(no subject)
Title: Dinner, part 3
Spoilers: Up 'til episode 5
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have another gorgeous bridge to sell you, but this one's in San Francisco.
Okay, so I don't like this part as much as the other ones, for various reasons which I'll be happy to discuss once you've read it (plus, because it's too long). But I can't re-do it because once I've written it...that's how the story goes. I can't re-write it even in my head. Sigh. Anyway, all sorts of comments are welcome.
She looked at him and wanted to cry for the second time today. Not only was he ignoring her body, he was actively pushing it away. He didn’t want her to touch him; he didn’t even care enough to fight back when she disagreed with him. He was reverting to the husband he’d been during the end of their “perfect” life and, though he hurt her and made her cry and broke her heart as the angry, soon-to-be ex-husband he’d become, at least that man was honest with her instead of silently resenting every move she made.
“It’s late,” she managed to choke out. Rex glanced at his watch.
“It’s only eight-thirty,” he said. “Are you okay?”
No. I’m not okay. You don’t want me anymore. You don’t love me anymore. It’s all over and I’m a fool for thinking that it’s not. And I’m a fool because I’m still going to try to hold on. I’m a fool because I’m going to utterly and completely destroy my pride and it will all be worth it if I can still have you. If. If if if if if…if by some small chance there’s still enough left that you want from me that you’ll stay.
“Really? Oh, uh, I guess I’m just tired.”
“Busy day?”
“Preceded by several busy weeks, yes.”
He looked at her. Bree seemed flustered and slightly drawn, and Rex suddenly wondered if maybe she was coming down with some sort of virus. He studied her appearance carefully. She had lost several pounds recently, and, though she was always pale, her face seemed particularly devoid of color. And it was certainly unlike her to be tired so early in the evening.
“Are you feeling all right? Maybe you’re getting sick,” he offered, concern creeping into his tone.
Right, because he cared.
“I’m all right,” Bree told him, and she smiled. “I just need to go to bed.”
“All right,” he nodded. “I guess an early night would be good for me, too.”
At least he still planned to come upstairs with her.
“Okay,” and this smile was wider, and Rex noticed. “I just need to do the dishes.”
“I’ll dry them for you.”
“Thank you.”
They stood in silence, the warm water running over her hands as Bree scrubbed each dish meticulously: first the edges, then the center, then the bottom, then the edges again for good measure. Rex dried quickly and accurately and returned everything to its spot in the cupboard. As soon as she was done, Bree turned and walked toward the staircase, quickly so that he couldn’t see the anxiety in her eyes.
Rex walked uncertainly through the doorway to what had been his bedroom. He loosened his tie and pulled it over his head, and then without a thought he un-tucked his shirt and removed it, too. He didn’t notice her watching him as he un-buckled his belt and took his pants off, but she was looking at him with a sort of fascinated, tortured gaze, because she knew that he was so close and yet, as the cliché claimed, so far.
It barely registered to Rex that he had stripped to an undershirt and a pair of boxers, but when Bree un-buttoned her pants, he thought that he had better play the gentleman.
“Do you want me to leave the room while you change?” he asked her politely, and for a moment, her face fell. Then her smile was back and she tossed her head with a laugh.
“Rex, I know that you know perfectly well what’s under my clothes. It doesn’t embarrass me.”
Yeah, but seeing what’s under your clothes is going to get me into trouble. Right now, I need to forget that you’re beautiful because sex isn’t going to make this better; it’s going to make things worse and so I need to keep my hands off you.
She took off her pants with a careful nonchalance and then took hold of the hem of her sweater and brought it over her head. Rex bit his lip. Bree really was beautiful, and he had picked the worst time ever to start to notice it again. Of course, she wasn’t helping by choosing that pornographic white lace that only barely covered the essentials. God, what he wouldn’t give right now for the plain cotton panties and full-coverage bras that he had once thought had no place on a woman as pretty as his wife.
Bree caught her husband staring and smiled to herself. Well, maybe he did want her after all.
“You look nice,” he said, because it was evident that he had to say something.
“You think so?” she preened as she turned around…slowly. It covered even less from behind-much less.
“Yeah,” said Rex, and his mouth was dry. She walked over to him and every motion tried his resolve.
She kissed him and began moving backward towards the bed, and he wondered just why he was resolved, anyway, not to touch her.
Oh, yeah, because it was a bad idea. Because he was still in love with her and still needed to harbor hope that somehow, everything would magically fix itself, and sex, though welcome at the moment, was only going to screw things up in the morning.
