Julian Moore had never mentioned counseling but I should have expected it. Considering the nature of the retreat and the depths of guests’ pockets, this wouldn’t be all group-led bonding activities filled with trust falls and couples’ trivia. John should have seen it coming, too. But the forlorn look on his face told me otherwise.

“The therapist…”

“She’s nosy but kind. You don’t have to worry about him,” Alistair/Dare assured me. Or tried to. I didn’t feel that reassured. “Ah. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t like to talk about his feelings.”

“He’s just a very private person.”

“Well, he’s gonna have to get over it fast!” he said with far too much glee. This pretty, pretty man must have been born perky. “Now, you are going to love Connie. She will make your feet sing!”

He delivered me to the salon, where three women were getting pampered. They and the aestheticians fell upon me like ravening beasts, hungry for a new gay BFF. I gave in and obliged them with a steady supply of witty and mildly bitchy commentary. We talked about the hottest reality shows and gossiped about stars. One woman tried to talk about her husband and another shut her down immediately, saying we’d waste the entire weekend bitching about them. Why they came here if they thought it was a waste, I have no idea, but I was more than happy to stay impersonal.

They all started calling me Pink Tommy, which made me feel like a mobster, after I scoured the shelves for the perfect shade of pink polish. After an exhaustive search, I finally found The One, a pearlescent baby pink with just the right amount of glitter. It also just happened to match the beautiful silk shirt Julian had insisted I purchase for this trip. Thank god so many top designers structured their shirts for flat-chested women and twinks, because that shopping spree was the thing dreams were made of.

We finished after exactly an hour, which meant that I didn’t have time to run back to the room before my session. I followed the other women back to the counseling corridor and knocked on the solid door before opening it. John looked at me like I had rescued him from the gallows, or like Frankie did whenever I finally gave in to his intent stare and offered him a snack.

He kissed me goodbye and before he could run out of there, I reminded him, “Bring the dragon when you come back. It’ll be like show-and-tell!”

‘Dragon’ was code for the camouflaged bug-detector Julian had created just for this occasion.

Then I sat down and met the kind and nosy Frenchwoman who served me tea and probed into the deepest recesses of my feelings for John. I cracked under pressure, but limited my rambling to a tale of my terminal case of Love at First Sight, my failed attempt to move on during our breakup, and how we moved from being nothing to friends to kitten co-parents to fiancés. There was only minimal color commentary, but John arrived for our couple’s session a few minutes late — minutes that she spent relentlessly probing into my insecurities and worries. It was just enough time to uncork the genie’s bottle, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my feelings pent up any longer.

John kissed me on the cheek and made a show of walking around the room and looking at the tasteful nudes gracing the walls. Furtively watching the light on the base of the device he’d picked up from our room, he waved it around as casually as possible. We had both practiced the move yesterday, while Julian and Buzzard snickered and gave us pointers. They insisted that this was the best vessel for the detector, but it was extremely difficult to be nonchalant when one was waving around a comically large, blue and purple, faerie dragon dildo.

I panicked a bit and launched into a bizarre, prepared explanation that concluded with, “So now I threaten to use it on him whenever he’s acting especially naughty.”

Our counselor laughed and winked at me before suggesting that John sit down. He squeezed next to me on the loveseat.

“Oh pooh, you fit!” I huffed, crossing my arms and pouting. The loveseat was clearly chosen to force couples into awkward physical closeness. I saw the moment John considered pulling me onto his lap, but instead settled for putting his arm around me.

“It’s entirely my fault for being a skinny bean pole. You can’t help being a Pocket Boyfriend,” he teased, knowing full well that I loathed that term even more than being called ‘adorable.’

“Yes it is! I’ll have to start feeding you more.” I wrested the dildometer from his hand and bopped him with it. The silicone protected the internal detector from getting broken by rough handling.

“The aim of this session,” the counselor interjected, “is to set discrete goals for this weekend. What would you like to accomplish?”

This was one question for which we had prepared an answer. John said, “We need to reconnect after being apart for so long and learn what it means to be a couple.”

