IT HAD BEEN A MONTH OF SEX.
Sex in her Mini Cooper. Sex in his Tacoma.
Sex at practically every hotel outside Santa Monica’s limits. The Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills. The Charlie in West Hollywood. The Langham in Pasadena, far enough from home for Mel to feel safe holding Zack’s hand as they strolled the magnificent gardens where roses of every color buzzed with honey bees, where she pointed out the plants she’d read about in her Guide to the Flora of Los Angeles book. She enjoyed teaching him, and learning from him, too—about exercise and food, topics she’d once found threatening—and even, gasp, the history of Catholicism, on which he liked to deliver mini-lectures, his big hands swooping the air with excitement as he spoke.
It was, Mel thought, utterly adorable, how he got so worked up—even if he still said outrageous nonsense about the Wall and Crooked Hillary. He’d spew an opinion, then look at her with those ocean eyes, asking forgiveness, saying sorry, then lowering his mouth between her thighs. Zack’s conversational filter, it turned out, was as weak as Mel’s. So different from Adam’s controlled, well-considered sentences.
The similarity made the sex even hotter. They’d have a debate about the papacy, Zack’s handsome face growing indignant as Mel argued for female priests and popes, then softening as he reached to undo the buttons on her shirt, lift her DVF wrap dress (now two sizes smaller) over her head, before flipping her over and yanking her underwear down in a single fluid motion.
For the first time in her life, Mel was acting first, thinking second. Leading with her body, allowing her mind to take a break, to simply come along for the ride. Living in a way she’d once believed applied only to the most superficial, self-centered sort of people. To people who lived in California.
Except that nothing about being with Zack felt superficial.
They were becoming their Version Two selves. Together.
He’s mine, Mel thought, as tourists gaped at Zack’s chiseled, shirtless torso beside the pool at the Hotel Shangri-La. All mine. She reveled in the thought of the women at Color Theory, all so much thinner and younger and prettier; and Mel, the winner. How many times had she given Sloane and the soccer girls the speech about good sportsmanship, about not gloating after a win, not celebrating too much? And here Mel was, doing a victory dance every other day at a different hotel. Showing off her spoils. His abs. That ass. Those eyes. Every single part of him was, dare she say it, perfect. And not in an awww, what a guy, Adam kind of way.
Zack was perfect in a someone, catch me before I swoon kind of way.
They had sex at the Mountain Mermaid up in Topanga Canyon. Zack had rented that one—a room called The Lover’s Nest with a view of the canyon, and a four-poster bed on the patio. We can you-know-what under the stars! Zack had texted her, like a virginal teenager (you-know-what) scoring an empty house on prom night. And so, they had. Fucked in the cool night air as coyotes howled in the canyon below. Woke in the morning sun, the bed surrounded by hummingbirds darting at the sugar water feeders hung by each of the four bedposts.
Mel hadn’t completely let her guard down. She made sure to erase their texts immediately after receiving and sending—who knows when Sloane would grab her phone to catch some creatures in the Pokémon Go app. She covered all Zack-related expenses on the Amex prepaid cards she purchased at Walgreens and Ralphs, hands trembling each time she reloaded them.
Adam couldn’t find out. Not just yet. She was going to leave him, yes, but not until she’d revived her letterpress business. With a new West Coast style. She already had her first batch of limited-series hand-pressed Christmas cards in mind. It had been nearly impossible to find any Christmas cards that actually looked like a SoCal Christmas. Who wanted a card with an idyllic New England winter setting, white glittery snow and sleighs? Her new letterpress Christmas cards would be decked with palm trees and surf boards. Zack had loved the idea and wanted to help. How sweet was that?
She had noticed a sense of paranoia creeping in on their fun, her pausing a few times while going down on Zack in his crappy truck, peering out the steamed-up windows, wondering what Adam would do if she were caught. Reminding herself, what did it matter when Adam was having his own affair? To each his own.
The occasional feeling of impending doom snuck in and ruined one of her orgasms. Like what if an earthquake—the Big One for which Sloane had to do “Shakeout Drills” at school—hit while Mel and Zack were mid-bang and she was stranded, away from home? Away from Sloane? Even, Mel worried, away from Adam, who always seemed to know exactly what to do in an emergency. She knew Janet would say that was Mel’s guilt surfacing. No shit, Janet, she imagined rebutting, but she had quit Janet soon after the disaster of a session with Adam. What need was there for talk therapy when there was sex therapy? Mel didn’t need Janet telling her what she and Zack did was wrong when it felt oh so right.