“Make love to me,” Bree breathed into his ear, in that firm, commanding voice of hers that simultaneously pissed him off and turned him on with its cockiness. He didn’t say anything.
“Make love to me,” she whispered again, and this time it was not a command so much as it was a quiet, desperate plea. She lay back on the bed, coming to rest against the pillows, her red hair spilling about her face and her chest rising and falling with increasing frequency as her heart sped up from nervousness. Rex looked at her and bit his lip. Bree was beautiful and she was willing and she was his wife-it could almost be called a husbandly duty.
“Not tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Not now.” Her face crumpled in a way she almost never allowed it to in front of anyone else, but then she was wearing nearly nothing and lying on a bed and practically begging for sex and he was still saying no, so the pain showing on her face was, in comparison, not as humiliating as it would normally have been.
“Rex…” she cooed, and she tossed her hair. He liked her hair, at least he did when it was mussed up and falling over her shoulders.
“Bree…” he began helplessly. “It’s not a good idea…”
“Why not?” she said, and her tone was suddenly conversational with just the slightest hint of accusatory. “We’re married. In case you’ve forgotten, sex is a part of what married people are supposed to do. You haven’t touched me in months, and I simply don’t understand why not.”
“We’re separated,” he tried to correct her. “I haven’t touched you because I’ve been unhappy with you. I had thought that that was pretty clear.”
“Let me make you happy,” Bree said insistently, propping herself up on her elbows. Her hair was falling in her face and her eye makeup was smudging slightly from the tears she kept blinking back. Her body was gorgeous and it wasn’t as if she were hiding any of it. If he didn’t want her now, he didn’t want her. “Give me one last chance…”
“Damnit, Bree,” he exclaimed, and his words were harsher than he’d meant them to be. “I don’t need any more sex that’s going to make me feel guilty!” She pulled back, stung, and as her mind began to process his words, she rose to her feet in anger.
“What guilt-inducing sex have you been having, anyway?” she hissed, her mouth just inches from his face.
“I…” he stammered, realizing his misstatement.
“Rex, are you having an affair?”
“Bree, I…”
“Who is she?” Bree demanded, and her voice was icily cold. “Tell me who’s been giving you what you won’t take from me. Tell me who she is.”
“Uhhh…” She walked even closer to him, forcing him to take a few steps back, slowly backing him into the wall.
“Who, Rex?” she snapped.
“Maisy Gibbons,” he murmured. Bree’s face fell for a split second, so quickly that he almost didn’t believe that it had happened. Then she was angry.
“Get out,” she said in a silken death-threat of a whisper.
“What?” Rex gasped.
“I want you out. You can have your divorce; I give up. Leave.” His hands came up to her hips of their own accord, his thumbs pressing soothingly into her flat abdomen.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she warned. “I told you to leave.” She pulled behind him swiftly and began to push him toward the door, and he had no doubt that she would march him outside to his car if necessary, regardless of the fact that she would probably face indecent exposure charges if anyone were lucky enough to see her do so. He followed her instructions and left the room. Suddenly, at the top of the staircase he turned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth, it’s complicated. I would have rather had you.”
“And you could have,” she shot back, moving closer to him, “but now you can’t.” They looked at each other for a long moment. “I would have given you anything. I would have given you everything. You were my husband…” The words “but now you’re not” lay on her lips unspoken. Rex began to reply, but she covered his mouth with her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I am going to hire a lawyer and we are going to destroy you…and maybe then you’ll understand what it means to have the one person you always thought that you could trust with your life turn on you.” He pulled her hand away from his mouth and turned quickly and was about to speak when she lost her balance.
Time seemed to stand still for Rex van de Kamp in the instant that his wife began to fall down the stairs. He still couldn’t quite understand what had just happened, the confession he had just made. He would rather have had her, he realized, if only…somehow, somewhere, something had happened to them, and she no longer knew how to make him happy. And then, to be fair, he no longer knew what she wanted, what mattered to her other than what other people thought.
But he knew that, in the moment that he had lost his wife, he had realized how much he still wanted her. And he knew that if he let her fall he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
So he reached for her arms and tried to steady her, and then his hands slid down to her waist and he held her precariously and pulled her to him. The inertia of his action pulled him back, too, and he was suddenly lying on his back with Bree breathing heavily on top of him.
“Are you all right?” he panted, his heartbeat beginning to slow down as his fear abated. She was silent. His hands on her waist relaxed and came away, and he could see that his fingers had left red marks on her side.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he apologized, and still she said nothing.
“Bree?”
