DISCLAIMER: Guiding Light and its characters are the property of Procter & Gamble; no copyright infringement is intended.
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Night had fallen in Springfield.
All the necessary phone calls had been made, and baby Colin had finally drifted off to sleep.
So his parents headed for the shower, by unspoken agreement, shedding their clothes along the way.
They showered together, trying ever-so-cautiously to recapture their old intimacy.
Reva dropped down on her knees, to gently touch and kiss Jeffrey's new scars from the bullet wounds.
She decided not to fondle other parts of him while she was down there. She'd been playfully flirtatious earlier in the day, and he'd seemed to enjoy it. But now that they were actually naked in the shower, she felt inhibited. After all he's been through, I should let him take the lead, sexually. Not do anything meant specifically to arouse him.
Instead, she rose and put her arms around him, nestling close to him under the stream of water. "It just occurred to me...I know you have survival skills. And you were in a remote village. Did you have to extract those bullets yourself?"
He nodded. "Yes. That...wasn't pleasant. At least they were in places I could reach. But..."
She'd guessed the experience had been worse than he made it sound when he described it to her and Josh. "Go on," she said softly. "Tell me."
"The blood loss almost did me in. And infections. My leg, I thought for a couple days I might have to - never mind."
She stiffened.
My God. Did he mean what I think? If he'd tried to amputate his own leg, in primitive conditions, he couldn't possibly have survived!
Stepping half-out of the shower spray, he told her more. "I had a painful back injury, too. Even after the leg began healing, I was afraid I'd never be able to do much walking.
"Of course, in that situation - and with Edmund dead - I would have phoned someone, anyone, to request help. But a cell phone wouldn't work in the jungle. And the villagers didn't have any means of contacting the outside world. I eventually learned medics came by 'every six months or so.' Otherwise, the locals were on their own.
"They were very kind," he assured her. "They tried to be helpful. But for the first few weeks, we could only communicate through gestures. They didn't understand English or Spanish. I have at least a smattering of most of the languages spoken in Mexico, but this was Nicaragua.
"It was a good thing the shot I'd gotten off missed. I couldn't explain anything. I think they just decided I was the good guy because I had two bullets in me, and Edmund's only wound was the fatal one. It was obvious he couldn't have fired one shot, let alone two, after I drove a dagger into his brain. So it looked as if I'd been the victim of an unprovoked attack, then defended myself the only way I could.
"I didn't tell them I'd had a gun, and they never found it. But I found it myself, before I hiked out. Doesn't hurt to have protection, in a jungle!"
"Wait a minute." She was looking up into his face now, brushing the water out of her eyes. "After all that, you had to hike out of the jungle?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"Yes. And without a GPS. That had been damaged beyond repair when I fell out of the tree."
"H-how long ago was this?"
He'd told her and Josh that he'd been shot three months ago, and had then been "stuck in the jungle for months." He'd hurried on to something else before they could ask questions. She'd unconsciously assumed that "months," in that context, meant two months. That someone had eventually learned of his plight and sent a chopper to fly him back to civilization, and he'd spent some time in a Nicaraguan hospital.
She'd also been assuming he'd waited till he was back in the States to make that phone call to her, to check whether she was alive. But come to think of it, why would he have waited?
"I made it to Managua three days ago."
The day she'd received the call.
"Good Lord..." She realized she was trembling, and weeping.
And then, suddenly, he was trembling and weeping, too.
They clung together, letting it all out.
But then Reva felt shell-shocked. Frightened by the vulnerability she'd been forced to recognize, not only in herself, but in him.
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They somehow turned the shower off, got out of it, and dried themselves - letting their wet hair stay that way. Hurried to crawl into bed. Where they lay on their backs, staring at the ceiling.
Not touching.
Neither of them had thought to turn off the overhead light. Or was willing to get up again, parading their solitary nudity, to do it.
That afternoon, when Reva knew she'd looked far from her best, she'd seen desire for her - yearning for her - in his eyes. But now...
There'd been nothing overtly sexual in the shower.
He opened up to me about how - terrifying? - his ordeal in Nicaragua was. But now he's withdrawn. Why isn't he turning to me for the comfort only a woman can give?
And why am I afraid to make the first move, with my own husband?
"Jeffrey?" She swallowed hard. "There's something that worries me. I realized what it was when - well, when we took our clothes off. And I think I should be upfront about it.
"I'm afraid that for a year and a half, you've been clinging to some idealized image of me. And now, your flesh-and-blood, aging wife won't be able to measure up."
