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  Melissa’s first thought was to apologize, but she was suddenly angry. It wasn’t all her fault. She wasn’t the one who needed his fantasies, she didn’t need to be thinking of other men. She just needed Richard to be—

  Someone else.

  The hopelessness of it engulfed her. She made a sound, like a sad laugh. What could she have been thinking? That the man she had known for all these years, the man she had married because he wasn’t someone like Marcus, would magically turn into someone else?

  Her reaction seemed to confuse Richard. Maybe he had been expecting an apology for her harsh words. “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Or everything.” Melissa gulped her wine and set the glass down, noticing that Richard had barely touched his. Without asking she picked up his glass.

  “I wonder if a relationship is like wine,” she mused, staring at ruby liquid. “There’s one magical moment when it has all the promise in the world, but you never know what it is going to be like until you open the bottle. It can be bad, or wonderful, or surprising, or just okay. Our relationship has never been bad. We’re both too smart to have made the mistake of getting married if that had been true.” She had fallen into Richard’s conversation mode, clinical, holding her emotion at bay.

  “A lot of wines get better with age,” said Richard, with just a hint of a lighter tone, trying his best.

  “Ours isn’t,” she said. “It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better.”

  “And that isn’t acceptable to you, is it?”

  Melissa should have been crying, and Richard should have been at least emotional, but here they were, talking as if it were somebody else’s life. Maybe this was her way of staying sane, at least for the length of this conversation.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “Honestly I don’t. But you are right, if you ask me today if I am completely happy I’d say no. I can’t tell you if that feeling will go away. I can’t tell you if it is a matter of unrealistic expectations on my part. I can only tell you what I feel.”

  Richard surprised her by reaching for her hand, and then pulling her toward him, taking her in an embrace. It was a little awkward, half reclining on the couch, but it felt good, comforting, loving. Why wasn’t this enough?

  His voice was quiet, soothing. “Admitting the problem is the first step. That’s true for both of us.”

  She buried her head against her shoulder, and she could feel the tears coming. Her whole world coming apart. “I know. I just don’t know what to do next.”

  The music had ended, the house completely quiet. They stayed that way for quite a while, in the melancholy embrace.

  Richard waited until she had stopped crying, then finally broke the silence. “I need to ask you something. Please be honest. What is it that you feel is missing? What is it that we don’t have?”

  Melissa hesitated. How to answer that? Was this really the time to be brutally honest? What could she say, that she needed more passion, and more than that, more thrill? More spontaneity? More wild, out of control sex? Could those things be created? Or were they just there, or not there?

  She moved her head so she could look directly at him. This wasn’t the time to be hiding. “It’s hard to explain. It’s just different from what I expected.”

  “Or what you wanted?”

  “Not exactly. Not all of it. Most of it is just fine. In fact, most of it is great. You are a good man. I’m lucky to have you. You work hard. You support me emotionally. You never second guess anything I do. We’re partners, we make decisions together. And most of all, I trust you implicitly. I can’t tell you how important that is for me.” Melissa shook her head. “When I list all the good things, I feel like an idiot for even thinking there is something missing. Most other women would kill for someone like you, for a marriage like we have.”

  “But—,” he prodded.

  “It’s not fair to even say it,” she said, meaning it.

  “You said we are partners. Is it fair to keep it from me? It affects me too. I can’t be happy if you are not.”

  “I know. I realize that. But that doesn’t make me feel any differently. I feel it’s selfish, for me to have this long wish list, a wish list that might be so unrealistic, so impossible.”

  Richard was quiet for a long time, and Melissa wondered what he was thinking. She had chosen her words carefully, trying not to place blame, but she knew if she were on the receiving end of those words she would feel that it must be her fault, that it wasn’t the marriage, it was something she was doing wrong. A typical man might not think so, but Richard wasn’t typical, at least not in that respect.

  When he spoke it didn’t even sound like him, it was as if the words he must have felt forced to utter had to be disguised, or in someone else’s voice. “Do you wish you had married someone else?”

  Melissa put her hand against his cheek, cradling it, trying to soften the blow. “Not in the way you think. Not someone in particular.”

  Richard kissed her hand, nodding like it was what he had expected. “It is me, then. Something I’m not giving you.”

  “No, no. No! You can’t say that. It might just be something we haven’t created—something we haven’t yet been able to create, together.” Melissa took a deep breath. “You have to admit, you must be missing something too. I think you’d want to be with me more, physically, if that weren’t true.”

