I turned over to face him. “And I love you.”
For the next few minutes we just lay there, like two lovers do, and stared into each other’s eyes. Then he took his hand and began to rub his knuckles lightly along the side of my arm. I had missed his touch for a long time. I had a fleeting thought about how much time we might actually have left together, then I let it go. I had been avoiding sex because I was afraid it might hurt him somehow. I was waiting for him to let me know when he was ready. He was ready.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“I played golf and I didn’t drop dead,” he said. He had that devilish smile on his face, the one I fell in love with so long ago. “Feel this.”
He took my hand and pushed it down to his Lowcountry.
“Good Lord! Adam!” He was like a teenage boy seeing a Playboy magazine for the first time.
“This won’t take long,” he said, unabashedly and brazenly, and then he smiled like he used to when we were younger—wide smile, full of beans.
He’s bragging about a quickie?
“Okay, but if you die, don’t blame me.”
“I won’t.”
He pulled my nightshirt over my head and threw it somewhere and slipped out of his pajamas at the same time. Before I could say anything, he was inside of me, and I thought, Oh, God. I have missed my husband!
“I love you, Adam. You feel so good.”
“I love you, Eliza. Yes. You feel wonderful.”
Well, I should’ve made note of the time. It was not a quickie. It was an Olympic trial if not a main event. Adam was in charge and going for the gold. I was holding onto the headboard for dear life while he enthusiastically plunged in me over and over for at least fifteen minutes, maybe longer. The headboard was banging the wall so loudly, I knew our neighbors knew what the rhythmic sounds meant. At that moment I didn’t care. I could barely participate or add anything to what was happening. I could hardly think. All I could do was lie back and enjoy it. So I did. When he finally reached orgasm, he began touching me. An onlooker (not that there had ever been one, except for that one time the boys caught us when they were little and thought we were killing each other) would’ve said Adam had a future in gynecology. I would’ve said to that onlooker that Adam knew how to make my body sing arias like a diva. There was no way sex got any better than that.
We were lying there in a pool of our bodily fluids and sweat, trying to bring our heartbeats back to normal.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re menopausal.”
“Screw you,” I said and laughed.
“You just did,” he said.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “You just stay right here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
I pulled my nightshirt over my head and yelled, “Coming!”
Adam said, “You just did!”
“Very funny, Mr. Stanley.”
“Be right there,” I said. I looked through the keyhole. It was Carl and Eve. I thought, Oh, okay, and I opened the door. “G’morning!” I said, chipper as a baby bird just out of the shell.
“Sweet Jesus, girl! What happened to your hair?” Eve said.
I ran my fingers through my hair and stopped at the rat’s nest in the back of my head the size of a grapefruit.
“Um,” I said, feeling its Rastafarian mass. “Yeah, wow.”
“And your nightshirt is inside out,” Eve said. They both snickered. “Busted!”
“Yeah,” Carl said, innocently. “So what’s going on in the Stanley house this morning?”
“Exactly what you think, Mr. and Mrs. Landers! We’re giving each other a little thrill. So, why are you here at the crack of dawn?”
“It’s actually nine o’clock and we’re supposed to be going out for breakfast at the Sea Biscuit? Remember?” Eve said.
“Really?” And then I remembered. “Well, why don’t y’all get us a table and we’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“Come back to bed, woman!” Adam yelled from upstairs. “I’m not done with you!”
“Adam! Stop! You’re just going to milk this to death, aren’t you?”
“We’ll see you soon,” Carl said and took Eve’s elbow. “Let’s go, sweetheart, and let these old people try and recoup their dignity.”
They left, and by the time I got upstairs, Adam had the shower running. He was brushing his teeth and I began to work on the knot in my hair.
“I have three choices,” I said, looking at it with a hand mirror. “I can grow dreadlocks starting now, I can cut it off at the roots, or I can carefully untangle it.”
“I’m going with dreadlocks,” he said. “I think they’re interesting.”
“I’m interesting looking enough,” I said. “Get your shower. The Landerses are waiting.”
When we got to the Sea Biscuit, Eve and Carl were still waiting for a table.
“This place is impossible,” I said.
“You should open a breakfast place on this island,” Eve said. “You’d make a fortune!”
There was a shortage of breakfast places on the Isle of Palms and nothing on Sullivan’s Island, the next island over.
“What do I know about running a restaurant?” I said, and then I remembered I knew someone who did. Alexandros.
I’d talk to him when we returned to Corfu. Maybe he’d like to have a second restaurant here? Maybe I’d be his partner? It was certainly something to think about. A Greek diner on the Isle of Palms? Why not? I’d had crazier pipe dreams than that.
Later on, Carl and Eve went downtown to check on Cookie’s house and Adam and I scouted the island, looking for a real estate opportunity. Sadly, there was nothing on the market that we liked.
“You should call that guy who’s on all the Carolina One For Sale signs—Everett Presson. Looks like he’s listed every darn house on the market! Tell him to let us know when something good comes up.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Three weeks later, the elders of our tribe were all on the way to Greece and I had a cell phone with an international plan. My bag was stuffed with gifts for everyone I could remember. JJ and Tasha were flying to Athens from Boston, and we were able to coordinate our flights to land within thirty minutes of each other. Then we would take the domestic airline to Corfu together. I called him the night before we left just to see if they were all ready.
“I’m psyched,” he said. “Tasha’s been shopping around the clock.”
“I’m really excited too,” I said.