I stuttered on the words, blushing hard. Something palpable hovered between us, and I was afraid to look at him. Not worried that I’d see something nobody else did, but that he would see something in me I didn’t want revealed.
Mr. Braverman broke the uncomfortable silence by closing the book with a solid thud and pushing it back on the shelf. “Everyone has something unique about them, Elisabeth. I wish you’d just told me about the candy, instead of acting like you were doing it just to be bad.”
“My grammy told me not to tell anyone about it. That people would think I was crazy.”
“Well,” Mr. Braverman said, “you’re not.”
Chapter Fifteen
Since that day in Mr. Braverman’s class, I’ve never forgotten that Mary Sheeran, that lucky bitch, literally sees fireworks when she comes. Orgasms are pretty spectacular all on their own, but to see bursting and shifting patterns of color—that’s always seemed like an extra bit of luck. And now it’s happened to me.
It doesn’t escape me that of all the lovers I’ve ever had, Will’s the first to make me come so hard I literally saw stars. I look at his photo on the computer screen, not even embarrassed to be cyberstalking him, because it’s been over a week since the day he took me to MOMA. I haven’t heard from him since, not an email or a text. And fuck him, I left his apartment with him still coating the back of my throat, so he can very fucking well text me first. I’m not going to go chasing after him as if I have no self-control.
He has a Connex account, but it’s for his business and not personal, so it’s not set to private. I scroll through his pages of pictures, most of them his work or the book covers that have featured his photos. There are a few of him, though.
In one he wears a dark shirt, skinny dark tie, his hair a mess, all pushed in front of his ears and over his forehead, a little slick with sweat. The lines at the corners of his eyes are very distinct in this shot, maybe because of the light or because he’s squinting. Not smiling. He’s not smiling in any of the pictures, and I wonder if it’s because he wasn’t happy in any of them or if it’s because, as a photographer, he knows that smiling makes his eyes squinch up like that.
I love the way he looks when he smiles.
In this picture he’s pointing at something out of range, a cigarette held between his first and middle fingers. Brow furrowed. Familiar black Converse sneakers. And oh, there, that braided leather belt. I know that belt, the length of it, the feel of the leather in my palm. The click of the metal buckle as it’s undone.
My clit pulses. I shift in my desk chair, crossing my legs. Uncrossing. I’m wearing a pair of yoga pants I picked up on sale, thinking I was going to start doing something crazy like Zumba. Be like the wives of Ross’s coworkers, speed-walking around the block listening to recipe podcasts. I should’ve saved the money and bought a couple cartons of high-end ice cream with the money. At least I’d have enjoyed them.
The fabric, though, is clinging, soft and so thin the first tickle of my fingertip over the bump of my clit is almost as if I’m touching myself bare. Almost better, since the fabric barrier blunts the sensation enough to be teasing. I rub in slow circles as I study another picture of him. Someone caught him in profile, a half hint of a smile, his gaze bright. He has one hand around the waist of a tall blonde in red lipstick, both holding sweating drinks of clear fluid. The flash is reflected in the ice cubes.
They’re lovers. He and that woman, at least in the moment captured by this picture. I can see it in the way his fingers curl so slightly, denting the material of her sheer blouse. How she leans into him, how her gaze has fallen on his face. Her mouth is open a little, showing a glimpse of white teeth and pink tongue, as if she’s getting ready to lick her lips at the sight of him. I understand completely. I can’t even be jealous of anything except maybe how lovely she is, lithe and blonde and young, and that she had that moment with him and I’ve had hardly any.
Did he take her home that night to his apartment? Did he put her on that couch? No. His bed. Did he push up her dress, run his fingers over her long, lean thighs? Did he slide inside her cunt?
Up and down, my fingers press. I’m wet all the way through the scant lace of my panties. The yoga pants. My head falls back as I rub, rub, rub. So close already, just from thinking of Will fucking another woman. I shouldn’t like that, should I? Maybe it should even make me jealous, but instead I imagine him pushing her onto a bed, the sheets a tangled mess, the pillows scattered.
