“Tell me what you’re thinking.” “I’m thinking you should— you should stop talking.” Jonah grins against my neck, his hands are under my shirt, sliding up my ribs, and I’m sitting on the edge of his bed with my ring already on the nightstand, my shoes kicked off by the door and we’ve been here for 12 minutes and I haven’t let him take my shirt off yet because I’ve been kissing him and honestly the kissing is good, the kissing with Jonah is always good, but I don’t want to rush through the part where his mouth is on mine and his hands are learning the architecture of my body through cotton.
“You’re thinking,” he says.
“I’m always thinking.” “Stop.” “I…
can’t.” “Let me help.” He pulls my shirt over my head, unclasps my bra in one motion, smoother than the first time he did it when his fingers fumbled, I laughed and the laughing made him blush and honestly the blushing made me want to fuck him on the spot.
He’s not fumbling tonight though, his mouth drops to my collarbone, my sternum, the space between my breasts, and his tongue drags a slow line down my stomach.
I lean back on my hands and watch him move down my body, and I’m not nervous anymore, though I was nervous the first time, and probably the second, and okay, maybe the third, but tonight I’m not nervous, because tonight I know what he’s going to do and I know I’m going to let him and that itself is a different heat entirely.
He unbuttons my jeans and pulls them down my legs and my underwear follows, he spreads my thighs with both hands, rough palms on smooth skin, chlorine-callused fingers pressing into the soft inner part where the muscle gives, and his mouth is on me, my head falls back and I stop thinking.
He doesn’t just touch me, he opens me up, his palms press my thighs wide, pinning me to the mattress with his shoulders, and the first thing I feel is his breath, hot and deliberate, against the wet mess he’s made of me.
Then his mouth.
He drags his tongue up through my pussy in one long, shameless stroke that starts at my entrance and ends at my clit.
The sound that pulls out of me isn’t a moan at all, it’s more of a crack, my ribs splitting open from the inside.
He does it again, but this time slower, and I watch the ceiling swim and think: This is what being known feels like, this is what it feels like when someone pays attention.
He’s learned me, the broad, lazy laps that build the pressure low and deep, then the tip of his tongue flicking fast and tight over the swollen nub until my thighs are shaking and I’m gripping his hair not to guide him but to just barely hold on.
I’m not performing, I swear, I’m not arranging my face or modulating my sounds, I’m just rolling my hips against his mouth because it feels good and I’ve spent 8 years not doing that because Grant didn’t like it when I moved too much, he wanted me still, always quiet until he finished.
Jonah wants the opposite, he groans into my pussy like he’s the one being devoured, and the vibration of it buzzes through my clit and up my spine and I think: I could live in this sound, I could just make a home here.
“Right there.” My voice is shredded, barely mine.
“Jonah, right there, don’t…
move.” He doesn’t move, he seals his mouth over my clit and sucks, soft then harder then softer again, reading my body in the flex of my thighs and the arch of my back, the orgasm doesn’t arrive gently, it ambushes me, and I come with a sob that’s half his name and half something older, possibly a sound I’ve been swallowing since the first year of my marriage, and I can feel myself pulsing against his tongue.
The wet slide of his fingers inside me and I don’t care that the neighbors can hear.
I don’t care that my wedding ring is 6 feet away on the nightstand, and I absolutely don’t care about anything except the fact that a 26-year-old teacher just wrung a sound out of me that Grant has never heard, not once, in 8 years, thinking that was normal.
He kisses the inside of my thigh, then my hip, then the dip of my waist.
He climbs up my body and his mouth tastes like me, salty, and I kiss him deep, and I can still feel him hard against my thigh through his sweatpants but I push him back.
“Lie down.” He looks at me.
“You don’t— you don’t have to—” “Lie down, Jonah.” He lies back on the twin bed, and I pull his sweatpants down, his cock is hard and warm against his stomach.
I wrap my hand around him, and his breath catches, I watch his face change, the jaw loosening up, the eyes going half-shut, and the control I feel in this moment is the most powerful I’ve felt in months because I am choosing this, I chose to drive here, I chose to take off my ring, I chose to put my mouth on this man and nobody told me to, and nobody asked me to, and the choosing is the point.
I lower my mouth over him, and he tastes clean, salt and skin, and his hand finds my hair.
He wasn’t pushing, and definitely not guiding, he was just resting there, his fingers tangled in the roots like I’m something precious he’s afraid to break.
