“It shouldn’t be this hard, Ko.” I shift so her hand slides to my hip.
She deliberately moves her hand back to my dick and squeezes. “Feels hard enough to me.”
She squeezes my dick, I get hard. That’s biology, but it’s not a substitute for the healthy relationship we both deserve. We’re in our thirties, not college students looking for a quick hook-up. I’ve given in to physical urges for years, hoping it would restore what we once had.
Intimacy. Passion.
But it hasn’t and I’m no longer sure how to fix what is broken. Not between our bodies, but between our hearts.
She rolls away, the sheet snapping when she jerks it back with an angry flourish. Her feet hit the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she says, drawing a deep breath. “It’s just so frustrating. I don’t know why this is happening to us.”
I roll to sit up on my side of the bed and run weary hands through my hair. “We need to talk, Ko. Maybe it’s time to…”
I glance over my shoulder and see her seated on the edge of the bed, faced away from me, her naked back bowed, her dark head bent. “God, Ezra. We have a son. We’ve been together so long. You’re this quick to give up on us?”
“Quick?” My laugh emerges as scornful despite my best intentions. “We’ve been to couples’ counseling. We’ve done date nights. Tried sex in public to fix this. Every damn thing Dr. Cairns recommended, we tried, and things aren’t getting better.” My words fall on us, a shower of pebbles that hurt when they land on us both. “Things have gotten worse, Ko.”
“We haven’t tried everything,” Aiko says, her voice hesitant, hushed.
I stand, stretch and walk over to the window, pulling back the drapes to study Noah’s garden out back. The sprinkler isn’t on. I could have sworn I set the timer last night.
Aiko comes to stand in front of me, sandwiching her small body between my bare torso and the window. She’s donned one of her colorful kimonos. With her long straight hair, dark eyes and golden skin, she’s gorgeous. She’s also a brilliant photographer and a remarkable mother to my son. It’s easy to see why we began, but with our chemistry shriveled and dried and the arguments over nothing increasing—it’s hard to see us making it much further.
“Ezra, we haven’t tried everything Dr. Cairns suggested,” she says again.
“What haven’t we tried?” I ask, glancing over her head to inspect the tomatoes below, easy enough since barefoot she only reaches the middle of my chest.
“An open relationship.”
My eyes jerk from a row of peas to her determined expression with her wide, tight mouth, set jaw and pleading eyes. “We didn’t try it because it’s a bad idea. You actually think me fucking someone else is the answer?”
“Maybe me fucking someone else is.”
She probably says that to get a rise out of me, but we’re past that. At least, I am. “Doesn’t the fact that you want to sleep with another guy tell you something?”
“Maybe we just need a jolt, and experimenting a little could do that. Dr. Cairns’ suggestion about an open relationship was to save what we have, not end it. You once asked me to marry you, Ezra.”
“And you refused. You did us both a favor.”
“You only asked because I was pregnant.”
We’d only been dating five months when she realized she was pregnant. My mother had asked in horror if Aiko was planning to raise her grandson as Hindu? Hearing that most Vietnamese are Buddhist, not Hindu, didn’t make Mama feel any better. I assured her my girlfriend didn’t practice anything except photography. Aiko’s profession is her religion, and she’s practically evangelical in her zeal for it. She is about as much a practicing Buddhist as I am a Jew, despite my mother’s efforts.
“You know I don’t believe in marriage,” Aiko says, “but we’re as close as I’ll ever come. You don’t just discard that after so many years.”
There are lots of ways I could pick this argument apart. One of the main reasons I haven’t is still asleep down the hall.
Noah.
It’s so simple with the three of us living under the same roof. I cannot see my son less. I want to read with him every night before he goes to bed. Breaking up with Aiko means breaking this arrangement, and things may have cooled between us sexually and emotionally, but we’re still a family. We’ve raised an extraordinary little human so far, knock on wood, and we make
a good team. I had no reason to disrupt that, but I’m afraid the disintegrating romance is now eroding everything else.
She loops her arms around my neck and lifts up to whisper in my ear. ”Even if I fuck someone else, I’ll always want to fuck you. I still want you, Ezra, and you still want me. Remember Taco Tuesday?”
Our whole neighborhood gathers for tacos every Tuesday, and one night a few weeks ago the patio bartender had a heavy hand. Wednesday morning, I had a hangover, hazy memories and regret to show for it. I’m not a monk. Every morning in the shower, my sexual frustration goes down the drain. I can’t explain it other than we’ve been living like roommates for so long, practically platonically, that sex with Aiko just doesn’t feel right anymore. Something can feel good, but not feel right. That night, we may have managed to feel good for a few moments, but I can’t remember the last time we felt right together.