Kindness.
But hot kindness. He didn’t want to say the F word: Friendship.
The unknown place, the terra incognita: friends, with s****l bona fides.
He had that with Vivi. Had had it. They were best friends before they married.
His eyes swam behind his eyelids, a green underwater returned to him. He slipped back down under the coverlet. Dulce spooned against his back. Put her hands around his belly. He drifted off, she drifted off. He didn’t want this. He wanted it badly.
Dulce’s hands rubbed the sides of his rib cage as she hummed a series of throttle coughs, low wails. She beat on his ribs; she beat on his skin lightly as if he were a human drum. She skimmed her palms over his waking body, turning him toward her. Tapping, smoothing, with her hips moving.
Back in the days of Carthag
