Are you mad?” She breathes from behind me. I spin around to face her.
“What do you think?” I clip.
“That you’re going to save me.” She says quietly.

A mistake? The most passionate night of his life was a mistake? Her first time and that’s what she thought. That grated on him in the worst way. “Is that what you think, Beth?”

“Don’t call me that.”
“Why, Beth?”
“You know I hate that name.”
“Oh, so sorry, Beth. I do apologize, Beth.” He was being petty and he knew it, but he didn’t give a damn. She’d always brought out the very worst in him.

She reached up and twisted his ear. “Ow!”
“Out of my way, Robert Lemonade,” she said casually, pissing him off in the worst way.

Give it up, mister! No sex for you!" I yelled at the wall as my girls cackled maniacally.

"Tons of sex for me, sister. None for you!" he yelled all too clearly through the wall.

He had slept next to her for thirty-six years, and the mattress felt different without her weight, however slight, and without the rhythm of her breath the dark had no measure. There were times he woke feeling cold from the lack of the heat that once came from between her thighs and behind her knees. He might have even called her, if he could have momentarily forgotten that he already knew everything she could possibly say.

Love is a renewable resource

Relationships are such that if one person changes, the relationship changes.