The explanation sounded so weak now, after my session, and I couldn’t bring myself to respond or nod. Instead, I focused on the dildo in my hands and remembered the argument that inspired John to buy it. Luckily, his lame response seemed sufficient for the purpose of this session. The therapist then went on to monologue for a good twenty minutes about breakups, reconciliation, rebuilding trust, and making up for past hurts.

I could tell John was barely listening. It wasn’t that he found my feelings unimportant, he just seemed not to realize they existed. Yes, I forgave him. But I hadn’t forgotten. Our new relationship wasn’t a blank slate, even though we loved each other. I could feel his secrecy now.

Before I knew it, our session was over and our therapist wished us good luck with the day’s activities and reminded us to take them seriously.

“That was relatively painless,” John said as we took a circuitous route back to our room. I took charge of the dildometer and swung my arm as we walked, one eye on the light.

“Yeah, well… it was still hard talking about our rollercoaster ride,” I admitted. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into the walking semi-hug. Eventually, I began to wonder if the bug-detector was broken. “Has this thing lit up at all?”

“It did when I stood near her, but it could have been her phone,” he said. Stupid phones with their wifi and Bluetooth and apps!

“Phones can be used as recording devices,” I reminded him. “So this thing won’t be super useful on people, since everyone carries their phones everywhere. And Buzzard was very clear that we shouldn’t dismantle anything, but at least we’ll know whether the room is clean or if there’ll be a sex tape of us floating around.”

“Are you hoping for a sex tape?” he teased and I rolled my eyes, but didn’t say no. “We can do that even if there isn’t a camera hidden in a vent.”

I attempted to hip-check him and John dramatically stumbled to the side, forgetting momentarily that he had his arm around my shoulders. It sent us both stumbling, and he pivoted in an attempt to steady us, but instead wound up swinging me around until my back hit the corridor wall.

“Ooof!” I gasped. I lifted my arms up to wrap around his neck.

“I know you want to use that to keep me in line, but I think you’re doing it wrong,” he teased. I’d forgotten I was still holding the device, and was now poking him in the ear with the giant dildo. John slid his hand behind my head, and I knew he was trying to see if I hurt my head when I hit the wall. For once, I didn’t object. I knew I wasn’t technically invincible, but I saw such severe injuries and illnesses every day on the job that I tended to ignore my little boo-boos and sniffles.

I hummed and pushed into the touch, and a soft smile played across lips I hadn’t tasted in hours. There was only one way to remedy that lapse; I raised my mouth to his. Mmm — black tea, almond cookies, and John. I put my arms around his neck, but one met resistance. I tried to ignore it and savor the kiss, but the moment was broken by a man’s guffaw and woman’s southern-lilted, “That’s not where you put that.”

I turned my head to see a large man in his fifties smirking. Despite the spare tire around his middle, he was a prime specimen of a silver fox, with small crinkles in the corners of his eyes and hair graying in that way all men hoped would happen to them as they aged. The slim, large-chested, big-haired blonde with him covered her smile demurely, but I could see the naughty mirth in her eyes.

I must have looked confused by the woman’s comment, because the man clarified: “It goes in his ass.” He drew out the last word into two syllables: aaaaa-uhsss.

“The dong,” she added, then asked her husband, “Shouldn’t they know that?”

“Maybe they’re here because they’re new at this gay thing.”

“I heard that happens sometimes. Are you new at this gay thing?”

“No. We’ve been doing this gay thing since we were teenagers,” John told her matter-of-factly. “Well, in general, not with each other. We just met last fall. Tommy, you’re still poking me with it.”

I looked at my hand with surprise, having completely forgotten reality with John so very close. Just for fun, I poked him a little harder before moving my hand away. “If you don’t like how I discipline you, then you should stop misbehaving.”

“Sorry, sir,” he said, eyes obediently downcast.

“That’s better.”

The couple guffawed and tittered, then we introduced ourselves. They were from Texas, had been here several times before, and ‘liked to wander.’ Not suspicious in the slightest. As soon as possible, we made our excuses, said we’d see them at dinner, and slipped into our suite.

