This Is Where I Leave You

ago, this haunted pool that seems to pull dead and buried love to its surface.
    “I’ve been thinking about you, Judd.”
    “Me too.”
    “Do you think you’d like to kiss me now?”
    I glide over to her, my hand falling over hers on the ladder rung. Up close, I can make out the tantalizing outline of her breasts, wet and glistening, where they disappear into the water. “Listen,” I say, but then, somehow we’re already kissing, deep and slow, our tongues colliding softly, gathering speed. And her taste is exactly as I remember it, brings me back in an instant to those nights of sweaty dry-humping in my basement, and I can feel her nipples hard against my chest, her fingers gliding up my back to my neck, pressing against the spot where my spine becomes my skull.
    I have kissed no one but Jen in over ten years, and we have not kissed like this in a very long time, with gaping mouths and frantic tongues, where kissing is its own kind of sex. I am kissing another woman, and the awareness of these lips opening against mine in wet surrender, these fingers snaking down my chest, these smooth, naked thighs wrapped around my hips, is both exhilarating and surreal. If one woman is willing to kiss me like this, it stands to reason that, in due time, others might be equally willing, and for the first time since I walked in on Jen and Wade, I feel something approaching optimism about my future.
    After a while, Penny stops to catch her breath, gasping a little as she turns around to rest her arms against the edge of the pool. I swim up behind her and put my hands on either side of her arms, pressing my chest against her back. She leans her head back to press her cheek against mine. “That was so nice,” she says.
    My body falls against hers, and when my erection, straining underwater against my soaked underpants, falls lightly against the curve of her ass, she emits a low groan.
    “Listen,” I say. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
    “Tell me tomorrow,” she says, pressing herself hard against me. “Just do that now.”

    10:25 p.m.
    Penny left a little while ago, after kissing me a few more times. Now I’m horny and throbbing and sleep is an impossibility, so, for some twisted reason, I dial Jen’s cell.
    “Hello?” Wade’s voice. I should have realized he’d be there. Wade’s not the sort of guy who would pass on the opportunity for some hotel sex. I hang up, wait a minute, and dial again. “Hello?” he says with a little more emphasis, like maybe the mystery caller hadn’t understood him 174the first time. It’s Jen’s cell; why the hell is he picking up? I hang up and dial again. This time his voice is thin and clipped. “Judd,” he says. I listen to his breathing for a long moment and then I hang up. On my next call, Jen picks up.
    “Hey, Jen.”
    “Judd,” she says, probably with a sardonic, knowing nod for Wade’s benefit. I picture them lying in bed, him running his thick fingers up her naked thigh to the curve of her ass as she talks to me, his other hand fondling his thick, semi-erect cock, getting it ready for her. Wade could not get enough pancreatic cancer to satisfy me.
    “So, we’re going to be parents.”
    “It’s late, Judd. Can we talk tomorrow?”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something, again?”
    “No. I’m just exhausted.”
    “Would you have left me?” I say, surprising both of us. “If you hadn’t gotten caught, do you think you would have left me or left him?”
    I can hear her breath catch on the phone. “I honestly don’t know,”
    she says.
    It is one of those questions that can’t possibly have a right answer, but hers still hurts.
    “I’m sorry I disturbed you. Go back to sleep.”
    “Can we talk tomorrow?”
    “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”
    “I hope we can.”
    “Bye.”
    I wait about three minutes and then dial Wade’s cell phone.
    “Hello?” he says.
    I hang up. It’s a small victory, but you learn to take them where you can get them.
    * * *
    Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can - by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life - but when it comes to marriage, it’s a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and puncture your heart like a bullet.

    11:55 p.m.
    I am