Chapter Nine

 

Ezra

 

 

“Should we try to make love?”

Aiko presses her naked body to my back. She wasn’t nude when she came to bed last night, so I guess she stripped to enact this little scene. Her question feels clinical, premediated compared to how we first came together nearly a decade ago.

I was getting my Ed.D. at UCLA, and a classmate dragged me to a party in Sawtelle, where I had off-campus housing. Outside, Aiko was running some kind of makeshift photo booth from a gazebo. We were instantly attracted, and I made a rare departure from my usually cautious coupling protocol. Within hours, we were in her tiny bedroom screwing loudly and raucously, trying our best between giggles and orgasms not to wake her ornery roommate.

Should we try to make love?

That urgent, passionate night feels like a millennium ago beside her tentative question this morning. For a moment, I consider faking a snore, but it’s that kind of avoidance behavior that has dragged this out for months.

Years?

Though Aiko and I never married, we’ve been together ten years, all Noah’s life and nearly a quarter of mine.

“Ezra?” Aiko pokes her breasts into my bare back. “Did you hear me? Are you awake?”

“I’m up,” I say, my voice sleep-scratched and reluctant.

“And?” She slides her hand around to my cock. “You want to? Should we try?”

Try? Does she even hear herself?

“It shouldn’t be this hard, Ko.” I shift so her hand slides to my hip.

She deliberately moves her hand back to my dick and squeezes. “Feels hard enough to me.”

She squeezes my dick, I get hard. That’s biology, but it’s not a substitute for the healthy relationship we both deserve. We’re in our thirties, not college students looking for a quick hook-up. I’ve given in to physical urges for years, hoping it would restore what we once had.

Intimacy. Passion.

But it hasn’t and I’m no longer sure how to fix what is broken. Not between our bodies, but between our hearts.

She rolls away, the sheet snapping when she jerks it back with an angry flourish. Her feet hit the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she says, drawing a deep breath. “It’s just so frustrating. I don’t know why this is happening to us.”

I roll to sit up on my side of the bed and run weary hands through my hair. “We need to talk, Ko. Maybe it’s time to…”

I glance over my shoulder and see her seated on the edge of the bed, faced away from me, her naked back bowed, her dark head bent. “God, Ezra. We have a son. We’ve been together so long. You’re this quick to give up on us?”

“Quick?” My laugh emerges as scornful despite my best intentions. “We’ve been to couples’ counseling. We’ve done date nights. Tried sex in public to fix this. Every damn thing Dr. Cairns recommended, we tried, and things aren’t getting better.” My words fall on us, a shower of pebbles that hurt when they land on us both. “Things have gotten worse, Ko.”

“We haven’t tried everything,” Aiko says, her voice hesitant, hushed.

I stand, stretch and walk over to the window, pulling back the drapes to study Noah’s garden out back. The sprinkler isn’t on. I could have sworn I set the timer last night.

Aiko comes to stand in front of me, sandwiching her small body between my bare torso and the window. She’s donned one of her colorful robes. With her long straight hair, dark eyes and golden skin, she’s gorgeous. She’s also a brilliant photographer and a remarkable mother to my son. It’s easy to see why we began, but with our chemistry shriveled and dried and the arguments over nothing increasing—it’s hard to see us making it much further.

“Ezra, we haven’t tried everything Dr. Cairns suggested,” she says again.

“What haven’t we tried?” I ask, glancing over her head to inspect the tomatoes below, easy enough since barefoot she only reaches the middle of my chest.

“An open relationship.”

My eyes jerk from a row of peas to her determined expression with her wide, tight mouth, set jaw and pleading eyes. “We didn’t try it because it’s a bad idea. You actually think me fucking someone else is the answer?”

“Maybe me fucking someone else is.”

She probably says that to get a rise out of me, but we’re past that. At least, I am. “Doesn’t the fact that you want to sleep with another guy tell you something?”

“Maybe we just need a jolt, and experimenting a little could do that. Dr. Cairns’ suggestion about an open relationship was to save what we have, not end it. You once asked me to marry you, Ezra.”

“And you refused. You did us both a favor.”

“You only asked because I was pregnant.”

We’d only been dating five months when she realized she was pregnant. My mother had asked in horror if Aiko was planning to raise her grandson as Hindu? Hearing that most Vietnamese are Buddhist, not Hindu, didn’t make Mama feel any better. I assured her my girlfriend didn’t practice anything except photography. Aiko’s profession is her religion, and she’s practically evangelical in her zeal for it. She is about as much a practicing Buddhist as I am a Jew, despite my mother’s efforts.

