In the dream, I leave her in the woods. The scenery is never clear, and I can never see her face, although I know it’s Gen. The scene begins as I walk off. I hear her calling my name and turn around. And I can hear her panting, even though I can’t see her, because it’s dark. In a voice that doesn’t sound upset, she says, “But Daddy. It will be so real for you. Daddy…are you sure you want to leave me here? It will be so real!”

I hear her words, but they feel meaningless, unreal. I don’t want to leave her in the woods, of course, but that’s my role; I don’t consider anything different.

As I walk away, toward a faint glow that I know to be the boardwalk, I hear her start to scream. She screams, so agonized and frantic that I think she’s being eaten by some animal. I turn around, but by the time I do, the woods are silent. Geneva is gone.

The dream is ripped out of that Spielberg-Kubrick film, A.I.

When I awaken from it, at least once or twice a week, I’m usually not crying. But sometimes I’m moaning, or sweating. Sometimes I can’t get back to sleep that night. So that’s my situation when I wake up at 4:12 AM.

I write for an hour, then throw on my running clothes, leave Cora with a bone, and start the four-mile run up to the place where Dad is—Cedar Crest. It’s at the top of Rudolph Hill, so by the time I reach the double doors on the side of the long, one-story building, I’m breathing hard and sweating.

I knock hard and see the familiar, dimpled smile of a short, brunette nurse who always wears pink. She gets the door and shakes her head at me.

“Front doors only, Mr. McKellan.” She tsks, and I rub at my head. “Dammit. I forgot.”

She shrugs. “New rule.” She rolls her eyes, teasingly. “You’ve only had…mmm, coming up on three months to adjust.”

I let her rib me as we walk down the hallway toward the sign-in desk, where I see the surprise on the receptionist’s face.

“It’s not—” She must get some signal from the nurse behind me, because she blinks a few times, then smiles thinly. “Mr. McKellan!” She leans forward, on her bony elbows. “What can we do for you today?”

A few minutes later, I’m ushered into Dad’s room, where I find him sitting up in bed, watching a game show with the windows open, casting his room in a deep blue glow.

When I step inside, he glances toward me with a frown. “Who’s that come to bother me?”

I raise a hand in greeting. “Hi, Dad. Gabe.”

“That ole Gabe. That boy took off, years ago. Just left.”

I swallow as I take a few more steps inside and rest my elbow on the cracked, leather recliner. “How ya doing?” I ask.

Dad scowls my way. “Are you one of those doctors in ‘civilian’ clothes?”

I shake my head. “Just came by to check in on you.”

He shakes his head roughly, his single flop of faded brown hair smacking his freckled forehead. “I don’t like it here. They’re assholes, and no one gives me coffee.”

I squint at the table by his bed. “I think there’s a coffee cup beside you.”

“That?” He glares at the cup. “Sugar water.”

Is it wrong I have to struggle not to laugh? “Oh yeah?”

He nods once. “Sugar water like they give the little babies! Motherfuckers here, I tell you. Nothing but a bunch of motherfuckers.”

I rub my hand over my mouth. “Is there anything you like?”

“Well—there’s that nurse. The one with white hair. Very nice one, that one. Fluffs my pillows. She knows what it’s like.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, just making conversation.

Dad pounds his fist against the bed’s rail. “To be locked up in here like a fool!”

I nod slowly. “No one thinks you’re a fool.”

“You do. You and your New York. And that clean girl. In every picture, she looks clean, so clean she’s sparkling. Sure wish you took care of your old man that way.” He shakes his head. “Selfish and self-absorbed…going off up there.” He shakes his head again.

I inhale slowly. Work my hand into a fist, then let it relax.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” I’m not, of course. But I think it never hurts to say you’re sorry.

“Yeah—well.” With obvious reluctance at first, he looks me over. “Looking thinner now there. Older, too. I must be missing time again. Who’s president? It’s that fucking talk show host!”

I work to hide a smirk.

“You look like shit.”

I blow my breath out, steeling myself for more of his erratic commentary.

“Not drinking,” he says—but it’s a question.

“No.”

“Then it must be a woman.” He chuckles at that thought and then zones out, blinking at the TV and murmuring to himself for half an hour, but not looking over again at me.

