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being touched by another man. People she’d been with, pleasure she’d given and received, things she’d moaned. He was not an insecure person in other contexts, but hisbrain was compelled, with the magnetism of someone unable to escape the perpetual reliving of a trauma, to imagine her being sexually intimate with others. What did she say to them that she also said to him? Why would such repetitions feel like the ultimate betrayal?
    “Of course they would be painful,” she said. “But the point isn’t that I want to know everything about you. It’s that I don’t want anything about you withheld.”
    “So I won’t.”
    “And I won’t.”
    They passed the joint back and forth a few times, feeling so brave, so still-young.
    “What are you withholding right now?” she asked, almost giddily.
    “Right now, nothing.”
    “But you
have
withheld?”
    “Therefore I am.”
    She laughed. She loved his quickness, the oddly comforting warmth of his mind’s connections.
    “What’s the last thing you withheld from me?”
    He thought about it. Being stoned made it harder to think, but easier to share thoughts.
    “OK,” he said. “It’s a little one.”
    “I want all of them.”
    “OK. We were in the apartment the other day. It was Wednesday, maybe? And I made breakfast for you. Remember? The goat cheese frittata.”
    “Yeah,” she said, resting her hand on his thigh, “that was nice.”
    “I let you sleep in, and I secretly made breakfast.”
    She exhaled a column of smoke that held its form for longer than seemed possible, and said, “I could eat a lot of that right now.”
    “I made it because I wanted to take care of you.”
    “I felt that,” she said, moving her hand up his thigh, making him hard.
    “And I made it look really nice on the plate. That little salad beside it.”
    “Like a restaurant,” she said, taking his cock in her hand.
    “And after your first bite—”
    “Yes?”
    “There’s a reason people withhold.”
    “We’re not people.”
    “OK. Well, after your first bite, instead of thanking me, or saying it was delicious, you asked me if I’d salted it.”
    “So?” she asked, moving her fist up and down.
    “So that felt like shit.”
    “That I asked if it was salted?”
    “Maybe not felt like shit. It annoyed me. Or disappointed me. Whatever I felt, I didn’t share it.”
    “But I was just asking a matter-of-fact question.”
    “That feels good.”
    “Good, love.”
    “But can you see how, in the context of the effort I was making for you, asking if it was salted conveyed criticism rather than gratefulness?”
    “It feels like an effort to cook breakfast for me?”
    “It was a special breakfast.”
    “Does this feel good?”
    “It feels amazing.”
    “So in the future, if I think a food needs more salt, I should keep that to myself?”
    “Or it sounds like I should keep my hurt to myself.”
    “Your
disappointment
.”
    “I could already come.”
    “So come.”
    “I don’t want to come yet.”
    She slowed down, slowed to a grip.
    “What are you withholding right now?” he asked. “And don’t say that you’re slightly hurt, annoyed, and disappointed by my hurt, annoyance, and disappointment, because you’re not withholding that.”
    She laughed.
    “So?”
    “I’m not withholding anything,” she said.
    “Dig.”
    She shook her head and laughed.
    “What?”
    “In the car, you were singing ‘All Apologies’ and you kept singing, ‘I can see from shame.’ ”
    “So?”
    “So that’s not what it is.”
    “Of course that’s what it is.”
    “Aqua seafoam shame.”
    “What!”
    “Yup.”
    “Aqua. Seafoam. Shame?”
    “My hand upon the Jewish Bible.”
    “You’re telling me that my perfectly sensical phrase—sensical on its own,
and
in its context—is actually just a subconscious expression of my repressed whatever, and that Kurt Cobain intentionally strung together the words
aqua seafoam shame
?”
    “That is what I’m telling