Butterfly Dreams Read Online Free

she didn’t help matters. She seemed to think that once I was out of the hospital, I should be able to jump back into our life together as though nothing had changed.
    The first night I came home, she entered our bedroom wearing a silky piece of lingerie that, under normal circumstances, I would have ripped from her body. But I was tired and sore. I just wanted to sleep.
    So when Sierra started kissing on my neck and touching me, sliding her hand underneath my pajamas and cupping my junk, I pulled away. She kept trying to get me in the mood, straddling me and pushing her tits in my face. She inadvertently pressed her hand into my healing incision and I had yelped in pain, pushing her off my lap.
    “I can’t, Sierra!” I had yelled, frustrated and pissed that she was only thinking of herself. Pissed that I couldn’t be the man she wanted me to be…the man I was
before
.
    I just remember lying there with my hot-assed girlfriend gyrating on top of me with my dick flaccid between us wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why was I so angry? Why wasn’t I turned on? Why couldn’t I just be the man I was before my heart stopped working?
    “Fine, be an asshole!” Sierra screamed, jumping off the bed and slamming out of the bedroom. She ended up sleeping in the spare room that night. And the night after that.
    In the three months since I had been discharged from the hospital, Sierra and I had slept apart more times than we had slept together. Our sex life had dwindled to nonexistent and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to remedy it.
    “All couples go through rough patches,” my mother had tried to assure me. She had been badgering me as to why Sierra, once again, hadn’t joined me for dinner with my parents. I knew that Sierra wasn’t their favorite person but they had always made an effort for me. I hadn’t wanted to admit that maybe they had been right about my girlfriend all along. That she
was
juvenile and self-centered. That she was incapable of thinking about someone besides herself.
    But I had finally cracked and told Mom how bad things actually were. It was festering inside me. She surprised me by being completely nonjudgmental.
    “Yeah, I don’t know, Mom,” I had said, unconvinced.
    “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be. One thing I’ve learned in all these years being married to your father is that it’s not always passion and kisses that make your toes curl.” I cringed. The last thing I wanted to hear about was my parents’ toe-curling kissing. But when she was in her bestower-of-sage-wisdom mood, there was no interrupting her.
    “There will be hard times. There will be moments when you ask yourself if this person is really worth it. But I can tell you that every time I have ever asked myself that question about your father, I could answer
yes
without hesitation. Because in my bones, I knew he was the only man I could ever spend my life with. If you look inside yourself and can say that about Sierra, then you’ll be able to get through this. I promise you.” She had poured me a glass of iced tea and left to go check on her pot roast.
    In Mom’s mind, there was nothing in this world a good pot roast couldn’t fix. I wondered if her rose-colored glasses would fit my fat head.
    Because, when I asked myself if Sierra was worth the trouble, all I could feel was frustration and anger at her selfishness. Maybe I needed to wait until I wasn’t pissed and irritated to ask myself such important questions. Or maybe that was the best time to ask them.
    Perhaps I wasn’t being fair to Sierra. She’d been through a lot too, right? It couldn’t be easy seeing your boyfriend laid up in a hospital room, not sure if he’s going to make it. And I
had
been short tempered. And I
had
taken a lot of my shitty mood out on her.
    But my mother’s words continued to echo in my ears for weeks afterward.
    Was Sierra worth it?
    I wasn’t so sure.
    “All systems seem to be a go. You can put your shirt back on,”