Love the one you're with

five

It is completely dark by the time I turn onto our quiet, tree-lined block in Murray Hill. Andy won't be home until much later, but for once, I don't mind the hours he's forced to bill at his white-shoe law firm. I will have time to shower, light a few candles, open a bottle of wine, and find the exact right soundtrack to purge the last traces of the past from my mind-something cheerful, with absolutely no Leo associations. "Dancing Queen" would fit the bill, I think, smiling to myself. There is absolutely nothing about ABBA that conjures Leo. In any event, I want the evening to be all about Andy and me. About us.

As I step out of the cold rain into the brownstone, I breathe a sigh of relief. There is nothing lavish about our building, but I love it that way. I love the shabby lobby with its creaky herringbone floors and brass chandelier in dire need of a good polish. I love the jewel-toned Oriental rug that gives off a subtle scent of mothballs. I even love the lumbering, claustrophobically small elevator that always seems on the brink of a breakdown. Most of all, I love that it is our first home together.

Tonight, I opt for the stairs, taking them two at a time while I imagine a day far into the future when Andy and I return to this spot with our yet-to-be-born children. Give them a grand tour of where "Mommy and Daddy first lived." Tell them, "Yes, with Daddy's family money we could have afforded a plush Upper East Side doorman building, but he picked this one, in this quiet neighborhood, because it had more character… Just as he chose me over all those blue-eyed Southern belles."

I reach the fourth floor, find my key, and upon turning it, discover that Andy has beaten me home. A virtual first. I feel something between sheepish and shamefaced as I push open the door, glance through our galley kitchen into the living room, and find my husband sprawled on the couch, his head resting on an orange chenille pillow. He has already banished his jacket and tie to the floor and his blue dress shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. At first I think he is asleep, but then I see one of his bare feet moving in time to Ani DiFranco's As Is. It is my CD-and so far afield from Andy's usual happy Top Forty tunes (or his sappy country music) that I assume our stereo is on random-play. Andy makes no apologies for his taste in music, and while I'm listening to my favorites, stuff like Elliott Smith or Marianne Faithfull, he will roll his eyes at the more turbulent lyrics and make cracks like, "Excuse me while I go chug some poison under the sink." But despite our different tastes, he never makes me turn my music off or down. Andy is the opposite of a control freak. A Manhattan litigator with a surfer boy, live-and-let-live, no worries mentality.

For a long moment, I watch Andy lying there in the soft amber glow of lamplight and am filled with what can only be described as relief. Relief that I got to this place, that this is my life. As I take another few steps toward the couch, Andy's eyes snap open. He stretches, smiles and says, "Hey, honey."

"Hi," I say, beaming back at him as I drop my bag on our round retro dinette table that we found at a flea market in Chelsea. Margot and her mother hate it almost as much as they hate the kitschy knickknacks that congregate on every free surface in our apartment. A coconut monkey wearing wire-rim glasses perches on our windowsill. Beads from a recent Mardi Gras hang from our computer monitor. A collection of salt-and-pepper figurines parade across our countertop. I am much more neat and organized than Andy, but we are both pack rats at heart-which Margot jokes is the only dangerous part of our being together.

Andy sighs as he sits, swinging his long legs onto the floor. Then he glances at his watch and says, "You don't call. You don't write. Where've you been all day? I tried your cell a few times…"

His tone is easy-not at all accusatory-but I still feel a shiver of guilt as I say, "Here and there. Running around in the rain. My phone was off."

All true statements, I think. But I still know that I'm keeping something from my husband, and I fleetingly consider revising my vow of secrecy and telling him the rest. What really happened today. He would most certainly be annoyed-and probably a little hurt that I let Leo come back to the diner to see me. The same way I would feel if Andy let an ex-girlfriend come share a coffee with him when he could have, nearly as easily, told her to kiss off. The truth might even start a small argument-our first married argument.

On the other hand, it's not like Andy feels threatened by Leo or feels hostile toward him. He simply disdains him in the typical, offhanded way that nearly everyone disdains their significant other's most-significant ex. With a mild mix of jealousy and competitiveness that recedes over time. In fact, Andy is so laidback that he probably wouldn't feel either of those things at all if I hadn't made the mistake of disclosing a little too much during one of our early-relationship, late-night conversations. Specifically, I had used the word intense to describe what Leo and I had shared. It didn't seem like that much of a revelation as I had assumed that Margot had told him a thing or two about Leo and me, but I immediately knew it was news to him when Andy rolled over in bed to face me, his blue eyes flashing in a way I'd never seen before.

"Intense?" he said with a wounded expression. "What exactly do you mean by intense?"

"Oh, I don't know…" I said.

"Sexually intense?"

"No," I said quickly. "Not like that."

"Like you spent all your time together? Every night and every waking moment?"

"No," I said again. My face grew hot with fresh shame as I recalled the night that Margot accused me of blowing her off for Leo. Of being one of those girls who puts a man ahead of a friendship. And an unreliable man with no marriage potential to boot, she added, disgusted. Even then, somewhere deep down, I knew she was probably right, but despite my guilt and better judgment, I just couldn't stop myself. If Leo wanted to see me, I dropped everything-and everyone-else.

