Three shirt deal

Chapter 43

I reached out and took the notebook from her.

"I'm sorry you saw that," I said gently. "I was so worried after you crashed the car that I went down to the Support Services Division and they recommended a psychologist named Eric Lusk. He told me he couldn't treat you through me, but suggested I keep a journal. I've been doing that in the hope that it will somehow help us."

Alexa sat in silence for a moment longer, then stood up and walked into the kitchen. I heard her rummaging around and after a couple of minutes she returned with two glasses of champagne in long, stemmed flutes.

"Here," she said, handing one to me.

"I think we need to discuss this."

"You were right to get help, Shane. I should have gone to someone myself. It's time I faced up to the fact that I'm different. I hear things coming out of my mouth and half the time I can't believe it's me saying them. I'm not sure how many men would have put up with what you did this past year. But I don't want to talk about that now." Alexa clinked her glass on mine. We both took a sip. Then she set down her flute, and drew me to her. "Practice time," she said softly.

She kissed me tentatively at first, then deeply. Her tongue slipped into my mouth and her body pressed hard against me. I felt the sudden driving heat of shared passion. We fumbled with buttons and zippers, pulling off our clothes in a desperate attempt to find each other. She was quickly down to her bra and panties and unbuckling my belt, helping me shed the rest of my clothes. Then we were naked, on the floor.

"You are everything to me," she whispered.

She held me tightly and guided me into her. Her breath quickened, warm against my ear as she began to move with me, dictating the passion and the pace of our lovemaking. Tonight was no dutiful performance. She was in control escalating us higher and higher, from one orbit to the next until we both climaxed. She moaned in pleasure as I released inside her. We smothered each other with kisses, inhaling each other, holding tight. Something valuable that once was lost had just been found. We lay like that, out of breath for several minutes.

"Practice, practice, practice," she whispered.

I had a friend who once explained his successful thirty-year marriage to me this way. "It's like team sailing," he'd said. "But you are never in the same boat. You are never one craft, always two. You sail along without problems the first few years after marriage, lust and love at the tiller, your two boats easily staying side by side. But as time passes you inevitably encounter strong winds or bad seas, and your two boats start to drift apart. The careless sailor pays no attention. He kids himself that a little separation doesn't matter. It's healthy. No need to smother one another. But soon you are so far apart no line is long enough to pull you back together. The good sailor senses the danger the first moment the boats separate and throws a line." My friend said that conversation, lovemaking, and vacation time are the ropes that keep a marriage together.

I knew that during the past year, Alexa and I had drifted far apart, but a line had just been thrown and caught. I was determined to pull with all my strength until our boats were again side by side.