It all started when Clarence e-mailed his ex-wife again.

Robin brought it up casually, as if it was nothing important, while they were having dinner together: "You know, Clarence e-mailed me the other day." Her company of an evening was becoming more and more common lately; she might come over to his place, or he go to hers. Sometimes this would go somewhere, and sometimes not; Robin's barriers, though lower than before, were still in place, and sex was something she just wasn't willing to broach yet. Nor was staying overnight.

Clarence, though, was. "I take it you're just going to ignore him as usual," Nathan said.

"Actually..." she said, toying with her plate. "I was thinking of writing him back."

Nathan took another bite of food to settle his mind, stifle his panic. "You, umm. You do realize the irony of that statement, right?"

Robin had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Well, I... As you know, he has been e-mailing me now and then."

"And, as you know, I'd prefer it if you ignored him," Nathan said.

"I know," Robin agreed. "And I have been. It just... Honey, from what he's writing, it sounds like he's really turned himself around. It sounds like he's changed."

Nathan grumbled, "I'll believe it when I see it."

"I'll show you his message," Robin said, standing up to take her plate over to the sink. "I mean, it's not like it was a big deal. So he didn't let me contact ex-boyfriends when I was married to him. So what?"

"I didn't object for my sake," he said. "I just didn't like that he was being so controlling."

Despite the rush of the faucet, her smirk was audible: "And you don't think it hypocritical to do the same thing in reverse?"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Look, I just don't think he's any good for you."

"And I agree with you," she said. "But e-mailing him isn't marrying him."

With guys like him, it is, he thought, but he kept it to himself. And, to be fair, the e-mail (when he saw it) did seem to be from a man who was getting his life together. Still the same cocksure self-absorbed asshole who thought he knew everything—Nathan, who ran a small computer business, could spot them from a mile off—but at least he had moved back out of his parents' house.

The part Robin wanted to respond to—so how are u babe?—was innocuous enough, and Nathan couldn't think of any reason to turn her down that wouldn't make him seem like an overcontrolling jerkwad. They had a love-hate relationship with that kind of person: when Robin wasn't chewing him out for it, she was complaining that he wasn't being enough of one. What she wanted from him seemed to change from day to day. Nathan kept patience with it as much as he could; it wasn't like he hadn't known that about her since the first time they dated. But patience was a limited commodity. Robin's penchant for flightiness was not.

"Umm..." he said. "Let me sleep on it."

She shot him a look over her shoulder. "So in other words, 'No'."

"No," he said, "let me sleep on it."

"You know I could just write him anyway," she said.

"I know," he said. "But I hope you won't."

"Maybe I don't care about your feelings," she said with a mock pout.

"Maybe you don't," he agreed. "But then I'd have to ask why you were dating me."

"I'm..." she said. "...Kinda stupid?"

"No you're not." He slipped an arm around her, drew her in for a kiss.

"Well, I married Clarence," she said, her face halting inches from his, "how smart can I be?"

He shrugged. "Fairly. But learning."

She let her lips seek his. "Yes, I am."

They had met in college, courtesy of one of those boring classes everyone needs to take—Appreciation of Art, Appreciation of History, Appreciation of Mongols, whatever. Nathan was a sophomore, Robin a freshman. He didn't think much of her at first: he liked neat, perky blondes, with preppy names like Claire or Missy or June. Robin was simply built differently: tall, stocky, deep-chested, well-fleshed; a polite man would call her 'statuesque,' a mean one 'chunky.' But they got stuck in a group project together and started talking, and it wasn't long before he was having second thoughts. True, she was fidgety, and sometimes overcontrolling, but the group project certainly benefited from her perfectionism; and there was a top-flight mind in there, one just at home discussing the impact of the Protestant Reformation world history as it was the latest episode of America's Top Model. She wanted to travel to many of the same countries he did, for many of the same reasons he did; she was just as concerned about the future of the human race (and its penchant for lurching merrily over cliffs) as he was. And every now and then she would smile a particular smile, one that brought out the warmth in her face and in her eyes, and he would have to take a moment and remind himself where he was.

When he asked her out, her first reaction was surprise: she thought of him as a friend, nothing more. True, he was attractive, in a slapdash, unkempt kind of way—the uncombed hair and bristly facial hair spoke to her of contempt for social norm—but dating? But she thought she might as well give it a go, and she said yes. And she found that there were hidden depths to this man: he knew exactly what wine went with which dish; he could translate from French (but not back into it, for no reason they could understand), and he seemed to have a knack for saying exactly the right thing to make her melt. And when she kissed him goodnight that evening... She had dated before, been kissed before, but nothing had ever quite made her that riled up. She didn't touch herself that night, but it was a near thing.

They dated for two years, and they were happy without ever really realizing it. They spent time in each other's company, practically lived together; they took classes together, developed injokes, laughed over things that made their friends shake their heads in puzzlement. To him, she became ever more lovely as the years passed. She hadn't lost weight and she hadn't dyed her brown hair, but when he looked at her, it was as if he was seeing something far more beautiful than mere flesh, and far more precious.

Nathan had no thought of marriage, but Robin did. She wanted to wait. She had been raised in the church, and while by and large she had moved on from that part of her life (she called herself a recovering Catholic, the way AA members called themselves recovering alcoholics), the desire to wait until marriage had stayed with her. She didn't think sex was inherently sacred; she did think she wanted to make it inherently sacred. She knew that taking a lover was a very intimate thing, that he would get to see parts of her body and soul that no one else would, and to her there was something romantic about the idea of only having one such man, ever. Wouldn't it be nice to look at her husband and know, deep in her heart of hearts, that there were secrets they shared with only each other, and with no one else? Wouldn't it be nice to keep some things completely and utterly private, except for her marriage bed? She even understood why some conservative (that is, fanatical) Christians preferred to refrain from kissing until marriage. Though she had no intention of doing so herself. She'd be disconsolate if Nathan couldn't kiss her anymore. And a little more than kissing. Nothing involving hands going under clothing, of course, but... Well, maybe a little of that. Nathan was a virgin, but that didn't seem to impair him in the least; she had never known her body could be made to feel so good, and it was hard to know how far she should let him take it.

So they dated, and spent time together, and kissed, and things were good; but not always. There were arguments—about the sex, of course, or lack thereof, but also about other things. Stupid things, sometimes, like whether it was okay for him to cancel a date because one of his guy friends had tickets to a concert, or the new Guitar Hero game. Stupid things, like whether she had the right to tell him she didn't like his favorite pair of tattered, broken-in jeans. Stupid things, but in the end they piled up, and the two of them just drifted apart. Still, they stayed friends, seeing each other on occasion, exchanging e-mails.

Nathan graduated and went straight on to pre-law, as he'd always planned. Within a month he knew he'd have to kill himself if he kept on with it. His big break came when every computer in the Law library went down, all at once. Nathan, a hardcore gamer whose computer had been able to run Crysis at full graphics settings without a flutter, had become experienced in tech support due to the demands of his lifestyle, and he volunteered to try and figure out the problem. He not only isolated the hack into the library network, but was able to make hardware suggestions to lower costs, streamline access and prevent this sort of network-wide damage. The Law school faculty paid him a thousand dollars for his services, and Nathan had a career he could stand.

