She shrugs. “You have to give things up as part of a couple. There are worse losses.”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair in frustration. “Except that this guy seems to understand very little about you, so I bet you’re giving up more than you’re admitting.”
Her face grows guarded, a hint of pink blooming beneath the surface of her cheeks. “I’m not.”
She is.
And someone needs to show this asshole that if he won’t put some effort into making her happy, plenty of other men will. I guess I ought to be the one showing him how to treat her, but I wish, instead, that I was just making sure he doesn’t win her back at all.
He clearly doesn’t deserve to.
23
EASTON
Ibet you’re giving up more than you’re admitting.
Of course I am. There are plenty of other problems in my relationship, but becoming an adult involves the realization that a certain degree of dissatisfaction is part of the deal. No job is perfectly happy and no relationship is perfectly happy. People talk about how much joy their children bring them, but research shows that people with children are significantlylesshappy than those without. Which isn’t to say that having children or a job or a spouse isbad, but every responsibility you take on has a weight to be carried.
You can make everyone miserable bitching about it, or you can ignore those moments of irritation and fatigue, that tiny itch of displeasure, and I usually do. But I’ll allow myself some unprecedented honesty just this once.
Thomas is a terrible gift giver, for starters. His idea of a Christmas present is some huge, confusing book he’s appalled I haven’t read. Or a class I can take. His gifts are more a burden than anything else. After a month wading throughUlyssesand spending four Thursdays in a row learning how to make tapas,I suggested maybe we just shouldn’t exchange gifts anymore. It seemed easier.
And then there’s the sex.
I’d wanted to laugh when Kelsey said she was worried she’d interrupt post-engagement all-night sex. We never have sex all night. And it was a Monday. Unthinkable. Thomas and I have sex twice a week—Wednesday and Saturday—because having sex twice a week is protective against depression and good for relationships, but doing it more than that has no statistically significant benefits.
So we don’t do it more than that. Ever.
It’s not all bad, having it on the calendar. At least I always know when I need to shave my legs. But there are times when I’m listening to my roommates talk about tearing some guy’s clothes off or hooking up in an office late at night, and it hits me that I’ll never, for the rest of my life, experience one of those “fuck the consequences, this is happening” moments.
The memory of Elijah’s heavy-lidded gaze as he pulled up my skirt appears before I can stop it.
Not now, Elijah.
I guess I’d also prefer if Thomas wasn’t sleeping with me for its health benefits, but simply out of desire. I want him to send me desperate, eager texts every Wednesday and Saturday because he can’t wait. I want him to suggest a Friday once in a while because Saturday night is too far away.
And I want him to make noise. Thomas doesn’t make a peep, the entire time. Even when he comes, it’s only obvious because hestops.
I once asked him to say something dirty and he said, “Like what?” His wariness was an immediate cold shower. I didn’t want him drily reciting something he didn’t even mean, so I told him not to worry.
So when do you decide you’ve sacrificed too much and when do you decide it doesn’t matter? If you can never cook anything with mushrooms because he hates them, if he wakes you up at five a.m. every morning, if you can’t get a dog because he’s allergic...do you end it over those things? Of course not.
Do you end it because he no longer seems interested in fucking you? I mean...odds are he was going to lose some interest eventually, right?
I’d take what I’ve got over being thrown down the stairs any day, over being forced to help someone conceal a crime, over having a husband who drives drunk every night.
So yes, those concessions—sleeping with someone who never makes a peep, who doesn’t seem to care about sex—are ones I’m willing to make.
Although...I don’t,technically, have to concede to a single fucking thing right now, do I?
“We’re stoppingon the panhandle until Monday,” announces Betty when we return from the beach. She and Mrs. Cabot sit side by side at the kitchen counter, doing a puzzle. “An old beau of mine from high school lives there now.”
I turn toward the pot of coffee someone brewed while we were outside. We are slightly over ten hours from New Orleans so I sort of suspected that we wouldn’t finish this trip today. The silver lining is that I get some more time at the beach and might finally see a coastal dune lake, which I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid.
The downside is that I’m stuck that much longer with Mrs. Cabot.
“He wasn’t justyourbeau,” snipes Mrs. Cabot. “I dated him first.”
