Lacking Communication
The phone developed a chuckle as Keith walked by it for the twentieth time in the last hour. Laughing at his failed attempts to pick up and call. Just call. Call and see how she's doing. See if she needs anything sent to her or if the trip was going the way she expected it to go. Squeeze in a moment to ask about the weather. All Keith thought of for the past two months was to see when his wife was coming home.
What was he supposed to tell her? You being Foreign Correspondent for Cable News Network is putting a hinder on our relationship, and it would be best for me if you came home? If anything, that would make her come back only to grab her suitcase and pack the rest of her things.
Keith drew in a long, frustrated breath, taking a seat on the one rickety wooden stool in the kitchen and continued to stare at his phone, hallucinating that the screen had lit up. But, as always, it remained dark. Why hadn't she called him? Why hadn't she put any effort into her part to check up on him now and then, and see how he was coping without her?
Reciprocity seems to play a significant role in a marriage, but for Keith, it was the equivalent to being in a boxing cage, strapped and ready to fight with no opponent. In the end, he'd find himself defeated.
So, he waited and waited until the thought of waiting another second sent an exhausted guttural scream to ricochet around their mouse-sized one-bedroom apartment. He knew his wife would be awake. It was three-thirty in the afternoon in the Philippines compared to his two-thirty in the morning in blizzard-riddled New York. There would be no excuse for her not to pick up the phone, and yet, he still did not want to feel like a nuisance.
So, he waited again.
Like most nights, he rubbed his swollen red eyes and stood up to jog in place for a bit, shooing the sleepiness out of his system. This routine would work till about three, and by then his legs would cave in, forcing him to either get in bed or sit back on the stool until he passed out from lack of sleep. Unlike all those other nights, he sat back down and grabbed the phone in his hands. Before Keith's mind could register his actions, he pushed the call button and pressed the phone to his ear.
No answer.
Maybe she had her phone buried at the pits of her travel bag like most cases, but the need to speak to his wife drove Keith to call once more. The sound of her voice was the last thing he expected to hear after the fourth ring.
"Hey, babe! What's up," she asked.
"What do you mean, 'What's up'? I haven't heard from my wife in a fucking month," he spat, losing all of the composure he thought he would have when she answered the phone.
He knew when she took on this job there would be a strain on their marriage. She wasn't a communicative person. Keith knew if it were up to her, they would have given their vows and said 'I do' through text. Even after four years, it unsettled him to see nothing has changed.
There was a stagnant pause in the conversation on her end, but he could still hear the faint shuffling of movement in the background.
"I'm sorry, Keith," she exhaled.
He gripped the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as his brows scrunched further and further together and headed into the room to sit down on their bed. Their new mattress held a nice bounce as it curved to his size, a surprise gift Keith bought for his wife when she came home.
The bitterness of his voice oozed out with no remorse, "I guess that's all you have to say?"
"Well, what else is there to say? I've been busy working. I thought you of all people would understand...," she stopped, hearing the piercing sound of his brash tone take over her words.
"Yes, I of all people know that you work, Baby! You work day in and day out, and I've admired that about you from day one. But, I of all people also get the burden of not being with you, not even getting a phone call or text here and there! For an entire month," he retorted, loud as his voice could carry.
Silence swept through like a guest and took a patient seat as Keith waited to hear another typical excuse from her to place the blame on someone or something, anything other than herself.
"I don't know how many more times I can say I miss you, for you to get the message," Keith mumbled, cupping the back of his head as he stood up again.
"I've missed you too, Keith," he mustered a small smile as she spoke, "But, I've just been asked to stay for another two months to cover the new rise of women who plan on overthrowing their male dictator... And I decided to stay."
His eyes narrowed into fine slits as he took the phone away from his ear, gazing at it with a skeptical demeanor as if to project his emotions to his wife. Lips that held a smile seconds ago shifted into a grim, compressed line. His eyebrows knitted so close; one could have mistaken it for an indented unibrow. Huffing out hot breaths, he placed the phone back to his ear, to see if there had been a slip up in her words, but the lack of sound on her end confirmed there was no mistake.
Keith jerked the phone down, his head shaking as he ended the brief call. She decided to stay away, without even consulting him about it. His wife did not want their marriage. She did not want him. Those thoughts centralized at the forefront of his mind as he sat down at the foot of their bed.
Perhaps he took the more selfish route in that scenario. He thought of calling back, tell his wife he's sorry and move on. This job is her passion, her career, and no matter how upset it made him, he would still support her. The cost of his happiness was the only currency in exchange. Even against his rational judgments, he ended her attempts to call him back and tossed the phone onto the floor.
