I am not sure I can leave.
I am not sure I want to.
And I do not know what to do with that, because the woman who stood in the hallway outside the conference room—who heard every word, who drove home holding back her tears, who made lamb ragu she had no appetite for and said she wanted out of this marriage—that woman had very good reasons. Those reasons have not disappeared, and I do not want to be the person who forgets them because a man was kind to her for six weeks and danced with her in her parents’ backyard.
I have been that person before.
I know what it costs.
He tells me two days before our anniversary that he has planned something and not to make other arrangements.
I look at him over coffee.
“Something special?” I ask, which is my performance, which now sits badly in my mouth.
“Of course.” He grins. “I’m told it’s a significant occasion.”
He says it with the dry, quiet humor that he does not always deploy but which, when it appears, has always been the version of him I find most?—
I stop the thought.
I finish my coffee. “What kind of special?”
“The kind you’ll like.”
“That’s not information.”
“It’s all you’re getting.”
I look at him. He looks back.
The morning light is doing somethingunreasonableto his face, which it has been doing with increasing frequency, and I am less and less interested in beingreasonableabout it.
“Okay.”
He smiles. He looksunfairlyattractive.
That’s the other-other thing.
I want him.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult at night to sleep next to him and not have him.
We had a healthy sex life. We made love nearly every day. And we made love not just in bed but in other places, whenever we felt like it.
Now that I can walk and talk and move without pain, I want him over and under me.
Fox has excellent hands, and he knows how to use them.
He also knows how to use his tongue and other parts of his body.
Lucy, you’re just horny, girl!
He takes me to the Frist.
“You told me once that you wanted to study art before deciding on culinary school,” he explains as he holds my hand and walks to the entrance of the art museum.
I did tell him that. In passing, at one of those Sunday dinners, when his mother was holding court about a Rubens she’d bought at auction—The Three Graces.