John opened up the folder on the table by a huge gift basket and began to read it aloud, while I walked around the room checking for monitoring equipment — cameras, recording devices, that sort of thing. The schedule was surprisingly complex, although I only listened with half an ear: sometimes we were to take part in mandatory activities with our assigned group, and at other times couples were given a choice between physical or mental activities.

Just as I finished my tour of the room, the light on the dildometer lit up. Score! The signal was coming from the top-of-the-line, unnecessarily huge, smart TV. Like a phone, it had wifi and Bluetooth connectivity and possibly a camera and microphone for video-calls. The TV could be benign, or it might be a nanny-cam on steroids. So I unplugged it. We had computers if we wanted to watch movies, and it was safer if we didn’t have to limit our conversations and sexual activity. And if someone asked, I’d say that we were focusing on each other this weekend.

“What are we doing tonight?” I had mostly tuned out John’s rambling recitation of our schedule.

“Same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!” he replied dramatically, quoting one of my favorite childhood cartoons. I snickered and leaned against his arm, and he lowered the folder so I could read along with him. “It’s not very specific. Introduction and Games, Scavenger Hunt, Dinner, and Bonfire.”

“It’s probably all getting-to-know-you stuff. I can’t believe we have therapy every single day,” I complained. After what she’d pulled out of me today, I couldn’t imagine what feelings she’d dredge up after two more sessions. And who knew how John would cope with the sessions on top of all the emotionally invasive social activities.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find something to talk about, even if we have to dig deep to find it,” John said, as though he wasn’t dreading it too. And as if we had nothing to talk about. Which was just plain weird. “I thought you like to talk things out.”

“But you don’t,” I said simply. “I don’t like it when you’re uncomfortable.”

“I should probably learn how to talk things out, anyway. My sister certainly says so often enough,” he admitted.

“I thought you talked to her about everything?” In fact, John’s twin was probably the only person on the face of the Earth who truly knew him.

“I do. But she thinks I should talk to you the same way. Only without all the rude nicknames.”

Oh. That was actually… pretty cool of her. I knew I liked Joy for a reason!

We quietly unpacked our bags and explored the suite. It was luxurious but laid out like a standard hotel family suite, with a living room, bedroom, and bathroom. There were three gift baskets, one in each room, and we of course peeked inside each as though they were Christmas stockings. One held snacks, movies, stationery, writing utensils, and cards. Another contained decadent toiletries and bath products. And the bedroom basket was the most interesting, filled with a wide variety sex-related items: toys, restraints, a mask, lubes, condoms, a gay sex manual, and herbal arousal supplements.

I flushed the boner pills down the toilet. I hated herbal supplements. Many were either harmful, or placebos, or both. But having a doctor visit and prescribe a few of the guests with Viagra was probably a little over-the-top, even for this place.

We decided to wear our current outfits for tonight, despite the fact that we both wore light trousers — white and beige were not ideal for an outdoor bonfire, but we had to act as though we had more money than we knew what to do with. I promised to spend a significant amount of time checking to make sure John’s gorgeous ass was clean and brushing it off as needed, because such were the sacrifices that I made in the name of love.

The afternoon was relatively uneventful, but Operation Butt Bandits was exciting enough to get me out of my own head. First we were informed of the retreat’s ground rules, which gave me an idea of just how odd this weekend would be. We must be honest at all times, we may not visit staffers’ rooms, and we could not be nude or engage in sexual activity in public spaces unless it was part of the program. Yes, that last clause had many of us giggling. The final rule — no phones could be on us during activities— meant John and I could bring the dildometer with us everywhere and get useful readings. Hopefully. Then the army of staff was introduced, and there were more therapists, spa personnel, and domestic staff than there were people taking part in the retreat.

After that, we moved on to childish getting-to-know-you games, in which we introduced ourselves and our reasons for being here. There were a lot of dysfunctions on display, and suddenly two gay man carrying around a giant faerie dragon dildo like toddlers with a beloved teddy bear didn’t seem all that strange.

