Rosie:Hot.
Rhiannon:You should invite Seth over to watch with you.
Rosie: I’m telling Boone.
Brianna:This chat’s going on mute. BYE.
Rhiannon: No! Don't leave us hanging. Send me the couple’s name so I can watch with Cain!
I choke out a laugh, shaking my head as I slide my phone onto the table beside the bed and then lean over to blast my face directly with the cool air vents.
Natasha’s not wrong. This is one of those things I do when the insomnia hits, and it’s not something I’m remotely embarrassed about. More than once, she’s walked into the living room to find me curled up on the couch with a bucket of popcorn, completely captivated by whatever scene they’re engaged in on the screen.
“What the hell are you doing?”is usually her first question followed by. “And why is he shoving that in her asshole?”
Most of the time, she ends up sitting down beside me. Then the two of us spend the next two hours dissecting every scene and wondering if it’s possible for marriage to keep that level of desire and heat even after several decades together.
Maybe that’s why I keep watching. Not because I believe every grand gesture or dramatic declaration, but because some stubborn part of me still wants to believe that love, passion, and marriage can coexist the way they do in the movies. Or pornos.
Anyway, now that she brought it up, I can’t stop thinking about it.
And it’s not as weird as it sounds. It’s not about the kink. It’s not about taboo shit or getting off at the end of it. It’s about connection. Emotional intimacy as much as physical. Watching two people who’ve been married for years, who know each other’s bodies inside and out and have seen each other at their lowest, still finding ways to keep things hot.
It’s not some overproduced, scripted nonsense. It’s raw and real, full of little moments that make my hopeless romantic heart sigh. Like a home video, except with some rough sex.
The way he looks at her like she’s his whole damn world.
The way she touches him like he’s her safe place and has held her through the tough years.
I chew my bottom lip, glancing at my phone again. It’s soromantic...
I’m already reaching for cell phone, tapping into the app that holds all my secrets. It’s like muscle memory at this point. And it makes me feel safe.
I press a few different buttons and before I know it, my favorite couple’s face fills the screen of my phone.? Married for fifteen years. In their early forties, yet still wildly in love. Their connection is magnetic, electric in a way that makes my stomach flip every time I watch becauseI want that so badly, I can almost taste it.
I scroll through their feed and select one of their latest uploads that I haven’t watched yet. The screen fills with their smiles, and before I know it, I’m sinking deeper into the plush hotel bed’s pillows, my eyes glued to the blue glow, heart pounding for reasons that have nothing to do with the energy drink coursing through my veins.
I fiddle with the hotel TV’s remote and eventually figure out how to cast the video onto the big screen at the end of the bed so that I don’t have to hold my phone up by my face while I rest. The husband starts talking and instantly I feel myself being to relax into a smile.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I watch people who are happy fall in love with each other every night? Because I’m a sucker for love. For connection. For knowing that it’s possible to choose the same person each year and not call it compromise. And maybe… maybe a tiny, irrational part of me feels like I may never find something like that and so watching it happen for other people allows me to live a dream I’ll never have.
I bite my lip, heat pooling low in my belly as I get lost in their world, my mind drifting to thoughts I have no business entertaining right now about the man on the other side of my hotel room. I wonder what Seth’s doing. Probably sleeping or stretching his hamstring after his exhausting game.
My eyes go back to the TV where the husband just pulled out a massive purple dildo he’s going to use on his wife. She’s a total size queen which I love for her. I shift to get more comfortable, stretching out on the bed fully clothed while watching from the safety of my little cold cocoon. I’m minding my own business, lost in their world, when—
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
My head whips toward the hotel door like I’ve been caught committing a crime. My heart pounds like a drum line, and my brain completely short-circuits from lack of sleep and caffeine. I scramble to pause the TV, jabbing at the button on my phone where I’m casting the damn video to X out of it, but it’s not working.
Why won’t it turn off?!
Panic surges through me. Mute. MUTE IT! Because now the wife’s moaning loudly while the husband is teasing her clit with some sort of sparkly feather wand. I slap the mute button which works and hold my breath, hoping, praying it’s just room service or someone drunk thinking this is their room.
Please be room service.
This hotel has room service, right?
I tiptoe to the door, peeking through the peephole like some kind of criminal hiding from the cops. But no.
