While we were waiting for the show to start and I was taking advantage of the freely available WiFi at his house and checking Facebook, I started yammering away about Mike and what a dumb situation that was, and how sad and embarrassed I still feel over it. Heartbreak is easier for me to digest than embarrassment, and it is still sitting heavily in my stomach. "You're still hung up on him?" Gino asked, "Why? He sounds like a jerk."
I set my Kindle aside and said, "I'm not hung up. I'm trying to figure out what happened. I think maybe I attach a little too much significance to having sex with someone. If I choose them, there needs to be a reason behind it, I guess. I really liked him, and, yeah, he said the wrong thing, but I can forgive that. You've said plenty of wrong things to me, and I always forgave you."
He seemed satisfied by that, or maybe he just didn't want to rehash the past and have me bring up examples. Gino knows me well enough to know that I always have something filed away, ready to whip out at a moment's notice. "Okay, but, I still don't like it," he said.
He's been pretty vocal about all of the things he doesn't like about the person I chose to hook up with since our separation. He doesn't like that I let this person get rough with me in bed, that I had unprotected sex with him, that I still spent time with him after he started giving me the cold shoulder. He knows that he asked for it by asking for this divorce, and that he has to hear my stories about it since he decided he is open to being friends, but he doesn't like it. I shrugged off Gino's dislike the way I usually do, joking with him, "It doesn't matter, anyway. I'm too pretty for Mike."
Gino laughed to himself, and asked, "Is that so?"
"Yeah," I said, "I wasn't too pretty for you, but I'm too pretty for Mike."
A look of worry came across Gino's face. "You weren't too pretty for me? Why do you think that?"
I knew I had one chance to say this without sounding like a shrew. One of the main sticking points in our relationship, as I have said here before, is the fact that Gino was not free with praise. I had to really push him to give me a compliment, while I was overflowing with them for him. I pumped him up so much, he started to think he could go out and find someone better. "Well, you never told me I was beautiful. It doesn't come naturally to you. It felt like I had to push you to say something like that because you didn't believe it," I said.
He moved closer to me on the sofa and put his hand out for me to take. "I should have told you more, I know. I wish I had said it every day, I just, didn't think of it."
That was enough, I thought. That was worth the price of admission for me. So long as Gino grows even the tiniest bit because of this divorce, I'll feel like it was worth it. My biggest fear, since he has been asking me to hang out and talking about our separation with regret, has been that I would change, but he would not. I want the best for him, because I love him, and I worried that he would not see his own flaws. All I have done is pick apart my own emotional navel lint since we broke up, trying to divine something from my own failings and bad qualities and learn how I can improve upon what I have to work with. I wanted to believe that Gino was capable of some self-awareness, that he could learn from this too. Now, I see, he is getting there even if he is not there yet.
"You can tell me now, you know. It won't fix it, but it will help, " I said, trying to move away from the snuggle that I knew he was leaning into.
It wasn't that I didn't want to snuggle, I just didn't want one of his family members walking in and getting all weirded out by it. "Okay, you're beautiful," he said.
We watched the show and talked a little more, and I rifled through the kitchen for any foodstuffs I left behind when I moved out. I then had to inform him that I wasn't going to have sex with him. "Why not?" he asked.
I have a hard time, sometimes, explaining something that I don't think really demands an explanation. He lives with his parents, we're getting divorced, I'm still nursing a minor heartache over someone else, what more of a reason do I need? "It's... it's inappropriate," I finally came out with, "It was one thing when we were married, but I can't have sex with you while you're parents are down the hall."
He made that face that he made when he knew he wasn't going to win, but he was going to keep trying anyway. "We could go in the car?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"No. Have you ever had sex in a car?"
"You know I haven't."
"Well, let's go, then."
I realized that I was going to have to explain to my ex why I wasn't going to have sex with him in my car. "I don't want to. If you want to have sex with me in the future, you can come to my apartment and have sex with me. In my bed. I am not going to fuck you in the car. And if you keep at it, I might not ever do it again at all."
I hugged him goodbye and drove home, seeing that I had actually just made a wise decision. It was kind of an easy one to make, but small victories are all I have right now. If I had actually gone through with it, I would have hated myself. I didn't hate myself after we had sex the other times, but I would have hated myself over this one. There was something just a little too desperate and a little too sad about it. I am finally trying to get to a place where I am not constantly doing things that make me hate myself, after all. That might be the most important takeaway from all of this: I don't need to go fuck my ex in a car. It might not seem like such a huge revelation to a lot of people, but it is to me, apparently.
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