“We both of us have made mistakes. We’re human.”
He picked up the pen. He turned the paper back toward himself. He wrote, below my line, in his neat hand:agreed. forever.
He drew a third underline beneath the whole vow. The way he had drawn a third underline beneathI like sleepon a different paper in a different kitchen in a different version of our life.
Then he put the pen down and slid the paper back to me.
“Next,” he said.
I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding. I picked up the pen.
“The orgasm rule,” I said.
He smiled.
“What about it.”
“It’s mine too now. It’s a game we play. You decide when, sometimes. Other times I do. Sometimes neither of us does andwe just let the thing happen. It’s not a control. It’s a—a thing we both like.”
“Write it.”
I wrote it. The pen went easier this time.Pleasure is shared. Asked for. Given. Sometimes mine to ask. Sometimes his to grant. Sometimes neither. Always honest.I underlinedhonestonce, because I had underlinedhonestonce already on the first line and I liked the way it linked the two clauses across the page.
He read it. His mouth did the slow corner-lift. He wrote, under it:I will make you ask. Sometimes. You will like it.
I laughed. The pen jumped. A small black blot landed on the paper an inch off the line.
“Pietro.”
“Truth in writing, baby.”
“That blot is your fault.”
“I accept the blot.”
He took the pen. He drew a small careful circle around the blot and wrote next to it, in tiny letters,exhibit A.
I was laughing for real now. This was the laugh of a woman who was writing her wedding vows with a man who had decided to put a blot in them on purpose so she would remember it later as a joke.
He turned to the second page. He turned the original contract over too, found the line he wanted, and slid the old paper next to the new one so we could read them side by side.
The old line was in pencil, in his hand.Holding is okay. Tying, not yet.
He read it aloud. The “not yet” sat in the room.
He looked up at me.
“And tonight?”
I felt the heat run from my throat down the front of my chest.
I had been thinking about this too. For longer than I had been thinking about thenothing carried aloneline. Longer than I hadbeen thinking about any of it. I had been thinking about it for months, in the slow private way I thought about things I had not yet decided whether I was allowed to want.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Write it down.”
