The Road is a Harsh Mistress

Author's note:

See part 1 for blurb. Also, if you haven't already read part 1, I strongly recommend doing so before proceeding.

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

Thirteen

"Dad?" Zach asked over the dinner table with an edge of worry.

"Hmm?" Mike asked distractedly as he stared mesmerized at the surface of his coffee.

"Is everything ok? You seem... out of it."

"Yeah, bud. I'm fine. Just a little tired."

"Is this related to that text you sent me at two AM?"

"After a fashion," he admitted. "I hope I didn't wake you up."

"Are you kidding?" Zach chortled. "It would take a heck of a lot more than a text to wake me up."

"Consider yourself fortunate," Mike replied sagely. "The day will come when sleeping through the night becomes more rare than a full moon."

"You always talk like you're a million years old. But you can't be more than, what, sixty-three?"

"He's not sixty!" Alexis yelped.

"Ok," Zach allowed. "Fifty-seven, then."

"Zach!" she shouted.

"Calm down, kids," Mike interjected with a smile. "You both know very well I'm eighty-four."

"Daddy!"

Zach laughed and said, "In all seriousness, he's forty-three, Lex."

"Whoa!" she whispered in awe.

"And on that note," Mike groaned as he stood up from the table. "Anyone for seconds?"

"What about you, Dad?"

"I ate while I was cooking," Mike deflected. "If you guys are done, I need Alexis to clear the table and Zach, you can load the dishwasher. And no staying up late tonight. The first day of school is right around the corner."

"Can we go get..." Alexis began.

"There's ice cream in the fridge, honey," Mike interrupted. "But, absent something on par with an alien invasion, we're going to stay in tonight."

"Aww," she complained while hurrying to the freezer to extract a tub of mint chocolate chip.

Mike hung around the kitchen for a moment while the children finished up and he made another cup of coffee (his sixth of the day). His body and mind were firmly aligned in their insistence that he go to bed, but he was determined to keep himself away until at least ten lest he wreck the rest of his week by throwing his schedule off kilter. Yet he knew that his current state of consciousness could only be described as 'awake' if the beholder was using the most liberal of definitions. He had almost literally sleepwalked through his day at work, producing almost nothing of value beyond his attendance in meetings and avoiding writing any code (since it would undoubtedly need to be rewritten).

Since he knew that sitting down (even for a brief moment) would result almost at once in him slipping into unconsciousness, he kept himself moving by getting ahead on his never-ending list of household chores. He was thus in the midst of scrubbing the tub in the guest bathroom when he heard his phone ding. He decided to finish the task at hand, since he knew it was as likely as not that he would forget what he had been doing if he deflected his attention for more than a few moments. When the job was done, he stood with a groan and stretched for the ceiling to crack his back before yanking his phone from his pocket to spot a text from Leia.

please tell me you got some rest today

please tell me you got some rest today

A yawn escaped his lips as he read the message, prompting him to chuckle at the irony of the situation as he considered his reply.

slep is four the week

slep is four the week

weak

weak

fpr

fpr

shit

shit

His phone rang before he could make another attempt to self edit.

"Dude," Leia snickered. "You're just walking proof of that study that there's an equivalency between hours of sleep lost and shots of grain alcohol. Please tell me at least that you aren't doing any more car stunts until you get some sleep."

"To be certain," he agreed. "I know at least some of my limits."

"Did you get any sleep after you dropped me off at five o'clock in the God damn morning?"

"I decided it was more prudent to power through. Besides, it's not like I didn't getanysleep last night. You forget, I'm basically senile so I tend to hit the sack shortly after sundown."

"Yeah, right. A senior citizen could never have executed that ten-second long four-wheel drift you did last night when Nevaeh asked if that stunt you pulled off with her cousin was the result of luck rather than skill. All while repeatedly staring over your shoulder at her, I might add. Even though the embankment was close enough that I'm pretty sure I could have reached out and touched it."

"That was a bit of a dick move," he conceded.

