She giggles, and settles against me. I kiss her neck, and she lets out a sigh. I feel her heart rate rise, and smile. It’s a hell of a feeling, being with a woman like this, no matter how temporary it is. Knowing that she wants me as much as I want her.
She turns her head, meets my lips, and we share a slow and tender kiss, the sound of the waves our backdrop. I lift her up, and carry her to the bed. Only the tiniest of gripes from my back, which has been very much behaving itself for days now.
I lay her down and undress her, taking my time. Undoing buttons, sliding down fabric, touching every new piece ofexposed skin with my mouth and my tongue and my fingertips. It’s like I’m unwrapping a gift, and I do it with reverence.
By the time she’s naked, trembling on the bed, her hands under my shirt, I’m more than ready to lose myself in her. My clothes come off quickly, and she wraps her long legs around me, pulling me close. Her fingers are in my hair, her breath hot on my face as she sighs and moans, her breasts soft against me as we make love. It’s different, somehow, to the other times we’ve done this – slower, more heightened, every movement of our bodies in sync. Her fingernails dig into my shoulders as she comes, her head going back in pleasure. I kiss the column of her throat, and find my own release.
Afterwards, she burrows into my arms like a little animal, limbs floppy and skin coated in a light sheen of sweat. Her head settles on my chest like it’s always been there, and we lie in silence for a few minutes. I feel both intensely calm and completely unsettled, the connection between us so strong in that moment that I can’t ever imagine letting her go. Like something has changed, but I have no idea what. It’s almost too much, an emotional stimulation that matches the physical. It came from nowhere, and now I don’t know where to put all my damnfeelings. It’s just sex, I tell myself. It’s just sex, and hormones, and biology.
I guess she feels the same sense of confusion, because she makes an attempt at lightening the mood. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘I’m considering starting smoking, just so I can enjoy a post-coital cigarette… I have to say, Brody, that this deal is very much working out for me.’
I grin and drop a kiss on her head. I’m only human, and who doesn’t like to hear that?
‘I mean,’ she continues, ‘I honestly just didn’t know it could be like this! You’ve raised the bar now. When I go back to my reallife, I’ll be doing it with a lot more confidence, and much higher standards!’
I try not to tense as she speaks the words. Real life is something I’m not exactly looking forward to myself, and imagining her sleeping with other men makes me want to growl. It’s unreasonable, I know – what did I expect? For her to go back to living like a nun after I leave? It’s none of my business what she does.
‘What was your ex like?’ I ask, knowing this is safer ground. He’s the past, and doesn’t enrage me as much as the thought of her future.
‘That’s not a sexy topic of conversation!’ She’s trying to sound light-hearted, but I can feel her body go more rigid, and tell her she doesn’t need to talk about it if she doesn’t want to.
‘No, it’s okay. I don’t want him to have any more power over me, so it’s good to talk. Like lancing a boil. Um, well. He was nice to start with, I suppose. He wooed me, which was lovely. But when I look back, I think maybe he was just one of those guys who like the chase, but not what they catch, if you know what I mean?’
I do. There’s a big difference between the excitement of a new relationship and the solid basis it takes to make a marriage work long term.
‘So, as I’ve told you, he met someone else and left me. But I think things had been wrong for a long time. He was controlling, but in a quite clever way, I now see. Little things, like criticising my cooking, making sarcastic comments about my hair, telling me I sounded dreadful when I sang in the shower… that kind of stuff. When I was considering going for a promotion, he persuaded me not to bother, because he “didn’t want me to be disappointed”. He paid all the bills, dealt with the paperwork – he kind of made out that I’d make a mess of it, just because Ionce forgot to pay the milkman! Once! Silly stuff by itself, but when you add it all up?—’
‘It becomes a giant headfuck.’
‘Exactly. Then there was Covid, and we had some other… uh, issues… and somehow I just got used to walking on eggshells around him, trying not to do something wrong. I was always trying to please him, to figure out how I could be better, how I could stop disappointing him. It was exhausting.’
‘Other issues’. That could cover a whole world of hurt. But she doesn’t seem to want to share the details. She sighs against my chest, and I tighten my grip around her. ‘But you know it wasn’t you, right? That nothing you could have done would have pleased a man like that? A man with a severe case of TAS…’
‘TAS? Is that an American thing?’
‘Nah. It’s a worldwide epidemic. Total Asshole Syndrome.’
She laughs, and it’s a sound that warms my heart.
‘Oh yes! There’s definitely a lot of that about! I wish they’d develop a vaccine! What about your wife? Sandy? What was she like?’
I wait for my usual reaction – clam up, turn to stone at the mention of her name – but am surprised when it doesn’t come.Huh. Maybe I am moving on, in baby steps. Besides, it’s only fair – I can’t expect her to open up to me and then refuse.
‘She was great. We met in high school. She was a teacher, loved her job. Loved me, loved Shannon… she was kind of made of love really. Our marriage wasn’t perfect, and neither of us was a saint, but it worked.’
‘And what would she think of this?’ Kate asks, looking up at me, hazel eyes wide. ‘Of us?’
I turn it over in my mind, ignoring the prickles of guilt – that’s been my automatic response for way too long, and even a big jerk like me knows it isn’t healthy. We never got to talk about this stuff, Sandy and I – what she would have wanted,how I should live without her. There was no warning, no time to prepare, no love letters carefully written to guide me once she was gone. It was sudden – one minute she was making pancakes, the next she was on the ground, me doing CPR while Shannon sobbed in the background.
Since then, I haven’t been interested in another woman, and honestly pictured myself living the rest of my life without one. Would Sandy think that was right? Would she want me to be as lonely as I now realise I’ve been? Hell no. She loved me, and she wouldn’t want me to be miserable. Knowing that and being able to act on it are two different things though. Maybe this is the start.
‘I think,’ I eventually say. ‘She’d laugh her ass off. Then tell me I was a dirty old man!’
‘Well she’d be right on that count,’ she replies. ‘And I for one am grateful. This has been so perfect, Brody. Exactly what I needed at exactly the time I need it. I’m going to be so sad when it’s time to leave.’
You and me both, I think. You and me both.
EIGHTEEN