“Thank you,” she said finally, and she carefully stood up. “Thank you for not letting me fall.”
“I’d never let you fall.” He continued to lie on his back, looking at her as she smiled in semi-disbelief. “I love you.” She laughed now, a mirthless laugh as she shook her head.
“Leave, Rex,” she said quietly. He scrambled to his feet and stared at his wife. She folded her arms in front of her breasts and stared back.
“But…”
“You caught me, and I thank you for that,” she said evenly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you slept with another woman while I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to get you to sleep with me.”
In the moment he told her that he’d been unfaithful, unfaithful with a woman who hated her, unfaithful when she’d been in his bed all along, unfaithful when he’d accused her of being cold-in that moment she had hated him in that awful way reserved for the only man she’d ever loved enough to give herself completely to him, reserved for her husband when he’d broken her trust and broken her heart, and she’d thought, in that moment, that she would never, ever love another man again because men are bastards. Especially the one she’d married.
“So it’s my fault, everything’s my fault?” he asked quietly and almost rhetorically. Bree snorted back a laugh.
“A week ago, everything was my fault,” she said derisively. “It’s your turn now.” She turned to return to the bedroom, but Rex grabbed her arm and held her back.
“Wait,” he said, and there was something in his tone that caused her to swallow the “Don’t touch me,” that sprung to her lips as she turned to face him.
“Less than an hour ago, you wanted to save our marriage so much that you stripped off your clothes and lay on the bed and told me that you wanted to make me happy.” She winced slightly.
“That was before I knew that Maisy Gibbons already was making you happy.”
“She didn’t make me happy,” he said softly. “That wasn’t the point. And she’s not the point now, either.”
“Then what is?”
“You didn’t say that you wanted me, that you felt like having sex. Hell, you haven’t even said that you love me all night.”
“Rex, it’s been a long evening; I want to go to sleep. If you have a point, make it, and then leave.”
“You know what your problem is?”
“Ah, that I’m some ‘cold, perfect thing,’ was it? Or perhaps the fact that I’m ‘always pleasant’ and my hair stays in place?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You have spent almost all of your adult life being a wife and a mother.” Bree nodded. “And you drove me up a wall half the time, but you did a good job.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I think.”
“But, honey,” he continued, and there was a desperate, pleading quality to his voice that made her breath catch in her throat because she’d recognized that quality in her own voice so many times over the past few months. “Honey, when was the last time you thought of yourself just as a woman?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Rex,” she commented dryly with a sigh. “I know that I’m a woman.”
“Of course you do,” he agreed, “but do you ever take the time to enjoy it?”
“What ever do you mean?”
“Once upon a time, being your husband meant being your lover and your best friend, talking to you about anything that was on my mind or yours after we’d gone to bed and the lights were out. It meant…it meant sharing our lives together as two individuals made whole by each other. Now, being your husband means sitting at the head of the table for your dinner parties and footing the bill for your Ralph Lauren clothes and putting on a tux and pretending to be happy at one of your charity events. I feel as if I’m an Armani dress or a new Buick or maybe a pretty, well tended house in the suburbs. Do I even mean anything more to you than the final piece in the jigsaw of your ‘ideal life’?
“I miss you, Bree, the girl I dated in college, the girl I married, the woman with whom I always thought I’d spend the rest of my life. ‘Cause I’m looking at you now, but you’re not that woman anymore. You don’t share your life with me anymore, just your lifestyle. When you lay on that bed and asked me to make love to you, did you want me or did you just not want to be divorced?”
“I always wanted you,” she told him, her voice heavy with emotion. “I do love you, Rex, I do.” Her eyes were pooling with tears and she bit her lip to keep them back. “And I miss you…my friend, my lover, my husband…” The tears she had kept at bay all day burst forth and he took an instinctive step toward her before remembering that she was still probably angry with him. But he couldn’t watch her cry and so he tentatively reached for her and she put her arms around him.
“Why did you sleep with her? Did she share her life with you? Did she let you be her best friend?”
“That…was completely different, Bree. It’s complicated. Don’t even think about it. It doesn’t matter any more. Please…please let me stay.”
It was funny, he reflected, that he was begging her to let him stay when just this morning it had been she pleading with him. He’d never really wanted to leave her; he knew that now. It was awful to realize that the simple truth was what she wanted to hear…to realize that she wanted the same thing that he did, because it meant that if he’d only mentioned it to her months ago…years ago…maybe they’d be happy with each other and sleeping in the same bed rather than on the brink of divorce as he begged not to have to go back to his motel room.