Grant used to push, he used to take the back of my head and press down until my eyes watered and I gagged, but I let him because that’s what I thought wives did.
Jonah’s hand just holds on, and the tenderness of it, the sheer, unearned gentleness, makes my throat tight even as I take him deeper.
I swirl my tongue around the head of his cock, and he makes a sound I want to record and just keep forever.
A groan pulled from somewhere deep in his chest, wrecked and unguarded, the sound of a man who isn’t performing, who isn’t managing, who isn’t trying to finish efficiently so he can roll over and sleep.
His hips shift under me, involuntary, and I press my palm flat on his stomach and feel the muscles contract, and I take him even deeper still, until the tip hits the back of my throat.
My eyes sting but I don’t pull away, I stay, I breathe through my nose and I still stay, because I want to, because I absolutely want him to feel what it’s like when someone doesn’t pull away, because nobody has ever stayed for me.
“Margaux, I’m gonna—” I don’t stop, I take him even deeper, and his hips lift and he comes with a sound that cracks open the quiet of the apartment, his hand still in my hair, trembling, but not gripping.
I swallow and press my forehead against his hip and listen to his heartbeat hammer and slow.
I told him to stop talking and then spent the next hour desperate for every sound he made.
This is what it sounds like when someone’s not performing.
This is what it sounds like when someone is just here, just present, and just letting go.
I’ve been married for 8 years, and I’ve never heard it, not even once.
I crawl up next to him on the twin bed, and he pulls me against his chest then we lie there breathing.
His apartment is quiet except for the hum of his refrigerator and a car passing on the street below, his fingers drawing circles on my shoulder blade.
“Can I— can I ask you something?” I say.
“Anything.” “Have you ever been with a married woman before?” “No.” He doesn’t hesitate.
“You’re the first.” “Are you okay with it?” He’s quiet for a second, his fingers stop on my shoulder, then start again.
“I’m okay with you.” “That’s not— that’s not the same thing.” “I know it’s not.” The honesty of that sits between us on his cheap sheets, and neither of us touches it.
He’s not okay with this, but he’s okay with me, and the distinction matters, and we both know it, but we also both know that the distinction is the only thing making this survivable for a man who teaches second-graders 5 days a week and fucks one of their mothers twice a week and has to reconcile those 2 facts every time he walks into Room 204.
“I’m not gonna leave him,” I say, and I don’t know why I say it except that the dark makes truth easier and this bed is the only place I’ve been honest in months.
“Not right now, I should, I know I should, but…
Milo, and the house, and the…
I’m just not…
ready.” “I’m not asking you to.” “I know.” “I’m just asking you to keep showing up.” “I keep showing up.” “I know.” He presses his mouth to the top of my head.
“I know you do.” I check the time on his microwave.
11:08, so I need to leave in 10 minutes, 12 if I skip the shampoo and go straight home.
I reach for my phone on the counter because I always check it before I drive, and the screen lights up and my stomach drops.
Three missed calls, all Grant.
10:44, 10:51, 11:02.
“What?” Jonah says, reading my face.
“Grant called.
Three times.” I sit up on the bed, and my heart is slamming against my ribs then I press call, and he picks up on the second ring.
“Where are you?” Not angry, not suspicious, just measured.
The voice of a man filing a question, not asking one.
“Nina’s.
We— we lost track of time.” I keep my voice even, and I pull the sheet around my shoulders but I don’t look at Jonah.
“What’s up?” “Nothing, Milo woke up asking for you, I got him back to sleep.” “Is he okay?” “He’s fine, just a bad dream, maybe.
Are you on your way?” “Leaving now.” “Drive safe.” He hangs up, the line goes dead, and I stare at the phone.
Grant didn’t ask a follow-up question, didn’t ask what I was doing at Nina’s until 11:00 at night, didn’t ask why my phone rang 3 times without an answer.
He just called, he got his answer, and he filed it away, and the ease of that acceptance should comfort me, but it doesn’t, because a man who doesn’t question his wife’s absence at 11:00 at night is either a man who trusts completely or a man who has his own reasons not to ask.
I get dressed without looking at Jonah because looking at him right now would make me stay, and that’s not an option when my son just had a nightmare and asked for me and I wasn’t there because I was here with my mouth on his teacher’s cock.
The guilt of that hits me for the first time since I walked through this door tonight, and it hits hard.
“Thursday?” Jonah says from the bed.
“Thursday,” I say from the door.
And I leave.