That day had been the perfect spring Sunday for Ethan and Rhonda Hedgerton. Jonathan, their son, and Evie, his wife, had come for the afternoon with the twins. They made it a point to get together one Sunday every month to catch up on family events and activities. Jon and Evie lived about an hour away. On warmer days, they were at Ethan and Rhonda’s so the kids could swim in the pool. During cooler months, they met at Jonathan and Evie’s. Holidays were always at Evie’s and included her parents…she insisted.

The boys played in the pool as the adults watched from the patio with drinks. Ethan had Guinness, room temp, Evie had iced tea, Jonathan and Rhonda had G&Ts.  Later, Ethan barbequed steaks for the grownups and hamburgers for the eight-year-old boys. Rhonda served a medley of oven-roasted veggies and, for dessert, special cream cheese-filled chocolate cupcakes that always made the boys squeal with delight. After the kids left, Ethan and Rhonda cleaned up the kitchen and patio. They settled in for the evening.

Ethan sat in his leather recliner with the footrest up and his stocking feet dangling over the end. He was reading the Times sports section. Other sections were scattered on the floor by his chair. Rhonda sat on the couch across from him, her bare feet tucked under her dress, and the cat curled up in the crook of her knees. She was reading the sixth novel in a series of Gilded Age Mysteries by her favorite mystery author, Rosemary Simpson. She found herself reading the same page over and over. Finally, she plunked down the book without putting her bookmark in it. Rhonda scratched Simone’s silky caramel head, eliciting a rumbling purr.

“Ethan…,” she paused to see if he was listening.

“Huh?” He answered from behind the paper.

“Why did you marry me?”

“I donknow.”

“Really, Ethan. Why did you ask me to marry you?”

“What’s going on?” Ethan lowered the paper a bit to look over the top at Rhonda.

“I want to know why you asked me to marry you.”

“It just slipped out.”

“You mean you had no thought? No intention? I could have said no, and things would have just gone on?”

“Ronnie, what do you want from me. It was forty years ago. I don’t remember what I was thinking.”

“You hadn’t agonized over popping the question?”

“I don’t remember. It seemed to be the right thing, the right time, I guess. What brought this on?” His paper was crumpled in his lap.

“Today, when the kids were here, Jon mentioned he and Evie were going to Hawaii for their tenth anniversary, taking the kids with. You said, ‘Hey boy, you just might get stuck for forty years like me’.”

“So?”

“Well, I saw a look pass between Evie and Jon. I felt like you had thrown cold water in my face. Stuck, you said, stuck.”

“Oh, get over it, Ronnie.” A peevish tone entered his voice.

“I can’t get OVER it. I want to know why you married me?”

“Look, I’m here, aren’t I. No visible chains. You’re making something out of nothing.”

“It’s not nothing if Jon and Evie noticed it. You must have had some thought about us being us.”

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“That’s not good enough.”

With a sigh, Ethan responded, “I married you because of your soft brown eyes. I liked the idea of having sex with you, morning, noon, and night, without worrying about your roommate coming home.”

“That’s it…sex?”

“Pretty much.” Ethan paused. “Okay then, Miss Third Degree, why did you say yes? Why did you marry me?”

“Because I thought you loved me. I thought we had the same idea about family and our future.”

“I don’t recall ever talking about a future OR a family. I wasn’t really keen on the idea of kids back then.”

“So, we didn’t have the same goals?”

“Goals are something I do to advance my career, not live with my wife.”

“You go your way, I go mine. You work all week. You play golf every weekend and poker once a week. You go out with your college friends for dinner. We don’t do anything as a couple.” Ronda was getting visibly upset.

“I relax with my buddies, put work stuff out of my mind. I enjoy golf. It’s my excuse for exercise. I knew Skip and Tim before I met you. Skip is a bachelor, so there’s no couple to go with. The last time I invited Tim and Kim over for dinner, you told me you didn’t like her. After all these years, you said she was boring, opinionated, and talked too much. I don’t connect with your friends’ husbands. We don’t have anything in common. When I go out with Tim, Kim joins us sometimes, even Skip, and it is easy. Kim’s a kick and blends right in with the guys. For a couple of hours, we all have a good time.”

“You mean you go with them, and I’m not invited?”

“You’re invited, but I tell them you have mahjong that night or are babysitting the twins or something because you made it clear how much you disliked being around Kim. I think they get the picture. If you want to join us and listen to old college reminiscences, you can anytime.”

“We’re living here together for no reason. We’re like roommates.”

“Roommates with privileges,” Ethan quipped.

“Not so much anymore. You barely touch me. Our lovemaking is perfunctory. Like you just want sex but no commitment.”

“I barely touch you because after you started menopause, you said your skin hurt. You flinched every time I tried to hold you. You said you felt sweaty all the time.  Over the years, I got used to keeping my distance. I felt like I was invading hostile territory. I don’t want to impose on you. I feel left out when I see you hug your girlfriends, even the guys in your book club, and our grandkids.”

Rhonda opened her mouth to respond, but shrugged her shoulders sadly.

“Hey, I haven’t noticed you being lonesome. You have your mahjong group, your tennis friends, your book club, and you go to dinner with your girlfriends for birthdays and such,” Ethan said.

“We used to go to concerts, plays, and movies, sometimes just us, but lots of times with friends. We used to go dancing and listen to live music around town. Now we just sit here and watch TV. You’re going to retire next year, and we’ll be stuck here looking at each other, wondering why. Why are we together? We have nothing in common except Jonathan and his family. Marj and Colin are planning a cruise the first year he retires, but you don’t like to travel. Bev and Spike are getting a divorce after thirty-six years together. What are we going to be doing?”

“There’s that word stuck again. I get seasick. I don’t like to travel because I like the food I eat here, the bed I sleep in here, and having everything I like, just where I like it…including you. I don’t want to worry about foreign money, foreign language, foreign food, and people I don’t know and don’t want to know.”

“Travel doesn’t have to be foreign. We could travel in the US. There’s a Denny’s or Applebee’s everywhere.”

“But you know how hard it is for me to sleep in a strange bed. My back aches if the mattress isn’t firm enough.  I get cramps. My stomach gets upset easily with weird food.”

Rhonda shook her head and looked down at Simone, tears threatened to breach the edges of her eyes.

Ethan got up and walked over to Rhonda. Taking her hands in his, he pulled her to her feet, dumping Simone onto the floor.  He put his arms around her carefully, then feeling no resistance, tightened his hug; his chin nestled on the top of her head.

“I’m winding up my last project at work. Next year, when I retire, we will plan things together again, maybe even a car trip. I’ve been so busy I didn’t realize we weren’t.”

He bent a little to whisper in her ear. “As far as stuck, I’ll borrow from Elvis, ‘I’m stuck on you’ and that’s a good thing. I married you because I thought you were sexy, and you laugh at my lame jokes. Your laugh, that starts deep inside you, fills the room and warms my heart.”

Rhonda hugged back, her head against his chest.

Neither said, I love you.