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murmurs of appreciation. His hands passed over my skin as he unhooked, unbuttoned, unzipped. When I was naked, he bent to kiss my mouth again and his body aligned with mine, a puzzle with only two pieces. Adam and me. Fitting.
    He traced my body with his lips and tongue. I tensed when he nuzzled the curve of my belly, then my thighs. He parted my curls with a fingertip and kissed my clit. When he licked it, I arched into ecstasy at once, giving myself up to his touch. Adam made love to me with his mouth, slowly, until I couldn’t do anything but ride the waves of pleasure and try to remember to breathe.
    Adam didn’t fumble with the condom or struggle to figure out how to enter me. He used a hand to guide himself inside, dipping the head of his penis first to smooth the way for the rest. I was so wet he was able to fill me with one thrust.
    We both cried out. He bent over me, his face buried in the curve of my shoulder. His teeth grazed me, and I answered with the scrape of my nails on his back. We didn’t move at first. Pleasure had immobilized us. The immensity of what we were doing became real. Only for a moment, and then he eased out with a smooth shift of his hips. Back in, all the way, and I lifted my hips to meet him.
    Inexperience should have made me clumsy, but arousal choreographed us. In and out, bodies shifting. Give and take.
    It didn’t last long enough for me to come again, a feat of which I didn’t know myself capable at the time. Adam cried my name when he came. His last thrust hurt me more than the first had and I cried out, too.
    After, I lay curled in the circle of his arms and slept until it was time for me to get up and leave for home. It took my body three days to recover, until I could no longer feel the effects of him inside me, and by that time Adam had called me twice a day and made arrangements to come see me at my parents’ house. I never asked him what he told Rachael. I didn’t really care.
    We were inseparable after that. We got married the June after I earned my masters in psychology. A year later, while I was working on my post-doctoral experience so I could sit for the licensing exam, the binding on Adam’s left ski broke as a result of a manufacturer’s defect. He skied headfirst into a tree, suffered a C5-level spinal cord injury that put him in a coma for three weeks and left him without sensation or voluntary movement from the shoulders down. He was only thirty-six.
    Losing my virginity hadn’t made me a woman, but almost losing my husband had. He could have died. There are days I weep with gratitude that he didn’t.
    And then, there are days I wish he had.
     
    At home that night, I let myself in the front door with my key. I smelled something good, savory. Probably soup. Mrs. Lapp likes to make soup in the winter.
    “Mrs. D?”
    She always asks, though who else would be coming in at dinner time? “It’s me.”
    She bustled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Her tidy gray bun had gone a little askew and wisps of hair had come down around her flushed face. Dolly Lapp cooks and cleans like a dream come true, but she’s more than a housekeeper. She’s a mother, nurse, friend and my life would be impossible without her.
    I hung my coat on the hook and set my briefcase in its accustomed spot by the front door. Everything had to stay in its place in my house. There could be no room for clutter, nothing to snag or catch on wheels and block the way.
    “I made soup. Come in and have a seat. I was getting worried. You’re so much later than usual.”
    “Traffic was bad.” I lied with nary a flinch. Traffic had been fine. The fight with Joe had so unsettled me I’d gone driving, around and around, unable to face the idea of coming home. “But you’re right, it’s late. I should go check on Adam.”
    Mrs. Lapp nodded her apple-doll head. “He’s in bed already, I helped him in about an hour ago. Soup’s in the Crock-Pot, Mrs. D, and I’ll just get going.