Exposure

the bed and I’m suddenly excited by its newness, instead of unnerved.
In the kitchen we find the cutting board and plates, and make a meal of grapes and soft cheese and good crusty bread. Caroly is in her personal idea of heaven—I see it in the way her eyes narrow each time the Banon passes her lips.
“Your face looks much the same whether you’re eating cheese or approaching orgasm.”
She laughs, covering her mouth with her hand to keep from wheezing crumbs across the table.
“It’s only natural you moved to France.”
She nods, swallowing. “I know. It’s so obvious. I’d say I was switched at birth with a French baby, but I don’t seem to have any inherent ear for the language.”
“You speak just fine.” And I like her accent, as she does mine. I like when we lapse in and out of the two languages, creating some hybrid all our own. Why shouldn’t that be the case, after all? We met as a virgin and a prostitute. Everything has evolved through the perfect mix of fluidity and awkwardness, an absurd but happy coupling. It seems only natural our speech should be the same.
“Is this our future?” I ask, leaning on the table. “Lovely trips and lovely nightly cheese and wine tastings?”
“I hope so. What else could anyone want?”
“I can think of other things.”
That earns me a grin. “Such as?”
“Things I’ll show you once supper is finished.” I take a deep drink. “So much is about to change, when we return to Paris.”
She nods. “All for the better, I hope.”
“I suspect so. Difficult at first, but I’ll suffer for my freedom. Plus I’ve come to appreciate my home all the more when I’ve forced myself to leave it. I revel in the calm a hundred times more deeply.”
Only last weekend, I finally agreed to join Caroly and two of her girlfriends for drinks. I was embarrassed to let strangers witness how I shake while in public, but her friends made it easy. They were hyper and crass and hilarious, and already aware of my former profession. Coupled with the wine, their shameless curiosity drew me out of the unfamiliar setting and into the forgotten pleasures of socializing.
“I’m proud of you,” Caroly says, her tone suddenly serious.
“I know that. You tell me every day.”
“And I’ll keep telling you.”
We eat in a natural, intimate silence, the night sounds serenading us through the open window. Once we’re sufficiently stuffed with cheese and bread, we stow the food and Caroly refills my glass.
“We have to drink it all tonight. It’ll be no good flat.”
“What a terrible burden,” I say, and take a sip.
“I could use a quick shower, to rinse away the journey.”
I’d normally campaign to join her, but a few minutes alone would be well spent simply breathing deeply, adjusting to this place. “I’ll go after you. “
She kisses my cheek.
“Once you’ve scared all the spiders away,” I add.
“Oh, chivalrous.” She swats my arm and leaves to collect her toiletries.
I wander the cottage, marveling at its sheer quiet. I feel very close to the earth, when I’m normally four stories up, gazing down on the ant farm of Paris from my safe little roost. Here I feel like a bird on the ground, acutely aware of what might be above, tensed and ready for flight at the slightest suggestion of danger. I can’t fly though. I can’t drive, and I can’t sprint seven hundred kilometers back to the safety of my flat. My wings are clipped.
And yet it’s not so bad. Not so bad at all.
Caroly finishes in the shower and I take my turn, fascinated by the old enamel tub propped on its lion paws, at the colored glass glinting darkly in the bathroom window’s diamond panes. The water tumbles from the old fixture, a heavy stream slapping my shoulders, feeling nearly brutal after knowing only my own shower for the past half decade. It’s curious, finding novelty in something so simple as water. I let it fill my mouth, thinking it tastes cleaner here. The tub is smooth and rounded, unlike the flat tiled floor of my cubicle back home. How long since I’ve taken a proper sit-down bath? Ages. I’ll have to do that before we leave.
I shut off the taps and dry myself with a towel more thin and coarse than I’m accustomed to, another primitive distinction to add to the list. I leave my hair wet. That seems to do things to Caroly—darkens her gaze, charges it with a hungry glimmer.
I dress in fresh clothes, a thermal shirt and a pair of fine, soft pajama bottoms Caroly bought me, insisting it was strange I didn’t own any “lazy pants”. At first they made me feel half-dressed and unkempt, but I’ve come to see the appeal. When you dress for sleep on a Sunday afternoon, you often wind up in bed, I’ve discovered.
Caroly is in the bedroom, folding clothes and sliding them into the drawers of an old wardrobe. She smiles over her shoulder at me and her gaze catches on my wet hair—so adorable, so predictable. I’d worried this trip would have me too anxious to make much of a go at honeymoon-style sullying, but I needn’t have wasted the energy. Just that look in her eyes has me half-hard, my stiffening cock teased by the fleece lining of the pants.
Once our clothes are put away, we meet beside the bed. I stroke her slender arms and smile down at that peculiar, charming face. Sharp cheekbones, round eyes. The hard line of her jaw offset by the impossible softness of the damp curls tucked behind her ears. She kneads my shoulders, returning the smile.
“You look happy,” she says.
“Why wouldn’t I?” It’s rhetorical. We both had good reason to suspect I’d be a wreck.
She rises on her toes and our kiss is chaste and fond. I rub the tips of our noses together before she drops back on her heels.
She bites her lip.
“Yes?”
“Sit on the bed with me.”
I nod to tell