The M.I.L.F. Man

"Woe be unto women like you..."

He came in and just stopped by the door.

We were in this sort of dormitory where the local Jesuits put the volunteers who came down to work in their shelters. And it felt like an hour passed before he came over to the little bed I was sitting on, cupped the back of my head in one hand and hugged me up against his belly.

But then he said, "Don't ever...ever...do that again," in that new, mean voice.

And I must've looked really scared when I pulled back to look at him because he caressed my cheek and said, "I kept imagining you getting lightheaded and...careening off into a ditch or...through one of those damned guard rails—you'd lost so much blood."

I rubbed his side and said, "I'm here now, though. Sit by me. Please?"

And after a little bit, he sank down on the bed and we sat staring at each other like two middle school kids trying to figure out how to say we liked each other. It was that awkward, honest to God.

But I put my hands on his chest just to feel him. And he leaned to kiss me from forehead to lips—I clutched the bedspread and tried to ignore what that did to me in...certain places...

And he chuckled and said, "So much for the long speech I'd prepared."

"Oh, you were going to read me up and down, right?"

"In no uncertain terms, yes. I practiced."

I touched his face. "You should be angry. You were suffering as much as me. And I just--"

"But I wasn't," he said. "I couldn't, could I?"

"It was your baby, too."

"It wasn't my body, though. Going through all those changes every day. And then lying there in a pool of blood, feeling it all just...slip away..."

He paused for a moment trying to erase that image, probably. And then he asked me, "What was your first thought? When you truly knew you were pregnant?"

And I remembered how I'd tried not to know for as long as possible. The mind games I played. But all I said was, "I wasn't...sure we were ready. But I believed we'd be ready."

"And I never let you say that. I never let you say anything. I went off on my little fantasy trip and you came along--did you feel you'd failed me? When it was over?"

"Well, I've felt that way about a lot of things. Like...I was failing at life, basically..."

He sighed and said, "We scooped you up and threw you in the deep end. All of us."

I smiled. Yet another swimming thing...

And then I kissed him and ran my hands back up that chest again. "Damn, this is going to be rough..."

"How so?"

"Well...this...woman Madame sent over to see me...she told me we'd have to wait awhile before—"

"Oh, of course. Goes without saying, that." He shuddered a little bit, after he said it.

And when I said, "Freaked you out that bad, huh?" he chuckled, "That's not how I meant it, but now that you mention it..."

I ran a finger from his chest to his crotch and said, "Well, your plumbing's okay, though..."

And he caught my hand and said, "It's my turn to suffer some, physically, don't you think?"