Before I Wake Read Online Free

shoulder and I could feel the heat of his tears through my shirt.
    I let him cry. I held him until he went silent; his life, his pain, filling my arms almost to bursting. Then I asked, “Do you want to go anywhere?”
    â€œWhat?” He raised his red eyes to mine. “No.”
    â€œI thought—it’s a beautiful day. Maybe a walk would help clear your head.” I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but I wanted to offer. We never take walks. It’s one of the rules of being the other woman—the wife has custody of public spaces—but I felt like he might need the fresh air and shouldn’t be on his own.
    â€œNo…” He shook his head, looking away. “I have to go back to the hospital soon. I think I’d like to just stay here.”
    I nodded. “Of course.”
    Our eyes met. Without warning, he pressed his mouth to mine. His lips were cold, hard, his breath a hot rush.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he muttered as he was kissing me, his voice cracking again. “I need…” His arms tightened around me, drawing me into him. “I need…”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”
    I wanted to blanket the pain he had brought with him from the hospital.
    He pulled my clothes off as we stood in my living room. He popped a button from my shirt, and looked down at it for a long moment, as if shocked that such a thing could happen. That something so small could be broken so easily.
    After I was naked, he undressed himself quickly, his eyes never leaving me. He pushed the coffee table to one side and pulled me down onto the couch. He made love to me desperately, as if trying to hide within me. He controlled everything, his hands on my hips setting the rhythm, his mouth at my breasts, my lips.
    After he came, he didn’t release me like he usually did. Instead, he pulled me closer, laying his head against my breasts.
    I could feel the rough tug of his whiskery face, and the heat of his tears, as he softened within me.
    SIMON
    I hated myself for being there, for being so weak I had to run to her. Hated myself for lying there, watching Mary as she stood up, her high, small breasts, the dark, narrow line of her sex.
    I tried to rise, but she touched me gently on the chest with the palm of her hand, pressing me backward with an even pressure. “No, you stay here.”
    â€œI have to—”
    â€œYou can sit for a minute. There’s time.” The tone of her voice brooked no argument, but it wasn’t her court voice. It was smoother, warmer, like honey in tea.
    I glanced at my watch. 6:42. There was still time to stay, to sit. I had left the hospital at 5:32, caught a cab from the emergency room door, arrived here at…
    MARY
    What was that expression? That little lift in his lips as he slept.
    Was it satisfaction? Relief? Comfort?
    Comfort…
    Could I really settle for comfort? Probably not. But for now, I’d settle for the thought that I could help take his pain away for a little while.
    I curled myself into the sofa between him and the picture of my parents on the end table. He slept with one arm at his side, palm up, the other hand draped across his belly, rising and falling gently as he breathed.
    His sandy hair was just beginning to hint at gray. I knew that he would comb it fastidiously before he left—he alwaysdid, no matter the weather, no matter if he’d have to comb it again once he got to wherever he was going. He never went out in public unless he was absolutely perfect.
    If he were younger it would have annoyed the shit out of me. “The great tragedy of middle age,” my best friend Brian had once said about the carefully coiffed men who were always trying to pick him up, “is watching these guys trying so desperately to hold on to a youthful beauty they only imagine they had.”
    But Simon was beautiful. He hadn’t let himself go. His belly was flat, his chest tight,