CHAPTER 3
Amelia
My hands moved through the clay, kneading and wedging, preparing it for the wheel.
My heart was shattered into a thousand pieces, but I still had forty jewelry dishes and thirty vases to finish for the PTA fundraiser.
The studio in the basement was my sanctuary—the one space in our home that was entirely mine.
Mark had built it for me two years ago, installing the pottery wheel, the kiln, the shelving for my pieces.
He’d painted the walls a soft cream color I’d chosen and hung good lights so I could work at night.
He’d done all of that because he loved me.
Or so I thought.
Amelia, It’s just an experiment. It’s for us to explore new possibilities. But if you say no, I’d drop it right now. The only thing is, in that case, maybe it wouldn’t make so much sense for you to uproot what you have here to come to Paris.
An open marriage? I thought these things happened only in movies. Or to other couples who live under the same roof yet detest one another. The concept was so foreign to me that it hadn’t even deserved mindspace in my head.
But now it was real. Too real. The moment those words came out of Mark’s mouth, they became a permanent entity in our marriage, and even if I said no, it would always be present in between Mark and I, always mocking me, always making me realize I was not enough for my husband.
How could he propose such a thing? How could he stand there in our kitchen, after spinning me around and kissing me, after talking about celebrating together in Paris, and then casually suggest we date other people?
My hands pressed too hard into the clay, my fingers sinking deep.
I thought we were happy. I thought we had what everyone else wanted—real love, real partnership, real connection. How many times had we said it to each other? “Nobody gets each other the way we do.” “We’re so lucky to have found this.”
Were those just lies?
Tears blurred my vision as I centered the clay on the wheel. I blinked them back, but more came, hot trails down my cheeks that I couldn’t wipe away with my muddy hands.
Mark wanted to sleep with other women. French women.
Beautiful, sophisticated, worldly women who probably didn’t have stretch marks crossing their stomachs like a roadmap of motherhood.
Women who didn’t have the soft curves and extra pounds that came from two pregnancies and too many late-night snacks while working in the studio.
I looked down at myself—my lacy night gown that Mark liked so much, and that had seen better days. When was the last time I’d dressed up? Really dressed up, the way other women probably did every single day?
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe I’d stopped trying.
The other PTA moms—they worked out every morning, had standing appointments for highlights and blowouts, talked about their Botox schedules and which plastic surgeon did the best work.
I’d always smiled through those conversations, secretly pitying them.
Thinking how exhausting it must be to work that hard just to keep your husband’s attention.
I’d been so smug. So confident that Mark loved me just the way I was.
How stupid was I?
I remembered that last coffee meet last month.
Jennifer had held court, fresh from her tummy tuck, talking about how women needed to stay “up-to-date” or their husbands would wander.
The other moms had nodded sagely, sharing stories about personal trainers and diet pills and minor “tweaks” that kept their husbands interested.
I’d sipped my latte and thought how lucky I was not to need any of that. Mark loved my curves. He loved running his hands over my soft belly, my full hips. He loved kneading my full breasts when we had sex. He’d told me so a thousand times.
Or had he just been lying?
My throat squeezed-in. Fresh tears fell, dropping onto the clay.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go into an open marriage. I couldn’t watch my husband explore other women, knowing that I wasn’t enough for him anymore.
But if I said no...
If I said no, what then? Mark really wanted this. He’d made that clear. He thought it would bring us closer, somehow, which made no sense at all. How could sleeping with other people bring you closer to your spouse?
But what if he was right? What if this was some modern thing I didn’t understand, some way of strengthening marriages that everyone else knew about except me?
No. That was crazy.
Wasn’t it?
I thought about the alternative. Saying no, and having Mark go to Paris without me for six months.
That physical distance would wreck us anyway.
I knew it would. Six months was too long.
Six months apart, with me here drowning in carpools and pottery orders, while he was in Paris surrounded by beautiful women who wanted him.
At least if I went with him, if I agreed to this nightmare arrangement, I’d be there. I could... what? Watch him with other women?
God, how had we gotten here?
