(This is slightly explicit. I edited heavily. You should have seen it an hour ago. I practically needed a cigarette. I don't even smoke.)
Didn't I say before and repeat myself the other day about how Jacob can fix everything only to wreck it all over again, day after day? He has a bittersweet way in which he can build me up and tear me down in seconds and a dry delivery leaving you not one hundred percent sure whether he's kidding or not.
When he said I was a whore I know he was quoting..me. I've called myself one so many times I've lost count. I do it in life, I do it here, I pretty much label myself at every turn and he put it on the end of his point to illustrate what he meant and everything went horribly wrong in the instant between his depiction and when he realized that I thought he was calling me a whore.
Either way it still fucking hurt very very much.
I put the kids to bed, still alone, made tea and unlocked the front door to go out on the porch with my phone, hoping to reach Jake at some point and at least make sure he was okay.
He was. He was on the swing. Just sitting there. Thinking.
When I came out he jumped up and grabbed me into his arms and simply held on for dear life. I put my arms around his neck and we put our foreheads together as we do when we're having difficult conversations.
If I'm a whore then I'm going to be your whore, Jacob.
Don't talk like that, you're not a whore. I said that because I knew it would hurt you and that's what I wanted.
Do you still want to hurt me?
Never again. It hurt me as much to know I caused you pain.
What hurt wasn't the words, in the end. Just the fact that they came from you. I've been called worse. Worse has been done to me but it didn't matter because you never did it.
I'm sorry. Of all people I shouldn't have lost it like that.
I forgive you. And Jake, you don't have to be perfect all the time.
Oh I'm so far from it, Bridget.
Not in my eyes.
Thank God for that.
I'm sorry too. For yelling at you. For blaming you.
I forgive you back. And I love you.
I hope so. I love you. Geez. What a long fucking day, Jake.
Yeah, it was, wasn't it?
He smiled at me then, and held me for a while. Tight. Hard. He was breathing in my hair. It was the calm after the storm. We had expected it, in the building tension around the trip, and how the trip went and everything else going on here, there was bound to be some sort of blowup and I had set myself up for a bad day as it was.
We salvaged it with a lovely round of desperate, crazy, affirmative make-up sex.
Yeah, of course I'm going to go there. Do I ever not go there?
Last night Jake actually made an effort to expand his (ahem) horizons. To put it politely. I may be the freaky one and he's the straight arrow but there are times, well...my friends, there are times when he is completely relaxed and just in the right mood and likes to try to match my enthusiasm. Not that he isn't always totally enthusiastic, but he has drawn a box around the parts of the kama sutra that he's comfortable with, and he fucking burned the rest of the book. Sometimes he remembers what was on the pages that were destroyed, and it's like Christmas for Bridget. Somewhere around four a.m. I ruined it. I was straddling his lap holding on to him and even the headboard for dear life because otherwise I would have been flung across the bed and I told him all we needed now were those strobe lights and a slow-motion sequence and we'd have the most erotic movie ever filmed. He laughed and the spell was broken. Damn it.
That's okay though. We always finish. He put me down and then he made me scream. Face down into the pillow. Because of the kids. Geez, people.
Was that so bad, Reverend?
Oh no, that was very very good.
I'm not a monster, Jake.
No, you're totally a freak though.
You love it.
Yes, because you're my freak.
That's right. I am.
