I didn’t find Gail there, in the room where our marriage had ended. Oh, it limped along for a little while after that–her desperate pleas to reconcile and the various legal nonsense kept it on life support for months–but there was no marriage there anymore. For a time, we lived as two roommates, albeit roommates who occasionally shared a bed for a quick hatefuck, but that’s not a marriage, is it?

I took a quick peek inside the laundry room and garage, just off the kitchen, but she wasn’t there, either. That only left three possibilities, so I headed toward them.

The house had a bit of an odd layout, like the architect couldn’t decide if they wanted a spacious open floor plan or a cozy, homey space. To reach the kids’ rooms and the guest bathroom, I had to backtrack to the living room before entering a narrow hallway, as if this little chunk needed to be segregated from everything else. 

It went maybe five feet, then turned at a forty-five degree angle, out of sight of the public rooms. There, I was presented with three doors, leading to what had been Hailey’s room on our right, the guest bathroom on the left, and Ethan’s former room at the end of the hall. 

From our daughter’s room, I heard the sound of soft weeping through a door left slightly ajar. Inside, I saw my ex-wife, one hand placed on the leftmost wall inside the room, palm flat against it. Gail’s head hung low, her shoulders rising and falling with barely suppressed sobs. Standing there, touching the blank wall with reverence and sorrow, she looked like nothing so much as a visitor to a memorial for the victims of some terrible act of human cruelty.

Perhaps, in a way, she was.

“Gail?” I asked, pushing it open.

Her head turned towards me, and I finally felt some measure of the pain I perhaps should have that night I’d confronted her over her infidelity. “It’s gone,” she gasped out. “Why is it gone? It can’t be gone!”

—

“Stop,” Fuzzy giggled, dancing away from my paintbrush.

I jabbed at my wife, scoring a slash of yellow down her arm. “You started it.”

“I give! I give!” Her hands went up in surrender, but I wasn’t done yet. A single splash of paint on the tip of her nose elicited something between a peal of laughter and a screech of anger, finishing closer to the former than the latter. “You dick!”

She looked so beautiful then. Some women have miserable pregnancies, but not Gail. She’d suffered almost no morning sickness, and her energy levels went up. Her sex drive, too; I thought she might kill me a few times through sheer overexertion.

“Guilty as charged.” I dropped the paintbrush in the tray, then pulled her into my arms; she welcomed my embrace with a long, sweet kiss. 

Gail turned around to face the opposite wall, leaning her head back to rest it on my chest. “It looks so good. Thank you.”

This room, the nursery, was the first that we’d changed up in a way that went beyond merely adding furniture and pictures. We’d discussed what colors to paint it before learning of our unexpected twins, but with both a boy and a girl on the way, blue or pink didn’t really work. Instead, we settled on a pale yellow; it didn’t clash with any of the furniture or bedding, nor did it present a jarring contrast when compared to the rest of the eggshell walls throughout the house. In the back of our heads, too, we knew that when it was time to leave this house behind, we could easily paint over it again, unlike a darker or much brighter color.

Still, Gail had wanted to make the room ours in a more meaningful way. After looking at a few options online, reading mommy magazines, and talking with various family and friends, she settled on her favorite choice: a stylized mural of three trees, two saplings sheltered by a full-grown one. 

We went over the yellow once it dried with a stencil I’d cut for the trunks and limbs, then she painted the detail work of leaves and carved initials freehand. The smaller trees bore “EK” and “HK,” while the larger had “MK + AK” inside a heart. We’d left more room for additional trees, but… Well, those never grew.

If the living room had been the physical center of our home, the mural had been its heart. Even after all the updates we made to the house, that one wall remained unchanged, outside of occasional touch-ups to preserve it. Even once the room became Hailey’s alone, even after she’d gone through her pink phase into purple and later to more subdued lavender, we never changed the mural we’d painted that day. None of us, the kids included, had wanted to. 

It was us, all of us. 

And now it was gone.

—

“Why?” she rasped again, angrier this time.

We hadn’t actually had this talk, and now I regretted leaving it so late. “Because it wasn’t meant to last.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit! I touched it up every year!”

“Not the mural, Gail. Us. Our marriage. We weren’t meant to last.” 

That caught her up short, but she quickly rallied, self-righteous venom lacing her voice. “Oh, fuck you, Mason. I made a mistake, but I was ready to put in the work to make it right. If you hadn’t been a coward and bailed on therapy, we could have made it work.”

“I bailed because it was a waste of time.” 

Her brows shot up, then down; surprise, then fury. “Why, because I’d been soiled? Because–”

“Jesus, Gail. Just stop. Fucking stop. I bailed because I didn’t want to be married to you anymore, and you didn’t want to be married to me, either.”

