Page 82 of Fox
It can’t be comfortable, I think, when I come out at six in the morning, and he’s still asleep.
The couch is too small and his feet are hanging off the end and his expression in sleep is the unmanaged one, the real one, and I stand in the doorway of Dina’s living room and look at this man—this difficult, morally flexible, complicated man who is showing up for me in a way no one ever has—and I feel the thing I have been not-feeling, fully, in my chest, with no armor.
I make coffee in the kitchen instead of in the diner.
The noise plus the smell wakes him.
He comes into the kitchen, a lazy smile on his face.
He kisses me.
See, I’d be mortified to do so without brushing my teeth. Fox doesn’t care. He helps me not care, so I kiss him back, just for like a half a second.
I hold out the coffee for him, and he takes it. “Thank you.” He’s saying that not just for the coffee but for the kiss and for letting him sleep here.
“Don’t make it a thing,” I warn him.
He grins cheekily. “Sweetheart, it’s already a thing.”
Two nights later, he manages to get into bed with me.
“What are you reading?” he asks, lounging against my bedroom doorway in sweatpants and a T-shirt.
I hold up the cover ofMadame Bovary.
He straightens and pushes off the frame, coming into the room. He leans over to look at it. “Is it good?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it about?”
“You know what it’s about.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“It’s about a woman who makes a series of risky decisions that have reasonable consequences,”
I snap.
“Can I read it with you?”
“What?”
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s readMadame Bovarytogether and see how Emma convinces herself that Léon is a good idea.”
He gets under the covers with me, and we read freakingMadame Bovarytogether for fifteen minutes before my ribs make their opinion known and I shift, trying to find the right angle.
“Here.” He adjusts the pillow without looking up from his page, and I settle against him because it is the position that works, because the angle is right, because my body has its own memory even when I am trying to be principled about getting too close to my husband.
“You done?” he asks.
I nod.
He turns a page.
I read three paragraphs, absorbing not one single word.
His arm comes around me at some point—slowly, with the quality of something offered rather than taken, and I let it, and his chin comes to rest on the top of my head.
