Because I’m a sadist, I scan the story further, adding a match to my combustible feelings. It mentions Charlie and Brad shopping for antiques while “taking Colin’s baby for a stroll.” They dined outdoors and sipped champagne - although in the picture it’s just Brad with a glass in hand. Then it notes that Charlie breastfed our baby at the table while Brad seemed to not care. I roll my eyes. I’m sure parent groups are going to be up in arms that my wife dared to sip champagne while breastfeeding even though there’s no evidence that she actually did.
I decide to forward the link to the article to Brad and Charlie with a note. “Ah… young love.”
I leave it at that. They can interpret my message any way they choose.
No more news for me. I open my word-find game app and lose myself for more than an hour, searching for words that I don’t know the meanings of.
****
God, finally the first away game of the season is over, and it was brutal. The lonely hotel room and missing my family was the cherry on top of a shit game. We lost. I sucked. I couldn’t seem to scramble away from the defenders and find a receiver, even if the other team had removed two players from the field. The plane ride home was so fucking quiet it was scary. No one sat near me. I think my team might be scared of me.
All I want is for my wife to be naked in the hot tub, waiting for me. It’s the thought that kept me from losing my fucking mind after the game. I’ve come to just expect that when I pull into the driveway after a game, my girl will have the hot tub turned on, a champagne bucket of iced-water bottles, old country music playing over the outdoor speakers, and she’ll be in some sort of string bikini contraption that’s for my viewing pleasure only.
As I turn into our neighborhood, my dick gets hard in anticipation of seeing her. I can almost feel her surgeon’s hands working the knots out of my sore muscles. Staring down at my over eager cock, I chuckle. Who says that the sex goes downhill after kids? Geez, we took six weeks off for her to heal and then picked up right where we left off. That’s because we were made for each other.
Bertha gives me a moment of protest and then decides to behave herself. I finger my wedding ring in anticipation of seeing Charlie in just a few seconds. I’m giddy, a little boy on Christmas morning who’s hoping against hope for a new bicycle.
But, as I walk through the backyard gate, I don’t hear Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson. The water isn’t bubbling in the hot tub, and it’s empty. Like there’s water in it, but no hot blonde in a bikini. Then, I panic. What if something’s wrong? With her? The baby?
I unlock the backdoor like a lunatic and it flies open, hitting the stopper and catching me on my shoulder. The pain barely registers. I jog through the house as much as my sore ankle will let me, and throw open the bedroom door, hearing my pulse pounding in my ears. Trying to calm my racing heart, I grip the door handle, and have to catch my breath.
She’s in bed sound asleep. The lights are completely off. The curtains are pulled so the only light in the room is from the bedside clock, and the baby monitor power light, indicating that it’s on.
Once I’ve recovered from my initial panic and confirmed that both my girls are okay, the disappointment sets in. Hell! Pancho didn’t even get up to greet me. So much for him being man’s best friend. We lost. I played for shit. And no naked girl in the hot tub. Fuck my life.
I walk back to the kitchen and grab a couple of bottles of water out of the refrigerator, and take a seat at the kitchen table.
What did I do after football games before Charlie? It’s been so long that I hardly remember what life was like before she stepped on the elevator in Los Angeles. I think that I might have soaked in my bathtub, filled with Epsom Salt. Did it work to keep me from getting sore? Shit. I really don’t remember. I quickly down the first bottle, and toss it toward the garbage can with my right hand, but I miss. I’m a lefty through and through. I take the lid off the second one, and drink it more slowly. My house is so quiet. Was it this quiet before Charlie? Once again, I don’t remember.
What about when I was married to my first wife? What did we do after games? I keep drawing a blank. What did we do? Then it hits me. We fucked like bunnies in heat. God, how could I have forgotten that? Oh, yeah. The girl asleep in the other room has hijacked any part of my life that she wasn’t in, and filled the gaps with everything that makes her the one for me. I guess my time without her was so meaningless that my brain cells don’t care to store the knowledge.
Maybe the reason that I always had so many people at my house was because I didn’t like this level of quiet. It’s a halfway decent theory. What did Charlie call my house when she first moved in? A country club? A home for wayward boys?