Whatever the reason, she couldn’t get out of her own head. And Owen seemed oblivious to the way her body was there but her mind was somewhere else.
She let him kiss her, and tried to kiss him back. She ran her hands against his shoulders, feeling the broadness of his back, the smoothness of his skin, the muscles working underneath. She touched his hair, caressed his cheek, tasted salt on his neck, tried to enjoy the sensation of his body, strong and agile, against hers, but she couldn’t turn off her brain. Not even as she raised her arms to let Owen remove her cover-up; not even as he bent his stubble-raspy cheeks to her breasts, not even when he slid himself inside her. All of it felt strange, and forced, and even a little cheesy. Owen’s strangled gasps of “Oh, God” sounded silly and dramatic; the way he squeezed his eyes shut as he thrust made her wonder if he didn’t want to look at her. When he swung one of her legs up over his shoulder, Sarah felt a twinge of pain, and was reminded that Eli knew not to pull too hard on that hamstring, because she’d injured it years before during the single time she’d run the New York City Marathon. When she moaned, he mistook the noise for pleasure—another thing that Eli would never do.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, she thought. Maybe it was Ruby’s misbegotten wedding; maybe it was Ronnie’s confession; maybe it was how it had felt to see Eli embracing that strange woman, but it was starting to feel increasingly likely that the main thing really troubling her at the moment was that Owen was not her husband. It was also starting to feel more and more probable that fucking Owen was just a way of getting back at the man she really cared about, the man who’d disappointed her so badly. She was using Owen—Owen, who still loved her! It wasn’t fair, Sarah thought miserably, feeling guilt settle against her like a smudgy cloud. This wasn’t right. She’d have to tell him. They’d have to stop.
When it was over, Owen gathered her against him. Sarah shut her eyes, resting her cheek against his chest. Owen tangled his fingers in her hair.
“Do you think it’s always going to be like this with us?” Owen asked. Sarah wondered what he’d felt; what, exactly, he’d experienced as her brain had hovered outside of her body and watched two middle-aged people get it on. “Is it always going to be this good?”
Sarah didn’t reply, even though she knew the answer: after a few months, every infatuation fades. The passion ramps down, the fairy dust evaporates, the pheromones calm, and, instead of two people who float on clouds of ecstasy, who think of one another endlessly when they’re apart and can’t stop touching when they’re together, you end up two people who have to decide, every day, whether or not you still want to be a couple; whether to stay or go. She’d seen it happen with her friends; she’d felt it herself, with her college boyfriend, Tommy, and then with Eli. But not with Owen, who’d turned himself into a ghost before it could. Did you miss me? Sarah wanted to ask. Did you think of me, the way I thought of you? When did it stop, and who did you meet who stopped it? There had to have been someone for him, the same way for her there’d been Tommy, then Eli.
Owen sounded dreamy and lovestruck, still in the clouds. “It’s never been anyone but you for me.”
Sarah spoke slowly at first. “Last night, my mother told me she had an affair. A long time ago, before my brother and I were born.”
Owen made a startled noise.
“And she’s selling her house.”
Owen sat up, bringing her with him, reaching around to brush pine needles out of his hair, “I’m so sorry, I know how that feels, to lose your place here.”
Sarah inhaled, then blurted out the final confession.
“And Eli—my husband—Eli is cheating on me.”
Owen looked down at her, frowning. “Really?”
“He’s been weird and secretive for months, and I saw him on the beach this morning. With another woman.”
“Brazen,” said Owen, who’d come all the way from New York City and had made love to her right out in the open, five miles from the bed where she’d slept with her husband.
“Shameless,” Sarah replied. When Owen leaned forward to kiss her, she shut her eyes, wishing that she could enjoy it and, if she couldn’t feel pleasure, that she could feel nothing, just oblivion, no thoughts or sensations at all. Overhead, a mourning dove called—too-WHIT, too-WHOO. Another bird chattered back, almost angrily, and some small four-legged creature scampered by, rustling the grass.
“It’s so beautiful here,” said Sarah. She tried to appreciate it, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the water—but she just felt exhausted, drained and sad and empty, so preoccupied that when Owen said something she didn’t hear what it was. She turned toward him, squinting in the sunlight. “What?”