Chapter 9: Late January

He'd been sick, off and on, since the beginning of the year. First, it had been a nasty case of the flu that sapped his energy and put him in bed for four days. It should have been longer but he refused to stay down that long. Next it had been a stomach virus everyone said was "going around," and although it didn't make Steve take off work, he was clearly miserable and wasn't making any new friends at work. Now, it seemed he just didn't have any energy. He was tired all the time and regularly came home from work exhausted. Strangely, he was often unable to sleep.

Barbara was worrying herself sick about her husband. Just when there were hopeful signs in their relationship, he seemed to be getting sicker and sicker. She thought she knew why.

When Steve got home, Barbara wasn't there. He'd known she wouldn't be. She'd told him that morning she was going to visit her grandmother that evening and she'd be home about 10:00 PM.

She'd offered, as she always did these days, to call him from her grandmother's phone every so often while she was there so he could know she was actually there. Steve refused, as he always did. He had no intention of treating her like a misbehaving child, he told her.

He had a couple of drinks on the way home, something he'd almost given up during the long separation from his wife. His brother Jon had called, though, and wanted Steve to meet him somewhere. They didn't get together often enough, Jon said. What he really wanted was an update on how he and Barbara were getting along and Steve knew it. That was fine. Months of counseling had let him open up a lot more than he'd ever been able to do before. He especially didn't mind talking to his brother.

He was tired, he was beginning to feel the effects of the liquor, and he was hungry when he finally made it home. He tossed his briefcase on the couch and watched to make sure it didn't bounce off onto the floor. There were some reports in there he needed to go over with Barb, but they could wait.

In the kitchen, he made himself a couple of sandwiches, dropped a handful of chips on a plate and was making good progress on gulping it all down when the phone on the wall next to him rang. He hadn't been expecting it and he inhaled involuntarily. The better part of two potato chips went down the wrong way. When he answered, his voice was hoarse and ragged.

"Hello?" he gasped.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Barbara asked anxiously. She listened as her husband coughed harshly. He'd put his hand over the mouthpiece, but she could still hear the muffled coughs.

"Just eating some chips and a sandwich," Steve said in a strained voice. He cleared his throat, coughed once more, and tried again.

"Ahhhhhhh," he said, drawing out the word experimentally. "There... I think I'm all better," he said. His voice was stronger, though the hoarseness remained.

"Are you all right?" Barbara asked.

"Yeah... the phone caught me by surprise when it rang," Steve explained. "I choked on a potato chip."

They talked for a few minutes and then Barbara passed the phone to Lydia. Sometimes, even though Steve never asked, Barbara felt better if he had some verification of where she was. When Lydia hung up, Steve finished his sandwich, took a shower, and went to bed.

Barbara was still anxious when she got home, but Steve was in bed asleep. The booze had had its effect on him and he barely roused when she slipped into bed beside him. She touched his shoulder and stroked it gently as she listened to him breathe. It sounded a little rough, she thought, and maybe he was wheezing a little too.

She looked at his body. He'd lost a good ten pounds just since the first of the year. It had to be something serious but he kept telling her not to worry.

He was back on South Padre Island. They were on their honeymoon. Barbara and he had sneaked hand in hand behind some sand dunes. She had pushed him flat on the beach blanket and yanked his swimsuit down before straddling him and guiding him into her.

She'd eased herself down on him, driving his prick deep inside. Her gasping pleasure at the feeling of his dick invading her vagina had aroused him even more than he'd already been. She'd begun riding him cowgirl style, varying hard back and forth thrusts by rising straight up and letting her weight pull her back down on his cock.

He couldn't get his swimming trunks off his feet; he kept trying but they were tangled around his ankles and he could not get them off. It was distracting him when he wanted to pay attention to his new wife's lovely dangling breasts dancing so beautifully before his eyes. If he could just get his suit off so he could thrust up inside her more strongly...

Steve woke slowly, spending a long time in that limbo between wakefulness and sleep. He didn't want to let it go. It was such a great dream.

"Unh, unh, unh, unh," Barbara grunted as she pushed her cunt down over Steve's hardness. Her nightgown was gathered around her waist, the top almost off her shoulders.

She was setting a hard, fast pace without any grace to it. She moaned, her lips pressed into the hollow of his shoulder as she felt her orgasm beginning to rise. Frantically, Barbara tried to squeeze her husband's penis with her vagina muscles. She wanted Steve to spend himself inside her, flooding her with his hot cum. She could feel him beginning to rouse. She had to get this done before he awakened completely and stopped her.

Steve began to work with her, setting a strong rhythm that rammed his cock deep inside his woman. It had been so long. He couldn't hold back much longer. When Barbara's vagina muscles began squeezing the head and shaft of his cock, he lost control.

Abruptly, his climax was there. He shoved his hips up hard to meet Barbara's down thrust. Straining, he held himself deep inside her and pumped spurt after spurt of white-grey cum into her vagina. He was cumming long after he thought it had to end.