We played ‘two truths and a lie,’ which was fun despite the fact that John unfairly insisted on choosing ‘lies’ that were mostly true. We could have had more fun with that game if alcohol was involved, but the game sucked when played sober as a conversation starter. Later on, someone admitted that the usual game was to line up shoes and hope your spouse could recognize your shoe. Unfortunately, the game had been discontinued because there had been more than one catfight after someone attempted to claim someone else’s Manolo Blahniks. It was just as well, since John and I would have kicked butt at that game. We both had left shoes with the distinctive imprint of Frankie’s teeth — the poor little guy hadn’t taken the news of our trip well and separation anxiety had reared its ugly head.

Next, couples wrote a paragraph about our first date or how we met, and we had to guess which story went with which couple. One poor schmuck described meeting someone… but that date was not the one he went on with his wife. We, on the other hand, had the second most boring story: he visited his friend at the hospital and it was love at first sight… we texted, met for tea and pastries at Moore Delicious, and then he introduced me to his dog. The award for most boring went to the busy CEOs who decided their lives were compatible and marriage was the cleanest, most thorough way to merge their companies.

Finally, we discussed what kinds of cakes our relationships would be and why. Some couples dispassionately chose something unusual without any explanation, others had heated arguments with their partners and wound up not making a decision at all, and the Texan couple waxed poetic about chocolate cake with fudge frosting. John and I were a nut-based cake, with an accidental dash of pet hair mixed in. Our cake had homemade pink whipped cream filling, was iced with chocolate ganache, and sprinkled with edible glitter. And the reasoning behind that decision should be obvious to anyone who knew us and most people who didn’t.

After games, they sent us out on a scavenger hunt, which was disappointingly easy. The counselors said it was to get us to learn teamwork, but it was so lame that it clearly was just intended to acquaint us with the amenities and let us stretch our legs. One glance at the sheet and I was already bored, so John decided to make things interesting. I charmed a member of the kitchen staff into giving me a couple of items, and we otherwise used items in plain sight. We started at the last step, going backwards as quickly as we could. It wasn’t until number four that we hit a snag.

“People are coming! What are we going to do?” I said a harsh whisper, as if the horses and barn cat could help. I turned in a circle and tossed the dinner roll from hand to hand. The stable was remarkably clean and tidy. Too tidy, in fact, for what we had in mind.

John found a solid bale of hay and dragged it within view of the barn door. “Aww! Don’t do that! They’re trying to make the place look nice for all the fancy-pants rich people.”

“Put it in here!” he said with a huff. Those things must be heavier than they looked. Then again, a box of paper was super heavy even though a sheet of paper was– “Come on, Tommy! Quick like a bunny!”

“Okay, fine,” I bent over and began loosening the straw so that I could fit the bread inside, while John guarded my rear. He must have been a little too focused on my rear, because he didn’t give me any warning. A gust of hot, moist, grass-smelling air bathed the right side of my face and neck. I looked to the side and giant lips touched my ear.

I screamed.

Then several of the horses screamed, including the one inches from my face.

So I screamed some more and ran outside.

John appeared in the doorway, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Are you okay?”

“That’ll have to be good enough!” My voice was a tad hysterical and screechy, but I’d just been assaulted by a horse. I jumped up and down and shook myself all over.

Everything was fine. I was safe. Horses were herbivores.

But those huge teeth.

And now he’d gotten a taste of me. Everyone knew I was delicious, especially after I put on that vanilla lotion.

Great, now they had a carnivorous horse that would start eating the guests until it found Yummy Tommy. I was so not going on that trail ride tomorrow morning.

“You’re still holding it.”

“Holding what?”

John took the bread from my hand and walked inside. I shook myself one last time, adjusted my mussed hair, and pulled myself together while I watched him stuff it artistically inside the bale of hay.

“There, it’s done.”

“I hope it was worth it. Think anyone will even notice?” I asked. We already knew most people would miss our little visual pun, but it at least made this fun for us. “Oh who cares? If not, everyone will think we had sex in there.”

With a grin, John jotted down ‘a roll in the hay’ next to the clue ‘something to neigh about.’

“We still haven’t found anything but computers and people with cell phones,” I whined, covertly dildo-scanning as we walked to the pool for clue three. John just shrugged because Julian had warned us we wouldn’t find much — the perp was probably someone with a cell phone. “I remember the days before cell phones, when parents had trouble contacting their teenagers and entire movie plots hinged on the fact that nobody was home when the phone rang.”