"Au contraire. It was one of the more impressive things I've ever seen, and Nevaeh texted me about a dozen times asking for your info. Both so she could apologize for coming off a little bitchy, and to properly thank you."

"There was nothing wrong with how she treated me, and I hope you told her as much. She's going through something extremely traumatic. All the more reason my show-boating was in very poor judgement."

"You're her hero, Mike. You're allowed to indulge a bit when given the opportunity to demonstrate your skills in front of a couple of attentive chicks with big tits."

"You make my point for me," Mike huffed. "I should be above such sophomoric displays. After all, as is so often pointed out by nearly everyone in my orbit, I am certainly old enough to know better."

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"My age is not up for debate, Leia. I can produce several official documents which will prove how old I am."

"I'm not talking about your age. I'm talking about how you're constantly putting yourself down."

"As one of my former roommates used to say, that ain't hatin'... it's just factin'. But enough of my complaining. Did you manage to get any rest today? And what of that senior manager and the date your H.R. department should be arranging between his genitals and a wheat thresher?"

"I called out because I didn't get any sleep last night, which is also what you should have done."

"This is hardly the first sleepless night I've ever endured. Alexis especially was extremely resistant to my efforts to sleep train her."

"I can't help but notice the emphasis you placed on your pronouns in that sentence."

"Huh? You mean, like, he/him?"

"Not your pronouns, you dork," she chuckled. "I meant the way you said 'I', rather than 'we'."

"Connie was in no condition to care for a baby. As often as not, it was her I was taking care of during those late nights."

"How awful for you," she murmured.

"I wasn't the one who was sick."

"But you did everything for everyone. Didn't you?"

"Of course," he replied reflexively.

Leia was silent for a long moment and, despite not being able to see her over their phone connection,he had a strong suspicion that she was expending a good deal of effort searching for the right words. When she finally broke her silence, her voice was so quiet that he almost missed the fact that she had spoken at all.

"I'm glad you have your car."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know your children make you happy Mike, and likely the rest of your family as well. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that you get a fair amount of satisfaction from your job. But I can't think of a single other thing in the admittedly small portion of your life you've shared with me that's just for you. It seems like, with that singular exception, everything else that defines Mike Carter is just a vestige of what you represent to someone else."

Mike sighed wearily before admitting, "Connie always told me that car was the height of selfish vanity, that it told the whole world that I always put myself first. Even though it's certainly a far cry from a sports car. It's merely a family car with a little extra under the bonnet. In truth, if I hadn't gushingly bragged about the damn thing to Connie, she never would have known it was anything other than a boring daily driver."

"It certainly proved its utility last night when you saved Nevaeh. Again."

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"What?"

"Going out of your way to repeat your claim that I rescued someone. As you've mentioned more than once, you would have escaped Tripod's sex dungeon without my help. And you certainly wouldn't have left anyone behind when you did so. So my contribution was inconsequential."

"I'm gonna hit the head," Leia announced jarringly. "Promise you won't hang up on me?"

"I would never..."

"Ok," she interrupted. "Be right back."

Mike heard the unmistakable cessation of background noise (informing him that Leia had muted her end of the call), so he took the opportunity to take a bio break himself.

She restarted their conversation by saying, "What do you tell your friends when they ask how you're doing?"

"One of my best friends actually called out of the blue the day I... I guess I should forget the word rescued... the day IencounteredVicky. I told him I was operating within acceptable fault tolerances After telling him... six months late... that my wife had left me."

"Freakin' engineers," she quipped before her voice once again turned serious. "And you shouldn't forget the word rescued. Because that's what you did. Whether or not I might have gotten out on my own is immaterial, because you saved all of us. Including, ironically, Victoria. Then you saved Nevaeh again last night. You're an incredible man, Mike. And you're so much more than the things you do for people."

"Perhaps," he evaded. "But what about you? You dropped everything in the middle of the night to go help her as well."

"Indeed I did. The difference is that I feel good about what we did. Really good. Whereas I get the sense that your mindset is closer to wondering what's next."

"It is what it is."