Robin met Clarence during her last year at college. He was different than Nathan in many respects: he had cultivated that home-down-south air, walked around in cowboy hat and boots. She wouldn't've believed it if she hadn't seen it. After years of Nathan's indie/emo fashion sensibilities, Clarence was a refreshing change. His personality too: where Nathan was cautious, Clarence was bold; where Nathan was sensitive, Clarence careless; what Nathan scoffed at, Clarence valued. They were both pretentious, but in different ways, and something about Clarence's cocksure swagger—looking like an idiot, and not giving a care—drew her in. They married right after she graduated.

Nathan dated when he had the time, but he didn't have much of it. His business was booming: in addition to growth by word of mouth, the university was outsourcing much of its IT to him, and on a campus of 15,000 there was always something going wrong. Soon he had hired his first employee, and then his first three, and more until eventually ten people answered to him. One of them was an accountant, to keep track of all the money going in and out. He was single, yes, and often overworked, but he didn't notice; he was having fun, and making a difference.

Robin first started to think that marrying Clarence was a mistake the night he came home drunk and beat her. Unfortunately, it took three more years before she could get up the gumption to tell him where to stuff it. In retrospect, it was easy to reconstruct the justifications she'd built up in her mind. True, he wasn't the most sensitive of lovers; true, he was working a dead-end job at McDonald's, the only thing his bachelor's in Communications had been able to gain him; true, he rarely came home without reeking of drink, and spent most of the time in front of the TV once he arrived—watching the NASCAR, most of the time, but occasionally she would catch him jerking off to videos of nubile vixens—neat, perky blondes with sensuous names like Lolita or Pearl or Butter. (Once, Lolita and Butter at the same time, goodness-gracious-me.) But he was trying. She couldn't deny that. He was trying, and heaven only knew how much pressure the establishment put on men to be breadwinners, to be masculine, to be confident and good in bed and everything a man should be. He was trying, and every now and then when he came home, his eyes would light up, and he would be tender to her, caring, kind, everything she'd hoped. And besides, my dad hit my mom. And I turned out okay.

She did not, though, always turn out okay where Clarence was concerned. To hear him talk, she was the worst wife he could've found for himself—and he freely admitted that he had passed up some real desperate ones. There was nothing she did that he couldn't find something to be critical about—her cooking was bad, she didn't keep the house clean, she hadn't provided him with an heir, she should forget this nonsense about having a job and become a housewife... It just went on. Robin tried to pacify him as best she could, using some of the negotiating skills she'd learned from Nathan; but even that was a slippery slope. Clarence had a way of starting small. For instance, this thing about not contacting ex-boyfriends. She had invited Nathan to the wedding, and Clarence let her, with ill grace; but the next time he called (a few months after the honeymoon) Clarence asked her to hang up. It seemd reasonable at the time, but within a year she was out of touch with Nathan completely. Within a year after that, he had—very reasonably, very tactfully—gotten her to abort just about every friendship she had; her coworkers ignored her, her college friends never called, even her parents had learned to keep a wide berth.

Perhaps she should've known the day she found herself giving up her virginity. It wasn't her wedding night. As a matter of fact, it was a couple months before he proposed. Protest all she might, Clarence was not the sort of man who took 'no' for an answer, and over the eight-or-so months of their courtship he had slowly weathered his way onto her body. On their six-month anniversary he saw her naked for the first time—something no man had ever seen before—and took the opportunity to introduce her to the world of cunnilingus. Not that he was particularly good at it. Robin was much more sensitive, much more orgasmic, than most women, a fact Clarence took to his advantage; eventually would get into the habit of diddling her up just enough to make her wet, and then climbing aboard and going to town. Sex might last five minutes. The first time he fucked her, it lasted less. He had been going down on her, "introducing" her to oral sex, when suddenly his mouth disappeared and he moved up. And, without so much as a if-you-don't-mind, she was not a virgin anymore.

She got a Depo-Provera shot the next day—and a morning-after pill, something she had always sworn she would never use, because it was too similar to abortion, too similar to murder. And yet what could she do? She believed in a woman's right to choose... But had she chosen? Could she have stopped him? And what should she do now? Should she admit defeat? No; that was not in her nature. She would make the best of it. She would do what she could with what she had. She was delighted when he proposed.

It was, quite possibly, the last time she felt happy. At least, until Nathan.

She next met Nathan at her graduating class' five-year reunion. He shouldn't have been there, but the temporary patch allowing the alumni to use their Stag Cards to buy food, just like they had back in the old days, had gone down, and the president of the university realized it was a weekend, but they were willing to pay him overtime and there was no one else they could turn to and could he please... When he first saw her he barely recognized her. She was heavier than she had been before, but there was a bleakness of heart, of spirit, that hung around her. The innocence—what little had been there to begin with; she was never one to remain ignorant when she had the choice—was blanketed over now by stoop-shouldered defeatism. He asked his assistant to ask that lady over there—no, that one—yes, the fat one, Jesus, is that all you think about—if she could come over and he could test her Stag Card. It still didn't work—the system still wasn't acknowledging the ad-hoc $50 every account number from her school year should have attached to it—but that wasn't why he'd called for her anyway.

It was hard to get her to talk. She was tired. She was living on her own in a seedy part of town, at the end of a messy and contentious divorce that had left her and her ex-husband quite a lot poorer than they started (but their lawyers much richer), and working two minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. Ends weren't meeting. She might have to move home. Her parents assured her she would be welcome, but, well... He knew how it was, didn't he? Yes he did. And what he saw he wasn't pleased with. The fearless willingness to face the truth, to not flinch in the face of reality, that he had loved so, was now replaced with bitterness and bone-deep weariness. She didn't even soften why she had come to this reunion: it wasn't to meet old friends or renew business connections. What did she have to offer, except her body? No; she was here for her MRS degree.

Nathan made some calls. As it just so happened, his company was looking for a part-time, ad-hoc secretary/receptionist. He could offer better hours than her current jobs, and much better wages. It was flattering to think that maybe she had come here looking for him; but no, he wasn't from the same graduating class, he shouldn't have been here at all. He wasn't the type to lie to himself. But now she was here, and he was too, and he had to do something.

He asked her out in the most outrageous way possible: by firing her. After eight months of better conditions and much more sleep, she had some of her old fire back. She was passionate, challenging what she thought was wrong, fighting for what she thought was right. But that youthful fire had been tempered by the rigid winds of pain; she was more willing to admit she was wrong, more understanding of compromise, a better peacekeeper. He was with her through all of it—helping her buy furniture, treating her to lunch, helping her make or re-make friends. He was at her side through all of it, as she slowly woke up from her nightmare, and he burned for her; she had never been more lovely to him. But he and she both knew how stupid it was to date her boss. So he told her he had a friend in the publishing industry who needed someone like her, and that he had set up an interview for her tomorrow, and then gave her a pink slip with the dinner reservations and that age-old question scribbled across the bottom. Once she understood what was going on, she slapped him, while everyone in the office laughed.

