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you.”
    “Well, I cannot believe that. But at the same time, I’m extremely embarrassed.”
    “Don’t be.”
    “That usually works when someone’s embarrassed.”
    She laughed.
    “That shouldn’t count,” he said. “Hobbyist withholding. Give me something good.”
    “Good?”
    “Something really difficult.”
    She smiled.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Sure sounds like something.”
    “OK,” she said. “I’m withholding something. Something really difficult.”
    “Excellent.”
    “But I don’t think I’m evolved enough to share.”
    “So went the dinosaurs.”
    She pressed a pillow over her face and scissored her legs.
    “It’s just me,” he said.
    “OK,” with a sigh. “OK. Well. Lying here, stoned, our bodies naked, I just had a desire.”
    He instinctively reached his hand between her legs, and found that she was already wet.
    “Tell me,” he said.
    “I can’t.”
    “I bet you can.”
    She laughed.
    “Close your eyes,” he said. “It will make it easier.”
    She closed her eyes.
    “Nope,” she said. “Not easier. Maybe if you close yours?”
    He closed his eyes.
    “I’m having this desire. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know why I’m having it.”
    “But you’re having it.”
    “I am.”
    “Tell me.”
    “I’m having this desire.” She laughed again, and nuzzled her face into his armpit. “I want to spread my legs, and I want you to move your head down and look at me until I come.”
    “Only look?”
    “No fingers. No tongue. I want your eyes to make me come.”
    “Open your eyes.”
    “And you open yours.”
    He didn’t say a word or make a sound. With enough but not too much force, he rolled her onto her stomach. He intuited that what she wanted involved her inability to see him looking at her, for that final safety to be given over. She moaned, letting him know he was right. He moved his body down her body. He parted her legs, then spread them farther. He tucked his face close enough to smell her.
    “You’re looking at me?”
    “I am.”
    “Do you like what you see?”
    “I want what I see.”
    “But you can’t touch it.”
    “I won’t.”
    “But you can jerk yourself off while you look at me.”
    “I am.”
    “You want to fuck what you’re looking at.”
    “I do.”
    “But you can’t.”
    “No.”
    “You want to feel how wet I am.”
    “I do.”
    “But you can’t.”
    “But I can see.”
    “But you can’t see how tight I get when I’m about to come.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Tell me what I look like and I’ll come.”
    They came together, without touching, and it could have ended there. She could have rolled onto her side, put her head on his chest. They could have fallen asleep. But something happened: she looked at him, held his gaze, and once again closed her eyes. Jacob closed his eyes. And it could have ended there. They could have explored each other in the bed, but Julia rose and explored the room. Jacob didn’t see her—he knew not to open his eyes—but he heard her. Without saying anything, he also got up. They each touched the bench at the foot of the bed, the desk and the cup with its pens, the tassels on the curtain tiebacks. He touched the peephole, she touched the dial that controlled the ceiling fan, he pressed his palm against the mini-fridge’s warm top.
    She said, “You make sense to me.”
    He said, “You, too.”
    She said, “I really love you, Jacob. But please just say ‘I know.’ ”
    He said, “I know,” and felt along the walls, along the mounted quilts, until he came to the light switch. “I think I just made it dark.”
    Julia became pregnant with Sam a year later. Then Max. Then Benjy. Her body changed, but Jacob’s desire didn’t. It was their volume of withholding that changed. They continued to have sex, although what had always arisen spontaneously came to require either an impetus (drunkenness, watching
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