I feel it hard against my anus, demanding and predatory. Waiting until the right moment to break down the door.
“You’re not breathing.”
“Right.”
“Let me see it. Breathe.”
I inhale slowly and deeply. He pushes. Gets nowhere.
“Good,” he says as if we were successful. “Again. You this time.”
I breathe again and push myself down. My ass opens a little, and I squeal. He pulls back.
“Again.”
“I’m scared.”
“Are you telling me to stop?”
“Would you, if I was?”
“Yes. Without hesitation, I’d stop.”
I’m curious enough to want to keep going. I trust him when he says he’ll stop, when he says he’ll make it good for me, and when he says it will hurt. I trust all of it.
“Then do it. Take it. Make me love it when you fuck me there.”
“God, you’re so fucking hot.”
He puts four flattened fingers between my legs, circling gently, using the promise of pleasure to encourage me. I lower myself little by little, until his head is in. I cringe, biting back a scream of pain because his groan of pleasure makes it all okay. He likes it. I’m giving him myself.
“Slow, now.”
“Okay.” The shape of the pain has a dozen points, like a stamp on a certificate or a volatile star. The pleasure is rounded, yielding, curved, and sloped like an approaching tidal wave.
Another inch. Stretching me, unlocking a door to fill a place I didn’t know was empty. The pain dulls, becoming a constant ache as his cock slides in, inch by inch. Then something changes and the points turn to petals.
“Oh, God. That’s…” My body buckles when he pulls out and slides back in.
Am I crying because of the pain, or because I’ve been reduced to shapes with edges that roll and vibrate?
“That’s what? Does it hurt?”
“Yes. No. Please. Let me finish.”
“Good girl.”
We take it so slowly that when I try to go faster, he redirects my every move with gentle sureness, as if it’s all about me.
Then he groans, sucks in a breath. “I need to feel…”
He doesn’t define it. He just increases his movements on my clit and the tidal wave becomes a circle, bigger and bigger, even after I’m sure nothing inside me is that big, and I’ll never be able to contain it. Like a balloon filling with heat way past just enough. Past what it should reasonably hold. The rubber holds together, thinner and thinner.
“I can’t!” I sob.
“You can.” He grunts, shoving deep.
And I do. The balloon gives up and finally breaks. Splatters in a wordless scream. He puts both hands on my hips and moves me up and down on him.
He pulls me into him as his crescendo comes in a rumbling breath. We lie like that in the cooling water, my back to his front as if I’m a skin’s-width ahead.
I am broken, and filthy, and at peace.
That night, I’m alone. Dario is somewhere being a man no one’s ever learned to control. To counter the emptiness of the house, I turn on a game show.
“I’ll take Friends of Alice for 400.”
“This substance, often used in haberdashery, is said to be responsible for making many a hatter mad.”
My phone makes a noise.
“What is mercury?”
When I look at it, I expect to see a call from Dario, but it’s a message from Massimo’s number. Holding my breath, I open it.
—I know your voice,
even with one word—
Did I say one word?
Wait.
—Tell me where you are
and I’ll come get you—
No.
Never come get me.
If I leave a message, he’ll send something back. I shut it off. If I ignore him, maybe he’ll go away and leave me alone.
“According to Shakespeare, nature teaches even beasts to recognize these.”
Before I admit to myself that I don’t know, one of the contestants beeps in and says, “What are friends?”
“That is correct.”
They move on to the next box, but the question lingers.
What are friends?
Friends laugh. They joke. Share secrets.
Friends embroider diaper covers and clean the apartment when your husband gets mad and lays you up in bed.
Friends tell you he’s not that bad. That you can redeem him. One day, he’ll stop.
Has Marco found the video? Or just the phone?
I take out my phone, turn it back on, and let muscle memory dial the shape of Denise’s home number. Four in the corner. Diagonal. Up twice. Middle. Corner again. Middle. Zero.
It rings. What will I say to her?
She’ll ask about me first. I’ll say I’m fine. She won’t offer to come and get me, that’s for sure.
Ring.
I’ll ask her how she is.
She’ll say she’s fine.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I’ll listen to what she says and what she doesn’t.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Come on.”
I don’t hear Marco’s voice telling me to talk after the beep.
I know they have a machine, but it doesn’t pick up. It just rings and rings.
This is worse than her swearing she’s all right.
CHAPTER 23
DARIO
I find Sarah standing at the counter, watching the television, tapping her eraser against a new sketch pad.
My life can be order. It can be whole.
I kiss the back of her neck.
“Dinner’s in the oven.” She says it as I’ve always imagined my wife would—as if she knows damn well she’s the still center of a universe in chaos.
“What are you watching?”
“It’s called Jeopardy. It’s a backward contest about… things. Facts I don’t know.”
“What did Willa show you today?” I kiss the back of her neck again and move her shirt to expose more skin.
“The library.” She drops her pencil and slides a little booklet out of her sketchbook pages. “I got a card. Then we got a study guide from the DMV.”
“And then?” Barely looking at it, I take the booklet and lay it on the counter.
“She left. Benny too. Something about a water heater breaking.” She faces me. My lips cannot resist her throat. “How many safe houses do you have?”
“Not enough.” I take in her scent of milk and honey and rose petals.
“Any news from Denise?”
“No.” I put her on the counter with her legs wrapped around me.
“Can you tell if she watched the video again?”
“No.”
“Can you check on her?”
These aren’t things she should be concerned with, so I change the subject. “Did you pick up the papers from the lawyer?”
“Yes. You’re divorced. Officially. Legally.”
“It means nothing. I feel exactly the same as I did yesterday.”
“Really? I was so relieved I think I lost ten pounds. Then Willa took me out to lunch to celebrate and I gained it all back.”