Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tina, Watching

There's a woman at table six who wants me.

I've known it since I walked in. I felt her eyes find me before I'd even sat down. But it's a wedding, and the champagne is good, and the lighting is forgiving, and she's decided to be bold about it. I see it in the angle of her body. The way her eyes track me across the room, not bothering to hide it.

Tina sees it too.

I know because her hand just moved to my thigh under the table. Her fingers pressing.

'Don't look now,' she says, leaning close enough that I can smell her perfume, the one that always makes me want to put my mouth on her neck, 'but you have an admirer.'

'I always have an admirer. I'm extremely admirable.'

'Table six. Brunette. Green dress.'

'Is she pretty?'

'Would I bother telling you if she wasn't?'

Fair point. Tina has never once alerted me to someone unattractive finding me attractive. She has standards, even for my hypothetical alternatives.

The wedding is for someone's college roommate's younger sister. We know almost no one here. We came because Tina owed a favor to someone who owed a favor to someone else, a chain of social obligation so convoluted I stopped tracking it somewhere around the third degree of separation. Now we're at table twelve, surrounded by strangers, performing the married-couple-at-a-wedding routine. We're good at it.

'The father of the bride definitely had an affair,' Tina murmurs, her lips brushing my ear. Her breath is warm against my neck. 'Look at the way the mother won't stand next to him in photos.'

'Could be a recent argument.'

'No. That's old anger. That's years of sleeping on her side of the bed.'

I look. She's right. The mother's smile is immaculate and her body is angled three degrees away from her husband.

'The maid of honor is in love with the groom,' I offer.

'Obviously. She's been crying since the vows and not in the happy way.'

'Do you think the bride knows?'

'The bride absolutely knows. Look at where she seated her.'

I look. Table fourteen. By the kitchen. Next to an elderly aunt who appears to be asleep.

'Brutal,' I say.

Tina nods and takes a sip of champagne. Someone across the room catches her eye, an acquaintance, maybe, or someone she's pretending to recognize, and she lifts her hand in a small wave. Her wedding ring catches the light. 'She's not wrong to be worried. The maid of honor is stunning.'

'You think so?'

'You don't?'

'I hadn't noticed.'

The smile she gives me says I see everything you pretend not to see, and I'm not even slightly threatened by it.

That smile does something to me. It always has.

The band starts playing something slow. Couples drift toward the dance floor. The woman from table six stands. Her dress is actually more teal than green. She's pretty.

'She's coming over,' Tina says.

'She's not coming over.'

'She's absolutely coming over. She's going to ask you to dance.'

'No one asks a married woman to dance at a wedding.'

'Bold women do.'

Tina's hand is still on my thigh. Her thumb is tracing a slow circle, just above my knee, a touch so light it shouldn't register but does, god, it does. She's not looking at me. She's watching the woman navigate between tables.

'Is she your type?' Tina asks.

'I don't have a type.'

'Everyone has a type.'

'My type is you.'

Tina turns to look at me. She's doing that thing she does when she's thinking something she hasn't decided to say yet. I've seen that look a thousand times. It still makes me hold my breath.

'I like when people want you,' she says. Low. Almost inaudible. 'I know I'm supposed to be jealous. Territorial.'

'You are territorial. Your hand has been claiming my thigh for the last ten minutes.'

'That's different. That's mine.' Her thumb presses harder, demonstrating. 'I'm talking about the wanting. Watching someone want you.'

The woman is getting closer. She's been stopped by someone at table nine, a brief conversation, but her eyes keep drifting back toward us. Toward me. I feel it.

'It turns me on,' Tina says. 'Watching her watch you. Knowing she's imagining what I already know.'

'What do you know?'

'Everything.' Her hand slides higher on my thigh. 'That's the problem.'

'I'm jealous of her,' Tina continues. Her eyes are still on the woman making her way across the room. 'Not in the way you'd think.'

'Then how?'