* * *

I open the door with a big grin on my face. Because I fell asleep last night, and Gabe covered me up and made me cider, and then put a huge bottle of it in my refrigerator before he left. When I woke up later in the night and found his number on the notepad by my bed, I felt so warm and cared for. Like we’re really in a partnership of sorts.

So when I get an eyeful of him Wednesday night, my stomach twists a little.

“Heyyy.” I hold the door open, and he steps inside. He gives me a small, closed-mouthed smile as I drink in his long-sleeved, navy blue t-shirt and ragged khakis. As I check him out, I start to shake my head.

“Are those those Mountain Hardware ones? From way back when?”

He smiles, a little more, and I blink at his eyes as he says, “Yeah.”

“Oh my goodness, those are antiques.” I step a little closer to him. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

He blinks. “Sick? Nah.”

“Are you sure?” I take his hand and turn it so it’s palm over, feeling there to see if it feels warm and finding that it doesn’t.

He nods, his eyes squinting slightly. “Just a headache.”

“I’m sorry.”

I flatten his palm against mine and sandwich it between my hands…and I find I don’t want to let it go.

“Come here…” I tug him toward the bedroom. At the bed’s footboard, I nod. “Lay down. Face first. If you don’t mind,” I add, smiling.

With a funny look my way, he stretches out—and I climb atop his back, straddling his hips, and start to stroke his back through his shirt.

Gabe groans softly as I drag my thumbs over some pressure points in his midback.

“I don’t remember this.” His voice is muffled in my pillow.

I grin. “I took a massage class in Chicago. Just for fun.”

I rub a few key spots a little more, then move up to the area around his shoulder-blades. As soon as I start rubbing there, I feel him flinch. His body tenses under mine, and he lets out another moan.

“Most people carry tension here…”

He grunts, and I let myself have at the sore muscles around his shoulderblades, and then move up, toward his neck and shoulders.

“Jesus…”

“Someone’s really tense…or slept wrong.”

“Offh.”

I giggle, and his hips flex under mine. “I can feel your heat against my back,” he rasps against my pillow. I rub against him, and he groans. “Fuck. Making me hard…”

I trail a hand back down his flank, then nudge up under him. Gabe shifts over on his side, and I move to lie down and face him. He looks sleepy, smiling as I stroke his abs and drag my hand down toward the bulge that’s straining his fly.

“Oh, fuck.”

“What a dirty mouth you have, Mr. McKellan…”

I unbutton his pants, unzip them, and coax his hard cock out of his briefs, into my hands. “I think I have one, too.”

I suck him into my mouth—because I want to. Because I want to feel his hips shift as I take him deeper, feel him flex his lower back when his balls start to draw up. I like his fingers in my hair, his precum on my tongue, the way his cock swells even more right at the end, before he comes. I think I even like the way my eyes water as I breathe around his hard girth.

What I like the best, though?

After he comes, I wrap an arm around his hips, feeling unsure, as I do it, if it’s too much. Too intimate for what we’re doing. Too familiar.

He doesn’t move, though, for a while—and then I notice that his abs are moving rhythmically below my cheek. And I glance up, and find his eyes are shut.

Oh goodness.

You know that Instagram account hotdudesreading? There should be one called hotguyssleeping. There is nothing like a big, bulky, sleeping hot guy. One in your bed? Better than Christmas.

I cover Gabe up like he did for me last night, and I go make some loaded baked potatoes. When he’s still asleep, I think of tidying the living room, but honestly? I’m sleepy, too. I had a long day at work, including a pregnant mom bring her two-year-old in for a check up and mention her baby wasn’t moving. I sent her straight to the hospital, where it turns out, she lost the baby.

I feel as tired as Gabe looked. It’s cold outside, and I hear rain hitting the roof above us. I want nothing more than to snuggle up behind him, press my back to his, the way we used to, years ago, and fall asleep. When he wakes up, he’ll probably leave like last night. And you know what? That’s okay. We don’t have to have sex every day. We’re not machines.

I tell myself, as I snuggle against him, that I don’t care if this is inappropriate. What’s appropriate, anyway? I’ve lived through thirty-three years. I feel like I should get to just say “fuck it” to appropriate. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re not hurting anyone. And if it’s weird to snuggle up to your ex-husband, with whom you’re trying to make a baby, if it’s weird to just enjoy his weight and warmth behind you…maybe I need weird.

