What Desire Tastes Like When You
1803 Words
I had not been touched in six weeks. Marcus and I had existed in the same apartment the way two satellites orbit the same planet: close enough to track, far enough never to collide. He slept in the guest room half the time now. He said it was because of his early meetings. I said nothing, because saying nothing had become my primary form of self-defense.
But my body had not gotten the memo.
I was twelve weeks along, and the first-trimester exhaustion had started giving way to something restless that my doctor had warned me about with a cheerfulness I found inconvenient. Some women in the second trimester, she said, experienced heightened libido. I had nodded politely and gone home to a husband who was sleeping in another room and spending his evenings texting Vivienne.
That Thursday I went to a client site in Tribeca, a loft conversion for a tech couple who wanted clean Scandinavian lines. I was walking the space with the site manager, Devin Okafor, when he said something that stopped me.
"You look like someone who hasn't slept in two weeks."
I stopped. "Excuse me?"
He held up both hands. He was tall with calm eyes, the kind that made you want to tell him things you had not said aloud. "That came out wrong. I meant you look tired. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I said. The automatic answer. The armor.
"You said that the same way I say I'm fine when I'm not even a little bit fine." He tilted his head. "We don't have to get into it. But if you need five minutes, the building has a rooftop."
We went up to the rooftop. I do not know why. Maybe because no one had offered me five minutes in weeks.
We stood at the railing, and I said, "My marriage is falling apart."
I had not said that to anyone. Not Dana, not my mother, not even myself out loud.
Devin said, "I'm sorry," and he said it like he meant it, not like he was waiting for me to say something next.
"I'm pregnant," I continued. "He doesn't know yet. And his ex just came back to town and he's completely lost himself in her orbit." I stopped. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."
"Because I asked," he said simply.
We stood there in the cold, not talking, and something about that nearness made my whole body remember what it was like to be wanted. He did not touch me. He did not try to. But he noticed me in a way Marcus had stopped doing months ago. Just honest attention, the kind that felt like water after months of drought.
"You should tell him," Devin said. "About the baby. Whatever else is happening, he needs to know."
"I know," I said.
"But?"
"But I'm afraid of what happens after. When he knows, everything changes. Right now I still have options. Once I tell him, I'm tied to this situation in a way I can't walk back from."
"You're already tied to it," he said. "The baby is already there. You're just delaying the inevitable."
He was right. I hated how right he was. We went back downstairs and finished the walkthrough and I kept my voice professional and I did not think about how close his hand came to mine when we were looking at the same blueprint. Much.
That night Marcus came home early. It caught me off guard. I had made dinner for one and was sitting at the counter with a glass of sparkling water and a design brief when the door opened at seven.
"You're home early," I said.
"I wanted to be." He looked at the single place setting. Something moved in his face. "I haven't been here."
"No," I agreed. "You haven't."
"What did you want to tell me?" he asked. "Two weeks ago. You said it was nothing, but I could tell it wasn't."
"Not tonight," I said.
"Naomi—"
"I need you to earn it, Marcus. Whatever it is I was going to tell you, you need to earn the right to hear it first. So tonight you're going to stay home. You're going to sit with me. And you're not going to text her."
He held my gaze. Then he put his phone face-down on the counter.
"Okay," he said.
We ate dinner together for the first time in weeks. He heated the extra pasta I had made. We talked about small things, a renovation project I had landed, his drive upstate for a site survey. It was careful and deliberate and nothing like easy, but it was something.
After dinner he came to stand behind me at the sink and his hands settled on my waist and I felt my whole body go still.
"I miss you," he said into my hair.
I gripped the edge of the sink. Six weeks was a long time. His mouth found the side of my neck and I closed my eyes and I hated myself for the way my body answered him without asking my brain first.
"Marcus," I said.
"I know," he murmured. "I know we're not okay. But I miss you."
He turned me around and when he kissed me it was slow and searching, the kind of kiss that asked questions instead of assuming answers. My hands went to his chest. I meant to push. I did not push.
He walked me backward to the bedroom, and I let him, because I was desperately lonely and
because somewhere underneath all the anger I still loved him. That was always the worst part of the whole situation.
He undressed me slowly, and when his eyes paused at my abdomen, just slightly fuller than it had been, I held my breath. He did not ask. He just kissed me there, soft and warm, and I did not know if he knew or if it was instinct.
When he finally pulled me under him and I arched up to meet him, gasping, I was not thinking about Vivienne. I was not thinking about the divorce attorney whose number Dana had slipped me two days ago. I was thinking about the five years I had loved this man with everything I had, and how easy it still was to be undone by him, and how terrifying it was to want someone this much and trust them this little.
Afterward, he held me in the dark and his hand rested over my stomach. I felt the weight of it.
Then his phone buzzed. He picked it up. He read the screen and something in his body shifted, a
change in his breathing, a tension in his jaw. He put the phone down. "It's nothing," he said.
I lay there in the dark, his arm around me, his child inside me, and the specific taste of betrayal on my tongue. Nothing, he said. I had stopped believing in his nothing.
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