Chapter 114
TO ASSUAGE THE GUILT I felt for kissing Teo—twice, I decided I was going to improve my marriage through any and all means necessary.
To start, I asked Francesca to teach me how to make pasta.
She showed me how to mix the dough and told me what kind of pasta maker to buy, then walked me through how to work all the attachments, and soon I was cranking out spaghetti and fettucine, malloreddus and lorighittas.
I got a little obsessed, and for a while Paul and I were eating nothing but carbs, which maybe wasn’t great for our waistlines but did a lot to improve my mood.
I had also decided that I needed to try a little harder around the house, so I bought a few rugs and some throw pillows, put up some curtains, and framed a Mary Magdalene print, which I hung in the kitchen.
While I was at it, I framed a couple of wedding photos, including one of the two of us looking wasted but happy at the Colony House.
Laura noticed the changes right away and said that the house was feeling more and more like a home.
My biggest lift was in the bedroom, where I sat Paul down one Sunday afternoon and told him that I had never once—with the exception of the night of the Submarine Birthday Ball—orgasmed while having intercourse with him.
“Never?” he asked, in a state of complete shock.
“Never.”
“What have you been doing this whole time, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound flippant. “Moaning?”
He looked hurt, so I hurried to offer what reassurances I could. “It’s not that I was faking it. Not in the beginning, anyway. I just didn’t realize what an orgasm was meant to feel like. Because I’d never had one.”
“But now you have?” he confirmed.
“Yes, definitely,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“I was actually thinking… it might help if I showed you.”
“What, like now?”
I drew the bedroom curtains, slipped my shirt over my head and let it drop to the floor, then unhooked my bra. “You got anything better going on?”
“Nope,” he said with a laugh as he reached for one of my breasts and rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
It felt good, but I nixed it. “No touching.”
“Whatever you say.”
When I had stepped out of my shorts and underwear, I sat on the edge of the mattress and found my clitoris with my fingers. Slowly, I began working it back and forth, like I’d done a hundred times before.
Paul knelt before me in a sort of mesmerized stupor.
As I got into it, I worked faster and expanded my reach. I didn’t take my eyes off Paul, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t looking at my face. All his attention was focused between my legs; I swear, he acted like he was seeing parts of me for the very first time.
I had been worried that I might not be able to get off in front of Paul, but if anything, having him in the room was proving to be a turn-on. Eventually, I leaned back on the bed and closed my eyes.
In the silence, I could hear Paul unzip his pants. “That’s not what we’re doing,” I whispered, then reached for his hand and pushed his forefinger deep inside me.
“You are so wet,” he said, a little worshipfully.
“Mmm-hmm.”
He started to move the finger back and forth, but I shook my head. “I don’t need you to do anything. Just keep it there.”
It was one of the few times in our marriage when I made an unequivocal demand and Paul listened to me. No arguments, no dealmaking, no quid pro quos. Maybe he was feeling insecure, or maybe it had dawned on him that I knew something he didn’t. Regardless, I was grateful.
I could feel the buzzy build, knew that soon I’d have no control over what came next. “Don’t move,” I said one last time, to be sure that he knew this request was nonnegotiable. “I’m going to—” Before I could get the words out, my muscles began to clamp around his finger.
It went on like this for several seconds, and all Paul could say when it was over was “Oh my God.”
I let out a little laugh and said, “Uh-huh.”
“I could feel that,” he said.
The thing about trying harder with people is that they try harder with you. I won’t tell you that this one demonstration changed our sex life completely. But I will say that Paul started paying more attention to my needs, asking what he could do to help me get to the same place he was.
In other parts of our life, too, he seemed more attentive. He started buying me fresh flowers in the piazza. Or occasionally offering to cook dinner. For my twenty-fifth birthday, he gave me a pair of earrings. They were these beautiful gold knots, and I took to wearing them every day.
I guess I tell you all this just to say that, after that first kiss with Teo, it wasn’t like Paul and I were done. In some ways, we were better than we’d been before.