Suddenly, I felt so tired. We should have had this conversation months ago. Unfortunately, by the time I’d figured everything out, Gail and I were only communicating through the lawyers, and then the divorce was done. Maybe I could have talked to her afterward, but the way she looked at the final hearing, I couldn’t imagine she’d take it well. She probably wouldn’t today, either, but it still needed to be said.

My ex-wife stared at me, slack-jawed, as I sat against the opposite wall, before finding her voice. “That’s not true. I’m the one that tried to fix things.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Ooooh yes, that is true. You did love trying to fix things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That some things don’t need to be fixed. That they are what they are. That…” 

She wasn’t getting it–I could see it on her face–so I changed tack. “Do you remember when I walked out? Like, the specific thing we were talking about?”

For whatever faults she had, Gail wasn’t a bad person. A weak one, maybe–it takes one to know one–but not a bad person. A flicker of shame crossed her features. “Liam.” She slid down the wall where the heart of our family no longer beat, wiping mascara from her cheeks. “We were talking about Liam.”

“Right. Do you remember specifically, though?” She hesitated, then shook her head. Hesitation because she knew and didn’t want to admit it, or hesitation because she really didn’t remember? I decided to be charitable and assume the latter. “It was about how you fell for him.”

“I didn’t fall for him, Mace. I fell for his line. We talked about that.” I wondered if she really believed that or if she just wanted to. Gail had always been the more perceptive of us, but I’d always been the more honest, and I’d come to realize that included our internal lives, too. She sniffled. “I loved you, even if I made a mistake. I still do.”

“I love you, too, Gail.” Her face brightened, but only until I spoke again. “But that doesn’t mean I want to be married to you. And it doesn’t mean you want to be married to me. Please. Please, don’t interrupt. Just let me talk, okay? You wanted us to talk before, so just let me talk.” She signaled her agreement with a sullen nod.

I ran one hand through my hair, trying to buy time while I willed the story to my lips. I’d avoided this conversation for a reason… A lot of reasons, truth be told. And that’s the exact issue: I’d have to tell her the truth, and while I could soften the blow, I couldn’t take all the pain away. Regardless of how we’d ended, I didn’t want to be cruel, but that’s how this would go.

“It… hurt… a lot, when you cheated on me. Physically, I mean. But it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. That was my first inkling. It bothered me, that you’d go around behind my back and fuck someone else, that you’d share…” A mirthless chuckle slipped out. “That you’d share the only thing I still enjoyed about my time with you. But it didn’t bother me like it should have.” Gail didn’t like that, but she kept her peace, at least for the moment.

“It was just so… so goddamned selfish. If you wanted out, that would have been one thing. Like, if you’d just asked for a divorce. I would have understood that. Accepted it. Probably not without some anger and some tears, and I’m sure I’d have suggested counseling–” Ah, the irony. “– but ultimately I’d have stepped aside. Things hadn’t been great between us for years, even since before the kids left, and we both know it.

“But that’s not what you did. Instead, you met someone else, you let him seduce you, fucked him, and hid it from me. Even all of that, though, didn’t make me as angry as the details I learned that day in Dr. Tolliver’s office.

“I tried to get past it until then. I really did. You and I don’t have a lot in common anymore, but we’re both stubborn. You wanted to stay married for… whatever reason you had. Love, or… whatever. I wasn’t ready to give up just because I was unhappy in our marriage. I wasn’t even ready to give up just because you’d cheated.”

I leaned forward for a slightly snide dig. I didn’t want to be cruel, but there’s cruel and there’s brutally honest, and the line can be oh-so-fine. “Not, to be clear, because I really wanted to be married to you, but for the kids, and because I didn’t want them to have to deal with our divorce while they were finishing out college.” Her frown deepened. Still, to her credit, she stayed silent.

“To do that, though, I figured I needed to know… how. How you fell so easily. How you could just throw aside your vows like that. How I could maybe duct tape our marriage together for at least another few years. But then, once I found out, I just couldn’t stomach the sight of you anymore.”

The sun had set outside, leaving only the soft glow of an LED bulb in the fixture overhead to illuminate us. That left it for me to illuminate her. “Because the truth is that it didn’t take much for him to seduce you. All he had to do was be someone you liked.”

Gail imbued a single “What?” with all the disbelief she could muster. “That’s… that’s not true. I loved- I love you!”

“And? That’s loving me. It’s not liking me. It’s like… I love my brother, but he’s an asshole. If his house burned down, or his wife left him, would I be there for him? Sure, in a heartbeat. But I don’t want to spend any more time around him than I have to, and outside of emergencies, Christmas and Thanksgiving are all I can manage.

