No, he wasn’t. The word sorry came off his tongue like so many watermelon seeds—he constantly spit it out without even thinking “What do you want?” she demanded.
He sighed again. But it wasn’t a tedious sigh, it was a sad sigh, a sigh totally unlike anything she had ever heard from Aaron in the more than thirty years they had been married, separated, or whatever they were. “What I want . . . what I want is not easy to put into words,” he said softly. “That’s always been my problem, you know. The ugly stuff comes right out, but what’s really inside me gets stuck there.”
“Don’t start,” Bonnie groaned. “You’re always saying shit like that and you don’t mean it. You grovel for a while, and I come back, then you forget all your promises and I leave. I’m sick of it. I am sick of your promises and I am sick of leaving. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Please don’t say that!” he exclaimed. “I called to tell you that I want you back, Bon-bon. I’ll do anything if you’ll just come back.”
Bonnie didn’t say anything at first, just sank onto the edge of the bed, staring blindly at the brightly patterned wall.
“Let me say first that I am sorry,” he said quickly, filling the silence. “I mean it this time, Bon-bon. I am sorry for everything. For all the years, all the heartaches, just like you said. And then, when I found out I was sick, you came when you didn’t have to, and I know how hard you tried, and what did I do? I just pushed you away again, I know I did. The girls, too. But I’ve thought long and hard about it, Bonnie, and I see the mistakes I made. I don’t know why I didn’t before, but I do now. Please give me one last chance. Please come back one last time! I swear you won’t regret it, I swear on my life you won’t.”
Bonnie sucked in her breath, closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. What was this, the hundredth, maybe thousandth time they had had this conversation? How did he do it time and time again? How did he keep drawing her back in with his promises? But more importantly, how was it possible that after all they had been through, she could still love him so?
“Come on, Bon-bon . . . what do you say?” he asked.
Bonnie opened her eyes. “I say no, Aaron.” And she hung up before he could draw her in again.
Chapter Fourteen
When your personal boundaries are stretched to new dimensions, you cannot return to the old dimensions. You will transform to fill your new boundaries . . .
TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES SEMINAR, TRACK 2
Rebecca emerged a half hour later still a little pale but nonetheless remarkably improved, so Matt decided to call off the funeral after all. Nonetheless, now that he had held her, seen her up close and personal so to speak, he had decided she was too thin. And without the knee-high boots, her very shapely, long legs looked more like bird legs stuck into enormous sneakers. The Stubbs Bar-B-Q T-shirt, which she had tucked into her skirt, swallowed her whole. Probably the result of some stupid beauty queen diet. For the life of him, Matt couldn’t figure out why women thought stalag-thin was attractive. Flesh was attractive. Soft, sweet-scented, succulent flesh like her flesh . . . flesh that was now forever seared into his memory, thankyouverymuch.
He’d grabbed a shower, too, and had whipped up some steak sandwiches. Rebecca blanched when he said so, but after her little wine binge last night, Matt wasn’t about to let her walk out the door without eating something, and made her sit at the bar and try it.
Rebecca sat. She even ate a little. But she was not the same, dangerously appealing you-owe-me-a-favor Rebecca that she had been under the considerable influence of alcohol. That sexually repressed Rebecca had knocked his socks off, and truthfully, he couldn’t get that unexpected kiss or its wake out of his head—the big head or the small head. In fact, the small one had awakened bright and early, remembering last night with some enthusiasm. What was a guy to do? From the moment she had said four years, every male fiber in him had kicked into testosterone overdrive.
It was funny what a person could make of a single word, a gesture, a look . . . but he’d known last night that she wanted him to end her four-year trek through the desert, and he could have sworn it was more than just a little fun between adults when it was all said and done. In fact, he’d felt something extraordinary—he had wanted to fall back and lie in that state of grace as long as he could, hold the emotion they had created in his hands. Maybe it was the raw release wrenched from her gut that did it to him. Maybe it was just the honesty of it all. Whatever it was, he’d never felt quite that way in his life, and it was a little weird.
Which was probably why he’d been so quick to throw in the towel and chalk it up to a Friday night shenanigan. But the moment he said that, she’d been so damn relieved, like she’d rather die than . . .
To hell with it—whatever the reason for her relief, it had annoyed him, and in the shower, he had tried to scrub the taste of her from his lips.