Bleeding Out: Beauty Marks

Colleen Possible sat up in bed and listened to the sounds of her husband's nighttime ablutions in the adjoining bathroom. She was bone-weary, but she didn't want to go to sleep without him. She'd had to do that too many times over the past month. Now Kim was home, and life felt like it was returning to something that vaguely resembled right.

True, James had needed to carry Kim up the stairs (and it had been frighteningly easy for him to do so), and she'd needed help getting out of the bathtub (there was no way she could stand long enough to take a shower), but those things would pass. Their daughter would get better.

Returning to right.

The toilet flushed, and the bathroom door opened. James stood in the door for a moment, silhouetted in the light. He wore only a pair of pajama bottoms. She was wearing the top. They did that every night, and joked to their children (and anybody else who found out about it) that it was for economic reasons: why spend money on two sets of pajamas when he got too warm wearing the top, and it was as good as a nightshirt on her? Of course, economic reasons didn't explain why she occasionally insisted that he wear the top, at least for a while, so his smell didn't fade. But they didn't tell their children about that part.

"Come to bed, honey," she said.

He turned off the light, but didn't go to his side of the bed. Instead, he circled to hers and sat down on the edge.

"Honey?"

Without a word, he reached down and took the hem of her nightshirt.

She put her hand on his. "Could I take a rain check, dear?" she asked. "I don't know about you, but I haven't had a really good night's sleep in weeks. I'm about to crash." She smiled up at him. "Give me a day or two to recover, and I'll make it worth your wait."

He smiled down at her. "Sounds tempting, but that's not what I'm doing, sweetie."

"Then what - ?"

He raised a finger to his lips. "Shhh."

Confused, she didn't protest any further as he drew her nightshirt up her torso, leaving it bunched below her breasts. Despite what he'd said, she expected him to go for her panties next, as he usually would. Instead, he began to stroke her belly.

It felt nice, but she was still confused. "James?" She asked.

"I've been thinking," he said. "All day long, I've been thinking about something I overheard Ron say yesterday."

"What did he say?"

He paused. Apparently he was still thinking about it. Then he stopped stroking her belly and traced a finger along one of her stretch marks. That startled her into sitting up. "Honey?" She asked.

"Did I ever tell you," he said. "That I don't think you're beautiful in spite of these?" He asked.

If they'd been together less than twenty years, she might not have heard the emphasis. But they had been, and they knew each other. Instead of being hurt right away, she waited to find out if she should be. She didn't think that would be the case – whatever else he might be, her James wasn't cruel.

She shook her head and lay back on her pillow, watching him and waiting.

He traced another mark. "These marks are our children," he said. "And they're part of you. I love them. You're not beautiful in spite of the marks, the marks are beautiful because of you. I never told you that?"

She shook her head again. She wasn't hurt, but she was tearing up anyway. "You never told me, but you let me know in other ways. I don't even really think about it any more." She paused, and something came back to her. "What on Earth did Ron say, Honey?"

"What I never said to you? He said to Kim. Yesterday."

Such a simple thing. And yet so huge. Maybe he now saw in Ron what she always had, but it was starting to look like there was something in Ron that even she had never imagined was there. No wonder he'd been thinking about it all day.

And it seemed that he wasn't quite done. He still had one more thing to say:

"That boy's heard the last black hole threat that he's going to hear from me."

Colleen Possible smiled up at her husband. Anyone who hadn't known him for twenty years wouldn't have known how hard that sentence had been for him to say, how much of a letting-go it represented. She hadn't been so proud of him in a long time. 

She reached up and drew him down into her arms.  Maybe she didn't need to crash just yet.