"AAARRRGGH..." he bellowed. He couldn't help himself. It was the spur Barbara needed to get over the threshold herself.

"STEEEEEVE..." she cried. The two worked themselves against the other, rubbing their groins together in a final paroxysm of carnal lust. Barbara's strength deserted her. She collapsed atop her husband. They lay that way for a time, breathing hard and relaxing in the afterglow of their sexual union. Barbara rolled off him and lay on her back beside him. She stared up at a ceiling hidden in the darkness.

Steve chuckled. He felt good, truly alive for the first time in many months. He'd missed this. He hadn't known until this moment how much he'd missed it.

"Now, what was that all about?" he asked his wife in a soft voice. She didn't answer at first.

"I don't want you to die and leave me alone," Barbara sobbed.

Steve couldn't make any sense of her words. He was still not completely alert after having been awakened so abruptly. He turned on his side and reached out a hand to caress her soft belly. This was the first time they'd had sex in almost a year, but they'd begun accepting small, affectionate touches from each other since Barbara had moved back in.

Steve was surprised to find his wife was trembling as she lay next to him. Abruptly, he was wide awake. He rolled up on his elbow. He couldn't see his wife's face, but he didn't need to. He knew it so well he could picture the tears flowing from her eyes.

"Barbara, what's wrong?" he asked quietly. His wife didn't answer for a while.

"I don't want you to die," she whimpered, "and I couldn't stand living without you," she sobbed between hiccups. "Now I'm going to die too."

In the darkness, Steve's eyes widened in amazement. He was at a loss for words.

"Steve?" Barbara asked softly.

"What, honey?" He was distracted. He'd been trying to find a way to begin telling her what he'd been told just today.

"Hold me? I'm so scared," she begged.

Steve scooted closer and took her in his arms. He pulled her on her side so they were pressed together the whole length of their bodies. For a moment, he said nothing. He realized he had to choose his words carefully.

"Baby, listen... you're not going to die... and neither am I, okay?" She continued to quiver in his arms. He hugged her tighter.

"Barb, listen to me... you're not going to die." He shook her tenderly. "And I'm going to be around to aggravate you 'til you're old and toothless and can't walk without a cane. You understand? You are not about to die and I'm not either." Barbara quieted in his arms.

"But you've been so sick. You've got..."

"A bad case of the flu, followed by something one of the secretaries' kids had that got passed on to me, followed by week of hard work without lunches, honey. I don't have anything any more serious than that." He thought for a moment.

"I lost my appetite for a while, and I guess I look like a scarecrow... or a skeleton or something, but I'm fine now. I ate like a horse at dinner and was still hungry when I got home." He hugged his wife again. "I think I'm going to go easy on potato chips though," he added.

Barbara had stopped shivering in his arms. She took in everything her husband was telling her, but she was bewildered. The bed bounced when Steve untangled his feet from the sheets and got up.

"I'll be right back," he told her.

Steve walked quickly out of the room; Barbara heard him turn on a lamp in the living room. There were two snapping noises, a rustling sound... then something thumped closed, and Steve turned off the light out there. A moment later he was sitting beside her on the bed and clicking on the bedside lamp. Barbara was blinded. She blinked repeatedly until she got used to the brilliance. She pulled her upper body up on her elbows.

"I meant to tell you this tonight, Barbara," Steve explained, "but this was the night you always go visit your grandmother." He waved an official looking form at her.

"Honey," he said earnestly, "I am not HIV positive. It's been more than three months since... ahhhhhh... since I was exposed... and there's no sign of any of the antibodies. I just got the word from Doctor Macmillan this afternoon." He studied Barbara's face for a hint into her thinking.

"The doctor told me ninety-six or ninety-seven percent of the time, HIV shows up between... uh... two and twelve weeks after exposure was what he said... and I'm way past that, Barbara. There are some very rare occasions when it won't show up until the six-month point, but Doctor Mac isn't concerned about that where I'm concerned. He said the chances I will test positive from this point on are about the same as being hit by a meteor. Understand, honey? I don't have AIDS... and you can't catch it from me."

Barbara lay back on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling for a space.

"You couldn't have told me earlier?" she said with an edge to her voice.

"I was asleep," Steve countered quickly, reminding her. "I didn't know it couldn't wait until morning, Barbara," he told her in a conciliatory tone. The reasoning was too clear for her to refute.

"And since they gave me that injection desensitizing me to penicillin, they've knocked down all the other STDs and I'm completely clean. Oh! And the county health people have contacted all of Kim's... uh... partners, and all of them are HIV negative too. All of them are past the six-month point after having sex with someone outside their little circle. They've been passing a witch's brew of STDs around between them, but AIDS isn't one of them, honey." He waited for Barbara to absorb everything he'd told her.

"We're not going to die?" she whispered.

