Together Apart: Change is Never Easy (17 page)

Zach cut Sam off, and wrapped her in his arms, not wanting her to finish the sentence. “Growing pains, Sam. That’s all. They even have a term for it: ‘quarter-life crisis.’ When we all have to grow up, realize we’re not kids anymore, and enter the real world.”
 

“Fine,” she said. “But I feel like we’re stepping into it separately.”

Zach stepped back, breaking their embrace, then reached past Sam, pressed his hand against the canvas, and wiped away the dark shape, the impression fire he’d felt compelled to create, the area of shadows. When he withdrew his hand, the vision was gone as if never there.
 

He pressed his paint-covered hand to Sam’s chest and cradled the firm weight of one breast in his palm. The hand moved lazily. She watched his face as Zach’s hand moved to the other side, turning her into a living canvas. She closed her eyes, sighed, and opened them. Then she reached out and pulled Zach’s shirt over his head. Her hands went to his jeans, leaving a red mark. Jeans came off; he pulled one leg out and almost tripped over the other. She pulled off her own slacks, then both her panties and his boxers. His cock, in front of her, looked lazy and tumescent, like a dozing snake.
 

His other hand went to the painting. Both hands in reds and oranges and blues, he traced slow, seductive lines up the insides of her legs, to where she was warm, beyond, up her sides, down her arms, along her neck.
 

“You’re ruining your painting,” she panted, his hands back between her thighs, painting their facing surfaces. He could feel the heat coming off of her pussy. He wanted to touch it but didn’t know if the paint would harm her. So he kneeled and licked her clit as best he could, her knees slightly bent and her bearing unsteady.
 

“I’m not ruining it,” he said. “I’m turning it into something different.”
 

Sam’s knees surrendered under his tongue’s ministrations. She stumbled backward, grasped the easel for support, and sent it crashing to the floor. Paint went everywhere. Zach had laid down a sheet of plastic (something he hated, though the landlord would surely approve), but paint on the canvas had been thick and as Sam tumbled onto and ripped it, he saw flecks of paint clear the area covered by the plastic, striking both wall and carpet.
 

Sam’s ass was covered in paint. She rolled over to try and look back at it, mashing her tits and hands into the ruined stretcher in the process. She half-stumbled over the easel, almost looking ready to apologize, but was up and looking back. Zach felt his earlier urgency return as he saw Sam’s pussy from behind, back and butt swirled in color above it. He reached for her legs, still feeling her heat on his hand, and pushed them apart enough to get between them. Then his cock was all the way inside, his torso collapsed over her back, the hand not supporting his weight curled around and cupping her swaying tits.
 

“Oh, Zach,” Sam moaned. He withdrew slowly, then slid his shaft slowly back into her wet hole. Once seated, he pushed hard into her as if trying to get an extra inch, as close to her as possible. He squeezed the arm around her. Laid his chest flat on her back. Put his cheek against the base of her neck and started to kiss it.
 

“I love you, Sam,” he said. He had to let her know. It suddenly seemed very, very important. Desperate, even.
 

Like time was thinning.
 

Sam’s hand slipped on the canvas, and they nearly spilled. He continued to shove his cock deep inside her. Zach could already feel pressure building, his art orgasm slowly becoming a biological one. Sam was so wet. As he pulled out and pushed his cock into her pussy, it sounded like the washing of a paintbrush. He felt her squeeze him back. She had no free hands, so she did it with all she had, gripping Zach’s shaft like a hug. He felt the ridge of his dick’s head roll along the walls inside her, making his cum want to rise.
 

“I want you to be happy,” she said.
 

“I am happy.”
 

“I don’t want to hold you back.”
 

“I’m not held back.”
 

“I don’t … ”
 

“Sam,” he said, cutting her off.

She sighed, seeming to surrender. “Oh, God, Zach. Then just make me cum.
Make me cum.”
 

