“I’m drawn to women who are hard to read, I always have been. But I’m learning, because I can tell that you’re not saying what you’re thinking, right at this minute. Are you?”

His voice had gone slightly blurry, as if he were drunk or near sleep. There was resignation in his expression, and that cut her to the quick.

Angie pressed herself against him. She put an arm across his chest and her face against his neck and she kissed him, softly, on the underside of his jaw and then on the mouth. She kissed him again, trying to apologize without words for the things she couldn’t say. He caught her wrists and flipped her over on her back and kissed her back.

“John,” she whispered. “I can’t explain Caroline to you, but I can tell you about me, and how I feel about you. That will have to be enough for right now.”

He rubbed his face against hers, caught her lip between his teeth and kissed her, breathed into her. “You’re what I want,” he said, and then he pulled away from her. “You, and a shower.” He caught her wrist and drew her along with him.

The tub was ancient, huge, a luxury boat with paws for feet. An awkward shoulder-height shower arrangement had been added in the sixties, but this bathroom was the first thing John had remodeled after his aunt died. He kept the tub, updated the shower hardware, and added a pale linen curtain that could be drawn around the entire circumference.

They stayed there until the hot water was gone and they were both exhausted and Angie was as soft and loose and open as an overblown rose. John wrapped her in towels and rubbed her dry and then tucked her into bed next to him. She was almost asleep, breathing deeply, when she suddenly roused herself enough to roll out of the towel and drop it by the side of the bed.

“Skin,” she mumbled. She pressed herself against him, and slipped away into sleep. John stayed awake for much longer, every sense focused on her textures and smells and the sight of her. He had brushed his teeth and lost her taste: salt sea, milky sweet. He thought of spreading her open with his hands, taking his fill, swallowing her whole, and then pushing himself, all of himself, inside her while she whispered in his ear and undulated around him, hair like floating seaweed, her body suckling insistently, come and come and come. When he woke she would be next to him. Angie in the night. Angie in the morning. He let himself relax and slip down, follow her down and down into sleep.