This Empty Love

My lips parted slowly as my jaw dropped. Oliver’s words met my ears in slow motion. First, his lips were moving and his knuckles were turning white from gripping the steering wheel. Then, his face was heating up from pale, to pink, to a dark shade of red. The color even moved to his ears and the back of his neck, cascading beneath the collar of his jacked. And then, finally, his voice hit my ears with such an impact that I scooted far back in my seat, back pressed against the rain covered window, and looked at him with only shock and confusion.

Oliver’s eyes shut under the weight of me staring at him with such an appalled look stuck on my face. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back onto the headrest, and pried his fingers away from the wheel. His chest moved up and down and up and down, fast and non-stop.

“I… Oliver… w-what?”

That not-so-sentence took all of my breath and courage to sputter out, and even then, I felt like a fool for asking it. Of course I knew what he meant, and of course I wasn’t confused. The what was directed towards whether or not I heard him properly, which I was questioning. To finally hear what I’d been begging for, like a sick puppy left outside, was too much of a shock to believe. I had to have heard wrong.

“God damn Taylor,” Oliver sighed. His eyes were still shut and remained that way. “I just told yeh I love yeh, and all yeh ask is “what.” How much more clear can I be?”

“You mean it?” I questioned. Oliver opened his eyes and turned towards me. He was ready to talk but I cut in again. “You really mean it? This isn’t some spur-of-the-moment confession of sorts?”

“Of course it’s not spur of the moment! Are yeh mental? I love yeh. Everythin’, even the shit I can’t stand!” Oliver was being loud and not caring. He was fuming, even. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought he was mad instead of confessing his love for me. Suddenly, his face went soft and his voice lowered, “Just say yeh love me too, please.”

I didn’t reply to Oliver, at least not right away. I was too busy lunging in his direction, ignoring the sudden pull of the seat-belt gouging into my shoulder, and pushing my body and lips hard against his own. Caught by surprise, Oli was pushed back into the opposite window, but not before wrapping his arms around me best he could and clicking my seat-belt out of its lock.

Without the restraint, I was able to crawl over the center console and into his lap. This wasn’t comfortable by any means, and it definitely wasn’t the best way to go about making up, but all I really cared about at the moment was Oliver kissing me.

We were being sloppy, lost in a frenzy of getting as close as possible in this already tiny car. Oli’s lips were smashed against mine and our tongues were met in a wild battle. His hands were gripping my thighs tightly as if I was going to bail out of the car at any moment. I can’t say I blamed him. I had my arms looped around him too, scared to let him slip away from my grip.

Oliver had my shirt half way up my stomach when he stopped and pulled away from the kiss. “Say it.”

“I love you,” I said confidently. There was no doubt in my mind. I cupped Oli’s face in my hands. “I love you. Everything.” Between small kisses, I continued talking. “Never, ever, put me through this shit again.”

Oliver smiled, and I knew he wanted to protest against what I said. Sure, it was both our faults, but for the time being Oliver shut up and kissed again. He finished pulling the shirt over my head and let his hands slip to the hook of my bra.

“Wait,” I interrupted a while later, when my bra was gone and his chest was bare. Oliver looked at me half lust-drunk and half-confused. “We need to call them, the deadline is tomorrow morning.”

“What are you talking about? What deadline?” Oliver asked, eyes staring straight into mine. He was out of breath, his chest heaving against mine.

I sighed. “The three month deadline; the three months to see if things could work. The three months we had to go to Dr. Owens’s stupid appointments to see if he could fix us. That ends tomorrow morning. We were supposed to let them know tonight. And now, with the time difference we have to tell them now or they may file the divorce papers.”

“How can they file them without us there? I didn’t sign mine, and if you didn’t, they can’t file them.”

“But I did sign mine, after you told me to,” I mumbled, nuzzling my face into Oliver’s neck. I was mad at myself. “I thought you did too, why didn’t you?”

“I dunno really. I was too scared of it being official.”

“I need to call then,” I repeated and tried to reach for my pursue in the back seat. Oliver’s hand slid over the skin of my arm and pulled it back, kissing my shoulder blade

“Not now,” Oliver said. “First, we finished this. Then, we find a hotel. And then, maybe, we’ll call.”

I nodded and accepted the kisses he offered me. We started out right this time, but compared to the heat of the last kiss, this seemed too slow to stand. We kissed without a care in the world. We didn’t even notice the windows of the car fogging up as Oliver and I shed our clothing. We didn’t notice the rain beat down harder while our skin heated up and clung together. And I definitely didn’t notice, or mind, the small space of the driver seat that Oliver and I christened.

________________________

“So you’re trying to tell me everything is fine?”

Dr. Owens looked back and forth between Oliver and me, his eyebrows tilted in disbelief. In front of him, Oliver and I were seated close on the black, leather couch. Oli’s painted arm was draped casually over my shoulder and I was nestled comfortable into his side. We looked, for the most part, normal.

“Well no,” I spoke for both Oliver and myself. “We’re still dysfunctional. We fight, make up, and then fight again. Sex in a car couldn’t really change that. And we’ve still got a lot to work on.”

“I just, wow, I didn’t think I could actually help you two. I mean, I’m only thirty, it’s not esasy to give adive to couples not far from my age,” he rambled.

“No offense Doc, but I dunno if it was really you or not. I mean, Taylor and I sort of worked it out on our own,” Oliver replied. He shrugged his shoulders casually.

Owens shook his head while tapping his pencil on his trusty notepad. “No way. Not possible just by yourself. Who brought up sex when you wanted nothing to do with it? Me. Better yet, who brought up anything when you wanted nothing to do with it? Me.”

“In a way you’re right,” I concluded. I understood the fact that Dr. Owens, who was actually a bit of a novice, needed the satisfaction of hearing he helped us.

Between then and the meeting with Doc, I’d been two weeks. We were still rocky, on edge, and ready to snap at any moment. But something changed the night Oliver and I got everything off our chests. After steamy sex in the car, we sat and talked for hours. By the time we finished getting all of our feelings out in the open, the rain had stopped and the sky was lightening up.

“Do you think we can go back to how we were,” Oliver had asked me. I told him no, not exactly how we were. We both accepted that and left the topic alone. I knew we’d always have scares from this who ordeal, but it was nice to know we’d find a way through it.

“Speaking of sex, has it been regular now?” Owens mentioned, his ears tinting pink. And I always thought it was only the clients who should become embarrassed.

“Probably once or twice,” I replied, my face turning the same color of Owens’s ears. “A day.”

Owens nodded, scribbling something down. The scratching of pen on paper was becoming more and more friendly, despite my attempts to hate it. I still had no idea what Owens wrote on there during each meeting. He stopped writing and perched the notebook up on the kneed of his leg that was folded over the other. He turned the yellow, legal notepad slowly, revealing doodles and scrabbles of what seemed to be my best Gandhi words of wisdom.

“Did you expect much more?” Owens asked. Both Oliver and I shook her head, bringing a grin to Owens’s face. “Well then, so what now?”

I looked at Oli, my eyes meeting his. He looked at me with his floppy smile and gorgeous eyes and we both shrugged. “We don’t really know.”