Page 14 of The Wife
This was us.
Then the next thing I knew I was falling back against the kitchen island. If he hadn’t reached out to grab my arm, I would have hit it hard.
“I…what…” I couldn’t get out any words because I was feeling so much, but the look on his face…
He was disgusted. I disgusted him.
“What the fuck!”
I flinched because he was loud. As loud as he’d ever been with me.
“I… thought…”
“What?” he barked. “What the fuck did you think? What have we been fucking doing for the last fucking three months?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly,” he said tightly.
“But… I thought…” Forget that. I wasn’t going to be so stupid to admit I thought he was waiting for my permission to make a move. Instead I asked. “Why do we have to do that?”
His jaw was clenched, that muscle thumping away hard. He glared at me and I think he was actually trying to calm down before he said anything else. Which in a way I was grateful for.
Not going to lie, not a huge fan of having Jake yell at me.
“Because this is temporary. Because we’re getting divorced as soon as we have enough money. Because you’re a goddamn virgin!” He was running his hands through his hair, so exasperated, as if any of that should have made sense. “We are not doing fucking anything. Ever. Do you get that? I told you what I told you after it happened the first time to try and explain why I was so mad at myself. But that was not supposed to be taken as… I don’t know how you took it.”
“I took it to mean you wanted me.”
“I don’t,” he said flatly. “Not you.”
I let out awooshof breath. Which made sense, because I had this horrible feeling as if I had been stabbed in the center of my chest. I knew this feeling. I had felt like this before. The day we got married. The day I finally understood that my father was lost to me forever.
This felt like that. Hollow and painful on the inside. So bad that you wanted to cut yourself and watch the blood spill out so there would be a visible representation of what you were feeling.
He closed his eyes then and tipped his head back. “Ellie… listen…”
“No. It’s okay. I got it. Let’s just blame it on the wine. Okay? I’m a little tipsy…” I wasn’t any longer. I was stone cold sober. “So yeah, drunk people do stupid stuff all the time. I’m going to get my water and leave.”
I didn’t wait for him to say anything else. I just moved around him, took the water he’d poured for himself and ran as fast as I could out of the kitchen, trying not to spill water along the way.
* * *
Jake
Yeah, I fucked that up hard. I was about to follow her, to explain myself better. But I still had a fucking hard on, and I thought trying to discuss how complicated this all was when I was still desperate to fuck her wasn’t the best idea.
I crushed her. Eighteen-year-old girl. Virgin. And I crushed her.
I decided to forgo the water for another beer. Maybe after a few more of them I might not see her expression when I told her I didn’t want her.
Of course Iwantedher. It wasn’t that. Nothing was that simple. What the hell did she think, that we could mess around, have sex and then get divorced without any emotional complications?
I was going to take her virginity. The first guy she was ever going to have sex with and she wasn’t going to be hurt when I walked away?
No, sex would make whatever ending was coming our way infinitely worse. I knew that. Which meant I had to be the adult. I had to keep the boundaries firmly in place. Only now I knew for a fact that she wanted…
Shit.