He tugs up her dress and finds her bare beneath. A woman like that would keep her pussy smooth. My fingers slide past the waistband of my pants at last, beyond the lace, to stroke the soft curls between my legs. I groom, but I’m never bald. My clit’s a hard, tight knot under my fingertip. All I have to do is press, just a little, and the walls of my pussy clench. One finger slips inside my heat. My body bears down on the intrusion.
I think of him pushing her legs apart. Crawling up the bed to get to her cunt with his mouth and hands. His tongue, the slick, hot swipe of it against her flesh.
Oh, fuck.
My back arches, my head pressed to the back of my chair. Both hands, now, one with my fingers deep inside, the other lightly pinching my clit in time to the rocking of my hips. I haven’t touched myself this way in a long time, so long I can’t remember the last time desire hit me so hard in the middle of the day that I had to relieve it.
I want Will between my legs. I want his tongue on me, his fingers inside, stroking upward while he sucks my clit. I want, I want, I want. At the base of it, that is what this is.
Desire.
The leather of my chair creaks as I rock against it. Soft, breathy moans escape me. Then some a little louder.
Everything inside me goes tight, tangling and twisted. When I come, I taste him. Not my synesthesia, but true memory, and it floods me. All my muscles twitch and jerk, until at last, spent, I melt into my chair with my arms and legs sprawled. I’m coated in sweat, tangy when I lick my lips. My hair is stuck to my forehead and small wisps cling to my cheeks. I feel as if I’ve run a mile with hungry zombies hot on my trail.
I’m starving.
“Mrs. Amblin?”
Startled, I spin in my chair, face even hotter than it was a minute before. “Maria. Hi.”
Our weekly housekeeper pauses awkwardly in the doorway. “I wasn’t expecting you to be home today.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m working from home.” I carefully do not turn around to close the Connex window, still showing the picture of Will and the blonde. I rub my fingers along the soft fabric of my pants, glad I took my hands out of my panties. “I was going to work out.”
Maria has been with our family for a long time. Now she tilts her head a tiny bit to look around my office. It used to be the smallest bedroom, the spare room, but since we finished the basement with a guest room and full bath, I took it over. Ross has the house’s official “office” on the first floor, and yet he never works from home.
“You need me to do anything in here?”
“No, thanks.”
We look at each other.
“You all right?” Maria asks.
“Me? Fine.” I give her my best broad smile. “How are you? How’s your granddaughter?”
Maria is always happy to talk about her granddaughter, and today’s no different. She chatters while I casually shut down my laptop and lead her out of the room. In the kitchen, she disappears into the laundry room while I pour myself a tall glass of orange juice and gulp it so greedily it makes my stomach hurt. I could’ve left the glass in the sink for Maria—Ross would’ve. But I rinse it thoroughly and put it in the dish rack.
My knees are still weak. I want a shower. I need the kiss of sunshine, though, the caress of fresh air. Outside, I pull catalogs and bills from the mailbox and wave at my neighbor Sandra from across the street. She’s weeding her flower beds. I nod at a couple walking their dog as they pass, and send another wave toward Ed from next door as he gets out of his car.
If I sank down onto the green, soft grass in my front yard right now, if I rolled in it and pressed my face to it, what would any of them do? Would they run to help me up, feel my forehead, call an ambulance? My husband? Or would they watch me wriggle and writhe without a word?
My world has changed. Upside down and inside out. I am not the woman who brought macaroni salad to the neighborhood potluck picnic last year, or the one who passed out Halloween treats in a witch’s cap and pointy shoes. I’m not the one who picked out this oversize mailbox so the mail carrier wouldn’t have to leave packages on the front porch, or the one who chose the color of these shutters and the front door when it came time to paint them.
I am someone different now, and I don’t quite know who.
Inside, Maria gestures at my purse on the counter. “It was ringing.”
Expecting Ross or one of the girls, I thumb the screen. One recent call. One missed call. One voice mail.
Will.
