Tampa

Spread open between my fingers, my labia looked like a splitting heart.

fixed as tightly and aggressively as an assassin about to pull a trigger while his body hunched over me panting and dripping sweat.

Sensing that I was drifting even further away from him, Ford’s mind went into overdrive. He’d recently tried to get the baby conversation going again—he wanted us to go to a fertility doctor, get the ball rolling. “If we ever have a child, it’ll be through adoption,” I stressed, trying to play to both his vanity and my own. “You didn’t marry me for my stretch marks.” I had no interest in children; even if Ford raised the thing completely by himself and we trained it not to talk to me or interact with me whatsoever, I would surely end up moving out of our home within days of its arrival. There was an impulse of self-protection surrounding the decision as well; I knew if I ever had a son, at a certain age it would be impossible to ignore him, and I never wanted to force that transgression upon myself.

“You know there are benefits,” he reminded me. It was true—as soon as we became parents, we’d gain additional monthly income from his father’s trust.

“What, you want more money?” I asked. He shook his head, in a cursory way at first, but then an anger mounted behind his eyes that soon forced him from his chair; he began to pace around the living room, fists closed, chest forward. “I don’t

But the moments before he came home made this suffering worth it—times when Jack would urgently call and I’d open the door to find him sitting on the couch waiting for me, naked and erect, wearing the baseball cap I liked (its Little League vibe made him look just a shade younger). Sometimes we knew we had only minutes alone and there was a harried and apocalyptic violence in the way we went for each other—our joined bodies slamming into the wall, quaking with a fortune of pleasure that we had just seconds to spend. I began to dress for efficiency—skirts that could be lifted, shirts that could be slipped overhead, never any panties.

It was an optimal situation, save for the additional ripples it made at home. I now saw Buck enough that he drained the reserves of patient energy I had used to spend tolerating Ford. Evenings when Ford returned home from work and came into the bedroom wanting an inspired quickie inevitably led to hurt feelings—I encouraged him to look at pictures online, to buy videos. “Teaching all day takes everything I’ve got,” I complained; “it exhausts me wholly.” But Ford’s appetite was for real flesh and he’d insist that at the very least I let him look at me naked while he pleasured himself; this led to offensive scenes of Ford’s face in the dim-lit shadows, his jaw

explain to Buck that I’d never had an affair and probably never could. That I wasn’t looking for anything physical and he needed to understand that. I was simply looking for a friend. And of course I’d mention he was free to date and sleep with whomever he wanted. Dating wasn’t what he and I were doing, I’d explain—I was just getting some space from my husband.

One of the teams in the movie scored a touchdown; cannons filled with school-spirit-colored confetti shot into the air as football players ran to cheerleaders for congratulatory kisses. Jack slurped the last dregs of his cola through his straw.

“This is going to be so cool.” He smiled and gripped my hand in a way that I can only describe as juvenile—like we were at the fair and he wanted me to follow him over to the Ferris wheel.

his expression caused a series of micro-wrinkles to form at the corners of his eyes. Perhaps he wouldn’t be opposed to starting a preventative regimen of retinol? Surely I could gently convince him of its benefits.

“I know he’s disgusting. But I mean, you’re so much hotter and younger than anyone he’s ever dated. I think you could string him along for a super-long time. At least until I can drive and have a later curfew. Think about it—you’ll be able to come over whenever you want.”

The thought of unbridled access made my crotch seize up in a robust squeeze. I realized I’d be able to go over in the early hours and peek in on Jack, perhaps catch him with bedhead and a sleep erection and wake him up by putting his penis into the warmth of my mouth. This image was more than enough to let greed cloud my judgment.

“I guess we can give it a try,” I agreed. “But tell him he can’t call me, ever, so there’s no point in giving him my number. My husband’s a cop, and he’s the jealous sort. We can’t be too careful.” I didn’t clarify to Jack whether or not the cop detail and the jealous detail were true, and oddly, he didn’t ask. I suppose in the same way I wanted the details of Jack’s future to remain vague and blurry in my mind, he wasn’t looking to cement the particulars of my home life. It could work, I figured. I’d

thought of Buck’s shining red face mid-proposition, the way his flushed cheeks would gleam like griddled ham. “Eventually I’ll have to either reject him or give in.”
Of course what Jack didn’t know was just how temporary our own relationship was going to be. As I argued, I began to realize that several months from now, when Buck would likely reach his sexually frustrated breaking point, Jack would probably be due to hit a growth spurt—I’d need to be waning away from both of them anyhow. Buck could prove to be a perfect excuse to begin going over to see Jack less and less, and eventually I might be able to play the conflicted-conscience card with Jack: how I’d wronged them both and needed some time to soul-search, that my pretend relationship with Buck had made me realize Jack needed to be a normal kid and bound into high school without the heavy tethers of an adult love affair.

