Lore laughs. Back home, people refer to driving times by the number of beers you can drink from here to there: Laredo to San Antonio is a three-beer trip if you’re taking it slow; Laredo to Houston is a six-pack.
“All I have to do is hang on, right?” Lore asks.
“Well, yes.” A gleam comes into his eye. “Tightly.”
“I’m pretty sure I can handle that.”
“I’ll . . . drop you off at your hotel, then?”
“I thought you wanted to show me the view from your apartment.”
And then they are hurrying, as if they both know she could change her mind at any moment. Her hands tremble as they redo the ankle straps of her shoes, and she is pressed up against him, squeezing her thighs around his, her fingers clasped at his waist. He’s given her his helmet again, and any time he slows, the weight of it pulls her head forward to bump his slightly. She can see his smile in the side mirror. She stares at his hands curled around the handlebars and imagines them sliding up her rib cage, encircling her breasts, brushing his thumbs across her nipples, and by the time they get to Tlatelolco, a housing complex so big it’s like a city within a city, she is desperate to know what he will feel like inside of her.
They park and take the elevator to the tenth floor of Andres’s building, where they stand in the back, tension crackling between their bodies until the doors open and Andres leads her to his apartment, fumbling with the key, laughing.
“Here we are.” Andres steps aside so she can glance at the small brown couch and creased leather chair, the crammed bookshelves taking up an entire wall. She can see several framed eight-by-ten photos, his kids, surely, though she can’t make out their faces from here. There’s a boy’s blue backpack in the corner, a copy of Pedro Páramo open on the condensation-ringed wooden coffee table. The carpet is worn thin in places, and the pale blue walls could use a new coat of paint—but the view! From three large windows in the living room, a spray of lights shines before them.
“It’s beautiful,” Lore murmurs.
“Yes,” Andres says, though he’s looking at her, and then she’s pushing off his jacket, his hands running from her back down to the curve of her ass, cupping its weight in his palms. He lifts her, and she wraps her legs around him as he half stumbles toward a short hallway, shoving open a door with one free hand. Then they are on his simply made bed, absent the half dozen throw pillows that indicate a woman’s touch. Lore wants him to hurry, to plummet them past the irreversible. He takes his time, pushing fabric aside inch by inch to press his hot lips to each new slice of skin. She’s squirming beneath him, moaning, and he chuckles gently, teeth on his lower lip as he looks up from undoing her zipper. “Everything okay, Ms. Crusoe?”
“No!” She shoves her thumbs in the waistband of her pants, tilting her hips to pull them off, and he catches her wrists and holds them to the bed.
“What’s the rush?” Andres asks, with that wicked tone he sometimes gets on the phone, sexier for the surprise of it and even more so in person, with the matching glint in his eyes.
He kisses her legs as he slides her pants down—the inside scoops of her knees, the marbles of her ankles. He maneuvers the pants around her shoes, then takes a moment to just look at her. In the hotel before dinner, she’d done the same, studying herself in the mirror. Her black hair sprayed gently into curls from her electric rollers. Her eyes smoky and eager for the night to unfold. Her body, demure in a white silk blouse tucked into black pants, her favorite gold belt winking in the light. But beneath all that? She’d stared at the swell of her breasts in the black lace bra, knowing how without its support, they’d hang lower than before the boys’ hungry mouths had found them, her nipples large and dark as bullseyes. The sturdy width of her hips and softness of her lower belly, the silky white stretch marks curling like measuring tape from her thighs to her ass, an ass too big, really, for the tiny swatch of fabric pretending to cover it. Would he—if he were to see her like this—would he be able to tell she is a mother?
She holds her breath now, waiting for him to see all this history on her body. All he says is “God, you’re beautiful.” And she feels beautiful, not just beneath his gaze but her own. She appreciates the deep golden glow of her skin in the moonlight, her body’s womanly softness, the strength beneath her curves. Then he unstraps her shoes and takes them gently from her feet, and she remembers her burgeoning blisters and the black dirt that must be caked onto her soles. He laughs, confirming her fears.
She laughs, too, lifting her ankles. “I’m going to get your bed dirty.”
“Do you really think I care?” Then his lips are on her inner thighs. She gasps as he kisses her through black lace, the teasing heat of his breath, the stroke of one finger against fabric that is cool against her with its own wetness. She moans, lifting her hips again, rubbing against his open palm as he slides over her body, tongue in her mouth, lace pushed aside, one finger, then two, sunk deep into her, bucking against his hand, already so desperately close when those fingers recede, pulling the panties with them, leaving her breathless with reality: this is it.
She looks into Andres’s eyes, the ferocity of his desire, and sweeps his pants and boxers over his hips. He pulls a condom from a bedside drawer and rolls it on with quick, fevered expertise, making her wonder who was last in his bed and when, and then, with a question in his eyes she answers by wrapping her legs around him, he slides inside her, swallowing her gasp. Their bodies swiftly find a rhythm together, another, and another, and there is no room left for doubt or recrimination. His sweat smells like damp cotton, and she kisses it from his skin, licks it from her lips. It’s exactly as she imagined, except for one thing: Fabian, watching from the corner.
Why? Fabian asks. What did I do?
Nothing, Lore tells him, wanting him to look away, but also wanting him to keep looking, to really see her. It’s not about you.
Afterward, Andres rests his forehead against hers, breathing hard, and Lore isn’t sure what should come next. At home, Fabian would extract himself, kiss her, and immediately fall asleep, while she would slip from bed to clean off and pee, lest she get a bladder infection. At home, sex is casual and seamless, like any other necessary but mundane physical activity. Afterward, life just resumes. And that isn’t bad. That kind of comfort and familiarity, it’s hard won. The ability to laugh at the sounds their bodies make—the slaps of soft flesh, the gurgle of a full belly—to have sex in the daylight (not that they often do, with two almost-teenagers and so much going on in their lives, but still), where every bulge and scar and stretch mark has a history they both understand.
But is it enough?
Later, Lore will see this is when the thought first occurred to her, shapeless and half-formed. That perhaps not every affair is about lack in the primary relationship; perhaps some are about a complement. Perhaps multiple relationships can illuminate different parts of the self, like a prism turned first this way, then that, toward the light. Perhaps to love and allow love from only one person at a time is to trap the self into a single, frozen version, and it’s this that makes us look elsewhere.
“How about a shower?” Andres kisses Lore’s jaw, and she shivers, hypersensitive.
“Okay,” she says, smiling. As they disentangle, her self-consciousness returns. Andres is still looking at her with naked appreciation, and she tries to see herself that way again.
In the bathroom, Andres turns on only the dim light. He runs the taps, tests the water, and before he pulls the lever to switch tub to shower, he takes a washcloth from beneath the sink.
“Sit down,” he says, with a smile, gesturing to the far lip of the bath.
Lore obeys without understanding, surprised by the eroticism of her uncertainty. Then Andres kneels by the bath, dips the washcloth in warm water, and gently begins washing her feet.
Cassie, 2017