Page 84 of Badd Daddy
I nodded. “When you have a relationship with the same person for thirty years, there are a lot of layers and levels and nuances to it. It shifts and changes with time. At first, being just kids, it was clumsy and crazy and spontaneous, and…reckless, at times. Then as we grew closer and more comfortable with each other, it sort of evened out. We discovered what worked for us, and what didn’t. Then, as we started to age a little, post-forty and such, things…I don’t want to say cooled off, but slowed down some. It wasn’t as much of a priority for either of us.” I sighed. “I suppose to really make this worth the telling, I have to be truthful with myself, huh?”
“Probably.”
I wiped tears away. “The truth, then, is that the cooling off came more from Darren. I guess it was a symptom of his declining health. I thought it was a normal middle-aged male…thing, but I don’t know for sure. I just knew that he still loved me as much as ever, and was as attracted to me as ever, but the initiation of sex came more and more from me instead of him, and with teenaged girls to raise, and an exploding career as an interior designer to balance, my energy and time were…not always there. And then, about six months before he died, he threw out his back, and all sex stopped completely.”
“Jeez. That’s rough.”
I shifted and ran my hand over his chest, his shoulder, finding comfort in simply touching his skin. “I…I don’t know how to—how to encapsulate it all.” I blinked hard. “I loved Darren, and he loved me.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“But in the years since his death, and since meeting you, and now with what you and I just shared, I guess I’m realizing some things about my sexual relationship with Darren that I never knew before.”
“Like?” Lucas prompted.
“Like the fact that I was pretty unsatisfied, sexually, for the last…three, maybe even four years of my marriage with Darren. When we did have sex, it was…not perfunctory, but just…” I shook my head, dislodging tears that I didn’t wipe away. “I don’t know. I was left feeling like there was something I wanted, something I needed that I wasn’t getting. I used to get it from our relationship, but that wasn’t happening anymore. What that is, I’m still not sure. I don’t know. I just know it was…something.”
“Passion?”
I shook my head. “No…well, maybe. I mean, after thirty years, passion becomes something else I don’t know we have a word for. It’s not always…high-octane fire, you know?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t. I was never with anyone long enough to know about that. But if you’re passionate about someone, I guess I’d personally find it hard to believe that just goes away. But what do I know?”
I blinked, tried to breathe normally—but couldn’t. “I don’t want to disrespect my memory of Darren. I loved our life together. I wasn’t unhappy.”
“I don’t want to put anything negative on it either, Liv. You used the word sacred earlier, and I guess I think that would apply, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but my point is that I have to be honest with myself, because I’m dealing with these feelings inside myself that I don’t know how to navigate.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that with you just now, I felt more alive, and more…desired, than…than I have in a long, long, long time. That kind of hurts, because it means I wasn’t feeling that from the man I spent my entire life with, and I don’t know what to do with that fact. I can’t deny what I had with Darren, but I also can’t ignore what I feel with you.”
“Which is what?”
“Amazing. Passionate. Womanly. ” I swallowed hard, twisting my head to meet his eyes. “Desired…needy.”
“Needy, huh?”
I nodded. “I feel out of control. Since we met I felt like if I didn’t push down and hold back my attraction to you, I would just…lose all control over it, and I’m scared to do that.”
“Why?”
“Because healing and learning to move on has been an exercise in learning to control my feelings. Learning to live through the grief, to let it just be there without letting it take over and stop me from living my life. I’ve had anxiety attacks pretty regularly, too, and I’ve had to learn to deal with those—life just overwhelms me sometimes and sometimes I feel like I’ll never be able to start again. It’s been about control.” I had to pause for a long time to figure out how to say the next part. “Since Darren died, I’ve been shut down, sexually. I just couldn’t think about myself as a sexual being anymore, because my identity as a woman, as a sexual being, had been so completely tied up in him, in us.”
“And then suddenly you have these desires for someone else,” he guessed.
I nodded. “Very, very powerful feelings,” I said, looking up at him. “Very, very,verypowerful desires. It’s confusing and, as you can tell, it’s messing with my mind.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Being around you is confusing. It’s hard. And now that we’ve crossed over into a physical relationship, I’m even more confused. Because I…I want you. Ineed…what you were making me feel. It’s been so long since I’ve felt any kind of physical pleasure at all, and now that I’ve had a taste of it, I need more.”
“So, a question.”
I glanced at him. “Yes?”
“You said any kind of physical pleasure.” He hesitated. “Does that mean even on your own?”