Total pages in book: 225
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Zero baby unicorns were harmed during the writing of this book.
“Hall pass granted,” my fiancé Adam announces as he hands me a piece of paper.
“Huh?”
Adam used to drop one-liners constantly. For a beat I think his sense of humor is returning. But he’s not wearing that silly smirk that I miss so much.
“Read it, Chloe. Marinate with it today and we’ll talk it over tomorrow.” He presses the joystick on his wheelchair and motors away from me, out of the bedroom, leaving me holding the piece of paper with the words Hall Pass on top, underlined.
He’s not joking.
He actually handed me this piece of paper and said what he said before wheeling away like he’d handed me a menu and told me to pick what I want for dinner.
I force myself to swallow as I take in the list and ending paragraph.
Hall Pass
Who? Chloe and anyone I don’t know.*
What? Just sex.
Where? Just not in our home.
When? When you need it.
Why? I don’t want to lose you.
*I ask that it’s never the same person twice. Nobody you’ve been with before, so no emotional attachments. We won’t talk about it and discretion is sacrosanct.
He signed the bottom with his actual signature and today’s date.
I’m rooted in place while reading the paper a second time with trembling hands. And now I’m angrily stuffing it into the nearest drawer, which happens to be the drawer of my nightstand.
This means it’s beside my vibrator, which lies there innocently despite the fact that the vibrator was the catalyst for all this.
I slam the drawer and aggressively finish making the bed instead of doing what I want to do – follow Adam and pick a fight with him.
We haven’t fought in over half a year. Because Adam was in a horrific accident and suffered a spinal cord injury, I tiptoe around, trying to make everything sunshine, flowers, and rainbows.
But the reality is that I’m not sure if our relationship will ever be anything close to what it was. And the piece of paper he just handed me makes me feel like a complete asshole.
It's been six months and three weeks since we’ve had sex. I made a wine-fueled mistake two nights ago by pulling out the vibrator while he was in bed beside me, and now here we are.
He didn’t want to help by using it on me. He didn’t want to watch me use it. Doesn’t want anything to do with anything sexual. Doesn’t want anything to do with any intimacy at all. Because things don’t work for Adam the way they used to.
I asked questions about intimacy at a doctor’s appointment a few months ago and was given a stack of literature that Adam refuses to read or discuss. He gave me the silent treatment for three days afterwards because my questions embarrassed him. While the doctor says he might eventually regain sensation, might gain full function (and if not, there might be things we can do to help), Adam won’t talk about it.
Sperm collection and IVF could also be an option if we want to have kids. The doctor was very willing to answer my questions, was the one who encouraged me to ask questions. But Adam cut him off, so the doctor handed me the pamphlets.
And now he wants me to marinate on him giving me a license to cheat on him?
And I absolutely will not.
He gets himself from his chair into bed and I stop myself from remarking on how fast he’s getting at what used to be much more of an ordeal. He’s getting more and more independent. Moving here almost a month ago has helped significantly, since everything is calibrated for accessibility.
Since he dropped the hall pass into my hand a few hours ago while I was changing the sheets, I’ve been cleaning our spotless townhome needlessly while he’s been in his office. He wanted to eat his dinner in there, too, telling me he wanted to work on his novel. Funny how the last two days he’s so entrenched in writing that novel that he’s been blocked on for as long as I’ve known him. I suspect it’s a tool to avoid me.
Adam is a journalist, and the novel has been something he’s talked about working on since we met a year and a half ago. He won’t let me read it, won’t tell me what it’s about, and I don’t know if it’s dozens of pages, hundreds of pages, or a series of paragraphs because he won’t even say.
He barely looked up when I put his plate down beside him, but he did switch screens so I couldn’t see anything in the document he had on screen.