Descending Star

VOTE

Closer to her house, they attained a kind of détente whereby they'd exhausted themselves by what felt like hours of fruitless bickering and now, more keyed up and desperate for each other than ever, despite the concomitant challenges, they'd essentially given up and agreed to let her family decide for them.

She snuggled contentedly and said, "Benjamin, at the risk of bringing up a sore spot, upstairs in your bedroom, you were a pent-up volcano. We're not talking Mount St. Helens. We're talking Krakatoa. You were making love to me illicitly, in your imagination, all summer, and I'll provisionally accept that you struck out with She Who Must Not Be Named. So please reassure me that at least occasionally, our virtual encounters provided you with a real, physical outlet."

"What are you"–

"You know what I'm asking, Benjamin. Grow up and answer me."

He sighed and confessed, "No. It felt real. But not that real."

She sighed, long and hard. Her hands worked into fists against his chest. "Then at least tell me you've masturbated."

He sighed again. What was it, with her fascination with self-manualization? He shortly said, "I feel like I'm twelve years old again. I wake up to the evidence of nocturnal emissions. Every three days at most."

She angrily said, "You know, I have a real problem with that. It's unhealthy, and you know it."

"Edythe! I told you last night that you win! You have no idea how pleased I'd be to callously screw you to death, as you've eloquently put it!"

"Then why wont you?"

He screamed out of his window again, a full-throated roar of angst that paradoxically pleased her. Through the tirade that followed, she never took her head off his shoulder or her hands off his chest.

At some point she did apologize for bringing it all up again, but to Ben's mind, she didn't sound all that sincere. Their private drive at this point was about a mile up the road, and he attempted to change the subject.

"You told me where you went, but you didn't. You went to our meadow, and then you started digging. That kind of creeps me out, so you know. You never told me how deeply you buried yourself. You only said it got warm enough to mend you, or reassemble you, or whatever."

She cuddled against him and didn't want to reply. He perceived her reticence and didn't want to press.

"We don't have to talk about it."

She shook her head. No, they did have to talk about it. But she said nothing, until she suggested, "Stop at the turn-off."

He did.

He put the truck into park, took his hands off the wheel, and waited.

She told him that he needed to know this, for whatever would come next. She began, "I am sorry that I left you. I didn't know I did. But that is no excuse."

"I'm the one who wouldn't allow you to follow me back to my house. I turned you away. It was my fault."

"No, Benjamin. I was literally falling apart. You even gave me the choice. Red eyes, or gold eyes. I look back on it, and I see it as tough love. You were at a loss. I will never, ever blame you for that. It's so strange. Even then, I knew you were right. And that's why, in my mind, we never parted.

"So anyway, yes. We went together, to our meadow. And in its center, at the origin point of the kaleidoscope, I started digging. You clung to me as we descended. I know, it's absurd and impossible, but by then I was already dreaming, fast asleep, and my body was moving on its own, with what little remained.