Big finish

I thrust up into her harder, and she comes apart completely, clenching around me in long, rolling waves, biting down softly on my shoulder to muffle the sound that tears out of her. I feel every pulse of it and hold on by the thinnest thread, slowing my movements to let her ride it out.

Across the floor, Meg has pulled Jenny into her lap and is doing something with her fingers that has Jenny's head thrown back and her mouth open in a silent O. My wife looks like a different woman. The guilt and the anxiety have burned away entirely, and what's left underneath is someone I recognize from a long time ago, before mortgages and car pools and the comfortable sediment of years had settled over everything.

She looks beautiful.

Hallie lifts her head from my shoulder and follows my gaze. She smiles, slow and satisfied, still breathing hard. "She's incredible," she says softly, and there is no performance in it. She means it.

"Yeah," I agree. "She is."

Hallie shifts her hips, and I am reminded forcefully that we are not finished. She raises an eyebrow and begins to move again, slower this time, more deliberate, watching my face with frank and unembarrassed attention the way only someone very young or very confident can manage.

"Your turn," she says.

I let go of whatever remaining restraint I had been maintaining and pull her down hard against me, finding a rhythm that has her gasping and gripping my shoulders for balance. Somewhere behind her, I hear Jenny cry out, high and sudden, followed by Meg's low murmur of encouragement and the soft sounds of the two of them coming back down together.

Hallie leans down and kisses me with surprising tenderness, cupping my face in both her hands, and that small gesture undoes me completely. I come hard, my whole body locking up, my hands gripping her hips as the wave crests and breaks and rolls through me in long, shuddering pulses.

We stay tangled together, breathing.

After a while, the room comes back into focus. The distant sound of the grill. Someone's music drifting in from outside. The smell of chlorine drying on skin.

Meg is lying on her side, facing me, Jenny curled against her back, one arm draped loosely over her waist. Meg's expression is soft and unguarded and a little wondering, like someone who has just stepped off a ride they weren't sure they were brave enough to take.

"The steaks," she says finally.

I stare at her.

"Josh is still out there," she adds. "With the steaks."

A laugh starts somewhere low in my chest and works its way out of me, and then Meg is laughing too, and Jenny lifts her head with a bleary, confused smile, and Hallie dissolves against my shoulder.