“No,” Arianne was saying. Scott tried to relax his face. He didn’t need to display his disappointment; she knew, and that was more than enough. He wondered, sometimes, if it was deliberate on her part, rejecting vacation ideas simply because they were his ideas. They had been together so long, long past long enough to get on each other’s nerves as well as under the skin, and it occurred to Scott that she had, in recent months, been more than usually discordant even on uncontroversial topics, such as how to spend their three weeks off in the summer.

“What’s wrong with it?” he demanded, hoping he didn’t sound as testy as he felt. “It’s perfect. There’s a beach for you, and mountains for me.”

“It’s Maine,” said Arianne, as if that were self-explanatory. “The water’s cold,” she added as patiently as she could, as if she were talking to a simple child. She turned back to correcting papers.

“It’s the fucking ocean,” Scott grumbled. Arianne ignored him; he sighed, “OK. I’ll give it some more thought and come up with something else.” He was tired, he realized: tired of having this conversation; tired of feeling like he was running a distant second (or third) to her students; tired of his own job. Tired of existing, when he knew he should be living. He wondered: Did we ever really live, or was it always like this? He knew the answer: they had become comfortable with each other, in the way that couples often do, with comfort and familiarity displacing passion and curiosity. He wondered if it bothered her as much as it bothered him, and wondered too whether it wasn’t time to chuck it all or at least go have an affair, do something that might rekindle interest and refuel long-lost ardor. Or, at least, replenish what was lost with something new and different.

He had the sense, in that moment, to withdraw to another room to research vacation spots while Arianne kept to the kitchen table. In better times they could sit together and ignore each other: each absorbed in work, both content to know that they were but half an arm’s length away. But now the proximity was more often irritant than balm, a reminder that things weren’t working the way they expected or wanted or needed. Scott sat down at his desk in the study and opened his laptop to browse the Personals. Seeing there was nothing more than the usual assortment, he glanced at his own pile of student papers and sighed again. With forced cheerfulness he attacked them: “No time like the present!” An hour passed before he noticed the message banners on his phone announcing the Mets’ loss, the Yankees’ win, and another suicide bombing in the Middle East. “Nothing changes,” he thought miserably. He marked the last midterm, then put the pile in his bag. He kicked off his sneakers and was halfway to the door before he came back, picked up the running shoes, and headed back to the kitchen.

Arianne glanced towards the study door and turned back to her papers, shaking her head. Why was he like that? After all this time, he should know her likes and dislikes, and yet he was always trying to compromise her. She knew what she liked; why couldn’t he be content with that? They were comfortable together, and that was more than most people had. She refocused on the student paper on the table and frowned, pursed her lips, then broke into a smile while she marked the grade and moved on to the next essay. She could see the growth in her students, at least.

Scott watched her from behind: lost in her work, in her students. Content in her life. Too content, he thought. After all these years, he knew well how she processed information and emotions. Any dissatisfaction she felt, he knew, came from him: not from being dissatisfied per se, but from his own discontentment. She would think, I am content, why can’t he be? Why isn’t my contentment enough? She never quite saw him as much more than an adjunct to herself, and that was a huge part of the problem. Time, Scott thought, past time to shake things up. To shake her out of it. To draw her out of her comfort zone, force her to live and exist out here with the rest of us. He took a step closer and untied the running shoes, pulling the laces loose while he moved forward on stockinged feet.

She jumped at his low voice in her ear: “Anything good?” She wanted to pull her head away and tell him to stop, but his warm breath felt good on her ear and neck, something in the way he modulated his voice getting deep inside her head and touching her, tickling her, in a way that felt both familiar and edgy. It caused her unease and slight discomfort, but of a kind that compelled her forward: rather than shrink away, she only wanted more. And even while these thoughts criss-crossed in her mind, she was trying to focus her eyes on Jimmy Wendel’s essay, and then Hayley Gomes’s. And Scott was being relentless, doing his best to distract her.

