Posts with Grant in them usually did well among her primarily female following. He gave good camera. But now Whitney tensed, suddenly worried that some commenter in a Des Moines basement might have an unexpected flash of insight, steeling herself for a “bet they haven’t had good sex in years” or a “trying waaayyyy too hard.”

No, the only comments coming through tonight were the heart-eye emojis, the “TOO CUTEs,” the “#relationshipgoals.” She exhaled, staring at Grant, and then at her own radiant face in the photo. Maybe she really was as openmouthed-smile-happy as she looked.

And then on Monday morning, Christopher sent her a message, and she knew that she wasn’t.

Looks like you had a busy weekend, he wrote. I’d recommend a massage on Wednesday.

She let the message sit there. Underneath everything she did—the errands she ran, the games of peekaboo she played with Hope—it thrummed and rang in her mind like the telltale heart, the steady beat of Christopher, Christopher, Christopher. She felt like a tween mashing her face against a Justin Bieber poster—ridiculous-looking from the outside, but inside, filled with an almost holy, previously unknown longing.

At Tuesday’s playgroup, Gwen brought up the subject of preschool, and when Whitney said that she hadn’t started looking into any of that yet, Gwen went off on a very earnest monologue about how you had to figure it out early, or else all the prime spots would be taken, and if a child didn’t get the right preschool spot, it put them at a disadvantage for elementary school, which put them at a disadvantage for high school, which totally screwed them over for college. “I started researching for Reagan weeks ago,” she said, and Whitney wanted to strangle her.

As soon as all the women left her apartment, she ran to her computer. Yes, I think you’re right about the massage, she wrote back. I need it, badly.

* * *

—

This time, when Christopher opened the door, he led her to the bed and took his time with her, unbuttoning her dress so slowly that it drove her crazy with anticipation. Thank God, all her residual flab had finally gone away, she thought, as he slipped the dress from her shoulders, over the long, lean muscles in her arms. Once he had her completely naked, he didn’t unbutton his own pants. Instead, as light from the window streamed in, he began to kiss his way down her stomach.

Whitney’s heart started racing. A month after giving birth, she’d examined her vagina in a handheld mirror and had nearly cried at what she saw. She was disfigured, her delicate Georgia O’Keeffe petals now the swollen, split lips of a hockey player after a brawl.

Grant had never been the most enthusiastic oral-sex giver anyway. On the infrequent occasions he did it, he treated it as a warm-up, a couple of minutes of cursory licking to get her wet enough for the main event. Since Hope’s birth, he’d never offered, and she’d never asked. Well, it had never felt that good for her anyway, so it was no great loss. But now Christopher was heading down there, and panic gripped her at what he might see or smell. What if she was sweaty or, God forbid, fishy?

She propped herself up on her elbows. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Really. Here.” She reached down and tried to stroke him through his pants, to redirect the action, but he caught her hand and looked up straight into her eyes. Then, to her total surprise, he laughed.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I want to.” He placed his hand on her chest, right in between her breasts. She looked down at his fingers. He’d taken off his wedding ring before she’d arrived. Something about the gesture made her flush. Was it a courtesy to Gwen or to her? Before she could figure it out, he pushed her back so she lay flat against the mattress.

Above her, the light fixture in the ceiling glowed a warm cream color. No merciful, obscuring darkness to hide the wear and tear on her body. As Christopher studied the most vulnerable part of her, she tightened up. “Hey, relax,” he said as he ran a finger along the inside of her thigh. He waited a second. “You’re not relaxing.”

“I’m afraid I might look like a drooping mess and smell like a rotting fish,” she said in a rush of honesty that surprised her.

“Hmm,” he said, taking a sniff and then parting her lips and staring straight into her. “No fish smell. And actually, you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, really?” she said in a teasing tone, despite the fact that, at his words, her legs had started to tremble.

“Yes. Now, stop talking, and let me make you come already.”

She let out a breath, fully sinking into the soft sheets beneath her as he began to flick his tongue up and down, so lightly at first that she shivered. As he grew more insistent, she glanced at him, expecting to see his face screwed up like someone performing a mildly distasteful task—a dog walker picking up poop, maybe, or herself when Grant was taking a long time to finish—but Christopher actually looked like he was enjoying himself. And not just in a “Well, this is fun enough” way. Like it was turning him on. That was what allowed her to fully let go, to focus on the feeling between her legs as it grew and grew, then narrowed to a radiant pinpoint of pleasure, then rushed through every part of her body.

Oh, God. Sweet Jesus. This kind of orgasm was a revelation. Back in college, during a drunken game of “Would You Rather” with her roommates, someone had asked the classic “Would you rather give up cheese or oral sex?” question, and though she’d said she’d rather give up cheese when she realized that was the cool answer, she hadn’t understood the dilemma. Of course cheese was better than oral sex, she’d thought, assuming that everyone else was playing up their love of having a man’s face rooting around down there too. They were merely a group of girls in sorority sweatshirts pretending to be women.

Well, now she was a woman, and she’d largely given up cheese anyway as her metabolism had slowed, and she was thunderstruck by the realization that College Whitney had given the right answer after all.

Later, after Christopher finished too, they lay tangled together, beautifully spent, catching their breath in the minutes they had left. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her, and because she felt afraid to tell him that Gwen’s reproachful face had just swum into her thoughts—they had an unspoken rule that they didn’t talk about their spouses or their children in this hotel room—she said the next thing that came into her mind. She told him the story of the snow globe in her yard, all the gory details, even though she’d never told anyone about it before.

When she was done, he looked at her like she was the most interesting woman in the world. “I didn’t come from wealth either,” he said. “My dad was a middle school science teacher. I can still name every bone in the body.”

“No way,” she said, laughing, so he kissed her, clavicle to ulna, fibula to sacrum, naming them all as she shook with giggles.