“What are you thinking about?” She slides onto the couch beside me and curls up in the circle of my arms.
“You. And me. Mostly me, and how I want to be this perfect man.”
“That’s how you were raised.”
“Pretty sure my nannies…” I trail off, not meaning to argue. “Right. The Preston way.”
“It’s not real, but that’s part of the brainwashing, right? You were taught to always live a lie.”
“I sure managed to excel at that.” I roll my shoulders.
“Are you tense?” She climbs into my lap, an unconventional way to give a neck rub, but I’m not complaining. I spread my thighs wide to balance us and she strokes her hands up and down the side of my neck. “Tell me more.”
“I want to be a better man for you. Unravel myself to the point where I went wrong, and fix it from there. Be the guy you wanted to grow old with. Remake myself in the original vision, but with less baggage. That’s it in a nutshell, basically.”
“That’s all good stuff.” She gives me a level look. “Can I ask about the affair? No shouting, no getting mad. I just… wanna know some things.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Before we are intimate again,” she laughs lightly. “That’s so serious. Before we get carried away like we did last time, I really would like to negotiate some of the kinky elements specifically. I have a pretty complicated list of limits around the Little stuff, and some of them are common things in porn, so…”
The WASP in me is dying. The earnest husband, though, is all on board. “Okay. Yeah. I’m game for that.”
“Did you do any of that limit negotiation with…her?”
I shake my head. “I’m going to keep telling you this. It wasn’t like that. I was playing at something, and I didn’t even understand the game. Now that I understand it, I’m glad that I’ve only really played the game for real with you. And it’s not a game, I know that, it’s who you really are, and I think that’s beautiful.”
She smiles, looking pleased, and I’m glad I got at least one answer right. I reach for something I talked about with my therapist. “That was nothing. Less than nothing. That was desperation. Cocaine off the back of a dirty toilet. A death spiral. It was grandiosity. Self-destruction. A form of addiction, probably. It could have been gambling or drugs. I took what was offered as a way to numb the pain of what I had done to myself. It was never real.”
“Have you been in contact with her again?”
I shake my head. “No. Not since that night.”
“And this is real? You and me?”
“Always. Forever. And it’ll take time for you to believe that on enough levels that the pain I’ve caused is balanced out.” I look at her, my sexy goddess, and need to know something. “Can I ask you, why did you decide to give me another chance?”
“Maybe for the same reason,” she murmurs, her gaze searching my face. “For that young man I fell in love with in college. For the scared little boy he carried inside, for the way he protected his brother.”
Sam. I need to do something about the damage to that relationship too, she’s saying. And she’s right. “I’ll talk to him soon.”
“Good.” She leans in and kisses me softly. “But really, I’m here right now because of everyone I’ve ever met, you are the one person I can never stop thinking about. And it’s starting to feel like maybe I’m that person for you.”
“You are. And you were, before. Once upon a time. I promise you that I loved you then, so much. I’ve never stopped loving you. But then thinking about you got hard. I started to feel small and stupid. And I hid. I’ll never hide again.”
“Speaking of hiding…” She climbs off my lap and holds out her hand. “I want to show you something.”
She leads me into her closet and pulls down one of the two vintage suitcases from her top shelf.
“Photos?”
She gives me an amused look. “Is that what you think is in here?”
I frown. “Isn’t it?” I could have sworn she’d shown me some family pictures at some point. I hadn’t paid enough attention, because I was a jackass.
Now I want to look at each one carefully. Inspect it for all the tiny clues I can gleam about who Grace is, where she came from. Every bit of her is exciting and fascinating, including the ancient history of baby photos.
She takes a deep breath. “No, these aren’t photos. They’re…” She turns pink. “Books. A collection, so to speak.”
Cave of Sin
For Lust’s Sake
The Sexiest Student
Spanking the Sitter
Their Secret, Younger Lover
The Wayward Daughter
I pick up the last one, and Grace turns red. “Some are more… No, actually, they’re all pretty intense.”
It doesn’t take me long to figure out what she means. The words on the page are crude, violent, and obscenely out of date.
My wife collects misogynistic porn.
I don’t really know what to make of that. I look up at her and smile, because this changes nothing. Everything about her complicated, clever mind is amazing to me. Even something like this that I’d never have expected and don’t really understand. “Huh,” I finally say.
She laughs.
“How long have you been collecting these?”
“Forever. I found my first one in college.”
I think about all the times we’ve crawled through used bookstores on our travels. “Have you ever bought one in front of me?”
She nods, her lips pressed together and her eyes bright.
“Which ones?”
She points to The Sexiest Student and Their Secret, Younger Lover. “On our trip to London last year. At the used bookstore.”
“I don’t remember.” There’s so much about the last three years that are a fog to me.
“You bought a biography of Winston Churchill.” She tips her head to the side. “And then we went to a pub, and you asked me what I bought, but I changed the subject.”
Nothing. “Was that the same day we went on the Eye?”
“The day after that. You’d had meetings that morning, remember?”
I swear under my breath. “No.”
“It’s okay.” She gives me a small smile that says no, it isn’t, but that’s Grace. Endlessly forgiving of the mess I’ve made of my life. Our life.
“I want to remember,” I say hoarsely. “Tell me more.”
“I dragged you to the Notting Hill market first. We paid too much for a print of a painting…” She cranes her neck, looking at the top of the closet on my side. “It’s up there, I think.”
I follow her gaze and see an edge of plastic at the top of the shelf. I reach up and grab it.
There are actually two prints there, and she gasps when she sees the other one.
I don’t recognize it. But I do remember the one from London. “This…I remember you wanted this, and I…” I trail off. She’d wanted it, and I’d said it was ugly. She’d pouted and I’d given in, but I’d hurt her feelings. “I was rude.”