At first it was only light kisses on her ear, and the occasional question. And of course his warm breath, which seemed to enter through her ear and exit, if that were possible, somewhere else altogether. Surely, she thought, this is impossible. And she wondered, too, how Scott managed the trick at all, any of it, because in their years together she had never experienced this. In her life, she knew, she had never felt so excited. Her head tilted away from his mouth and he cooed, “Would you really rather correct papers? Of course you wouldn’t. All work and no play makes Arianne a very, very dull girl indeed.” She stiffened her neck, moving her head almost imperceptibly closer to his. “Good girl,” and a nip on the ear, were her rewards.

“No,” she said again, and tried to refocus on Amber Lyons, whose unfortunate essay paper was becoming damp with sweat from Arianne’s palms. And again her head tilted first away, and then back, and then forward, and back again as she relaxed into the sensations in spite of herself. “NO.” Arianne felt the paper beneath her hands, beginning now to stick and dissolve, and she shook herself upright.

“No?” Scott’s voice wasn’t angry, nor exactly confused. But the way he asked the question, flicking at her outer ear with his tongue, suggested that not only was “no” an unexpected response to his attentions, it was an altogether inappropriate and, indeed, an impossible one. “But you don’t really mean that, do you, darling?” His hands pressed her shoulders, the way he knew she liked, and then pushed gently downwards to her bare arms. “I know you don’t. You want this. You want more than this, don’t you?” Her head shook sideways, but her body relaxed even more, softening into the chair. Scott’s hands ran lightly across hers, then back up her arms and down, fingers scrabbling across her breasts but not lingering. He lengthened his fingers, holding them straight, and pressed them into her, along her belly and out across her lap. Her thighs parted, involuntarily and without his insistence, and he ran his hands up inside her legs. She melted further into the seat, her head now rolled back.

“No.” It was just a whisper now. Scott’s fingers unfastened the brass button on her jeans and slowly slid the zipper. With one hand he pushed off her jeans, while the other unfastened her button-down cotton blouse. “No.” Softer than before, and Arianne kicked her legs free of her jeans. Scott lightly fingered her panties, pressing against her through the fabric, feeling her reaction. He spoke in her ear again and savored the effect. “No,” was barely audible, less feeble protest than rote habit by now.

Arianne felt her body nearly convulse at the touch of Scott’s fingers, slipping now inside the leg of her panties and gently spreading her, his long fingertip pushing inside effortlessly. She felt her blouse fall from her shoulders; she felt Scott’s free hand unclasp her brassiere, effortlessly, and she shrugged that, too, aside, her breasts hanging, swaying, ripe fruit begging to be enjoyed. One rough hand cupped a breast, the thumb pressing against her stiff nipple, while his voice played in her ear and the rhythm of his breathing matched the thrusts of his finger inside her. She was powerless to stop it, barely mouthing the word now while she succumbed completely, her body fully possessed by whatever magic he had found. When she found herself struggling to understand it she pushed that inner voice aside, shushing it quickly lest it break the spell.

“This is what you’ve been missing all your life, isn’t it?” His voice was soft, but commanding; she knew he was right, and knew she would follow him anywhere just to feel this again. Her breathing coarsened, her body began to convulse and slacken. “You want this, all the time, don’t you?” He was taunting her, keeping her on the edge, knowing when to thrust and press and when to lighten his touch. He pushed her forward now, forcing her out of the chair, his fingers still plying her wet folds. He stripped off the wet panties, and she kicked them aside herself when they fell to her ankles. She was so close now.

And then his fingers released her, while he placed her hands where — clearly — he wanted them, palms-down on the tabletop near the corners. She wanted to cry out, do anything to get him back there, but she knew, somehow, that she mustn’t interfere. She felt something slip around her wrist, first one and then the other, and then she felt his fingers inside her, driving her upward again. She tried to shift and couldn’t move her hands; the harder she tried, the tighter the laces became around her wrists.

“Don’t move,” was all she heard Scott say, but his tone was enough to both relax and further incite her. His finger moved in and out, gliding ever-easier. He curled it upward and stroked inside, and she gasped: knees weakening, arms bending to take her own weight.

“Please,” she heard herself say, and his finger stroked again, his teeth biting her ear at the same time. “Please!”

“Of course, darling,” he said, soothingly. “Of course. We’ll do this again, in Bar Harbor.”

“Yes!” she screamed, before finally collapsing. “Yes.” Softer. “Anything you want.” A whisper, meek, something she had never been with him until now.