44.
I’m startled by sounds that seem to come out of nowhere. Moans, desperate gasps. Jonah’s hands are on my hips. My hair is falling in his face, my hands pressing down on his shoulders. He pulls my shirt off and moves his hands up to my waist. The sounds are coming from me. I haven’t heard them in so long.
I laugh as Jonah’s hands move up my body. He looks up at me and smiles.
These are the sounds I always tried to make at work. It’s absurd to think those attempts could have ever passed off as pleasure, now that I have these sounds to compare them to.
I missed this. I didn’t think I would have this again.
“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” Jonah asks me.
“Yes.”
We’re standing by his bed kissing and then all of a sudden I am on my back and he is on top of me and I don’t know how he did that without hurting me. When he moves he seems so completely aware of where his body and my body are in space. I’ve never had an experience like this.
“He must know martial arts,” I think. And then I’m on top of him and I’m not sure how I got there. He feels good inside me. I bite my lip.
I want to stay here, I want to keep going, but I want something else more. I pull myself off him, lean down to kiss his chest, his ribs, his stomach. I move down his body. I listen to the sound of his breathing and the sound of my breathing and the sound of my tongue and lips on him.
When he finishes I look up at him and wipe my face and crawl back up the bed to lie next to him. Now Jonah is the one laughing. He pulls me close.
“Holding you feels so nice,” he says.
“I like it a lot.”
We lie in silence for a while and then I ask him if he practices any martial arts.
“Jiu jitsu,” he says.
I smile.
Jonah hasn’t traveled much, but he wants to. He likes daydreaming, talking about other places, imagining what they’re like. I realize how lucky I am to have had the opportunities I’ve had. I tell him about him about my trip to Monterosso, about watching children play soccer in the streets. His eyes light up. I want to tell him I’ve been all over the world, but I don’t. I can’t leave out the why, or with whom, and I don’t know how to tell him these things.