The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“Well…it’s official…” Em gives an exasperated sigh and blows her bangs off of her sweaty forehead as she kneels in the middle of the queen sized bed in one of Flower‘s five guest rooms. A first aid kit is open and resting to her left and she possesses a sandwich bag of ice in one hand and a damp facecloth in the other as the back of my head rests on her thighs. “…testosterone and booze DO NOT mix.”

“I think you’re missing a key ingredient,” I say, and then wince when she uses the tip of her index finger to poke at the left side of my nose and along the swollen, throbbing bone under my eye. “Un gros Marceau du casse-tete. Testosterone and booze are just fine together. But when you throw in a crazy, obsessive ex…”

“Don’t be like that,” Em scowls, and I howl in pain as she flicks the end of my nose with the tips of her thumb and forefinger. “Vous n’avez pas appris votre lecon? A busted nose and a soon to be black eye isn’t enough for you?”

“This wasn’t about me learning a lesson. It was about teaching him a lesson. He’s not exactly Mike Tyson, you know. Had I not been tanked he never would have been able to get close enough to clock me like that. And if hadn’t have stuck your nose where it didn’t belong, I would have handed him a good old fashioned, passionate ass whupping.”

“Because you laying a beating on Sidney just would have made everything so much better,” she gives a derisive snort. “Did you forget about some of those lessons you were taught when your parents used to make you and brothers go to Sunday school every week? Somewhere along the line of going from little boy to grow man did you forget about the whole ‘turn the other cheek?’.”

“Only thing turning the other cheek would have gotten me was a second black eye,” I declare. “And turning the cheeks is for wimps. For guys that are afraid to mix it up. When have I ever been afraid to mix it up? I’ve fought bigger and better than him.”

“And that just makes you such a man,” sarcasm drips from her voice as she uses a corner of the face cloth to wipe blood from my upper lip and from under my nose. “Fighting just makes you so damn macho. I would have thought more of you if you’d just kept your fists to yourself and not retaliated. Did you really need to tackle him like that? Did you really need to smash his face into the ground?” she asks. “From what Flower says you were both saying some really stupid shit and you both had the right to freak out. But did you really have to go to that extreme? You could have seriously hurt him.”

“The snow cushioned the blow,” I reply, and give a shrug of disinterest. “His pretty face and his huge lips and massive teeth are still in tact, aren’t they? He managed to walk away without anything rearranged or relocated. Ask me, he’s damn lucky.”

“Violence is not the way to solve everything,” Em informs me. “It may be the way you solve things on the ice, but you can’t just go around slamming someone’s face into the ground because you don’t like something they said.”

“Are you going to hunt Sid down and give him a lecture too?” I irritably inquire. “Are you going to go all mother hen on him and nurse him back to health? ‘Cause there’s two fucking sides to every story and so far, you’re only listening to his. Or only caring about his. One or the other.”

“Don’t even start,” she grumbles, and lays the ice over my eye. “Just lie still and be quiet and…”

“I find it really weird that you’re my wife and I’m the one with the busted up face yet you’ve got the nerve to defend him,” I snarl, and snatching the bag from her hand, toss it onto the night stand with a clatter and then use my elbows to push myself up into a sitting position. My brain immediately feels as if it‘s going to explode and I have to briefly close my eyes when the entire room spins around me. “I find it really fucking strange that you don’t give a rat’s ass that he was talking shit about you,” I continue, as I wriggle my way across the bed and slowly stand up. “All you care about is me fucking him up a little. You don’t even give a shit that I did it for you. ‘Cause Sid’s the fucking golden boy and you feel this fucking overwhelming desire to kiss his ass every chance you get.”

“What I care about is you getting yourself into even more shit than you already have,” she argues, as she gathers all of the unopened bandages, gauze and roll of surgical tape from where she’d placed them on the bed and drops them into the first aid kit. “When were you going to tell me about asking Mario to trade you?” she inquires, as she snaps the plastic lid closed. “When were you going to let me know that you’d made such an important decision without me?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” I admit, and grimacing as a sharp, burning sensation erupts in my shoulder as I attempt to pull off my t-shirt. It hurts like a motherfucker; as if someone is shoving a thousand scalding knives straight into the bone and the damaged muscle and tissue surrounding it. It’s nearly enough to not only bring tears to my eyes, but to drive me to my knees as well. Something is wrong; something is seriously fucking wrong and it’s not going to be a simple fix to make it better again. I feel like goddamn Humpty Dumpty; all these cracks and shattered pieces that they may never be able to mend.

“Max…” Em’s voice has rapidly switched from irritated and disgusted to a mixture of affection and concern. I can hear the soft rustling of clothing and bed sheets as she crawls across the bed towards me and feel the weight of her warm, tiny hand as she lays it on the small of my back. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Is it your shoulder?”

