Pain claws at my stomach, stealing my breath, silencing the cries that threaten to tear out of my throat. My muscles tighten with the tension of holding it together even as my body goes limp against Rob’s chest, forcing him to do all the work from beneath me. With his every upward thrust, a stabbing sensation overrides the pleasure of being on his lap, his arms wrapped around me, his mouth and tongue trying so hard to love me in all the right ways. He doesn’t drive into me in a fast rhythm, never tries to go deep. After an excruciating eternity that’s probably only minutes, his movements still.
He rests his face in the crook of my neck, panting for air.
“Why did you stop?” I whimper. One of us should be rewarded for all the effort.
“It’s obvious you’re not enjoying this. I’m not going to hurt you just to get off, Evie.”
“No, not again. I hate when you give up.” I rock my hips against him, but even the smallest movement sends a shard of agony through my abdomen.
“I’m never going to cause you pain, my wife.” He bands his arms around me tighter, halting my attempt at movement. “It’s okay. I don’t need to come. Just being with you is enough.”
I gasp in pain as his bear hold inadvertently seats him deeper inside me.
His arms fall away in a heartbeat. In the next breath, he hoists me off him, which only seems to make it worse. Now, an aching emptiness combines with the cramps.
There’s no way to mask this feeling of anguish. It’s too sharp, too salient, too overwhelming. I curl into a fetal position on the mattress. I may not have any control over my body or Rob’s reaction to it, but I refuse to let any tears escape.
He lies on his side, watching me like I’m some kind of caged animal. With a shaky hand, he brushes the wayward curls off my cheek. “I’ll go get a wash rag to clean you up.”
“Clean up what?” I snipe at his retreating back as he makes his way to the bathroom. “It’s not like you came or anything.”
His shoulders slump as I stab him in the back.
It seems the sharper my pain becomes, the sharper my tongue lashes out in frustration. With every passing week, I feel less like myself and more like someone I barely recognize.
By the time he’s dragging a soft, damp cloth against my middle, he’s armored himself in the fake confidence he usually only wears during interviews or on the field. His calmness only pisses me off more.
“I wouldn’t have made a mess even if I had come. That’s the whole point of condoms, remember? You, on the other hand, are covered in lube.”
“Yeah. We’ve tried every kind—water-based, silicone, gel, creamy, whipped, flavored, sensation enhancing. Nothing works.”
“We’ll wait a week and try a different position. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” I yell. “We’ve already tried more positions than I can count on both hands! Something’s wrong with me!”
The rag flies to a dark corner of the bedroom with a sailing arc of his throwing arm. It meets the wall with a dull thud. A deep breath, and he regains his composure before he lies beside me, so close, but not touching at all.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” Rob closes his eyes for a moment before meeting my gaze. “I just think, maybe… You never dealt with the assault, Evie. Instead of facing the aftermath, you ignored it and buried it inside to fester. It’s catching up with us now, is all.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I mean to leap off the bed, but the best I can muster is a hobbled escape. Not even able to stand upright, my body bends at the waist until I resemble a hunch-backed old woman. Perhaps that’s fitting.
I’m certainly not a young wife, capable of pleasuring her husband and making all his fantasies come true.
Everyone was right. I’m not worthy of the man approaching me with a cautious expression on his exhausted face.
“Baby, come back to bed. Lie down. I’ll bring you some Advil and water.”
“I don’t want to lie down,” I grit out, rubbing my eyes with my fists as if not seeing anything will make it all better. Such a childish belief, but hope springs from the strangest of places. “I want you to make love to me. I want you to quit making me feel like a head case because I can’t take you. And I don’t want you to suggest even a single new position for us to try.”
I feel his sigh as heavily as if he put his hands on me. “I’m doing the best I can here, Evie. You have to meet me halfway. We just haven’t found the magic formula that will work for us yet. But, we’re never going to get there if you give up.”
My eyes fly open. “Me, give up? You’re the one who gives up every time! You won’t even finish! You sneak off to the bathroom after you think I’m asleep and jerk yourself off! I’m not even allowed to touch you anymore, but you expect me to be ready and willing anytime you feel like going down on me for hours at a time?”
