She reached in the open window without asking, popped the old-school lock, got in. Then before either one of them could speak, she turned and covered his mouth with hers.
They
drove to a secluded spot near the Berkeley Marina. There, with the sound of
waves lapping against rocks and homeless men stirring against sleeping bags, they
slid hands into clothes, fingers past lips to eager tongues, waiting. When he
moved his body against hers she wanted to cry, but instead she just cried out. Fuck me she said, and he did. He did it
without a condom, risky and stupid and utterly frenzied, moving in and out of
her at a pace too rapid to be rhythmic. She cried out again, this time without
words, and put her nails into his skin, her teeth into his shoulder.
When
she came she cried for real.
She
did it silently, her face turned away from him, tears sliding into her ears. The
tears were not of guilt. They were born of relief, of the knowledge that something
must have changed, though she had no idea or intuition as to what. He, lying on
his side next to her, buried his face in the nape of her neck, unaware. He said
something. It could have been I love you.
She was trying not to listen.
Yes,
it was relief. It had to be. She’d waited to cross that line; she’d skirted the
edge so much that she’d grown tired of its rubbery taste on her tongue. She’d paced
it alone, in the grocery store, walking down the path to pick up her son, alone
in her brain on fallow Thursday afternoons.
