Chapter Twelve
Light filtered thru the lace curtains that adorned the window and cut across Tami's shoulder. Eric eased over next to her and kissed the spot where the light danced. She stirred. "Mhmmm," she complained. "Stop it." He smiled and lay back down, his arms behind his head. In the end, last night, his wife had not forced him to go to bed frustrated.
He was just about to drift back to sleep when Tami sat bolt upright, turned the alarm clock toward herself to check the time, and cussed. She was throwing back the covers when he tugged on her arm to pull her back down. "It's Columbus Day, remember? No school today. Lie back down." She turned and looked at him. He beckoned her towards him with his head. "C'mere." He patted his chest.
She pulled the covers back up and slid next to him, laying her head on his chest while he wrapped his arm around her back and sighed contentedly. "You don't have practice this morning?" she asked.
"Nope. Just this afternoon. And no class to T.A. today. No class to go to tonight."
"Is Gracie up? Do I have to get out of this bed?"
"Nah…she's up, but I heard Matt out there with her. He's probably up with Henry. I'm sure he'll feed her. We'll roll out of here eventually."
They were quiet for a long time. He toyed with the strands of her hair, wrapping them around his finger and then unraveling them. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry for making a scene last night and embarrassing you. I didn't mean to, but you went back to the bedroom like you wanted to talk. If you had just let me go back there by myself, I'd have waited until he was gone."
"A conditional apology isn't really an apology, Eric."
"Neither is startling a man in the shower."
"Well, I accept the first half of your apology anyway."
"And I accept the second half of yours."
She giggled. She kissed his chest softly and then said, "Babe, I'm still not entirely sure why you were so upset. I think you're right that I should be cautious that I don't develop feelings for Bill, but I haven't. I promise I'll be on my guard against that."
"A'right. I don't know why it bothered me so much. I just…" He stopped stroking her hair and rested a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think it has anything to do with Bill himself. And the more I think about it, I don't think the fact that I was attracted to that woman in my class - "
She stiffened a little against him as he said this.
" – had much of anything to do with her either. I don't really know her, and if I did…I doubt…" Tami's body relaxed. "The thing is," Eric continued, "she stroked my ego at a time when I was feeling a little distant from you. And I could see Dr. Tate doing that for you. And I could see either of us, if we don't tend to this marriage like we should…I think I was so upset to see you laughing and drinking with him because I just don't feel like we've been connecting lately."
She slid out from under his arm and propped herself up. She looked down into his eyes and studied them.
He swallowed before he spoke. "We're in different worlds now, Tami, in a way we weren't back in Dillon. We used to move in the same world, that high school world. In a small town. We knew all of the same people. I knew all your friends, you knew all of mine…"
"Yeah, I know what you mean, hon. I guess that means we just have to work a little harder to stay connected."
"And sometimes," he sighed. "Never mind."
"No, hon, what? Go on."
His jaw was set tensely. Usually she let it go when he looked like that. She'd come to learn what it meant. It meant he disagreed with her about something, but he didn't want to say it, because he'd be irritated to be told he was wrong, so…he just didn't bother. It had taken her a long time to figure that out, a long time to realize that, as often as they bickered, and as assertive as he seemed, sometimes he just let her have the last word in an argument and then shut his mouth tight. And a lot of the time, she let him. But now, looking at the taunt lines of his face, and thinking about how he had been attracted to that classmate, and thinking about how she had spent nearly four hours talking to Dr. Tate, she thought she shouldn't let it go. "Tell me," she said softly. "I'm listening. I am."
He looked away from her gaze, but he answered, "Sometimes I feel like I'm working harder on this marriage than you are."
"What!" Her hair flicked back from her face as she jerked her head in offense and annoyance. "How is that even possible?"
"Yeah," he said, rolling over. "Yeah that's why I said never mind. So never mind."
She drew in a deep, calming breath. "Eric, I'm sorry I didn't give you a chance to finish. So what do you mean by that? Why do you feel like you're working harder on this marriage than I am?"
He turned back and sat up, leaning back against the headboard. He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know. I just do."
"Well what the hell am I supposed to do with that answer?" she exclaimed, throwing up her hands in frustration. "What do you think I could possibly be doing differently?"
"I don't know. Never mind. I'm sorry I mentioned it. Hey," he took her hand, clearly trying to calm her. "I think we need a weekend away. I got a lot of Friday games coming up and I've got that Saturday class…but…maybe I could skip it once, get the notes. Think Shelley would come for a visit, watch Grace, maybe in two weeks? We could leave after the game Friday."
"I can ask." She placed a hand on his chest and looked him right in the eyes. "Hey, babe…do you think maybe we should go see a marriage counselor?"
"Nah! No!"
"But it seems to me – "
He let go of her hand. "Nah. It's not as if we're having major problems. I mean," he smiled and slid a finger suggestively up and down her bare shoulder, "last night was pretty fantastic, wasn't it?"
"You mean the part where we were yelling at each other, talking over each other, overreacting to things because they meant something else? That part?"
"You know what part I meant. The making up part."
She now slid away from him and sat back against the headboard too. "People make the mistake of waiting until something serious happens to go to counselors all the time. I had students who did that too. And then the counselor is just left trying to glue the pieces together. And it doesn't always work. In fact, most of the time it doesn't."
"Tami, I don't want to go sit and talk to some stranger. I want to talk to you."
"But you're not talking to me. That's the point. Not right now anyway. And okay, I admit maybe I'm not always approachable." As a counselor, she had taken pride in being someone students could open up to, and she had long thought it important that her daughters always be able to talk to her. Yet she was not too self-unaware to concede, "Maybe sometimes I do cut you off." Hastily moving away from this admission, she continued, "But it's also that you don't seem to even be able to put in words what you're feeling. A skilled counselor can give us guidance on how to talk to each other better, can give us some sense of direction on what we need to be talking about that maybe we aren't. She can referee our discussions."
"No."
"No? Just no. That's it? Just no?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much it. Just no. We don't need a marriage counselor. We've been married over twenty years and have survived everything life has thrown at us. Yeah, maybe we've gone in different directions lately, been a little bit distant, not quite given each other everything we've both needed, but we're dealing with it. We're faithful to each other, and we're making time to be alone together. We're doing just fine, given the time we've put in."
"The time we've put in?" Her hair again flipped from her forehead. "Like it's some kind of prison sentence, is that it?"
"You said that, Tami. I didn't say that."
"I didn't say that! I said that's what you implied. Is that how you feel? Like you're serving out a sentence with me? Like-"
Just then the door flew open. "Breakfast time!" shouted Gracie as she ran and leapt onto her father's lap, knee first, causing him to double over and groan.
"Oh, Gracie, watch where you're jumping, honey," Tami said, grabbing Grace and putting her on her feet on the other side of the bed. "We'll be out in a minute, sweetie."
"Breakfast time!" Grace shouted again and did a little dance on the carpet before running out of the room.
Tami turned to a wincing Eric. "Serves you right," she muttered, before throwing the blankets back, rummaging through the dresser drawers, pulling on her clothes, and heading out to the kitchen.