Spoilers: Up 'til episode 5
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have another gorgeous bridge to sell you, but this one's in San Francisco.
Okay, so I don't like this part as much as the other ones, for various reasons which I'll be happy to discuss once you've read it (plus, because it's too long). But I can't re-do it because once I've written it...that's how the story goes. I can't re-write it even in my head. Sigh. Anyway, all sorts of comments are welcome.
She looked at him and wanted to cry for the second time today. Not only was he ignoring her body, he was actively pushing it away. He didn’t want her to touch him; he didn’t even care enough to fight back when she disagreed with him. He was reverting to the husband he’d been during the end of their “perfect” life and, though he hurt her and made her cry and broke her heart as the angry, soon-to-be ex-husband he’d become, at least that man was honest with her instead of silently resenting every move she made.
“It’s late,” she managed to choke out. Rex glanced at his watch.
“It’s only eight-thirty,” he said. “Are you okay?”
No. I’m not okay. You don’t want me anymore. You don’t love me anymore. It’s all over and I’m a fool for thinking that it’s not. And I’m a fool because I’m still going to try to hold on. I’m a fool because I’m going to utterly and completely destroy my pride and it will all be worth it if I can still have you. If. If if if if if…if by some small chance there’s still enough left that you want from me that you’ll stay.
“Really? Oh, uh, I guess I’m just tired.”
“Busy day?”
“Preceded by several busy weeks, yes.”
He looked at her. Bree seemed flustered and slightly drawn, and Rex suddenly wondered if maybe she was coming down with some sort of virus. He studied her appearance carefully. She had lost several pounds recently, and, though she was always pale, her face seemed particularly devoid of color. And it was certainly unlike her to be tired so early in the evening.
“Are you feeling all right? Maybe you’re getting sick,” he offered, concern creeping into his tone.
Right, because he cared.
“I’m all right,” Bree told him, and she smiled. “I just need to go to bed.”
“All right,” he nodded. “I guess an early night would be good for me, too.”
At least he still planned to come upstairs with her.
“Okay,” and this smile was wider, and Rex noticed. “I just need to do the dishes.”
“I’ll dry them for you.”
“Thank you.”
They stood in silence, the warm water running over her hands as Bree scrubbed each dish meticulously: first the edges, then the center, then the bottom, then the edges again for good measure. Rex dried quickly and accurately and returned everything to its spot in the cupboard. As soon as she was done, Bree turned and walked toward the staircase, quickly so that he couldn’t see the anxiety in her eyes.
Rex walked uncertainly through the doorway to what had been his bedroom. He loosened his tie and pulled it over his head, and then without a thought he un-tucked his shirt and removed it, too. He didn’t notice her watching him as he un-buckled his belt and took his pants off, but she was looking at him with a sort of fascinated, tortured gaze, because she knew that he was so close and yet, as the cliché claimed, so far.
It barely registered to Rex that he had stripped to an undershirt and a pair of boxers, but when Bree un-buttoned her pants, he thought that he had better play the gentleman.
“Do you want me to leave the room while you change?” he asked her politely, and for a moment, her face fell. Then her smile was back and she tossed her head with a laugh.
“Rex, I know that you know perfectly well what’s under my clothes. It doesn’t embarrass me.”
Yeah, but seeing what’s under your clothes is going to get me into trouble. Right now, I need to forget that you’re beautiful because sex isn’t going to make this better; it’s going to make things worse and so I need to keep my hands off you.
She took off her pants with a careful nonchalance and then took hold of the hem of her sweater and brought it over her head. Rex bit his lip. Bree really was beautiful, and he had picked the worst time ever to start to notice it again. Of course, she wasn’t helping by choosing that pornographic white lace that only barely covered the essentials. God, what he wouldn’t give right now for the plain cotton panties and full-coverage bras that he had once thought had no place on a woman as pretty as his wife.
Bree caught her husband staring and smiled to herself. Well, maybe he did want her after all.
“You look nice,” he said, because it was evident that he had to say something.
“You think so?” she preened as she turned around…slowly. It covered even less from behind-much less.
“Yeah,” said Rex, and his mouth was dry. She walked over to him and every motion tried his resolve.
She kissed him and began moving backward towards the bed, and he wondered just why he was resolved, anyway, not to touch her.
Oh, yeah, because it was a bad idea. Because he was still in love with her and still needed to harbor hope that somehow, everything would magically fix itself, and sex, though welcome at the moment, was only going to screw things up in the morning.
