We Sat By The River

Nick and Casssandra are parked along the river. The sky is clear and the sun’s light is brilliant, creating sparkling diamonds along the shoreline. Nick sips on a coffee with one hand and holds a greasy breakfast sandwich in the other. Cassandra is quiet, and so is Nick. The radio is on low and they’re here to patch things up, if they can.

She swirls then takes small sips of her iced coffee, then swirls the ice again. She sighs and stares out at an empty river. It’s late fall and the view is still magnificent, but the weather is becoming too cold for any boats, or swimmers to be out. The snow is coming soon and then days like this will seem impossible until late spring when the grass and water begin to reappear after being buried by snow and ice for several long cold months.

“I’m sorry,” Nick says quietly, looking at the water. Just those words are so hard to say and he doesn’t know why.

“Me too,” she responds, those words equally as hard for her.

The evening before had been their first alone without kids in years, and they had spent it clawing at each other’s throats. The topic of sex crossing the threshold from toxic to poisonous and deadly. The word and the act becoming sacrilege. Cassandra had screamed at the top of her lungs that she never wanted to have sex again. “This is bullshit,” she yelled. “You make me feel like I need to fuck you or you’ll throw a fit like a goddamn baby!”

And he had retorted, “Why don’t you want to fuck me in the first place? I stayed in good shape, I’m a good father, a good husband, and now we have a night alone for the first time in ages, and what? You’re not in the mood? Why? What do I have to do Cassandra? Do you want me to beg? Do you want me to get on my knees and beg like a dog? Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Of course, that isn’t what I want.” She said, “you just make me feel like a piece of meat that’s only good for sex.” Then she began to cry, and Nick should have stopped. He had a propensity to have out-of-body experiences in the heat of arguments, where he could feel himself floating above his body and telling himself to just stop talking. To stop digging that hole, or he was going to find himself approaching an unbearable heat.

But he couldn’t stop. He was hurt, and he was angry. And he was feeling a life of intimacy slipping away.

“You’re just a piece of meat? Do you think I’m a nympho or something? Christ, you act like I’m begging for it every day. All I want is sex on a semi-regular basis. That’s it. I married you Cassandra, I swore that I’d only ever have eyes for you for the rest of my life. And my best years are slipping away with me spending every evening alone in the spare room, while you sit in the living room. You think that’s right? Do you?”

“I can’t help if I don’t feel like it, Nick. Okay? If I don’t want to, I don’t have to.”

“Remember when we first got together?” Cassandra rolled her eyes at this, because it was speech that Nick had gone through more times than she could count. The same pointless blah-blah-blah fucking rant that she hated, but once he started talking, he didn’t stop, and every time she opened her mouth, he interrupted her before she could get a word in.

But when she rolled her eyes, Nick could feel an anger that made him want to drive his head through a wall. It made him feel sick, and unheard. Like nothing he said mattered. Like his life and this marriage didn’t matter.

“We were all over each other, Cass. Days spent in my room. What is it? Is it me?” He knew when he started whining like a little kid who didn’t get his way, he was only pushing her further away, but he needed to know.

“My girlfriends that I talk to are all in the same boat, Nick. It stops being new and exciting and it’s not the same as it was then.”

Nick hated that bullshit cop-out too. Cassandra loved to say it was the natural flow of things. That marriages HAD to be sexless at a certain point. And he hated the fact that the “girlfriends” she spoke of all had marriages that were closing in on divorce. Unhealthy marriages filled with relentless unhappiness bordering on depression, and these were the examples she used. Was that supposed to make him feel better? Because it sure as hell didn’t.

The evening went on like that until they went to bed. Their first chance at a quiet, peaceful evening blew up in their faces in a matter of seconds. And as Nick lay in the darkness of his room, as Cassandra snored softly beside him, he felt sick and trapped in his own skin. The late night hours alone in the dark, inside his head made Nick think thoughts that he would never think of in the morning. He remembered Stephen King calling them the suicide hours, and while he wasn’t quite at that point, he felt it would no longer be a surprise if the dreaded S word popped into his skull.

Now parked at the water in the morning, life seems different. Still not great, but better with the possibility of mending what seemed unfixable the evening before. Eventually, Nick places his hand on her left leg, and she places a soft hand on top and begins to rub it gently. Her face begins to calm and he can see traces of a woman who isn’t filled with rage, regret, and questions, and he hopes his face is showing signs of the same thing.

The sunlight and the calm sparkling, rippling water makes the world feel like a different place, then the darkness in a lonely bed.

“I love you, Cas. I’m sorry I ruined the night. I’m sorry I care so much about sex. I just don’t want it to continue the way it’s going. I remember Cody telling me at work that he’s down to once every six months or so. And even when they do it, he says she’s just laying in silence waiting for it to be over, and I can’t do that. Massages, candlelit dinners, romantic movies, whatever we have to do, I want to do. I still want you as much as I did when we first met, Cas. I swear I do. I’ll watch Dirty Dancing with you every night and I’ll watch every episode of Grey’s Anatomy too.”

She laughs at this, and he breathes a sigh of relief, then laughs with her.

They finish their coffee, and back out and head to the east side to pick up the kids. Nothing resolved, and the same argument will find its way back into their homes, but for now, Cas rubs his hand, and Nick tells her he’ll stop bringing it up. That he’ll let her come to him. It’s a lie, but in the early morning sunshine, it feels true.