“I’m not saying you disliked me, or that I disliked you, but we didn’t really like each other, either. We haven’t for a while. Oh, we had our moments, but that’s what they were: moments. We’d argue, and I’d give, or you’d give, and we’d fuck our way back to a happy life for a little while. But…”

The memory forced a grimace onto my face. “We were there in therapy, and you were telling Tolliver about how you met the asshole. How he and you talked about gardening, and theater, and… Rostakovitch?”

Her gaze wouldn’t meet mine. “Rachmaninoff.”

“Right. Well, at least I got the first letter right. Anyways. I watched you and listened to you, and, while I believe your distaste for the asshole was real, you also… You lit up when you talked about those early meetings, even through that. You lit up in a way I haven’t seen in years. I can’t remember the last time I saw you like that, much less the last time it was because of me.

“And I got… God, just—just so fucking mad. I couldn’t even talk, remember? Just got up, walked out, drove to a hotel, and called a lawyer. The funny thing is, even if I could have talked, I couldn’t have articulated why I was so mad. I mean, yeah, some of it was seeing you like that when you talked about it, but it was… more. Deeper.

“It wasn’t until later that I understood why I was so angry. Why I really was, I mean. It’s because of this: we didn’t belong together anymore, and we hadn’t for a long time. You figured it out first, and you kept it from me. You didn’t talk to me, or try to muddle through it like I did; instead, you went out and had your romance with that asshole, leaving me stuck with someone who it seemed like didn’t give a shit about me anymore.”

Gail’s head snapped up, a look of pained outrage on her face. Before she could object, I leaned forward to ask, “Why the fuck did you come here today, Gail?”

That put her on the backfoot. “I… What does that have to do with…”

“You didn’t have to be here. I could have done the last walkthrough; anything you’ve found that I haven’t spotted is so trivial as to not matter. And you know that. If all you wanted to do was take a look at the place before it sold, you still have a key. You could have done it any time. So don’t give me that, either.”

She glowered, unwilling to answer. “I think you came here because you knew I’d be here at this specific time. And I think you came dressed…” I gestured vaguely at her. “Like that for me.”

Eyes darting to one side, she snapped, “Like what?”

“Come the fuck on, Gail. You know I always loved when you wore something like that. Sexy office worker? Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets? You didn’t dress like that just to go to the office.”

My ex-wife sniffed, “Well, maybe I have a date later. And maybe–” I started to stand. “Wait. Where are you going?”

“I’m trying to tell you the truth, Gail, and you’re still lying to me. I had enough of that when we were married. So now, I’m just gonna go check the rest of the rooms out and–”

“Please, don’t.” I paused, looking down on her with disdain. “Don’t go, Mace. I’m, I’m sorry. I just…” She patted the carpet next to her. “Please, stay. I want to… You’re right. We should be honest. Sit with me, just for a little while longer.”

I could have walked out the door and left; it would have been the easiest thing in the world. But doing the easy thing isn’t usually doing the right thing; I’d learned that to my detriment in the not-too-distant past. Instead, I slid down the blank wall to sit beside her. 

She smiled gratefully, but the words came out more mournful than anything else. “I never thought… I didn’t want to believe that we’d end this way. I loved you so much. I still do, I mean, but…

“You’re right. I did come here to…” Gail’s words faded out for a moment, then she shook her head. “I thought maybe if we were back in the house, we could reconnect. Walk through the house, take a trip down memory lane, maybe go out and have some dinner afterward and… just talk. Or more, if you wanted. I miss you, Mace, and I want you back.”

“Why?”

She seemed confused by the question. “Because I love you? We’ve been together for over half our lives, and I don’t want us to end like this. I don’t want us to end at all.”

I sighed deeply. “Again, why? What is it about me that makes you want to be with me? And don’t say ‘our shared past’ or ‘because I love you.’”

“Then.. I don’t…” Frustration evident in her tone and voice, she almost snapped, “What, then? What do you want me to say? I want to be with you because I want to be with you.”

“That’s my point exactly. You want to be with me because you want to be with me. And, before all this happened, I wanted to be with you because I wanted to be with you. We were stable, even when it sucked. But I don’t want to be with you anymore, and you shouldn’t want to be with me, either.”

Before she could object, I pressed the point. “I want you to answer a question, Gail. Take your time and really think about it. I’m not going to rush you, and I promise this isn’t a trick. Will you do that for me?” She nodded, dubious. 

“Okay, here goes: Can you name five things that you and I have in common that aren’t either our kids or this house?”

Gail’s mouth opened half-way, then closed. Her brows knitted together, eyes flickering as she considered and discarded options. I’d had longer to think about it–a lot longer–so I knew where this train of thought would go, assuming she was honest in her response. Still, sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.

We had literally nothing in common anymore except for a good sex life, our shared past, and maybe one or two relatively unimportant interests. We both still liked horror movies, for example, and shared a love of college football, but that was it. On everything else? On politics, hobbies, tastes, spirituality, or any of the other aspects of our lives, big or small, we shared no common ground.