Another word from him would cause nothing but chaos amidst everything, and he'd rather be silent than giving into aggression's enticing embrace. Still, the vein that throbbed in his temple told him to do otherwise. To let him slip. To hurl himself to the floor and strike unmerciful hits to the ground while he belted out inhuman shrieks, having the mental pull of a breaking heart tear him apart from the inside out. Instead, he sat there, head drooped into his chest, defeated.
No longer succumbed to exhaustion, Keith's mind strode through the different paths of what it would be like seeing his wife again. The road that held no more promise, no assurance, the way that still stayed, the path that led him into a straitjacket while he rocked back and forth singing the lyrics to J Holiday's "Suffocate."
By then, time sprinted to five in the morning, and he still had not gone to bed. Instead, he sat cross-legged with a blanket on his back and a bowl of Honey Graham O's cereal in his hands as he watched reruns of Love It or List It. Things he would do with his wife before she was gone.
Once he finished the bowl, Keith scuffled off the bed and dragged his body back into the kitchen to make himself seconds. On the way, he spotted someone sitting on their stool; their head tucked down as they munched on what looked to be a bowl of cereal. Each step closer brought him more to her.
Closer.
Until, he became close enough that his chest melded a bit into her back and his arms encapsulated around the rest of her, placing his bowl next to hers.
Fantasy impersonated reality well because this would be something his wife would do. Stop in the kitchen to have a bowl of cereal before coming to say hello to whoever was in the house. What else was there to do but cherish what his mind conjured before him?
The touch of Keith's lips invaded the side of her neck as she stammered out, "I was gonna surprise you, but I got hungry."
Maybe it wasn't another dream. His wife couldn't be here, could she? Keith let the apparition go and pinched down on the part of his arm, and then another, and then another. After inspection, he had seven light bruises on different parts of his arm, and his wife was still there.
"You're here," he questioned, gripping her torso to turn her in his direction.
"I know I shouldn't have lied like that. I wanted you to be surprised when I got here," Keith's wife confessed, standing up to engulf him in a hug.
For a while, Keith did not respond to her gesture; his arms still limp at his sides. They needed to address the issue, not bury it like she did whenever she came back home. No matter how delightful she felt as she squeezed him tighter.
"No," he breathed, stepping out of her grip, "We need to talk about you and this job."
After his words slipped out, he could see the familiar furrowed eyebrows and lips bunching to the left side that would happen whenever a debate commenced between them. His wife's shoulders slumped forward, and her head craned all the way to the back while she sat down on the stool.
"See, this right here is why we need this talk," he asserted, claiming her chin in his hand to bring her eyes to his, "You have never communicated with me, Baby. I need you and honestly, fuck how selfish this sounds, I don't want you to leave me anymore."
"You're ridiculous, Keith," she muttered in a low voice.
"Ridiculous," he chuckled, "Ridiculous is not responding to your husband an entire month. Shit that I put up with every single time you leave!"
The intense stillness in the room permeated around the couple as they glared one another down, neither having much else to say. Keith knew if he screeched from the highest mountain, it would not be enough. The fight never began for her, since the words confrontation and conversation did not become a part of her internal vocabulary.
"Please," Keith begged as he lowered himself onto his knees and laid his head in her lap, "Baby, just talk to me."
Chills clattered inside Keith once he felt his wife's moving hand reach to rub a small part of his back, the other settled its anchor into the chasm of curls and scratched his head. They halted themselves in that position of hand-talk for a few minutes, letting the calm atmosphere tucker down the broiling situation. Moments of cease-fire kept the two at bay in their marriage, and they were too rare not to treasure, but Keith knew the cycle, and he wanted to get off.
"A little after I left, I made a friend," his wife orated, "Rosaline's a mail-woman for the news station I worked at, and she reminded me so much of you. She hated that I didn't talk much about anything or how she had to come and find me for me to listen to her. And before I left, she talked to me about how having a conversation with me was like jamming mail in a closed box."
He snickered, circling his hands on the side of her thighs, "She's not wrong."
"Shut up," she giggled, continuing her story, "Anyway, she made me start writing down what I wanted to say to you, and I was going to mail them... But I couldn't."
"Why," Keith investigated.
Her eyes fluttered down to close, only to open when Keith got up to stand and pick her up from under her legs. Mutual silence swayed through them as he walked them into their bedroom and sat her down onto the bed. Even as he got back into his previous position on her lap, she hadn't answered, still letting the suspense swing above their heads.
"I always wanted to have the right answers, and with my emotions, nothing I said felt right. It wasn't enough, or it was over the top. I was afraid," Keith's wife hesitated, "I thought it wouldn't be genuine enough. Because whenever you say, 'I love you,' I feel it, Keith. I know the strength behind your words and, and I felt like you would be disappointed if you couldn't hear the same weight in mine."