But she did agree to go out with him.

He would be thirty soon, and they had been going out for a year and a half. He felt confident that she was the one, but at her insistence they didn't rush things, giving it a lengthy courtship. Of course, sex was on hold, the way it had been the first time, and for a while quite a lot of the emotional and physical intimacies of love were belayed as well. Robin needed distance. Robin needed to delay. She had gone to the altar with one man already, and it had been a horrendous mistake. True, Nathan was about as opposite from Clarence as it was possible to get; but opposite didn't mean better, just different. Robin had been burned. She was wary now. She saw how much her flightiness wore on Nathan, saw how much patience he had to muster to stay with her, and wished she could do something about it; but she needed to know, for herself, in herself, that she wouldn't be making a mistake this time.

But they were together again. She was the head of the editing department at her publisher's; he ran his business. They cooked together, did the dishes together, argued over the television together, went to the gym together (more for his sake than hers, now that her weight had stabilized), grumbled together, laughed together. They had started to talk a little bit about what it might be like to be married; then the conversations stopped being "if" and started being "when". She was comfortable with him, relaxed in a way she had never been able to be, not even the first time; she knew he had seen her at her worst, and not turned away, and that she could be herself with him and still be loved. She could kiss him, or feel his arm around her, or even just call him up and hear his voice, and know (deep in that place below conscious thought) that she was in the right place.

And then Clarence e-mailed her again.

"Explain to me again how we got here," Nathan said, tugging at the lapel of his suit. The thing was starched to razor's edges. He felt like it was made of plaster.

"It's what he does," Robin sighed. "He asks for a small thing, and we say yes. And then he asks for a bigger one in the same vein, and because we already said yes to the first one, we feel like we should say yes to this one too."

"Why?" said Nathan. "Why do we say yes?"

"I dunno," Robin said. "I had years to study it and I still don't understand. I think it's because we, as human beings, try to keep our word. So we said yes to the first one, and then we figure, 'Oh, that makes me the kind of person who does stuff like this.' "

"Like, meeting your ex-husband for lunch at the swankiest place in town?" Nathan said. "Do you have any idea how much of my gross operating budget this afternoon will cost?"

"I'm certain that, once I look at a menu, I will," Robin said.

He sent her a mock glower. "How do you know what my company's operating budget is?"

"Well, besides being friends with your accountant?" Robin said. Stacy was one of the first friends she made after Clarence. It was funny how her whole life could divide so neatly into those two categories: Before Clarence, and After. "I can just ask her, and she'll probably tell me. Or I could check the spreadsheets on your computer. Or..."

"All right, all right," said Nathan.

"Clarence didn't keep spreadsheets," Robin remarked, reflecting. "Not for finances anyway."

"Did you ever have enough money to need them?" Nathan asked.

Now it was her turn to glare.

Nathan said: "Look, hon, I... When I first met you..."

"The first time or the second time?"

"The second time."

"...Oh."

"Yeah, you see? It wasn't a good time for you. And, Robin, everyone could see that."

"Not everyone. Nobody did anything except you."

"Nobody cared enough," he agreed. "But I did. I saw you and I just... I mean, you were gone. You were like a walking dead man. —Woman. Whatever. You just... You were on your feet, you were still shuffling around, but you were dead inside. And I just thought... No, I can't let that happen. If there is any spark of life in there, I need... I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't."

She gave a cynical smile and gestured to her body: "You just wanted a piece of this."

"No, I... Well, yes, fine, that was part of it. But Robin, you know by now I didn't marry you to get into your pants. Or, at least, you should."

She shrugged assent. He hated when she got cynical like this.

"Robin, I... Look, the point is... That's who I saw. I saw someone who had been beaten; and I saw someone who had been defeated. And... You can't ask me to be positive about the guy who did that to you."

"But I can ask you to go to lunch with him," she said.

An impatient sigh: "Yes, you can. And because I love you, I will. But not because I have anything for him. It's you I love. It's you I care about. And I'm willing to do this only because it makes you happy."

She gave him a smirk. "So I better enjoy it, is that what you're saying?"

He turned away. "God, I'm not explaining this at all, am I." Frustration roiled through him. Why was it so hard to say what he felt?

Her finger under his chin drew him back to her. "Nathan, I get it." She smiled, her face inches from his. "And believe me, I really appreciate it. I couldn't have come if you didn't want to."

"Oh, great: so you mean I could've aborted this whole thing by saying I had a meeting?"

She gave him a smile, and then a kiss—sweet, gentle, the uncomplicated girl he had once known. She kissed him, and it was like the first time again.

A hearty voice said: "Hey, that's my ex-wife you got yer paws on!"

They turned, almost bumping heads. Yep, it was Clarence all right. He had grown out his mustache into a bushy horseshoe, and he had traded in the rodeo wear for motorcycle gear—a plain white helmet in hand, and a leather jacket that hung on him awkardly—but, by and large, it was the same Clarence. Robin gave him a hug, and then, after a bit of hesitation, a kiss on the cheek. What was the etiquette for meeting an ex-husband? With your new boyfriend beside you? An ex-husband you didn't really care for anymore, didn't plan to befriend, didn't plan to have in your life anymore? Not for the first time, she thanked God or fate or whatever celestial power ruled her life that she and Clarence had not had children together.

Robin made the introductions: "Clarence, this is Nathan. Nathan, Clarence." As if any were needed!

Clarence displaced a hand to be shaken. "Now, I think I met you at my wedding. Weren't you one of those in attendance?"

"As I recall," Nathan said. He confined himself to the handshake. He had always envied Clarence his easy confidence, his way of assuming he could just charm his way through any situation. He caught Robin's hand in his own and held it fast, and then cursed himself for possessiveness.

Nathan was right about the operating budget.

For a while it was just small talk: nice weather we've been having, did you catch the game last night. Then there was a lot of catching up to do. Nathan gave the condensed version of his life story—it had been boring, by and large, if pleasant so far—and Robin the sanitized version of hers. She knew fully what Nathan had sensed: that Clarence was quick to attack weakness. She did not intend to show any. She held Nathan's hand over the table.

Clarence did most of the talking for this section of the conversation; he was, Nathan thought, the kind of man who loved the sound of his own voice. From the way he said it, he had indeed gotten his life in turnaround: evidently, being left by his wife had shaken him up some, and he'd taken the chance to sit down and really think about who he'd become. "I never thought... I mean, I never expected to be that kind of man, you know? The kind of man that a woman would have to leave."

That seemed silly to Nathan—had he never been broken up with over the course of his life?—but he went with it. "We always figure this sort of thing will happen to somebody else. We always figure we're too... normal for it to happen to us."