My ex-wife tried, as I had, to slip around this disconnect, answering the question without answering it. “Lots of people love each other, spend their whole lives together, with people that they don’t have a lot in common with.”

“That’s true, but most of them end up like roommates instead of husband and wife. Sometimes…” Here came the painful bit, the one I’d wanted to save her from. “Sometimes, if they have a reason to stay together, something that binds them together, like a large family…” 

I held my hands up in appeasement before she could tear my head off. “Please, don’t. I’m not blaming you for that, or trying to make you guilty, or anything like that. I’m saying that, when you have that procession of children to grandchildren with little space in between, there are more opportunities to grow together. Maybe find something the kids like that you both do, too. Failing that, the simple joy of sharing that experience with each other.

“We didn’t get that. It sucks, and it’s not fair, and it’s nobody’s fault, but we didn’t. There was this gap that was just too long for us, between our kids and, maybe, if they choose to have them, grandkids. It’s pure empty nest stuff, I know, but even empty nesters usually have something that keeps them together, some little thing or things that they like or can do together. And we just don’t have any of that.”

I looked in her eyes and saw the war going on there, between knowing this was all true–knowing, for that matter, that she already knew it was true–and accepting it. Accepting that I knew, too, that I’d figured out what she already had: that there was no coming back to us, because there was no ‘us’ to come back to.

Gail’s lip trembled; God, even now, she still looked so beautiful. I put my hand on her cheek, and the tears we’d temporarily dammed with conversation burst forth again. “I love you, Gail. You’re the mother of my children, and you were my best friend for a long time. But it’s the truth: we weren’t built to last.” She choked back a sob, her eyes dipping down to avoid mine.

“When I saw you light up in therapy, it hurt terribly, but I couldn’t figure out why,” I continued, using a soothing tone not unlike the one I’d used when comforting her after the thoughtless cruelty of our neighbor all those years ago. “I thought it was jealousy at first, and some of it was. Some of it was anger, too, that you’d… I guess, gotten the jump on me. Let me be unhappy and loyal while you were happy and disloyal. That you hadn’t been honest enough to say, ‘This isn’t working anymore.’”

My thumb stroked away the tears from one cheek; I’d meant it as a kindness, but it only made her sob once more. “But the longer I sat with it, the more it realised what hurt the most: that I was never going to be the person who could do that for you again, and that you would never be that person for me. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t have this talk sooner; I’ve been trying to work through it, and I’ll be honest: some of the anger and pain is still there, just below the surface. But mostly, I just wanted to get out of your life and get you out of mine so we could both move on and have a clean break. I was trying, in my own clumsy way, to still honor our vows. Because the only way we can really love or cherish each other now is by moving on.”

Gail’s weeping turned to a howl as she collapsed against me, clutching me like a child. I just held her and patted her for a while, letting her grieve the last illusions she had about us, about there ever being an ‘us’ again, except in the most casual of ways: weddings, the birth of our grandchildren, and all the other milestones that draw together, for the briefest of moments, those once inseparable but now perpetually apart.

I’d cried over us before, and for a long time, so I could hold this space for her without being drawn into it. I wonder, looking back, if that hurt Gail more or less than if I’d mourned alongside her; shared sorrow is lessened, but my boundaries mattered more to me now than alleviating her suffering. Even if I still loved my ex-wife, there were limits to that love, and I refused to let myself range past them. What had been unconditional was no longer.

The night had grown dark by the time she’d finished her lamentations. Gail pulled away, eyes puffy and red, before laughing. “God, I must look like hell.” She swiped angrily at her tears, embarrassment clearly showing through in her manner, mascara leaving dark smudges on the sleeves of her white shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right. I kept trying to tell myself that… that we could still make it, but you’re right. I shouldn’t have…. Shouldn’t have…”

She swallowed hard. “You’re right that I could have come here any time to look around, but I didn’t after the divorce. I just couldn’t. Up until that, until I moved out, I spent so much time here by myself, and every room I walked through… It was like being surrounded by ghosts. All the good memories just turned… bitter. Spoiled. I thought–hoped–that if you were here, maybe they’d come back, but…” Gail shook her head. “But it’s not our home anymore. It never will be again. And seeing the mural gone…”

“I know.” I leaned over and kissed the top of her head, a small gesture of comfort that had become almost reflexive over the years. “It was hard for me, too. It was hard for me to even give the order back when Don asked about repainting in here. I had time to be ready for it, though, and I should have warned you. I just…” 

I shrugged, unwilling to admit how much both being back in the house and seeing her had affected me, for good and for ill. Instead, I said the final thing I needed to say to her. “Gail, for what it’s worth: I forgive you. For all of it. For the asshole and hiding it and for my part in us falling away from each other. I–”

She surprised me with a kiss then, quickly darting in close to me before framing my face in her hands. Her lips mashed against mine, parting slightly to probe with her tongue before I could pull back. “Gail!”

