From: Gwen Monroe
To: Ellie Donahue
Subject: Sooooooooooo???

      So.....  How'd everything go????

          Love,

            Gwen

 

 

 

 

 

 

            "So, how has it been going with the other mom's?" Patrick asked after we had ordered lunch. 

            Actually, he ordered saying "A round of club sandwiches!" when he discovered we were going to procure the same items.  I couldn't tell if he was trying to be impressive or silly, but I snickered either way.

            "What do you mean?"

            "Have they been getting all the paper work in, do they have any concerns?"  He sipped his soda, "I mean, isn't this what I pay you for?"

            "Yeah, you don't pay me."

            "Oh." he smiled, "So I guess that explains the lack of dedication." 

            "Certainly doesn't help."  I grinned, "Actually, Marissa Glover complained that her daughter came home with a sunburn the other day, and suggested we be more diligent with sunscreen application."

            "Wait, I didn't know we did sunscreen application."

            "We don't."

            "Then I can see her point."  He deadpanned.

            "Actually most of the moms apply it themselves before practice and during the breaks."  I half sighed, "For some reason she seems to think that even though it was her that forgot to reapply, it is somehow our fault."

            "Well, then, why don't you keep some extra with you, and you just make sure that they all are covered."  He seemed awfully proud of his little idea. 

            "Have you ever tried to put sunscreen on a hyper five year old?"  I stared at him incredulously.

            "No."  He answered taking another drink, "Why?"

            "It's like wrestling with a greasy, pissed off octopus." I was more than amused when he laughed mid swallow and sort of coughed soda all over himself.  "Tell you what."  I smiled coolly as he laughed and tried to clean himself off, "Why don't we get a few bottles of the spray kind, so if I see a girl starting to fry, I can give them a little sprits, okay?"

            "Sounds great," he coughed, trying to clear out his throat, "But let me ask," he leaned in and raised an eyebrow, "Exactly how many greased up, pissed off octopuses have you wrestled to make that comparison?"

            "Dozens."  I quipped with a straight face, "It is a very popular suburban past time, you know."

            That was the start of it.  We traded quips, innocuous conversational flirting, munched on club sandwiches, and at some point remembered that we were there for an actual purpose of assigning coveted spots to a bunch of tiny girls who will most likely not stick to any sort of formation, but rather they will run around in total chaos chasing a black and white ball.  Patrick had to spend a considerable amount of time explaining to me the differences between things like strikers and sweepers, and then a few moments later he would have to do it again because part of me really didn't care enough to listen the first time, and the other part was actually paying attention but was apparently too stupid to put the words together to make sense. And when he started trying to discuss the girls individual talents, their hustle, their blocking, their kicking ability, I almost blacked out. 

            It was terribly sweet when he offered to let Abby have whatever spot she wanted.  He said goalie is always the most coveted spot, but I had to pass and insist that my child earn her spot.  I can't allow myself to be the mom that bends the rules and lets my kid take something from another who has worked for it.  I may have been using the poor coach to make my husband jealous, but at least I still had some sort of morality.  In the end, after his assertion that Abbs was a phenomenal goal scoring machine, she was placed in the position of center-forward, or the "striker" as he mentioned before.  When I told her this later, she was thrilled beyond belief.  It's funny.  My little brainiac, sensitive to the core doll is this aggressive scoring demon on the field.  My girl.

            Once the work part was done, and I use work loosely as sitting around sipping ice tea, talking to the pretty man is not what I would consider hard labor, talk turned to our lives outside the riveting world of soccer.  We talked about our college lives, him as a star athlete, me as a wallflower who loosened up with a bit booze, talked about our chosen careers, talked about the scariness of some of the other mothers on the field...

            "So that friend of yours, Gwen, right?" he had asked, "She's a bit feisty, isn't she?"

            "A bit!" I giggled.  "Honestly I figured you would have been used to that kind of talk by now."

            "Oh, and what do you mean by that?" Him and that smirk.

            "Please." I sighed, "You've seen you, you know what you look like." I flicked a piece of my straws wrapper across the table at him, "The way the women at camp practically throw their underwear at you when you hit the field every morning.  Don't act like it's shocking."

            "Okay, fine," he smiled at me, leaning back in his chair, "But I'm sure you're no stranger to being hit on."

            "Oh yeah, guys always line up around the block to flirt with the married, stay at home mother of two, wearing sweats and mismatched sneakers." 

            "Guess it just depends on the mismatched sneaker and sweats wearing, married, stay at home mother of two."  His tone had softened just slightly, the smirk still present, and my stomach lurched.  He wasn't just friendly flirting, he was full on making a pass.  Wait, do people even say "making a pass" anymore?

            "So tell me about your husband?"  He went on, "You haven't really mentioned him at all."

            "He's um," My face was burning, "Well, he's, we've been married for like seven years, and yeah." 

            "That's, uh, informative." he frowned.  "There is a real husband right?  You aren't just making it up?"

            "Why would you ask that?"

            "Well, I was thinking maybe you would actually have things to say about him.  Like how you met, what he does for a living, or even his name perhaps?"  His furrowed brow was piercing me right through the chest.

