He’d asked to be left alone, so I left him alone. Stranded in an isolated corner of New York in the winter, in a house that hadn’t been inhabited in years, with a man who took up more room than space, I didn’t know what to do with my body.

Pushed against the wall, the kitchen table had two chairs facing the window. I’d moved the one at the head. A black-and-white TV took up much of the tabletop. Dust coated everything like snow. I opened drawers for no reason. Inexpensive but sturdy silverware and servers, plastic measuring cups worthy of a hipster vintage store. A chrome plate was set into the wall. It had three parallel slits with teeth. I pulled it open to find wax paper, tin foil, and paper towel rolls behind it. I pulled out the paper towels, found some blue liquid in an unmarked atomizer, and squirted the table. The paper towel was black after one swipe. Half a roll later, a third of the table was done, it was getting dark, and I hadn’t even gotten to the crevices.

I couldn’t clean all this up myself. I didn’t have the tools or the time.

Putting down the paper towels and squirt bottle, I followed my husband’s path.

Adam was sitting on the bed, leaning on the wall. It was shingled and painted with outdoor paint. When I put my hand on the doorframe, I noticed how thick it was and how it had a big hole for a deadbolt. The light from the wide window was a flat grey that made him an opaque silhouette.

“It’s dark in here,” I said.

“There’s a light switch in the hall.”

I leaned out and found it. The switch clacked loudly when I flipped it. An outdoor light by the doorframe went on, bathing the room in yellow. The blue of the crocheted bedspread looked military green, the woods looked like cheap veneer, and the world outside looked dark and unknowable with reflections of us painted on it.

“Yuck,” I said.

“Piss was all the rage when I was a kid.”

“Has that bedspread been sitting out for five years?”

“Just got it out of the drawer.”

I shut off the light, and we sank back into deep blue. The school globe looked rounder, the books and blotter on the desk looked more mysterious, and as Adam faced me, he looked more three-dimensional.

I crawled onto the bed next to him and put my back to the wood siding.

“Definitely got a nice indoor-outdoor thing happening,” I said.

“They used to sit on this porch every afternoon. Watch the kids get home from school. Say hi to the neighbors. I remember them being happy on this porch. My grandmother brought Grandpa tea in the winter and iced tea in summer. If you look under the window, you can see the ledge where he rested the glasses. There’s still a ring in the paint.”

I craned my neck, but though I could recognize that the little shelf in the front of the room used to be the ledge of the porch railing, I didn’t see the ring. It was too dark.

“When they took me in, they just closed this thing up and chopped up the house to support me. It was what they did because that was what they did. Not an obligation. Maybe it was cultural. But they had no choice. I was their business. They were close to sixty when they took on a five-year-old orphan. Their entire lives revolved around me, but my grandmother’s life revolved around my grandfather. She did a figure-eight around the both of us. When he died, I thought she’d be free. I thought I’d offer to make the porch a porch again. She could sit on it and be happy.”

“Why didn’t they just take this room out when you moved out?”

“He got set in his ways. They had routines and God forbid one thing was out of place. She was miserable. But when he died, she went right after him. Like she forgot how to live.”

The sun had set, and the streetlights came on. I didn’t press the point with him. Didn’t mention his grandfather’s dominance or how it had affected him. A car with a loud stereo drove slowly along the block to the Belt Parkway service road.

“He pissed me off,” Adam said. “Sure. But by the end, I was pissed at her too, for letting him destroy her.”

“But you loved them.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his lower lip. “And she could really cook.”

“What was your favorite thing?”

He smiled absently. “You’ll make a face.”

“Maybe.”

“Snails.”

I made a face. “Ew.”

“She’d make them in this big pot.” He flicked his hand to the kitchen, or wherever the pot was, as if he was visualizing it. “But only on my mother’s birthday, because she’d loved them. Every year in July. Ten pounds at a time with tomato sauce. We’d pick them out with straight pins, and Grandpa would grouse around the house. Like making something he didn’t like was a personal insult and not a way to honor my mother. It was the only thing my grandmother ever put her foot down about. It was for me. Because when I moved out, she stopped doing Mom’s birthday because of him.” He jerked his thumb back at the house as if his bossy grandfather was still there. As if he was physically connected to the stories made in the house.

“Fuck him,” I said softly.

“Yeah. Fuck him.” He took my hand, putting it in his lap as if it was finally home. “What are we doing?”

“Screwing up.”

“Like it’s our job.”

“If you’re going to do something, I say, do it all the way.”

He squeezed my hand. I was jarred by the way he looked in the direction of the window, but not through it. He didn’t look like the commanding Dominant who had been my partner for the past few weeks. He was as handsome as ever, and graceful and sharp, a leader and a decider, but not the same.

He faced me. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

The light from the streetlights glinted off one eye. His jaw locked, catching things he’d never say. He looked like a man I knew and abandoned. Manhattan Adam.

“We can’t fix it,” I said, putting his hand in my lap, watching our clasped hands make a new form. I rubbed the outside of his thumb with mine, feeling its familiar shape, the strength of the knuckle, and the texture of his skin. “We have to build something new. And we can.” I looked up from our hands to his face.

Could I make him feel my optimism? Could I take a piece of it onto a fork and lift it to his lips? Would they part? Would he let me lay it on his tongue? Would he chew and swallow, saying “I do. I do believe we can, I do.”

He didn’t say that. He didn’t believe, but his lips needed to touch my belief and his tongue needed to taste my hope.

I didn’t know if I kissed him or if he kissed me, but it felt like a first kiss, with full quivering that left me paralyzed by his nearness. The act of two tongues tasting each other was so intimate between strangers, so taken for granted over time, and so rarely was the wonder of it felt through to the bone.

He was licorice. Fennel and leather. And he moved like cool water, reacting to my movements, countering with his hands and his mouth, wrapping me with his attention. The kiss was the sway of sex, the smell of it, the carnal desire without the promise of anything but another dance.

He pulled me on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips as he pushed them into me. My body reacted as if the shape of his cock was new.

I was blind. The world was pitch black.

But him. In a tunnel of light.

We pushed against each other. Our clothes got moved aside, unbuttoned where necessary and no more. We released our bodies from bondage and joined them. Right in the walled-in front porch built just for him, we made together what couldn’t be made separately.

If only for that moment, in that bed, in that dusty old house. We built something as permanent as the night breeze. Something that would go away too soon but would return like the seasons.

I forgot the latent desires and sexual exploration for a minute to look into my husband’s eyes and see all his anxiety, his growth, and his intentions. I saw everything he didn’t want anyone to see.

He loved me. He was terrified, but he loved me.

I closed my eyes. Felt the strength of his hands as they caressed me. Listened to his tender whispers. His movements under me were as familiar as the sound of my own voice.

Manhattan Adam was still there, and he loved me.

I wanted to cry but couldn’t. I was flayed, spread out, raw red, and bleeding. Reality was a serrated knife separating muscle from bone, sinew from skin. It cut away the truth of me from the truth of him.

We were on perpendicular paths. We were crossing at a ninety-degree angle, and soon we’d be traveling on different axes.

Manhattan Adam loved me, and I still didn’t love him.