And One Last Thing... by Molly Harper Page A

sneered. “The house, the money, the credit cards. I’d love to see how you’re going to get along without my credit cards.”
    “Aw, Mike, I wouldn’t worry about it. I recently liquidated some assets of my own, so I think I’ll have some pocket money for a while. Mr. Goote really is very generous.”
    “Mr. Goote? Why would you go to Leo -” Mike gasped. “Your ring? You hocked your engagement ring? That was a - Do you have any idea how much that ring cost?!”
    I shrugged. “Probably twice what I sold it for.”
    Mike growled. “I’m going to leave you with nothing. No cards, no cash, no house, no car, nothing. By the time Beebee and I get done suing you, you’ll be living with your parents, working double shifts at the Sizzler -”
    “Oh, go sting the BumbleBee,” I sniped, shutting my phone off.
    How, I wondered as I stared out over the water, could two intelligent adults end up like this? Well, one intelligent adult. Why was it that other relationships had flourished and ours seemed to have stalled and died an agonizing, horrible death? Mike and I had been given all the tools to build a good life together. Both sets of our parents bumped consistently along the glass ceiling between middle and upper class. We had good orthodontia, summer camps, swimming lessons, new cars for our sixteenth birthdays. We graduated college without student loans. We got married at the First Baptist Church and our reception was held at the Singletree Country Club. The down payment on our sweet little starter house was a gift from my grandparents.
    Maybe the problem was that we never struggled. There was nothing to bond us together, us against the world. We didn’t have to turn to each other and figure out what the hell we were going to do to pay the light bill or make the next house payment. We just coasted along. The thing about coasting is that it usually means you’re going downhill.
    I knew we were pathetic excuses for adults. I knew we should have told our parents to back off and just let us be. But it was so easy to let the hard stuff, the bills, the worrying, the minutiae, be taken care of so we could focus on getting our lives up and going.
    I screwed myself over. That’s the worst part. I did this to myself. I’d never lied to myself about the level of contentment in my marriage. I knew I was never blissfully happy. When I realized our newlywed life wasn’t the ecstasy-fest I’d hoped for, I thought, “Well, no one is completely happy.” And when I had to fight harder and harder to find the bright spots in my marriage, I thought there was something wrong with me. I had a beautiful home, a husband who provided for me, security, position within my community. Most women would have been thrilled with my life. I thought maybe I didn’t feel things the way people were supposed to. Maybe my expectations were unreasonable. I even thought about going on antidepressants for a while, but we just don’t do that in my family. Three Bloody Marys for breakfast was perfectly acceptable, but a Xanax or two showed character flaws.
    ******
    To give a more explicit example, in eight years I’d never had an orgasm with Mike. Ever. Not even a promising twinge. I read somewhere that a good lover played your body like an instrument, listening for the right sounds and striking the ideal notes at the perfect time. Mike’s playing style was more like “Chopsticks,” hitting the same notes over and over again and nobody got any enjoyment out of it.
    At first I was convinced it was because I was just too nervous that Mike might trick me into sex that I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy our “we’ll do everything but that one thing” phase. That was followed by our “let’s just get it out of the way so there’s no pressure on our wedding night” phase, followed by the “is that it?” phase. Just after we were married, I convinced myself that I was still too new to sex to enjoy it properly. About three years in, I finally