“What happened?”
He let out a long sigh, then finally started talking. “I honestly don’t know when things started going the wrong direction with her. Things were good, or at least I thought they were. I mean, I was gone a lot, but as the daughter of Dr. Crawley, it wasn’t anything new to her. But then my dad died when I was on a dig, so I ended up coming home early without telling her. I was so upset about my dad, I thought that if I could surprise Addison, her excitement to see me would make everything better. And she was surprised to see me all right—I walked in on her masturbating with a dildo.”
Corrie fought to keep her face straight. Well . . . this was unexpected.
“What happened after that?”
“Well, first she screamed and threw the dildo at me because she thought I was an intruder. Gave me a black eye, in fact.”
Corrie snickered.
“Don’t laugh. It’s not funny,” he said, unable to keep himself from chuckling.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face to stop herself. “I’m just picturing a dildo hitting you in the eye, and you have to admit—it’s an interesting visual.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“So then what?”
“We talked about it later and she apologized, but she also said that she was lonely because I was gone too much. I decided to stick around for a while, trying to rebuild our relationship, trying to satisfy her. I tried thinking of ways to reignite the spark so I thought, well, maybe we could experiment with toys together. We’d never tried that before, but I’ve always been open to exploring new things. Whenever we had sex, though, it was different. She . . . she was faking it.”
Hmm. Maybe she was right about him not being any good in bed.
“Like, faking having an orgasm.”
“Yes.” He paused. “God, why am I telling you this?” he muttered as he shook his head, still looking up. “This is so embarrassing.”
“Do you think she was always faking it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But at this point, who knows? Then we had sex less and less, and it was always she was tired or wasn’t in the mood or was on her period or she’d just taken a shower and didn’t want to get dirty again.”
Mm, wasn’t that half the fun?
“But I swear, Corrie, she’d say she was too tired and so she was going to go to bed and then I’d hear her later. Hear her muffling her moans. Do you have any idea how that messes with your head? Like, I don’t know. Not like I’m God’s gift or anything, but I always thought I was decent in the bedroom. Or, I don’t know, thought our emotional connection was stronger than that. I suppose I was wrong.”
This only stoked Corrie’s interest.
“Did you ever talk about it?” she asked as she shifted over to her stomach and propped herself up on her forearms.
“Oh yeah,” he said with a chortle. “Big mistake. That’s when I learned I wasn’t exciting enough for her. Our sex life was boring. And then she said our entire relationship was boring. What do I even do with that?”
In some ways, his admission didn’t surprise Corrie. Not everyone could be Indiana Jones, even if they were technically named after him.
“Yikes.”
“Yikes is right. Can you even imagine? Wait . . . no. You’re the opposite of boring.”
No, Corrie had never been described as boring in the bedroom. She’d also never been described as boring in a relationship. But, then again, she hadn’t really been in a relationship since her early twenties.
“So you broke up?”
He turned over on his side, now facing her. His face weary and tired.
“Yeah. I mean, I guess. Honestly, we never even said the words. She literally said, ‘Our sex life is boring. Our relationship is boring. And you’re boring.’ And after standing there dumbfounded, I responded, ‘Well, okay then.’ And we stared at each other for a few more minutes until she finally said she was going to go. And that was it. She took a bag that I thought was for the night, and she literally never came back.”
“Ouch.”
“Is it weird that it didn’t hurt?”
“I mean, no. If the sex was as bad as it sounds toward the end, you were probably emotionally disconnected from her already.”
“Yeah . . . maybe.”
“How’s it been since then?”
“What? Things with Addison? I haven’t spoken to her even once since that day.”
Interesting. But not what she meant.
“No, I mean how’s sex been? Did the emperor get his groove back?” she joked with a shimmy, trying to bring a little levity to the situation.
But he didn’t laugh. He blinked a few times. “I haven’t had sex since then.”
No. Fucking. Way.
Literally. No fucking way.
Corrie about choked.
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “With everything going on with my parents and some changes at work, I haven’t had time for dating.”
“There’s always time for sex. Takes five minutes if you’re efficient,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I thought women didn’t like men who couldn’t last more than five minutes?”
“It serves its purpose. Sometimes all you need or want is a five-minute fuck.”
“Wow. You really are comfortable with your sexuality, aren’t you.” He didn’t say it like it was a question. It was definitely more of a statement. And a correct statement at that.
“Aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
“Maybe you need to try Tinder. It’s great for boosting your confidence.”
“You use Tinder?” His eyebrow raised.
She nodded. “Sometimes. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m surprised, that’s all.”
“Why? Because it’s slutty?” She hated that stereotype. Why couldn’t women enjoy sex with random hookups as much as men did?
“No. Because I . . . I guess I thought you would be in a relationship.”
Corrie laughed. “What? Me? Oh no no no. I don’t think so,” she said shaking her head.
“Like, never?”
“Not in a long time. As you’ve acknowledged, our lifestyle doesn’t exactly lend itself to having stable relationships.”
“I mean, it can. It just didn’t work for me and Addison. Lots of archaeologists and professors are married or in relationships.”
“Yeah, well, not this one. Think about it, Ford. Would I even be here right now if I were in a relationship? You gave me less than a week’s notice to fly out. What would I say? ‘Sorry, honey. Gotta go, but see you maybe in a few weeks or months’? And then, if you add kids to the mix, it only gets more complicated. I don’t see how that’s feasible. Not with all the things I want to do.”
“Things like what?”
“Like find Chimalli.”
“Okay, what if we find him here? What if, in a few weeks, we’re packing up with a crate of his bones and all these years of research and study finally culminate with the biggest archaeological discovery of our time? Then what?”
Corrie had never thought about life after Chimalli. Maybe because she’d never thought she’d actually have the opportunity to find him. What did she want to do with herself after that, assuming there would be an after?