I delete the message without listening to it.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday is laundry day. For me, anyway. For Ross it’s golf and beer with his buddies day. It used to matter more when the girls were small and I was overwhelmed with ferrying them where they needed to go, when I needed a break. Now the break is Ross spending the entire day away from the house instead of hovering over me while I try to read or do anything else.
I could have Maria do the laundry, but it’s been hard enough for me to allow her to clean our bathroom. Having her handle and fold my underwear is just too much. So, though it’s not a task I enjoy, it is one I’ve refused to delegate, and therefore, one about which I try not to complain.
Ross has no problems about complaining. He’s very particular about the state of his whites. They have to be washed separately, using a special extra stain treatment, and sometimes even soaked for a while first in a bucket of diluted bleach. He only wears white business shirts and will throw them out if they’re not pristine.
I don’t mind going to the extra effort for his laundry—so long as he separates the whites from the rest of his laundry. Which he consistently doesn’t do. Today, looking at the jumble of shirts and socks and briefs among the rest of the clothes, I can’t face it. I cannot sift through his dirty clothes, I cannot turn the pockets inside out and check for change or receipts or anything else.
Everything goes in the washer together in double handfuls, shoved until I can’t fit anything else. I add detergent, choose the temperature. My fingers fumble on the washing machine’s controls, as if I’ve forgotten how to use it.
All I can think about is Will.
This is me, on my knees, where I want to be. Hard floor pressing my skin, maybe I’ll even bruise, just a little. That’s okay. Later I’ll look at the bruises and remember what I’ve done.
He has the most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen, but I haven’t taken him inside my mouth. Not yet. I want to take my time. Make this last. I want to measure and map him with my hands and tongue and teeth before I consume him. I want to taste and tease him. When I slide his cock into my mouth to nudge the back of my throat, I want him to already be weak-kneed and throbbing, ready to spill.
When I look up, he looks down. His hand has found my hair; his fingers tangle but don’t pull. I put mine over his and tuck them in deeper. I encourage him to tug. To push my head, just a little, toward the sweetness of that cock. I want him to beg me to put it in my mouth, and in another minute...
“Please,” he says. “Please just—”
The house phone rings, pulling me out of my fantasy. I don’t answer it. I blink and shake my head to chase away the images, but I can’t manage to rid my mouth of his remembered flavor. My mouth is dry, but even gulping orange juice straight from the bottle can’t quench my thirst.
I try to think if I’ve ever wanted someone this way, and can’t remember it if I have. I take myself off to the den with the book I’ve been trying to read forever, and settle into the couch with a glass of iced tea, and my iPod shuffling up songs I’d forgotten I had. I read the same page four times before I give up and let my head fall back against the cushions. I stare at the ceiling. There are cobwebs.
I open my mouth and slide him in. All the way, balls-deep. My tongue caresses the head, my teeth scrape, just gently. Then out, my hand at the base, sucking a little harder on the tip while he shudders and mutters my name, and his fingers go tight in my hair, this time hard enough to hurt. Just a little.
I want it to hurt, just a little.
His ass is resting on the edge of the desk. His pants around his ankles. My hand’s between my legs, fingers in my panties, and I’m wet and slick. My clit’s hard under my fingertips. I pinch it gently, making my hips buck, and for a second or two I lose my concentration on his cock because the pleasure in my cunt is just too much....
The phone rings again, and this time I twist to look at the handset on the side table next to the couch. It’s Kat, so I snatch it up and connect just before she gets sent to voice mail. “Hi, honey.”
“Hi, Mom. You’re home. I’ve been calling your cell. And I called here earlier, but you didn’t answer.”
I turned off my cell so I would stop checking it obsessively. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to see how you were doing.”
I’d spoken with her on my birthday, but not since. This wasn’t unusual. Jac’s the one who keeps in almost constant touch, texts, phone calls, emails, posts on my barely used Connex wall. Kat is more reticent and independent.
It’s impossible for my daughter to know what I’ve done, but that’s the first thought that springs to my mind at her question. How am I doing? I’ve been better. Then again, I suppose I’ve been worse.
“I’m fine. What’s going on with you? Everything okay?”