  “That isn’t it,” he argued, his voice rising. “You think I don’t want to be with you more? To have more sex? It’s because I know I’m not measuring up to what you want, what you expect. I can’t face it. It freezes me.”

  She pulled back, confused. “What are you saying?”

  “I can’t be what I’m not. I can’t be what you need in bed. I tried. But I’m so not what you want that you probably didn’t even notice. I don’t have the capability. It’s not in me.”

  Melissa squinted in confusion. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I’ve been thinking about these fantasies I’ve been having, about you with someone else. I’m not blind. I may not know exactly what you want from me sexually, but I do know you in other ways. Admit it, thinking about other men turned you on.”

  Melissa felt her eyes slide away and forced herself to look back at him. “Maybe that was because I saw how excited you got.”

  “Even if that was part of it, and even though I am grateful to you for even saying it that way, you can’t fool me. You got aroused. So there’s something you were thinking about that’s missing from what we are doing. And I realized that I was getting excited because of just that—that I was finally giving you what you wanted. Even if you weren’t thinking of me.”

  Melissa wasn’t ready to give in so easily, this was dangerous territory, and not the kind of danger she liked. “It might have been just the newness of it, the surprise. You talking about sex. Talking dirty. Doing something different. Something new.”

  “Another maybe. But let me ask you this. Are there other men you have been with who have given you what I have not? Men who have totally satisfied you sexually?”

  Melissa was shaking her head even before Richard finished. “We said we’d never talk about the specifics of our sex lives with other people. Neither one of us were hermits or virgins when we got married. I know you slept with women, you know I slept with men. We don’t need to go into particulars.”

  Richard pressed on. “So this—ideal you have about what we are missing, it’s more than something sexual? If it is, tell me what it is, and I’ll leave it be.”

  Melissa had no answer to that.

  “You see?” Richard said.

  He wasn’t accusing her, or sounding triumphant. Just another fact that Melissa could not deny.

  Richard went on, it sounded like he had thought this through. “It is something physical. And I never have thought you to be a wide eyed girl, with some dreamy vision of a romance novel hero in your eyes. So whatever it is that you feel is missing, it’s not some guess, it’s a re
ality. Which means it is something you’ve experienced. With someone else.”

  His eyes were burning into her, his shoulders tense, sure of his conclusions, but still, Melissa thought, hoping she would deny it.

  If she did, Richard would know she was lying. She trusted him, she said that and she meant it. If he lied to her it would destroy whatever they had. There would be nothing to rebuild on. She knew he needed to trust her the same way. He’d be crushed if she lied.

  And crushed if she told him the truth.

  “The women you were with, they couldn’t have all been the same in bed,” she said. It was the best she could do, skirting the answer.

  “Of course. A lot of differences. Some were better than others, and I’m sure they thought the same of the men they had been with.” Richard reached for her hand again. “And sometimes there was just more compatibility.”

  “So you see what I mean,” Melissa replied. “Just because someone has a certain set of experiences with one person doesn’t mean they will have them with everyone.”

  He smiled. “You’re avoiding the issue. I’ll help you.” Gently he said, “It was Marcus, wasn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.

  Melissa shook her head, something protective in her trying to deny it, even as she was whispering, “I’m sorry.”

  Richard cradled her hand in both of his. “Don’t be,” he said, and he seemed to mean it.

  Melissa felt the tears coming again, but she fought them off. “It would really help me now if you said you had the same experience, that there was some woman who was better than me in bed.”

  Richard smiled. “There was. A whole bunch of them in fact.”

  Melissa pulled her hand away and punched him on the shoulder, her tears falling freely now. “Bullshit.”

  “I know,” he said, reaching for her again. “You see what I mean? You know when I’m not being truthful. The other women were different. But not better.”

  “You’re making me feel worse,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t. It’s just the way it is.” He hesitated. “Marcus. Do you still have feelings for him?”

  “Not in the way you think,” said Melissa. “I wouldn’t have married him. I’m sure of that.” She fought to get control of herself, she was telling the truth, and she needed Richard to believe her.

  “But maybe you would have still been with him? Marriage wasn’t the be all and the end all for you.”

  “Except for kids,” she said. “I wanted to be married for that.”

  “I know. But here we are, years into our marriage, and we haven’t talked about kids yet, at least not seriously.”

  “We still have a lot of time.”

  Now it was Richard who shook his head. “You know I think you’d make a great mother. And you know I love you. But I’m not going to start a family with you until we get this resolved.”

  The stark reality of the truth of his words slammed into her. This was too big a cloud to be hanging over them. He was right, but that didn’t shield her from the pain. “I know,” she admitted, her voice choked with the unfairness of it all.