            "Oh, yeah," my giggle was nervous and sounded strangled through my rapidly closing throat, "He is a Systems Analyst.  His name is Derek."

            Oh, and I am fighting with him right now, and we haven't slept in the same bed in days, and the other night I was cowering in fear in front of him because he was in a rage due to the guilt of him tonguing another woman.  And in case you were curious his family hates me, and I hate them, and the real reason I am even sitting here with you is that I was hoping to make the bastard jealous by spending time with the Sexy Man.  So I am pretty much just using you to torment the man to take vows with. 

            Is that what you were wanting to hear?

            My mind was exploding in that hideous rant, I could feel my eyes darting from side to side as my brain tried to come to a stop slot machine of insanity that were my thoughts.  I was once again so very angry with Derek for all the things that had brought me to a point where I even had to have things like that running through my head during a conversation with someone.  I was crushed that even a few weeks ago, when asked about my husband, I would have had nice things to say, normal housewife rantings sure, but I loved him dearly.  I was ashamed of myself for stooping to the point of trying to get any sort of revenge, but furious that there was anything to get revenge for.  I wanted to call Derek and scream at him where everyone could hear, I wanted to call his stupid mother and bitch her out until she cried, and I most definitely wanted to order something with a kick to wash down this panic attack.

            I placed my hands, palms down on the table in an attempt to brace myself, brace my thoughts.  An anchor to ground me as the room began to spin as fast as my head.  I honestly started to wonder if I might pass out, or possibly spontaneously combust when I felt Patrick put his hand over mine.

            Everything stopped moving. 

            I stared at his hand, gently holding onto mine.  His fingers were long, sinewy, and wrapped ever so slightly underneath my palm.  They were surprisingly soft, but they were hands that had purpose.  Lightly callused in right below his middle finger, I wondered what from.  What activity would have put that battle scar there?  Was it from the sports that he played?  From working with tools, hammering perhaps?  I feared it would be something wonderful such as his had had been callused while chaining himself to a tree for Greenpeace, or by hauling wood to build houses for the homeless.  If anything else of a fantastic nature came from this man, I am not sure I would survive the encounter.

            What staggered me the most was the warmth of his grasp.  The contrast against my icy, clammy hands felt like an ice cube being swallowed up in a pulsating hot tub.  It was unsettling, and at the same time, engulfing.  It was the hug I needed to comfort me, it was the shoulder I needed to cry on, it was the ear I needed to listen to me, it was the lust I didn't hold for my husband. 

            I looked up to see his eyes much closer to my own than I had realized.  They were compassionate, and concerned, gentle and intoxicating, and at that moment, more than I could handle, and so as if my reflexes had kicked in far later than necessary, I jerked my hand out from under his.

            "Why did you do that?" My whisper was nearly inaudible, so very breathless.

            "You seemed so nervous," His eyes melted with sincerity, "I wanted to help calm down."  His voice was the perfect volume of soft comfort, "I'm sorry."

            "No, its fine, I'm sorry."  I shook my head, adding embarrassment on top of the seventy-two emotions my body was choking on, "I'm sorry."

            "Why are you sorry?"  A gentle smile.  How was he doing that?  How was he coming up with the absolute perfect facial expressions and vocal tones? 

            "I guess I was just being silly."  My laugh was so far beyond awkward, "I thought you were like, flirting with me or something." 

            His eyes managed to soften, and become blazingly intense in the same blink as he leaned forward and placed his hand where ours had been joined together on the table moments before.  He sat forward in his seat, and slowly moved towards me, and like before on the soccer field, I was overtaken by his cologne.  His scent had become familiar, and much to my horror in the moment, it had become a longing.  And with a voice that was uncharacteristically serious, a voice heart wrenchingly honest and tender, he changed everything.

            "And would it really have been that bad if I were?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            When I got home that evening, Gwen had already left for the airport.  Yeah, I was gone four hours, so long in fact that Derek was home from work by the time Patrick dropped me off.  That was an awkward ride home, let me say.

            Just as Gwen had predicted, Derek looked crushed.  He wasn't even able to speak having been drowned out by the jubilant screaming and inquiries or my daughter who was desperate to find out what her position on the team was, and a son who wanted to show me the fourteen different kinds of macaroni that he had used to create a glittery, still wet with glue, construction paper masterpiece from pre-school that morning.  As I fawned over my sweet children, I tried very hard to never look at the face of my husband.  The face of the man I married that was contorted by painful emotions, and weighted with vulnerability.

            Before that moment, I had felt angry and justified every time I watched his face crumble in front of my eyes, but not then.  No, then his face was a large, neon lit Scarlet Letter reflecting off my guilty body.

            I tried to distract from the tension by ordering pizza and suggesting a fun, family movie night that kept us busy until the kids went to sleep, at which point I once again retreated, solo, to our bedroom, as had become the norm over the last few nights to try and process the events of the day.