'She gets to see you for the first time.' Tina's voice is quiet. 'I remember that. Walking into that gallery and seeing you across the room and feeling my whole body just... stop. This physical shock. I couldn't breathe right for an hour.'

Her hand leaves my thigh. Rises. Her fingertips find my jaw, trace the line of it slowly, then drift to my mouth. She brushes my lower lip with her thumb. Lets it rest there. A touch that belongs in a bedroom, not a stranger's wedding. The kind of touch only a wife would dare.

'She's feeling that,' Tina says. 'That shock. And I'm jealous. Because I can't feel it again. Not like the first time.'

'You don't feel it anymore?'

She looks at me. Her thumb still on my lip.

'I feel it every time I look at you,' she says. 'But I'm used to it now. It's like living near the ocean. You still hear the waves. You just stop noticing that you're hearing them.'

Her hand drops back to my thigh. Returns to its slow circles.

'I want to notice again,' she says. 'The way she's noticing you.'

The woman has arrived at our table.

'Hi,' she says. Her smile is nervous, hopeful. 'I'm so sorry to interrupt. I was just wondering... would you like to dance?'

She's looking at me. I'm looking at Tina.

Tina's hand tightens on my thigh. One squeeze. Then she releases me, leans back in her chair, and her face is perfectly composed, perfectly pleasant, the social smile I've seen a thousand times.

'Go ahead,' she says to me. 'I'll watch.'

I watch Tina with amusement. The woman waits. I don't get up.

'I'm sorry,' I say, finally, to the woman in teal. 'I don't dance.'

It's a lie. Tina knows it's a lie. But the woman accepts it gracefully, the way people accept rejection at weddings, with a small nod and a smaller smile, and then she's gone, retreating back toward table six with her dignity mostly intact.

We're alone again. As alone as you can be in a room full of strangers.

Tina doesn't say anything about the woman retreating. Her hand returns to my thigh, and she's watching the dance floor. I reach over, let my fingertips brush the back of her neck, just below her hairline. She shivers.

'I used to hesitate,' she says finally. Still watching the couples sway. 'When I touched you. Do you remember?'

I remember. I remember everything about the first time. The bar in West Hollywood with the terrible lighting. The way she looked at me and then looked away. Then looked again. The moment I decided I was going to know her, whatever it cost.

I remember the first time I touched her. My hand on her back, guiding her through a doorway. Such a small thing. My palm against the fabric of her shirt, the warmth of her underneath, and the way she went still. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to understand that I had affected her. That this was going to be something.

I remember not knowing what sounds she made. Not knowing where she liked to be touched. Not knowing that she shivers when you kiss the inside of her elbow, that she arches into pressure at the base of her spine, that she says my name differently when she's close.

I didn't know any of that. And then I learned it. And the learning was so consuming, so total, that I forgot what it felt like not to know.

'I don't hesitate anymore,' Tina says. Her voice is low, meant only for me. 'I know exactly where to put my hands. I know exactly what you need.'

Her finger slips just under the edge of my dress. She knows what that does.

'Sometimes I think about watching someone else touch you. Not because I want them to have you. But because I want to see it again. The discovery.'

She turns to look at me. Her eyes have gone dark. I've spent ten years learning to read her and she can still do this, still go somewhere I can't follow, still surprise me.

'That's the thing.' Her voice is barely audible now. 'That's what I keep thinking about. How there's no way back. How I can't unknow you. How I'll never again get to find out what you feel like, because I already know, I know everything, and it's...'

She stops. Swallows.

'It's wonderful,' she says. 'And it's a loss. Both things. At the same time.'

I understand. I understand so completely that it aches.

This is the secret no one tells you about long love. That intimacy is a kind of grief. That every thing you learn about someone is a thing you can never learn again. That the price of being known is the death of being discovered.

I lift her hand from my thigh. Bring it to my lips. Kiss her palm, slowly, the way I might have kissed it ten years ago, when I didn't yet know the taste of her skin.

She watches me. That look. The one I remember from the beginning, when everything was still possible, when we were still strangers deciding whether to become something else.

