make something right if I don’t know what it is.”
“I don’t think you can,” she says sadly now.
“Whatever I said, that’s the stuff I have to deal with everyday, but I choose to ignore it, and it’s fading away.”
“Not as fast as you’d like.”
“But it is. Listen, I’ve still got hurt, I’ve still got anger, I still need to let off steam every once in a while. But I’m dealing with it. That’s why I was with Paul, to burn off a little steam.”
She looks down into her lap where are hands are held tight together, knotted into a tangle of fingers, pale with red ends like drops of blood.
“Whatever I said, it isn’t how I feel. It’s just leftovers from before. I’m sorry they were said, I’m sorry you had to hear them, but I don’t mean them.”
“Well, that may be true, but they still hurt. They still blame me. They still accuse me.”
“But I don’t blame you, and I don’t accuse you. And that’s what matters.
I reach over, take her hands, untangle them. I take one and place it up against my lips. She lets me, she doesn’t resist.
Then she turns and wraps her arms around me. I can’t see her face, but I know she’s crying. I let her. I let her get out all of the anger of the last week that she’s allowed to fester in her heart.
She says she’s sorry and I forgive her again.
“So,” she says with a slight smile. “That kiss...”
I nod. “And the grabbing at me. Let’s not forget that.”
She laughs. “It’s not like you grabbed very often, I suppose,” she says.
“Thanks for pointing that out,” I say, and I wish she would grab my cock now, climb on me in the front seat and make up with some uncomfortable car sex. We won’t. We’ll drive on and find some dinner and head back home before it gets too late. We’ve got another drive and another session tomorrow, and I’ve found I need a lot of sleep before hand. All that outpouring of emotion is very tiring.
Saturday
Quinn is crying. She’s telling Grant and Mary what I had told her after Paul had bashed the back of my head in. I can feel the stitches pulling but no longer the pain, but I’m acutely aware of the pain I have caused Quinn in the aftermath. I don’t remember what I had said, and she did not tell me my exact words, but I knew they hurt her deeply.
Now I know what I said, and I’m appalled.
I told her that she was without redeeming qualities. I said that I would never, ever, forgive her. I said that she was unlovable, uncaring, unfaithful and she would never change. I accused her of the worst lying, cheating, deceit, all to my face. I accused her of using words of love, words that should have been used to connect us, and turning them into the facade of hate. Worst of all I said that she poisoned our marriage by taking the intimacy that should have been given to me and gave it to Wade. I had accused her of terrible things, just when she was starting to forgive herself.
The trouble was that I had believed all of those words at one time, but no longer. Perhaps, even though I was not aware of it, that these are things that I must deal with. They bubbled up to the surface when I was the least vigilant, the least in control of my thoughts and emotions.
“Judd,” Mary says, “how do you feel about what Quinn has just said?”
I turn to her quickly, like I’ve been startled, like I haven’t been listening. I’ve heard every word, but I’m also locked into my thoughts and my anger, which is directed within.
“Terrible,” I say. It’s the only word that comes to mind.
“More than one word answers,” Mary chides me.
I take a deep breath and let it out. “I’m an ass for saying those things. I don’t think that way, not any more.”
“But how do you feel, Judd?” Grant presses me.
“I feel... I feel terrible for saying those things to you,” I say to Quinn, looking into her face as I’ve been taught. “I don’t believe them. Not any more. Like I said. I feel terrible that I’ve hurt you.”
“Quinn...” Mary says.
She sighs. “I don’t know, Judd. You’re telling me that you don’t think that I can change and that tells me that you don’t trust me. And you sound like the old Judd, the one that I couldn’t trust, the one that pushed me away. That tells me that I can’t trust you. I’m trying here, and I want to commit myself to you, but if we don’t trust each other...”
“I do trust you.”
“Last night you said that you didn’t.”
“When did I say that?” I ask her, my voice lifting in volume and pitch.
“Judd,” Grant says quietly. I take a breath.
