Page 17
“This isn’t so bad,” Quinn says.
I look up from the couch where I’d been staring blankly at another intake form, one I missed. Yippee.
Quinn smiles at me over her shoulder. She’s wearing her usual travel gear. Black leggings hug her thick thighs and strong calves. An off-the-shoulder heather-gray crew neck drapes over the curve of her peach-shaped ass, hiding it from view. Her shoulder-length pink hair is up in a half pony, and her face is free of makeup.
She’s standing in front of the sliding door. Correction—the entire far wall of the bungalow is glass, giving a full view of the plunge pool, an in-ground stone hot tub, and the desert beyond, the landscape dotted with Joshua trees, cacti, and other desert foliage.
It’s mid-afternoon now, and the sun is getting lower in the sky. But I can tell from the glare of the light and the haze in the air how hot it is outside.
I want to say something snide, like while this place is nice, it would be better if we were somewhere in the mountains or Vancouver, a milder location that isn’t ninety already this early in June. But I’d be an asshole to say that. Okay, I’d be more of an asshole than I already have been.
I fully recognize I haven’t been the easiest to deal with, but yesterday, I was wallowing in the comfort of my own home, and now I’m in the middle of the California desert, my marriage in shambles, with a woman named Hazel who smells like patchouli and apparently a former hockey player who is going to mentor me and my wife about—
I look down at the intake sheet, ways to promote self-awareness, deepen connection, and identify areas for growth, both in and out of the bedroom.
The couch sinks next to me, and I glance up at my wife. She still looks tired, and the bit of a spark I recognized in her eyes when I agreed to come here yesterday is missing.
“You hate it,” she says.
“I don’t hate it.”
She puffs out a breath, and some of the shorter hair framing her forehead shifts with the gust. “Don’t lie, Noah.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. During the tour, you looked like you wanted to run the other direction. The gym didn’t even make you smile, and it’s a very nice gym.”
She’s right; it is a nice gym. Hazel wasn’t lying when she said it had brand-new equipment and air conditioning. I’d go so far as to say it’s better than my home gym.
I take Quinn’s hand and kiss the top of her wedding band, reveling in the texture of the diamonds and the coolness of the white gold, appreciating the fact that she still wears my ring.
“I don’t hate it, Sunshine.”
“Then why are you acting like you do?”
I turn my body so I’m facing her, dropping our hands so they rest on my thigh. I rub my thumb over her ring, memorizing how it feels. I used to do it all the time when we were first married, and I realize while sitting here now that I’ve stopped doing it. Not because I don’t want to, but because we haven’t had the time, not even enough for us to sit like this.
“Because this is difficult for me,” I say on an exhale.
“You can survive the desert for one week.”
“It’s not just the desert; it’s what this place is.”
Quinn pulls her hand from mine and sits up straighter. “What do you mean?”
I shove down the flip of my stomach at the loss of her touch and glance at the intake sheet. When I find a question that makes me ill, I read it out loud: “‘How would you describe your current sexual connection as a couple? Examples: passionate, comfortable, routine, distant, experimental, unbalanced.’”
Quinn blinks at me. “Okay, and?”
“That’s a personal question.”
“They’ve all been personal questions. This is an intimacy retreat.”
“I get that, and I know that intimacy can mean a lot of different things. So while I agree that we haven’t spent time together recently, I don’t think our sexual connection is something we have issues with.”
Quinn looks at me, unblinking, the hum of the air conditioner the only sound between us. Her lips part, but instead of words, laughter bursts free from her in a loud cackle.
I don’t join in, pressing my lips together in annoyance. She goes on for what feels like forever but is probably only seconds until she wipes a tear from her eye.