His eyes widen and his face pales. He’s so busted. Just as quickly as his emotions surface, he buries them again. And he claims I’m the one not facing up to things. “I’m only trying to make sure you feel loved by me. I’m not giving up.” He hangs his head in shame. “I don’t like finishing myself off, but it’s not fair of me to ask you when I’m the one causing you so much pain. And, I don’t want to add to your stress by being shitty to you because of a permanent case of blue balls.”
“Oh, so I’m a mental case and I sexually frustrate you. That’s just fucking fantastic!” I throw my arms up in the air, my anger blurring the edges of my pain enough for me to raise my chin and square my shoulders.
Rob reaches for me, but I sidestep him, making my way out to the kitchen. I’ll get my own damn water and pain pills. I’m not some fragile charity case.
“I never said that!” He shouts as he follows hot on my heels. “Why do you constantly twist my words into whatever the hell you want to hear? I’m trying my best to be a good husband to you, but it seems like my best is never good enough!”
“Yeah, well, now you know how I feel,” I spit. My hands tremble as I fill a glass of water and reach for the bottle of ibuprofen perched on the edge of the sink. Inevitably, my clumsy movements result in a spill and the pills falling into the sink.
“Goddammit,” I mutter. I can’t do anything right.
“Here.” He nudges me aside, righting all the wrongs I’ve created. “Let me.”
I watch in silence as he untwists the child-proof cap, tumbling several pills into his palm before placing them on the counter. The muscles in his arms flex as he rips paper towels from the roll and blots up the mess I made. His powerful back moves with the slight twisting of his body as he refills my glass at the tap.
A sudden pang of jealousy overcomes me. It’s a foreign sensation, one I’ve never associated with Rob before.
“It must be nice,” I muse.
“What’s nice?” He faces me and cocks his head to the side, questions dancing through his eyes.
“Being you.”
His brow scrunches in confusion as he hands the refilled glass of water to me. “Why on earth would you say that?”
I shrug, then swipe the pills from the counter, swallowing them one by one. They stick in my throat. In my mind, I visualize them sliding down, spreading relief through my aching body. In reality, it’ll be easily an hour before they kick in and dull the pain, which won’t completely be gone for days. “Everything seems so easy for you. You didn’t even want to play football as a child; now you’re a Heisman-trophy winner. While most of your teammates majored in basket weaving and needed tutors just to pass, you’re going to graduate magna sum laude with a degree in computer engineering. You’ve graced the covers of several magazines, looking like not just a powerful athlete, but a ridiculously handsome model. It takes me hours of prep work, makeup, and styling products to even resemble the beauty you exude when you roll out of bed in the morning.”
He cuts me off before I can list everything else rolling through my mind. “When did I become your competition for anything other than fun?”
“You’re not,” I insist. “I just never stopped to think about how effortlessly you master everything you put your mind to. And how many things you’re naturally gifted with.”
A spark of anger smolders in his expression. “Nothing comes naturally or easily to me. I have to work, and damn hard, for everything I have. Including you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” As quickly as my irritation subsided, it fires back up again with only two little words out of his mouth.
“It means I’m disappointed you seem to be judging me like everyone else all of a sudden. All the stuff you listed, it’s only what’s on the surface. Did you conveniently forget I study my ass off to keep my grades up? Or that I’m constantly conditioning, memorizing plays, and watching film to stay ahead of the pack on the field? I could barely work up the nerve to talk to you for years, and when I finally did, I basically had to trick you into telling me exactly what to do just so you’d give me a damn shot.”
My cheeks burn with shame. Of course, I’m aware of all those things. I didn’t forget. Clearly, the way it sounded in my head is not the way it sounded in Rob’s ears. I allowed my jealousy and insecurity to speak for me, the same way I’ve been taking out my frustration on him.
He keeps going before I can apologize. “And don’t forget my massive dick. That’s a natural gift, right? Yeah, that one’s working out just peachy for me. No matter what I try, every time I touch my wife, she cries. You think I enjoy that?”
