It’s money that we shouldn’t be spending, but it might also be money that helps to save us.
As we effortlessly work through our entrées and start on our desserts, I let out a contented sigh.
“This is really nice,” I quietly say before taking a sip of my wine. My heart pounds against my eardrums, but I pull on abrave face as I steady myself. “I’m wondering if maybe we can try tonight?”
Surprise crosses his face, and his expression twists until he’s looking at me as if he thinks I’ve gone crazy.
“Try?” He clears his throat as he carefully sets down his spoon and the bite of dessert loaded onto it. His hand reaches for mine across the table, taking a gentle hold of it as his thumb strokes my skin. “Baby, I don’t know if that’s a great idea right now.”
“No, Lovey, I—” Lowering my voice to a whisper, I lean closer to him. “I meant that maybe we could try to have sex.”
The topic of sex never used to make either of us uncomfortable. We never really talked about it with other people, but between the two of us, it was always an open conversation. We always paid attention to what the other liked or needed. We were always perfectly aligned.
But as my husband wears his apprehension on his face like the flickering sign on the window next to us, I’m reminded that we’re no longer in the days of struggling to keep our hands off of each other. I’m reminded that he won’t be taking me by the hand through the parking lot and breaking traffic laws just to get me home and into our bed.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I say into my wine glass as the air shifts around us.
“No, it’s…” he sighs, shifting in his seat. “One good dinner isn’t gonna fix whatever this is. I just don’t want to screw up a good night by jumping into bed and fighting there.”
“You say that like you plan on us fighting,” I say with a humorless chuckle.
“Our track record looks like ass lately.”
Even though I know he’s right, I pull my hand from his and rest it in my lap, defeated.
We’re in critical condition.
What if we can’t recover?
As our server comes to collect our plates and wine glasses, leaving just our glasses of water and the bill behind, we don’t say a word to each other.
Tripp is somewhere else, far away, and I’m left alone to navigate the thick fog in my own mind. Blankets and quiet prayers and…
As I move to put my folded napkin onto the table, my wrist knocks into my water glass and sends it crashing to the floor. It shatters, sending shards of glass in a wide spray on the ground.
My cheeks heat under the prying eyes of the people around us whose attention was drawn by the noise as I reach to the ground to start picking up the pieces.
“I got it. You’ll hurt yourself,” Tripp tells me, just before crouching down next to me to pick up the larger shards himself.
He apologizes to a member of the staff, offering to pay for the glass, and I’m stiff in my chair.
It takes a few minutes for all of the glass to be scooped up by both hand and by dust pan, and I am absolutely mortified.
“It’s not a big deal,” Tripp assures me as he settles back into his seat. “It probably happens twenty times a week.”
“Don’t tell me it’s not a big deal when it’s a big deal to me,” I snap. “You don’t know how I feel.”
Like it always does, a small voice in the back of my mind starts screaming at me.
Stop it!It shouts.He hasn’t even done anything!
But I can’t.
His eyebrows raise in annoyance as he pulls his wallet from his pocket.
“Maybe I would if you’d talk to me about it,” he argues.
“Great, so now I don’t talk enough,” I mumble.
