and good-natured no matter how many of their buttons you push. I hate those guys. They are as dull in bed as they are to fight with. Brian, on the other hand, is anything but boring.
What I don’t tell my friends, what I don’t even tell Brian because he’d say I was the one with the problem and I don’t need to give him ammunition, is that I like the fighting. It gets me hot. Yeah, I guess that is fucked up, isn’t it? But I think he likes it as much as I do and won’t admit it either. He pushes me and I push him and we fight. And after we fight, we make up. And the making up is hot and sexy and sweaty and rough. I fume for days after a fight, but the longer the wait, the hotter I get to make up with him.
The other thing I don’t tell anyone is that sometimes I have to change my panties after one of my screaming, throwing, slamming fights with Brian. I’m just wired that way, I guess. He pushes my buttons to piss me off and that does something to my other button. My clit stands at attention when we’re going nine rounds over who was flirting with whom at the bar or whatever. I hear myself say things I never thought I would ever say to someone I love, with my hands balled into fists at my side, not sure whether I’d rather slap his face or stroke my clit. Maybe both. Yeah, there’s something wrong with me. Right?
I’ve slapped him a few times, pushing him, taunting him. Waiting to see what he’ll do, hoping he’ll do what a nice guy would never do. When I started dating, while my friends were being told by their mothers that boys didn’t hit girls, my mother was practical and told me not to slap a boy unless I’m prepared to be slapped back. The threat of being hit by a boy scared me when I was thirteen but the thought of being slapped by Brian excites the hell out of me at thirty-three.
I guess I could just ask him to slap me. But that seems a little twisted. Nice girls don’t ask to be hit and I’m a nice girl. Except with Brian. He brings out the bitch in me. With everyone else, I’m this super-controlled, calm, rational, together woman. The female counterpart to the guys I’ve dated who keep their voices modulated and never swear during an argument. People who know me wouldn’t recognise me when I’m fighting with Brian. The problem is, I think I’m my truest and most honest self with him – when I’m longing for him to call me a slut and slap my face. Why else would I stay with him and fight with him? He brings out the worst in me – and I love him for it.
‘You’re a stone-cold bitch, you know that?’ he asked me once during a particularly gruesome battle. I don’t even remember exactly what we were fighting about – I only remember the fight itself.
Brian is a writer and works in advertising, so he’s always careful with how he uses language. He’ll say I’m being bitchy or I’m acting like a bitch, but that was the first time he’d called me a bitch outright. My head snapped back like he really had hit me. Hot tears pricked my eyes, but I furiously blinked them back. I didn’t want him to think he had gotten to me. If he thought he’d penetrated my ‘stone-cold’ exterior, he would stop taunting me. And I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted more. A lot more. So I just smiled. That’s something else my mother taught me. No matter what horrible insult someone hurls at you – smile. It makes them crazy. I knew for a fact that it made Brian crazy.
‘Only to you, baby,’ I purred. ‘Only to you.’
The veiled meaning was that there was some other guy who I treated better. I could practically see Brian imagining me fucking another guy, or a string of other guys. Jealousy twisted Brian’s face into something ugly and unfamiliar. I should have been scared, but that primal female part of me that loved the fighting and wanted more thought it was hot as hell. He looked like a brute – and I wanted him to unleash that brutishness all over me. I ached for it in a way I couldn’t explain even to myself.
‘What are you saying?’ His voice was quiet. Almost sinister.
I took a step forward, the threat of tears long gone, and smiled sweetly. ‘It means I know how to treat a real man.’
Lightning fast, he was on me, one hand grabbing my arm to push me up against the wall, the other hand coming up in an arc. I thought he was going to slap me. I really did. Even though I wanted it, was ready for it, I flinched just a little.
He blinked, as if touching me had shocked him and let me go so abruptly, I nearly fell. Damn. It was my own fault. This time, the tears came and I couldn’t stop them.
‘Go on, do it,’ I taunted him, though my voice sounded wobbly with emotion and had lost its previous heat. ‘You were going to hit me, you know you were. Go ahead and do it!’
I was screaming the words, like a child throwing a tantrum because she hadn’t gotten what she wanted. It sounded like a plea rather than a taunt. Brian just stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.
‘You thought I was going to hit you,’ he said, something different in his voice. ‘I was going to hit you. Swear to God, I was.’
It finally dawned on me why he sounded different. He sounded sad. I took a step towards him, tried to touch him. ‘Just do it,’ I begged. ‘Do it. You want to.’
He shook his head. ‘I’d never hit a woman. I’d never, ever hit you, Jules.’
I said what had been hanging in the air between us, the truth that I couldn’t hide from any longer, the reality that maybe was starting to dawn on him. ‘But I wanted you to.’
He rocked back on his heels as if I’d punched him in the stomach. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously, Jules, who says that? Who wants that?’
My first reaction was shame and embarrassment. I was messed up, something was wrong with me. He’d just said it. My shame was followed by white-hot anger. I said the other truth that was between us, the truth I’d always suspected and was now willing to put into words. ‘You want to. I know you do. It’s why we’re still together. It’s why you fight with me and push me and let me push you. You want to take it farther, you want to, but you can’t.’
His hand came up to my face, but too slow to actually be a blow. Instead, he tucked a lock of my dark-brown hair behind my ear and gave me another sad puppy-dog smile. ‘Maybe. But I can’t do that. I’m done, Jules.’
I thought he meant done fighting, but he fished his keys out of his pocket and took my apartment key off his ring. Then he laid it on the table by the front door and walked out. The door closed with a finality that echoed inside me. I didn’t start crying for another thirty minutes, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Some time later, it started to rain.
* * *
Some time after 2 a.m., after tossing and turning for hours, I finally got up, threw a raincoat over my short nightgown and headed out into the night. I had only intended to go for a drive, but I found myself driving to Brian’s town house and parking on the street. I sat there, windshield wipers dashing away the heavy rain, staring up at his darkened windows and wondering if this was wise. I’d already gone this far, I decided, I might as well see it to its bitter conclusion.
He’d given me his key back, but he hadn’t asked for mine. I let myself in the front door, shushed his friendly Labrador Charlie, and made for the stairs to go to his bedroom. Brian’s voice caught me up short.
‘I’m in here,’ he said, calling to me from the living room just off the front entrance. ‘I figured you might show up.’
The room was dark, so it took my eyes a moment to adjust and see that he was lying on the couch, one arm tucked behind his head. He didn’t seem like he’d just woken up, nor was he
