Time of My Life Read Free

the hum of the wheels of our strollers.
    Why didn’t I just tell her?
I think now, with Garland’s hands deep into my deltoids. Why didn’t I just come out and say, “Ainsley, I think that something’s broken between Henry and me. When he goes away for weeks on end, I barely notice the difference, and sometimes, when he’s home, I peer over at him, across the living room or over the dining table, and I search his face to try to rediscover what I once found attractive”? Why didn’t I just tell her that two Saturdays ago, with Henry in Los Angeles, and a babysitter already booked, I went to see a silly Orlando Bloom–Kate Hudson romantic comedy by myself, and spent the entire remainder of the evening wondering if Orlando Bloom couldn’t come rescue me from my spiraling marriage?
Orlando Bloom!
I wrapped myself up in my fantasy and dreamed of bumping into him in TriBeCa or maybe on a vacation to London or just about anywhere other than here. When I trekked to pick up groceries on Monday, I saw his face splashed on a tabloid cover—he was caught canoodling with a supermodel—and felt a tangible, pitiful jolt of jealousy.
Orlando Bloom!
Why didn’t I tell Ainsley about Orlando Bloom? She would have found a way to make it funny, to have it all make sense.
    But Jack, he wasn’t as funny, he didn’t make any sort of sense. Or maybe he made too much. Ainsley knew this; I knew this, which is why, I suppose, neither of us dug too deeply as we wound through our neighborhood in a fruitless effort to lose those last eight pregnancy pounds.
    And now, lying here with the eucalyptus oils and the hum of spiritual chants and Garland’s magical hands, there’s no one left to lie to, and I can’t help but reconsider.
    What if I’d chosen Jackson? What if Henry wasn’t supposed to be the one for me? What if I’d never married Henry in the first place?
My whole body tenses, and I feel Garland’s fingers sink in farther in response. I exhale and push it away.
No. I am happy.
I am a loving wife with a beautiful daughter who speaks, count them,
eighteen whole words,
and whose husband has lit up Wall Street and who can still give me an orgasm, even if it is under duress. (For him, not me.)
    I press my eyes shut and will the thoughts away. But they refuse to comply, and instead, they lodge themselves in the crevasses of my brain, poking out just enough that I know they’re still with me, like a tiny splinter in your baby toe that gnaws away at you with every step you take.
    Garland rolls my glutes like Play-Doh, and I refocus my mind, letting it wander into blank space, into nothingness.
    “Your chi is blocked,” I hear Garland whisper in my left ear. “I’m going to work to unblock it, but you’ll feel some pressure.”
    “Okay,” I grunt.
    “Deep breath,” he says. “This might hurt.”
    His hands delve into my temples, then spider down the back of my neck, until his elbows torpedo into the hollow just below my shoulder blades. I let out a gasp that signals that fine line, somewhere between pleasure and pain, and in an instant, I’ve forgotten all about Henry and Jackson and rotten milk in the car seat and those stupid eighteen fucking words, and all I can do is bite the inside of my lip, breathe, and wish that every moment of my silly in
significant life could feel as good as this one.

Chapter Two
    I need to get up. I’ve been telling myself that I need to get up for at least a good five minutes, and yet I can’t move. A jackhammer seems to be beating on my brain, and the inside of my mouth tastes like rotten tangerine. I’m certain that it’s light outside, but my sleep mask has blocked out all the offending rays, so I can see only the flashes of yellow that reflect behind my closed eyelids.
    “Katie must be awake,” I mutter aloud to no one other than myself.
She must be playing in her crib with her stuffed brown doggie that Henry’s mother bought her, and she’s probably hungry, so get your ass out of bed