Coffee [MF] [Emotional, may be triggering]

You never could make good coffee, sweetheart. Early on, we decided I would make my own coffee every morning, even though you wanted to make it for me.

“It’s not like I’m trying to use one of those coffee pots on a campfire,” you said. “It is just a machine. It shouldn’t be this hard!”

“I know, honey,” I replied, trying to distract you with kisses. “It’s okay.” I tongued your lips, and you pulled back.

“But I did it the way you said.”

No one will ever understand what you did to the coffee. I knew you didn’t deliberately mess it up, but it either came out too weak or too strong – and I used the same coffeemaker. The same coffee pods. The same mugs. Your coffee-making fails were one of those cute, quirky things about you that made me love you a little bit more. I laughed and said we had a mixed marriage. I drank coffee. You drank tea. I didn’t make your tea – vaguely I knew it involved strings and little packets and a tea water kettle-thing – and you didn’t make my coffee. It was a perfect system.

I had to know somewhere deep inside that perfection doesn’t last, but we were happy. Who had time to think about endings? Who had time to think at all, when one of your favorite games was to get me hard in public? I remember your lips so close to my ear I could feel your warm breath. You whispered, “Think about my lips closing around the head of your cock. So smooth and slippery and soft.” Bam. That was it. Instantly hard. Trying to hide my hardon, I nearly stumbled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that satisfied little smile on your face.

You sweet, sexy little kitten, you had a pile of sexy things to say to me in public. “I didn’t put any panties on this morning.” “Would you like to come on my tits?” “Nothing in the world feels as good as when you slide into me.” “I have a hole in my panties, and I can feel the wind when it blows.” “I’ve been thinking about sucking you all day long.” Every time you said something dirty in my ear, I tried to hide my hardon. A couple times, I thought I caught smiles or shocked expressions on people passing by us. Sometimes, you giggled. Always, you smiled. It was your own harmless kink, I suppose. It made you happy to see how you affected me. Even after I got control of my hardon, you would be in a great mood the rest of the day. After the first time you did that to me, I played up trying to hide my erection, because that gave you a boost too. You never care who saw us – the onlookers were always strangers. We would never see them again. So what if they saw me with a great big tent in my pants? Let them look. Let them talk. We were happy. Let them be jealous.

They should have been jealous. They just didn’t know they should. They never saw you sitting naked on the bed brushing your hair. They never felt your so-soft nipples get hard between their finger and thumb. They never jerked off while you held their balls so tenderly and studied every jet of come. They didn’t know you like I knew you. They never would.

My buddies had stories to tell. From the time I was a gullible teenager, any buddy of mine had stories – they probably still have stories today. I only half-listened because I believed even less than half of what they said about their women. But me, I never told them much about you beyond your being my wife. To speak a thing is to cheapen it. What would I have said? That you moaned and went a little limp when I hugged you tight, or that you went to belly dancing class – just so you could come home and dance naked for me? What else would I have said? That I learned to push all your buttons? Our first time together, I really had to work to get you to come. It took so long that when it hit, you grabbed my arms with your nails digging in. I thought you were going to faint. Each time we made out, each time we had sex, each time I touched you, each time I kissed you, I learned where and how. On our wedding night, you came four times. Those guys don’t deserve to know any of that.

I am not a sharing kind of guy. You were all mine. Because of you, I could do anything. I landed big sales. I got a promotion, too. I had balls of steel. I looked other men in the eye. They could tell there was something about me when I shook their hands. I could tell them things they didn’t want to hear, and they would accept what I said. It was because of you. You made me stronger and better, and I had you all to myself.

I drew power from how you looked at me. I could feel your eyes on me from across the room. I would look up from my phone and see you looking at me with that half-smile. Standing in the hallway, I would turn and look in your eyes. Wiping the kitchen counters, you would have your back to me, but you would turn to me when I touched you. Your eyes told me everything I ever needed to hear. When I picked you up to carry you to bed, your eyes told me you trusted me. When I apologized for hurting your feelings, your eyes forgave me. When I baked your favorite kind of cake and bitched about how it didn’t turn out, your eyes were bright and full of love. When we entangled our fingers, yours so pale against mine, I found acceptance in your eyes.

I remember you sitting here on the couch with me, curled up against me, sliding my hand up your shirt to cup a breast. I remember you walking across the living room showing me a new pair of shoes, and the only thing you had on other than the shoes was a pair of shorts. I remember you running down the hallway to the bedroom, shrieking in laughter because I got up from the couch and said I was going to get you. I stay in the living room these days. I remember you in every corner of the living room, against the wall, in the middle of the floor, beside me, under me, on top of me. I live here because I can’t stay in the bedroom. The bedroom was where you slept beside me, trusting me to keep you safe. I thought I could. I thought I was the man big enough to stand between you and whatever came through the door.

Nothing came through the door. I still don’t know where it came from…

I remember you looking out the living room window, standing beside the window, pulling the curtain to the side. Light spilled through the window. You said you needed to look at the sky. One phonecall changed our world. You called it the “Day Ruined by Diagnosis”. To be honest, it was more than a day ruined.

At first, you gave me your brave face. “I’ll fight to win,” you said. How could you know what that even meant before the treatment started? Your skin was sore everywhere. You struggled to swallow water. Tea was rancid to you. Nothing tasted, looked, smelled or felt right any more – I watched chemo and radiation leach away everything that made you yourself. The very last bit of you to go was libido. You were frail, and your skin was dappled with gray.

“Make love to me,” you said. When I shook my head, you said, “I miss it so much. It won’t hurt me, I promise. I just want to show you I love you.”

Sweetheart, I tried. Against my better judgment, I touched you gently, but I could see in your eyes that my caress was like fire. It was not the passionate, sweet fire of love, sex and lust. It was torment. I tried to kiss you instead – just barely grazing your lips with mine. Your lips were so thin. I had to stop because I couldn’t bear hurting you anymore. Your tears hurt me more than I thought anything could. “It doesn’t hurt that bad,” you said, with a wobble in your voice. I knew it for one of your little white lies to protect my feelings.

The day you left me was a beautiful, bright, sunny day. In a chair on the other side of the room, my mother was praying with her beads over her hands. Your fragile hand was in mine. I didn’t close my hand to hold yours, afraid I would crumple you like a dry leaf. The window next to my mother looked out on a flower garden in full bloom, bees and dragonflies buzzing over it. I never felt so alone.

The hospice nurse came in to tell me that you had waited for me to get there. “I never tell patients to wait. I told her it is a glorious day to go. But I know how much you mean to her, so I asked her to wait.” I couldn’t stop the tears, but I did hold my voice in until the nurse left.

“This is the toughest thing I have ever had to do,” I whispered to you. I stayed until they came in and told me I had to go home.

The taxi ride home was soundless. I don’t remember paying the driver. Of course, I paid him – I don’t remember it. I don’t even remember giving him the address. My heart hurt like a toothache, and nothing was important any more.

These days, I sleep on the couch and wake by the alarm on my phone. I don’t sleep long enough or deep enough – but somehow the alarm startles the shit out of me. Still groggy, I get up and look around. Sometimes, I am dressed in my work clothes from the day before. The curtains are closed. I never open them anymore. From time to time I think about opening them because with them closed it’s dark enough to make me stumble over my own damned shoes. But I never open them.

I bang my shin on the coffee table. This is probably how a hangover feels. My lips are thick and dry. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, shuffling along toward the door.

Walking into the kitchen to turn on the light, I see the coffeemaker.

You never could make good coffee, sweetheart.

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ccleo8/coffee_mf_emotional_may_be_triggering