Pears

How can you live without love? It’s in everything, in the way that she straightens your shoes when you kick them off by the door, or fixes your shirt lapel on date night, rolling her eyes and saying I lost the ability to love, not the ability to feel embarrassed. It’s even in the way she goes to date night anyway, even if it is just for a free meal. Nothing else.

You don’t believe it, any of it.

The wedding is a mess.

Will you marry me, Kim Minjeong? You remember asking it under the old willow tree, the one on the property you bought expecting a life of laughs and touch and love. You remember what she was wearing, that old sundress your mom gave her, “because it’s the same colour as Asian pears and she loves Asian pears”. You remember asking aren’t you cold? You remember it was 3 months after the diagnoses— the tragedy that rendered her incapable of love.

“I don’t love you anymore,” you remember her saying. You expected her to look indifferent. She did, and it felt like she was throwing your heart on the ground and stomping on it.

“I’ll marry you anyway,” you remember saying, like giving her permission to stomp on it harder.

“Okay then.”

You remember those 2 words being the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard. She probably doesn’t.

You bawl your eyes out, and so does your mom, and so does her mom when she walks down the aisle. The dress is stunning, her makeup ethereal. Her hair is done up in the same way it was on the bride in that old movie she forced you to watch, where the wedding is exactly the type of wedding I want to have. Her skin is so smooth, whiter than the dress, but it’s getting hard to see with all the tears in your eyes. You should wipe them away, but then you’d get tears on your tux, and you don’t want to embarrass her.

She’s just walking there, calm, indifferent, Sun shining through the stained glass window and hitting her in a way that no light could ever hit someone, except for her. Her gloved hands are draped lazily to her side and you just want to reach out and touch them, hold them, even if they are cold.

She gets up there, and there’s a slight red to her cheeks, and you think maybe she can love, but you read your vows, and it’s raw and deep, you talk about how you’ll care for her through the darkness of the night, the cold of winter, and the desolation of a feeling unhad. You tell her you’ll love her, because you know deep down, by the way she fixes your shoes and your lapels that she loves you too, because she told you she always would no matter what, even if God took love away from me. You tell her that she looks beautiful and that she always will, and that your souls are eternally attached, and you wipe your tears away even though it makes her cheeks more red.

The whole room is a mess of sniffles and sobs, and when it’s her turn she says “I don’t have any vows.”

She makes up for it later that night, right after all of the “are you okay?” questions.

“Just, so happy I’m marrying the love of my life,” you respond, wiping your tears away. It’s only half true.

But you're in the suite now, and her lips are chasing yours.

“It’s our wedding night,” she huffs, ripping your jacket off of you. “I’ve been waiting for this all day.”

She pushes you onto the bed. She looks hungry, impatient, slipping out of the dress you’ve waited your whole life to see her in like it’s lingerie, but her smooth skin, the lips you know so well are back on you in a second.

“Minjeong,” you cry, but her tongue interrupts you as she shoves it back down your throat, and she’s wearing that same lip gloss you got her in high school, the one you saved up for months for, and you start kissing back.

She climbs on top of you, hands on the lapels of your expensive tux. “Just make me feel good.”

You scramble to take your clothes off. She helps you, unbuttoning your shirt and finding your nipples, pinching them softly. She grinds on you, your cock growing, blinded by one sided love and pure lust as her white wedding panties soak your trousers. She doesn't mind now.

It's a mixture, how you feel. Until death do you part, and when her pussy clenches around you, you think, is this really living? Am I already dead, gone, destined to fizzle out in this marriage with no love? But she makes you come while her tongue is in your mouth and you forget, and you hold her tight while she cums, and you think, this is romantic, both of us cumming together on our wedding night, but it ends and she rolls over on her side and falls asleep, back towards you.

You lay there for a while, huffing, huffing until the Sun comes up and she rises, turns around, says good morning before heading to the shower.

So it goes like this, and you tell yourself that your love for Winter will never wain. She can be indifferent, but she can still feel humour and horny and hope, so maybe you can live like this.

Sometimes she'll tease you, and even if it's not lovingly, it's not full of malice. It's something in between, like: "hey, aren't you going to take me out? I'm your wife, aren't I?" with a smile on her face and you don't know what it means, and you know it's not love, but it's something and you can deal with something.

Other times it's hard, like your two people just living, neither together nor apart, the string of fate, the slow decay of memories keeping you just close enough.

It occupies your being. Your whole life, thinking what if. What if Winter could still feel love? How different would your life be. Would it be like old times, where she held you, told you you were hers and she'd never let go?

You have all the remnants of a happy marriage. Fluff pillows thrown comfortably on all the couches, candles, a picture book from the wedding sat on the coffee table.

Sometimes, she'll sit on the couch with you, look through the book and say: remember how we fucked that night? Remember how hard we both came?

"Cafeteria food again?" a coworker asks.

Correction, it's not just any coworker. It's Karina.

"It's not that bad."

"It's sludge," she smiles. "Your wife doesn't pack you lunch?"

She's always like this, friendly to a fault, talking to you like you're buddies, like just because your desk is across from hers and she gives you funny looks when the boss comes in, all red and yelling because the quarterly reports are down that you're 'besties'.

"She's busy," you say. It's not a lie, per se. Winter still has goals, still has things she wants to do in life. Sometimes, you have to remind this to yourself: love isn't the only passion you can feel.

Karina grabs the empty bowl of the lukewarm soup you just had, scoops some of her rice, still warm and steamy into it. She places two strips of pork belly, hot and sticky with it's spicy glaze over top the rice. "Well, you still need to eat properly."

It fills your stomach, the warmth touching places you thought gone dormant, and you huff because your tongue isn't used to the heat. You eat it anyway.

"See, you were hungry," Karina smiles. She glides into the seat next to you, like this is a school cafeteria and the rest of the seats are filled, but it's only you and her and maybe a couple of others in the whole of the room. "You can have more, if you'd like." She says it all high, crossing her legs as if her pencil skirt isn't tight and cheap and more than a little high. "I packed extra, cause, you know, you never eat well."

You share the meal, silent at first, but then you start laughing when she impersonates your boss and his fake french accent and the way his mustache hangs off his lips like mouse droppings she says, which makes you laugh harder even though you have no idea what it means.

You stop off at the fruit market on the way home to get Asian pears, because they're in season and Winter wore that sundress the other day which reminds you of how much she loves loved them.

"You can sleep with her, I won't mind."

She says it to you after the company barbecue, the one where you held her hand and kept her by your side while Karina talked your ear off.

"What?"

"Karina. She likes you."

You're splayed all over the couch, food pregnant with all sorts of marinated meats, and Winter stands there in the door. She looks so small.

"You're my wife."

"I don't love you, though." She doesn't say it with force, doesn't sharpen the words. She just, says them because they're true. "And I can't imagine what that's like. To be married to someone like me."

"What do you care?" you say. Again, not sharp, just curious.

"I can feel compassion."

"Can you? I'd think that's tied pretty closely to love, no?"