Chapter 74

Their vacation had flown by too fast, Rachel thought.  Sun, sand, sea and sex had taken up most of their time and they never did do all the things they talked about.  They had been able to take advantage of the perfect scuba diving trip off the reef.  It had taken the entire day, but was completely worth it.  The boat charter had even made arrangements for some time in the sun and a BBQ on an island near the reef. 

“Island” might not be the best, most accurate description as it was only one square acre.  A tiny speck of land surrounded with nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see, but it was one of the most exquisite places she’d ever seen.

Jet skis and kayaking had rounded out their trip and kept them from being lazy slugs that just laid on the sand for days on end – although there had been plenty of time for that, as well. 

With the aircraft now climbing to their cruising altitude, both were powering up laptops to check back in with reality.  While waiting for her email to feed, Rachel gazed out the window as the magnificent turquoise waters of Turks and Caicos began to fall further and further away. 

The trip had been perfect, there was no denying that, but Rachel was ready to get back to New Jersey and even back to work.   She could sit still only so long and she knew Jon was just as anxious to get back into the studio to put the finishing touches on the band’s new record. 

Still… there was a little stab at her heart to be leaving their idyllic paradise. 

“Hey.  Don’t be sad to leave.  First chance we get I’ll bring you back here.” The tanned man across from her was so in tune with her it seemed he could read her mind sometimes.  

“I’m not sad, Jon.  I told you when I left San Francisco to move to Jersey I had to close the shades on the plane?  THAT was sad.  I couldn’t bear to look back.  THIS???  This is joy.  To look out the window and see the beauty that we’ve spent this perfect week in… there’s nothing sad about that.”  Rachel reached across the table to twist her fingers into his before continuing.  “In fact, this time and this place is exactly what we needed, or at least what I needed.  I finally feel like we’re completely in sync with each other.”

“Yeah, me too.  It was a perfect week.  I hate to leave the warm weather, but I’m anxious to see the kids and get back in the studio… kinda get into a normal life with you.”

 “That’s a funny thought…” Rachel snorted in response. “You and ‘normal’ don’t quite go in the same sentence.”

“Our version of normal, then.  Maybe after I get you out of the Caribbean I won’t have to change clothes in the bathroom with the door locked.”   Jon’s toothy grin was matched by playful blue eyes and a cock of his head.   “I have a healthy sex drive.  But you?  Sunshine turns you into a ravenous wolf.  I’ve never seen anything like you.  It borders on intimidating.”

“I don’t know what it is about sun, sand and blue water, but it’s like I can’t get enough sex.”

“I noticed.” 

Her absent-minded response was the result of her attention being captured by the mountain of emails feeding through.   “I was like that when I was pregnant, too… horny all the time.  Nick said I was like a cat in heat.”

Jon, too, had been focused on the multiple messages coming through his laptop, but his focus instantly shifted as that one word pierced its way into his consciousness.  Holding completely still, as though any movement might blow life, as he knew it, all to hell,  only his eyes snapped up to look across the table at her. 

“You’re not…”  His nervous tendency to fiddle with his fingers was kicked up a notch into a full knuckle-crack before he asked the fatal question.  “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“Nope.  Just horny,” was her distracted reply. 

It would’ve been nice if she’d bothered to look up, he thought.  But when Rachel was in work mode, as she clearly now was, it was hard to take her focus away. 

Jon could feel the muscles of his face pulling downward into a frown, but he didn’t say anything and returned to his computer screen.  For what good it did.  He couldn’t make heads or tails out of the jumble of words he saw.  They were viciously blurred by the silent panic creeping up his spine. 

Did he know she was on birth control?  Because he knew he sure as hell wasn’t. 

Terrifying anxiety wormed its way through the base of his skull and settled into the big, throbbing vein in his forehead.  The nagging worry demanded to be addressed.  He’d never sleep again unless he knew.

“You are on the pill, right?”