Out of all the paths his mind created to explain why his wife never spoke to him, it did not lead him near this. His headstrong wife. A woman that took on a dominant role as an international journalist.
Insecure.
"Nothing you say can disappoint me, other than saying nothing at all," he assured, rising to his feet.
This time his wife followed, her eyes leveled with his shaved chin, giving it a chaste kiss. Keith's hands cupped to her cheeks while he bombarded her face with sensual kisses. To her forehead. Temples. The tip of her nose. Corners of her mouth. The left side of her face, to the right; up and down until he kissed her once on the lips. Twice. By the third, their lips ravished one another, and their hands shed away all aspects of clothing.
Massive intakes of air serenaded the room as the two parted lips, hers now nibbling to the spot on his neck just under the ear. In command, she shifted him onto the bed and straddled his lap while directing the kiss lower and lower, down to the faint depression of his abdomen.
Over the years of their marriage, she experienced and learned every bit of her husband that made him go into uncontrollable spasms. When she teased the small space under his belly button with her tongue, she could feel the muscles of his tummy tighten and flex. If her nails impaled his back hard enough, his hips would match it, plunging deeper inside her. Nevertheless, the one part that her mouth loved to abuse most would be the valley of skin from the V-line to the base of his thick, elongated length.
His wife could see her effect once he anchored himself up by his elbows, head dipping back as an onslaught of curse words sailed out of his mouth.
"When I wrote to you," she hummed, pausing to sweep her tongue along his goose-bumped skin, "I talked about missing how responsive you were to me."
"By just one touch," she whispered, her hand now grasped onto his firm length.
Transfixed by her hand, Keith's starved eyes stalked her movements while she hovered her mouth over his throbbing tip, letting some drool coat the top of his skin. Words that sought to escape morphed into strangled groans as her tongue licked around him; more spit running down while her unhurried hand pumped up and down his shaft, soon staying at the bottom to hold him as her mouth started to slide and suck his twitching girth.
'Fuck's,' 'shit's,' and 'just like that's' streamed out his mouth as his wife sucked harder and faster, stopping only to suck his sack while both hands twisted and jerked his shaft. When she made her way back to his tip, Keith lunged forward to scoop her in his arms and pushed her back onto the bed in a missionary position.
Shoving her legs apart, he buried himself within her soaked walls, thrusting with a languid speed while he spoke out in a graveled tone, "Say it right now. Say you love me."
He heard a gasp.
"I love you," she whimpered.
"Again," he ordered, his voice ragged as he tongue kissed the side of her neck, "Don't fucking stop either."
His hips burrowed deeper, harder; keeping a steady pace that drove his wife mad until the words he wanted to hear began to tumble out. Greed cast its net wide and hooked Keith in; hurried, he yanked both of her legs open and placed them over his chest, allowing him to plunge deeper inside her gushing folds, his cum seeping out with each stroke.
"That's all I wanted to hear from you. I needed you," Keith pulled out to move down her body, kissing in between her thighs, "If there's one thing I need from you, it's those words. Again, and again."
Sharp intakes of breath choked his wife as three of his long fingers intruded her, filling her dripping opening while Keith's mouth connected to her tender clit. Her back arched her closer into his mouth and fingers as she chanted out cries of exhilaration.
Warm juices flooded his fingers and onto the bed, splashed his chin and drenched their sheets as her orgasm squirted out, before Keith sucked the rest up in his mouth. After he finished, his wife got up to lay on top of him and snuggled in his embrace as they relaxed on a dry part of the bed.
Keith grabbed one of her hands, playing with her fingers while he spoke, "We need to practice this every day."
She laughed, craning an eyebrow up, "Our love-making?"
"No," Keith quipped, giving a soft spank to her ass, "You need to know that your words mean something to me. Anything you do affects me." There was a significant pause as he hesitated to find the words.
"I don't want to go through not hearing from you again. It tears both of us apart."
For a while, Keith heard nothing but her shaky breaths and assumed she went to sleep until he felt her messing with his fingers. But being worried and angered no longer pressed his mind. The paths erased themselves, along with his strait-jacket and what stayed was something he didn't expect to receive that morning.
Understanding.
His wife exhaled, squirming up to kiss him, "It'll never happen again, I promise."
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Author's Note → I haven't written in a while and it shows, but hopefully you guys like it.
Don't worry, I'm not dipping out for a whole year this time, more imagines will be coming :)
Also, if you have any imagine requests you can just message it to me (just know I do not add names in my imagines)
I missed you guys ❤