'Dance with me,' she says.

'Let's go home.'

'One dance.'

She stands. Holds out her hand.

The band is playing something I don't recognize. Slow, strings, the kind of song they play at weddings because it sounds like what love is supposed to sound like. The dance floor is crowded with couples holding each other the way couples hold each other when they're being watched.

I take her hand. Let her lead me.

We find a space near the edge, away from the lights, where no one is paying attention. She steps into me, her hand finding its place at my waist, and I realize she's right; there's no hesitation anymore. Her body knows where to go. Mine knows how to receive her.

We've done this a thousand times.

But tonight she's holding me differently. Closer. Her fingers pressing into the small of my back. Her forehead tips against my temple and I can feel her breathing, the slow rise and fall of her chest against mine. The warmth of her breath against my jaw. The soft press of her hip bone against mine when we turn.

My hand drifts up her spine. Finds the bare skin above her dress. She inhales, just slightly, my fingertips tracing the ridge of her shoulder blade, the curve where her neck begins.

I think about the woman at table six. What she saw when she looked at me. A stranger. An unknown. All the things Tina will never see again because she's been too close for too long.

And I think about what the woman didn't see. Couldn't see. The decade of mornings Tina has watched me wake up. The fights we've had and survived. The way she knows, without asking, that I need silence before coffee and that I cry at certain songs and that I can't sleep unless her hand is somewhere on my body, any part, just the fact of contact.

The woman saw a surface. Tina sees what holds it together.

Maybe that's not a loss. Maybe the discovery isn't the thing.

'I know what you're thinking,' Tina murmurs against my ear. Her lips brush skin when she speaks.

'Do you?'

'You're thinking I'm wrong. That knowing is better than discovering.'

'I'm thinking you already said it. Wonderful and a loss. Both.'

She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her face is soft in the dim light. Open in a way it rarely is in public.

'But you don't wish you could watch someone else touch me,' she says. 'The way I think about watching someone touch you.'

'No.'

'Why not?'

I consider the question. The way she asked it, like she genuinely wants to understand. Like she's been wondering this about herself, why the fantasy exists, what it means.

'Because I don't want to see someone learn you,' I say finally. 'I want to be the only one who knows.'

She exhales.

'That's different,' she says.

'Is it?'

'I think I want to see the discovering because I miss it. You don't seem to.'

'Because I'm still doing it.'

'Are you?'

I pull her closer. Let my hand slide up her back, feeling the warmth of her through the thin fabric of her dress, the architecture of her spine that I know better than my own. My thumb traces the hollow at the base of her skull. She tilts her head, just slightly. Giving me access. An old reflex.

'You just told me something you've been thinking about for months,' I say. 'Something you were afraid to say. That's discovery.'

'That's not the same as...'

'There are rooms in you I haven't been in yet. There are always more rooms.'

She's quiet. Her body sways against mine, following the music without thinking about it. Her fingers have found a rhythm on my lower back, tracing slow circles through the fabric of my dress.

'I don't need to watch someone else touch you,' I continue. 'Because every time I touch you, I'm looking for the rooms I haven't found yet. The sounds I haven't heard. The places you haven't shown me.'

'What if there aren't any left?'

'There are always more.'

'You can't know that.'

'I know you. And you're inexhaustible.'

She laughs. The one that means I've surprised her.

'Inexhaustible,' she repeats. 'That sounds tiring.'

'It is. You're the most exhausting person I've ever loved.'

She tips her head back. Looks at me, entertained. The woman at table six is probably watching us right now, or maybe she's moved on, found someone else to want. It doesn't matter. None of them matter.

'Take me home,' Tina says.

I don't ask if she's sure. I don't mention the cake, the bouquet toss, the social obligations we're abandoning. I just take her hand and lead her off the dance floor, past the tables of strangers, through the lobby and out into the night where the air is cool and the stars are doing whatever stars do.

In the car, she sits close. Her fingers laced through mine. Her head against my shoulder. I can smell her shampoo underneath the perfume, the smell of our bathroom in the morning.

