44 Chapters About 4 Men - BB Easton
The Husbot
August 16
Dear Journal,
This motherfucker is killing me.
Fresh out of the shower. He’s so close I can smell the Irish Spring on his skin. His hair’s all damp and sexy, and his beard scruff is at that perfect length—just long enough to be soft to the touch, but not so long that it hides his perfect chiseled features. And the way his undershirt clings to biceps and stretches across the hard planes of his chest…I could stare at him all night. Actually, I have been—through the corner of my eye. But that’s not enough.
I want to touch him.
In the half hour since he plopped down next to me and flipped on the Braves game I’ve thought of at least a thousand and one ways to reach over and caress this man. I could lace my fingers through his, or run my knuckles along his rough, square jaw. Maybe I could be playful and walk my mint-green nails up his sculpted ab muscles, then, once I have his attention, I could thrust those same fingertips into his wet hair and straddle his damp, clean, hard body.
But I don’t do shit, because I know all it will get me is a sideways glance and a shift in the opposite direction.
My husband is a rock. Not as in, He’s so strong and supportive. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But more like, He’s so fucking cold I wonder if he still has a pulse. Ken has never even held my hand, Journal. Not on purpose, anyway. He has had his hand held by me, while unconscious, but whenever I try that move during waking hours, Ken will politely endure the discomfort of human contact for…oh, say, five and a half seconds before smoothly removing his soft, limp flesh from my grasp.
Sex is pretty much the same story. Ever the gentleman, Ken will lie on his back and allow me to have my way with him while he quietly engages in minimal and obligatory petting. (Even when I try to be fun and reenact the ice cream scene from Fifty Shades Darker. In his defense, I do have to play the part of Christian because Ken obviously doesn’t know his lines. And I admit, the white noise of a baby monitor isn’t exactly Al Green. And for some reason we never seem to have vanilla ice cream, like in the book. We only have Cherry Garcia, which is pretty awkward to lick off, what with all the chewing required. But still. A little participation would be appreciated.)
Regardless of the level of theatrics involved, afterward I always kiss and cuddle Ken’s lean, beautiful, unresponsive body, trying to squeeze a single degree of warmth from the man-shaped boulder that is my husband. All the while, I can almost hear him counting to himself—one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand—before he taps me on the ass. My cue to get the fuck off of him.
At least, that’s what it feels like. The problem with Ken isn’t so much his coldness—his lack of need, want, or capacity for intimacy—or his inability to feel, let alone discuss, emotions. Those attributes actually keep our marriage quite stable and drama-free. That, and the fact that the man never does anything wrong.
Kenneth Easton is a lawn-mowing, bill-paying, law-abiding, defensive-driving, trash-toting husbot—a cyborg built specifically to withstand seventy to eighty years of gale-force matrimony. I’ve never caught him looking at another woman. Hell, I’ve never even caught him in a lie.
No, the problem with Ken is that he’s married to me.
Before meeting Ken, I’d been contorted into at least seventy-three percent of the positions in the Kama Sutra, Journal. I’d shaved most of my head and had all my lady bits pierced before I was old enough to see an R-rated movie. I spent my free time being handcuffed to things by boys with more combined tattoos than a Guns N’ Roses reunion concert in the Florida Panhandle. Ken simply can’t compete.
So, why, you might be wondering, did a slutty little punk like me go and marry someone so straight-laced and frigid?
It was because of them. Because of the way my adrenaline spikes and my pupils dilate in a fight-or-flight-or-fuck response every time I smell the sickly sweet musk of Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men. Because of the way a pierced bottom lip makes me want to take up smoking again. Because of the way a full sleeve of tattoos makes me want to hitch a ride on a tour