Chapter 1

Have you ever watched an amateur video on Pornhub or scrolled through OnlyFans and wondered who these people are? A couple with a black man. A husband watching his wife with someone younger. Two women and a man tangled together in a bedroom that looks like someone actually lives there, not a set. You watch them and they seem so free, so unashamed, so genuinely into it, and you think: who are they? What’s their story? How did they get here?

I’m going to tell you ours.

Malin and I got married thirty-seven years ago. I was nineteen and she was eighteen. We were sure about each other in the way that only young people can be sure, which is to say completely and recklessly and without any understanding of what a lifetime together actually demands from you.

Even then she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Pale blonde hair and sharp amused eyes that seemed to see everything. She had a dancer’s body, lean and quick, and she moved like there was music playing somewhere that only she could hear. And me, I was a skinny kid with thick dark hair and too much energy and no idea how lucky I was that she’d looked at me twice.

She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Thirty-seven years later, her luminous silver-blonde hair is still worn in elegant updos or playful buns depending on her mood. Her arms are strong from decades of dance and yoga, her waist lean, her hips wide, her teardrop-shaped breasts moving joyously when she laughs. Her skin holds the warmth of the sun year-round, like she’s been dipped in honey and never quite dried off. Even now, when she’s still, she seems to move.

My hair turned silver early and Malin says it makes me look sophisticated and more magnetic than I actually am. She says I know exactly what she wants and exactly how to give it. I think she’s being generous. But after thirty-seven years, she still looks at me like I’m the answer to a question she loves asking.

We were happy for a long time. We had two kids and a house by the lake. We had sex in every room of that house. We laughed a lot and fought sometimes and made up the way couples make up. I thought that was the whole story. I figured we’d grow old together and the sex would slow down and we’d become companions and that would be fine.

When the kids left it all fell apart. Not in any dramatic way. It was just this slow quiet that filled the house and made every room feel bigger than it was. We’d sit after dinner with nothing to say because we’d already said it all years ago. The fights started over stupid things like toothpaste caps and grocery lists but underneath was something neither of us could name. You don’t see me anymore. You don’t listen. We went to bed angry and woke up worse.

Then one night after a fight about how I loaded the dishwasher, Malin sat on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. I leaned against the doorframe. We were both just done. Not angry done but empty done. The kind of tired where you can’t even remember what you were fighting about.

And then she said it.

“I’m bored with our sex life. I want to try new things. Maybe even sleep with other people. I want to feel that ... that spark again. I want to feel the heat. I don’t want to just live. No. I want to feel alive.”

She said it to the floor. Not to me. Like she was afraid the words would break something if she aimed them at me directly.

I didn’t say anything for a long time. The room was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. And the thing is, I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t angry. I was surprised to feel something else entirely. My cock was getting hard. Just from hearing her say it. From picturing it. Another woman’s hands on her. Another man inside her. The images came fast and they didn’t make me jealous. They made me hungry.