Clarence mimed firing a gun at him. "Bullseye. That's exactly it, man. That's exactly it." As a salute, it left something to be desired, but Nathan kept his face impassive. "I just... It wasn't where I expected to be, you know? So I really sat back and figured out how I'd got there, and... Excuse me." A buzzing noise interrupted him. He glanced down, pulled out his cellphone, frowned at it for a moment, silenced the call. "Where was I?"

Robin had taken the moment to glance at her boyfriend. Clarence was playing the charm full force, and she could see that Nathan wasn't particularly impressed by it—and, probably, was a little resentful that he wasn't fully able to resist it. But it would keep him on his guard, and that was all she could ask for right now. "I had just left you," she said helpfully. "You wanted to figure out what went wrong."

To hear Clarence tell it, he had embarked on a massive self-improvement campaign from then on out. He'd started searching the job market, started hitting the gym, started eating healthier. He'd even (he confessed) canceled his cable subscription to channels of an... adult nature—now, now, he knew this would shock her, because she'd never suspected, but, even while they were married, well... He played the shame well. It might even be genuine.

Robin had her doubts. Clarence had a pretty thorough metabolism; he didn't seem to have gained, or lost, much weight since she'd last seen him, and she knew that he might not have actually changed his lifestyle. But as a decoration, it was mostly harmless, and how would she prove it? Besides, he was in the police force now. Clearly, he'd made good on some level; the cops weren't stupid enough to take on a total screw-up. She hoped. Nonetheless, she decided to obey the speed limit exactly for the rest of her life.

Several times during the recitation, Clarence's phone rang. Each time, he muted it. "Don't you want to get that," Nathan asked, "maybe there's a big accident on the freeway," but Clarence shook his head. Finally he made some adjustment and tossed it down on the table. "Damn these new gizmos. I could never understand them. I'm too old for them. Remember when phones had a dial?"

"I try not to," Nathan said.

"So," said Clarence. "Yeah. I done my best to turn myself around. I'm not proud of what I once was. But, I've done what I can, and now I can put that behind me."

"Good," said Robin, "good. Clarence, that will help you. A man who can face his mistakes... Women like that."

Clarence looked at her. "Do you like that?"

"O-Of course," said Robin, startled. Nathan had a moment of upswelling fear, remembering everything she had said about Clarence's ability to get an inch and take a foot. But she smiled and added: "Why do you think I'm with Nathan?"

"Mmm," said Clarence, nodding. "Good of you. So, Nathan, what is it that you do again? Some computing stuff?"

Nathan nodded. "They're getting pretty complex these days. Really, it's not too hard—I think that, if the average person were brave enough to open up their computer, they could figure a lot of it out by themselves. But most people think their computers are these magic boxes that they don't have a chance of understanding. Which means that, if it breaks, they're in trouble. My company exists to fix those problems."

"So, basically," said Clarence, with just enough delay to indicate skepticism. "People pay you to do something they could probably do for themselves... For free."

Nathan gave a shrug. "Well, you could say that about most services. Car washes? Hair dressers? Restaurants? People are willing to pay for peace of mind, for confidence that the job's being done well." It was a low blow—and besides, he believed in gun control—but he threw it anyway: "Even your job would be like that, if everyone had guns."

Robin gave him a cross look, but Clarence took it up in an unexpected way: he slapped the table and guffawed. "Lord, ain't that the truth! Why have a police force, anyway? It's right there in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers always felt that the people should have the right to overthrow the government if necessary—why else would they put the Second Amendment in? But, I tell ya, man—" He slapped the table again. "If we got rid of the cops, who'd be between us and the idiots with guns? Ha!" Oh, he got a big laugh out of that one. Robin and Nathan traded glances, not entirely sure what to make of it.

"So, what," said Clarence, once he had his composure back, "you gotta... Run around all day, fixing up people's broken computers?"

"More or less," said Nathan.

"Ever get, like, crazy stuff? Like, somebody stick an apple in it?"

Nathan shrugged. "More or less." It had been noodles. Mrs. Brakowski was now sternly admonished not to let her toddler wander into the computer room.

"Must not be a lot of money in that kind of work," Clarence said.

"You'd be surprised," said Nathan, shrugging again. "It pays the bills, and that's all that matters."

"Sure enough, sure enough," said Clarence. "Still, don't you got a future to think about? I mean, what about your children?"

"What about our children?" Robin said sharply.

Clarence seemed taken aback for the first time that day. "Well, I mean... Don't you gotta provide for them? That's a lot of money. What's the statistic now? Half a million to raise one child to adulthood?"

Put that way, it did seem kind of worrisome. Robin spoke as much to allay her own fears as to answer the question: "Then, before we have them, we'll make sure we're ready."

Clarence blinked. "...'Before'?"

"Clarence, I don't know where you got the idea that Nathan and I have children. I've certainly never said anything to that effect." And if we did, I probably wouldn't have told you. "Perhaps we will some day. But not yet."

"Oh," said Clarence, "oh. Well. Well!" He laughed. "I just... I just figured... Well, you must excuse me. When you get to be our age, after all... Biological clock starts ticking and all that." He seemed curiously lightened by the resolution.

"Well, we'd have to get married first," Nathan said. "Unless we wanted to do it the other way around. Which I don't think we do. We figure, let's get some money under our feet, get done with our jobs... You know. Take our time."

"What, you're gonna make her have a job even if you marry her?" Clarence said. He turned to his ex-wife. "Wouldn't you rather get to stay home and relax all day?"

The last time I did that, my husband criticized me for it. "I find it better to be productive," she said smoothly.

Clarence looked between them for a long time. "Robin," he said finally, "darlin, I... Hold on." His phone was shrilling again, hopping up and down on the white tablecloth. "Darlin, I... I hate to be the one to have to say this, but... Are you sure he's the right one for you?"

Robin felt her eyes narrow. "What?"

"I'm just... I'm just saying that a, a woman of your... Of your worth, and talents, and breeding... Ought to be treated better than you are."

Nathan gave a single snort of derision. "This is what you made me order a fifty-dollar appetizer for?"

"Clarence, I have no idea what is going through your head, but whatever it is, you can just stop it right now."

"Now, darlin," he said, a picture of wide-eyed innocence, "don't go over-reacting on me—"

"Don't patronize me, Clarence," she said.

"I am not patronizing you," he insisted. "I am merely concerned—as someone who was once a member of your life, a fairly important member— Oh, for God's sake!" It was the phone again.

"Yes, you were an important member," Robin said as he fumbled for it. "And, as I recall, you've done some thinking as to why you're not anymore. Want to talk about what you learned?"

"Yeah, I did some thinking," Clarence said. "And what I see in your fellow right now is a lot of what I was back then! You can't blame me for—"

"What you see?" Robin said, her voice icy. "Or what you want to see?"

She saw Clarence's eyes harden—the same rage that had once meant she was in for another painful night. It still had some power over her, even now, and she turned to Nathan. "Wanna help out a bit, hon?"

Nathan gave a single mirthless laugh. "Why? You're doing fine on your own." And he squeezed her hand, and when she turned back to her ex-husband she could face him without flinching.