            I wasn't able to say anything after Patrick admitted his flirtation.  I was extremely grateful when he didn't add any thing else to his confession, but shaken deeper still when his stare didn't waiver.  I held him equally, breath for breath, blink for blink as his gaze pierced into me deeper and deeper until the point I felt that he could literally see everything behind them, that he could read every facet of my emotions, every nuance of my thoughts, and I broke away, literally shaking from the experience.

            There were no words on the ride home other than perfunctory inquiries for the directions to my home.  When he pulled into our driveway, right behind Derek's car, I felt agonizingly magnetized to the seat in which I sat.  I didn't want to get up, I didn't want to open that door and have to face my family knowing that I had allowed this man beside me to profess some level of desire and know that not only did I do nothing to discourage it, but I had somehow allowed myself to acknowledge my own mutually inappropriate wants.  We sat together, alternating our stares between the dashboard, and our knees, both seemingly unable to meet the other's gaze, the two of us equally aware that I should have escaped that car the second he shifted into park.  When the air in that shiny, black, SUV became so thickened by all the things neither of us wanted to say or even think, I silently extracted myself back into the real world. 

            I didn't hear him drive away until several moments after I had been inside.  I fought with brain all night to not allow myself to wonder what he was thinking while he sat there.

            I'm not sure I ever want to know.

           

 

 

 

            I am sitting, legs tucked up underneath me, on my bed, Murphy snoring gently beside me.  My chest aches from the heaviness of the day, my eyes burn from having bugged out of my head the greater part of the day, and my stomach lays heavy, exhausted from the roller coaster of near-vomitous tension. 

            I am furious with myself for what has happened.  While I want to blame Derek for everything that is hanging over our relationship tonight, I know that I have made a huge mistake.  While I justified my getting in Patrick's car in the first place by convincing myself that I was going to get back at Derek, to illicit that harmless revenge, I know now that in reality, I wanted an excuse. 

            I wanted a guilt-free reason to let myself be around Patrick, to engage in our coy back and forth, to feel that fluttery way he makes all the women around him feel.  I wanted to feel special, and important, and I wanted to feel my heart stop with the rush that only a new crush can provide. 

            Derek may have given me the alibi, but I chose to commit the crime. 

            What is worse is that while I know, deep down I know that tomorrow I need to stay after camp and set Patrick straight, confess my childish behavior, I am certain that will not happen.  I want things to go back to the way they were before, before Derek and his little Tartlet fucked up, before Catherine spewed her venom over our home, and before I smelled the cologne of my daughter's soccer coach, but I know that it won't, that it can't.  And wrong as it may be, no, wrong as it most certainly is, the truth of the matter is that I liked the way it felt when Patrick laid his hand on mine, the way his eyes gripped my entire body, the way my stomach shivered when he leaned into me as he spoke.  And even though I wish Derek's mistakes hadn't made me look at him so differently, they did, and they still do, and with those feelings damaged, I am not ready to let these new, albeit wrong, feelings go yet.

            My own heart is making me sick with guilt.

            I walk out of the bedroom, and stumble into Derek, headed once again to his office down the hall, where he will sleep, uncomfortably on the floor by his desk, the permanent look of desperation tattooed across his beautiful eyes, and I know I can't keep this going.  In this one abrupt encounter, it all shakes into place. 

            He made a series of mistakes.  That is all.  A few poor choices.  He panicked, he was scared, and he let things go to far.  I can certainly understand that now, can't I?  Here he is, begging for any kind of forgiveness, and I am consciously making equally, if not more, destructive choices.  The pain in his eyes encircles my whole person in shame.

            "Good night, Ellie."  He quietly speaks, and starts to walk past me towards his Punished Husband's Refugee Camp.

            "Derek," I reach out and lightly touch his arm, stopping him dead in his tracks, mid-step.  "I'll meet you in bed in a few minutes."  I smile softly, "Murph is keeping your side warm."

            "Really?"  His eyes are so wide with hope, his body tense with anticipation.

            I can barely nod before he grabs my face with both his hands and kisses me, deeply, and more passionately than our lips had touched in years.

            "I love you so much Ellie," he pulls away, with quickened breaths, "I am so sorry, I want you to know that."

            I smile, happy to see his eyes light once again, "I know you are."  I set my hand on his chest, "I love you too."  I turn and head to the stairs.  "I'll meet you in bed in a moment, alright?"

            He beams at me before heading to gather his things out of his office, and I make my way downstairs to the computer.  When I check my email, I open a message from Gwen, already back in New York.

           

From: Gwen Monroe
To: Ellie Donahue
Subject: Sooooooooooo???

      So.....  How'd everything go????

          Love,

           Gwen

            I hear Derek rummaging around in the bedroom, you can practically hear the excitement and relief in his muffled footsteps, and I grin imagining the look that must be plastered onto his face.  Before I head upstairs, I quickly type out a response to Gwen, then I head upstairs to join my husband for our highly anticipated reunion tour in bed.

From: Ellie Donahue
To: Gwen Monroe
Subject: RE:  Sooooooooooo???

Dear Gwen,
            I think I went too far.
            And I'm afraid I will again.

            Ellie