Leia was once again silent for a moment before saying, "You'd tell me if I was overstepping. Right?"

"You're not," he replied quickly. "I genuinely enjoy talking to you, Leia. I find it very soothing." He paused for a moment before sighing and muttering, "Now I'm the one overstepping."

She ignored his recrimination and pressed ahead, "So you wouldn't mind if I asked you something kind of... um... personal?"

"Not at all."

"Did Connie ever make you happy?"

Mike felt his head whip around to check his surroundings, despite the certain knowledge that his wife had not entered what had once been their house in over nine-months. The simple fact was that what had once taken conscious effort was now so ingrained as to be indistinguishable from instinct. As for the answer to Leia's question, it was something which was at once something he had repressed and something which he could never forget. It took conscious effort to quell his impulse to change the subject. Whether his desire to answer her question with complete openness was borne of a need to unburden his soul, or simply the desire to continue the conversation with this woman with whom he seemed to effortlessly resonate, he could not say. He simply knew that deflection was not an option.

"I'm sorry, Mike. I shouldn't have asked you that." Leia said softly after Mike's delay.

"Don't be sorry. I told you that you could ask me anything. It's just... I never talk to anyone about my marriage. Former marriage. It's almost like I have to reprogram myself to access those memories."

"Did you guys ever go to therapy together?"

"Nope," he grunted. "By the time things had reached a state where that option occurred to me, it was already too late.

"But, to answer your question, she did make me happy. Once. I was very much in love with her almost from the jump. Especially once it became clear that we had what I thought was great sexual chemistry. We were insatiable for each other. Multiple times a day... in every room of the house... in the car... in a secluded grove at the park... at the lake when we found an empty cove. We never lacked for passion during those early years. We were married a year to the day after our first night together. Then Connie quickly got pregnant with our first child. That was when things changed overnight."

"What do you mean?"

Mike shrugged, despite the fact that Leia could not see him through the phone, and said, "What was obvious in hindsight, but never occurred to me at the time, was that Connie always drank when we were together. We tended to go to her place after work and she would almost always have a couple of six packs in the fridge. It never seemed to be an issue since she never really got sloppy drunk. Hell, I was drinking too, as often as not. We'd have these amazing conversations. No phones to interrupt us, no television on in the background; just two people forming a connection. Things stayed that way until she got pregnant. What I realized after she got pregnant was that we'd almost never had sex when she wasn't drinking. The only exceptions were occasional wake-up sex, but that was quite rare even in the early days.

"When she got pregnant with Zach, she stopped drinking and our sex life vanished overnight. We went from having sex multiple times a day trying to get pregnant to not having sex for nearly a year. Part of it was that pregnancy was hard on her, and I chocked it up to that exclusively with Zach. But the impact this had on me was profound. It was crushing for my confidence, but our relationship also took a big hit because of the constant arguing. And without the intimacy of sex, all we had left was what amounted to a partnership between two people who didn't get along very well anymore."

"Was it more than just sex that you argued about?"

"In point of fact, we never argued about sex," Mike replied with pride. "I was too stinkin' proud to ask why things had gone silent in that department. It was only later, after Alexis was born, that she told me the truth. But when she was pregnant with Zach, I assumed it was because she was uncomfortable, or dealing with morning sickness, or that the body image issues she dealt with as a result of the pregnancy made her unable to get in the mood. By the way, those reasons are all totally valid. Hence why I didn't bring it up. I never wanted to be the guy who gave their partner the impression that my problems trumped her own."

"So...what was it that was causing the arguments?" Leia asked quietly.

"We fought because, despite her promises before the pregnancy that she'd stop smoking when I knocked her up, she refused when the moment of truth arrived. I constantly asked her to stop smoking for the health of our child, but she told me I wasn't the boss of her and kept up her two packs a day habit."

"That's terrible. You must have been sick with worry for your son."

Mike sighed wearily and said, "I was, but what could I do? Far more often than we realize, our social and relationship interactions are propped up on respect for ourselves and each other. She didn't respect me, and might not have respected herself, which meant it was impossible for me to convince her to do anything she didn't want to do. That didn't stop the arguments, though.

