fiction
by Bestia Mortale
Jack raised a tear-streaked face from his hands and looked up at her. "I wish I'd never started this. I wish we could just go back to before."
Laura shrugged. "I'm sorry. I know it's hard...Well, no, I'm not, actually. This is the right thing."
"But I'm losing everything."
She shrugged again. "You can't lose what you don't have."
He frowned in sudden anger. "What a fucking bitchy thing to say." He shook his head. "Yes, okay, I initiated the polyamory thing, but now you think you can walk out without a second thought. Well fuck you."
Her own anger flared. She glared at him for a moment, trying to restrain herself. "Look," she said at last. "I do care. This hurts. We've both tried hard the last couple of years. You know I have, even when you felt like quitting. This isn't coming out of nowhere. And you know it isn't about you and April, either."
He glared at her, and by his silence admitted she was right.
"I suppose your thing with April made it easier for me," she went on, "It let me see I was ready let go. And you're right, I don't feel as sad as you -- I feel a lot of relief, like I said before."
"Relief," he said bitterly. "You still resent me for getting us into polyamory in the first place."
"I do not!" she yelled at him. "Will you lay off that? Polyamory is one thing we actually agree on. Yes, I was kind of put off by the idea at first, but I did come around. And not just for you."
"Well it certainly didn't work with you and Tony."
"No, Tony was an experiment that proved I'm not interested in a fuck buddy right now. I'm glad nothing ever came of Tony, so you and I can be clear I'm breaking up over us, not over some other guy."
His face was in his hands again, but the sobbing had stopped. What hung between them was the knowledge that he'd seriously considered leaving her for April.
"Look," she said, "I know this is hard. But it's not because there's something wrong with you. I still admire you, you know. And we have years of shared experience, and a whole lot of things in common. Our relationship hasn't ended up like we wanted, but it's not a failure either."
He looked up again, bleakly. "Then what would you call it?"
She shrugged. "A mixed bag. A safe place for each of us to grow. We grew apart -- but we did grow, and always encouraged that in each other." She stood up. "Well, I gotta go. I have to get to the airport by 1:30."
He stood up as well. The pain in the set of his shoulders echoed in her chest. He looked like a beaten child.
"I'm sorry, Laura," he muttered. "I know you're right. I'm just fucking scared."
"You'll be okay," she said as reassuringly as she knew how, feeling desperate to get out of the room. She didn't want to hug him, so she touched his arm. "See you in a couple of weeks. Things'll look better then."
But at the door, she turned again. "Talk to the Goddess," she said. A funny look crossed her face, almost of surprise. She left.
He had a hard time staying in one place. He lay down, he stood up, he went to the refrigerator and then didn't want anything. He opened a beer and then poured it out after the first gulp. He found himself prowling around the little apartment like a trapped beast and decided to go out. Then at the door, he turned back inside.
"I'll meditate," he said to himself, standing in the middle of the room. He felt like such a baby, but he couldn't stop the feelings of panic and hopeless loss. It was as if thorn-covered vines were being torn out of his heart.
"Plenty of people go through this," he told himself. "Stop being so dramatic." It didn't help.
Forget meditating. He couldn't quiet his mind. At his altar, the stones and little statues and shells all reminded him of the different places he'd found them, with her. He tried to concentrate, gazing on a candle flame he'd lit to Bridhe, but he kept thinking of Laura.
Her body, which he might never touch again. Lying naked on the bed, her legs spread. Or on hands and knees, panting, pushing back against him as he thrust into her. He felt himself getting hard thinking about it. Her face as she came, beautiful beyond anything he'd ever imagined.
Then memories of how it had been the past few years -- how she'd reach for him and he'd shrug her off, angry without knowing why. It was all the little things, the stupidest little things. She'd leave his mail on her desk for two or three days before remembering to give it to him, she'd lock herself out of the apartment three or four times a year, requiring him to drive all the way from work to let her in. She...whatever.
He had come to realize he couldn't touch her. She read all the time -- he was dyslexic, and read only what he had to at work. What's more, she was a writer, and he didn't... he couldn't help feeling jealous of her writing, that it was a world she had where he couldn't go. While she had little understanding of engineering, and less interest. They hadn't talked about the things that mattered to them in those areas for a long time. She knew so much less about his work than April.
April, he pictured her on top of him, riding him intently, eyes closed, concentrating on her impending orgasm. Younger than Laura, prettier than she'd ever been, and so matter-of-fact about sex. But then...so matter-of-fact about sex. He hadn't realized how much he liked Laura's romantic edge. The first time April had told him in her small voice, "Now I'd like you to put it in my bottom for a while," he'd found it charming. After a while, though, he'd felt like a hired hand being told what to do.
He remembered with more interest the few times he and Laura had tried anal sex -- she ended up feeling it did little for her -- but the first time, she'd looked him in the eye and said, "Okay, Jack, how about fucking me up the ass." Like it was exciting and dirty. Even though it hadn't worked very well for either of them, it had seemed daring to try it. Whereas with April, (he hesitated to admit to himself) it had ended up being kind of like a chore.
And yet...April was so wistful sometimes, and they would talk for hours about the project they were wrestling with together at work. It was that intimacy that had gotten them to sex, and neither of them could quite understand why the sex seemed less intimate than the engineering in the end.
