1. Max and Rosie Pt. 2


    Date: 7/6/2016, Categories: Love Stories, Author: Sisyphus, Rating: 18, Source: LushStories

    When they entered the kitchen, Max touched Rosie's shoulder then bent over and kissed her forehead. She opened her eyes and look up at him. “Tomorrow is our thirty-seventh anniversary, dear.” Max sat down on the chair next to her wheelchair and took her hand. “That’s nice,” Rosie answered. “I think I should take a nap.” Max glanced up at Robin and sighed at Rosie's response. Robin stood behind Rosie then turned the wheelchair around. “I’ll be right back. How about making a pot of coffee?” While the water was boiling in the teakettle, Max put four scoops of coffee into the French Press then walked over and looked at all of the photos on the refrigerator door—snapshots of Leah when she was eight or nine sitting on his knee while he had his arm around Rosie. He moved closer to look at Rosie’s face, her big smile, the wire-rimmed glasses she started wearing instead of the horn-rimmed ones she wore in college. He knew the picture was taken when they were in their forties and her curly brown hair was long. She was wearing her old plaid flannel shirt, tan Bermuda shorts and the yellow bandana she wore over her hair when she gardened. The picture had been taken by their neighbor, Gordon, who often stopped by to kibitz with Max, but who he suspected had a secret crush on Rosie. He looked at a photo of Rosie wearing a one-piece bathing suit and posing with her hand on her hips like she was in a beauty contest. He thought about the way they loved going to Long Beach Island for two ...
    weeks every summer and how she’d made a delicious dinner with the bluefish he caught that day. The teakettle whistled and Max poured the steaming water into the glass pot just as Robin came back into the kitchen and reached for two mugs from the shelf over the counter. Her arm brushed his and the touch made him realize how he desired her and wished he didn't. Between feeling the memories the photos awoke and Robin's presence next to him and the thought of the woman he had loved for thirty-seven years slowly dying before his eyes, he was being yanked back and forth between the past and the present like in a game of tug of war. Why am I being faithful? Would it be cheating if she's no longer able to be my wife?This is nuts? I love Rosie but I love Robin too. I don't know what to do. “She’s asleep,” Robin said and poured the coffee into their mugs. When they sat at the table, Max looked out at the bird feeder and then at the daffodils just beginning to bloom. They sat quietly and sipped their coffee in the late afternoon sunlight coming through the window. Max glanced up at the clock and noticed it was ten after four. “This is when we used to have tea and toast with raspberry jam.” Robin looked up at the clock and at Max. “That was then and this is now. Be in the present. I know how hard this is, but it's important to try to accept what is happening and make it as good as possible.” Max smiled and nodded. “I’ve been lonely. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.” ...
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