“Sorry,” I say, and ask the question gently.
“You accused me of looking at him again, like I want him.”
Crap, I think. I did accuse her, but it was true, she was watching him. And I have a witness. Chloe saw it too. I decide to be honest.
“Well,” I say, “weren’t you?”
“You don’t understand. It wasn’t like that.”
“So, make me understand.”
She sighs again. “You said those things and I was hurting. I just remember what it was like to be not hurting, when I was with him and he had eyes only for me. He never accused me, he just loved me. But I don’t want him, not anymore. I know it was wrong and I know that in the end it only brought more pain. I should have known that from the start but I was too caught up in it. But I’m not going back to him.”
“So you were just remembering, then?”
She nods sadly.
“Well, that’s what I was doing.”
She frowns and I explain.
“I was remembering the pain of it all. I guess it just came from trying to burn up a little aggression. But that pain is gone. I don’t feel that way and I do trust you. I didn’t just come out and accuse you of going back to him after the party, did I?”
“No.”
“So, I don’t believe you will. I mean, I was angry, I admit it, but not about that. It was being back in that place and realising that’s when you decided you loved him.”
Quinn looked down, broke eye contact. I put my hand under her chin and pulled her gaze upward.
“Look,” I continue, “the two of us... we’ve come a long way. We’re going to commit to each other, no matter what, and that stands for something. We’re going to mess this up from time to time, one or both of us, and we’re just going to have to keep forgiving each other and loving each other anyway.”
She nods slowly. I take her hand.
“Please,” I say, “don’t listen to the idiot ravings of a head case. Listen to me now. I’m telling you that none of the things I’ve said are true.”
“This week we’d like you to be intentional about intimacy on your date,” Grant says. “I don’t mean sex. I mean connecting to each other.”
“That could mean touching,” Mary adds, “looking into each others eyes and saying words of love, kissing – not just quick kisses, deep connecting kisses.”
“Intimacy is a practiced art,” Grant goes on. “We have to be intentional about it, choose to be intimate with each other. And we keep that only between ourselves. That’s intentional too. We need to be on constant guard about not giving any away to anyone other than our partner. That’s when we get into trouble.”
Grant pulls me aside as we’re leaving.
“The things you said, they were about the things that you lost, that were taken from you. This week I want you to think about those things and put them against the things that you have gained, that you’ve been given, or given back to you. I want you to concentrate on those. Write them down if you have to and come back to them.”
“Sure,” I say.
“What do you know about ‘redemption’?”
I shrug. I remember the word from classes at the temple when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago. “I’m familiar with the usual application,” I tell him.
“Well, I want you to look at how redemption plays into the dif
ference between what you lost and what you’ve gained – and in particular in regard to Quinn herself.”
I’m looking a little confused and he doesn’t go any further. “You’re not going to explain what you mean there, are you?”
“You’ll work it out.”
“Sure,” I say with a sigh.
We’re driving back to the city in silence again. Quinn places a hand upon my thigh as I drive. She has her new ring on her finger and her old wedding band behind it. I remember what we had before it all fell apart, I remember a time when we were lost in each other and saw no one else. I can’t imagine my life without her, and I guess I’m starting to feel like I did before. I’m starting to forget about Wade and her. That was our old life, our old story. We were writing a new story, with new love and new promises. That was something to hold on to. I found myself letting go of the things that I had lost, they were gone, never to return.
I smile at her and she squeezes my leg and I respond to her again and I want her. She knows she has this power over me and she’s deliberately teasing me, frustrating me. There is a tension between us, a good tension, one that is drawing me closer to her every day. I would have thought that not having sex with her would have pulled us apart, but the anticipation of making love to her was drawing me even closer to her. I wanted her, I needed her, with every fibre of my being. I remember what it was like a college, when she was with me. I wanted to kiss her so badly, and then after we had, I wanted to take her to bed and make love to her until the dawn. I feeling that way again, only worse, because I know her, I know her intimately, and that makes the longing more