Emily settles back on the bed watching Matthew pace nervously around their bedroom. She can tell he's struggling with something so, even without knowing what it is, she offers him some reassurance. "Why don't you come over here and lie down with me? We can talk about it, and maybe that'll help you sort things out."
Matthew hesitates for a moment before slowly making his way over to their bed. He reclines beside Emily, slipping under the top sheet. Its coolness on his naked flesh makes him shiver so he scoots closer to the warmth of Emily's body against his. She slides an arm around his waist, pulling him close, and whispers in his ear, "You know you can always talk to me, right?"
She slides her other hand over his chest, teasing at his nipples, and she feels him both relax and stiffen under her touch, both reactions expected by each after these many years.
"What's on your mind sweetheart?" she asks gently. "Is there something you want to talk about?"
Matthew's words come slow and haltingly as if each one is a struggle to get past the lump in his throat. "I-I don't know," he finally manages to say. "I just feel...different. Like I'm not sure who I am anymore." He gazes deeply into Emily's eyes. "Or who I'm supposed to be."
Emily kisses the side of his neck, her breath warm against his skin. "We all go through moments of indecision in our lives, and we both certainly have had our shares for sure," she reassures him. "Change can be scary, but it can also be an opportunity for growth."
And that's just it,
Matthew thinks.
That word, 'growth'. That's been the problem all along.
Emily runs a hand through Matthew's short gray hair while looking deep into his eyes.
He's gotten even more handsome with time
, she thinks.
I love him so
.
Matthew's eyes search hers for any hint of judgment or mockery. But all he sees is love and understanding. It's a heady sensation, one he has cherished for the thirty-plus years they've been together.
"I guess," he says finally. "I never thought..." He trails off, unable to finish.
Emily kisses him softly on the lips, her hand splayed across his chest. "There's no rush, darling. Take all the time you need. We'll get through this together, I promise. Whatever it is."
She nibbles lightly at his bottom lip, teasing him, before pulling back with a smile.
"I'm all ears, you know that." She playfully rubs his crotch through the bedsheet. "Plus a few other things." Matthew, a satisfied shallow grin, settles back onto the mattress. It's a lazy Saturday afternoon. The Fitzgerald's, Emily and Matthew Fitzgerald, have spent most of the day doing chores and yard work around the house after Emily had returned from the library's summer breakfast fundraiser. He had been the first to step into the shower of their en suite while Emily lay on their bed, still in her shorts and t-shirt lazily scrolling through her phone. It's Memorial Day weekend, both Emily and Matthew have three straight days off, and tomorrow, Sunday, they're hosting a dozen or so friends for a barbecue on the patio by the pool.
"It's just," Matthew finally says, a noticeable tremble in his voice, "I've been wondering, recently if I'm..." And his voice trails off again.
"If you're what?" Emily asks, smoothing a finger lightly down his jawline and over his lips.
"If I'm enough of a man for you," he blurts out. He's staring at the ceiling fan hanging above them, blades slow and languid, and he continues to speak, tings of frustration and sadness in his voice. "If I've ever been enough for you."
Emily's heart breaks at his words. She sits up on the bed, facing him, and takes a hand in hers. "Oh, sweetheart," she says, her voice thick with emotion, "of course you are. You're everything to me. You always have been. You're the man I love, the father of our children, my partner, my closest and most loyal friend. There is nothing about you that I would ever change."
Matthew rolls his head closer to Emily. He sees the depth of her love for him, the way she has for going on this their fourth decade together. All she has done for him, has been his cheerleader and defender, even on the occasions when reason counseled her otherwise.
But he also knows that sexually, he's not the most...endowed of men. His penis has always been on the smallish size and now, in his late fifties, he's been noticing that, well, it not looks but
feels
even smaller. The head is shrinking, has shrunk, his testicles too, and the shaft is not as thick and long as it used to be, especially getting out of the shower or his suit at the end of the day, it's a shrunken soft nub, like a wine cork wearing a beret. And as for stamina, he can't remember the last time he was able to stay hard and orgasm when they have had penetrative sex - an ego-crushing term if there ever was one - Emily always ends up giving him a slow, seductive hand job or sucking on his semi-soft penis until he cums. She says she doesn't mind but Matthew wonders, and he's been wondering more than ever recently, if he's not being "the man" he ought to be, if Emily has sensed his current late-blooming diminishment as well and is merely suffering through.
Emily traces the profile of Matthew's face. She knows
exactly
what Matthew
isn't
saying.
When they had first met, Emily was not a "one man" kind of woman. Not that she was a whore or a slut, she just really liked sex. A lot. And frequently. She had a handful of different men she would see and each, well, they knew exactly how to
really
satisfy a woman. She wasn't what is called - either approvingly or reprovingly - a "size queen", but she did appreciate a thick, long, hard cock -
Who doesn't!
- attached to a man who really knew how to use it. There were MANY a time, Emily thinks now as she stares at Matthew, feeling a slow heat building inside her, she had nearly lost consciousness from the amount of orgasms a particular partner could raise in her from deep, satisfying intercourse.
