Page 81 of The Marriage Blunder

Jude read every line of the public filings, then set the phone down on the table and did not mention it again. We made dinner, ate it, and watched a documentary on the world’s most expensive cheese. The word “justice” never came up.

I did not feel triumph. What I felt was a relief so absolute it took a full week to register as anything but exhaustion. Then, slowly, something quieter: a low, steady sadness for the version of Carolyn that might have existed in a world where she wanted something other than to win at any cost. I did not say this to Jude. He already knew.

* * * *

Saturday night in the penthouse, but it was not my penthouse anymore. It was ours, even if the lease, the furniture, and the art on the walls all still bore my name. You could tell it was ours because Jude’s annotated invoices had migrated from his laptop to a designated stack at the left edge of the desk, his backup glasses case lived on the kitchen counter beside the coffee grinder, and two shelves in the study were colonized by his books—shelved by color, not topic, because he’d once claimed that it made finding things “a visual pattern recognition exercise instead of a memory contest.”

There was a new entry in the building’s coffee order system, labeled “Jude, sweet, iced,” which meant the concierge no longer even asked whose cup was whose. None of these things had been discussed. They simply happened, as inevitable as a change in season.

I cooked dinner: one pot, three ingredients, the kind of meal designed for efficiency and minimal cleanup. Jude ate two portions and commented, deadpan, that it was a “landmark achievement in household resource utilization.”

I accepted the compliment with a nod, and poured the wine.

Now, post-dinner, we sat on the couch, legs overlapping, wine nearly finished, the city putting on a light show across the glass. Jude was reading—or pretending to—one of his battered hardcovers, glasses pushed up on his nose and a pen behind his ear despite the complete absence of marginalia in a pleasure read.

I watched him. Not in the way I watched competitors or clients, but in the way you watch something and realize it is not going anywhere, and that you are happy about it.

He set the book down on his lap, looked at the skyline, and said, “I always thought this would feel like living in a spaceship.”

“Disappointed?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not in the spaceship.”

I took my wine, set it on the table, and reached for the pen behind his ear. I removed it, set it next to the bottle, and ran my hand through his hair. He looked at me. Glasses a little crooked, mouth set like he was about to say something clever and decided not to.

“Come here,” I said.

He did.

He straddled my lap, the fit of his thighs around my hips a silent admission of exactly how many hours he had mapped out the complexity of this move. The contact was immediate, his mouth on mine, soft and open and tasting of cheap wine and the basil from dinner. He kissed like a man who knew he was being watched, which was probably true, since I could never look away.

I slid my hands up under his shirt, tracing the line of his spine with my thumbs. He arched a little, pushing against my chest, which made his shirt ride up enough to expose the soft skin just above his waistband. I ran my palms over his sides, slow and deliberate, and he made a sound that might have been a laugh, if laughter were measured in decibels and exhalation alone.

He leaned back, looked at me, and asked, “Are you cataloguing this for future reference?”

“Yes,” I said, and pulled his shirt off.

He shook his head, but the smile stayed, bright and present.

His body was the same as it had been every time before, but better for being something I got to see whenever I wanted. He had gained a little weight since moving in—happy, he claimed, but he also claimed it was because “one of us has the metabolism of a college athlete and the other one runs on coffee and complex carbohydrates.”

He wore it well: the slight softening around his waist, the way his chest went from nothing to everything when I touched it, the curve of his thighs in old jeans.

I wanted all of it.

He pushed me back onto the couch, straddling me with a confidence that would have startled either of us a year ago. I let him, my hands braced on his hips, guiding the rhythm as he ground himself against me, slow and filthy and so deeply focused that the rest of the world narrowed to the point of a pin.

His hands went to the buttons of my shirt, flicking them open with the dexterity of a man who had opened a thousand spreadsheets and only a dozen actual shirts, and he spread his palms over my chest, pressing in as if memorizing the pattern of my heartbeat.

We kissed until I couldn’t remember the last thing I’d said, until my hands ached to get him undressed, until I couldn’t think past the next inhale of his skin.

I rolled us, gentle but insistent, so that he was under me. He sprawled out, glasses abandoned somewhere behind us, hair already a mess, eyes fixed on mine with a steadiness that left me exposed.

I bent and kissed his neck, slow and methodical, marking the line from his jaw to the hollow at his throat, then further down, tracing the line of his collarbone, then the warm, yielding flesh of his chest. When I closed my mouth over his nipple and bit, just enough to make him curse, he arched up hard and his hands locked tight in my hair.

I worked my way down his body in increments, taking the time to learn every new reaction. His stomach tensed under my hands, his thighs flexed and relaxed in rhythm with my mouth, and when I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of his sweats he sucked in a breath that sounded like my name. I let him out, thick and hot in my palm, and stroked him slow enough to make him squirm.

“Fuck,” he said, and I did not correct his language.