"Once our son was born, she went into deep postpartum depression for which she started taking medication. She also immediately started drinking again and got drunk nearly every other day, with the gap days spent sleeping off the previous day's bender. By the time Zach was walking, she was taking so many medications I could barely keep up with them all. I begged her to see a therapist, and that she couldn't just treat her issues chemically. She told me she was handling it.

"So, the vast majority of the work caring for the baby fell on me. Connie stopped working right after she got pregnant. So, in addition to doing all of the childcare, I was also the only one bringing any money into the house. It was really tough for a while, but I was soon able to get a job which allowed me to work remotely. This didn't fix things; it just turned an impossible situation into one that was merely intolerable."

"What was it that she told you later?"

"Pardon?"

"You said Connie told you the truth about why she didn't want to have sex during the pregnancy after Alexis was born."

"Oh," he grunted dispiritedly. "That's not really a nice story. Suffice it to say that her judgement had to be significantly impaired before she could tolerate the sight of me unclothed. So say nothing of actually touching her."

"God damnit," Leia muttered.

Mike pressed on rather than grappling with the emotional turmoil of her pity. "Things went the same with Alexis, despite her renewed promise to stop smoking. Perhaps I was a fool to believe her, but she was so vulnerable when she asked if we could have another baby. So sincere. She bemoaned missing out on so much of Zach's childhood, and said she wanted another chance to be a good mother. How could I say no? The fact that her second pregnancy went the same as the first was almost a blessing in disguise. We never fought about the smoking; never bickered about the imbalance in our relationship. I'd already been there and gotten the t-shirt. In part, I think that's why things got so much worse afterwards. I allowed the dynamic between us in which I did, as near as makes no difference, everything, become the new baseline."

"Mike," Leia gushed. "I'm so sorry."

"That was, as they say, only the beginning. I believe, however, that I have answered your question."

"You have indeed," she agreed. "And thank you for trusting me with that."

"Of course."

"This is likely going to sound a little strange... but, in an odd way, I'm happy for you. What you described sounds many times worse than anything I've endured. I would gladly exchange a few weeks of captivity rather than endure years of neglect and abuse. But, despite all that shit, you didn't crumble. You stood strong and willingly took on the task of raising your children and providing for them all by yourself. And that's before you became an actual single-dad. That's remarkable. And extremely admirable. I feel very fortunate I was lucky enough to become your friend."

He was glad they were speaking on the phone, rather than face to face, because he realized that it had suddenly gotten very dusty in his office. He waited a few more moments to be certain his voice would not crack before saying. "I couldn't agree more." He waited a moment to further collect himself before saying, "I'm sorry, by the way."

"For what?"

"I just sort of played back in my head everything I said, and I realized it must have sounded like a cheap romance novel there at the beginning with all the talk of our sex life."

"Don't be sorry, Mike. It was an integral part of the story. And I agree with you, by the way. Intimacy is a fundamental part of any romantic relationship. I don't believe any such partnership can be healthy without an active sex life. I was happy for past-Mike at the beginning of that story. I've always dreamed of finding someone with whom our shared attraction was so fervent that it threatened to boil over if we didn't basically tear each other's clothes off at every opportunity. I've never had that, but you have, however briefly. I envy you for it."

"I'm not sure what to say," he murmured.

"You should say goodnight," Leia replied. "I know you're exhausted, so I should let you get to bed. Just promise you'll call tomorrow so we can continue this amazing conversation."

"You're not sick of me yet?"

"Not even a little bit," she corrected warmly. "Good night, Mike. Sweet dreams."

"Yeah, right," Mike muttered. Then, after realizing he had spoken out loud, tried to cover his lapse by raising his voice and saying, "Good night, sweetheart."

It was only many minutes later, after he had locked up and while he was brushing his teeth, that he realized what he had said. At that point, he gave thanks for his overwhelming fatigue... because he knew that otherwise he never would have managed to fall asleep.