The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“You know…” Em pipes up from where she sits perched on the edge of the granite topped island in the middle of the kitchen, in one of my Ed Hardy t-shirts and a pair of barely there white cotton boy shorts with pink and red hearts emblazoned on them and her hair parted down the middle and secured in two separate braids. “…there’s something you’ve never been quite honest with me about.”

Everything about is her so fucking sexy; her smooth, slender legs that are on full display, the blood red polish that graces the nails on her fingers and toes, the way she swirls a spoon around the container of yogurt in her hand and then slowly and methodically uses the tip of her tongue to clear the sweet, strawberry flavoured away from every inch of the spoon. I’m not sure if she’s intentionally doing it; if she realizes that the simple act of her eating yogurt is having such a direct, powerful effect on me. The same way I’m not sure if she’s aware that I can’t be in the same room with her if she even decides to indulge in a popsicle or an Oreo cookie; she makes eating them lewd acts of epic proportions, especially when she pulls the cookie apart, scoops the white icing out with the tip of her finger and licks and suckles at it and makes blissful faces and noises and comments about loving ‘sweet, sticky white stuff’. No red blooded male could ever put up with that; there’s not one guy on the planet that wouldn’t read into it and wouldn’t take it as a direct come on. And when you’re an incessantly horny and you’re newly married to a woman that gets your pulse racing and sends you blood pressure through the roof with a simple flutter of her eyelashes or the way she drags the end of her tongue along her top lip, everything and anything is taken entirely out of context.

And it’s because of my raging libido and my inability to get my full of her that being in such a close proximity to her is incredibly dangerous. I should have retreated to the other side of the kitchen the second she’d showed up in just my shirt (is there anything sexier than a woman in guys' clothes, her hair mussed and the glow to her skin just advertising that she’s been, as rude as it sounds, extremely well fucked); I should have kept my distance and not leaned over the counter alongside of her while sipping my coffee and making a long and detailed ‘to do’ and ‘must buy’ list. I have to be at Southpointe -our practice facility located in Canonsburg- in less than two hours; a forty minute trip in normal weather that will no doubt take me at least and hour (if I’m lucky) because of the amount of snow that had fallen overnight. I’d already spent over an hour shovelling the front walk, driveway and our portion of the sidewalk and now my lower back and shoulders -especially my pitiful excuse of a left one- are paying the price; I’m stiff and aching and no amount of pain relief medication or heat rubs are going to put me out of my misery and I can almost hear the tirade that the trainers are going to launch into when I tell them why I’m in such awful shape. And I’m seriously considering calling in sick; telling coaching staff that I can’t make it because of a mixture of the shitty weather and my wife’s insatiable sexual appetite.

Em’s been gone for so goddamn long. I’d somehow managed to survive not sharing a bed with her or making love to her for two excruciatingly long and torturous months; we’d gotten married on the afternoon of Christmas Eve in a candlelight service attended by only fifteen people (including Flower and Vero and Peyton and Tanger) in the parish my family has been worshippers at since I was a little boy and we’d had only two nights as newlyweds before I’d headed back to Pittsburgh with the daunting task of hiding my brand new marriage from everyone around me. After going so long without her, one night of ‘catching up’ is nowhere near enough. In fact, I don’t even know if an entire lifetime with her is enough; if there will ever come a time where I tired of her. Where the taste of her mouth and the smell of her skin and the sensation of being buried deep inside of her warm, welcoming body will grow old and routine.

All of the women that had come before her are distant memories; parts of a life I’d willingly left behind after the first night Em and I had spent together. Sure, at the time random hook ups had made my body feel good and mindless, no strings attached sex had filled up my spare time and never posed a risk of me developing a bond with someone. I’d known long before I’d slept with Em that things would be different between us; she’d change me if I ever got the chance to be with her. She doesn’t just make my body feel incredible, but she easily and efficiently fills holes in my heart I’d never even been aware of.

I’d missed her so much I’d physically ached. And now that I have her all to myself, I’m nowhere near ready to walk away. Even if it is just for a practice.

