Chapter 6
Ingrid stumbles into her intimacy coaching session still in a daze.
Her whole body’s been shaking ever since Dr. Hayes dropped the news.
She just wants to go home and start figuring this out: How is she going to find this person?
How much is an appropriate amount to offer a young person given the risks?
Is there any appropriate amount? And what will Kyle think about all this?
She tried texting him, but he didn’t respond, which means he must already be there. Kyle’s almost always on his phone.
She had thought about adding spyware to his cell after the escort incident.
But she could never bring herself to ask someone how to do it.
Not even her two closest friends, Laura and Joanne, know.
She just didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to admit to anyone that her husband banged two random twentysomethings in a hotel room five months ago. Because then it would be real.
It was Kyle’s idea to go to a counselor. He pitched it to her as an opportunity to get to the root of their intimacy issues. She didn’t know what “their” intimacy issues had to do with him sticking his dick inside two strangers, but she agreed because it was only fifteen minutes from her office.
As soon as she enters Geneva’s office, her husband looks up, in his snug white T-shirt, sweats, and sneakers.
Another thing she deeply misses about him having a job—him actually putting on a real shirt every morning.
Geneva greets her with a huge smile. Geneva’s a bubbly, enthusiastic white woman with silver hair and beaded jewelry and a giant tattoo of the sun that starts on her chest above her bright pink tunic, leaving one to wonder where it ends.
“Hi, sorry I’m late,” Ingrid says, taking a seat next to Kyle.
“Oops!” Geneva chuckles. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Oh right, the kiss.
She looks over at her husband. She closes her eyes and cringes a little as she moves in for the kiss.
It’s not that she finds him unattractive.
By all objective standards, Kyle’s a good-looking fifty-nine-year-old.
Still has all his hair. He’s in great shape thanks to all the free time he now has to go to the gym.
It’s that the idea of having her marriage judged by a kiss is so…
well, Hollywood. Built on a lie that she helped create.
She thinks of all the intimacy coordinators on set, the prosthetics, the heat pads.
It’s all so mechanical. Behind the steamy scenes, there’s nothing but riders and bright green tape and reshoots that last hours.
And yet here they are…for everything that she and Kyle have built together, their twenty-seven-year marriage is still reduced to this one act.
Ingrid brushes her lips against Kyle’s.
Kyle holds Ingrid as they kiss. He’s definitely more into it than she is. Some days Ingrid thinks he got into this whole escort mess just so he could end up here, telling someone everything he wants to do sexually and getting a gold star.
“Missed you, sweetheart,” he says to Ingrid when they pull apart.
“Awwww…that’s lovely,” Geneva says, putting a hand to her sun tattoo. She beams at Kyle. Ingrid discreetly rolls her eyes. Why is Kyle her favorite, when he’s the one who fucked up? “So catch me up. How have the last couple of weeks been?”
“Great,” Ingrid says. “Everything’s fine. Actually, we kind of need to cut out early today. Something came up.”
“Oh noooo…” Geneva says, making a disappointed noise through her teeth.
Kyle sighs. “I thought we agreed. We were going to take this seriously…”
“I am taking it seriously.”
“Then let’s hear it, Ingrid,” Geneva says. “Have you been doing the tasks I assigned?”
“You mean the thirty-minute cuddle?” Ingrid asks.
“She hasn’t,” Kyle informs her.
Ingrid glances at her phone to see if there’s a new message from Charlie.
“Ingrid…”
Ingrid snaps her head up. “I’m sorry. I’d love to cuddle for thirty minutes on a bed of roses while a Swedish man drapes chocolate all over us, really I would, but I have a job. I have responsibilities. I have people who need me—”
“What about Kyle?” Geneva asks gently.
Kyle puts his hand up. “I’m game, with or without the Swedish man, just FYI…”
A laugh escapes Ingrid. At least he still has his sense of humor; she’ll give him that.
Geneva beams enthusiastically. “Why don’t you clear some time this weekend and put it on the calendar?”
“I’m not putting thirty minutes of cuddling on our calendar.”
Geneva gives her a look. Ingrid feels like she’s in grade school again, being reprimanded for failing her Friday spelling test. “Intimacy is as important as any of our other appointments.”
To prove her point, Geneva whips her own phone out and shows them the calendar she shares with her husband. There are appointments for Sudsy Foreplay and Foodgasm for Two. Ingrid wants to burn her eyeballs.