He pushed himself against her pussy from behind, making shallow, grinding strokes. She reached back between her legs and began stroking her clit. Zach pulled up, seeing paint now smeared across the whole of her back. He looked down and saw it across his own chest. His knees. Her knees. The insides of Sam’s thighs, where he’d touched her.
 

Without a word, she gave a giant, heaving moan. Her pussy clenched his cock hard, milking it. Zach continued to stroke. Sam bucked back, and his dick slipped out of her hole. He was at the edge, so instead of inserting his dick back into Sam’s slit, he gripped it in his paint-covered hand and stroked himself until he came, shooting several lines of thick, white cum across her back where it pooled on the multicolored canvas of her skin, stark white against the reds and blues.
 

She rolled over, heedless of the paint or collapsed easel. They were both covered, and as they clutched at and touched each other in the afterglow, it moved onto their faces, hair, and everywhere else.
 

Sometime later, spent, they fell asleep as two living works of co-created art.
 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Present Day

“Zach, we’re going to be late,” Sam said, peeking her head into the studio, where he was sketching.
 

Zach hadn’t used the studio much during the two weeks since Sam’s ill-fated visit to the doctor, but he’d at least
used
it. Sam had insisted. Just as
he’d
insisted that she carve some time out to work on “something that nurtured her.” Sam had mocked the way he’d phrased it of course, because she was Sam, then followed orders anyway. The rule was that neither had to show the other what they were working on, but they had to do the work. On one level, it seemed counterintuitive that one of the initiatives intended to bring them back into alignment had them spending more time apart, but on another level, they, as individuals, were the pyramid’s base.
 

Sam and Zach first, as separate people.
 

Sam and Zach next, as a couple.
 

Then and only then could they even consider the idea of trying (deliberately, this time) to have a baby.
 

Despite Zach’s protests that he was plenty fulfilled, Sam insisted that he spend time creating. Zach, to retaliate, insisted on the same from her: more time spent becoming what her innermost being wanted her to be; a little less time spent with news work.
 

“I’m almost finished,” he said. Zach looked up at Sam and felt his heart swoon. She was always stunning, but had taken her look to a new level. Her hair was half pinned back, flowing out of whatever held it in big, loose curls. She wore a slinky, red dress that he wanted badly to tear from her body. It was both incredibly sexy and professional — the kind of dress a girl could get an award in now and be bent over a sink by her husband in later.
 

“We need to leave in 10 minutes,” she said. Her expression was almost comical. She looked stressed (of course she was; this was Sam, after all), but she was obviously trying not to nag him. Her teeth were bared in what wanted to be a white smile, but her eyes were almost apologetic.
I’m trying to be nice and I love you,
the look said,
but Jesus, hurry the fuck up
.

“I’m showered. Hair done, casual yet appropriately tight-assed. Perfect for the spouse of an award-winner. I just need to get dressed.”
 

“Zach … please?”
 

He nodded her away with a good-natured head jerk. Ten minutes was an eternity, considering he needed only to drape the various pieces of a semi-fancy suit to his frame. He wanted to finish the sketch. It was of Sam, as a superhero, wearing a cape with an N on it (for NewsLady) and nothing else. Below the stylized sketch of the naked Sam was the legend
Hottest Reporter Award
and
Congratulations, baby, Love Zach.
She didn’t know about the sketch, just like she didn’t know about the champagne he’d stuck in the back of the fridge earlier in the week, about the flowers he’d picked up this morning, or the — wait for it — cherry cordials he’d stashed in an office drawer. Zach wasn’t sure if he was exposing himself as a one-trick pony by defaulting yet again to chocolates and flowers, and didn’t know if his drawing of a nude super chick was an inappropriate companion to champagne and celebration. But it was the thought that counted.
 

“Thirty seconds,” he said.

With visible effort, Sam inhaled, exhaled, and said, “OK.” She saw how he was hunched over the drawing and said, “What are you working on that’s so urgent?”
 

He curled his arm around the pencil and paper. “Piss off. Trade secrets.”
 

“Come on,” she said. “I want to know what you’ve been doing in here the past few weeks.”
 