“Mace, please. I mean, I mean, thank you. Thank you for forgiving me. I forgive you, too, for anything that—that might require it. But, please, I want one more thing from you. I want it for both of us.”

“What?”

“One more good memory for us. About us, here. I’ve loved you for so long, and I know–I know!–that you’re right. I’ve known for a long time, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself. But I want, or, or maybe need, to have one last happy time with you.” Her eyes dipped and came back up, bringing with them a mischievous smile. “And, like you said, this is one of the few things we have in common.” The humor fell away from her expression, leaving only a yearning, pleading look in her eyes. “Please. Let’s be good together one last time?”

I searched her face, looking for any hint of agenda or foolish hope, but found neither. Instead, I saw the beautiful young woman I’d fallen in love with, back when we believed our love could conquer everything. Maybe it hadn’t–hell, maybe it never could have–but it had made us both so happy for a time. It could make us happy one last time, too.

Gail saw my assent before I could voice it, and accepted with a crooked, lascivious grin and a long, open-mouthed kiss. There was no urgency to it, not like our frantic first coupling in the living room decades before. We took our time to savor each other. I tasted the salt of tears on her lips, tears that would have always made their way there eventually; she ran her fingers through my hair, its dark black now faded to salt and pepper. 

She broke the kiss, murmuring, “Lie down,” and tugging at my sleeve to show her where she wanted me. I moved toward the middle of the room as she knelt next to me. Deft hands unfastened my belt, unbuttoned and unzipped my pants. She didn’t move them down much, just enough to get access to the hardness tenting my underwear, but that was all either of us required.

My ex-wife, the only woman I’d ever truly loved, stroked my shaft, bringing a bead of precum to its tip before leaning low to lick it away. Her tongue flicked at the slit, then she opened wide to take my glans into her mouth, sucking at it softly, sweetly, while looking up my body. I loved when she maintained eye contact, especially when she dipped her head further down and swallowed me into her throat. My gasp elicited a slight withdrawal and chuckle from my former wife, then an enthusiastic return to her task.

We stayed like that for a long time, her bobbing, swallowing, and occasionally choking on my cock, my hand tangling in her hair to tug and pull and sometimes force as I groaned her name. Words like “cocksucker” and “slut,” once used to excoriate her, were instead turned towards playful affection. A little bit of dirty talk here and there had always been part of our foreplay; while we’d never be a couple again, reclaiming them seemed right in this moment.

Gail switched to a hands-free blowjob somewhere in there, her hands instead moving down to undo her shirt, then to pull her skirt up around her hips. Before they moved back up to cup my balls, those same slender fingers slipped her panties down enough to let a little bit of that feminine magic she’d christened our house with do their work. Then, all necessary tasks completed, Gail released me from her mouth, planting one more playful kiss on my crown before moving up to straddle me. 

My hands moved to her bra, unfastening the clasp at the front; she knew that I’d always loved removing this last piece of fabric, as if unwrapping a present from her to me. Her breasts fell free, larger and heavier than they’d been in the decades before, with a bit more sag to them. I caught them with both hands, cradling and squeezing them. 

She smiled down at me, teasing, “Still the best pair of tits you’ve ever seen?” 

In answer, I took the swollen nipples between finger and thumb, pinching and rolling them to draw a joyful sigh from her throat. “Best pair of tits on the planet.”

Her eyes half-lidded with pleasure, Gail reached behind herself to grasp me in her hand, then slid the head of my cock up and down her slit. She paused for just a moment, holding it steady, before taking me inside for the first time in almost a year. 

As she lowered herself onto my erection, the words I knew I’d hear, her breathless, “Oh God, Mace…” spurred me to action. One hand moved from her breast to her hip, gripping it tightly before ramming myself home. A noise that might have been my name repeated once more, half-pained and half-ecstatic, erupted from her; that was the last word she said until much later.

Gail’s head hung down as we found our rhythm, her blonde tresses forming a sort of dark halo, backlit by the overhead light. I became rougher and so did she, clawing at my shirt before tearing the buttons off and digging her nails into my chest, body bucking wildly as she rode me bareback both figuratively and literally. I hissed at the sudden pain but didn’t stop; we’d hurt each other too much in the past for this trifling sensation to do more than drive me onwards.

My ex-wife’s first orgasm approached, her staccato, ever-more-frequent grunts like a locomotive picking up steam. When it came–when she came–her throaty howl would have put the loudest of trainwhistles to shame. She ground against me, begging for me to keep going, to keep her going, but unable to form coherent thoughts, just a string of “More more, please, more, God Mace, more!”