“I’m fine…” I assure her, and then use a forearm to clear beads of perspiration off of my forehead. The pain is intense; my stomach twists and contorts, my heart hammers in my chest and sweat glistens on my brow and drips down my temples and the back of my neck. I hate my wife seeing me like this; I hate the panic that takes over her face and her voice and the way she jumps to take care of me and look after every single want and need as if I’m some kind of goddamn invalid. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about me. Just…” I attempt to raise my arms over my head once more and this time the pain not only causes me to wince and inhale sharply, but nearly has me doubling over in agony.

“Turn around…” Em instructs, and laying her hands on my hips, hooks her index fingers through my belt loops and tugs gently in order to get me to obey.

The drunk bastard side of me wants to give her a hard time; he wants to feel offended by her apparent ‘choosing of side’ and her affiliation with her ex. He wants to be a belligerent ass; he wants to lash out and say degrading, malicious things in order to hurt her. The adoring, attentive husband past or me -the one that loves her beyond all comprehension and would take a bullet for her with no second thoughts and no questions asked- wants to let his guard down and temporarily shit can his macho bravado in order to tell her how desperately he wants and needs her. He wants to admit all of his weaknesses and faults; he wants to come clean about feeling threatened and jealous of Sid because of the history they share.

But I’m not weak. I don’t want her to know the full extent of my insecurities and I refuse to give Sid the pleasure of knowing how easily he gets under my skin and how nervous and anxious he actually makes me feel.

********

“Please…” she pleads, and tugs on my jeans once more. “Please just turn around and look at me. Why do you get like this? Why do you always have to be so damn stubborn? I just want you to turn around and look at me and…”

“What do you want from me, Emma-Leigh?” I sigh heavily and reluctantly turn to face her. “What do you want me to say? How do you expect me to feel? You’re taking his side. You’re picking him over me and…”

“I’m not picking anyone over you,” she gently interjects, and pushing herself up onto her knees, takes the bottom of my t-shirt in both hands and yanks it free of the waist of my jeans and pushes it up my stomach and back. “I’m not taking Sid’s side, Max. I’d never do that. I’m just trying to make you realize that nothing is ever going to be solved or put to bed if you keep letting him antagonize you. If you keep rubbing it in his face and gloating all the time that I chose you instead of him.”

“I don’t gloat,” I frown, and then shiver violently as every one of her fingernails lightly scratch my rib cage in her quest to remove my shirt. “I don’t rub his face in anything.”

She arches both eyebrows and stares at me pointedly as she runs her hands over my chest and along my shoulders as I manage to shrug free of my t-shirt despite the pain shooting all the way from the nape of my neck to the tips of my fingers.

“Okay…so maybe I do rub it in his face…” I admit, as I toss the cotton garment aside. “…but I only do it a little bit.”

“Can’t you just put yourself in his shoes for five seconds?” she asks, as she trails her nails over every indent and ridge in my chest and shoulders and then slips her hands to the back of my neck and toys with the thick platinum chain around my neck with the fingers of one hand as the others scrape along the hairline at the base of my skull. “Please just think about it for a minute, okay? Think about how you felt when I was with him; when I wouldn’t even consider breaking things off with him to be with you. He’s hurt and he’s pissed off and you know what? He has every right to be. He has every right to want to lash out and hurt you as much as you hurt him.”

“I already apologized. I already…”

She presses a tender kiss to my lips in order to silence me. “It doesn’t matter how many times you apologize, Max. It isn’t going to change how he feels. Let him be angry. He deserves that. He deserves to spend some time being bitter. I’m not saying that it’s okay that he’s talking the way he is. I’m just saying that I understand why he’s doing it. And trust me; you’re only making things worse by egging him on about things. You’re just making things worse for him when you make smart ass comments or you rub it in his face that we’re together. Is it too much to ask that you just ignore him? That you just walk away when he starts in on you? I just want you to prove to everyone that you’re the bigger man. That’s all I want.”

“I can’t let him get away with talking like that about you Em,” I argue, as I tenderly smooth her hair away from her forehead and cheeks and my eyes searching hers as I cradle her delicate face in my hands. “You’re my wife and I’m not going to let anyone talk about you like that. I don’t give a shit what he says about me, but…”

“Maxime…” she gives a long, weary sigh and leans into me in order to press a series of feathery kisses along my shoulders. “You’ve already won. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough that you have the one thing that he wants but knows he can’t have?”

“How do I know that he can’t have it?” I ask, and she abruptly draws away from me, a frown capturing her mouth and creasing the corners of her eyes and furrowing her brow. “I don’t trust him, Emma-Leigh. I don’t trust him and I don’t believe him when he says he’s not in love with you anymore. Don’t you see the way he looks at you? Everyone sees it. Everyone knows that he still wants you and that he…”

“But I don’t want to be with him,” she stresses, and digs her nails into the back of my neck. “If I wanted to be with Sid, I would have never, ever ended things with him. I never would have slept with you that night at your apartment and I never would have picked you over him. And it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe him or whether or not you trust him. What matters is that you believe me and trust me.”