“You know I don’t believe in marriage,” Aiko says, “but we’re as close as I’ll ever come. You don’t just discard that after so many years.”

There are lots of ways I could pick this argument apart. One of the main reasons I haven’t is still asleep down the hall.

Noah.

It’s so simple with the three of us living under the same roof. I cannot see my son less. I want to read with him every night before he goes to bed. Breaking up with Aiko means breaking this arrangement, and things may have cooled between us sexually and emotionally, but we’re still a family. We’ve raised an extraordinary little human so far, knock on wood, and we make a good team. I had no reason to disrupt that, but I’m afraid the disintegrating romance is now eroding everything else.

She loops her arms around my neck and lifts up to whisper in my ear. ”Even if I fuck someone else, I’ll always want to fuck you. I still want you, Ezra, and you still want me. Remember Taco Tuesday?”

Our whole neighborhood gathers for tacos every Tuesday, and one night a few weeks ago the patio bartender had a heavy hand. Wednesday morning, I had a hangover, hazy memories and regret to show for it. I’m not a monk. Every morning in the shower, my sexual frustration goes down the drain. I can’t explain it other than we’ve been living like roommates for so long, practically platonically, that sex with Aiko just doesn’t feel right anymore. Something can feel good, but not feel right. That night, we may have managed to feel good for a few moments, but I can’t remember the last time we felt right together.

“It was the margaritas.” I reach up to gently disentangle her hand from around my neck. Her arms flop to her side and she looks up at me, her expression earnest.

“It was beautiful. We slept together and it was beautiful again,” Aiko says, though I don’t know if she even believes that. I was too wasted to remember if it was beautiful or not. “I just want to get back to us.”

“And this is your solution?” I shake my head. “Not interested. I don’t want an open relationship. Or one that feels like…”

A prison.

I don’t say it because I don’t want to hurt her, but our life together, that bed when we’re beside each other, feels like a cell. I still care about her deeply, admire her. But I want to be her friend again, not her inmate.

“Remember in counseling when we talked about what we saw growing up?” I ask, taking a different tack. “What we saw in our parents and how it affects us?”

“Yeah,” she says, her eyes resigned because she knows my family history—probably knows what I’m going to say. She never met her father, a Japanese man who died before he could give her much more than her name.

“We’ve been struggling for a while, but I wanted to make this work for so many reasons. I wanted us to be a family for Noah. I wanted it to work because you’re fantastic, and who wouldn’t want to spend their life with you?” I sit on the edge of the window sill, looking out at our backyard, the garden Noah and I planted, the memories we’ve made here as a family.

“But you know what I’ve come to realize?” I ask, shifting my gaze back to Aiko. “I also tried to make it work because I grew up seeing my parents trying to make it work. Saw this huge gulf between them grow bigger and bigger, and the love that brought them together in the first place wasn’t enough to fill it. They never gave up on the marriage, but somewhere along the way, they gave up on each other.”

I take her hand and look into the familiar dark eyes swimming with bright tears. “I’d rather give up on this relationship than give up on you, Ko, and if we continue down this road, I’m afraid we’ll keep going through the motions but end up resenting each other.”

“You resent me?”

“No, but I think there’s something you need that I’m not giving you and something I need that I’m not getting.”

“Is it that piece of paper?” Her voice is dismissive, her tone bordering on derisive. “You’re such a traditionalist. If we’d gotten married, would you be ‘getting what you needed’?”

She’s right. In a lot of ways I am traditional. I did always think I’d get married, even when I was young. In the midst of this thorny conversation, a memory sprouts, a fragile bud that opens, reminding me of my earliest ideas of marriage and family and what it meant to choose one person for the rest of your life.

When I was six years old, I got married on a spring day in my backyard. The bride wore a Paula Abdul T-shirt that declared Straight Up on the front. There was a tiny hole in the toe of her Keds, and her pink sock poked through it. Her hair was artfully arranged into two afro puffs. The groom wore a Superman cape and swimming trunks. Who knows why six-year-old Ezra was obsessed with swimming trunks, but there you have it. Mama had taken me to Aunt Rose’s wedding in New York, and I knew as soon as I got back to Atlanta, my best friend and I should get married.

For once, Kimba let me have my way.

The low-hanging branches of the elm tree out back formed our chuppah. I couldn’t remember any of the Sheva Brachot, so I made up my own seven blessings. I’m pretty sure they were things like all-you-can-eat pizza and Super Mario Brothers high scores. I grabbed two tabs from cans of Coke in the refrigerator for our rings. I can still feel the cold metal encircling my finger. I couldn’t remember why they broke the glass at Aunt Rose’s wedding, but we dropped one of Mama’s mason jars on a rock, jumping back and laughing when it shattered everywhere.

