He was always handing her moments out of time. Awkward ungainly moments he thrust into her arms as she struggled to catch up or slow down or stand still so that she might accommodate his timing. Their whole relationship was a small misunderstanding repeated in an endless loop, an offered handshake enveloped within an unexpected hug that dissolved into stiff-armed embrace and withdrawal.
Over time, she had learned to compensate.
A cleared throat in the darkness, his name hesitantly whispered and then a preparatory hushed gathering of her thoughts, a hand seeking his beneath the blankets . . . she had sought a moment of confiding intimacy. Without a word, and before she had managed to make her own words heard, he had pulled her hand low and to himself and she had acquiesced and changed course. Allowed herself to be pulled into an unexpected embrace, her extended hand pinned momentarily between their bodies.
Even now, as he moved above her and within her, she made small assessments and revisions of plans. She felt him swell within her to final tumescence, and she quickened her rhythm to meet him, releasing her desire for a slower languid pace in favor of his harshly breathed momentum. Long-practiced in the art of being suddenly and ecstatically overtaken by non-existent pleasure, she groaned and gasped and pulled him tightly to her chest. A few final spasms and he shrank within her as he loomed large above her, his dark shape silhouetted against the ceiling.
He rolled away and into the silent gloom and she lay there, his semen along her thighs, considering how best to broach the subject. She let the silence linger for a briefness, and then the sounds of his unconsciousness revealed that she had missed the moment in which they might have had an exchange. The darkness stared back into her wide eyes and mocked her timidity . . . the morning would bring no better moment. There would never be a better moment, which was not to say that this was the perfect moment.
She nibbled at the edge of a thumbnail as she thought, opting for continued silence as she splayed her fingers and took her own jaw and chin within her hand, feeling for evidence of the strength that she would need for the moments that lay ahead. Some vestige of arousal within her guided her palm and fingers along the line of her neck and then across her breasts, and she slowed her breathing to descend into this moment that was hers alone. Fingers danced within their intermingled moistures; the fecund taste of redundant possibility traced upon her lips.
She extended her left hand into the dimness and lowered it slowly onto her husband’s sleeping chest, gently resting her palm above the steady beating of his heart. Her own heart racing, she surged ahead of him alone, pursuing her solitary triumph to the jangled beats of their mismatched hearts. She was aware of how small a movement would be required to invite him back into this moment with her, but she issued no invitation.
Parallel bodies then, a constant space between.
Unknowing movement through time into the next moments.
At some point she moved into the space he had left behind.
His hand upon her shoulder and the settling of his weight on the bed beside her roused her from sleep. She struggled toward consciousness, and her eyelids flickered as she surrendered her dreams to the day. The scene that greeted her was largely familiar, but discordant images clanged against her expectations. Too much was demanded, and so she closed her eyes and tried to reconcile the unexpected impressions as she feigned a final few seconds of sleep.
He was dressed in jeans and a buttoned shirt, its blue collar evident above the slung-back hood of his jacket. He smelled of toothpaste and the eucalyptus shampoo he preferred. He was cleanly shaven, and a small bit of dried blood beneath his chin marked a tiny self-inflicted wound. His hand was warm against her shoulder, but the tension in his fingers belied the intimacy of the contact. She focused her blind attention on the feel of his hand against her skin, seeking the metaled bit of promises made and kept. Not finding it, she slid a hand up toward her face, her eyes still closed, and sought there instead for the freed golden circlet she had glimpsed.
She slid it over her finger, where it rested in rounded misplaced parallel against her own ring.
She opened her eyes and faced the moment in which she found herself.
A moment filled with the banality of all such goodbyes.
A moment delivered to her as she stared at her husband’s back. As he filled the room with his words but did not turn to offer them directly to her. She shrugged his hand from her shoulder, not wanting him to take comfort from that touch in this moment.
Words.
He cared about her, but this was no longer working. He needed to find his place in the world. He needed to find his happiness. He wasn’t happy with her. He hadn’t been happy with her in a long time. He had tried, but life was too short to keep trying for something he no longer believed was there. They had simply grown apart. It happened sometimes. He cared about her, but they had grown apart.
He left out the part about how he was fucking the young woman who had moved into the house down the street a few months before, but she read that piece of truth in the bite of his ring within her tightly clenched fist.
It didn’t matter.
There had always been a space between them, a space into which another might occasionally fit.
She had thought she could fill that space, that they might fill that space.
Together.
Instead, she would fill the space within her.
She was astounded at how quickly this new version of the future took hold.
He was still talking. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, and he was still talking. She snorted in annoyance and scooted back in the bed in order to bring her feet to his lower back and shove him up and away.
He rose awkwardly to standing and turned, finally, to face her.
She swung out of bed and stood naked in front of him.
He reached to cross the space between them, and she put a hand to his chest to stop his approach.
There would be no final apologetic hug.
She brought her hand down to offer instead a handshake.
His arms remained poised for embrace, and so she stepped backward to reach for his hand.
Shook it.
Firmly.
Spoke.
“You go be happy.”
She dropped his hand and walked to the bathroom, where she stood a moment before the mirror. Stood there in that moment that was hers alone. Slid first his ring and then hers from her finger and laid them on the counter.
All the heartbeats that mattered perfectly synchronized.
