The Year We Turned Forty Read Online Free Page A

times a day or to stop herself from emailing him with yet another wry observation on a topic they both found funny. But when he walked over with a vodka martini piled high with green olives, the drink she’d once told him she loved, and challenged her to a game, she agreed. She’d barely seen Grant lately. He’d been workingthirteen hours a day and was so tired when he arrived home—long after dinner was eaten and the leftovers stored in neatly stacked plastic containers in the refrigerator—that he barely had the energy to listen to the girls practice their reading, let alone have a conversation with Jessie. She would often discover him asleep in one of their beds, a chapter book on his chest and one of his daughters snoring softly beside him. And she was sure that if she’d gone home right then, that’s where she’d find him.
    â€œLoser buys a round,” she’d proclaimed as the other women she’d been with called it a night and started to leave.
    â€œI’ll give her a ride,” Peter had said, smiling innocently at the moms, whom he also knew from school. He’d come up in conversation more than once among the women, everyone agreeing he was smoking hot, but also that he seemed very happily married. But Jessie knew from her private conversations with Peter—the ones that had eventually transitioned from light bantering about their kids’ never-ending homework and rigorous sports schedules to heavier topics like politics and the fragility of marriage—that it was mostly for show, which was very similar to the one she and Grant had been performing lately. Together but not connected—a very precarious place for any marriage to perch.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Jessie understood now that she’d been a big part of the problem. That she’d let herself, and ultimately her marriage, become a victim of her own insecurities. At some point, she had shifted the responsibility to fix their relationship onto Grant’s shoulders, making it even easier to think Peter was the answer to the question she had been secretly asking. At the time, she thought her marital problems were overwhelming, that her dissatisfaction was unique. But what she wished she could tellher thirty-nine-year-old self now was that even though their love wasn’t as shiny as it used to be, it didn’t mean that it didn’t have merit. She realized too late that falling in love was the simple part—it was staying in love that seemed to elude most people.
    After Jessie lost the third consecutive game of pool, Peter had whispered in her ear, “Want to get out of here?”
    Jessie froze. It was one thing to flirt. To fantasize about this moment from the safety of her own bedroom. But to have it within her grasp? It felt surreal. She set her drink down and followed him before she could change her mind.
    They drove in silence to a Quality Inn while his warm hand rested on her upper thigh. After securing a room, Peter had offered to buy her another drink in the sad little bar off the lobby, but Jessie shook her head and moved quickly toward the elevator, not wanting to lose her courage, the months of flirtation and lack of sex propelling her on.
    Once in the room, she tried to ignore the worn carpet and peeling wallpaper as he did what she imagined him doing for months—ran his hands through her hair and touched his soft lips to hers. One kiss wasn’t the end of the world, she told herself as she leaned into his full mouth. When he slipped his hand under her shirt, she reasoned that she wasn’t going to let it go any further than that. And when he nudged her to the bed’s edge, pulled off her jeans and underwear, and started to make his way inside her, she’d wanted to rip herself away. But she couldn’t—not because of how he felt, but because of how he made her feel—beautiful. In that moment, she felt like the layers of her life had