For some unknown reason, Rob’s two-month period of calm in the face of my mounting anxiety seems to disappear. Why me verbally listing all of his talents is the last straw, I have no idea.
His face reddens and his eyes burn bright as he advances on me, backing me into the counter, then caging me in with his arms on either side of my body. “Maybe you’d prefer it if I fuck you senseless every night, as much as I want, regardless of how it makes you feel? Since you’re comparing me to everyone else, I guess that’s what you want out of me. This is just like high school all over again. Is that it? Are you trying to relive what we went through to get together before the assault ripped everything away? Or, are you suddenly disappointed you didn’t marry a horny, dumb jock? Because that’s sure as hell what it sounds like to me.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he places his hand over my lips to silence me. “No. I don’t want to hear anymore. You act like you’re the only one getting the raw end of this deal. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to be with you? Most of my teenage years I spent fantasizing about what’s turned into the worst part of our relationship. It’s not bad enough that in the blink of an eye, all those fantasies evaporated. It’s not enough we’ve worked our asses off to get to this point. At least I have. I’m so fucking sorry you’re not ready yet, to get the help you so obviously need. I get what we experienced were two very different sides of the same coin, but dammit, Evie! I am not the bad guy here! I refuse to be the villain ever again!”
I bite his finger hard enough to make him release me, then duck under his arm. “You want to talk to me about dealing with shit? You’re the one who constantly brings it up! If anyone has unresolved issues about my assault, it’s you! All your fancy therapy and medication obviously didn’t help as much as you think. It took you another three years to be ready to have sex with me, and only then because you had some patriarchal idea of consummating the marriage bed! I told you we didn’t have to rush, but you were the one who insisted! So, how dare you accuse me of not dealing with it? I don’t even remember what happened! I’ve never once done anything or acted in any way to make you so obsessed with the idea I’m not over it.”
Rob’s eyes practically pop out of his skull as he slowly turns to face me. In a burst of anger, he throws his arms up, his voice booming through the kitchen. “You posed completely naked for the entire world to see, just to prove you’d actually been assaulted! The case being leaked to the media wasn’t enough for you, no! You had to show everyone your scars like it fucking matters what everyone else thinks! Those are not the actions of someone who’s over it!”
Rage and indignation tint my vision until all I see is a complete stranger standing off against me. I approach him with measured steps, not stopping until we’re so close, his breath fans over my face, hot and angry. I should’ve known he was never okay with that photo shoot. Mr. Falls was right all along. His son, my husband, is embarrassed of me. “Yeah, I did show the whole world. I never would have had to make that choice, felt pressured into it, or felt the need to defend myself, if it weren’t for you.”
“For me?” He spits. “I never pressured you into that.”
“No,” I agree. “You didn’t. You also didn’t tell me you were against it, when clearly you were. The only reason the media was so damn interested was because of you. Because of your career in the public spotlight. They don’t give a damn about me. They care about you; about how I make you look. I never wanted that kind of attention, but I made the best I could of a bad situation. That’s what I’ve always done. Had I known you’d be so disgusted for everyone else to see what you’ve tried so hard to keep hidden, I wouldn’t have posed for that shoot.”
Rob’s previous rage evaporates, replaced with what I can only hope is shame. His shoulders slump, his posture changes from defensive to meek. In the blink of an eye, he’s someone else. It seems like we’re both wearing multiple masks these days.
“Baby, no.” He reaches for me again, but I dance out of his personal space. “I could never be disgusted by you. I love you, don’t you get it? I’m running out of ways to make you understand how I feel. How many more languages do I have to learn to convince you that to me, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world?”
My laugh is humorless. It bounces off the walls, mixing with our spent anger and frustration. At least now I know where he really stands. This marriage was a mistake. “The language of love needs no words, Rob. Actions speak louder than any meaningless phrase ever could. Every night when I hear you grunt out your orgasm, in the bathroom behind a closed door, proves just how much you love me.”
I spin and storm down the hall, slamming the bedroom door shut behind me. If he wants to jerk off tonight, he can do it on the couch. I’d rather sleep in the closet alone than with him for even a single night.