My whole life, I’ve tried to do things right. Make the “right” choices. Do the “right” thing. And now I wonder: What’s so wrong with doing what feels good?

I open my eyes sometime much later to a darkened room—and a warm pressure between my legs. A few more blinks, a few more lines of thought, and I realize…I’m pressed against the back of Gabe. I’ve got my leg between his legs. I’ve got my arm around his hips.

Oh God, it feels delicious—and I’m pretty sure I dreamed of sex, because right now, I feel so empty. It’s this clenchy, full-but-empty feeling…

I press myself against his ass and freeze when Gabe groans. His abs tighten underneath my palm.

I smile. “Hi…” I glide my palm over the ridge of his hip and stretch my fingers lower, where I find him long and stiff and gloriously bare.

I grip him just under his warm, smooth head and tweak under the rim rim, and Gabe rewards me with a soft grunt. I trail my fingertips down his thick rod and grip him at the bottom, pumping a few times before I need more. I urge him onto his back, where I can pump him with one hand and tease his balls with my other.

When my hand comes underneath them, fingers brushing lightly, he grits, “God…”

I rub my hand up his length as I tug. “Does it feel good?”

“Too good,” he groans. “Keep that up, I’m gonna come before I get inside.”

And so of course I want to keep it up. I wrap my fingers around his long, thick shaft, tracing the rim of his head, then stroking back down until I feel the puffy bulge below. Oh God, Gabe his the biggest balls: so full and heavy. My pussy clenches every time I feel them draw up underneath my touch.

I grip his shaft—as much of it as I can—and start to jack him off with firm, fast strokes. I move from right below the rim down to the base and then back up, caressing his head, where I feel tiny drop of moisture at the slit, and then back down, where I tug on his balls and Gabe’s arm comes over mine.

“Oh, fuck.” He shifts his hips, thrusting into my hand. I wrap my fingers around the top of his taut sac and give a gentle tug.

“I want to taste these…”

Instead of murmuring a “yes,” he pulls himself up, half-sitting, his eyes glazed over as he reaches for my shoulder.

“Mar…” He shifts his legs, but doesn’t move his cock as I continue jerking him off. “I need to be inside you.”

“Yeah?” I up my hand game.

Gabe nods, closing his eyes as his head drops back.

“Yeah…”

But I don’t want to end this just yet. I lean down, sucking his head into my mouth as his hands grip my shoulders.

“Marley…”

I can feel him shaking as he struggles not to shove into my throat. I take him deeper, deeper, swallowing to take as much as I can; it’s still not all of him. I wrap my hand around his base and stroke him while I struggle with his girth. I swallow once again and feel his head against the back of my throat. With my free hand, I grab his balls and rub my thumb between them, kneading as I deep-throat him, and Gabe starts panting like he’s running.

He wants to fuck my throat. I know he does. But he won’t, not until I get him started.

I start to take him in and out, and he lets out a desperate-sounding groan.

“Ahh, fuck.” He pushes in just slightly. “Marley…”

I can feel him trying not to move, can feel his hand on my head, shaking. I can feel the moment that he can’t control his need. He grabs my head, and for a second, thrusts into my throat. I choke. Then he’s pulling out, snatching me up, tossing me down on all fours. He jerks my panties off, then smacks me hard.

“Are you trying to hurt yourself?”

“I liked it, and you did, too.”

“I like this more,” he says, dipping two fingers into where I’m hot and sopping for him. “Nothing like this pussy…”

I clench around his fingers, and he drags them out. I feel delicious pressure as him as teases at my entrance…then pushes his tip inside.

“Oh God!” It’s not enough. I wiggle back against him, frantic. I’m so wet, he fills me in a breath, and then we’re both groaning. Our bodies shake as I take and he gives…oh God, he gives so good, my arms can barely hold me as he pounds me.

“This is mine—” his hand squeezes my ass— “and when I put a baby in you, it will still be mine.”

I can’t breathe to speak, can only grip the duvet while I cry his name, and Gabe fucks me with the fury of a lover scorned.

When we finish, he dresses without a word, murmuring a gruff, “goodnight, Marley” as he stalks out of my room.