And the way she’s so effortlessly and seemingly innocently turning me on -the side of her foot brushing against m thigh and she swings her legs back and forth as she uses a finger to scrape yogurt off of the walls of the container and then pops the tip into her mouth and sucks aggressively- isn’t going to make it easy for me to get out of the house on time.

“What wasn’t I honest about?” I ask, as I push my glasses further up onto my nose and flip the page over in the Home Depot catalogue open in front of me. I’ve already charged a disgusting amount of purchases to my credit cards in order to completely repair work around the house and buy the things that we so desperately needed -why Americans have an obsession with taking the appliances when they move out, I can’t figure out- and now there’s another extensive list of items that are ‘must haves’. I’ve added ‘snow blower’ to the list in massive block letters and have underlined it several times.

“You never did tell me how many women you’ve been with,” she replies. “I asked you that night at your apartment a few hours before you seduced me and…”

“Hold up…hold up…I seduced you? Apparently your recollection of that night is a little hazy. Because that is not how things went down. I did not seduce you, mon coeur. In case you need a little refresher, you seduced me.”

“I think not!” she gasps dramatically. “I am just way too innocent and sweet to ever seduce a man! Especially one whose had more ass than a toilet seat.”

“You know what? You may come off all sweet and adorable and innocent and you may be able to fool everyone around us with this pure and naïve little girl act, but I happen to know first hand that it’s all bullshit. T’as un diable deguise. You took advantage of me. I was drunk and vulnerable and…”

“You were stone cold sober!” she cries.

“…and you managed to get in my pants when I was having a down moment. One minute I was just lying there minding my own business and the next…well the next you’re sitting on top of me with no panties on and this total ‘come fuck me’ look in your eyes…”

“You could have resisted! You could have fought me off! You’re only eight inches taller than I am and outweigh me by seventy five freaking pounds!”

“…and you cast a spell on me and I was powerless to resist. Admit it, Emmy-Lou. You seduced me. Let’s get the facts straight so years from now you’re not lying to our grandchildren about how things went down.”

“Well you just wait until I tell these grandchildren about how the self proclaimed ‘King of Fornication’ and ‘Ladies Man Extraordinaire’ played so damn hard to get. Just you wait until I squeal all about you and your quaking in your shoes like a little girl because you were afraid to touch me. How’s that for preserving your reputation amongst your spawn?”

“You’d never do that to me. You’d never make me seem like a total pussy. Because then it makes you look like you have a thing for girly men and we all know how girly men irritate the shit out of you.”

“You could never be a total pussy,” she says. “Being a total pussy is just not in your genes. You’re a man’s man, Maxime. There’s no possible way you could ever be anything but. I mean, how can anyone that has as much hair on their legs and arms as you be considered a girly man? How can a man who grows a beard that makes him look like the Unabomber’s twin brother ever be considered feminine? And do I really need to get into how much you scratch your crotch and how you can burp both the Canadian and American National Anthems? If that’s not all totally masculine, I don’t know what is.”

A grin tugs at the corners of my mouth and I reach for the mug of coffee sitting to my left, down the remains and then let out a series of massive, rib shattering belches in between the words, “Why thank you.”

She gives a bright, cheerful and amused smile, grabs the glass of chocolate milk next to her, finishes it in one gulp and then lets out several loud burps of her own as she says, “You’re welcome.”

“So ladylike,” I smirk. “Just oh so feminine and cute. Remind me not to take you out in public.”

Frowning, she reaches out, grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me into her for a long, toe curling kiss. I can taste the mixture of strawberry and chocolate on her lips and her tongue and I find it impossible to suppress a shiver when she scrapes her fingernails against my scalp.

“Keep that up and I won’t make it to practice,” I declare, pulling away when air becomes a necessity and using the tip of my tongue to clear remnants of yogurt from my lips.

