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?"

It's casual, it's uniform the way you and your wife are discussing the issue. You've talked about these things before, endured years of this, emphasized not in its grandness but in its paucity, and you've gotten used to it.

"I— I'm not sure."

You sit up a little bit. "What do you mean you're not sure?"

"I just know… I knew what it was like to feel loved, sometimes I still remember the ghost of it, and I think if I were you, I don't know, I'd feel sad."

You do your best not to break down. It would do no good. You'd be crying for her, sniffling and sobbing that you deserve better or I should love you 10x harder and maybe you'll feel something, it's my fault it's my fault it's my fault that you're like this because I don't love you enough, and all she'd do is stand there and watch.

So you bite it back, push away the love and say: "if it's okay with you."

You get all dressed up for the occasion. You're not really sure how this goes, you've only loved one person and you fell in love with her in high school, but Karina knows.

She sends you a picture, a mirror selfie, black dress that contours her ample breasts, cut in a way it shows off her figure those pencil skirts and blouses never could.

"She looks nice, have fun," Winter says. "Thanks for making dinner first."

You Uber to the bar, and she's already waiting there, and she must have done something with her legs, extended them because you've seen them at work and you've never let your mouth hang open the way it does now.

She flirts and flirts, and you even take a stab at it, tell her how you can't take your eyes off of her at work, how she's such a tease, always crossing her legs at lunch like you can't see how hot they are. It's not true, you're always thinking about Winter but she smiles and blushes and says I know, I can tell.

She takes your hand after the 5th or 6th drink, all smiles and that pretty little mole on her face, takes you into the taxi.

Her lips are on yours before the door even closes. She's so fucking warm it's insane, and suddenly you don't like that dress, you want it off. You whisper it into her ear, and she climbs on top of you. It's exhilarating, having someone want you the way Karina does, she straddles you at 60 kmph, moaning in your ear how she can't wait to get dicked down, and you moan back that she feels so warm. She laughs, says that it was bad flirting, but she kisses you and places your hands on her breasts.

The weight of them, or the alcohol, or just the presence of it all does something, and you're kissing her neck, swaying with the motion of the taxi, taking off her dress and latching a mouth to her hard nipple, telling her they're so big and weighty and fucking perfect.

"Not like your wife's, huh?" She groans, which only makes you suck them harder.

You have to be shunted out of the taxi, scrambling out and into her apartment.

She kisses you, rubs the bulge in your pants all the way through the lobby and up the elevator and through to the room. You pin her to the wall, plan on fucking her right there and then, but she puts both hands on your shoulders.

"Slow down baby." She drops to her knees, unbuttons your pants. Before they even drop to the floor, she has you in her hands, slapping your thick cock on her tongue. "I'm gonna make you feel so good."

She does.

It's not so much that it's practiced, it's the fact that she wants to be on her knees, pleasing you. In fact, it's sloppy and that makes it all the much better, the way she gurgles on it, the way it slips in and out of her mouth, that face she makes as you thrust into her.

You cum, and she doesn't spit it out, she keeps you in her mouth as she swallows it all down, before she gets up and drags you by the lapels of your shirt to her bedroom.

She drops her dress and you see everything, every little huff of her breath shaking her tits, the redness in her cheeks as you eye her.

"Are you gonna keep staring at me?" she asks, before bending over.

You grasp her by the hips and thrust, thrust and thrust and thrust until she's a mess of moans and groans.

"Your wife doesn't get it like this, does she?"

You're not even mad at Karina, she's been respectful to Winter and this arrangement the whole time, it must be the alcohol talking.

It only makes you thrust harder, pounding her. "That's right, she doesn't" you grunt, speeding up.

It's animalistic, it's full of passion, and the feeling wells up inside of you.

"Then give it to me!" she cries, cumming on your cock.

You pull out cumming, spraying Karina with your heavy load, covering her in your mess.

She groans, collapsing. "I fucking love your cock," she sings.

You fall back, tripping, landing on your ass, and Karina just lays there, satisfied.

She doesn't even question you when you scramble for your clothes, collect your things and go, go back to her.

When you get home, you're silent. You don't want to wake her, you don't even change or shower. You just climb to the foot of your bed where Winter is laying softly, peacefully, collapsing on the floor.

You weep.

"How was it?" she asks.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

Winter doesn't much mind what happened. The next morning she wakes you.

"You didn't have to sleep on the floor, stupid, go take a shower." It's even a little endearing, she can be like that sometimes. But it's never anything more. "You didn't answer me last night."

"Hmm?" you say through the hangover and emptiness.

"I asked you how it was."

"Great," you reply. It won't hurt her anyway.

She smiles. "Better than me?"

You look away.

"I'll change your mind," she says, confident. "Go shower."

You don't doubt her. You know she'll jump on you tonight, ask you to fuck her, make her feel the way you made Karina feel, and you'll know deep down that she can't feel the way Karina felt.

You're sitting on the swinging bench in the backyard when Winter comes with a glass of water.

"What are you feeling right now?" she asks it like a scientist, like she already has a hypothesis and only needs to confirm them.

"I don't know," you reply.

"Tell me," she says.

"What's the point? You won't care anyway."

"I still care about you," she says, sitting down. "I just don't love you."

It stings again. "I'm sad."

"I can feel sad."

"It's worse than sad."

"But why? She was hot. You had sex."

"Because I love you. I can't explain it."

"Just try," she asks. You don't know what's going on in that head of hers.

"I want you more than anything in the world."

"You already have me, I'm your wife."

"It's not enough."

"I don't get it," she says. It's not hostile, just, rough around the edges.

"I want you forever."

"You have me forever."

"I want you to want—" you stop yourself. It's not her fault she can't love you. You don't want to get mad at her for that.

"I'm trying," she says. You know she is, you know if it were up to her she'd take down the live laugh love sign in your kitchen, or stop going out on valentines day, maybe just relax on anniversaries. "Do you remember when you built this bench?" she asks.

"No. Yes."

"High school shop class. You said it would be for our kids, since you always wanted a swinging bench." She's still not looking at you, still just looking out at your front yard. "Do you still want kids?"

You recoil in on yourself. You haven't thought of that in a while. No, that's not true. you think about it all the time, what it would be like to have kids. To have someone that you could love, have someone that could love you back.

You turn to her, serious now. She looks back. "One day, I'd have to tell them their mother doesn't love them. That she can't."

"But you would love them." She's serious too.

"I can't ask you to do that just for me."

"I think it'd be nice to have someone running around the yard."

"But you wouldn't love them."

"I could try."

It's confusing. You don't understand how a creature like her, incapable of love could make a decision like this. "It'd be pointless."

Something switches on her face, not recognition or even hurt, just a flicker. "You'd love them enough for the both of us, even if it is pointless."

She climbs on top of you that night, and she's still a bit cold, but warmer than usual. She closes her eyes when you kiss her neck, and she even kisses yours. She rides you and you cum inside and she says "I hope it's a girl."

It's a boy, and maybe it's pride, maybe it's dedication, maybe it's just an animalistic instinct to protect your blood, but she still hugs him when he asks for it, she still claps and smiles at his graduation, still squeezes your hand when he's standing at the altar, waiting for his wife to walk down and start their life lead with eternal love.

And you, you love the kid and he loves you back, he still comes back to hug the both of you and say I love you so much thank you for raising me and you cry back and Winter holds the both of you. He still comes back to play catch and to eat mom's cooking, because she started to cook when he was born.

You don't know if it's love or pride or that animalistic instinct, but you know that you love her and the kid, and that even if she can't love you back, you lived a life full of it.