"For your information, Nathan is not a workman clipping wires together in the back of some garage. He is the president of a company that fixes most of the computers in this city. I keep my job because I like it—because, believe it or not, sitting at home eating bon-bons is not my idea of an ideal lifestyle. And Nathan is perfect for me. Perfect."

"Oh really?" said Clarence, with an audible sneer.

"Yes," said Robin. "Because he understands me. Who would you prefer to set me up with? What's your counter-offer?"

Nathan said, "Himself."

Now it was her husband Clarence was frowning death at; but Nathan had been affecting a bored nonchalance this entire time, gazing out over the restaurant; and now, even with the heat-ray glare of Clarence's anger on him, he didn't flinch or even twitch. She hadn't known he had that much steel in him.

The impasse was broken by the cell phone again. Clarence made to mute it, but Robin—possessed by something, a devil maybe—was faster. The little display on the front said "Home", which could mean anything. She flicked it open, ignoring Clarence's protests, and said, "Hello?"

There was a long silence from the other end of the phone, punctuated finally by a bluster of noise: "What the fucking Jesus?"

"I believe fucking Jesus is against several religions, ma'am," said Robin. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nathan smirk.

"Who the fuck is this! What are you doing answering this phone, slut?"

"Well, I beg your pardon, ma'am," Robin said, struggling to keep a straight expression. Clarence could probably not hear the other party over the din of the restaurant—then again, this woman was yelling so loud he could probably hear the tone of the words, if not the words themselves. His expression—twisting from anger to dread to triumph in equal amounts—was something to behold. "Perhaps you have a wrong number. Whom were you trying to reach?"

"Is this or is this not Mr. Cluth's cellphone?!"

"Umm, as a matter of fact it is, ma'am." Glibness seized her: "Clarence Cluth's cellphone speaking. How may I help you."

"You tell that motherfucking son of a bitch to get his ass back here right now! His son has been screaming its little ass off all morning! And you, my dear little hussy—the moment I find out what your name is, I will circulate it and my friends on the force will have you locked up! That is a married man you have sunk your pathetic little claws into! Prostitution is illegal in this state, as you damn well know seeing as you are one, and—"

Robin leaned the cellphone away from her ear, unable to keep the smile off her face now. "It's your wife!" she said. "Here, she wants to talk to you."

Nathan gave a single guffaw. What little color remained in Clarence's face subsided into pale fear. He shook his head.

The missus was still going. "—what he would want with a pathetic woman like you, probably a scrawny little bitch with tits like thimbles, what's your name, anyway, Butter??"

"Well, if you insist..." said Robin, and closed the phone and tossed it to the table.

Nathan sprang to his feet. "Darling? Shall we?" He bowed to Clarence. "It's been a pleasure."

"It has indeed," Robin said, beaming. "It's good to catch up with old friends, isn't it? Ciao."

Clarence remained sitting, staring at the table. As they left, the phone started ringing again.

They laughed all the way home.

In the days following, she spent more time with him than ever before: talking with him, laughing with him, touching him. There was little they didn't share in those couple of weeks. She felt more comfortable with him than she had with anyone, felt as though there need be no limits between them, no boundaries. But there was one. Just one.

When they first dated, Robin could never picture what it might be like if they were to do it. Obviously, there would need to be a marriage first—and that in itself was a whole minefield of treacherous forecasting. What would the weather be like? What church would it be in? How old would they be? Would she be wearing a white dress, or would Nathan want a different color for her? What music would be played? All these things would need to be answered; she had many of her own ideas, of course, but she wouldn't be the only person getting married that day. And then would come the consummation, and about that she could picture even less, because about that she did not have her own ideas. She understood, from biology textbooks throughout the years, what sex entailed, but she wasn't entirely sure why people would want to have sex; Bio 101 never really covered that. Unless it had to do with the feeling she got from Nathan sometimes, when he kissed her really well or when she let him touch her skin under her clothes—the intimacy, the tenderness; the heat in the place between her legs, and the ache there, the emptiness needing to be filled. But if it wasn't like that, then, forget it, she was lost.

And she certainly didn't know very much about the mechanics and logistics of sex either: the first time she found out there were positions, she was flabbergasted. And what the hell was oral sex? A man put his mouth where? A man would do that voluntarily? If you paid Robin money, she wouldn't put her mouth on her own whatever! So if she wanted to contemplate what it might be like to make love to Nathan, it was largely a misty, unformed thing, a vague application of furniture-assembly instructions and the rumors that it was a fun thing to do. Why would it be fun, anyway? She assumed she'd figure out when she and Nathan got there. If they ever did.

Of course, it was Clarence who got there first.

So when Robin got a second chance with Nathan, to a certain extent she was more knowledgeable. But it didn't make her any more eager. For what had lovemaking with her husband been, if not boring? Well, it had been interesting too—interesting in a scientific sense. She had had plenty of time to learn about the physical mechanics: how a woman's vagina increased in size for intercourse, how a penis moved within it, what it felt like to have a man's semen inside her. The silly faces a man made during intercourse; the awkward way his body moved. Clarence had always taken the trouble to get her aroused enough to entertain penetration—probably for his own comfort; she could not imagine that a dry vagina was terribly pleasurable. But she had rarely been excited, rarely been passionate. Sex with Clarence had never been pleasurable for her—not painful, but not pleasurable; just another sensation. She had been able to view it with detachment. She now understood what the old books had meant when they said to "lie back and think of England." She wondered how many women had achieved it quite as well as she had.

With Nathan, then, was a whole new world of exploration, a whole new layer. The less-than-thrilling physical education was over. But Nathan's hands, Nathan's lips, Nathan's eyes: they awakened in her the idea of desire. He could touch her, or breathe on her, or even whisper her name, and suddenly her skin would be tingling, her heart racing. She would feel her nipples harden; she would feel a heat between her legs, and an ache, and a sense of need. These were the things Nathan showed her—and they were so different from her previous understanding of sex that she almost couldn't believe they were one and the same.

When they got back together, she was even more reticent about sex than before. Before, the idea of sex had been a nebulous, unformed shape tinged with curiosity and a little bit of desire; now she knew it in detail, and had no interest in it. Nathan saw this, and it got to him; she could see his impatience, and that he was gathering himself to give up and move on. But what could she do? So she told him. She sat him down and told him. It was one of the most painful conversations of her life—having to tell him what she had done with Clarence; having to relive those moments; having to see the revulsion on his face, mastered quickly but still there. "And the worst part isn't even all that. The worst part is... That I was wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"To wait. —Well, not to wait. To give. I wanted to wait because I only wanted to have sex with someone who loved me. And yet... When you wanted—you, who so clearly loved me—I turned you down. And then when Clarence... He didn't love me, and I think maybe I knew that, I knew that all the way to the beginning, but he seemed to, and that was... And after all I had done to you, all I had put you through, I let him do it to me, just because he wanted to, and I thought that love was letting him do it. I made a fool out of me, and I made a fool out of you. I was so wrong. I was so wrong..."

