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Amber had squinted at him from behind her sunglasses, trying to see him the way they did.
At forty-two, he still had what could objectively be declared a great chest—broad, muscular—attached to a pair of arms that could hoist a sack of Quikrete or an eighty-pound kid up onto his shoulders with equal ease. Flat stomach, nice tan, good hair.
Hot, one of the girls had said.
Smoking, the other agreed. I’d do him in a heartbeat.
He’d just looked like Tony to her.
Then Anthony had shouted, Look, Mom! exactly like this other boy, and he’d performed some kind of cannonball-twist thing off the diving board while grinning in Amber’s direction.
The girls had put two and two together. They’d found something else to talk about. A short while later, they’d found somewhere else to be.
Amber’s mother, stretched out flat on the chaise to her right, had declared the whole episode hilarious, but Amber hadn’t been amused. She’d wanted to lean over and stop the closest girl right as she was about to depart.
You don’t have to go, she might have said. I know what he looks like. I know you probably didn’t get that he’s my husband, because for all the attention he pays to me, I might as well not be here.
But of course she’d done nothing. Said nothing.
What would be the point?
She’d laughed along with her mother, and she’d pretended everything was fine, because it was.
Everything could be broken, the light in a marriage gone out, and still be fine.
The man in the pool began walking toward her, his progress impeded by the drag of the water and his obvious desire to look suave.
He held a drink in one hand, wore sunglasses pushed up on top of his head.
He smiled at her, a winning sort of try-out smile that contained the right amount of sheepishness to let her know that he was going to hit on her now, and he knew it was kind of cheesy, but perhaps she would be willing to roll with it.
She wore her wedding ring, but it wasn’t much of a ring. A simple gold band. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.
Maybe he didn’t care.
Amber lifted her hair off her neck, gathering it into a ponytail and then twisting it into a knot. She wrapped one strand around it twice, split it, and tugged it tight, fashioning a loose bun that would fall out as soon as she stood up.
The action straightened her spine, exposed her to his gaze, and she felt it roaming over her breasts, which had risen with her arms. Her breasts had been on the small side to begin with, but they’d come out of motherhood in passable condition.
She felt the stranger’s eyes roam over her stomach. Reasonably close to flat. No C-section scars. Barely visible stretch marks.
She thought about how easy it would be. How she wouldn’t even have to make the decision. She could just allow the wind to push her along. Allow this man’s winning smile to charm her, one drink to turn into three. Allow him to lead her somewhere.
She wondered how many times Tony had lived through this moment. This knowing that if he wanted to, he
could. How many lonely homeowners had given him a coy smile when their husbands weren’t around, clueing him in that he would be welcome to bend them over a stack of Sheetrock panels and then zip up and come home to Amber, with no one ever the wiser.
She didn’t think he’d ever done it, but she couldn’t be sure. And if he did—if he had—what would it mean? That he didn’t love her? That he no longer deserved to be the father of her children, the provider of her household, the lover in her bed?
Maybe it would only mean that he’d wanted to do something simple. That he wanted to fuck and be fucked, the most rudimentary of transactions, without past or future or anything layered over it.
Maybe it would mean that he’d wanted to feel powerful, to feel wanted, the object of someone’s fantasies. The subject of his own life.
Maybe it would mean one thing to him, another to her, and neither of them would be right, because there was no such thing as right. Only interpretations of reality, held close to the heart or spoken aloud. Shared back and forth.
I’d do him in a heartbeat.
Those girls—they had no idea how many heartbeats made up a marriage. How many decisions had to be made.
