I had not thought a woman could come from giving. But here she has, twice.
I had not thought of it. I have been a woman in a marriage where the giving and the getting were two different acts assigned to two different people. I was the getting. He was the giving. The giving was a small joyless thing he did and did not enjoy doing, and the getting was a small joyless thing I received and did not enjoy receiving, and the two were not the same thing happening in the same body. Tonight they are. Tonight Max gave and got at once, in the same body, and the body in question is mine and hers at once, and I am in it.
I cannot think about it now.
I am coming still.
I am coming through the second wave of it that her movement through her own come is dragging out of me, and I make a sound that is her name, and she stays in me, and her hand stays on my clit, and the second wave breaks on me, and I gush again, hot and full, around her and down my thighs, and the kitchen smells of me and her at once.
She slows.
She does not pull out.
She leans down. She lays her body along my back. She fits her cheek to the back of my shoulder. Her arm comes around me, soft, under my breasts. Her other hand stays where it was, between my legs, flat now, not moving, holding.
"Shh."
"Max."
"I have you."
"Max."
"I have you."
I am sobbing.
I am sobbing the way I sobbed last night and worse. Every nerve in me is on the surface of my skin. I am shaking head to foot. The wood is wet where my mouth is. My hair is wet. I am not afraid. I am not unhappy. I am undone. I am undone in the way she said she was going to undo me.
I cry into the table.
I cry for a count I do not keep. I cry for the woman I have been for eleven years who did not know her body could do what it has just done. I cry for the husband who is dead in a freezer in a Redwater coroner's office whose body did not, in eleven years, find any of the places this woman has found in me in five days. I cry for my father who saidpleaseon a porch in Sag Harbor yesterday and who I cannot call. I cry because Max has not let go of my back. I cry because Max has not asked me to stop. I cry because I do not have to. I cry because she is letting me have this, and she does not need it to be quieter or smaller or finished sooner than it wants to be finished.
She lays her cheek on my shoulder blade.
She does not sayshh.
She lets me cry.
She pulls out of my ass.
Slow.
She pulls out in inches. She lets the muscle close on its own. She sets the dildo against my thigh. She does not get up.
She lies on my back a moment longer. She kisses the back of my neck. She kisses the knob of my spine. She kisses each shoulder blade. She kisses the small of my back where her hand had been.
"I'm going to pick you up," she says.
"Yes."
"I'm going to take you to the bed."
"Yes."
"I'm going to clean you up."
"Yes."