But then there was that one time he talked her into letting him go down on her -- unlike Laura, she didn't care for oral sex as a rule. He remembered the strong, earthy smell of her as he had his face buried in her little pussy, his tongue running up and down her crack in long slow sweeps, and her hips bucking wildly as she came again and again with sounds far different than ordinary. When finally she stopped him, he found that she was weeping. He was afraid that he'd hurt her, but she said no, it was just so intense... She'd never let him do that again, though.
And she was so matter-of-fact about telling him it was over. Their project was finished; they were both moving on to other things, so this was the perfect time to bring it to a close, with one final fine orgasm each. He'd looked at her with stupefaction, and almost hadn't been able to get it up for that last time. But to his surprise, he'd found he was ready for it to be over himself, and that he'd missed it far less than he would have thought. Whereas, then, when he'd wanted to reconnect with Laura -- yes, he'd known things weren't right, but when she'd told him her decision, his whole world seemed to collapse beneath him, leaving him in free fall into a bottomless hole.
He came to himself with a jerk and straightened his back. Well, so much for meditation. Your spiritual practice is supposed to help you in times like this, but he couldn't have felt less like going there. Talk to the Goddess indeed. Another elusive woman... Still, he sat there a little longer, emptied of energy, feeling his sadness roll over him in waves. What a baby I am, he thought.
Yes, you are that, She said. She was naked and somewhat indistinct, as She usually appeared to him on the rare occasions he encountered Her.
Will you help me? he asked.
Will you be helped?
He tried to say yes but could not. She walked away from him and he found himself following, up into mountains. The path She was taking him on was terrifying, along a narrow ledge with a sheer drop to his left thousands of feet down into a barren valley of huge boulders. He felt his fear rising as he kept glancing down. The vertigo was so strong it made him feel almost sick to his stomach.
Wait, he said.
She turned, and seemed much more distinct. She seemed like a real woman, not as tall as he, but as he looked at Her, he realized She was constantly changing. Her face, Her body, the size and shape of Her breasts and hips, the color of Her hair and skin, everything about Her was in flux, except that She was always beautiful in ways he could not have imagined.
Come here, She said.
He could hardly move from fear and dizziness. The ledge was less than a foot wide by now, and a cold wind kept gusting into him. He put his back to the cliff and edged sideways until he was close to Her.
He could smell Her, like flowers or something, and also that woman smell of pheromones or whatever. He watched, fascinated, as Her left breast grew and changed and shrank and grew again.
Look in my eyes, She said.
He finally looked up at Her face, and Her eyes that seemed to reflect the Full Moon, so bright and far away and changeless. They too made him feel vertigo, as if he were going to fall into them.
Do you have anything left to live for? She asked him.
He thought about the things he had been wanting to do at work, realized how much they were tied to Laura and the life he had somehow still dreamed of having with her... maybe even children some day.
No, he shook his head, looking away from Her. I guess not.
Look again.
He dragged his gaze back to Her eyes, which were now empty and dark. He seemed to lose his sight, he could see absolutely nothing.
You know better, She said. You are not blind. See.
He let go, for a moment, of a weight of anger, frustration, sadness and fear he hadn't realized he'd been carrying for a long time. What he saw was a great sweep of possibility, of lovers he didn't yet know, triumphs and delights and lessons and discoveries, miseries and exaltations.
So. She closed Her eyes and it was all gone -- he couldn't remember what he'd seen, but he knew that he had always known it.
Walk with me, She said, offering him Her hand. He took it. Her fingers were both soft and hot and terribly hard, and something like a tingling ran up his arm and through him. She stepped off into the air, and without hesitation, he followed.
Instantly, he was in free fall. He could see thousands of feet of cliff below him, and the bottom -- cold, gray jagged boulders bigger than houses. He realized after a bit that they were receding, that he was falling upward.
Then for a moment he was in the middle of a dense fog that beaded on his upper lip, and then he was above it, standing next to Her on the sunlit surface of a cloud.
Go, She said, letting go of his hand and pushing him. Go play.
He fell over backwards onto the surface of the cloud, which was softer than feathers, but oddly resilient. He tumbled head over heels down a steep slope, each contact with the cloud like a caress. Then, at the bottom of the slope, he bounced over the edge of a vast cloud cliff.
Falling like a stone, he noticed he was naked, and wondered if he had been all along. The cloud valley below rushed up at him with terrifying speed, and some part of him prepared to die. Instead, he struck with the force of an orgasm, and bounced like a small child on a trampoline, endlessly high back up into the air.
Turning head over heels with a delight he hardly understood, he caught a glimpse of Her somewhere nearby, smiling. At that moment, She looked like Laura, and he vaguely realized that She had given him a gift.
Then he came back to himself, in front of his altar. He had slumped sideways against the wall. His butt and his left arm had gone to sleep. The candle was almost out.
He got up and stretched. The thing that stuck with him was how much he loved Laura, and that she had given him a gift by letting him go. The waves of sadness were rolling back now, but he no longer felt so helpless under them.
He closed his eyes. Thank you, Lady, he murmured.
Copyright © 2006 by the article's author