I loosen the knot in my towel and let it drop to the floor. The people who get you are yours for life. I let the affirming horoscope lift my self-esteem.
“You wanna?” I leave the question there, but finish the thought by crawling on hands and knees toward him. Adam looks up from his phone and fixes his face to hide his shock. I can see a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth.
“Now?” he asks, looking down at himself. “I’ve been on that germ-infested bus. I know you hate that.”
I’ve been trying to shed my mother’s germ obsession for years. Is he trying to reject me and make it my fault?
“These aren’t our sheets. I don’t care. Let’s do it now.”
I pluck the phone from his hands and place it on the nightstand. I lean down to kiss him and throw my leg over to straddle his lap.
“Really?” he says, unsure of where to put his hands.
It’s a slow and awkward start, but I conjure up the memory of our first weekend away together. He covered the bed with rose petals. We took a long bubble bath, drank champagne, and talked about our dreams. It was the performance of romance, but it worked like a charm. And it grew into something more real and somehow more wonderful.
Our bodies move in a familiar rhythm. Even after a year, it’s like riding a bike. I notice a distant look in Adam’s eyes, almost like he isn’t really there. Does he think of the same memory I do? Or something else? Or someone else?
Desperation wells inside me and I moan loudly, put on a show worthy of an Emmy. Some people frown upon the performance of sex, but the underlying feelings are real. The freedom of being away from the girls, the release of stress, the promise of connecting with Adam again. Does it matter if it’s slightly exaggerated? Heightened for effect? Good for me, I say.
Adam buries his face in my neck, and triumph courses through me.
Panting, I roll off Adam and pull the sheet up to my chin. I nuzzle into his shoulder.
“I’m gonna shower,” he says, nudging me away from him.
“Already?”
I’m overcome with emotion that I let out only when I hear the thick glass shower door open and close. Adam turns on the water and the phantom cries begin again, fainter this time, but they’re still there. My picture-perfect life doesn’t feel so perfect right now. Where did it go wrong? Could I lose my husband? Could the girls lose their father?
Before I had kids, I was the impulsive person who left no room in her mind for regret, but I’ve since learned that a mother can drown under the weight of one bad decision.
STARS HARBOR ASTROLOGICAL RETREAT
ASTRO CHEAT SHEET
GUEST NAME: Adam
SUN SIGN: Scorpio
MOON SIGN: Scorpio
RISING SIGN: Aries
AGE: 38
OCCUPATION: writer
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER GUESTS: married to Aimee, brother to Margot
SPECIAL NOTES: influential water and fire in this chart. Too much fire and the water boils over; too much water extinguishes fire. Which is the threat?
ADAM
I need to live the love I write. It’s what has made my romance writing career so successful, and something I have found impossible since Aimee got pregnant with our third. Aimee’s life, her whole world, has become the girls. Even her career. She went from a women’s rag writer (“How to Blow a Guy in Ten Ways!”) to a momfluencer (“Check Out These No-Fail Sleep Training Tricks!”). For the past year, there have been no late-night plot brainstorming sessions for my novels. No date nights for romance. No connection.
The Aimee and Adam of our first meeting would be so disappointed.
Thirteen years ago, fresh off my MFA, I was writing obtuse literary fiction about a dark, damaged man alone in the world. I drank in dirty corner bars during daylight hours, rejections from agents ringing in my ears. I was at such a bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when she walked in with a friend.
Music played loudly from an ancient jukebox that hadn’t been updated since the early 2000s. The bar was not a nightclub by any stretch of the imagination—or it wasn’t until Aimee and her friend squealed at the crooning of Dave Matthews Band. Before that, no one had moved a shoulder or bopped a head, let alone stood up and danced like the two of them. To say they looked out of place was an understatement. Especially Aimee. She was beautiful and she knew it. Half the guys in the room swarmed to her like flies to a rotting banana, but I stayed put, playing it cool.
I chatted up the bartender about the NBA finals, ignoring her. She sidled up close enough to sip my beer.
“I played basketball,” she said.
“Oh really?” I said. She was the same height as my six-foot frame sitting on my bar stool. Five four, tops. “Was that in college?”
“In elementary school,” she said in total seriousness. “I was a point guard.”
I suppressed a laugh, and she bounced her hand up and down, dribbling an imaginary basketball. I watched her with a mix of confusion and awe. She must have enjoyed the look on my face, as she proceeded to crouch low, still bouncing her imaginary basketball, and weave in and out of the crowd as if they were defenders on the court. She was so low that I lost sight of her head, but I could track her path by the stream of people being jolted in the backside by this whirligig of a woman.
