Page 3 of The Sound Of Us

He’s going to get his own welcome party just for looking like that. Mark my words.

What the fuck am I thinking?

Like me and my disgusting thoughts, Pepper has no shame, whining and wriggling to get out of my grasp as the truck eases back onto the road and takes the bend.

With Pepper secure between my legs, I steer her back into the front yard.

It’s Friday, after all.

NO LUBE FRIDAYS to be precise, and there are chores to be completed.

Chapter 2

Axel

I stare after the black SUV long after it’s disappeared. That’s the new resident. Benson didn’t say anything about him being deaf. How could he leave out such a pertinent piece of information?

As with all new things in River Valley, he’ll be smothered. Already I can see it. The girls will swarm for sure, and honestly, with a face like that, I wouldn’t blame them.

The Mom’s Club will definitely be all over him, trying to get him involved in their community programs. And most certainly, we’re going to have sign language classes.

When I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia during senior year, the Mom’s Club was formed to raise money and awareness, and everyone had to attend a class at the library twice a month to educate themselves.

We didn’t raise much money, but that was okay. River Valley was not known for its wealth, but we sure knew how to support each other with what little we had. We have our problems, one being that we are one of the poorest, most forgotten towns in the whole United States. The other is that we have a slight problem with prescription drugs and most of the two thousand three hundred and sixty-four of us are high on (illegally obtained) prescription drugs at any given time of day.

Not me, though. I’ve had enough of legally obtained prescription drugs to last me a lifetime. I never want to see another pill ever again for as long as I live… which might not be very long but that’s a story for another day.

The soft fall of snow litters my face, reminding me of the task at hand. I’d been chopping for an hour before Pepper’s Great Escape and my Highly Inappropriate Moment, but I hadn’t gotten much done, since my mind had been on the evening ahead and my movements had been slower than usual.

Fridays, as it happens to be today, are reserved for all-night fights and drunken sex without lube because real men took it straight.

But before you feel too sorry for me, I should tell you that Frank, my husband of ten years (and fifteen years older than me), is big in many ways but not in the way that counts for most men.

He's six-foot-five, attractively muscled with broad shoulders, thick thighs, and a mouth as big as Texas, especially when he’d had one too many and the filth to come out of his mouth was enough to make you want to take a three-hour shower.

But I’m the only one who knows about Frank’s filthy mouth. The people around town loved him because usually, he’s charming and kind. Happy and playful. So handsome.

Anyway, down there, there wasn’t much going on for Frank. On non-Fridays, he brought the lube to our marriage bed himself, shoved his thin, short penis inside me and was done in record time: eight seconds.

On those days, after it was over, I’d lie next to him with a cock as flaccid as it had been eight seconds earlier and with tears of sorrow falling down the side of my face and seeping into my ears, listening to Frank’s snores and wondering how I allowed my life to become what it did.

NO LUBE FRIDAYS was a different matter altogether. There was something about Fridays that got Frank going.

Maybe he was extra tired from the work week. Or maybe it was that all those hours he worked amounted to ‘a pittance’ as he liked to call it, at the end of the week.

Sometimes I think it starts when he and his buddies got together (Friday night usual) and they all got drunk and started talking about the things that drunk men talk about: whose dick is bigger, how many notches they’d gained on their belts and how lucky Frank was that he got to bust that pussy every night.

It’s a term I’ve gotten used to over the years. I’ve even begun to suspect that Frank secretly enjoyed being teased like that.

I may look like I get my pussy busted every night with my five foot eight frame and looking like every pretty boy ever, but I’m the opposite of Frank in one particular way. I’m small in most ways except one.

If you can imagine it, picture Frank towering over me in the shower (the top of my head not even reaching his shoulder). He’s hard and I’m flaccid.

We won’t get into too much detail about Frank’s disapproval that it takes me more than one second to produce an erection (you been gettin’ your cock hard somewhere else, Axel? And you been jerking off by yourself? Disgusting fuckin’ bitch).

Half the time I wished I could tell him if he treated me good, maybe it wouldn’t be like this.

The other half of the time I swallowed my sneers, knowing the only reason he’s mad is because even flaccid, my dick is bigger and thicker than his fully erect one. Not that I care, but after all these years, after all the poison-filled lies, the bruises, the threats with that fucking gun, and the humiliation, you learn to hold on to anything that feels like power.

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