"So what then?" Andy pressed. "You loved him to the heavens and back?" His voice dripped with playful sarcasm, but his hurt look remained.

"Not that kind of intense either," I said, struggling to find a way to put a detached, nonpassionate spin on intense. Which is impossible to do. Sort of like inserting a joyful note into the word grief or a hopeful note in doomed.

I cast about for a few more seconds before I finally offered up a weak, "I didn't mean intense… I take it back… It was a bad choice of words."

It was, indeed, a bad choice of words. But only because it was true-intense was precisely what Leo and I had been together. Nearly every moment we shared felt intense, starting with that very first night in my dark hotel room when we sat cross-legged on my bed, our knees touching, my hands in his, while we talked until sunrise.

"Too late," Andy said, smirking and shaking his head. "No take-backs. You can't strike this one from the record, Dempsey."

And so it was too late.

Fortunately, Andy wasn't one to beat a dead horse, so Leo's name seldom came up after that. But for a long time, whenever someone used the word intense, Andy would shoot me a knowing look or make a wisecrack about my "oh-so-smoldering, ever-passionate" ex-boyfriend.

I am not up for that kind of scrutiny now-joking or otherwise. Besides, I reason, as I peel off my jacket and hang it on our wobbly wooden coat rack, if the tables were turned, I'd rather not know about a chance run-in he had with Lucy, his most-beloved and longtime ex, who is now a third-grade teacher at a snooty private school in Atlanta. According to Margot, Lucy was as smart and wholesome as they come while still looking like she could be a body double for Salma Hayek. It was a direct quote I could have lived without.

With this rationalization, I decide once and for all that it is in everyone's best interest to keep my insignificant secret a secret. I plop down on the couch next to Andy and rest my hand on his leg. "So why are you home so early, anyway?" I ask him.

"Because I missed you," he says, smiling.

"C'mon," I say, feeling torn. I like this answer, but almost hope there is more to it this time. "You've never been home this early."

"I did miss you," he says, laughing. "But my case settled, too."

"That's awesome," I say. I know how much he had been dreading the even longer hours that come with a full-blown trial. I had been dreading them, too.

"Yeah. Such a relief. I have sleep in my future now… So anyway, I was thinking we could get changed and go to dinner? Maybe somewhere nice? You up for that?"

I glance toward the window and say, "Maybe a bit later… It's really coming down out there… I think I'd rather just stay in for a bit." I give him a seductive smile as I kick off my boots and sidle onto his lap, facing him. I lean in and plant a kiss on his jaw, then another on his neck.

Andy smiles, closes his eyes, and whispers a bemused, "What in the world?"

It is one of my favorite of his endearing expressions, but at this moment it strikes a small note of worry in my heart. Does my initiating foreplay really warrant a What in the world? Aren't we occasionally spontaneous when it comes to sex? My mind races to come up with some recent, juicy examples, but disappointingly, I can't think of the last time we had sex anywhere other than in bed, at bedtime. I reassure myself that this is perfectly normal for married couples-even happily married couples. Andy and I might not swing from the chandeliers and go nuts in every room of the house, but you don't have to be nailing each other willy-nilly on the kitchen counters and hardwood floors to have a solid physical connection. After all, sex on and against hard surfaces might look hot in the movies, but in real life it is uncomfortable, overrated, and contrived.

Of course there was that one time with Leo in his office…

I desperately try to push the memory out of my head by kissing Andy again, this time on his mouth. But as is the way when you're trying not to think of something, the scene only grows more vivid. And so, suddenly, I am doing the unthinkable. I am kissing my husband while picturing another man. Picturing Leo. I kiss Andy harder, desperate to erase Leo's face and lips. It doesn't work. I am only kissing Leo harder. I work at the buttons on Andy's shirt and slide my hands across his stomach and chest. I take my own sweater off. We hold each other, skin to skin. I say Andy's name out loud. Leo is still there. His body against mine.

"Hmm, Ellen," Andy moans, his fingers stroking my back.

Leo's hot hands are digging into my back with crazy pressure, urgency.

I open my eyes and tell Andy to look at me. He does.

I look into them and say, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he says, so sweetly. His expression is frank, sincere, earnest. His face is the face I love.

I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on the feel of Andy growing hard against my thigh. Our pants are still on, but I center myself over him, grinding back against him, saying his name again. My husband's name. Andy. There is no confusing who I am with right now. Who I love. This works for a while. And continues to work as Andy leads me to our bedroom where the all-or-nothing radiator is either dormant or sputtering steam everywhere. Right now, the room is downright tropical. We push away our goose down comforter, and slide against our soft sheets. We are completely undressed now. This bed is sacred. Leo is gone. He is nowhere.

And yet, moments later, when Andy is moving inside me, I am back in Leo's apartment on the night the not-guilty verdict finally came down. He is unshaven and his eyes are slightly glazed from our celebratory drinks. He hugs me fiercely and whispers in my ear, "I'm not sure what it is about you, Ellen Dempsey, but I have to have you."

It was the same night I gave myself to him completely, knowing that I would belong to him for as long as he wanted to keep me.

And, as it turned out, even longer than that.