One of the most painful nights of her life... And yet, one of the best nights too. Because, when she cried, he held her, and she knew that he still loved her. Despite all he had heard, he had not turned away from her. And when he held her as she wept, she knew.

At that moment, she knew something else too. I have to do it with him. As soon as possible. Even if he doesn't marry me first, even if he doesn't even propose to me first. I don't know how I'm going to make myself get through it, but I have to. I took away what should have been his; I have to give it back. He deserves no less from me.

And so she broke another rule that very night: the one about not touching under clothes. And she touched Nathan under his clothes, under his pants; and then over his pants, once she had fished him out. It was her first handjob, and she wasn't sure she did a very good job of it—though Nathan had no cause to complain. His cum was heavy on her skin, very different from what it felt like when it was deposited in her vagina, and as she looked at it draped in loops and coils over her fingers, she felt another resurgence of doubt. And another, when she looked at his face and saw how scared he was. But Nathan was Nathan: he buried his doubts, his fears, his confusion, and turned to what was more important to him than anything else: her. And as he kissed her, and thanked her, and told her how good she was, she saw something else in his eyes: gratitude. Intimacy. Love. And when she saw those things, she thought, Maybe I can do this. After all. After all.

From then on, the rules were off. Not that they broke them all at once; she still had her own insecurities to deal with, and Nathan had learned patience. Besides, it was one thing to want something you couldn't have, quite another to want something you could. A line had been crossed, and he understood that—if he wanted to—she would, indeed, yield up herself to his pleasure. He didn't want to. He didn't want her to do this out of obligation; he wanted her to want it. Obviously, it would please him more if she came to him willingly; but even more than that, he didn't want to keep to the old ways. Robin clearly didn't think of it as such, and Nathan never said anything, but to his mind, what she had endured was little better than rape. And if he, Nathan, exploited her sense of obligation to get his own way, then, in his own opinion, he, Nathan, would be no better. Never mind that she would be, technically, consenting; that was not the issue. It was her participation that mattered. As far as he was concerned, anything less than full participation was non-consensual. And he would not be party to it. Her pleasure was his pleasure now; nothing more, nothing less.

They still went on dates; they still went out with friends; they still watched movies together, or went to concerts, or went dancing. But, with much more regularity than in college, they might also find themselves at her place or his, arms about each other, lips entwined, learning about each other's bodies. It was a slow process, but rarely did an evening pass without some progress being made. In the end, it was easier than she expected. Nathan's body—handsome, strong, proud—she had no problem loving; Clarence had never tried to initiate her into the mysteries of the male form, and she had no memories there to contend with. In reverse, yes, sometimes she did: sometimes she would flash back uncontrollably to that cocksure grin, to those eyes surveying their territory with grim pride, and she would need Nathan to back off for a little while so that she could breathe. But she always overcame these moments—and, to her surprise, there weren't as many of them as she expected. It was worst when she was lying down and Nathan was looming above her; they realized this, quickly, and started finding other configurations. And though it sometimes became inevitable—when Nathan went down on her, for instance—there was sometimes something to contend with it.

Explorations with Clarence had always been a little bit deadened by fear. She could never be sure he wasn't going to do something unexpected, or bend the rules to suit his needs. She could never be sure he wouldn't hurt her, and it was difficult under those circumstances to give herself up to pleasure. Gradually it stopped being pleasurable at all (or, at least, she learned to ignore it). With Nathan, she had none of these concerns. For one, there were no rules; it was a tacit agreement between them. But for another, she knew—she knew, deep in her heart of hearts in a place that conscious thought didn't reach—that he never would hurt her, not intentionally. There was nothing to fear; there was nothing to fear. And so she could surrender herself to the sensations of her body—to his lips on her nipples, on the pale skin of her chest; to his arms around her, strong and supporting; to the dull red ache between her legs, begging for release. And so even though love play with Nathan was in some ways identical to what had happened with Clarence, in this one particular way it was not; it was completely different. She wanted what happened with Nathan. And that was all the working distance she needed to overcome her old fears.

And then they had their lunch date with Clarence and she knew that it was past time.

It took a little bit of planning. It needed to be at his place, because she had a tiny apartment and a single-person bed. And she would need him to be alone, so that she wouldn't chicken out and lose her nerve. So she needed to do some checking around. Stacy proved invaluable in that regard, fishing for his weekend plans with just the right touch of casual disinterest. The first weekend she tried, he had a party on Saturday afternoon—stupid Robin, she knew that, he'd invited her to go. But the next weekend it was all clear. So she invited herself over, feeling the gentle breeze on her skin, feeling worried and not a little stupid, hoping not too many people would walk by before he answered the door.

Nathan, seeing her, thought she might have just woken up—though that couldn't be true; she was a grown woman and it was a Saturday afternoon. Her hair was a shapeless mass, her face without makeup, and she wore a long oversize button-down shirt. The simplicity of her garb highlighted the simplicity of her face—her clear skin, her guileless brown eyes. How could he have once thought she was unattractive?

"Umm... Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I... I just wanted to see you." She seemed nervous for some reason. "Mind if I come in?"

"Of course, of... Come on in."

He closed the door behind her and they traded kisses. From deeper in the apartment she could hear the sounds of a video game waiting for attendance.

"So... What's going on?" he said.

"I dunno, I... I just wanted to... Come spend some time with you," she said. "Remember, we used to do that in college? Not necessarily doing anything, just... Hanging out."

He shrugged. "Yeah." It was taking their relationship to another level—they had been together for fifteen months now, but still only spent time together on dates. But what could it hurt?

She watched him play video games for a little while; then he traded for a driving game, and she played too. It was fun, but she wasn't that good, and it was more fun to just lean against him and watch. And soon he turned off the machine and it was just them in a comfortable silence, his arm around her, his head resting on hers. It was nice.

"So," he said eventually. "Was there anything you wanted to talk about, like, specifically? Or did you really just come for the pleasure of my company?"

He sounded so sarcastic on that last one that she turned in surprise. "Honey, you know I like spending time with you. I wouldn't be your girlfriend if I didn't."

He gave a wry smile. "That makes you the only one. Most of the people I knew in college... This isn't their lifestyle. ...Well, and I guess I can't blame them—I mean, you know." He gestured around his shabby apartment. "I'm a digital geek. It's what I do. It's not for everyone. But it means not having too many friends."

She snuggled closer to him. "Well, I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere."

"What," he asked, "did you get evicted or something?"

"What?!" she said. "No! Where'd you get an idea like that?"

"Well... You come here, unexpected, instead of calling ahead like you normally do. You look kind of frazzled. You don't wanna talk, you just wanna chill. And you don't seem to be wearing much. Normally you're careful about the way you dress, you don't just... toss anything on and wander over to a friend's house."

That much was true. "Okay... And?"

"And... Look, Robin, you're just... You're acting a lot different than you normally do. And that makes me curious."

"Am I really that predictable?" she said.

"Well... Maybe not predictable, per se. But you're very... Polite. You're aware of what the social norms are and you're always respectful of them."