I obliged. In my own way.

My lover’s post-orgasmic paralysis made her body easy to manipulate into position. I picked her up, or at least guided her descent, and onto her knees. Even amidst her blissed-out, fuck-drunk state, she understood what I wanted; we’d been together too long, known each other too intimately for her to not. She obliged, weakened though she was, by moving onto wobbly hands and knees. 

Gail managed a little chuckle when I knelt behind her, looking over her shoulder at me. Then, though, I saw fear and hesitation; our last time before I’d left had been like this but not like this: me behind her, brutally taking what I wanted in the most hurtful way I could. 

I felt my face soften from the lustful grimace I wore, then leaned over to kiss her shoulder and whisper, “Good memories only, Fuzzy. We’re only going to make good memories today.”

The woman who’d loved me and wronged me, who’d given me my moments of greatest joy and deepest sorrow, nodded, sapphire eyes shining with gratitude. Her body twisted, arm coming behind my head to pull me into a loving, sensuous kiss. My hand found her breast once more and cupped it, kneading gently. I felt her ass nudge backward against me, seeking that which had given her so much pleasure over the years. 

Breaking the kiss, Gail looked into my eyes and repeated, “Good memories,” just as what she’d sought found her. Her brow furrowed in concentration as my cock slid into her waiting center, lips parted both above and below. Finally, she groaned as though I’d expelled all the air from her lungs and turned forward to fall onto her elbows. “Good—ahh!—good fucking memories,” she gasped. “The best fucking memories.” I withdrew and thrust into her again, neither fast nor slow, hard nor gentle. “Mmm, Mason. Do it. Show me.” Her tone and volume pitched up as my tempo did. “God! Show me why I fell in love with you. Fuck me, babe. Fuck me!”

I couldn’t help but grin. After her first orgasm, Gail usually got more talkative, something I enjoyed almost as much as her inability to speak at the beginning. More, in some ways; her dirty mouth always amped me up, especially when she tried to play coy after she’d already let slip what she really felt. 

My hips slammed into hers. “Fuck you like what, Gail?”

She shook her head, blonde hair dancing across the new carpet, and giggled, “No.”

With my right hand, I gripped her flank, keeping her in place for another deep thrust. When that failed to get the reaction I sought, I raised my left and brought it down on her shapely ass with a loud thwack. She jumped and laughed even harder, then mumbled something under her breath. 

I taunted, “Say that again?”

Resolutely, Gail shook her head once more, at least until she felt my left hand move from the red handprint I’d left; that made her a lot more cooperative. “Wait!” But it was too late. Another loud slap, another shriek of laughter, another rough plunge into her welcoming heat, and my wife finally purred, “Like a slut.”

“Like a slut?”

Abigail glanced over her shoulder, all but her eyes veiled by golden tresses. The eyes were enough to read her mood: playful, bashful, needful. “Like your slut.” Then, turning away and facing the ground, she bore down and pushed back against me. “Your slut. Your…” I pulled out and drove home again. “Slut! Fuck, Mason, fuck I’ve missed you!”

Viewed by an impartial observer, what came next–the rough, lust-filled merging of our bodies; her loud, curse-laden moans; the slap of my hand against her ass and filthy goading–might have looked no different than the last time we’d come together like this, in this same house. An impartial observer, though, wouldn’t have recognized the subtle differences of tone in our voices or the nuances of how one body responded to the other. The hatefuck I’d subjected her to at the twilight of our marriage, one which she silently endured in hopes of reconnecting, bore little resemblance to this playful bit of kink between two people who knew each other’s body as if it were their own.

Gail came a second time, falling forward even further, forehead pressed against the carpet even while still trying to push back at me. Eventually, exhausted, she slid down further, arms stretched out in front of her, and I pulled her up into my lap. My lover wrapped her legs behind my back; we could have been the illustration for “concubine pose” in the Kama Sutra. 

My strength started to flag, but she urged me on, mumbling, “Again, again, so close. Please, p-please cum with me. I can feel you, Mace. I can feel it baby, you’re so close, too. I love you Mason, I love you, please—oh, God… Oh, please—Yes!” With that word, I finally drove the words from her lips again, going from short, uneven strokes to my own stillness before filling her with spurt after spurt of heat.

The room fell silent except for our panting and the beating of blood in our ears. Eventually, though, Gail managed, “Fuck, Mace.”

“Very articulate.”