He rolled on his side and stared at her. "My God, Reva," he said softly. "You don't understand yourself at all, don't see what you are. You're like...a diamond with a thousand facets. No photo could do you justice, no image in my mind could do you justice. The reality of you takes my breath away. It always will."
She could only murmur a stunned "Oh."
"And I'll be eternally grateful," he continued, "for what you showed me this afternoon - that you'd meant to keep wearing both our wedding rings, on that chain around your neck. If not for that, I'd have all kinds of worries. I'd be imagining you'd gotten over me long ago, moved on, but felt obliged to take me back because we were married."
"Oh, God," she whispered, "no!"
"About 'idealized images'? I think I had one of myself, and I'm the one who didn't measure up. I didn't exactly cut a dashing figure in Nicaragua! I came within a hair's breadth of being killed. Edmund had won. He did himself in, by foolishly playing mind games with me when he could have finished me off.
"And then, because I'd let him wound me badly, I was trapped there for months. Almost died from the wounds, easily could have died later, in the jungle, without getting word back to anyone that Edmund had been dealt with.
"So much for the 'experienced operative.' A rank amateur could have done as well or better."
Reva wondered if he really meant Josh could have done as well or better.
She thought for a moment, then said, "You're being too hard on yourself. If an amateur had been shot, and then taken a hard fall, there's no way he would have recovered enough to grab a dagger before Edmund reached him. And even if he did somehow manage to kill Edmund, he wouldn't have survived to get to Managua.
"But beyond that, you're forgetting something. Something that's very important to me.
"You told us that when you and Jonathan surprised Edmund in North Carolina, you tried to make a citizen's arrest. To do things the right way, the legal way - even though Edmund had just tried to kill you, and almost succeeded."
"Uh, yes." He sounded as if he hadn't thought about that recently. "I would have turned him over to the proper authorities. We could have made a case against him, at least for keeping silent when he knew another man's corpse had been misidentified as his, and trying to frame you for his murder.
"But when he started shooting, and a carload of bodyguards showed up, it was a foregone conclusion he'd get away."
Reva prompted, "If you'd come out with your own gun blazing..."
"I would have been able to kill him," he said slowly. "And Jonathan and I would have survived. Edmund wasn't a man who inspired personal loyalty. If his bodyguards got there after he'd gone down, they probably would have asked whether I was hiring!"
"But you would have been - at least in some people's eyes - a murderer," she told him. "None of what happened later would have been necessary if you'd acted like a thug in North Carolina. But you're my hero because you didn't."
"Oh!" The beginnings of a smile appeared; it spread slowly across his face. Then he captured her hand, brought it up to his lips, and kissed it.
After a few minutes' silence, he said, "There may be another problem, Reva. What you said about aging?
"I see you as ageless. But..." He hesitated, then blurted out, "I think there's something wrong with me. Maybe it doesn't show. Maybe it's temporary - I hope so.
"Headed for home at last, I was running on adrenalin. When we met this afternoon...if the person with us had been anyone but Josh, I would have asked that person to look the other way and keep Colin looking the other way, and I would have made passionate love to you, then and there.
"But by now, I'm back to feeling the way I've felt for the last few months. Twenty years older than I did a year and a half ago."
So that's it!
She sat up in bed and took a long, hard look at him.
Then she said, "You listen to me, Jeffrey O'Neill. You need nutritious food. You need vitamins. You may still need the blood transfusions you should have had months ago. And you need medical treatment for your back - after we'd been together for a few hours today, I realized you were wincing every time you picked up Colin.
"But most of all, you need rest. Time to relax, and recover from the whole nightmarish chase after Edmund and what followed.
"So you're going to get all those things.
"And you're going to be okay, we're going to be okay, everything's going to be okay."
He was smiling again. A weary smile...but a loving smile. "If you say so."
"I do."
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By now Reva was sure that on this night, they wouldn't get beyond holding, stroking, and soothing each other.
That would be enough. More than enough.
But after a half-hour of that gentlest form of lovemaking, other things began to happen.
Very interesting things.
A few minutes later, she heard herself saying breathlessly, "Jeffrey? Are you sure we're not teenagers?"
A strong, confident voice replied, "I'm sure we are teenagers. Horny teenagers who had some kind of dream about being a middle-aged married couple."
"Oh!" She giggled. "That's good. And, Jeffrey? This teenager is discovering...that sex with you...is very, very fulfilling!"
He covered her mouth with his.
And she gave herself to him, body and soul.
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The End