How had I gone from celebrating his promotion two hours ago to covered in clay and tears, trying to decide between two versions of heartbreak?
I lifted a beautifully shaped vase from the wheel and placed a fresh glob of clay on it.
I pressed my face into my shoulder, trying to wipe away the tears, but only succeeded in smearing clay across my cheek.
That’s when I heard the door to the studio open.
“Amelia?”
Mark’s voice was soft and tentative, the puppy dog voice he used when he wanted to make-up after a fight.
Any other night this voice would have been enough to melt my anger and forgive him within minutes.
But tonight? It wasn’t just a small domestic dispute.
It was a marriage shattering conversation.
I quickly tried to wipe my face with my sleeve, and continued working at the wheel, shaping a hollow in the middle of the clay mound. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t look at him right now.
I felt him move closer, and could sense him right behind me now.
He bent down so he could be at my level, and wrapped his arms around my waist. His touch sent ripples across my body, and I felt the urge to turn around and cry into his arms. But my hands were still at the wheel, and I wasn’t ready to forgive him yet.
Maybe he realized what a stupid thing he had been proposing earlier and wanted to apologize. Well, he would have to work for it. And explain many things.
He reached out to my hands from the back. His fingers threaded through mine, guiding them softly on the clay on the wheel.
“Let me help,” he murmured.
His chest pressed against my back. His breath stirred my hair. And slowly, gently, he started kissing behind my ear—that spot that always made me shiver.
“Mark—” My voice came out choked.
“Shh. Just feel.”
His hands guided mine, shaping the clay between our fingers. The wheel spun. Our hands moved together, creating something from nothing, the way we always had.
He kept kissing my neck, soft brushes of his lips against my skin, and I felt my body responding despite everything. Despite the hurt. Despite the confusion.
His wet, muddy fingers began tracing up my forearms, leaving dark streaks as they kept going up my arms. The sensation was cool, slick, and surprisingly sensual.
“Keep working,” he said, his voice dropping into that commanding tone he sometimes used in our bedroom, during our role plays.
My breath caught. “Mark—”
“Don’t stop.”
His hands started moving upwards, tracing patterns up my arms, across my shoulders. The clay was everywhere on my arm now —cold and sticky and messy. The more he smeared dirt on me, the more turned on I got.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered between soft gasps.
He traced the curve of my neck with one muddy finger, then another, making broad strokes across my skin.
The cold stickiness of the clay made me want the same stickiness inside of me and at that thought my panty got soaked with sexual anticipation.
I felt heat pooling low in my belly, and I just wanted him inside of me right that moment.
This. This connection. This was real, wasn’t it?
My hands kept shaping the clay because I had been ordered to, and I loved giving into pure submission in the bedroom.
I loved the sensation of giving up every bit of me and being controlled completely by him.
We had set roles that satisfied both our fantasies.
When the bedroom doors locked, I became his submissive little slut.
We loved having rough sex, but since we had kids, it was not easy to do that without making it loud, so we both had toned down the roughness quite a bit.
Is that why he wanted to sleep with other women?
Mark’s fingers were smearing me dirty, claiming me, marking me, and I wanted all of it.
I was loving the filth and the dirt. I imagined how muddy, dirty, and slutty I must be looking right now, and the image made me soaking wet in between my legs.
If Mark thought he would get this perfect sexual sync with anyone else, he was wrong.
Tonight I’d make sure he knew what a stupid idea it was.
He kissed the dip at the base of my throat. The strap of my nightgown slipped off my shoulder. I wanted to fix it but my hands were occupied. I let it hang.
Mark leaned forward over my shoulder from behind, and pushed the other strap down forcefully. He looked at the points of my nipples and smiled. I was horny, I wanted him inside me, and he was pleased with it. His mouth found my breast, sucking slowly, and I gasped.
The wheel jerked under my hands. The vase I’d been ordered to shape collapsed, falling sideways and splattering us both with more clay.
I didn’t care. I was loving this dirty, messy game with my husband, and I was determined to show him how much I was loving this.