Gail laughed into her arm. “Oh, fuck you. And don’t say ‘too late,’ asshole.” She really did know me. Instead of my planned retort, I instead kissed her shoulder and lay on the carpet next to her to snuggle. She stayed facedown on the floor, turning her head to look at me. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Then, realizing what I’d said, I stammered, “Uh, I mean…”

My ex-wife gave me a melancholic smile. “I know. One last time only.” The smile flickered to a frown for just a moment, then into a grin. “Still, it was nice to go out with a bang. It… it hurts to let go, but you’re right. We’re not what we were before, and I don’t think we can ever get back there again. I wish it weren’t so, but…” 

She let out a sigh. “You said I lit up when talking about all that stuff in therapy; maybe you were right. It wasn’t about Liam, ‘cause he was an asshole. It was about… about sharing that part of myself with someone. Sharing what I couldn’t with you.” 

It was my turn to frown now; Gail picked up on it, immediately changing tone to soothe me. “Hey, no. That’s not…” She reached out to cup my cheek. “What I’m saying is that I want that for you, too. I want to… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but when you show up at Hailey’s wedding, I want to see you with someone who makes you light up the way I used to. Someone who’s better for you than I was.” Then, with a little eyeroll, she admitted, “But until then, if you, you know, want someone to warm your bed…”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” We both knew I wouldn’t take Gail up on her offer; too many chances at making bad choices, for both of us, if we went down that path. But I would almost certainly keep it in mind, if only to warm me on cold nights.

“Fair enough. Now, I think–” Her eyes went wide. “Oh. Oh, shit.” Gail thrust a hand downwards, between her stomach and the floor. “Oh shit, I’m starting to drip. Don’t laugh, Mace! I’m going to ruin the carpet!” That did not have the intended effect, as I started laughing even harder, which made her laugh, too. “Stop, asshole! Go get me some wet wipes from my purse!”

Once I’d retrieved the carpet-saving wipes from the voluminous depths of her handbag, we cleaned up and dressed, joking and snarking and picking carpet lint from each other all the while. It felt almost like the best times of our marriage; only almost, though. Eventually, a lull in the conversation came, one which grew increasingly uncomfortable the longer it lasted. 

Gail broke first. “Mace, I… Thank you. I don’t just mean for… well, you know–”

“Oh, I do.”

She rolled her eyes. “Pig. But I don’t just mean for that. For, for everything. For taking the lead on the sale of the house, for talking with me today…” A small hesitation as Gail chewed on her lip. “... for having the strength to do what I couldn’t. Leaving, I mean. I loved you, and that’s part of why I wanted to stay together, but you’re right. It was as much fear of the unknown as anything else. And greed, if I’m honest; I couldn’t stand the thought of you finding the next person who… who made you feel whole like I used to. I’m sorry that I was too weak to let go. Let go the right way, I mean.”

Instead of saying anything, I opened my arms wide. She rushed into them, crushing me in a bear hug as though she never wanted to let go. However, we both knew that wasn’t true. “Mace, if you ever need anything…”

“I know.” Much like her earlier offer, I wouldn’t take her up on it, but also much like that one, I believed it. Like I said, Gail wasn’t a bad person, just a weak one. Weak like me. I could have let go, too, but I mistook stubbornness and pride for fidelity and love. It’s a mistake all too many of us make. 

“And, Gail, if you ever…” 

She silenced me with a kiss and a mumbled acknowledgement. We stayed there for another minute before she broke away from me for the last time. My former wife held on to my hand for a few moments longer, then, with a wistful smile, let it fall away. “C’mon. We should check the rest of the house.”

The last handful of rooms took longer than the earlier ones had, but the time flew by much more quickly. In each room, we’d swap memories: the time she found me sleeping on the floor next to Ethan’s bed when he had the flu; the ridiculous hoops we’d had to jump through while remodeling the guest bathroom; a naughty quickie we’d once managed in the laundry room while our toddlers napped. We laughed harder and talked more than we probably had on any given night in the final three years of our marriage; that only reaffirmed my belief that this was right for both of us.

We did a sweep of the garage last. Don hadn’t done any work in there that I knew of, but it didn’t hurt to be thorough. It was clean, with minimal dust, as I expected, but we also found something I didn’t expect.

“Hey, Mace. Look.” Gail was standing before the corkboard that sat on the far wall from where we’d entered. The board, which formerly resided above my workbench, had seen its better days; I used to pin notes to its surface and remove them constantly, wanting a neat place to work on the projects my wife asked for while still having all the info I needed at hand. 

I’d abandoned the board when I’d left the house; I had no idea if I’d ever do that kind of work again, and if I did, I could get a new one easily enough. That wasn’t the only thing I’d left behind, though.

—

It was a cheap thing, the palm tree tchotchke. A few inches long and painted with vibrant colors covered in cheap lacquer, we’d bought it in Cancún on our honeymoon; like many things there, it managed to be somehow both tacky and beautiful at the same time. I didn’t want to buy the thing; it screamed “tourist crap” to me. I’d rather have spent the money on a couple more cervezas than something that would end up on our fridge for a couple of years, then shuffled to a junk drawer. Gail loved it, though, and I loved Gail.

