" I laughed, and he pinched my bottom." I laughed, and he pinched my bottom. I pulled away from him and walked into the bedroom, turning out lights as I went. I thought about how I had looked the same for so long now, and for seventeen of those years had followed pretty much the same routine as tonight. Brush your teeth, turn out the lights, take off your clothes, get into bed. If he rolls up against you *this* way, and you roll against him *that* way, you have sex. If you roll the other way, or he grabs his pillow in another way, then you don't. I smiled to myself. Sometimes I missed being young and single, but most of the time I liked it this way. Besides, even if I was single again, I wouldn't be young, so why even think about it. "Um." Ben said. I turned to look at him, standing naked in the faint glow from the nightlight in the bathroom. "I think I forgot to put the clock out. Or I didn't wind the cat. Or something. Be right back." He started for the bedroom door. "Sweetie, don't you think you should put something on?" I sat down on the side of the bed. He made a rude noise at me and grabbed a bed pillow and stuck it in front of his crotch. "Okay, I'm decent. Be back in a minute." I watched his round little buns recede from me and go out the door. I sat for a moment on the side of the bed, feeling the cool cotton of the sheets against my thighs. Maybe all forty year old women don't sleep in the nude, but I do. I feel strangled by clothes when I'm in bed. Besides, I like to snuggle up against my husband's furry body. When I was seventeen I would have gagged at the idea of liking a man with hair all over his body, but I certainly learned to appreciate it on a lot of cold winter nights. Ben had a beautiful body, small and compact. His mom was a second-generation Italian, his dad an American Indian. He had the huge liquid eyes and brown skin of his mom, and the glittering black hair of his dad. That hair might be thinning a bit on top, but it was still luxuriously thick and soft everywhere else, and I loved to run my hands through its waves. |