a heart of gold. She is starting to erase old ghosts, and as she sits, having taken all of me inside her, she looks at me as if I am her world.
Now that’s the kind of reward seven thousand words is worth writing for.
Chapter 35
MARI
The night ends with us cuddling up in bed after sex. Just like it ends most nights. He hasn’t answered my questions. I have a feeling he doesn’t want to talk about it.
I’m making the same mistake again. Mistaking sex for love, and foreplay for connection. Ward’s been hitting his word count goals, so naturally I reward him with sex. There’s no need for him to wine and dine me. No need to build up to anything, what we have is purely physical. I’ll take it because it’s the only way I can get close to him. I wish he would open up to me, I wish this could be more than just sex, but Ward doesn’t seem to want more.
When it comes to relationships I seem to always be chasing a shooting star. Ward comes to my bed, but other than that, I can’t reach him. He’s closed off and I know next to nothing about him.
I tell myself that this is something that suits us both. We were filled with simmering lust before and now at least we get to satiate our needs. This should be enough, but it isn’t.
Jamie has calmed down. We are friends again. He asked if I wanted to go out on Saturday night, just me and him, on account of us having had that little disagreement. I told him it wasn’t a disagreement, it was him being petty. I also feel that it’s too soon, only weeks after Raleigh’s get together. I’m not ready to go out again. The real reason is I don’t want to go out because the object of my desire is here at home.
As with most nights, Ward leaves somewhere in the middle of the night, and even though I’m wide awake, I pretend to sleep, until I hear him leave and close the door.
I try to ignore the sadness that pinches my heart. This is my fault. I’m the one who made this into a game. I’m the one who started the whole word count and sex reward. I fooled myself into believing that we were on the edge of a new start, having given in to our baser instincts, but there is nothing deeper for us.
Ward, too, is struggling with it our arrangement, I can tell. One night he almost fell asleep in my bed. I was curled up against him, nuzzled against his chest, feeling wanted and cherished with his arm around me. I hadn’t been held like that in months. I was almost falling asleep when he climbed out of bed. I asked him to stay but he refused, he said something about it being better for us to stick to our boundaries. The clock showed 3:15AM. He left even though most of the night was over and I lay in my bed all alone, missing the warm space he had vacated.
I must be careful and guard my heart. It’s not something I’m good at. In the space of a few months I have gone from being cruelly cheated on, to finding sexual gratification with a man who seems incapable of connecting.
Lurching from one situation to the other isn’t the wisest move for anyone, let alone someone like me with all the things that are going wrong in my life, but at least it’s better than being alone.
“Let me help you with that,” he says one day when he sees me in entrance hall about to go upstairs with the vacuum cleaner.
“I’m stuck,” he says.
“On what?”
He reaches the top of the stairs and sets the hoover down. He winces, shoves his hands in his pockets. He never talks about his writing. Never tells me what exactly he’s stuck on. I’ve tried to pry it out of him, but the man won’t give anything up. He plays his cards too close to his chest.
“Just ... stuff,” he says, in his usual vague and cryptic manner. “It’s in my head but it won’t come out the way I want it to.”
I make a face. “So, give me some specifics.”
Give me something.
He sighs loudly then shrugs, choosing to hold on to the problem, whatever it is, and not wanting to share it with me. I can’t help him if I don’t know. I also