She sounds quiet when she answers, but not upset. “Yep. Everything’s fine. Just trying to finish up everything here. Did you have a good birthday?”
“It was fine. Thanks for the gift card. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Did you like it? What did you get?” She sounds brighter now.
I list the music I’d downloaded so far. A couple songs I’d been thinking about but didn’t own. I love music, but it can be hard for me to find songs that don’t smell or taste bad. Kat understands, while Jac does not. We talk about music and books for a few more minutes, then Katherine says abruptly, “How old were you when you got married?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Did you think that was too young?”
“I didn’t at the time,” I tell her. “But now? Yes. I think that maybe it was too young.”
“So...why did you get married?”
I laugh. “Because I was in love with your dad, and he asked me, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
More silence from her. Something is...maybe not wrong. But it’s not right.
“What’s going on, Kittykat?”
At least I’ve made her laugh, even though I know she hates the nickname. “Nothing. Just thinking about things, like what I’m going to do when I’m finished with school. Life stuff.”
“Ah. Life stuff.” Silence for a few breaths. “Anything you need to talk about?”
“Not really.” She sighs. “I’m okay, Mom. Just a lot to think about.”
“And you’re my thinker.” We both laugh. She starts to tell me about a video link Jac sent her, and the conversation leaves serious behind.
We disconnect and I spend another hour or so going from link to link on the internet, laughing at the
Wrong Number Texts
and
Damn You Autocorrect
blogs until my stomach hurts. It’s been a while since I spent the day doing nothing of importance, and it feels lazy and indulgent, but also somehow necessary. Relaxed, humming, I sort the piles of magazines and mail that never seem to be filed.
I find the envelope Will sent me, and the song I was singing lightly under my breath eases into a sigh. I let my fingers trace the letters of my name in the address, seeing the soft shades of gold and brown and orange my name has always evoked. The picture needs a frame, and it will need a place to hang, and right now I have neither, so the envelope gets wrapped up carefully and tucked into the basket I’ll fill with clean clothes and carry upstairs.
I’ve left the laundry go too long in the dryer. Most of our clothes get hung, but there are a few things, T-shirts and pajamas mostly, that get folded. In our bedroom, I press my face to the still-warm and wrinkled clothes I’ve tossed onto the bed. They smell fresh, they smell clean, but it’s nothing like clothes that have been hung on a line to dry in the sunshine. When I was growing up, my mother always hung the laundry in the backyard. All the neighbors did. The worst trouble we kids ever got in was when we played “maze” in the back-and-forth lines of hanging sheets on laundry day, marking the clean fabric with streaks from our Popsicle-stained fingers. The smell of sun-dried laundry is irrevocably tied to the sound of my mother’s muffled voice singing her favorite Simon and Garfunkel or Bob Dylan songs around the clothespins in her mouth.
Will’s envelope rests on my plum-colored bedspread until I pick it up and think of where to put it until I can frame it. Or to keep it safe if I decide never to look at it again. I can’t stop myself from opening it once more, sliding the photo out carefully, with the tips of my fingers against the thin white border.
It’s not the heart-shaped rock or the black-and-white scheme or even the touches of swirling color that make me smell the ocean. It’s the thought of Will. His name. His eyes. I close mine, rocked suddenly by the rush and whoosh of waves and the spray of foam on my cheeks. Tactile, sensual memory that has become somehow irrevocably linked to no longer just the sound of his voice, but the thought of him.
“I’m home,” Ross says from the doorway.
Embarrassed, still touching the picture, I turn as I slide it back into its manila prison.
“What’s that?”
“Oh. Something one of Naveen’s artists sent me.” I hold up the envelope as though I’m offering to show him, because I know my husband. He doesn’t care. Won’t look. Mention art to him and his eyes glaze over. I put the envelope carefully into the top drawer of my dresser, where I keep other important papers I never look at. “How was golf?”
I don’t care about golf any more than he wants to talk about art, but he talks anyway, rattling off something about par and birdies, details I’m not paying attention to. Still talking, he heads for the shower. Minutes later he’s out, towel around his waist, hair dripping. Still talking.