She still didn’t look up from the screen but she did open her mouth and take a breath, Jon assumed for the purpose of answering him.  Then something on that damned computer caught her attention again and she said nothing, raising his anxiety level a full ten notches before he snapped out her name.

“RACHEL!”

Her head jerked up, startled, and annoyed eyes met his.  “Geez!  What?!?”

“You’re taking birth control pills…..right??”  He was doing his best to remain calm at the thought of possibly procreating without consent, but her indifference wasn’t helping. 

 “No.”

The fact that she looked at him like he had a third eye didn’t lessen the sense that acid rain was about to fall down on him.  The sense of dread was profound as he absently rubbed the pounding bulge in his temple. 

“What… uh… what ARE you using for birth control?”

She huffed as though he were an idiot.  “I’m not using ANYthing, Jon.  You know I had fertility problems.”

As he processed the exact ramifications of Rachel’s words, the throbbing headache seemed tame – nonexistent, even –  to the nuclear explosion that  just went off in his head. Was she fucking kidding? Or was she trying to have a Catholic house full of kids?

“Are you telling me that we’ve been having round the clock sex ALL THESE MONTHS without ANY birth control AT ALL?”

“Uh, yeah.”

The nuclear explosion in his head now rolled out of his mouth with the same level of intensity as the one that leveled Hiroshima.  Uncontrollable acid coated each and every pissed-off word.

“What the FUCK?  How can a grown woman NOT be on the pill?”

The warning look that women have given to men for generations was familiar to Jon.  He’d seen it from his mother and his former wife plenty of times.  They had taught him that a screaming woman was much safer than the deadly quiet one now before him. 

 “You’d be wise to back up, Jon,” she warned him softly.   “The odds of me getting pregnant without fertility drugs and major intervention are so slim you may as well call it ‘none’.  There’s no reason for me to BE on the pill – or anything else for that matter.”

Because she’d had trouble once-upon-a-fucking time they were supposed to just skip through the forest and fuck like the little happy little bunnies without a worry in the world?  Had she lost her mind?  Unplanned pregnancies happened every day for God’s sake! 

“Oh no, no, no, NO!  You need to get on the phone to your doctor and get on the Pill the minute we land this motherfucker in Jersey!”

“I don’t even HAVE a doctor back here.”

“Then I’ll get you in to see Dorothea’s doctor because make no mistake-"

And that was the end of deadly quiet. 

Rachel leaned across the table, audibly slapping her open palm down on it, and then her eyes spit such anger he thought her head might actually spin around.   He never finished his thought because she interrupted with similar venom spewing from her mouth.

 “First of all Jon-I don’t WANT to see Dorothea’s doctor.  I’ll find my OWN doctor IF I decide that I need one.  And I’ve already told you I spent years and tens of thousands of dollars getting fertility treatments so I COULD get pregnant.”  Jon opened his mouth to speak but she wasn’t having any of it.  “And just for the record…. Nick and I went without birth control and without any unwanted pregnancies for most of our 20 years of marriage in spite of ALSO having ‘round the clock’ sex.”

He hated her visuals.  Rachel had a way of wording things allowing him to see a very clear picture of whatever she was talking about.  The image of her being as sexual with Nick as she was with him stung.  And it pissed him off.

“That may have been fine for him – but it’s NOT okay with me.   Maybe the problem was on HIS end, Rachel.  Didja ever think of that?  Obviously I don’t have problems getting a woman pregnant – I’ve got four kids to show as proof, and  I don’t want any more running around.  Which means YOU need to see a doctor.  PRONTO.”

 “I’m not putting all that crap in my body when I know I don’t need it.”

“I’ve been perfectly clear about not wanting any more kids, Rachel.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ll be any more receptive to one you surprise me with.”

He knew his venomously hissed response was more than he’d have spit out were it not for the panic he was feeling.  As he watched the tanned face of the woman he loved turn more and more red with indignant anger, he briefly wished he’d had better control of his temper. 

“Take it back.  Don’t you dare – ever – make an insinuation like that.  I would never deceive you that way, and you damn well know it.”

