Together Apart: Change is Never Easy (4 page)

“I’m shaking inside. Plenty.” Sam took Zach’s hand in both of hers, then guided it between her legs. His fingers met an island of warmth. Stuporous warmth, like a hot coal. “See?”

“Do you want me to … ”
 

“No.” Her hand went to his cock, keeping time but still somehow urgent. “I want you inside me. I just want to do it.” Her whole hand was on his shaft, longwise, her fingers down toward his balls. She tugged it, pussy melting beneath his hand.
 

“Not even to … ” His fingers slipped inside, felt her clench them as if afraid they’d escape.

Her big, blue eyes closed. Her mouth opened. She sighed. With her eyes still closed, she leaned toward him as she’d done at the fair, her breath warm and sweet on his cheek.
 

“No.” She swallowed. Then, sending a shudder through him, she whispered, “
Please
.”
 

“I want to. I can’t wait to.” His fingers slipped inside. She rolled up and down on them, squeezing, grinding into his hand.
 

“Hurry.”

“You’re so beautiful.” It was what she’d want to hear, yes. It was another corny thing to say, yes. But he was watching her face, and she seemed so helpless, so out of control and at his mercy. As he looked at her, it was so true that he’d simply had to say it.
 

“Put it in me,” she purred, desperate. “I can’t wait. Oh God, Zach, hurry … I can’t take it anymore.”
 

Of course. She’d known since that morning that tonight would be the night, she’d kissed him all day and held his hand and rubbed up against him. There had been all of that suggestive talk, all of those coming attractions, the handjob on the ride that left him satisfied and her wanting. He wondered if he should have tried returning the favor, but decided that she wouldn’t have wanted that. Regardless, she’d had a full day of foreplay with no release. That was her warm-up.
 

Zach rolled Sam onto her back. She spread her legs as he laid on her body. He could feel the warmth pouring out of her. He looked down, saw her pussy open like a flower, pulsing at him in anticipation as she rolled her pelvis, writhing. He considered making her wait just a little longer — to slow it down, as she’d said — but then shimmied down her naked body until the tip of his dick was at her hole, her wetness kissing its tip. He took one more look at Sam’s face. She opened her eyes, pleading. He slid inside, felt her whole body respond. She inhaled, held it, then exhaled, wrapping her arms around him, hugging her face into his neck.
 

He started to move. Immediately, Sam sighed and hitched beneath him.
 

“Do you want me to slow down?”
 

“No. Not anymore.”
 

“Do you want it harder?”
 

“Just like that. Just keep doing that.”
 

“You are so beautiful.”
 

“Just like that, Zach. Oh God, just like that.”
 

She closed her eyes again, exhaled slowly, and seemed to retreat from him, as if falling into a hole. It wasn’t the way she usually came, so Zach didn’t see it coming; she didn’t harden, or quicken, or give that feeling of holding her breath like she usually did. It simply happened. Her fingers clawed his back, and she pulled him in tighter, her pussy rolling orgasmic contractions along his length as if in a tender massage. Her orgasm was a tremendous sigh of surrender, less violent than suggested by her need. She was pulling him tight, and he wanted to cum again, too, but she felt so good that he wanted it to keep going forever.
 

“Oh, Zach,” she said.
 

“That was amazing.” He said it like he’d cum, too, but he simply meant that she was amazing, that her orgasm was amazing, that her pleasure was amazing. He barely needed his own.

“I want you to cum in me.”

“I’m not wearing a condom.” Again, Zach wanted to smack himself for saying something so mood-breaking and obvious. But they both had clean bills of health, and politically correct or not, they’d opted for bareback, and for some reason, again, Sam didn’t laugh.
 

“I’m on the pill.”
 

“I can pull out. To be safe.”
 

“I want to feel it. Oh, shit, Zach. I want to feel it. Cum in me. Come on.” Her eyes couldn’t decide whether to stay open or closed as they rose and fell, as he took long strokes in her pussy, the insides of her legs coated with lubrication.
 

“Are you going to cum again?”
 