  “Which brings us back to where we were. Marcus.”

  “Why do you keep bringing him up?”

  “I told you the other night. It’s how you talked about him. Or avoided talking about him.”

  “I don’t want to start some kind of comparison. Especially one limited to certain aspects of our relationship. That’s just not right. If I wanted to marry Marcus I would have.”

  “Did he ask you?”

  “He didn’t. So it’s a moot point.”

  “And you didn’t bring it up with him?”

  “He wasn’t the marrying type. At least not then. Neither was I, as a matter of fact. We were in our twenties.”

  “What about now? Do you wonder what would have happened if you had stayed with him?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is I didn’t. I’m with you.”

  “But you’re not happy. And you’ve basically admitted, without using the words, that he satisfied you in ways that I haven’t.”

  Melissa looked away. “How can you be so cool about this, so clinical?”

  Richard’s eyes flamed, a glimpse into his inner turmoil. “I’m not as cool about it as you think, inside. But I’m a guy, maybe that makes it easier. I see it as a problem to be fixed. It’s what I do at work, fix things. And I want to fix this. I don’t want to give up.”

  A wave of despair flowed over her. “Maybe some things can’t be fixed. Maybe they just are.”

  “I won’t accept that. At least until we try.”

  “I’ve been trying.”

  “I know. But maybe we need to be more creative.”

  Where was Richard going with this? “How?”

  Richard was completely focused on her now, squeezing her hand. “If I can’t give you what you want sexually, maybe you can get it somewhere else.”

  Melissa blinked. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But I can’t believe what you said. If I even understood you correctly.”

  “You did. I know this is a difficult thing to talk about. Can you imagine how hard it is for me to suggest it? For you to be with another man?”

  “You know I’d never cheat on you.”

  “I do. But it wouldn’t be cheating if I knew.”

  “You’re crazy! What’s making you say this?” Her eyes widened. “It’s that stupid fantasy of yours. Of me with another man. Fucking some stranger. This is for you, isn’t it?” She snatched her hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Listen to me, please. I’ve admitted that the thought of you with someone else excites me. Does it matter how we think of it, or even if we have to decide who it is for? The fact is that you are missing something. Something you know you’ve had from other men. If you could just get that, then you’d be fulfilled, at least in that respect. And if it excites me in the process, wouldn’t that be good for both of us?”

  “You mean you’d let me sleep with another man?” Melissa couldn’t get her head around it.

  “It’s not a matter of letting you. You are not a possession. I’m in no position to decide what you do or don’t do.”

  “You aren’t a possession either, but I wouldn’t let you sleep with another woman!” Just the thought of it, even with all their troubles, made Melissa shake. This was a thousand times worse than the time she had caught Marcus cheating on her.

  “I’m not asking you to. But if the only way you can get the kind of sexual release and excitement that you need is to sleep with someone else, I’d accept that. Because if what is missing is eating at you, it could destroy us. It will destroy is. Maybe not all at once, but everything would just keep going downhill, and we’d both know it. And hate ourselves for letting it happen.”

  Melissa sat up on the sofa, separating herself from him. “I can’t believe you are seriously suggesting this.”

  “I wouldn’t have, but I’ve tried to think of everything else. Anything else.” Richard’s voice hardened, just a bit. “I’m open to suggestions. If you want to save our marriage, suggest something else.”

  It was so far out of her range of possible solutions that Melissa could barely think straight. “We could see a therapist.”

  Richard nodded. “We could. And I would. Knowing me, and knowing yourself, do you think that would work?”

  Melissa didn’t have to spend time considering the idea. “No. It wouldn’t.” She laughed without humor. “And with my luck, we’d get a therapist who would suggest a threeway.”

  “Then what do you propose? I know this is not something you haven’t been thinking about. You’ve had plenty of time to come up with a better idea.”

  Melissa tried to think of something, any alternative. But if there was something that might possibly work, she would have thought of it by now. “You’re right. I haven’t. And I’m willing to try just about anything. I want to save what we have, I want to make it better. But Richar
d, I’m simply not going to sleep with a stranger. I just couldn’t do it.”

  “You don’t have to.” said Richard. “Marcus. You could sleep with Marcus.”

  Chapter 16

  “What?” Melissa was incredulous. Of all the ways she had thought about this conversation, not in a million years could she have dreamed that they would end up here.

  And she still hadn’t confessed what had happened between her and Vern. But that seemed almost insignificant now.