Not obviously — I've never been obvious about it. She thinks I'm looking at the screen. She's been thinking that for two years, that I look at other things when I'm looking at her, that my attention is somewhere else when it has never once been anywhere else. Adela has always been the thing in the room I'm most aware of.
And she's aware of it tonight.
That's new.
She's monitoring herself in a way she never used to because she never used to need to.
Something happened to her while I was asleep.
I've known it since the hospital. I know it more now, sitting here in my room in the amber light with her body against mine and her attention split between the screen and something she won't show me.
She thinks she's hiding it.
She's not hiding a thing from me.
But I want to understand its shape before I do anything about it. I want to know exactly what I'm working with. So I hold her, and I watch the movie I'm not watching, and I wait.
I'm good at waiting.
I slide my fingers across her stomach. Just over her shirt, nothing dramatic or pressing, just my hand moving across the fabric the way it has a hundred times in this bed. She inhales — sharp, small, quickly. I feel it more than hear it.
I keep my voice soft as I say, "Did you touch yourself while I was in the coma?"
She goes very still.
I press my hand flat against her stomach and slide down to between her legs. My hand is above her jeans now. I add pressure, but not too much. "Like this?"
Her hand finds my wrist.
She doesn't move it.
That tells me everything about where she actually is versus where she's pretending to be. If she wanted to stop me, she would stop me. She has always had that power, and she has always known it. The hand on my wrist is performance. The fact that she's not moving it is the truth.
"Adela."
"I stopped taking birth control."
I go still.
And look at the side of her face. At the quality of a lie delivered quickly, the words came out before she finished deciding to say them. She's looking at the screen with her jaw set and her hand still on my wrist. I can feel her pulse against my fingers.
I press harder.
"We can do other things then."
"Stop." She grabs my hand fully now. "I want to watch the movie."
I put my lips to her ear and whisper, "You can watch the movie."
I feel the shiver move through her.
She sits up, retreating into the version of herself she’s been displaying all evening. She starts to move, and I catch her wrist before she can stand.
"Where are you going?"
She's flushed — I can see it even in the amber light, the color high in her cheeks, her breathing not quite normal. She's performing composure over a body that isn't cooperating with the performance.
"Where's my laptop?" I ask.