“Don’t ask. Yes.”
 

He didn’t speed up, but he pushed harder into her, his balls resting against her ass at the bottom of each stroke. He moved forward, pushed the weight of himself into her so her clit would be stimulated as it rubbed between them.
 

“Cum with me,” she breathed.
 

“I don’t want to be done.”
 

“There will be time later. Again.”
 

But he still didn’t want it to be over. This was their first time. She started to cum again, and for some reason this one was harder, more typical. Sam clenched him to her and moaned in his ear as the orgasm tore through her body. It was too much — the sensation, the sights, the sounds of her pleasure in his ear. So as she came, he came, pushing hard, feeling 10 times the release he’d felt earlier, filling her with his seed.
 

They stayed conjoined for a long time afterward, Zach’s weight on Sam’s heaving chest, her breasts firm and nipples hard against him. His cock stayed hard, then finally began to flag until it slipped out and his cum rolled out of her onto the sheets.
 

Then, because it was Sam, she raised a hand and said, “Amazing.”
 

Zach gave her the high-five she wanted, knowing it wasn’t chivalrous to keep a lady hanging.

CHAPTER FOUR

Present Day

The big bottle had a screw cap. Sam looked at Zach and said, “Classy.”
 

“Hey. Sparkling grape juice doesn’t have the pedigree of champagne. Nobody talks about a ‘72 LeWhatTheFuck sparkling grape juice. So they get screw caps and look dogpatch. It’s totally unfair.”
 

“I could have a glass of champagne. One glass wouldn’t hurt.”
 

Zach shook his head. “No way. Not with my baby boy in there.” He filled Sam’s water glass with the bubbly liquid. He couldn’t fill his own because the waiter had refilled his with water when Zach was distracted. He screwed the cap back on, then slipped the bottle under his seat.
 

“Also classy,” said Sam, watching the bottle disappear.

“Restaurants just don’t seem to appreciate it when you bring in outside food or drink. Keep your mouth shut or you’re going home in the trunk.” Zach flashed his big smile at Sam. Her heart melted. Seeing that smile was like going back in time. Zach smiled now, of course, but not quite like that — not in the way that made the skin of his cheeks extend in bumps past the outline of his face. He’d used that smile all the time back in Portland, in college. He’d used it through the first years of their marriage. But lately? Since Memphis? Well, his job had beaten it mostly from him. It made Sam feel guilty, because the smile was so charming — so quintessentially
Zach
— and she couldn’t help but feel that she’d had a hand in stealing it away. Her job offer brought them to Memphis; he’d come because they were a package deal. The art community was better in Portland, too. But was he ever going to make a
living
with his art? It was the kind of question she knew better than to ask, but valid nonetheless. Staying in Portland meant getting a real job there, same as he had here. At least his current job in graphic design was tangentially art-related.

Sam didn’t comment on Zach’s smile. She used to tell him it made him looked giddy, naive and starry-eyed. To mention it now felt like a jinx.
 

“What makes you think it’s a boy?”
 

“Dunno.” He assessed Sam in her green dress — something she’d chosen specifically to prove to herself that a mother-to-be was no less sexy. He held his hands up with his index and thumb, both hands at right angles, as if drawing a cinematic shot. He pointed the invisible camera at his wife, gauging. “It just looks like a boy.”
 

“I could take offense at that.”
 

In the past, he would have jumped at that bit of compliment bait and told her how very non-boyish she looked. Instead Zach shrugged.
 

“It doesn’t
feel
like a boy,” she said.
 

“Really? How does a boy feel?”
 

“
Your
boy? I don’t know. Moody. Artistic.”
 

“Devilishly handsome?”
 

This time, she shrugged. “You think you’d rather have a boy?”

“I was trying to decide which gender I preferred. But if I pick one, it seems like an advance knock on the other. Like: I think it’d be cool to have a son, because I’m a guy and understand boys more. But I’d feel guilty thinking that, because what if it’s a girl? I don’t want to crap on our baby girl before she’s born.”
 

