Page 91 of Resistance Training
“Oh, me neither. They’re forever the worst. Everyone else from high school is still an idiot. It’s just you and me out herebeing awesome, mature grown-ups who have muscles and cats and great sex and talk like adults.”
He stares at me, his eyes travel all around my face. My eyes, my mouth. He lifts up my chin with two fingertips and says, “I love you, Vivian. I knew I loved you that summer you went to Orcas Island with your family. I know now that I never stopped loving you even when I hated you.” He exhales, as if he just lifted his weight in words.
And then he kisses me, and I say into his kiss, “I love you too.”
And then I let him go home so both of us can give our racing, broken, healing hearts a chance to repair themselves some more.
CHAPTER 27
BRAD
Emotional Fitness Journal—March 24
Today’s Intention:1.Continue being a relentlessly awesome boyfriend. 2. Try not to text her every ten minutes.
The Four F’s of Good TransFORMation
FLOW:I’m working on letting my feelings flow through me instead of burning everything to the ground. Every time I open up to her, instead of stoking the old fire, I feel relief. There is passion without limits. There is a powerful charge from desire, even without the conflict of trying to control it. Aside from the obvious restraint from tearing her clothes off and fucking her senseless in public. I have so far been successful at waiting until we’re mostly alone before turning into a savage beast with my cock out.
Also, I can actually feel my heart expanding every time I hold Bella. She fell asleep in my lap last night, and I didn’t move until she woke up. It was the longest I’d stayed still while being awake in eight years. Literally. I loved it. I spent theentire time talking to Vivian on the phone. When I called her, she answered in a panic, because apparently it was the first time I’d phoned her without texting first. She thought maybe something was wrong with Bella. But I just wanted to hear her voice. It was the first night we’d spent apart in over a week, and I missed her. It was crazy how much I missed her. Even while I was talking to her on the phone, I missed her. But it felt good because everything she makes me feel now is good.
FOUNDATION:I can feel myself creating a life built on love and trust, not fear and control. I like it. It works. People need emotional nourishment too—I get it now. Her love and acceptance isn’t conditional upon my performance or the way I look. It never was. Although I’m not gonna lie and say that I don’t like how much she likes the way I look now. This is some kind of cosmic fuel that’s going to get me through everything as long as I’m doing it for and with her.
FREEDOM:My boundaries are strong enough to be vulnerable and secure enough to let her in.
I’ve been very honest with her about how she’s turned my professional world upside down. Not literally in a chaotic way, but the new identity I created when I killed off that part of me that hurt too much…I don’t know what to do with that guy anymore.
I still need the fire and the fuel and the fortress and the fractures for my brand to work. I think. It’s going to be about integrating all these new things. Reintegrating the parts I didn’t think I could handle. I don’t know. Just admitting that I don’t know, to myself and to her…that wasn’t something I could even think about doing a month ago. But she doesn’t push me to do anything one way or another. She just listens. Validates me. She is beautiful in a million different simple andastonishing ways, but in this way, she is breathtaking and without equal.
I used to think freedom meant not needing anyone. Turns out it means trusting the right ones.
FUSION:Where we come together and I don’t fall apart.
All those places where I thought I was broken—that’s exactly where we fit together. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure she never feels abandoned again.
YOU:Today is your birthday. You are special and worth celebrating every single day of the year, but today is the day we celebrate your birth. That’s why I’m sharing the first entry of my Emotional Fitness Journal with you. Because this is also a day to celebrate my re-rebirth, thanks to you. It’s all pretty fucking cheesy, but I don’t hate it.
I transformed myself because I thought it was the only way I could get over you, and now you’re transforming me, just by being you. And by being really good at fellatio. It took me eight years to build up my resistance to you, and it took you seven days to break me down. I’m not mad about it. I’m not mad about anything anymore because I’m so fucking in love with you.
I mean, I still contain within me a sufficient amount of rage in order to aggressively remove your clothing by any means necessary, because fuck that clothing for trying to create a barrier between my eyes and mouth and hands and cock and any part of you.
I can’t stop thinking about last night with you.
I can’t stop thinking about any time with you. For instance, the time before last night when I was going down on you and you came so hard you kicked a lamp off your bedside table and bruised your hand when you flung it against the head of the bed. To be clear, I do not regret making you come that hard, but I am sorry you broke your very cool lamp and I’m sorry you bruised your very pretty and very capable hand.
However, I am very pleased that after you responded by holding back when I inevitably brought you to orgasm with my mouth and fingers last night, we agreed that a better way to prevent such accidents from happening again would be to tie you up. So you could be unrestrained in your restraints. So I could do all the things I love to do to you that force you to work your core and tense every muscle in your body until they release with a jolt and a loud sigh and my name on your lips.
The way you give yourself to me, Vivian. Your love, your trust, your body, your light. Every day it is and will be my intention to give back to you. With more trips to Powell’s Books so we can walk hand in hand down the aisles. With as many hikes as you’ll allow me to take you on. As much Cheat Day artisanal ice cream as you can handle.
You are my Aries queen, and I can’t wait to ram into you tonight. Cindy said this is “peak Aries fire season.” She said you were born when winter dies and everything comes back to life. She said that’s what you’ve been doing to my heart. She is not wrong. About anything, it seems.
I have eight birthday presents for you, not counting this one. They don’t make up for the time we lost, and that debt will never be cleared, even when you say it is, but I do look forward to giving these presents to you.
I can’t wait to see you at the gym later and then drinks with Larry and the girls, and then I will finally, finally have you all to myself again. I honestly don’t know if I have the strength to wait that long.
You were always the strong one, Vivian. I see it so clearly now. It was always you.
Vivian Elizabeth “Sparky” Sparks.
