Bad Love

Chapter 11

Andrew returned home and spent only a few minutes talking with Jasmine about the play before repairing to his room to begin work on the novel he'd been putting off writing for years. He undertook the endeavour without so much as a jumping off point. He had no ideas as to plot, themes, characters, setting or motif. He sat at the desk in his room with a blank pad before him waiting for something akin to inspiration to strike him. He knew he wanted to write something politically and socially relevant, an allegory, perhaps, something that when considered years later would be regarded as prescient, with strong characters that are simultaneously confronting the issues of the world around them and those of their very own individual humanity. But where and how to begin? The tyranny of the blank page, of which he had only a theoretical understanding, terrorized him all night. The sun came up without him having written a single word; he also hadn't had sex with Jasmine, the first time that had happened since they'd become lovers.

Jasmine had waited anxiously for Andrew to return from the play, fearful of the possibility that Melissa's play had stirred in him certain feelings that made him desire reconciliation with her. His behaviour upon his return did nothing to assuage her; he was pithy and his mind was clearly elsewhere. His answer of "it was okay" when she asked him about the play added to her anxiety. Previously he had spoken extensively and positively about the short stories Melissa had written and was expecting him to be similarly enthusiastic about her play. Jasmine had been planning on using the sex they had that night to gauge the effect Melissa's play had had on him. That he left her for the night without them sharing any physical contact at all caused her tremendous worry, enough to keep her up for most of the night, looking periodically from her bedroom door into the hallway at the light underneath his door, wondering if he was in there working out how to escape from her so that he could go back to Melissa. In the days that followed Jasmine's uncertainty about where she stood with Andrew grew. The morning after the play she didn't see him, she only saw him later that afternoon when she returned from collecting Lucy from school. There was something radically different about him, she'd gotten to know him well enough to know as much. His behaviour wasn't out of the ordinary, not when he was with her or when he was with Lucy, but the feeling Jasmine got from him was that he wasn't there with them entirely. She looked into his eyes and it was as if there was a membrane over them, excluding her from what was going on behind them that he refused to tell her about. She felt her exclusion keenly; after the trust and closeness they'd developed it hurt that he could so summarily close himself off from her. In bed, their lovemaking lost that which had made it special—his absolute focus on ensuring her pleasure—and had regressed to a level only slightly above that of a physical transaction. They were only having sex once a day at night after Lucy was asleep, after which Andrew was quick to return to his room, leaving Jasmine to wonder what had happened that night of the play to bring about this change in him. His touch had less gentleness and consideration to it, he kissed her without lingering ephemerally on her lips the way he always did. There was a distractedness and perfunctoriness about him when he was in bed with her; he was going through the motions with her the way she did with her husband. Something huge had happened that night of the play, obviously involving Melissa. Jasmine struggled to but couldn't understand why he wasn't talking to her about it. Was he depressed because there'd been a rupture in his relationship with Melissa or was he depressed about being here with her and not Melissa? Either way Jasmine needed an answer; she was having this affair with him because she was tired of being excluded and used by her husband and that's what it felt like was happening now; as hypocritical as it sounded she felt betrayed by the person she was having an affair with.

The more Jasmine had listened to Andrew talking about Melissa over the weeks she'd probed him about her the more she understood that she was very much second to Melissa where Andrew's appreciation of their minds was concerned. What was she going to do if he had grown tired of her body, which he had professed to worship? A feeling she had had several times before returned to Jasmine, that of a fierce desire to protect Andrew for herself. Unknowingly taking a page out of Melissa's book, Jasmine decided she would use sex to remind Andrew of her value. When he entered her bedroom on the fourth night since the night of the play she got aggressive and left no room for him to have any doubts about the experience she was about to give him. Drawing on a side of herself she never knew she had Jasmine overwhelmed him with sexual force, grabbing his face firmly in her hands and kissing him heavily. She took him by his hands and sultrily led him to the bed, where she pulled him down on top of her and wrapped her legs tightly around him, inviting him to be unrestrained with her. Andrew didn't oblige, so Jasmine changed their position so that she was on top, and being in charge demonstrated the lengths to which she was willing to go to please him.

It started out as an exercise intended to show Andrew that she could be passionate and adventurous, but, looking down at him lying beneath her, looking up at her with an indecipherable face that was clearly not the face of someone ascending to ever greater heights of pleasure, Jasmine quickly got angry and her anger manifested itself in her movement. She was angry at Andrew for not talking to her and making her feel unwanted all these days, she was angry at herself for getting into this affair with a boy who was half her age, an affair that, now that she was taking something of an objective look at the two of them together, made very little, if any, sense. When it was over she didn't collapse on top of him so he could hold her in his arms like he always did after they'd been together; she placed herself next to him facing away from him, not entirely sure of what she wanted to happen next.

Andrew got out of bed and quietly left the room. Alone, Jasmine thought about what she had just done and realized that her husband would have loved the person she was tonight and would have taken her without hesitation the way she wanted Andrew to take her, which he had refused to do. Jasmine broke down in tears as, for the first time, she understood fully how much Andrew loved her and how much she loved him. He wouldn't reciprocate her aggressiveness because he had far too much respect for her, and that look on his face had been one of confusion and hurt. There existed between them a deep bond that she had violated with her licentious display. A sense of shame came over Jasmine; her behaviour had been atrocious and she had done damage to what was presently the most important relationship in her life. She needed to correct this, as unbearable as the past four days had been the idea of a serious break with Andrew was unimaginable. She remained in bed waiting for her tears to cease, she then clothed herself in her nightgown and washed her face over her bathroom sink. She was going to his room to explain herself and apologise and hopefully get some answers from him as well. Without knocking she entered his room. He was sitting hunched over the desk with his head cradled in the palm of his right hand. Jasmine felt a stab of contrition looking at him; in her paranoia and insecurity she had further burdened him with the problem of another woman in his life giving him a lot to contemplate. Her entrance appeared to go unnoticed by him despite her making no effort to enter quietly. Jasmine could have taken his lack of acknowledgment of her entrance as a cue not to do this now but she didn't. She walked in and seated herself behind him on the bed, looking at him piteously and wanting nothing more than to set him free from the many burdens he had pressing down on him.

"I'm sorry," Jasmine said meekly, "I'm worried about losing you; I'm worried that you've been spending these last four days remembering how much you love Melissa."

Andrew raised his head from his hand and turned to face Jasmine, seeing now the fear and worry that he should have perceived when she'd come at him so aggressively just moments earlier.

"I'm not leaving you, and I'm sorry too, for driving you to such desperation," he said, reassuringly. "Don't ever do that again, okay? I love you far too much to see you...be that way."

"What happened that night, at the play?"

"I only stayed for half of the first act; there was too much truth in Melissa's interpretation of the events of our lives for me to take."

"Why didn't you say anything to me? If our relationship is really about more than just sex then you should be talking to me about things like this."

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about what Melissa said about me in that play, that for all my talk about aspiring to intellectual greatness I'm nothing but a man of inaction."

Andrew reached to one of the shelves above the desk and pulled down from it a stapled sheaf of papers that he handed to Jasmine.

"Here."

"What is this?"

"Chapter one of the novel that I've been putting off writing my whole life."

"You're giving this to me to read first?" She asked him, to which he nodded in confirmation.

"I'm going to be like this for a while; I'm going to need your patience and understanding."

"You'll have it."

Just then Andrew leaned forward and kissed Jasmine the way she liked him to kiss her, softly and lingeringly.

"Can you just promise me that when you're with me in bed you'll be there completely?"

"I can promise you I'll try."