“How do you know that’s not what I’m aiming for?” Em asks, as she reaches behind her in order to pull a plate of breakfast -one of my infamous 'Talbot McMuffins' that she can’t get enough of- towards her. “How do you know that there’s not some sort of method to my madness?”

“Be good, Emmy-Lou,” I sigh. “I’m already on Mario’s shit list. I don’t want to give him even more ammunition against me; I don’t want him having yet another reason to ship me off to Edmonton. Or down to Wilkes-Barre,” I shudder dramatically at the mere thought. “Would you still love me if that happen? If they sent me down to toil on the farm?” I ask.

“I’d love you if you cleaned toilets for a living,” she replies. “No questions asked.”

It’s my turn to kiss her; tender and totally sweet.

“Now quit avoiding what we were originally talking about,” my wife says. “Quit finding ways to get out of telling me how many women you’ve violated.”

“Violated? Non. They were blessed to have had me tap them with the magic stick.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I honestly don’t know how many there’s been,” I admit. “It’s not like I sat down and kept a detailed list. I don’t have a journal or anything with the dates and times and the names written down. I just know that there’s been a lot, okay? If I was to guess…I don’t know…maybe two hundred?”

“In one year?” she sounds horrified at the thought.

“Since I first started having sex,” I clarify.

“Hmmm…let me see…” she tilts her head to the side as she does the math, a forefinger twirling and waving in the air as she attempts the multiplication and division on an invisible chalk board. “…okay…so you admittedly lost your virginity at fifteen…that’s ten years ago…so that makes it…twenty women a year…fifty two weeks in a year…”

“Math was never your strong suit, was it,” I tease.

“That just doesn’t work out!” she huffs. “Not by a long shot! That’s not enough! Come on baby, you’re a bigger slut than that!”

“I’m not as big of a whore as everyone thinks I am,” I inform her, feeling slightly defensive. “It’s not like I’ve been going around fucking someone new every night, seven days a week. I was never that bad. Have I been with a lot of women? Yes. Is it way too many to actually count? Most definitely. Do I remember all of their faces and names? Absolutely not. I don’t understand why it matters; why you need a number. You know what I was like and you still married me. So it obviously doesn’t bother you that much.”

“It’s not that it bothers me,” she says. “It’s just that…I don’t know…I guess I’m just curious. Don’t you ever wonder about me? About how many guys I’ve been with?”

“Em, don’t take this the wrong way. But being with a lot of girls? Well it’s taught me a lot of things; taught me how to notice certain things about women. And the first night we were together? I could tell that you hadn’t been with a lot of guys. Two or three at the most. I mean, you were practically a virgin the way you were so…you know…down there…” I nod at her lap. “I could tell, okay? I didn’t need to know and I don’t need to ask. Can’t we just let it go at that? I’ve been with tons and you’ve been with very little and…”

“Three,” she says. “I’ve been with three. You’re included in that. Mind you, if I take into consideration what happened to me when I was a kid, the actual number is four and…”

“We don’t need to take that into consideration,” I interject. “That doesn’t count. At all. Can we not talk about that? S’il vous plait? There’s no reason to be bringing that up.”

It’s not that I don’t care about what happened to her or that it doesn’t make me sick to my stomach to think about someone taking advantage of her when she was just a little girl; I’d gladly go to jail for slaughtering the disgusting motherfucker if he ever had the misfortune of meeting me. And I’m certainly not disgusted by her. In fact, it explains why she is the way she is; why she’s had a lifelong struggle with trust and will forever battle her bi-polar disorder.

“The therapist at the re-hab place said that I needed to…”

“Please, Emma-Leigh,” I step between her legs and laying my hands on the sides of her face, press a kiss to her lips. “Please don’t talk about that, okay? We’ve talked about this enough, don’t you think? We’ve gone through this a few times now and…”

“Do I disgust you?” she blurts out.

“What? Do you disgust me? What are you…?”