“Make love to me,” Bree breathed into his ear, in that firm, commanding voice of hers that simultaneously pissed him off and turned him on with its cockiness. He didn’t say anything.
“Make love to me,” she whispered again, and this time it was not a command so much as it was a quiet, desperate plea. She lay back on the bed, coming to rest against the pillows, her red hair spilling about her face and her chest rising and falling with increasing frequency as her heart sped up from nervousness. Rex looked at her and bit his lip. Bree was beautiful and she was willing and she was his wife-it could almost be called a husbandly duty.
“Not tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Not now.” Her face crumpled in a way she almost never allowed it to in front of anyone else, but then she was wearing nearly nothing and lying on a bed and practically begging for sex and he was still saying no, so the pain showing on her face was, in comparison, not as humiliating as it would normally have been.
“Rex…” she cooed, and she tossed her hair. He liked her hair, at least he did when it was mussed up and falling over her shoulders.
“Bree…” he began helplessly. “It’s not a good idea…”
“Why not?” she said, and her tone was suddenly conversational with just the slightest hint of accusatory. “We’re married. In case you’ve forgotten, sex is a part of what married people are supposed to do. You haven’t touched me in months, and I simply don’t understand why not.”
“We’re separated,” he tried to correct her. “I haven’t touched you because I’ve been unhappy with you. I had thought that that was pretty clear.”
“Let me make you happy,” Bree said insistently, propping herself up on her elbows. Her hair was falling in her face and her eye makeup was smudging slightly from the tears she kept blinking back. Her body was gorgeous and it wasn’t as if she were hiding any of it. If he didn’t want her now, he didn’t want her. “Give me one last chance…”
“Damnit, Bree,” he exclaimed, and his words were harsher than he’d meant them to be. “I don’t need any more sex that’s going to make me feel guilty!” She pulled back, stung, and as her mind began to process his words, she rose to her feet in anger.
“What guilt-inducing sex have you been having, anyway?” she hissed, her mouth just inches from his face.
“I…” he stammered, realizing his misstatement.
“Rex, are you having an affair?”
“Bree, I…”
“Who is she?” Bree demanded, and her voice was icily cold. “Tell me who’s been giving you what you won’t take from me. Tell me who she is.”
“Uhhh…” She walked even closer to him, forcing him to take a few steps back, slowly backing him into the wall.
“Who, Rex?” she snapped.
“Maisy Gibbons,” he murmured. Bree’s face fell for a split second, so quickly that he almost didn’t believe that it had happened. Then she was angry.
“Get out,” she said in a silken death-threat of a whisper.
“What?” Rex gasped.
“I want you out. You can have your divorce; I give up. Leave.” His hands came up to her hips of their own accord, his thumbs pressing soothingly into her flat abdomen.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she warned. “I told you to leave.” She pulled behind him swiftly and began to push him toward the door, and he had no doubt that she would march him outside to his car if necessary, regardless of the fact that she would probably face indecent exposure charges if anyone were lucky enough to see her do so. He followed her instructions and left the room. Suddenly, at the top of the staircase he turned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth, it’s complicated. I would have rather had you.”
“And you could have,” she shot back, moving closer to him, “but now you can’t.” They looked at each other for a long moment. “I would have given you anything. I would have given you everything. You were my husband…” The words “but now you’re not” lay on her lips unspoken. Rex began to reply, but she covered his mouth with her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I am going to hire a lawyer and we are going to destroy you…and maybe then you’ll understand what it means to have the one person you always thought that you could trust with your life turn on you.” He pulled her hand away from his mouth and turned quickly and was about to speak when she lost her balance.
Time seemed to stand still for Rex van de Kamp in the instant that his wife began to fall down the stairs. He still couldn’t quite understand what had just happened, the confession he had just made. He would rather have had her, he realized, if only…somehow, somewhere, something had happened to them, and she no longer knew how to make him happy. And then, to be fair, he no longer knew what she wanted, what mattered to her other than what other people thought.
But he knew that, in the moment that he had lost his wife, he had realized how much he still wanted her. And he knew that if he let her fall he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
So he reached for her arms and tried to steady her, and then his hands slid down to her waist and he held her precariously and pulled her to him. The inertia of his action pulled him back, too, and he was suddenly lying on his back with Bree breathing heavily on top of him.
“Are you all right?” he panted, his heartbeat beginning to slow down as his fear abated. She was silent. His hands on her waist relaxed and came away, and he could see that his fingers had left red marks on her side.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he apologized, and still she said nothing.
“Bree?”
