I see her.
I see her in the armchair, not the doorway. I see her in the chair with her hand flat on the arm. I see her blue eyes on me. I put two fingers on my clit and I circle, slow. I picture her crossing the room. I picture her coming to the bed. I picture her kneeling at the side of the bed and putting a hand on my hip. I picture her hand. Her hand is broad and scarred and quick. I picture her hand on my hip. I arch a little into my own fingers.
Her mouth.
I have not pictured a woman's mouth at my body before. I do not have a template for it. I build one on the spot, which is her mouth, the bow of it, the way she eats with a fork. I picture her mouth at my throat. I picture her mouth at my collarbone. I picture her mouth sliding down. I picture her mouth between my legs.
I moan.
The sound is small and real, and I have not moaned like that in quite some time and hearing it makes me make it again.
I circle my clit faster. My other hand slides up to my breast. I pinch the nipple. I picture her hand on the same breast and I pinch harder. I picture her mouth on the nipple. I picture her hand between my legs where my hand is. I put a finger inside myself, slow, then two. I am slick. I am more slick than I knew I could be in the middle of a morning without touching anyone.
I picture her watching.
That is the image that takes me.
Not her mouth. Not her hand. Her eyes. Her eyes like they were in the chair. Her eyes on me the way they were at sunrise,blue, steady, not going anywhere, the part of her that sat when she wanted to stand. I picture her sitting in the chair this morning and I am the one on the bed, and I am a woman moving for her, because she is watching, because she asked me without asking, because she did not get up. I work my clit and I fuck myself with my fingers and I picture her seeing me do it, and my hips lift off the bed, and the sound out of my mouth gets louder, and I come.
I come in waves.
I come harder than I have come in years. I come with my hand on my breast and my fingers inside me and her hungry eyes in my head, and it goes through me, and I shake, and my heel slides up the sheet, and I say a word out loud that is her name.
"Max."
I hear myself say it.
I keep my fingers on my clit while I come down. I keep them there slow. I let the last pulses come through. Then I take the hand away and I lie on the quilt and I put both arms across my face and I breathe.
---
I lie there a long time.
The sun has moved on the wall. The woodstove in the next room ticks. I can hear a jay in the pines.
I do not cry. I thought I might. I don't.
I think, my husband died four nights ago.
I think, and I just came harder than I have come in my life, to the thought of a stranger in a chair.
A woman.
I wait for shame.
The shame does not come the way I expect. What comes instead is a small hard clear thought.
I did not love him. Daniel.
I have known that sentence for years. I have known it in pieces, in hallways, in the car between parties, in the rose garden. I have never said it to the ceiling of a bedroom in the full light of a morning after making myself come to another person. I say it now. I say it out loud in the empty cabin.
"I did not love him."
The pines keep doing what pines do.
"I did not love him," I say again.
Nothing in the cabin disagrees with me.