She knew she had joined the ranks of the women she’d once judged. The women—many school moms—she had, upon first arriving in Santa Monica, endured canyon hikes and beach walks and even a few excruciating SoulCycle classes with, the conversation veering toward the women’s grievances with their ex-husbands. Mel silently judging them as she pretended sympathy. Women who seemed to thrive on anger and cardio alone. She had felt simultaneously envious—what she would give to have these sad women’s thigh gaps and poreless skin—and guilty. Yes, these women had escaped selfish and controlling husbands and pocketed healthy divorce settlements thanks to California’s fifty-fifty law, and, yes, some of them now had hot younger boyfriends who seemed to adore their children with uncanny paternal instinct. But Mel had had Adam.
Or so she had believed.
Mel and Zack had sex in the back office at Color Theory. Sex in the CT van for old times’ sake. Sex on the turf fields at SaMo High late one night after the overhead lights had gone dark. A favorite spot was the beach—a blanket draped over their laps, Zack’s fingers tucked into her panties, Mel climaxing in front of who knows how many tourists strolling at sunset.
It was the sex she didn’t have in high school, she told herself. Or in college—she’d met Adam so young. She was making up for lost time. She was having the best midlife crisis a woman could dream of. Zack gave her orgasms, one right after another, like the ripples in a lake, one climax ending only for another to begin. She had to beg him to stop. Enough, please, enough.
Adam, thankfully, was busy with a new film. For which he was being paid nearly five thousand dollars a day. A big-studio adaptation of a sci-fi novel about a pill that transformed reproduction, shortening human gestation from nine months to nine weeks. A true feminist story, he’d told Mel, and she’d struggled not to scratch his eyes out. Him talking about feminism—ha! She fucked Zack with extra gusto that night, gyrating on top until he’d come with a gasping Oh Jesus!
With Zack, Mel did things she’d only ever fantasized about, and pre-Zack, always with a cringe of shame. But with him, she felt no shame. They watched porn on her phone; their favorite categories were Teacher’s Pet and Sex in Uniform. They’d even discovered a super-hot clip set at a gym, a burly guy with a giant dick (That just cannot be real, Mel had whispered, making Zack laugh mid-kiss) going down on a big-boobed woman sitting on “quadzilla,” that weight machine Mel loathed.
Today, she’d driven Zack to the Malibu Beach Inn, a place she’d read was a favorite among celebrities. They tangled the soft-as-silk sheets as the gas fireplace blazed. They devoured the eighteen-dollar Dean & DeLuca truffle-coated pretzels and hand-dipped chocolates. Calories be damned. If Zack wanted her body, which was twenty pounds lighter, but still a bit Jigglypuff—and oh God, he did—why should she deny herself?
Now, she was stretched out on the thick soft carpet of their hotel room on her elbows, in plank position, naked but for a tank top, as she was still too self-conscious about her body to let her belly roam free. It had been her idea—she’d surprised herself again and again with Zack—to re-create a scene from the gym porno, having him count her planking time, then make her beg for more.
He knelt over her. She felt his cock on her lower back, firm and ready.
“Five, four—” he whispered into her ear.
“Arrgh,” she grunted, her body trembling with exertion and desire.
“And—one. Now. Tell me how badly you want me to fuck you.”
Mel dropped to her belly, out of breath, arms shaking. “So bad.”
“Ass in the air.”
Mel lifted into child’s pose. He spoke again, his voice gentle now, earnest.
“Okay to do what we did last time?”
“Um.” She felt herself smile as her face went hot. Last time, she’d let him touch a part of her she’d always considered off limits and had an orgasm so shattering she was certain her very essence had been altered irreversibly.
“Yes.” She exhaled. “Please. Like last time.”
She pressed her nose into the soft carpet and closed her eyes, pushing her backside higher into the air.
Yes. She wanted him to touch her there. One of his hands stirring her in the front, the other stirring her behind. Forget Mel 2.0. Forget Mel the soccer mom. This new Mel was on fire, she thought, as she gave herself over to him.