have had me do differently?”
“I think we need to stop,” he said, cautiously.
She pursed her lips. “Okay, fine,” she said. “We can continue this tomorrow.”
“No,” he said. “Swinging.”
“What?”
“We need to stop swinging. I don’t think we can handle it. I’m closing the door.” He opened his mouth to speak again a few times, then added “Climbing back out of the deep end.”
She gaped at him. Stop this? This thing? She wasn’t sure she could. She’d suffered through that time off, after the fight with Paige. The thought of not doing it at all now left her cold. “Going back to our pathetic excuse for a sex life?”
“It’s better than the way I feel right now,” he said.
“What about how I feel, Ryan?” She stood up and turned on the light. “You haven’t asked me how I feel! You made a decision. Like last night. And now you’re just dragging me along by the wrist.”
She knelt in front of him. He stared into his lap.
“I think we should postpone this conversation a bit, maybe just till tomorrow. To look with fresh eyes.” She touched his knees, and he jumped away from her.
“No. We need to stop. We’re not good at it. You’re not good at it.”
She reeled back, his words slapping her across the face. She let her mouth hang open.
His expression changed too, hardened, seeing her shock. “This can’t be a surprise to you. After the way you acted at Bruce and Paige’s. You’re not ready.”
She sat back on the floor, dazed, staggered. He stared at her, blank face revealing no emotion whatsoever, no concern for what she was feeling. Rigidity. He’d spoken. No more swinging. As angry as she was with the words, though, the question of whether or not she was in fact “bad at swinging” echoed through her. That she’d caused a scene, that she hadn’t been able to watch Paige with that other woman, that she felt so much shame over it.
No! She shook her head. “You wallow, Ryan. You wallow all you want in this oh so unfair world you’ve created in your mind. But you recognize something. We were adrift. Remember? Adrift, and then we found something. And you’re suggesting we cut the cord again?”
“You found something. Someone.” The bitter edge in his words tasted like copper.
She stood and backed away. “I’m done with this conversation.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
“When you have a moment of clarity, because I’m sure it’ll come, you need to think about the hateful person you appeared to be last night. You think about how they see you now. And you think about whether any of that may have contributed to how lonely you felt.” She turned her back on him. “But I will not feel sorry for having a good time. A good time that you ruined, mind you, when you dragged me out of a good situation back into this… whatever this is.”
“This is our marriage.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.” Jennifer climbed the stairs to their bedroom. She held back the tears until she turned out the light. With the door closed, he wouldn’t hear. When morning came, they looked at each other in the mirror as they brushed their teeth and prepared for work. He drove her to the hotel. He picked her up. The routine that had been fixed two years ago, when their schedules first lined up, kept running.
The next morning, they didn’t look at each other at all. Perfunctory questions about breakfast, coffee, and leftovers in the fridge, all uttered quietly, were their only communication. By April, even that had ceased.
45
Noah set the bottle of Scotch on the bar between them. He held his glass up to the light, roughly an inch of caramel colored liquid on the bottom, two gray cubes in it. “Barbara got these for me,” he said, pointing to the cubes. “They’re metal or something, so you can freeze them and throw them in your drink, and they just get it cold, they don’t water it down.”
Ryan nodded.
“Want to try some of this Glenlivet? It’s a 21.” He elbowed Ryan.
Nothing.
“This amount here,” he said, “sixteen dollars. That’s not what you’d pay at a bar, that’s what the actual value is. At a bar, you’d pay…” He cocked his head at Ryan, who shrugged and nodded.
“What’d you come over for, if not to talk?” asked Noah, pulling another glass off the shelf behind the bar. He dropped two of the gray cubes into the glass and poured about an ounce of the Glenlivet 21. “I’m gonna start you off with eight dollars.”
He handed the glass to Ryan, who brought it to his lips and poured the entire ounce into his mouth. He swallowed, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat.
“Tastes like your bar,” said Ryan, “if I gnawed on it a little.”
“He speaks!” Noah raised his arms theatrically and did a bit of a jig that reminded Ryan of his high school theater’s interpretation of Tevye. “But will he share?”
“I don’t remember the last time she and I had a conversation. I mean, since then. We exchange basic conversational pleasantries, sure…” Ryan trailed off, staring at the cubes in his glass. He shook them, watching them tumble like dice. “I talk to the receptionists at the office more than I talk to my wife.”
Noah clapped him on the back as he came back around the bar and sat next to him. “Sometimes I, too, talk to the receptionists more than Barbara.”
Ryan choked out a laugh, the sound seeming foreign, it had been so long since last he made it. “Yeah, but that’s by choice.”
With a nod, Noah leaned closer to him, his shoulder rubbing up against Ryan’s. “Seems like yours is by choice, too, buddy.”
Ryan thought about that. No, if it were his choice the silence wouldn’t have lasted (he did some quick math in his head), Jesus, almost four weeks. It wasn’t his choice, it was their choice, and the Lamberts were opting out.
“Sex is gone too, now,” he said instead. “Months since the last time.” He turned to Noah and looked into his eyes. He poked the empty glass toward him. “You warned us.”
Noah gulped his Scotch. His face changed, as though he’d sucked down a lemon with that sip. “Oh, don’t play that fucking game,” he said.
“No,” Ryan insisted, “You did, you and Barbara.”
“We were concerned,” conceded Noah.
“Yeah. We should’ve listened.”
“Why? I wouldn’t have.” Noah folded his arms over his chest, swirling the last few sips of Scotch around the bottom of the glass, the gray cubes tinkling as they slid.
Ryan looked at him. “What?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” asked Noah, growing more animated. “The promise of wild sex? New friends? Excitement?” He grabbed the bottle next to him and gave Ryan the full sixteen this time, topping himself up to the same. “Someone puts that option legitimately in front of me… I mean, for real. I’m all over it.”
Ryan stared at his friend, this new information so different than what he’d revealed before on the subject. Noah talked big about his exploits, but had seemed shockingly prudish when the chips came down regarding the swingers. “So, I’m sure the option was there… Why didn’t you?”