Late to the Party ✔

18. Paint the town and the front porch

This was how her days went, for years.

Little hands would wake her up when all was still veiled by the grey of night, her husband a mere shape under the covers, and she would drag her feet out of bed, wrap herself in her pink bathrobe, and conjure up a smile. She would shush Missy, herd the twins out of the bedroom so Daddy could sleep a little longer. Later, the alarm would be the first to greet her in the mornings, and she missed those not-really-whispery voices and ache for Missy humming a sweet song or Sheldon recounting a dream about aliens and spaceships.

This was how her days started, sometimes. She would roll over in bed, collide with a big, sturdy teddy bear of a man, and be shocked to see him there, that this was where she'd ended up, in all the roles her younger self had vowed to escape. Only for a few seconds. She never allowed more, would just get up and dress and start breakfast and praise the painted skies outside the window — reds, oranges, yellows. He had tried, in the beginning, to tempt her to stay under the sheets with him, with a suggestive grin and some bawdy comments, and she'd huff and puff and get her tail up — she was a mother. She had duties.

This was how her day started, today. It was the sun that woke her up: bright and blinding, the garage swelteringly hot under its warmhearted embrace. She hummed, strangely soothed by the dazzling welcome, and snuggled closer into the body by her side, burying her face into a pillow of dark, tangled curls. She didn't want to return to reality yet, confront her sticky thighs, her sleepy mind, the pleasing ache in her tired muscles, the leftover scents of cigarette smoke and sex. All soft curves against sweat-sheened skin, a sweet, content sigh.

She looked at Jeanie, serene in her sleep, breasts rising and falling, sunlight caressing her shoulders, lips slightly parted, like in their childhood. How could it be like this? How could it feel like this, charged and falling and soaring and crashing and held, all at the same time? Jeanie, flush against her, no space between them. Finally, she stumbled upon some real guilt: that she had robbed her husband of this all these years. Their lackluster, almost dutiful meetings under the covers; she'd assumed it was what married post-baby sex was like. And hadn't she tried, the good wife she strove to be? The way she had given herself to Jeanie so entirely, so shamelessly, trusting and eager, still left wanting more — she'd never been able to do that with him. Maybe Brenda had. Maybe they both finally found what'd been missing in their marriage. Her heart swelled painfully tight, and she held her breath, willing to stop the tears welling up in frothing regret — how every time she'd fled from her marital bed before her husband woke up, she could've been watching her whole world in the lashes of a woman who kissed her like she'd never heard of the Bible.

She rolled onto her back, swallowed a sound that sprang loose somewhere low in her stomach. The stuffy air clutched onto her naked skin, and the floodgates collapsed; she pressed her palm against her mouth to keep herself quiet, but her shoulders shook, and her cheeks were wet, salt on her tongue. She hated it, didn't want this to be the first thing Jeanie would see after they'd bared their very souls to one another, only she couldn't stop: if mere hours ago, they'd been making up for eighteen years of lost kisses, now she was making up for years of frozen tears.

"Mare?"

It was the fear she'd encountered when Jeanie'd been on her knees before her, embedded in a sleepy murmur, and she turned back and shivered as she caught it in the brown of her eyes again — and again, it hit her how they'd both been hurt, by others and each other, by the whole darn world.

She turned over on her side, tenderly brushed Jeanie's hair back, left her hand on her cheek. "Silly of me," she said, voice trembling, "I was just thinking about what George said. How much of my life I wasted."

The fear dispersed by a shimmery glaze, Jeanie took the hand in her own and kissed it sweetly, rousing those butterflies she'd believed were a teenage fantasy. "You got years left, baby," she said, and yawned, her eyes flittering closed again, entwining their fingers. "In the spirit of your ex, we might be nearing halftime, but we're a long time off from calling the scores." She opened one bleary eye in an endearing, reversed wink.