“Because it happened, Max. We can ignore it all we want. It still happened and it’s something that I’ll never get over. And I don’t blame you if I make you sick to your stomach or if I…”

“N’etre pas stupide,” I scold. “Don’t talk like that. I don’t think that way about you. I could never think that way about you. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“You’re human,” she says. “Your human and it’s a hard thing to accept and…”

“And nothing,” I interrupt. “You’re right; it is hard to accept. But I have accepted it; I accept you. As is. It was horrible and disgusting and I wish I could kill the sonofabitch. But I can’t change the past. And neither can you. All we can do is try and get on with things. Not let someone like that ruin what we have right in front of us. Je t’adule. And the ground you walk on. Never, ever doubt that, baby. Ever.”

She smiles through a threatening flood of tears and circles my neck with her arms and pulls me in close; my palms coming to rest on the counter on either side of her thighs as our lips meet in yet another long, languid kiss. And when she pulls away and nestles her face in the space between my neck and shoulder, I press a kiss to her ear and wrap both arms around her slender body.

“I am seriously thinking about calling in sick,” I declare. “Maybe I should call Flower and tell him to pass along a message that I won’t be coming to practice today. That I can’t make it out of my house because my wife can’t keep her hands off of me.”

“You can’t do that,” she says. “That would be flat out lying.”

I chuckle and pull away from her slightly, my hands slipping around to settle on her hips as I rest my forehead against hers. “That’s harsh, Em. Real harsh.”

“I’m just teasing,” she assures me, and scrapes her fingernails along the nape of my neck. “You know that I can’t get enough of you. That I would give anything for you to stay home and make love to me all day long. But…”

“How can there be a but?” I inquire. “How can there possibly be a but? I mean, what better way is there to spend a crappy day like this? Can you think of anything else you’d like more? Anything else you’d rather do in this cold weather?”

“Eating every piece of chocolate in the house?” she chirps.

“Come on…” I roll my eyes. “Sex is way better than chocolate.”

“Or I could tackle that huge gingerbread man that you bought me on the way home last night,” she suggests. “I mean, after all, he’s the perfect male specimen.”

“How do you figure that? How do you…”

“Because he’s sweet and tasty and can’t talk back,” she explains. “And if he dares try to give me any shit, I can bite his head off!”

“You’re starting to scare me, Emmy-Lou,” I slowly back away from her with my palms out in surrender. “Should I be worried? That you might do the same to me if I cause you grief?”

“I’d never bite your head off, Maximus. At least not the one below your waist. It’s the most important one. I do want to have babies, you know.”

“Two years,” I remind her. “We agreed two years.”

“Vero’s having a baby,” she points out. “Everyone else is having them but us.”

“Vero and Flower have been together since they were toddlers. I think they’re due, don’t you? You’ve already got something she’s been wanting for a years. A ring on your finger, a piece of paper that calls you someone’s wife. Trust me; she’d kill to have that.”

“She would, would she? Well you know what I’d kill for Max?” she stretches out her legs and wraps them around my waist, and digging her heels into my ass, pulls me into her. “You know what I’m dying for right now?”

“For me to call in sick so we can spend all day in bed?” I ask hopefully.

“I’m already public enemy number on as far as Mario is concerned,” she replies. “But seeing as you don’t have to leave the house for at least another…I don’t know…” she casts a glance at the clock on the microwave. “…twenty minutes? You know what would be really, really, really good use of your time?”

“Taking you upstairs and making an honest woman out of you? ‘Cause I’m totally game.”

“I think that you should prove to me that you’re as big of a player as you let on you used to be,” she says. “I think you should take me upstairs and at least give me some kind of proof that your skills are as phenomenal as you think they are.”

“Would the living room do? On our brand new couch? ‘Cause I honestly don’t think my back can make it all the way upstairs.”

“I suppose I’ll settle for the living room,” she sighs dramatically. “As long as you promise to put those oral skills to good use.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” I tell her, and wrapping my arms around her waist, hoist her off of the counter. “I’ll do whatever you want. Whenever you want. I’m a man of my word.”

“Yes…” she agrees, and kisses me deeply. “You most certainly are.”

Something tells me I’m going to be extremely late for practice.