'I still think about it,' she says. 'The watching. I don't think it'll go away.'

'It doesn't have to.'

'You don't mind?'

'I mind that you thought you couldn't tell me.'

She's quiet for a while. The city moves past us, lights and shadows. Her thumb moves slowly across my palm.

'What if we got it wrong?' she says eventually. 'What if the first time isn't the best time?'

'What do you mean?'

'The first time I touched you, I didn't know what I was doing. I was nervous. I was guessing. I probably did everything wrong.'

'You didn't.'

'I definitely did. But you didn't know either, so it didn't matter.' She shifts against me, her breath warm through the fabric of my sleeve. 'Now I know exactly what you need. And you know exactly what I need. And maybe that's not a loss. Maybe that's the whole point.'

I think about this as we pull into our driveway. The house is dark. Ten years of accumulated living.

Inside, we don't turn on the lights. She takes my hand. Leads me down the hallway. And when we reach the bedroom, she turns to me in the darkness and puts her hands on my face, and I can feel her looking at me even though I can barely see her.

'I know you,' she says.

'Yes.'

'I know exactly what you want. Exactly how to give it to you.'

'Yes.'

'And you know me.'

'Every room I've found so far.'

Her thumbs trace my cheekbones. A touch so familiar it should be unremarkable. It isn't. It never is.

'Show me,' she says. 'Show me what you know.'

I do.

Slow. So slow she stops breathing. I touch her the way I touched her the first time. Like I don't already know what makes her gasp, what makes her arch, what makes her say my name the way she says it when she's close.

I know. But tonight I pretend I don't. Tonight I let my hands wander like they're lost. And somewhere in the wandering, I find something I missed.

She does too. She touches me like she's forgotten we've done this a thousand times. Like she's the woman from table six, seeing me for the first time, except she's not, she's Tina, she's my wife, and when her whole body shudders, it's my name she says. Only mine.

Discovery.

After, we lie in the dark. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair. Her fingers drawing slow shapes on my stomach, letters I can almost read.

'I don't need to watch someone else,' she says quietly. 'I thought I did. But I don't.'

'What do you need?'

'This. Just this. You, knowing me. Me, knowing you.'

I pull her closer. Feel her body settle against mine, the weight and warmth of her, the specific miracle of this person in my arms.

The woman at table six wanted something she couldn't have. The first time. The discovery. The intoxicating uncertainty of not knowing.

But she'll never have what we have. The ten thousand touches that came after the first. The way Tina's body knows where to go against mine. The unbearable intimacy of being completely known and completely wanted anyway.

And this. What happened tonight. My wife, looking me in the eye, telling me she thinks about watching someone else fuck me. Not an affair. Not a betrayal. Something stranger. Darker. The kind of want that lives in the basement of a person, the room you don't show anyone because you're afraid of what it says about you.

She showed me anyway.

What she was really saying underneath:

I want to watch someone discover your body. I want to see your face when a stranger touches you. I want to witness what I can never have again.

She handed me that. And waited to see if I would still be here when she finished.

I'm still here.

That's what ten years buys you. Not just the knowing, the freedom. The terrifying, precious freedom to say this is the darkest corner of me, the part I've never shown anyone, the thing I was afraid would make you leave. And to hear back: I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. Show me more.

I think about all the things we've handed each other over the years. The ugly thoughts. The shameful wants. The fears we couldn't say out loud to anyone else. Every one of them a test. Will you still love me if you know this? Will you still want me if I show you what I really am?

Yes. Every time. Yes.

That's the whole point.

I close my eyes. Listen to her breathe. Feel her hand trace absent patterns on my stomach, becoming words I can almost read.

'I love you,' I say.

'I know,' she says. 'You've told me before.'

'I'll tell you again.'

'When?'

'Tomorrow. And the day after that. Every day until you're tired of hearing it.'

She laughs. The one that means I've found a room she didn't know she had.

I add it to the collection.

Discovery, it turns out, has no end.