And that was it. We were married. Kimba said we shouldn’t tell the grown-ups because they wouldn’t understand, and we should wait ’til we were older. She always seemed to know best, so I agreed.

“Ezra,” Aiko prods. “Would marriage make a difference?”

I clear my throat, refocusing my attention to look her straight in the eye. “No, I don’t think we should get married, but you keep bringing up this open relationship. Tell me the truth. Is there someone you want to sleep with?”

To her credit, she doesn’t flinch, but I know her. That left eye twitches, which gives her away when she tries to lie or hide something from me. It’s how I always beat her in poker.

“There’s a guy I might…” She tightens the robe belt at her small waist. “Might be interested in. You know the photography safari I’m going on next week?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s, um, going, too,” she says quickly, licking her lips.

Now it makes sense. She wants me to agree to this ridiculous open relationship so she and her fuck buddy can have at it for a month in the Serengeti.

“It’s not just me,” she says hastily. “An open relationship would mean expanding the parameters of fidelity for us both. I know you’ve been faithful. So have I, always, but isn’t there someone you’ve…ya know, been attracted to?”

I swallow hard, not quite catching the memory I suppress on a regular basis before it rises up to torture me. Kimba Allen, all grown up and grieving at her father’s funeral two years ago. So lush leaning into me. I wasn’t prepared for the hug—hadn’t expected to feel her. The elegant black dress had caressed her full, firm curves, and I’d curled my hand reflexively at her waist. I hadn’t wanted to let go. As children we’d been close, but the thing I felt when I saw Kimba for the first time since the summer of ninth grade? It was more. Instantly more, and the kind of attraction a man feels for a woman. In just those few moments, it felt real and deep in a way I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had. By then, Aiko and I were already in counseling and things weren’t great. My strong response to Kimba warned it wouldn’t be wise to maintain contact, but I’d still started the question.

“Should we…”

Exchange numbers? Stay in touch? Hold on tight?

I didn’t ask, but she looked at me, read me, I think.

And answered the question with goodbye.

She saw my son. She saw Aiko. She may have even felt the instant connection that sprang fully born inside of me as soon as I laid eyes on her after twenty years, and she knew it was dangerous. So did I, but some reckless part of me wanted to say fuck it. Message me. Talk to me. Sit on the phone with me for hours and I’ll listen to you breathe.

Just come back into my life, Tru. I want to keep feeling this.

But I didn’t say any of that, and she said goodbye and I went home with my family.

And that was right.

But the suit I wore to that funeral carried her scent for weeks. I furtively sniffed the lapels, hungry to inhale what was left of her in the fibers.

“There’s no one in particular,” I lie. “But again, I’m not standing in your way.”

“So you’re fine with me and Chaz.” She looks down at the silk belt she rubs between her fingers. “That’s his name, Chaz. You’re fine if we—”

“An open relationship isn’t the answer.” I lift her chin, coaxing her to meet my eyes. “I want to be with someone who only wants to be with me, and it would kill me if she was with someone else. You and I want different things.”

“Isn’t there a part of you that still wants me?” she asks, her voice husky, desperate.

I glance down at her slim loveliness.  She’s beautiful and some men would kill for what I have, but I don’t feel that for Aiko anymore. I don’t know when it stopped exactly, but I do know for weeks when I would open that closet and catch the slightest lingering trace of Kimba’s scent, I’d go fully erect. I have a semi now just thinking about her. Guilt gnaws at my insides, and I step back from Aiko. I wish so many things were different, but if any one thing had changed, I might not have Noah, and he’s the best thing to ever happen to me.

“I want you to be happy, Ko.” I bend to kiss her forehead and squeeze her shoulder. “I’m not made for an open relationship, but I’m releasing you from this one.”

“Ezra.” She closes her eyes, and a tear slips over her cheek. “Oh, God. Is this really happening?”

So this is what the end feels like. Like rolling down a hill for years, wondering if you’ll ever land in a ravine, and then stopping suddenly. Crashing. Abrupt. Painful.

I thumb the wetness from her face. “There’s a lot to sort out. Noah is my first concern. We never married, but to him, this will feel like a divorce.”

“His birthday is coming up.” She bites her lip, blinking damp lashes. “I already feel awful that I’ll be away on this trip for it. Could we let him enjoy his party? I don’t want this cloud hanging over it. He’s so excited about his friends coming and—”

“I agree. We’ll let him have his party.” I kiss her forehead, pull her into a hug, swallowing against the painful burning of my throat. “We’ll tell him when you get back.”