"Not anytime soon," Steve assured her.

"Oh, God," Barbara said. "You must think I'm such a fool," she wailed. She threw her right forearm across her eyes to hide herself from her husband.

Steve puffed out a breath of air. He'd been holding it while he waited for her reaction.

"No... no I don't, honey." He turned out the light and got back into bed.

"We do have something to discuss, though," he said quietly.

"What?" Barbara asked. She was comfortable in her husband's arms. She'd missed having them around her.

"We did agree that we would discuss and come to terms with everything relating to our beginning to have sex again... remember?" Steve reminded her.

"Well... yeah," she answered reluctantly. "But..."

"No buts," Steve said sternly. "I'm going to have to punish you."

"What're you going to do," Barbara asked worriedly. She had made that agreement and this was no time for her and Steve to have a setback. They'd been doing so well since last fall.

"Well... I think for starters," Steve replied "you are going to have to sleep in the wet spot tonight," he said.

Barbara relaxed in his arms. She passed a hand over the sheet-covered mattress.

"I don't think there is a wet spot," she said coyly.

"Ahhhhhh," he drawled, "well... that's true, my boxers took care of most of it before, but I'm pretty sure I remember how to make one on the sheets," Steve said gently. His hand found the hem of her nightgown and slipped beneath to slide up her smooth thigh.

Barbara giggled happily.

"Okay," she said agreeably.

In the gray light of a cold dawn, making love to his wife didn't seem like the fine idea it had last night. As great as the lovemaking had been, as good as it was to hold her through the night once more, Steve still had many problems with Barbara's infidelity he didn't understand and didn't consider resolved. He didn't trust his wife anymore, for instance, and didn't see how he ever could again. He accepted her remorse for having betrayed the marriage, but wasn't sure how that affected anything. Most importantly, he didn't understand why she'd stepped outside the marriage.

Beyond that, in only pretending to be irritated at her breaking the agreement not to have sex until they both agreed, he'd marginalized the process of setting up boundaries and conditions for living together in what he still considered an in-house separation.

When he examined that, he saw that idea had been superseded. Somewhere along the way, he'd unwittingly crossed the threshold from not wanting and not believing reconciliation was possible, to hoping one was. It depressed him. It gave him a sense of not being in control of his own future again.

"So, let's talk about forgiveness again this evening," Verne Houston suggested, "in light of you two having made love last night."

Steve had hoped for the conversation to take a different direction. He'd thought all day of the ramifications of what he and Barbara had done. The more he'd examined the sex and everything that surrounded the event, the less certain he was he understood anything about Barbara's adultery and his reaction.

"Barbara?" Houston prompted. Barbara looked at the counselor uncertainly for a long moment.

"Well, like we talked about it back then," she said slowly, "it's about acceptance that a good person can do something bad and... a deep remorse... and stuff like that.

"Yes, we've pretty much established a definition for it... do you agree, Steve?"

Steve nodded.

"But I still have questions about some things related to forgiving someone," he reminded Mr. Houston.

"Understood," the counselor returned quickly, "and we'll get to them, but I'd like to hear a discussion of just the one issue for right now, okay?" Steve nodded after a momentary hesitation.

"Barbara," Mr. Houston said as he turned back to her. "Have you asked Steve for his forgiveness?"

"She doesn't have to beg me for forgiveness," Steve said quickly.

"I didn't say beg," Verne returned just as quickly.

He'd been ready for the comment, though with many of his clients, it was the wayward spouse who mentioned it. He was encouraged that Steve's immediate reaction had been to defend his wife. It was a good sign.

"I said asked," Verne repeated. He turned his attention back to Barbara.

"Have you?" he asked kindly.

Barbara shook her head hesitantly. She wet her lips with a nervous tongue. She waited for Mr. Houston to continue. He didn't say anything. Barbara turned to Steve to find him watching her intently.

"Steve," she whispered, "I have been ten kinds of a fool... I've done things... things a wife can never, ever do... and I hate myself for having done them. I don't know how to tell you how sorry I am for everything about all of the terrible--"

"Yes," Steve said softly.

"What?" Barbara said cautiously.

"Steve took a deep breath and let it out. He was almost certain he was making a bad mistake.

"I forgive you for... the lies... the deceit... uh... all the things you've done," he said slowly, belatedly realizing he didn't want to itemize every wrong he felt she'd committed. "I won't forget them anytime soon, maybe never, but I see how sorry... how remorseful... you are and I accept that."

He was about to add something but thought better of it. Instead, he reached across the gap between their chairs and took his wife's hand in his. He squeezed it gently.

Verne Houston let the moment extend itself for a while before taking the next step.

"Steve?" he said quietly. "Have you asked Barbara to forgive you for the hurt you've caused her?"

Steve's grip on his wife's fingers tightened involuntarily. Steve's eyes narrowed to slits as he studied the counselor behind the big desk.