Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I do, however, grip her hips when her ass won’t sit still. She’s wound up, anxious to show me whatever this quiz was she found this morning before I ever even spoke to her, which speaks volumes in itself.
My wife thinks she has me fooled. She’s thought it for a while. But I know how hard it is for her to get out of bed every day. I know she gets up late in the afternoon then rushes around to make it look like she’s been busy all day. And maybe I’m a bad husband for not saying anything all this time, but it just made more sense to me to allow her to do that, since she was getting herself up every day. She had the willpower to force herself out of bed when she knew she had no other choice or her daily habits would be discovered.
I told myself for months, Just give her another week. One more week of sleeping the day away, and then I’ll get her whatever help she needs.
I believed she’d snap out of it if I just continued to dote on her, if I kept on upping the time we spent together, whether at home or at the club. I thought maybe it was just a transition period she was going through, hopping so swiftly from endless hours at her three med-spas, to working with Abe and me to fill orders for more than twelve hours every day, to then uprooting our very simple, minimalistic life and moving into this big single-family home.
And it was no longer us three musketeers—it was just the two of us. Before, when it was our tiny apartment, Abe and I weren’t always on the same exact schedule. After a while, we had to divide and conquer the different meetings and clients to make sure we took care of everyone who needed us. That meant he’d get home before me half the time, so she had more company, wasn’t alone as much as she is now.
Then, as a consequence of spending so much time alone, she no longer felt it was important to take care of herself, and/or her appearance. If there was no one around to see the outfit she chose for the day, or that her hair was washed and styled, or that her makeup and nails were done, then why waste time on all that stuff? Like she told Doc during our session, I didn’t show any concern when her hair stayed in a messy bun for a week straight. I didn’t point out that she’d been in the same pajamas for a couple of days, or that the reason she kept having to shift her panties to make them more comfortable was that she wasn’t used to having pubic hair, so when it started to grow a little, it irritated her delicate flesh. And I sure as hell didn’t mention anything that would possibly humiliate her, embarrass the love of my life, the woman who had been nothing but perfect and completed me all these years. I still loved her with every fiber of my being. There was nothing she could go through that would make me want her any less. In sickness and in health was a vow that applied to mental just as much as physical in my eyes.
These were all the excuses I gave myself for why she wasn’t motivated to do much of anything during the day… or in the evening either. She went along with whatever I wanted, but it felt like she was just on autopilot, not caring either way if she was included or not. But in the back of my mind, I knew. I’ve known this whole time, all eight months since she found those texts on my phone, that my wife was depressed. I just thought it was something she’d come out of with time and with my love and adoration.
How stupid and cocky of me that was. I see that so clearly now, as she dances in her seat—well, my lap—giddy to show me something she discovered in her research. An assignment Dr. Walker had given her, us, just yesterday, and already she had more life in her than she’d had in all these long months.
Why didn’t I go to him in the first place?
Why didn’t I seek his help, even if I didn’t tell her what I was doing, to see if there was anything we could do to pull her out of this downward spiral, this whirlpool she couldn’t break free of, which she was trapped in because of me to begin with? If I’d gone to him sooner, she wouldn’t have spent so many fucking months in turmoil, unwilling to hear me explain the whole truth to her, that I hadn’t been with another woman.