“I do trust you,” I say. “You’re not the problem. It’s him. It’s him and how sneaky and conniving he can be. Everything thinks he’s so fucking perfect and angelic and that he is…”

“Sid has no bearing on us anymore,” she interjects. “It doesn’t matter how he feels or how he thinks or what he wants. This is about me and you, Max. This is about us making our marriage work. And it isn’t going to if you don’t stop worrying about Sid so much. You need to stop concerning yourself with him and start worrying more about how I’m thinking and how I’m feeling. You need to just let it go. You need to just stop dwelling over the fact that Sid and I were together and just concentrate on us. ‘Cause what you’re doing now…” she scrapes her nails along my scalp and lightly tugs at the hair at the back of my head. “…what you’re doing now is going to kill us. And I don’t want that. You talk about how you can’t lose me, but I can’t lose you either. There’s two of us in this relationship, remember? Two of us took those vows. And I know it seems like we suck at this whole marriage thing…”

“I suck,” I correct. “Just me. I suck at this marriage thing. I’m a crappy fucking husband. I don’t know the first thing about shit like this. Up until five months ago I didn’t even know a damn thing about being with just one woman. How am I supposed to…”

“It’s a learning process,” she concludes. “For both of us. We’re learning as we go along. You said it yourself; we barely know each other. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. That I don’t love you more and more everyday.”

I smile and lean in to press a kiss to her lips.

“It just means that you drive me insane most days,” she laughs, and tousles my hair affectionately. “You drive me totally crazy but I still love you. I still adore you. Crooked nose and all.”

“My nose was crooked long before Sid clocked me,” I grin, and combing my fingers through her hair, allow my hands to drift onto her shoulders and down her back before settling them on her hips. “I gotta say, people call him a wimp, but he’s got a fuck of a right hook.”

“He’s jealous of you,” Em says. “He’s jealous and hurt and you need to give him some time. I know he said that he’s over it and that he’s moving on with his life, but that was before I came back to Pittsburgh and before he saw us together. That had to be a kick in the gut for him. Cut him some slack, okay? Just let him have time to adjust and deal. You owe that much to him, don’t you think?”

“I don’t owe any…”

“Quit arguing with me so much,” she grumbles, and presses a kiss to my lips. “Quit being such an obstinate, stubborn shit. And stop trying to tell me there’s nothing wrong with your shoulder. You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it that you need to worry about,” I tell her. “You just let the trainers and the team docs worry about my shoulder, okay? Stressing out over it isn’t going to…”

“You’re my husband,” she reminds me. “I love you. And people worry about the people they love. And you telling me not to worry is like…I don’t know…it’s like leaving a porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa. It’s never going to happen.”

“Nice analogy.” I grin, and run my hands over her hips and down onto her ass.

“Analogy. Now there’s a scholarly word for a hockey player,” she teases, and then gives a giggle when I yank her into me and bury my face in the crook of her neck; hands firmly kneading and fondling her ass as my lips, teeth and tongue begin an assault on her sensitive skin. “Uh-uh…” she pulls back and wags a finger at me when my hands slip between our bodies and my fingers immediately descend on the button on her jeans. “I believe I was the one in charge here…” she says, and drags her teeth along her bottom lip as she runs her hands along my shoulders, down my chest and over my stomach. “…I believe I was the one undressing you.”

“Change of plans,” I shrug, and then groan in disappointment when she slaps my hands away.

“Don’t ruin my fun Max,” she sighs dramatically and drags her fingernails along my skin; hard enough to make me wince and leave blood red track marks behind. “Don’t make me have to throw you down on this bed and teach you a lesson.”

“I swear you start fights with me just so we can have make up sex,” I grin. “I swear you start shit just so you can be ravaged all night long afterwards.”

“A woman never gives away all of her secrets,” she says, and then vigorously and eagerly attacks my belt buckle. “But I do believe you owe me. Remember this morning when your mother interrupted a certain something by calling at the most importune time?"

I nod, and grabbing a hold of her thighs, unceremoniously yank her into me and toss her down onto my back. “I do owe you,” I agree, as my fingers make short work of her button and zipper and then aggressively yank both her jeans and her panties over her hips and her ass and down her legs. “And I plan on making it up to you,” I add, as I yank her across the bed and allow her legs are dangling over the side of the mattress. “In the best way possible.”

She gives a sly smile and then a long, content sigh as I place a blazing trail of kisses along the inside of one thigh and then the other before quickly making my way to the Promised Land.

I’ve always been a man of my word.