Page 72 of The Liar's Reckoning

Graham gives me a small, uncertain smile. “Yeah.”

I take a shower first because I need to rinse those assholes off me. I have some clean gym clothes in my bag that I put on before leaving the bathroom. Graham is lying on his back on the bed, on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling before he turns to me.

“You’ve got your shoes on,” I say.

He looks down at his feet like he hadn’t realized.

There is very little that’s smooth about me and Graham. We’re like stop motion claymation. But that doesn’t make it feel any less right to get into the bed, flip back the covers and tuck myself in. I lie on my side facing him, waiting for him to perform his next action.

He kicks off his shoes, and they thunk to the floor. Then he turns, still fully clothed, to face me. “You smell good,” he says.

“I guess I have you to thank for that,” I tell him. I used the soap and shampoo that was already in the shower. “Water pressure’s good, too.”

He smiles faintly. “You being nice to me is confusing.”

The sun is so bright in the room, I have to squint. He’s got the HD view of me now, and I hope I look better than I feel. “Say something unsexy,” I tell him. “Talk to me about what it’s been like having sex with your wife.”

“Have you ever had sex with a woman?” he asks.

“Only for work. Never because I wanted to.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t into it.”

“She puts on gay porn in the background for me to watch to get me hard. But I think it turns her on, too.”

“Interesting. Does it work? Do you get hard?”

“Usually. But the more she gets into it, the more it splits my focus, and lately, I…” he averts his gaze.

“You can tell me. Fuck knows I’m not gonna judge you.”

“I don’t want to make it seem like more than it probably is,” Graham says.

“What does it seem like to you?”

He sighs and picks at the comforter. “Sort of like she acknowledges that I’m gay but also thinks she can satisfy me well enough.”

I get the feeling he’s leaving something out. “And does she?”

“It’s not like I disassociate completely. I realize where my dick is when we’re messing around, and I…get off…”

He speaks haltingly, like he’s not used to talking about sex, and I guess he’s not.

“But the last few times it’s been…a disaster.”

“How a disaster?” I ask.

“Jesus…I’m not telling you that. You don’t need all the details.”

“Hey, if there’s anybody you can talk about this with, it’s me. I’m the last person who’s gonna judge you.”

“You judge me all the time,” he says.

I frown. “Not about this.”

“Of course about this. I’ll never forget the look on your face when I told you why I was getting married.”

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