He Had Decided to Go Driving - Short Fiction

He had decided to go driving.  

She had just started to make the sounds of sleep, when he rose up to the side of the bed. Sitting up, he tried to see things from all points of view, while knowing that he was tainted by selfish motivation.  

She said that she adored and loved him.  She said that what they had should not be taken for granted. She was sweet and sincere when she held unto his arm, in a moment of clarity perhaps.  But even before she came down that past Sunday, he felt the difference.  She had mentioned that she would be coming late Sunday night and maybe they should meet up Monday.  He had poo poo’d it, telling her it would be no trouble, but he tucked the memory of her words into the back of his mind, just the way he shouldn’t.

He remembered the last time she had come up for a week. That hadn’t gone well.  In fact, she later admitted that she had delayed their seeing each other again for many months because that visit.  That was another thing he had remembered and put into the back of his mind.  Other contents included Sunday night when she would barely kiss him or touch him because she had just been driving for eight hours and felt “blah.” Last night, she had made plans with her friends and called him to tell him that she would be out till around 2pm.  Thinking that he would rather avoid his jealous behavior last time he waited up for her at the hotel, he thought perhaps he’d go home and occupy his time with other things.

She asked if he was mad, which he understood, but as he told her, he wasn’t.  He was sad. Not at her or her friends, not even at the fact that she would invariably come home drunk and silly and flirty, promising amorous thoughts that would die in his head when she became ill or sick from her night out.

Tonight, she admitted that, at week before her period, she was not feeling up to the stress of being physical.  But he didn’t just want sex. He could live without the sex. He didn’t want to, but he could deal with it. It was the intimacy that he craved.  The touch of her skin against his, her hands in his hair, her silliness and sweetness, the way she scratched his skin or rubbed his feet,  the way she rolled her eyes.  These little moments that seemed so trivial were held like precious items in the front of his mind. They gave him the strength to march against the inertia of each work day.  They allowed him to wait for the next time, which more often than less, would be months from now.

After he had showered, he rubbed the hotel’s fancy orange scented crème on his arms and chest.  He liked the smell.  Lying in bed with her, she wrapped herself in his left arm and spooned against him.  He asked her if she like the way he smelled. Turning on her stomach, she looked up at him through hair now covering her face. She smiled. It smelled good.  She turned to him and embraced him.  Little kisses made way to more passionate ones.  Within moments her naked legs were wrapped around his hairy limbs. They were back there, where he knew what to do, where he wasn’t an ass, where he felt clear joy and love. She still loved him. He could feel it.

She started to panic.  Her breath felt labored.  She gently pushed away from him and told him she needed to breath.  She sat up.  He tried to rub her back, but she gently asked him to give her some space.  After a few minutes she got up and went to the bathroom to get some water.  He turned his back to her to give her some space and to feel sorry for himself at least a little bit.  

When she laid back down, he asked her if she was okay, not just because he meant it, but also because he didn’t want her to mistake his recoil for rejection.  She murmured something back and he thought about those brief seconds when he was holding her.  He thought about how she mentioned at dinner that she liked to keep their worlds separate, that he would hate her friends and she would hate his.  He wondered whether they both wanted the same things from each other.  She already had a child who needed constant affection from her.  She was reckless in ways he would never be and he was aimless in ways she didn’t understand.  

So many reasons none of this should be happening.  But he didn’t want to give up those moments.  He wanted so much to build a life around those moments.  He let himself be angry that she was sleeping at 10PM but would spend the next night up with her friends until 2.  He stood up, picked up his pants and a shirt.  He went out in search of cigarettes and wisdom.