44 Chapters About 4 Men (33 page)

It was divine intervention! Surely, Ken couldn’t argue with that kind of evidence! Ethan had clearly been talking about having an ode to the most important meal of the day permanently scrawled along his instep for, like,
weeks
.

Who was Ken to deny Ethan his dream?

I’ll tell you who Ken was. Ken was the asshole who was going to deny Ethan his dream.

And mine. As usual.

Once the clock struck twelve and Ethan’s big day was over, Ken decided it was time to take the Alexanders and the swingers home, leaving me behind to make sure that our children wouldn’t perish in their sleep or get seized by agents from the Department of Family and Child Services, who were probably already on their way.

I watched as my final Hail Mary attempt to get Ken to proclaim his love for me through the permanent art of tattoo stumbled out the door and into the night. Sitting alone on my now empty couch, in my now quiet living room, in the wake of yet another defeat, I felt bereft. My psychological tactics arsenal had been depleted.

I was out of ideas, and it was time to face the facts. Ken was
never
going to express his undying love for me—not in words, not in writing, and evidently, not on his skin either.

I’d always believed that those sentiments were in there somewhere. All I had to do was find the right key to unlock them. I mean, of course Ken loves the way I get hiccups every single day and how I always manage to fuck up instant mashed potatoes and how I am perpetually five (ten) minutes late to everything, and the way I get really loud and inappropriate when I’m in uncomfortable social situations, and how I sometimes flip (or flick) him off when I’ve been drinking.

Who wouldn’t? I’m fucking adorable.

As a self-confident only child, I’d always moved through the world, secure in the knowledge that the sun, moon, and stars shone out of my ass.

But there, clinging to my knees in the shadows of my picturesque living room, adrift on my microsuede couch, floating on a current of Peach Schnapps and desolation, surrounded by my disregarded photography and overlooked paintings, I finally found the courage to ask myself the question I’d been running from since Kenneth motherfucking Easton came into my life.

What if Ken’s not expressing his feelings for me because they’re just not there?

I clutched my shins for dear life and buried my knees in my eye sockets, trying to both physically protect myself from the implications of that single thought and hold fast against the flood of tears threatening to consume me. I’d spent more than a decade trying to figure out how to get Ken to give me a glimpse into the bottomless well of love he was hiding from me when what I should have been asking myself the whole time was,
What if?

I knew from experience that the kind of love I was looking for from Ken—the roses-are-red-violets-are-blue kind—was a fickle bitch. It hurt, it betrayed, and it was ultimately unsustainable. This thing with Ken, whatever it was, it was going to go the distance. I knew it in my cells, and I knew it in my soul. I’d already been with him five times longer than any of my other boyfriends, and I could have done it standing on my head. It might not have been carnal
or
tender. It certainly wasn’t emotionally fulfilling. But what we had was surprisingly steady and stable and strong.

Sigh.

The time to give up the ghost of passion past had come. Tears that were eleven years in the making fell in torrents as I tried to choke down my new reality. No man was ever going to tell me,
You’re so beautiful
, again or refer to me as anything other than Brooke, Mrs. Easton, or ma’am. No man was ever going to feel strongly enough about me to have my name (or preferably the adorable personalized pet name he’d assigned me the moment we first met) gouged into his skin with tiny needles. And it was also time to accept that the lingerie, handcuffs, and bondage gear stashed in my underwear drawer would never again see the light of day.

Fleshy chunks of my hopes and dreams were splattered all over my living room. Sliding down the eggplant-colored walls. Dripping from the custom coffered ceiling. I sat, hugging my knees, in the apex of the crime scene, crying, rocking, and humming a requiem of grief and acceptance.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay…

I would let those foolish needs go. I would bury them out back, wipe up the mess, and go to bed, taking comfort in the knowledge that, for the rest of life, I would be uneventfully married to the father of my children, the mower of my grass, the balancer of my checkbook, and the keeper of my heart even if he doesn’t have one himself.

Just as I was crawling into bed, carrying on my back the weight of both loss and resignation, I heard the garage door roar to life. Quickly dashing away my tears with the hem of my sheet, I pretended to be asleep as Ken tiptoed in.

Without missing a beat, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Hmm?” I grumbled, stretching a little. “Nothing. Why?”

“There are wadded up tissues all over the living room. Have you been crying?”

Way to go, Nancy Drew.

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

It was too dark to see him, but I felt the mattress sag next to me, and I heard the quiet concern in his voice.

“Because I’m an asshole.”

“You’re just now figuring that out?”

Wow, Ken. You’re so good with feelings and empathy and stuff. How could I have ever accused you of being a cyborg?

“Actually, I was crying because
you’re
an asshole.”

Crickets.

“I just told you I’ve been crying, and all you can do is sit there and stare at me? Jesus, Ken! Just go to bed! It’s not like you actually care what’s wrong.”

I felt Ken’s hand gingerly pat my hip. He didn’t argue with me or offer any solutions. He simply implied nonverbally that I was right. He did, in fact, just want to go to bed and didn’t actually care what was wrong.

Using my legs and free arm, I pushed him off the bed and pointed in the direction of the master bathroom. “Go! Go get ready for bed, asshole!”

