The kids were asleep by nine. Mara was at the sink with a dish towel over her shoulder. I was on the couch with a beer I wasn’t really drinking and the TV turned down low.

We hadn’t touched each other in three weeks. I stopped counting after that because counting made it worse. We weren’t fighting. We were just tired. Work, kids, dishes, do it all again tomorrow.

Mara stopped wiping the same plate and stood still at the window.

“Cole,” she said. “Come here.”

I got up and stood behind her. Across the courtyard, third floor just like ours, the lights were on in the young couple’s place. They didn’t have curtains. Not even blinds.

The girl was sitting up on the kitchen counter. Her boyfriend was standing between her knees with his hands up under her shirt and his mouth on her neck. She had her head tipped back and she was laughing, quiet, like she didn’t want the neighbors to hear but didn’t care that much either. He kissed her forehead first, quick and easy, before his mouth went to her neck. It wasn’t a sexy kiss. It was the kind you give somebody you live with.

We used to be like that. Before the kids. Before we were too tired to be anything but roommates who shared a bed.

Mara’s hand found mine on the windowsill. Her fingers were still wet from the sink. She didn’t look at me. She just kept watching, and her breathing changed. Not fast. Just deeper.

“They don’t even close the curtains,” she whispered.

“Maybe they like it,” I said.

She turned her head then and looked at me. Really looked at me, not the way you look at somebody when you’re asking them to take the trash out. Her eyes went to my mouth and back up.

“Do you?” she said.

“Do I what.”

“Like it. Watching.”

I didn’t answer with words. I put my hand on the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to mine. She made a sound against my lips, small and surprised, and then she was kissing me back hard, like she’d been waiting for somebody to start.

We didn’t make it to the bedroom. We ended up on the couch with the TV still on low and the blanket half on the floor. Her shirt came off first. Then mine. Her skin was warm from standing by the sink and she smelled like dish soap and herself underneath it.

“Say it,” she said, when my mouth was on her neck. “Say what you want to do to me.”

“I want to fuck you right here,” I said. “On this couch. While the kids are asleep and the lights are still on over there.”

“Fuck,” she breathed. “Yes. Do that. Don’t be gentle about it.”

I pushed her back against the couch cushions and got between her legs. The blanket slid onto the floor. She wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me in with her heels.

I went in slow. She gasped and dug her nails into my back and whispered, “Oh fuck, yes, just like that.”

I stayed slow on purpose. Deep, grinding strokes, my hands under her ass lifting her up into me. She met every one, rolling her hips up, her breath hot in my ear. “Don’t stop,” she kept saying. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Then she grabbed my ass with both hands and pulled me deeper and said, “Harder. Fuck me harder, Cole.”

So I did. Faster, harder, the couch creaking under us, her tits bouncing against my chest, my mouth on her neck. She was wet and tight and she kept whispering filthy things, “fill me up, fuck, fill me up,” and I could feel her getting close by the way her legs started to shake around me.

When she came she bit down on my shoulder to keep quiet and I felt her shake all the way through.

She was still shaking when it hit me. “I’m coming,” I said against her neck, and then I did, hard, with her nails still in my back and her legs still locked around me. I stayed buried in her until I stopped shaking too.