Free Best Intentions by Emily Listfield Page B

spiraling into the humid stillness of the air.
    Slowly I feel him turn on his side, inch in my direction, until he is curled around me, his hand moving up the curve of my waist to my breasts. Desire twinges from my lower belly through my chest, mythroat. I want him suddenly with a force that too often lies dormant beneath the predictability of marital sex, all those efficient couplings when you both know what pleases the other and do it because there is no time or will for risky new enterprises that may not pay off. I want him to wipe away the day, the doubts, I want him because I have always wanted him. Most of all, I want him to want me. I turn over, pull Sam on top of me, open my mouth to him. There is a rare urgency to our lovemaking—ah, we can still feel this, this need, we can still do this to each other—which is in itself a vast relief.
    Afterward, Sam falls asleep and for a little while I watch his back rising and falling until I, too, drift off.
    I wake with a start just after midnight to a jagged crack of thunder careening into the streets. A white flash of lightning slashes through the bedroom like a searchlight and then vanishes.
    The weather is breaking in one great clamorous late-summer storm.
    I reach over but Sam isn’t beside me. I lie still, listening to the torrential downpour, waiting for him to return from the bathroom, wanting only to curl once more into the perfect hollow of his arm carved as if for my head alone, but he doesn’t return.
    Finally, I tiptoe out to the living room.
    I hover in the doorway. Sam is standing by the rain-smeared window, his back to me, his cell phone pressed tightly to his ear.
    â€œI just couldn’t do it,” he says. “Not tonight. I’m sorry.”

SIX
    I stand rooted in the doorway, completely still, waiting, listening, but Sam doesn’t say anything more.
    He flips his phone shut and stares out the window before turning around, his eyes distracted, unfocused. He starts when he sees me.
    â€œI didn’t hear you,” he says. The sheets of water battering the window make a speckled shadow across his bare torso.
    â€œWho were you talking to?”
    He shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I couldn’t sleep.”
    â€œWho was that?”
    â€œThat woman I met with about the Wells piece. She left five messages.”
    â€œIt’s past midnight. How can you call someone at this hour?”
    â€œI didn’t want to talk to her, that was the whole point. I’m beginning to think she’s a total nut job. I thought if I called now I could leave a message without actually having to speak to her.”
    â€œAnd?”
    He pauses. “She picked up.”
    He walks over to me, puts his arm around my waist, settling just above the small of my back, he always calls it “his spot,” as if love has its own acreage. “It’s late, let’s go back to bed.”
    â€œCouldn’t do what?”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou told her you couldn’t do something. What couldn’t you do?”
    â€œIt’s nothing.” His hand hovers, then presses firmly against the silk of my nightgown, guiding me out of the living room. “She wants me to confront Wells and I told her I couldn’t without more proof. It would blow up in my face. Let’s just forget about it.”
    I nod, not quite relenting, not quite sure, and yet.
    What choice do I have, really?
    We walk quietly down the hallway, our bare feet padding against the wooden floor, and then lie side by side as the rain pounds against the pavement until, finally, we both fall back to sleep.
    The next morning I am showered and dressed before Sam stumbles into the kitchen. There are no fresh eggs, no cheerful admonitions about school as the girls finish up and gather their things. Sam and I are polite with each other in a hungover, desultory way, the air dense with that