“I’m sorry.  That was uncalled for.  I know that’s not you… I’m sorry.”  He reached across the table to take her hand before scaling things back and finishing his thought.  “I just want us using SOME form of birth control.”

“Fine.”  Rachel extracted her hand and threw him an icy glare.  “You can go get a vasectomy.”

In a move that was beyond his control, the Jersey Boy with attitude sat down next to Jon and spoke for him.  “Hmpf.  Ain’t happenin’ honey.  Dorothea tried to get that done and it didn’t work out too well for her.”

As it turned out, his California girl had somehow gotten a healthy dose of Jersey in her, as well. 

“COULD WE POSSIBLY HAVE ONE PERSONAL CONVERSATION THAT YOU DON’T BRING YOUR FUCKING EX-WIFE INTO THE MIX?  JUST ONE?  BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW YOU AND DOROTHEA HANDLED YOUR ‘BIRTH CONTROL’ DECISIONS.  THIS IS ABOUT YOU AND ME!”

Rachel wasn’t ordinarily a screamer outside of the bedroom.  But her raised voice left him a little defensive and his natural instinct to match his opponent, blow for blow, came through loud and clear. 

“My POINT, Rachel, was that my WIFE wanted me to have a vasectomy and I wasn’t willing to do it for HER.  I’m sure as HELL not letting some guy take a knife to my balls for my girlfriend.”

Jon only thought her glare was icy before.   He wasn’t quite sure what he’d done, but he knew it was bad when Rachel picked up her laptop and moved to the back of the plane with only a disgruntled snarl as she passed by.

“Thanks for putting me in my place, dear.”

He was left sitting alone at the table, shaking his head, wondering why she was always so difficult.  Defiant, almost.  The blue waters of the Caribbean were still clearly visible beneath the plane, and yet their perfect vacation seemed a long time ago.  How could they go from bliss to bust in mere minutes?  This was nuts.  He had to try and get some control over the situation.

Jon released his seatbelt and walked toward the back of the plane where Rachel was now reclined on the sofa, working on her laptop.  She didn’t acknowledge him, even though he stood in the aisle for a good ten seconds before speaking. 

“Maybe we should dial back the venom, huh?  I wanna talk to you about this, Rachel, not fight with you about it.”

Whether she was actually reading anything on the laptop screen or not, her eyes were glued to it.  She refused to even peek up at him as she coolly intoned, “Then let me cool down awhile.  We’ll talk later.”

“Rach, you can’t drop a bombshell like this on me and expect me to just sit with it until you feel like talking about it!”

“I can’t be nice right now.  Leave me alone until I can be.”

Now he was really pissed.   Not only did she have the nerve to walk away from a major conversation, she wouldn’t even glance up from her computer to look at him!

“NO!  There’s no reason we can’t talk about this, right now, like adults.  And maybe you could bring yourself to look me in the eye while we do.”

She slammed the laptop closed and exhaled an exaggerated huff before barking at him, “Do you think, just this once, you could trust ME?  Drop it for now.”

She’s primed to scream and fight.  You’re not going to accomplish anything by forcing her to talk.  She’s just gonna get more pissed.  Walk away for now.

“Fine.  We’ll do it your way.”  He couldn’t let it go without regaining the upper hand though.  “But we’re NOT having sex without birth control.”

“Suits me.  We can stop on the way home for condoms or we can do without altogether.  Your call.”

Damned stubborn woman!

“Oh for fuck’s sake, I hate those things!  Isn’t that the point of being in a committed relationship???  You don’t HAVE to use rubbers?”

Her eyes rolled as she opened the laptop again with obvious annoyance.  “No, I wouldn’t say that’s the point of being in a committed relationship.” 

Her views on marriage again.  That was a conversation best avoided altogether, so Jon sullenly returned to his seat to simmer and stew in his own anger until she ‘cooled off’.

He missed just how cool she was when she flipped a Jersey salute at him behind the computer screen.