Somehow, it made its way to our new home, surviving the junk purge that we’d gone through when packing up our apartment. That first day, after we’d made love on the floor of our–my God, our! We owned a house!–living room, we did manage to get some unpacking done. A lot of it, actually; the futon remained unassembled, but only because we both knew that once we had a comfortable surface to recline on, we’d be done for the day.

Giddy from home ownership, accomplishment, and our usual mindblowing sex, we decided to make our first foray out into the wilds of suburbia to seek out dinner together. On the way out the door, Gail spied the corkboard with its metal strip for hanging magnets on. With a laugh, my bride darted back into the house, and I followed.

“Gail?”

“Hang on.” She was rummaging through the box labeled KITCHEN, clearly looking for something.

“C’mon, babe. It can wait until we get back. I’m hung–”

A triumphant cry cut me off. “A-ha!” Gail held up the fridge magnet like she’d discovered the cure for cancer in amongst our junk. Dancing toward me, then around me–pausing only to plant a kiss on my cheek–she headed back out through the laundry room and into the garage. I found her there, beaming with delight at the first and thus far only decoration on the board.

“Any particular reason you needed to do that now?”

“Of course there was!” She looped her arm around my waist when I came to stand beside her. “Now, every time you get in the car or get out of it, you’ll have a reminder.”

“A reminder? Pretty sure I’ll always remember that vacation. It’s not every day that your wife gives up her ass so eager–”

Gail laughed in mock outrage, slapping my chest. “No, you jerk! Of me. A reminder that you’re home now, and that someone who loves you is waiting inside.” She leaned up to nip at my neck. “And, if you play your cards right… Well, it might not be every day that your wife gives up her ass, buuuuut…” She kissed me again, then darted away, rounding to the passenger side of the car. “But for now, food!”

—

I’d left the magnet behind without a second thought. Like the corkboard, it had outlived its usefulness; I’d long since stopped thinking of the warm sands of Cancun, its wonderful nights, or the loving gesture Gail had made that first day in the house. Early in our marriage, it had acted exactly as she’d hoped; by the end, it was just one more annoyance she’d littered my life with, another unasked for intrusion.

I took the souvenir from the board and turned it over in my hands, regarding the cracked lacquer and faded paint. Time and neglect had damaged it beyond repair; it was never meant to be in a place like this, soaking up gasoline fumes and the occasional nick from an errant fragment of worn-down saw blade. No longer beautiful, but it still held memories of something that once was. Never meant to be repaired, either, no matter how much it once meant to its owner.

I offered it to Gail, but she shook her head. “Keep it. If, if you want it, I mean. I’m not saying…”

“Thanks.” I pocketed the magnet. “It’s good to… I know I left most of our wedding stuff behind when we split, so it’ll be good to have something to remind me of the good times.”

“We had a lot of them, didn’t we?”

Nodding to myself, I answered, “We did.” I glanced around the garage. “I think we’re done. With the house, I mean.”

Gail stared at me for a moment. Then, with a melancholic smile, she agreed, “Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.”

Once back in the foyer, she said, “You know, you should think about what Don said. About renting the place out, I mean. If you don’t want to have to deal with me, we could come up with some sort of deal where you buy me out. I’ll sell cheap, too; it's the least I can do.”

“Thanks, but no. It’s not…” I chuckled. “Okay, it’s not entirely that I don’t want to deal with all of that. But I want someone to have the chance we did. I want a family to move in and make it theirs, not leave it as just a sterile ‘property’ when it should be a ‘home.’ It was meant to be loved, even if only for a while.”

“You were always such a romantic, Mace.” Gail leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Always loved that about you. See you around, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Until next time, Ms., ah…”

She stopped, halfway out the door, and turned to look back at me. “Martin. Ms. Martin. It’s time, I think.” And with that, Abigail Martin was gone.

I stayed for a few more minutes, checking that we’d turned off all the lights, that no taps were dripping or entrances left ajar. Soon, the house would be filled with noise and light once more, be a home once more, but for now it lay dormant. 

Its emptiness disquieted me, even as I knew it to be for the best; to have loved something for so long and see it in this state felt almost intolerable. Was this how Gail felt when she’d stayed here after I left, haunted by the ‘ghosts’ that she’d spoken of? If so, I felt pity for her and wished once again that I’d spoken with her sooner. But I had my own ghosts to wrestle with back then, and we’d have been no good for each other. Not even for saying goodbye. No, this last meeting between us was the best either of us could have hoped for, and I was glad for it.

Shaking my head, I returned to the entrance. Then, with one last look over my shoulder, I closed the door, locked it, and left us behind.