“Thank you,” she said finally, and she carefully stood up. “Thank you for not letting me fall.”
“I’d never let you fall.” He continued to lie on his back, looking at her as she smiled in semi-disbelief. “I love you.” She laughed now, a mirthless laugh as she shook her head.
“Leave, Rex,” she said quietly. He scrambled to his feet and stared at his wife. She folded her arms in front of her breasts and stared back.
“But…”
“You caught me, and I thank you for that,” she said evenly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you slept with another woman while I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to get you to sleep with me.”
In the moment he told her that he’d been unfaithful, unfaithful with a woman who hated her, unfaithful when she’d been in his bed all along, unfaithful when he’d accused her of being cold-in that moment she had hated him in that awful way reserved for the only man she’d ever loved enough to give herself completely to him, reserved for her husband when he’d broken her trust and broken her heart, and she’d thought, in that moment, that she would never, ever love another man again because men are bastards. Especially the one she’d married.
“So it’s my fault, everything’s my fault?” he asked quietly and almost rhetorically. Bree snorted back a laugh.
“A week ago, everything was my fault,” she said derisively. “It’s your turn now.” She turned to return to the bedroom, but Rex grabbed her arm and held her back.
“Wait,” he said, and there was something in his tone that caused her to swallow the “Don’t touch me,” that sprung to her lips as she turned to face him.
“Less than an hour ago, you wanted to save our marriage so much that you stripped off your clothes and lay on the bed and told me that you wanted to make me happy.” She winced slightly.
“That was before I knew that Maisy Gibbons already was making you happy.”
“She didn’t make me happy,” he said softly. “That wasn’t the point. And she’s not the point now, either.”
“Then what is?”
“You didn’t say that you wanted me, that you felt like having sex. Hell, you haven’t even said that you love me all night.”
“Rex, it’s been a long evening; I want to go to sleep. If you have a point, make it, and then leave.”
“You know what your problem is?”
“Ah, that I’m some ‘cold, perfect thing,’ was it? Or perhaps the fact that I’m ‘always pleasant’ and my hair stays in place?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You have spent almost all of your adult life being a wife and a mother.” Bree nodded. “And you drove me up a wall half the time, but you did a good job.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I think.”
“But, honey,” he continued, and there was a desperate, pleading quality to his voice that made her breath catch in her throat because she’d recognized that quality in her own voice so many times over the past few months. “Honey, when was the last time you thought of yourself just as a woman?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Rex,” she commented dryly with a sigh. “I know that I’m a woman.”
“Of course you do,” he agreed, “but do you ever take the time to enjoy it?”
“What ever do you mean?”
“Once upon a time, being your husband meant being your lover and your best friend, talking to you about anything that was on my mind or yours after we’d gone to bed and the lights were out. It meant…it meant sharing our lives together as two individuals made whole by each other. Now, being your husband means sitting at the head of the table for your dinner parties and footing the bill for your Ralph Lauren clothes and putting on a tux and pretending to be happy at one of your charity events. I feel as if I’m an Armani dress or a new Buick or maybe a pretty, well tended house in the suburbs. Do I even mean anything more to you than the final piece in the jigsaw of your ‘ideal life’?
“I miss you, Bree, the girl I dated in college, the girl I married, the woman with whom I always thought I’d spend the rest of my life. ‘Cause I’m looking at you now, but you’re not that woman anymore. You don’t share your life with me anymore, just your lifestyle. When you lay on that bed and asked me to make love to you, did you want me or did you just not want to be divorced?”
“I always wanted you,” she told him, her voice heavy with emotion. “I do love you, Rex, I do.” Her eyes were pooling with tears and she bit her lip to keep them back. “And I miss you…my friend, my lover, my husband…” The tears she had kept at bay all day burst forth and he took an instinctive step toward her before remembering that she was still probably angry with him. But he couldn’t watch her cry and so he tentatively reached for her and she put her arms around him.
“Why did you sleep with her? Did she share her life with you? Did she let you be her best friend?”
“That…was completely different, Bree. It’s complicated. Don’t even think about it. It doesn’t matter any more. Please…please let me stay.”
It was funny, he reflected, that he was begging her to let him stay when just this morning it had been she pleading with him. He’d never really wanted to leave her; he knew that now. It was awful to realize that the simple truth was what she wanted to hear…to realize that she wanted the same thing that he did, because it meant that if he’d only mentioned it to her months ago…years ago…maybe they’d be happy with each other and sleeping in the same bed rather than on the brink of divorce as he begged not to have to go back to his motel room.