Jack was still trying to solve the puzzle I’d set before him of how I could engage Buck without the flirtation becoming physical. “I think if you just keep telling him you need more time or whatever, he’d go along with that. Say he’s totally free to date other people and stuff. I know he likes going to the strip clubs. He’s sick; sometimes he’ll get a lap dance, then come home and tell me about it.”

“That is very, very nauseating.” Jack smiled; illuminated by the movie screen,

me?”

“Well adults don’t usually date without having sex, Jack. It’s just the way things work. I’m sorry to break it to you, but those women coming over to cook for him were most certainly putting themselves on the menu too.”

“Ewww!” he screamed, cupping his hands over his ears. “Stop saying gross things. I know they were, I get that. I’m not saying you actually date. Just tell him you want to get to know him better or something.”

The thought of Buck’s frontal-scalp hair plugs rubbing against my skin made my toes curl inside my shoes. “It’s a slippery slope, Jack.”

“You just pretend to be a little interested. Then if he gets home early and you’re there, he’ll think you came over to see him. You could even stop by on weekends and stuff.”

On-screen, a tubby linebacker with a heart of gold took a concussion-inducing hit to protect the quarterback. The camera zoomed forward to follow the trajectory of the bite guard, expelled from the linebacker’s mouth on impact, as it soared over a pileup of bodies and landed across the end zone with a poignant bounce. “Jack,” I pointed out, “he’s not interested in simply eating pot roast and watching Jeopardy! He’ll start wanting more and more.”

recently cheated on his wife with their children’s nanny and fathered a set of illegitimate twins. Tonight is all we have. This is the night we’re going to dream about for the rest of our lives. Some of us aren’t ever going to make it out of this town, but for the next two hours we can go out on that field and feel immortal! It’s true, I thought; the adult world has so much less to offer than adolescence does. It seemed to me that the happiest possible ending to the movie would be both teams playing impeccably and tying at the end of the fourth quarter, then the entire stadium being blown up by terrorists and their young lives ending on a high.

Jack turned to me, a sudden excitement making his words sound jumpy. “So I think I know a way that you can be at the house a lot more and it won’t matter if you’re there when my dad comes home,” he said. “You just have to lead him on a little. All of my dad’s past girlfriends have had keys to our house. They’d come over even when he wasn’t there and lay out by the pool or whatever. Bring groceries over and make dinner so it would be ready by the time he walked in the door—that kind of stuff. If you pretend to date him, you could come over all the time.”

My hands fell away from his penis, suddenly unsure of everything about Jack. “You want me to sleep with your dad?”

“No!” Jack looked at me like I was completely insane. “God, are you kidding

But Jack wanted even more freedom than this. That Friday, at Jack’s insistence, I took him to a drive-in movie. We went all the way out to Clearwater, about an hour away. I insisted we both wear party-store wigs since I’d have to roll the window down and be seen in order to buy a ticket. My faux hair was a short red bob, Jack’s a shaggy blond mop that might have accompanied a surfer costume. “It’s like we’re going to rob a bank,” he joked, putting his on.

We watched the film casually, his hand resting against my bare crotch with two fingers blithely inserted, my own fingers gripping the base of his penis, our limbs irregularly coming alive with motion, then hanging in stasis to watch one of the more interesting moments of a scene. “You know my dad keeps asking me to get your number for him,” he finally mentioned.

“I feel for you. That guy is a boob.” The movie centered on the quarterback rivalry between two opposing high school football teams; disappointingly, the youngest actor in the film still appeared to be at least twenty-six. Yet the sentiment lodged in one of the pregame locker-room speeches nearly moved me to tears. We’re high school seniors, the lead actor gushed. Due to the passion in his voice, I was able to momentarily suspend disbelief and think of him as an eighteen-year-old despite having seen in the tabloids that he’d

with anything that compromised his ability to shovel food in his mouth. At one point I took my foot out of my shoe and ran it up his leg, rubbing front to back again and again along his crotch while Buck spoke of upcoming concerts that his company could get box-seat tickets to. Watching Jack eat made the conversation bearable; his lips became visibly flavored with oil and sauce, and I delighted in the torture of knowing just what they tasted like by eating the food. By the time Buck asked if I could stay for dessert, though, my patience had been sufficiently used up.

“No thank you,” I said. “I have to watch my figure.”

“Self-control.” He smiled. “I like that in a woman. Outside of the bedroom I mean.” The three of us stood there for a moment, paralyzed by the awkwardness of this remark, then Buck tried to come in for a good-bye hug. I managed to trap one of his stumpy hands and shake it thoroughly instead.

“I would really love to see you again,” he said.

“Thank you for a lovely evening.” They were the only polite words I could manage.

I had a near-giddy sense of optimism afterward, knowing that if Buck ever came home earlier than expected, all would be well as long as Jack could make it to the table with a notebook and a pair of shorts on.