Our Time In Parenthesis

She is wearing a white shirt and black panties. He is wearing his boxer shorts. Their backs are against the headboard and their feet are all tangled up near the bottom of the bed. They pass a joint back and forth slowly. She had been afraid to sleep with him here, fearing she would tense up, like a child. The car is one thing. In a bed is more real.

“So when was Jersey born?” She asks him. He holds in the smoke and then exhales with a little cough.

“She will be 3 in March.” She nods and is quiet as the rolling paper burns in a slow orange circle at the tip.

“Do you guys want more kids?” She is in weird territory. She has been with her husband for almost ten years. Daniel has been with his wife for almost five. And yet here they are, smoking a post-coitus joint in a hotel room. Rock and roll.

“Sure. I like kids.”  She is nodding again. He giggles at this, takes his thumb and sweeps her cheekbone. “You look very serious.”

“Do I? I’m not feeling serious. Just weird I suppose. I…” She stops dead in her tracks as he kisses her. The kiss goes on and on. She forgets her words and is losing her breath. Her mind is not focusing because of the pot and the atmosphere in the room, like another alluvium. She only feels lips. She only tastes him, salty and mineral. She plays back every important word, spoken and written, every idea and story, every intellectual challenge he never hesitated to give, every dream he planted in her, so that the roots turned to buds and then to leaves, then to vines, then to branches till all parts of her had a growing thing she called by his name, as if she took him with her. This is love, she thought. And the kiss broke. The joint burned his fingertips.

“Damn it!” He yells and laughs and they hop out of the bed to find the lit cherry that he had dropped to save his finger. She is laughing and he grabs her again, his hands on her ass, lifting her to the heat register against the windows. He rests her there and she feels the cold window against her back and palms.

“Now, what were you saying? Before I almost burnt us down?” He is not focusing, his hands are cruising. He is staring at the skin on her face and memorizing it. He traces her ear with his finger, then down her neck, then the shoulder. She wants to ask what is next. But next he kisses the very same spots and she is panting, she is so engrossed in his energy. She wants him to say he will leave his wife, she will leave her husband they will have their own gorgeous babies. Instead she leans in and cups him with hands made cold by the icy pane at her back. He jumps and then settles into her.

” Nothing, Daniel…” And they start all over again because in her heart she knows, there is nothing after this.