Page 2 of Towles

The parking lot faded as I pulled down the road, watching through the mirror. An image of a man-child formed, and he stayed at the forefront of my mind the entire trip home.

When I pulled into our Danvers neighborhood house, Paul’s car sat in the garage. The two-story, multi-million dollar home put us where he wanted us to be. Most of Pine Bluff’s elite lived in Danvers. Most of the houses were run by nannies because the men were rich, and the wives left in the mornings for breakfast with the girls, then spent an hour at hot yoga before pastries at the club and an afternoon by the pool. When most wives got home, nannies had snacks ready for the kids arriving home from school.

Paul and I were a bit different. He wanted a wife that stayed home and rubbed shoulders with the other wives. He had the mindset of his grandfather, expecting dinner on the table and my ass in the bed. Ten years his junior, I wanted a career, and besides, the intrigue of an older man wore off long ago. To keep the peace, I played the role of a happy wife.

“Lovely, I’m home.” He preferred words like lovely and mon amour. He preferred to use ma cherie. I longed for the informal, hey, baby.

I pulled the casserole made by the housekeeper earlier in the day from the refrigerator and popped it into the oven. I assumed Paul was sitting in his office, reading the news or watching the stock market. Paul claimed he loved the housekeeper’s cooking. If he were honest, the food rarely tasted good and only made us hungrier closer to bedtime.

Paul worked from home, making his office his kingdom. The dark cherry wood and black furniture needed a woman’s touch, but he refused, claiming the room was exactly what every successful man needed. He sat in the office chair when we “needed” to talk, looking across his desk at an intended subordinate. I hated the room and the false sense of empowerment that it gave Paul.

Paul and I met ten years ago at a Denver convention center. I was the young psychiatric graduate, and he was the businessman sitting at the hotel bar nursing a drink and watching me through the mirror behind the bar. College boys did nothing for me back then. Seeing this older man’s staring eyes gave me a Sleeping Beauty complex; the prince finally came to take me away. I fell for the black, product-filled hair and lightly graying temples. I fell for the fitted suit and the presence of a manliness that didn’t exist among my peers. I learned too late that the manliness was fake.

He knew these things and milked them every day of our marriage. I thought he could show me the world outside the bedroom and teach me things inside the bedroom I never thought possible. Older men were the teachers of younger women, right?

Those things were true with most older men, but Paul was different. Lucky me.

“Ma cherie,” Paul said, smiling from behind a computer screen, sitting in his leather chair, the self-proclaimed business god. He was in the same chair this morning when I left. Like every other time I came home, I moved behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder for him to pat. No kiss. No hug. If days of romance had ever come, I would now say they were gone. The leather chair smell was a reminder of the man-child’s leather vest.

Paul understood the stock market but not women. He understood numbers, not clits. Instead of pushing his keyboard aside and bending me over the desk, he pointed to the stock ticker on the screen. I compartmentalized and moved to the desk’s front, getting down on my knees. The entire front center of the desk was open, so he could stretch his legs without scooting back away from the desk.

Because Paul refused to share in any fantasy, especially mine, I had to create them on my own. I pretended we were at a posh dinner, the lights low. At only five-three, crawling under the desk was a cinch.

Paul said anal sex belonged in porn movies, not in our bedroom. Telling me we couldn’t do it led to a fantasy I knew I could never have. Under the desk, I freed Paul’s cock, and a series of sighs and whimpers erupted. The stock market didn’t close for another fifteen minutes. The market was up more than he was.

I put him in my mouth until the floppiness left and the hard-on came. I crawled away and then backed under the desk, hoping he’d grab my hair like the reins on a horse. He did not. I pulled my skirt up and shoved my thongs to my knees.

Paul’s cock bounced from one cheek to the other but never explored between them. Disappointment killed my soul. I reached between my legs and found my clit, man-child on my mind, and between my legs. I moaned and eventually came with the stock market closing bell ringing loudly above. Such was my life.