“You’re thinking too much. Like always.”
 

“Maybe.” He emptied his water glass, then sneakily refilled it with sparkling grape juice. A woman at another table looked over with disapproval.
 

Zach raised his glass in a toast. Sam raised hers. They clinked. She laughed a little, watching Zach, thinking how good he’d be with a kid because in many ways he still was one. He played, he made art, he didn’t really understand the inescapable truth that numbers in your checkbook had to line in rows at the end of each month.

When their finances merged, Sam realized her man was on the edge of destitute. Given that he was barely out of college at the time and that they were living together, it didn’t matter much, but even now he didn’t get it. She paid the bills. He spent money on canvases, paints, and easels. She’d learned to give him an allowance, like his son or daughter would one day have.
 

“How are you with this, Zach?”
 

“Are you kidding?” He sipped his juice, made a face, and smiled. He looked downright giddy. His brown eyes had spots in both irises, flecked with something near silver. Sam realized she hadn’t noticed those spots in years. He really had to look right at you — boring his eyes into your head — for them to show. There had been so many rough patches lately that eyes were avoided more often than not. Thinking on it now, with such good (great, right?) news on the table, made her feel sad. There was magic in Zach’s gaze, and she remembered falling into it, her usually solidly-planted feet daring to leave the ground and fly for a while, in starry-eyed faith beside him. Recently there’d been so little. Sam hadn’t realized how little until now.
 

“Well, it’s big news.”
 

“Sure. But news we’ve said we wanted, right?”
 

“We weren’t trying. We’ve never tried.”
 

“Who plans a baby?” Zach almost laughed, and Sam realized he wasn’t kidding. That was really the world he lived in. Zach believed in faith, purpose, and serendipity. He believed in living truth and following passion. It’s why he didn’t like his job and didn’t understand how Sam couldn’t hate hers.
But you’re not blissing out, creating your art,
he’d tell her. She’d reply:
No, Zach, I’m doing what I need to. I’m paying the bills. Like a grown up. Not everything can afford bliss.
 

“I was nervous,” she said, scaling back the more accurate word floating in her head:
scared
. Back in the bathroom, the idea of having a baby unsettled her. Sam hadn’t liked where she and Zach had been going, but at least it was a straight line. Zach grew more dissatisfied. Sam accepted where she was. Zach pined, regretted, desired. Sam went to work and came home. They sat, ate without speaking — not because they were angry, but because there wasn’t much to say. Asking Zach how his day had gone was to peer inside Pandora’s box. Sometimes, she thought about how they used to be, and it bothered her. Sometimes, she took long baths before he came home, candles in a ring around her, reading or thinking or touching herself, sometimes spilling tears without knowing why. A baby would shatter that. The pieces of Sam’s life hadn’t fit quite right for a while. But at least now all of the pieces were spread on the table. A baby would toss it all into the air. Between them, Zach was the dreamer; Zach was the one who was most comfortable with uncertainty. Sam was the pragmatist, happiest when she could see a bend or three ahead into the future. Zach would take a coin toss over an unsatisfying situation, accepting the risk if it meant a chance at something better. Sam was the opposite.
 

“Nervous?”
 

“Yeah.”
 

“You would be.” He put his hands on the table, and she thought he might take her hand. Again she saw those flecks in his eyes, all of the teeth in his big grin. “Look, hon, this is the next step, and it’s scary as hell to everyone, but everyone manages. You feed it, you put it in bed when it’s tired, you change it when it stinks. You keep from dropping it on the floor. The rest is minutia.”
 

Sam nodded, her lips in a tight line. She wasn’t worried about being a mother. Everything else concerned her.
 

“But … do you think we’re ready?”
 

“I’m 25. Unfortunately, this is as grown up as I get.”
 

“I didn’t mean
you
. I meant
us
.”
 

Zach started to respond — probably with another dismissive answer about how they’d been married for half a decade, that they got along great, maybe that she was his soul mate. But instead, after his mouth opened, it closed. Something settled in his expression, and the smile faded into something more mature.