Exasperated, Ken’s silhouette threw its hands in the air and huffed, “What? What do you want from me? I asked you what was wrong, and you called me an asshole—twice. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Fuck it. Let’s do this.

Sitting up in bed, I glared at the backlit black hole where Ken’s face should have been and snarled, “You know what you can
do, Ken? How about you
don’t
ever say anything nice to me, give a shit about my needs or feelings, or get my name tattooed on your body to make up for the initials you have carved into your arm? Okay? How about you
not
do any of that shit? Oh, wait, it’s too fucking late!”

Ken’s outline looked contrite, and he responded to my outburst in a small voice, “You were serious about that? You really wanted me to get that tattoo?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

“Nope. Not anymore. Good night, Ken.”

I turned my back on the beautiful shadow and pulled the covers up around my chin, signaling the end of the conversation. After all the cathartic soul-searching I’d just done, I couldn’t believe the way I’d lashed out at Ken. Evidently, accepting that he didn’t love, want, or need me was one thing. Pretending to be happy about it was quite another.

With my eyes screwed tightly shut and the comforter pulled up around my ears, I tried to block out the sounds of Ken stomping around the house. I could hear countless cabinet doors and drawers opening and closing in the kitchen—or maybe the office?

What the fuck is he looking for?

It sounded like he was trying to wake the dead, not get ready for bed.

A few minutes later, Ken’s heavy footfalls made their way back toward the bedroom. I clutched the comforter and held my breath, silently thanking God that we didn’t own a gun. When the footsteps stopped just a few feet away from me, the black backs of my eyelids were suddenly bathed in screaming yellow.

Ugh!

I flipped over and squinted through the near blinding rays of my bedside lamp to see Ken looming over me, a long blunt object in his outstretched hand.

Instinctively, I braced for impact. When it never came, I risked a peek and found, to my utter, unadulterated glee, that Ken was extending to me…a calligraphy pen.

I sat up and stared at him, slack-jawed, searching his face for some indication of what the fuck was going on. He gave nothing away. He didn’t speak. He didn’t emote. He just stood there, sexily disheveled in his dress shirt and slacks, looking tired yet resolved. His usually bright aqua eyes paled to a steely gray as they bore into me, daring me to take the bait. When I shakily reached out to accept the pen, Ken clung to it for just a moment before relinquishing it to me. He then proffered another object in its place—his right hand.

Oh my God.

My mind vomited up so many thoughts and feelings at once that I was temporarily immobilized by the bottleneck of mental processes competing for my attention. I felt elated and deeply touched yet surprisingly guilt-stricken.

Seeing my constitutionally stubborn, almost pathologically rigid husband standing before me, asking me to draw a tattoo that he never wanted on his skin, made my chest constrict and my stomach turn.

My poor Ken. What have I done to you?

My guilt was quickly overshadowed by irrational anger, however, when I realized that Ken’s offering of that particular pen, and that particular hand, was completely fucking calculated. He was letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he’d been reading my journal. And he was ending this charade once and for all. Never again would I be able to post whatever my wicked heart desired for him to read and then coquettishly dance around the subject like we both didn’t know exactly what was going on. The jig was up.

Fucking asshole. I had a good thing going!

But you know what pissed me off even more, Journal? Realizing that I’d been beating my head against a wall for years trying to get this man to express his feelings for me, throwing every behavior mod tactic in the book at him, when all I needed to do that whole time was tell him
not
to get a tattoo!

Ken really does have oppositional defiant disorder!

Why didn’t I think to use reverse psychology sooner?

That shit works every time, God damnit!

I wanted to honor the breakthrough I had earlier by announcing that I didn’t need him to get a tattoo or compliment me or give me a pet name anymore because that’s not who he was and I was going to venerate that. I wanted to prove that I really had grown and was no longer seeking validation that I was lovable or attractive from him or anyone else.

But I couldn’t do it. Seeing the sexiest, most infuriating man I’d ever laid eyes on standing before me, offering me the only thing I’d ever wanted—visible permanent proof of his love—was simply too irresistible.

Like a recovering addict to a crack pipe, all the progress I’d made during my spell of soul-searching went up in a puff of smoke. Giddy effervescence exploded through my veins. The sour, churning acid in my stomach was replaced by delightful little butterflies, and the seal of my tight, angry lips broke open to reveal a stupid shit-eating grin that I could no longer suppress.

I wanted to do the right thing, I really did, but I was so high on the prospect of finally getting my way that I let my worst character flaw—the Selfish Only Child—take over.

Salivating over the smooth, warm fleshy canvas of Ken’s right hand, I pulled the cap off the calligraphy pen with my teeth and set to work. I didn’t glance up at him even once, for fear of what I might find, of what I knew was already there—disapproval and obligation.

Instead, I let my second worst character flaw—perfectionism—take the wheel. My attention was fixed solely on the placement and precision of every swoop and halt. Time ceased to exist. It was just me and the ink and the rapture of watching a fantasy eleven years in the making coming true before my very eyes.

An errant tear landed on the back of Ken’s hand, missing my masterpiece by a hair’s breadth. It was done. It was glorious. It was
everything
.