She loves Matthew. Once she got to know him and witnessed - and felt - his kindness and generosity, the possibility of becoming his wife thrilled her. And she was jubilant when he did propose - it brought tears to her eyes. And their life together these past thirty-plus years has been amazing. The sex at the beginning was incredible - even though Matthew was, certainly, the smallest man she had ever had, by far, their delirious love more than made up for that.
But over time, and especially over these last four, five years, their lovemaking has drifted off not only in frequency but intensity. And she knows it's more than the usual complacency and lack of drive that accompanies decades together. Even more than "the change" all women and men experience. In fact, she can't remember the last time Matthew came in her. Or was able to make her cum with his penis alone. Oh, he is exceptional with his tongue - always has been, an early learned skill he honed to compensate for other "short-comings", she had long ago mischievously rationalized - and when they do make love now, Matthew can still can make her cum four, five, six times with fingers and mouth and lips and tongue. He certainly, in that regard, has been the best she's ever had - and he has never lost that. But if she were being honest with herself for the second time this afternoon, if Matthew hadn't been as adept in that department, she doubts she would be laying in bed beside him right now.
And it's not that she doesn't want or like to orally massage him to climax, him dribbling a sweet thin stream instead of a thick milky torrent into her mouth not her vagina. She adores playing with his miniature penis, the marbly testicles and rubbery flaccid shaft. It's cute and adorable, like a puppy. Like Matthew. It warms her heart, the connection, the intimacy, the way he squirms and quivers on the mattress with his little spongy penis lodged between her lips that she sucks into her mouth like a Pacific oyster from a shell, certainly just as pliable and more often than not smaller by inches.
In fact, at this point in her life and even if Matthew was merely normal-sized, she knows she could take a real cock better now better than she
ever
could. She's certain that now only a REAL man's cock and a REAL man's fucking could satisfy her like the ways she had been when she was younger, emphasis on "fucking", not on Matthew's oral skills alone.
But that is not their life, never had been and never will be. And being true to herself, Emily has never been a person who ignores reality. A waste of time and energy on "what if" - make it happen or move on. That is her, just as this is their life now and all-in-all she wouldn't change one single thing, an A-plus tongue as a bonus.
"I love you dear." She runs a hand on top of the sheet over his chest and abdomen. "To the moon and back. Nothing has ever or will ever change that."
"So tell me sweetheart," she continues to caress his torso through the sheet, the smoothing her effort at refocusing her thoughts by swiping away the preoccupying ones, "what's really on your mind?"
Matthew takes a deep breath, still not quite able to meet her gaze. "I just..." He swallows hard. "I just wish I could be the man you deserve. I wish I could make you happy like the way you were...before." He trails off, not knowing how to say it, then lifts the bedsheet away from his body and with his head motions towards his mid-section, to what he and Emily know lays sleeping there.
Emily, a serious look on her face, looks down at where Matthew has been indicating, then directly into his eyes.
"This is really weighing on you, isn't it?"
Matthew nods his head from within the notch of bed pillows.
"Yes, Em, it has. I've always known I've been less than...adequate." He closes his eyes and speaks, barely above a whisper. "I know I've never been the kind of man you had been used to."
It's an admission that slices deep. Emily's hand ceases its caressing of Matthew's chest all of its own. She's frozen in place, staring down at her husband.
"And that thought, that I could never really truly satisfy you, I can't fight the truth of it anymore. So now I'm," Emily notes the resignation slowing his words, "lost. I guess it's just all catching up to me. And I don't know what to do."
Never over the course of their entire marriage have they engaged in such a conversation. Aside from a handful of bumbling, sheepish words when they were first dating, from their engagement on neither broached the subject - at first out of fear, then out of empathy and compassion, then loyalty - yet it constantly hovered above them, not unlike a ceiling fan. Or, a kind of "Penis of Damocles". Matthew knew and Emily knew and because of that it had been the one perpetual silence never broken between them.
Which suddenly makes Emily...sad. There had never been any constructed distances between them - that was one of the foundational bedrocks of her marriage that she prized vigorously. All the facts they both had learned over the years, the extra-marital assignations in the marriages of other couples they knew, sometimes one partner would never discover until the dalliances died on their own, other infidelities once revealed tore that marriage asunder. Even the couples who actively engaged in such entanglements together. Aside from moments of solitary fantasy - luxuriating in bed upon awakening in a morning after Matthew had left for work - on those moments,
Sure
, but,
who could, what spouse would allow one's life-long partner to...
Matthew continues to study the ceiling, unable to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry, Emily," he sighs the words out once again. "So, so sorry."
"For what?" Emily wants to say, but she doesn't.
What purpose would that serve?
And,
For whom?
She glances out the bedroom door, spying the corner of the hallway wall through the doorframe, then quickly up at the ceiling fan hanging above the bed - Penis of Damocles - then down at Matthew. His eyelids remain closed but she knows he is not feigning sleep. His breathing is slow yet measured, a conscious act on his behalf she has known from thousands of other similar moments that reflect deep thought. She knows she must once and for all quell all these anxieties. Yet it is obvious her words and actions from the past through to today have not been successful, so
How?
Emily sits up, no plan in her mind.
Just, something.
She climbs over Matthew's lap so that she's straddling him. She cups his face in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye.
"I am not disappointed in you. I am not unhappy.
"You are everything to me. You are the man I love. The man I
chose
