She looked away from him, not sure what to do with the compliment in either of her roles.
“You guys have kids?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No kids. And no more personal questions, Stevie. You’re breaking the rules again.”
He hooked his thumbs in his back pockets and tipped his head, looking at her from under his eyelashes. “What do the rules say we’re supposed to do next, Jenny?”
Jenny. Cute.
“Have a nightcap.”
“Where’s the bar?”
“Over there.”
Tony found a pair of glasses, and she took him the bottle of chardonnay. They sat at the table, side by side this time instead of opposite each other. He poured two more glasses of wine.
When she sipped hers, it wasn’t as crisp as it had been. It had warmed up, its flavor more tannic, too sharp. She drank it anyway. It seemed like something Jennifer would do.
“How do you like the wine, Jennifer?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“I hope you won’t be saying the same about me in an hour.”
“Me, too.”
They smiled at each other.
This was how it happened—how you made your way toward the bed with a stranger. By making him not be a stranger. Sharing truths and lies mixed together, teasing interspersed with confessions. These halting steps toward intimacy.
“Tell me something nobody knows about you,” he said.
She drained the glass, casting about for something to say.
Tony knew everything. Didn’t he?
Everything but the things he didn’t want to know. How she felt since Jacob had started school. How often she would be going through the motions of her day, driving around Mount Pleasant on some pointless errand or putting dinner in the oven, and be overwhelmed with an intense wave of anger. Or sorrow. Or petty jealousy.
How sometimes she laughed, alone in the kitchen, and sometimes she cried, and one time she’d thrown a cake plate on the floor, where it shattered into pieces.
How intensely she resented having to clean her own house.
How much the future scared her.
; Steve didn’t want to hear any of that. The petty, stereotypical problems of a Midwestern housewife. Tony didn’t. No one did.
Think of something sexy. Something to turn him on.
“I masturbate,” she said, before she could stop herself. “When my husband’s at work. I masturbate in the empty house.”
Instantly, the teasing smile disappeared. His eyebrows lowered, and he went dark. His whole face—God, nobody could glower like Tony could glower.
“It’s not—it’s not that he isn’t good in bed. My husband. It’s not that he doesn’t get me hot anymore, because he does. It’s more … I don’t even know.”
It was the silence. The quiet.