"True." She sighed. "That's... probably why Clarence found me so easy to manipulate. I was so full of the idea of... What I ought to be. What a girlfriend ought to be, what a wife ought to be. And all I knew was that he was calling upon me to be those things, and..." Another sigh. "And look where it got me."

He drew her closer to him, not wanting to be far. He kissed the top of her head.

"And I think that's part of how I know that you're right for me, too," she said. "Because you... I mean, you could have done all of the same thing. You totally could have."

"No, I couldn't," he said. "I wouldn't've been able to live with myself."

"Yes, you could," she said. "Don't lie to yourself, Nathan: you could have, when we first dated, and I honestly might have let you. You could now, too. The opportunity is there. The difference is that you choose not to take it."

Put that way, he didn't sound like quite so bad a person.

"You don't... You don't expect me to be anything," she said.

"What? So I, like... I just think of you as being this personality-less, faceless—"

"No, not like that. Sheesh. I mean that you... You don't place expectations on me. You don't have this list of things that I'm supposed to do and say and be. Instead, you just... Accept me. As I am. For who I am."

He shrugged. "Well... I love you."

She raised her head to look at him. "I know. And that's what the difference is." And she leaned up to kiss him.

For a long, slow time they were entwined there, kissing, her arm around his chest, his around her shoulders. It was a strain for her to reach him, and eventually she sat up to get closer to him; and from there it evolved that she was lying back on the couch while he leaned down to kiss her. And what she had said was true: she felt no pressure. She knew what he wanted, but she didn't feel that looming sense of obligation—that it was her job to give him what he wanted, regardless of her own feelings. It was... freeing. She was on her back on a couch wearing almost nothing, and a man was over her, and she was more free than she had ever been in her life.

"You know I love you," she said.

He smiled. "I know."

For a long time they kissed, cuddling, whispering, simply enjoying the leisure of an afternoon together. But in her heart was a tense hope, a fear: what if he never tried to take it farther? Generally he was reliable, but what if?... And so it was a relief—a relief, of all things!—when he let his hand rest on her bare leg, and begin to rub up and down her thigh as they kissed. She knew he was searching, rising higher and higher, wondering where he would find that traditional barrier: the hem of her pants. She might be wearing really short shorts under the long-tailed button-down shirt, after all.

Except for how she wasn't.

She watched his eyes widen. "You... I have no idea what you're thinking right now."

She giggled a little. "I can probably guess what you're thinking."

"How many people got a look at you while you stood outside my door?" he said. "How many people noticed you weren't wearing a bra—assuming you aren't, but the fact that you aren't wearing underwear would set a precedent that..."

She giggled again.

"Robin, what is going on? You come here to my place wearing nothing but a shirt?"

She pulled him down to kiss him, and then to whisper in her ear. "What's going on," she said, "is that I don't want to wait anymore. I came here so you could unwrap your present."

He was so still she could barely hear him breathing.

"I came here," she said, "to give myself to you."

He pulled back to stare at her with astonished eyes.

"Because I love you," she said. "And it's time to give you what should have been yours from the start."

"Are... Are you sure?" he said.

"Honey, I didn't drive all the way here with no bottoms on to be unsure."

"Then... Well... Then the first thing we gotta do is move to the bedroom," he said.

She beamed.

It was the first time she had ever been in his bedroom, she realized, at least this one here in this apartment. It was an old complex, beginning to fall into disrepair; and Nathan was not the neatest of people. Still, she liked the clutter. All of it said 'Nathan' to her.

While she was looking, Nathan was beginning to disrobe himself, for whatever reason—maybe he didn't want her to feel uncomfortable by being the only one in a state of undress. Whatever the case was, she stopped him with a gesture, and then finished the work herself. She wanted to do it. It was, after all, the first time that she would see him naked.

He was in good condition; hadn't it been his idea for her to start hitting the gym? He wasn't brawny, or particularly broad of chest, but he had more muscle definition than he seemed to when clothed. A narrow line of dark hair traced downward, its eventual terminus still hidden right now by his pants (though not for long). An appendectomy scar slanted between his ribs. His nipples were brown circles against his skin, so much darker than hers—probably for the best; imagine if hers were that color! He'd turn away in revulsion.

When the pants fell away, she could follow the thread of his chest hair down to his groin; and there was his cock, drooping out of the tangle of pubic hair, long and fat. By now she had seen it before, a fair number of times actually, and she could tell that he was already somewhat erect.  She had handled him before, brought him to his orgasm with her hand; but today she did something she had never done before, not even with Clarence: she kissed it. She kissed his shaft where it emerged from his pubic thatch, and then again, lower down the shaft; and then again at his head.

She looked up at him. He looked stunned, almost transfixed; but even as she watched, he came to himself, and one of his hands came up to stroke hair from her face, cup her chin.

"Do you like?" she asked.

"Yeah," he breathed.

"Do you want?"

"Umm... Do you want?"

She thought about it. Honestly, she wanted everything—especially now, while her courage was with her. "What I want... Is to make love to you. To pull you on top of me and have you in me."

Under her chin, his cock twitched.

She ignored it; so did he. "Then, let's..." he said. "Let's do it your way."

She smiled. "Okay." But she gave him one more kiss before she left—and then, wanting to, wanting to see how he would react, encircled his head with her lips and gave him a slow, sensuous kiss, like licking a lollipop. She heard his groan, felt his hand tighten against her cheek, and knew that she was going to enjoy this. (At least, once she had a chance to do it.)

He drew her up and led her to the bed, laid her down on it. He was totally naked now, she clad (still) in only her oversized blue shirt. She didn't even remember where she'd gotten it; had it been Clarence's? Her father's? Whoever had owned it at first, it was hers now, broken in by countless wearings and claimed by the scent of her detergent. It was as comfortable to her now as Nathan's arms were. (Could it have been his? But how would she have gotten it?—they never traded clothes in college, and were never in a situation where she needed to borrow some from him. Perhaps she'd never know.)

Nathan leaned down to kiss her, and once again she felt a flash-panic memory of Clarence; but this time she closed her eyes against it and flung her arms around the man who was actually with her. Nathan. Nathan, her first; Nathan, her love; Nathan, whom she could not live without. She let the kiss heat up, let her passion mount; she wanted to excite him, to make him eager. She wanted to know if she could be his.

One of his hands was sliding up and down her leg again; it began to go higher and higher on each pass, until he had his whole arm up her shirt and his hand touched her ribs. She broke the kiss then, and reached between them to begin unbuttoning her shirt. Once she had shrugged out of it, they were both bare naked with each other. Again, she felt no fear, and was glad for it.

He had seen her breasts by now, had touched them, felt them, suckled at them; come to think of it, he had seen every bit of her there was to see, just as she had seen of him. But always clothes had been pulled out of the way, never removed; she had never seen all of him at once, the way she did now, and he had never seen her all at once either. Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised, then, that he began to explore, to survey, to kiss it all and drink it all in: her breasts, so large to her (D's, and sagging, and painful sometimes); their wide pale areolas with the bumps around the edges; the long gap of cleavage between them. The seam leading to her navel, and the diamond of hair reaching up to it. He was kissing her hips now, doubtlessly feeling the bony knobs there. And then finally she parted her legs to welcome him, and felt his breath on her nether lips for the first time.

