“It has been a while since I shared a bed with someone,” Christopher said.
“A while?”
He laughed softly. “Ever.”
She laughed too. “I know how you feel. This is… it is not how I expected this evening to go.”
“Nor did I.”
“Might I be honest with you?” Rose’s heart started to race as she considered what she was about to say. She didn’t know why she wanted to say it, just that she did as if it might somehow help.
“Please.”
“If there was anyone whom I was capable of sharing my bed with, it is you.”
Christopher said nothing at first, and she worried that she had gone too far. She cursed herself silently and was about to make a joke out of it, hoping to diffuse the tension. But then, he spoke up.
“As am I, Rose.”
Rose smiled, and while she might have been imagining it, she could feel the tension between them fading. What was more, she could feel Christopher’s body loosening, so that he wasn’t nearly so stiff. Again, the urge to shuffle closer took her, but she resisted it.
“Can I ask you something?” Rose said softly.
“I sense that you won’t take no for an answer.”
She laughed again. “I know so little of you, Christopher. And it feels strange to me. That we are married, and I don’t know the first thing about you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” she said.
“You know of my work. We live together. You have seen me at my best and my worst. What else is there to know?”
“So much.” Carefully, she shuffled an inch closer. “And I feel that you know so much more about me than I do about you. You have met my father and my sister. Anything you wish to know, you can always ask, and I will happily tell you. But you…” She trailed off, not wanting to push on what she knew to be a sensitive topic.
Indeed, for a few moments, nothing was said.
Rose lay on her side, watching her husband through the dark. She could not make out his face, but she could sense the hesitancy in him. He was always so closed off, so careful not to reveal anything personal about himself, as if he thought that doing so was a weakness.
She would have loved to have asked why he thought it was a weakness, but that would have required her to know more about him.
If only he would open to me, just a little, just enough so that I know the man whom I now call my husband is human. There is another side to him, a hidden side, and despite what he might say, I know that he wants to let it out.
The silence built… the tension gathered… Rose could hear her heart thumping as her husband said nothing… and then, he did.
“My mother died when I was just a boy,” he began, his voice so soft that she barely heard it. “And my father died when I was barely a man. My only living relative is my aunt, and unsurprisingly, we are not nearly as close as we could be.”
“Why not?” she asked gently.
He scoffed. “Many reasons…” Silence followed his declaration, and she thought he was finished. “You want to know why I am the way that I am? Is that it?”
“And what way is that?”
He laughed bitterly. “You know what way, Rose. Cold. Distant. Particular.”
“You are not…” She sucked through her teeth. “You are not as cold as you once were.”
He laughed again, only this time it sounded real. “It’s how I was raised, is why. My father wanted a perfect son, and I wanted to be that perfect son. He did not like gossip. He did not appreciate rumors. What he wanted was…” He sniffed. “He wanted perfection, and he demanded it from me.”