I crawled forward and turned, heading back under the desk, tasting Paul’s cock. He leaned back in the chair and rested his hands on the chair’s arms instead of on my head—more disappointment.

This was my weakness. I took what I could get from Paul, but something was better than nothing with this man. I sucked him harder, using my tongue’s tip along the underside, careful no teeth were involved. And then it happened. No surprises with Paul. When he felt as if he would come, he pushed me away and used his hand to finish. Devastated, I sat back and watched him spray the hardwood floor.

His orgasm was over in a heartbeat, and his cock went limp just as quickly. I stared at the glistening semen on the floor, and tears flowed.

Before standing, I wiped away the tears. I didn’t count on him pleasing me the way I wanted to please him. Only on the days when the stock market lost did I win. He took out his disappointment on me in the bedroom, the only time he ever fucked me like a real man.

“Are you okay, ma cherie?” He asked suspiciously. A handkerchief stuck to his hand, and he pulled it away. Paul always kept a handkerchief in his office to clean up his messes. He reached out, urging me around the desk. “Tonight, when we retire to bed, ma cherie. I will please you. ” Another of his lies.

Paul kissed my hand, not bothering to put his lips on mine. I didn’t doubt that he loved me, but the love was too similar to how two friends who lived in separate places loved each other. He explained his love as existential. I explained it as empty, though I never told him that. It would hurt his feelings and make him question his standing in the circles we ran.

Once upon a time, I explained consummate love to Paul, and he acknowledged the conversation. I left the conversation where I started—lost. That evening, I looked in the mirror and explained to the woman staring back at me that she had everything most other couples we knew wanted. The woman acknowledged the conversation because her training called for her to do that.

I left Paul to his stock market and semen-covered handkerchief and went to the kitchen, the place Paul had specially designed when he bought the house. It had everything I needed. The house had everything I needed—according to Paul. In truth, the house was just a house, not a home.

We sat at opposite ends of the table, Paul explaining his next business trip while staring at his phone. I pleaded with my eyes for him to drop everything and fuck me on the table. His eyes remained on his phone, and he never saw the begging stare.

Paul listened to the Los Angeles Dodgers game on the radio in the den, and I spent two and a half hours watching him. At that time, I decided I didn’t love Paul anymore. He offered nothing but a roof over my head. I gave him the good girl that his parents told him he needed. Marry the woman fresh out of college. Train her to be a good, obedient wife. That’s what he did.

My next thoughts were spurred by the man-child I’d watched earlier in the day. I saw freedom in the young man’s life. Though he looked educated, his education had not trapped him into a life of boredom like so many graduates I knew—me, for one. I remembered how he gripped the handlebars of his monster bike and how his forearms and biceps bulged beneath the God-like grip. I wanted to know what it felt like to have hands like those around my hips. I wanted to experience manly confidence instead of Paul’s “I’m the best stock broker in the world” confidence.

Paul promptly went to bed at nine and fell asleep by nine-fifteen, as he did every night. Tomorrow began an entire week of me being alone in a house I always felt alone in. With Paul sleeping, I went downstairs to his perfectly designed, cherry wood office and sat in the leather chair that reminded me of man-child. I propped my feet on the desk and spread my legs, nudging the laptop away. The screen came to life, and I clicked on the Internet. A porn site opened in the browser, and I watched the last clip Paul watched.

Tears filled my eyes, but I came before the six-minute clip ended, feeling the warm juices as they ran beneath my ass, some of which spilled over Paul’s left-behind semen. I closed the laptop and stood. The leather chair glistened like a new blanket of snow. It was one of the few times my juices mixed with Paul’s semen. For the first time in our ten-year marriage, I hated the man. I wanted someone like man-child. Hell, I wanted man-child, though I thought I’d never see him again. That’s the way the universe treated me.

I walked from Paul’s office and gave the universe the finger. Fuck it, and fuck Paul. I wanted more out of life, but those things weren’t coming for me. I had to find them. Paul kissed my forehead the following day and left for his Seattle trip. Neither of our lives would ever be the same.

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