“We mix it up every few weeks,” Geneva boasts. “It’s never the same tired old thing.”
“With sudsy foreplay, I wouldn’t think so,” Kyle says.
Ingrid peeks over at him. She makes herself picture them in five years, when they’re finally in a place where all this is hysterical.
When they can look back and beam with pride at the fact that they survived this ludicrous chapter, when the word sudsy was used to measure their marriage.
Then a gasp of a thought—will she even still be here in five years if she doesn’t do the experimental blood therapy?
“All right, Ingrid,” Geneva says. “What’s your list of turn-ons this week?”
Ingrid jerks back to reality.
“Candles,” Ingrid starts.
Geneva closes her eyes. “Mmmm, love a good candle. What scent was it?”
“Graveyard fog,” she blurts out.
Ingrid hadn’t meant for it to be funny. She was literally thinking about graveyards.
But as Kyle laughs, she feels something warm spread inside her.
If she’s being honest, this is her biggest turn-on—this right here.
She’ll never forget the first time she made Kyle laugh.
They were at a bodega near her apartment in New York.
She told him the bodega cat was the standard she was holding boyfriends to.
Had a job. Didn’t give a fuck if she got another bag of chips. Listened to her for hours.
She smiles a little at the memory.
“Graveyard fog? OK…” Geneva says. “What else?”
“Let’s see, the drink receipt from the Starbucks printer,” Ingrid continues, glancing at Kyle.
“You mean the frothy drinks?” Geneva purrs. “Mmmm, I love a good hot foam…”
“No, I meant just the receipt.”
Kyle says, dead serious, “You don’t know Ingrid. Receipts are like therapy for her. It’s almost spiritual, her need to control and keep track.”
Ingrid stiffens a little. Is that supposed to be a dig at her?
Geneva frowns at both of them. “Look, I know you guys don’t want to be here,” she starts, looking to Ingrid.
Any other day, Ingrid would deny it and start muttering a bunch of believable turn-ons just to avoid the colossal waste of time that is trying to find a different intimacy counselor.
(They are even harder to book than aestheticians in this town.) But not today.
Not after the news she’s just been hit with.
“You’re right, I don’t,” Ingrid says.
“Could it be that you’re still holding on to resentment from Kyle’s past roaming?” Geneva asks.
She wasn’t going to let Geneva have it, but that’s some real bullshit. “I’m sorry, are we on an African safari?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he look like a lion who just got lost? Because that’s what I think of what I hear roaming…”
“I did just get a little lost,” Kyle says in his defense.
“Oh, you’ve been lost for a long time,” she fires back.
“How?” Kyle asks. “Tell me, how exactly was I a bad husband before all this? I’ve been a wonderful dad—”
“No one’s debating your dad skills here,” Ingrid says.
Then she stands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
You can’t manufacture intimacy. It’s not something you can make happen with the perfect calendar and soundtrack.
It takes years. Takes hundreds of tiny decisions—what you do, who you prioritize, who you make time for.
It’s not just about physical intimacy. Frankly, that’s so male centered! ”
“Male centered?” Geneva asks.
“Yes, male centered! I’m sick of talking about my sex life! Maybe I’m just old, have you considered that? Maybe I’m not interested! Maybe I don’t give a shit anymore. You wanna know what turns me on? Getting to bed before ten. Falling asleep and staying asleep. Traveling without a hemorrhoid.”
Geneva gasps. “Ingrid, please! Don’t say hemorrhoid in front of Kyle!”
“I’ll say hemorrhoid in front of my husband when I want!” Ingrid says, pointing at Geneva’s phone. “That’s true intimacy! Put that into your fucking calendar!”
She’s losing it. But she doesn’t care. She’s tired of keeping it all in. What for? She’ll probably end up dead anyway. What a cruel joke life is.
“The thing that blows my mind is I don’t know why he’d give all that up,” Ingrid says, blinking back the tears as she looks over at Kyle sitting on the couch. She hates him as much as she misses him, adding with a whisper, “He was my best friend. We were a team.”
Kyle turns to her. His eyes are wet. “We still are. I’m right here. Those girls…they meant nothing. It was one time. I don’t even know their names! You’re still the love of my life, Ingrid. Nothing’s changed.”
She shakes her head.
Kyle mutters to the carpet, “Ingrid, if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”