Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I shake my head and squeeze her hand. “Hey. No, ma’am. I’m just as much to blame for that shit. How many times did you send me a sexy-ass picture from inside the shower at the gym, and all I took the time to do was send a bunch of childish emojis? I should’ve appreciated those messages more. I know how much time and effort you put into taking what you deem as the perfect picture. I’ve witnessed how many you can snap off until you finally see one you think is worthy enough to send. All that effort, and all you got back was a bunch of eggplant and fire emojis? No wonder you stopped bothering.”
She lets out one breath of a laugh. “I guess we both have things we can improve on that neither of us realized we put on the backburner.”
The rest of the ride home is a comfortable, thoughtful silence, and she never once lets go of my hand. When we pull into the garage, the door noisily closing us in, I turn in my seat to face her and look her deep in the eyes.
“While I’m dying to get in there and start scouring the internet with you for all the things I never wanted to bother you with before, I need to know something first,” I tell her, and her brows come together slightly.
“What is it?”
I swallow, feeling my Adam’s apple bob in my throat. “Do you… Do you look down on me for having this kink? Do you look at me any differently now, knowing I have these thoughts?”
She tilts her head to the side, seeming to really think about her answer. Good. It means she’s not just going to reply with what she thinks I want to hear, a platitude just to make me feel better.
Finally, she speaks, her tone conveying her honesty. “No, I don’t look down on you for having this kink. Do I look at you any differently, though? Maybe a little. But only in the way I would if I learned anything else new about you, after believing I already knew everything there was to know about you.” She blinks a couple of times, and it makes me think she’s holding her emotions in check. “We’ve been married a long time, husband,” she adds, using her endearment for me for the first time in nearly a year, and it makes my soul feel a little lighter. “And before we got married, we were together almost constantly for over two years. I genuinely thought we knew absolutely everything about each other. But saying that out loud, I realize how silly that is. There’s no way for anyone to know someone’s every thought, every opinion. Every desire. Our thoughts are endless, happening faster inside our heads than even we can keep track of ourselves. Even if we were to verbalize every single thing that crossed our mind, there are things we’re not actually conscious of, things we don’t know we have an opinion on until we’re actually confronted about it.”
Fuck, I love it when she speaks her mind. We used to have conversations like this all the time when we were getting to know each other, and it’s definitely one of the reasons why she truly felt like she knew every single molecule that made up… me.
“Why did we stop talking to each other like this? What made us think we ran out of things to discuss, just for fun, just for the sake of having a meaningful conversation?” I ask, feeling a bit down at the thought that we’ve wasted all these years we could’ve been doing this. Maybe if we hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t have had the idiotic idea to keep that facet of myself turned away from her direction. It would’ve just been another one of many, a gemstone on a rotating pedestal that doesn’t allow you to focus on one impurity for too long.
“Something tells me it’s one of the rare normal things about us. The evolution of a relationship. I think married couples get comfortable, maybe too secure even. And when you get that way, you don’t feel like the things that got you together in the first place are that important. We feel like… hey, I’m content exactly how things are, so why do anything… extra? But as we know, feeling too secure can bite you in the ass,” she says in a self-deprecating tone I definitely don’t approve of.
“No.” My stern tone pulls her eyes up to mine from where they had lowered to her lap. “You have every right to feel 100 percent secure in our marriage, in life, and with me, period. You should not have to feel even one percent insecure, to be on guard, in order to protect yourself.” I pull in a breath to keep my voice steady, when I really want to rage at myself. “You felt that whole-hearted security with me for over a decade, and I ruined it with my own shame, my own fucked-up hero complex of wanting to shield you from a part of me, a shadow I didn’t want to touch you and darken you in any way. But what I should’ve considered instead is the fact that you’ve never once made one of my shadows seem like a burden.”