Ten Years In

It was an ordinary Tuesday. The kids were at Simran's mother's for the week, which happened perhaps twice a year — this accidental gift of an empty house and no schedule. Rahul came home to find her in the kitchen with a glass of wine and no particular plan, and for the first half hour they moved around each other the way married people do in the domestic choreography of arrival: checking in, decompressing, the small negotiations of a shared life. At some point Simran noticed that Rahul was watching her. Not the casual half-attention of two people in the same room but the particular, focused kind — the kind from earlier in their life together. "What?" she said. He crossed the kitchen, took the wineglass gently out of her hand, set it on the counter, and kissed her the way he used to kiss her when they were still figuring out how to want each other — with both hands in her hair and nothing held back. Something unlocked in her chest. They'd been happy. That mattered — they'd been genuinely happy, and the warmth and companionship of ten years was real. But this — the specific charge of being desired like this — she'd missed it without quite admitting to herself that she had. She kissed him back with equal force, her hands at his collar, and felt him pull her closer with the particular urgency that meant neither of them was going to finish the wine. In the bedroom, with the evening light coming warm and horizontal through the curtains, they undressed slowly — unhurried, looking at each other. She'd watched his body change over ten years: the small differences that came with age and familiarity, and which she found she loved, the accumulated realness of them. He looked at her the same way, his hands moving over her with an unhurried intent that she felt in her whole body. He went down on her for a long time. She let him — she gave herself permission to take it, to just feel, to be nothing but present in the sensation of his mouth on her and his hands warm on her thighs. She came the first time quietly, then pulled him back up to her. When they finally came together it was nothing like the efficient intimacy that busy lives produce. It was slow and vocal and self-indulgent, and when Simran came she did it loudly and without any concern for neighbours she didn't have to worry about this week. Rahul followed her, and they lay afterwards breathless and tangled in the particular warm wreckage of it. "We should do that more," she said. "We should empty the house more often," he said. "Same thing." She turned to look at him. "You started it tonight." "I've been thinking about it for a few days," he admitted. "Tell me when you're thinking about it." "Deal," he said, and kissed her again.