I am overcome with the need to touch him, to somehow anchor myself to this man. We have made children together. We have spent years building a life, a very good life, and I do not want to lose it.
“Come here,” I say in a voice not much like my own. “Kiss me.”
Ross looks faintly surprised and doesn’t move from his place at the dresser, where he’s rooting around for a pair of briefs. “What?”
“Come and kiss me.” I crook my finger and walk backward toward the bed. A little hair toss, a bit of a grin, a sparkle. I make myself shiny for him.
I remember when we’d spend an hour kissing and touching before we got down to fucking, but that doesn’t happen today. My husband kisses me roughly, too much tongue, his hands groping and squeezing too hard. His cock rises while water still beads on his skin.
I want him to undress me, spend some time. I want him to kiss my mouth and throat and work his fingers between my legs until I can’t stand it anymore. That doesn’t happen, either.
Ross gestures. “Take your clothes off.”
It’s easy enough to do, though not very sexy, since I’m wearing comfy around-the-house clothes. Naked, I lie back on the bed next to the pile of unfolded laundry as he crawls toward me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he reaches over me to pull open the drawer on my nightstand.
“Use your toy.” He presses my vibrator into my hand. “It’s faster.”
It’s small and smooth and curved to fit my palm. It could be exciting and erotic to use my vibrator while we fuck—because let’s be honest, I think, as Ross kneels in front of me, jerking his cock to get it hard enough to fit inside me, we’re not about to make anything like love. It could be sexy, but he wants me to use it so he doesn’t have to work as hard to get me off.
I’ve been feeding myself sex thoughts all day long, so it wouldn’t be that hard for me to come. But of course, Ross doesn’t know that. I press the button on the vibe and slide it against my clit. The buzz is almost too strong; it makes my hips buck. When Ross moves over me, ready to push inside, I put a hand on his chest to hold him back.
“Wait.” I was ready before, ready all day long, thinking about another man, but now I need more time.
I can remember how watching Ross stroke himself used to turn me on, but it’s not working now. He’s paying attention to his dick, not to me. He keeps looking at the clock.
I get on my knees, cheek pressed to the mattress so I can hold the vibe on my clit as Ross pushes inside me from behind. I’m wet, and yet he still sticks and stretches before he’s all the way in. I don’t complain. I push back against him, wanting him to fuck harder. A little faster. I want to be in sync with him the way we used to be, when we spent hours making love, and it didn’t have to be a gymnastics show.
My orgasm is fragile and elusive, slipping away. I’m not going to come, not even with the vibrator, and while there have been plenty of times Ross and I have had sex that I didn’t have an orgasm, I’ve never felt this desperate about it. He thrusts faster. He’s getting closer; I know him so well I can hear it in the shift of his breathing and the way he groans, by how tight his fingers are gripping my hips. Usually these signs trigger my own pleasure, but not today. Nothing is working today.
“Wait,” I breathe again.
He slows, but it’s not enough for me, and I guess it’s too much for him, because he lasts at that pace only for a few seconds before moving faster again. The vibe slides against me, and it feels good, but not good enough. I turn it off and push up on my hands, relieved to get the pressure off my neck from my face pressing into the mattress.
I thought he was going to finish, but he keeps going. We move together. And finally, gradually, the pleasure builds again. I relax into it, both of us working toward the finish.
And then Ross presses his thumb on my asshole.
It could be a mistake, except that he does it again a second later, this time pushing harder. No more orgasm for me, not even close. I jerk at the intrusion, breaking the rhythm.
Surely he should know better, right? Certainly he should remember all the other times he’s tried to shove something up my ass, and I said I didn’t like it? He couldn’t possibly have forgotten the times—more than once, because I wanted to be a good sport—that I let him try to fuck me in the back door and how much I hated it?
“Jesus fucking Christ, Ross!” I cry when he pushes against my asshole again. “What the fuck?”
My writhing and protests send him off. He grunts and thrusts and pounds me so hard I lose my balance and fall forward onto my face. Graceless. Irritated. And definitely not aroused.