Clarence, for all his promises, had never been very good down here. Her orgasms were all from a later date—from Nathan. The first one had been only a few months ago, a culmination of their joint explorations and discoveries. She had loved the feeling, but it wasn't what she wanted now. "Don't waste time," she told him, "I don't need to come. I just want to be ready."

He looked up at her. "I want you to come."

"Then you can do that afterwards," she said. "For that matter, I'm making an oral appointment with your dick. But right now I want us to do it."

He smiled. "Well, while I'm here I want to explore some. But since you ask so nicely..."

She lay back, but with a jolt of apprehension. Nathan had never been face-to-face with her down-there before; all his previous explorations had been only with his hand. Would he find something down there to repulse him? What if he didn't like the color? What if her mound was too large? What if her taste was bad? What if—

Then his tongue made its first swipe across her outer lips, and she had other things to be than insecure.

Nathan knew what he was about, that much was certain; he could tell that, despite all, she wasn't particularly aroused right now, and he was doing exactly what he should to remedy that. She had told him what to do with fingers; now his tongue executed those instructions, faithfully, and it was even better. He licked slow rings around her opening, a slowly-narrowing spiral with one special place at the center. She felt him nearing it, felt herself tighten with anticipation... And then felt him lick at her outer lips again! This time he went up and down, and she felt a moment's irritation merged with a broad amusement. He was drawing the moment out, wanting her to suffer. It was working.

It had another side effect as well: when his lips finally captured her clit, she almost died.

Soon he was alternating techniques: licking up and down her slit, from her perineum to her clit—across her inner lips, and even across the opening to her passage—and then sucking on her clit while flicking his tongue over it. He was brilliant, and soon she needed to pull him away. "Nathan... Nathan... Now."

Then his face was above her, kissing her, his lips meeting hers; she felt his weight settle above her, cast her arms around his shoulders, drew her legs up to welcome him. His forearms were under her shoulders, holding him up; she felt his member bumping at her pussy, and reached down between them to set him at the right place. And then she felt the head of his cock inside her, pushing open her slick, wet walls, and she stilled her movement to listen.

She felt the throbbing heat of her pussy, the gap that begged for release. She felt the coarse texture of his comforter under her back, and the grain-silk of her own hair. She felt his chest against her breasts, felt her nipples pressed against his skin. She felt his breath in her mouth, smelled the scent of his hair. And above all she felt his manhood, his member, his cock, as it slowly penetrated her, slipping inside her—veins and bumps and ridges, the bulbous head leading the way—caressing her inner walls, pushing them apart, pushing them open, spreading them, spreading her... until finally he had no more to give, and he was fully seated inside her, and she could move her hips up to feel him press against her from the inside.

"Oh god," she breathed.

She heard him laugh a little. "I don't think I'm the one you're looking for."

She opened her eyes to see his face dancing before her, his laughing eyes, the narrow nose and scraggly beard, now trimmed to neatness, she had known so well for so long.

"I love you so much," she breathed.

"I love you too, baby. I... I can't believe we're doing this."

"I'm so glad. I'm so glad... This was yours, this should've been yours, I gave it to somebody else—"

"Shh, shh, my love, shh. It's okay. It's okay. People make mistakes. At least we're here."

"At least we're here," she agreed.

He began to move inside her, in and out; she wrapped her legs around his waist, wanting him close, wanting him near. Never had it been like this before. She heard his breathing, the gasps and sighs; heard his murmurs, the things he whispered—that she was so beautiful, that she felt so good; she felt his arms under her, his body over her, and felt not imprisoned but elevated, as though her body was drawn by magnetism to his, was floating up off the ground to meet him. She felt as though her heart was bursting with love; it was her own glorious luck to be here, with this man she loved, giving herself to him—that the mistakes she had made had not damaged them too much to be here, to do this, to enjoy this. Each thrust touched against her clit; each thrust pressed against her walls; each thrust was a delirious eddy of joy through her body. She knew that one day she would come with him inside her, and that it would be glorious. But this alone was glory enough for today.

"I'm close," he mumbled.

"Good," she breathed.

She knew when it happened: she felt him stiffen, heard him grunt. He moved in and out once more; and then he was there, and she felt his buttocks clenching, felt the rush inside her, felt the faint warmth and wetness. And she used her arms to push him back up over her so that she could see his face: his eyebrows raised, his expression straining towards some greater glory, his eyes clenched shut—and then bursting open, unfocused, as the dam broke within him. It was wondrous to see; wondrous to know that it was her body that brought him such pleasure. Funny; she had never looked at Clarence's face during their loving.

He sagged against her, spent, and she cradled him down to her, feeling his racing heart begin to slow, feeling his breath rush through her hair, against her skin; until finally he gave a great groan—"goddageddup"—and pushed himself off her. She felt him withdraw from inside her, and a little rush of loss—or was that his semen? He flopped onto his back, and she rolled over to cradle herself against his side.

"I love you," he said finally. "That was... That was so..."

She kissed his cheek. "I love you too." She put his arm around him, and he gathered her up against him.

"What... I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth," he said. "But... What brought this on?"

"I... It was time," she said. "I realized that I didn't want to be apart from you anymore."

"Oh?"

"After we went to Clarence, I just... Everything that he was just came back to me, and I realized..." She tightened her arms around him. "Everything I want is right here. I don't want to be apart from you. I want to be a part of you, forever."

She felt the chuckle under her skin, heard it in her ears. "That sounds like a proposal."

"I... I guess it is," she said.

"Isn't that supposed to happen before the hot monkey sex?"

She felt her face color, wondered if he could feel the warmth of her skin against his chest. "Well, we did everything else backwards, why not this too? Everything that... Everything that Clarence had from me... It should've been yours. I don't care if you dump me right now, it... All this should've been yours, first, from the start. And now you finally have it. And that's what matters."

His arms tightened around her. "Well, I'm not going to dump you. Not the woman who just gave me everything." She heard the smile. "Forever sounds good to me."

She kissed his chest. "Me too." And there was another period of comfortable silence as she listened to his heart beat.

"So," he said. "I guess I should get up."

"Why?"

"I've got to get you an engagement ring."

"I suppose," she said. "But that can wait. Right now you have something more important to do."

"Oh?" he said. "What?"

"Well," she said, "we just claimed that lovemaking is supposed to happen right after you get engaged, right?" She reached down for his manhood. "And we just got engaged." She gave him her best grin.

"Hmm," he said. "I suppose I could put off the shopping for that."

"Besides, it's the second time I've done this," she said. "The first one went all wrong. Let's get it right this time."

It came out with a little less humor than she'd intended, but Nathan just kissed her forehead. "We will, baby. We will."