“Mostly painting,” he said. He nodded toward several canvases stacked against one wall, backs facing out. None was any good. Next week he’d rip them, re-stretch them with new canvases, and start over. Even so, painting them had been worth it. As he’d worked, he’d felt like the Tin Man returning to mobility after a few squirts of oil. He was producing shit, but any faucet dribbled at first after dormancy. The good stuff was coming, once Zach’s pipes and wires and joints remembered their most familiar rhythms. Sam had been right about all of it. Over the past weeks, Zach really had felt better. And from his end at least, they had been better for it.
 

“And what’s that? A sketch?” She took another step.

“Hey! Get out of here!”
 

Sam gave him a small smile, then fell backward, never turning. At the door, she pointed forked fingers toward her eyes, then toward Zach at his drafting table:
I’m watching you.
 

“Nine minutes.”
 

She closed the door and was gone.
 

Zach looked down at the drawing. He picked up an eraser, erased, then adjusted the shape of Sam’s right boob. He’d made them bigger than her actual boobs, but what the hell. She’d think it was hilarious. And, with all of the pieces in place once they came home, it would be the perfect antidote to the stuffy news awards banquet.

Zach looked down at the drawing, blew eraser shavings from the surface, declared it perfect, then slipped it into an envelope and set it aside. The woman in that illustration would laugh at the asses going to the news dinner, because she was a superhero. The real Sam would laugh when it was all over — but until then, the event was of paramount importance. Zach thought it was stupid. But what he thought didn’t matter, so he’d get through it like a good soldier. Later, they could celebrate in a way more befitting them as a couple.
 

With the drawing stowed in its envelope, Zach stood and left the office. As he passed into the bedroom to dress, he saw that Sam had laid out his clothes, unbuttoned the shirt, loosened laces on his polished black shoes, and seemed to have run a lint roller across both pieces of the suit. Anything to shave a few seconds from his prep time. He began pulling the clothes on piece by piece, thinking that finally, everything was falling into place.
 

Sam’s false pregnancy had been a blessing in disguise.
 

Before, they’d been on diverging roads — not because they either wanted to be away from the other, but because they had rolled onto them by default. The pregnancy, such as it was, forced their hands — but they’d
needed
to have their hands forced. Difficult decisions weren’t the enemy, their ultimate foes were
indifference
,
 
complacency
, and
living by rote
.

 
And that was what they had been doing: sailing along, never thinking to ask where their ship was sailing as they slowly drifted apart.
 

It was scary to confront certain truths about their marriage, but facing them was better than shoving them under the rug and pretending they weren’t there. Now that they had stared into the eyes of those truths, and turned together to make a decision, things were getting better. Because they were paying attention, roads were no longer diverging. Over the past two weeks, they’d consciously spent more time together, and more consciously took time for themselves, knowing that the more they were individually satisfied, the more each would have for the other.
 

They were more open than they had been in years. Sam told Zach she felt him growing distant, as if he resented her. Zach told Sam that she seemed obsessed with her job, and had been bringing that stress home. Zach confessed to feeling trapped in his job, because his income was good and he couldn’t leave. Sam confessed to feeling sad at the way Zach had turned his back on himself. She hadn’t fallen in love with a man who “went through life.” She’d fallen in love with a crazy dreamer, who was always reaching unrealistically for a fresh orbit — a starry-eyed optimist with the heart of a poet.
 

And on and on. Through the hard conversations, they had started to heal. He’d returned to his studio. She’d returned to her private creative writing, which she’d always had trouble “wasting” time on because, she said, it felt like a fool’s errand. Sam’s willingness to delve back into those fools’ errands turned Zach on, as if he was meeting her anew. Zach rediscovered emotions he thought he’d forgotten. He joined a few online social networks and began connecting with like-minded artists. On his own, he looked up a local artists group. He hadn’t gone to one of their meet-ups yet, but at least it felt like he was rediscovering his center after long years spent losing it.