‘Think of it like role-play,’ she said, as her handsome husband kissed her neck and she felt nothing.
He was leaning into her now and her bottom was pushed up against the edge of the sink. As Josh sighed an ‘okay’ in her ear, she heard the clunking footsteps of Stella on the stairs and gave him a gentle shove.
‘Sign it,’ she said. ‘And tonight, we’ll pick things up right there.’
*
The beach noise filled the silence while Gretchen considered Lou’s statement. Waves and yells and gulls and a distant pulsing beat from an Irishman’s portable speaker.
And then Gretchen inhaled too, and she said, ‘Why?’
‘Things aren’t . . . good.’
‘Well, you’ve been there before, right? Worse than not good. You sorted it out.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I thought we did. Maybe we didn’t.’
‘What’s changed?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lou played with the sand next to her, letting it run through her fingers. ‘Me? Christmas was . . . shit.’
‘You should have called me!’ Gretchen sat up now, and grabbed Lou’s sandy hand. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘You were in Byron.’ Lou twisted her finger around her friend’s, gave it a little squeeze. ‘Anyway. I’m giving it a year.’
Another pause. Lou’s girls had abandoned their pit and were wrestling. Half of the sand on the beach was coming home with them, clearly.
‘I hate to say it’ – Gretchen always said it – ‘but if you’re back here again, if it keeps being not good, why wouldn’t you just . . . leave?’
Lou looked around. Why did it look like everyone else on this beach – and there were hundreds of them – was having the summer of their life? That family over there, with the beautiful dark-skinned toddlers, everyone wearing tasteful neutrals and straw sunhats, the woman’s blonde head thrown back in laughter, the man wrestling with his adorable sons.
Her girls. Just there. They were lying on their stomachs now, their arms back in their hole, burrowing out a tunnel.
‘Them.’ She nodded towards Stella and Rita. ‘And history.’
Gretchen let out a little puff of air between her lips. ‘History? History’s bullshit. Donald Trump is making fucking history. History just happens, babe. It’s the passing of time. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘That’s not true, Gretch,’ Lou said. ‘It means a lot. Look at us.’
‘We’re different. Being friends with me doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be friends with anyone else, and’ – as Gretchen spoke, Lou again had a flash of those hands on her hips – ‘you don’t have to live with me. If you did, I think you would have dumped me years ago.’
Lou knew her friend was about to go off on one of her diatribes about modern monogamy and how humans weren’t meant for long-term cohabitation and why marriage was an institution that was good for men but terrible for women. But Lou, sympathetic to all of this in theory, couldn’t bear to hear it again. Not today.
‘Gretch, Josh isn’t some guy I’ve been seeing,’ she said. ‘We’ve been together forever. He’s my life. I’m his life. With the girls, we’re each other’s home. It’s a lot. It’s everything.’
‘Still . . .’ Gretchen took her hand back. ‘Here we are again.’
‘I’m not dumping Josh, Gretch,’ Lou said, more decisively than she felt. ‘Starting again feels like the end of the world. I want to fight for it.’
‘I’d say you’ve been fighting for it for years.’
‘I’ve got a plan.’
‘Of course you have.’ Gretchen let out a slightly snarky giggle, but she was smiling. ‘What is it?’
‘Right now, sex.’
A snort. ‘Sex is not a plan. Sex is a given.’
‘Said the woman who has never been in a relationship for longer than a year.’ Lou pushed her friend’s bare shoulder, her eyes still on the girls. ‘Sex is a big deal when you’ve been with someone a long time. It can . . . go away.’
‘I was with Gen for eighteen months,’ Gretchen said, mock offended. ‘And we still had sex.’
‘With her and with other people,’ Lou pointed out. ‘Including Barton.’
‘And Barton and I had sex every time we saw each other right up until he decided tantric sex was his destiny.’ Gretchen blew a raspberry. ‘Who’s got time for tantra? It’s so greedy.’
‘This is not very useful, Gretch,’ said Lou. ‘I don’t think tantra is on the menu. We need to start more vanilla.’
‘Okay, so you tell me, married lady: when does the sex go away?’
Lou went back to playing with the sand. ‘It wasn’t our problem for the longest time,’ she said. ‘Much longer than a lot of other couples I know. We used to laugh about other people not having sex, when we were still . . .’
‘Screwing.’
Lou suddenly felt an ache below her stomach that brought her hand there, pushing into her swimsuit. The word that came with the ache was empty. She was suddenly very aware of feeling empty.
‘It’s been a few years, I guess, since things changed,’ she said. ‘Two, three.’
Gretchen knew what had happened three years ago, but she also knew not to go there, not now. ‘Maybe there are only a certain number of years you can actively remain attracted to one person, whoever they are. You ever think of that? Maybe you guys have just run out.’
‘Again, Gretch, not helpful.’ Lou took her hand away from her stomach, reset herself. ‘Anyway, I give my marriage a year. My plan is that we’re going to try all the things that people say you should try to save a relationship that’s in trouble.’
‘And you’re starting with sex.’
‘Sex with Josh.’
Gretchen suddenly sat up, took off her sunglasses and looked at Lou. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she asked, and Lou knew that Gretchen was trying to get her to turn away from where Stella and Rita were now dumping double-handfuls of sand on top of each other’s heads. ‘You haven’t gone back to . . .’
‘Gretch, stop. I just need you to listen to me.’ Suddenly Lou knew that this was what she needed. ‘You know all kinds of things about relationships that I’ve never experienced, including bloody tantra. I want to try everything to stop my family from falling apart and I need your help.’ She turned her head. ‘I need your support. And your ideas about what to try next.’
Gretchen and Lou looked at each other for a long moment.
‘So, are you going to keep score each month, like “this is the percentage I’m leaning towards staying or going”? Is that how it’s going to work?’
‘Well . . .’ Lou hadn’t really thought about that. ‘Sort of, I guess. Like, how will I feel after the month of sex? Differently? The same?’
‘And are we starting at fifty-fifty odds?’
Lou scrunched up her nose. Not really. But, sure. ‘I guess so. That’s the point.’
Gretchen put her sunnies back on and lay down. ‘This is one of the crazier things you’ve done, Lou,’ she said. ‘Your marriage isn’t a reality TV show. Or a blog. Like that woman who cooked a Julia Childs recipe every day for a year even though she, like, couldn’t cook and didn’t have five hours to baste a ham.’