“We didn’t have a microwave until we were ten, and no cable television until we were teenagers,” John said. “And of course, Joy and I started college when we were fifteen, but we really only got cable for the internet connection anyway. Of course, then mom discovered the home shopping channels…”

Nobody really cared about the results of our scavenger hunt, although the couple that finished first won a free couple’s massage. The Texan couple we’d met earlier asked if we’d noticed a couple of things, and we pretended that we hadn’t set them up ourselves. Everyone was starving after all that wandering around, so we all eagerly went to dinner.

Couples were seated at tables based on their survey responses, but John and I could tell that someone chose our dinner-mates so that we could keep a close eye on them. They were all extremely sketchy. The couple from Boston refused to talk to each other directly and every word out of their mouths was a passive aggressive dagger aimed at their spouse. They also asked us a ton of questions without sharing anything about themselves. The couple from Vermont argued nonstop and ignored the rest of us, although I could sense they were listening with half an ear. The Texans were conveniently seated with us. They moved to Connecticut a decade ago and were over-sharers who made a great many assumptions about us and our fairy dragon dildo, and they’d suspiciously attended this retreat several times to ensure they stayed in tune with each other. In fact, this was their third visit this year, which they claimed was because the woman was lusting over beautiful Dare.

I was lulled into a false sense of security and had mostly stuffed my feelings back down… until the bonfire. We learned things we didn’t need to know about the other couples and why they were here, and were expected to share very personal information. John looked very uncomfortable, and I tried to make sure he was okay with me answering whatever questions we were asked. Unfortunately, based on the pitying looks I received, I was pretty sure that doing that made people think John was a controlling asshole.

“He’s very private person,” I tried to explain. “Which is kinda why we’re here.”

“You’ve gooot to taaalk abouuut your prow-bah-lehhhms,” the Texan woman told him, having dubbed herself an honorary counselor after so many visits.

“I do,” John said, and I rolled my eyes. “Well, I do now.”

“The breakup was rough, but we’re finding our way back to each other,” I added.

Instead of taking the talking stick from John, the Texan man stole our dildometer and declared it the true couples’ talking stick. I snickered at the bewildered, semi-panic on John’s face and squeezed his hand. We’d get it back, and it was dark enough that we’d see the little purple light from here.

The Texan stared intently at the dildo in his hands as he blushingly shared his marital non-problems such as being too friendly with a woman he worked with, and he sometimes got jealous of the time his wife spent with their eleventy thousand kids. Not that I judged them for raising an entire basketball team, I was just surprised because she just didn’t look like someone who’d been pregnant so very many times. I’d have to ask her if she did pilates or had any tips from her personal trainer…

The dildometer made the rounds of the group. Sure enough, the female half of the Boston couple lit up, but two minutes later, her pocket chirped and her ‘business phone’ was confiscated. Meanwhile, the male half of the Vermont couple took photographs of random things throughout the bonfire, and he caused the detector to light as well.

“Did you know there’s a little light on your dong?” the Texan man asked us quietly.

“It lights up whenever it’s around someone it thinks is sexy,” I leaned over John to whisper.

“It didn’t light up around me!” the Texan said, mock hurt in his voice.

“Fairy-dragons are renowned for their questionable taste,” John explained.

The therapists didn’t leave things at that and just allow us to enjoy the romantic fire. Noooooo. They concluded the night with a cleansing ritual which would give most of us a sleepless night full of arguments and cold shoulders. We were asked to each write down things —intentional and accidental— that we had done that hurt our partners and things they had done that hurt us. Then we were supposed to toss them into the fire —the lists, not our partners— to ‘let go of past hurts.’

I don’t know what came over me, but I wanted to move forward already, so I wrote down everything that had been roiling around in my head all day. Maybe I should have never written all this down. Or maybe it was the healthiest decision I’d made since the wedding. Of course, John being John, he finished quickly and peeked over my shoulder. The shock and devastation on his face was something I’ll never forget.