Page 22 of Indulgence
Norah was more than happy to oblige. “Well, during my party, I went inside to grab a sweater, and imagine my shock when I heard hot sex happening in the half bath across the hall from the laundry room.”
Penelope’s eyes bugged, and she looked over at me. “You and Matteo?”
“Oh my god, Pen.” Norah gushed. “I wish I had my phone to record it. Matteo was all, ‘Let them hear you scream,’ and Nat was moaning like a porn star. Then Matt was like, ‘Give it to me.’ It was so weird to hear. I honestly didn’t know he had it in him.”
Norah fanned herself and made goo-goo eyes as if the Hemsworth brothers were standing in front of us. She had a shit-eating grin on her face. “They were completely shameless.”
Penelope’s shock had faded, but her curiosity had been flamed. “You had sex in Norah’s bathroom? You little hussy!” She laughed with no judgment in her voice. “I can’t believe you didn’t care who caught you. What if it was Emma or Jackson who came inside and heard you? What in the world brought that on?”
“One day, Jackson and Emma will understand that you take good sex whenever and wherever you can get it.” I shrugged. “Until then, I’m sure we could find them a good therapist.”
Norah smacked her hand down on the table. “You owe us some juicy gossip, Miss Not-So-Goody-Two-Shoes. How did sex in my bathroom come about?”
I took a generous sip of my drink before admitting, “Things got a bit boring, and we’ve been spicing it up.”
Our appetizers arrived, and my stomach growled. I wasted no time pulling a potato skin onto my dish. I felt their eyes burning holes into the top of my head as I focused on my food, but I was in no rush to spill all the beans just yet. I was hungry and wanted to stuff my face a bit first.
Penelope huffed her annoyance with my lack of verbal vomit first. “No way,” she protested. “You aren’t just going to give me that. I don’t have a sex life. I live vicariously through you two. I need details. It isn’t fair Norah got the live action version, and I can’t even get a decent recap. Start spilling, woman.”
Penelope’s been divorced for two years and still hadn’t stepped back into the dating pool. Her ex-hubby moved on before they were even officially divorced. He found love in a twenty-five-year-old blonde model, and Penelope has felt inferior ever since.
I rolled my eyes as I cut into the potato. “Dramatic much. Things had become dull between us. Although, I guess I can’t really say that since we had been doing the same stuff we’d been doing for years. It just wasn’t working for me. Matteo figured out I was . . . disinterested, and then we started this bucket list of things, I suppose, that we want to try, and we’ve been checking them off.”
Pen seemed a bit mystified. “Doing it in Norah’s bathroom was on your sex bucket list?”
Norah looked skeptical. “What do you mean by disinterested?” She made air quotes arounddisinterestedas if it were a code I was using.
“No, it wasn’t. It was spur of the moment,” I answered Penelope before addressing Norah, “I’m almost embarrassed to admit.” I sighed as I thought back to the morning Matteo flat out told me not to lie to him. “He said I wasn’t as good at pretending as I thought I was.”
Pen gasped as if she were watching a telenovela.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Norah said, which meant she was going to say something kind of bitchy, “but you kind of sounded like someone who was faking it from what I heard. Like Meg Ryan inWhen Harry Met Sally. How was he able to know the difference?”
“Could you keep your voice down?” I snapped and leaned in closer. “The whole restaurant doesn’t need to know my business.”
She shrugged unapologetically and raised her brow in anticipation of my answer.
“He said I was closing my eyes and that was how he knew. Apparently, I don’t close my eyes when I come.”
Penelope scoffed. “You mean to tell me that Matteo could tell you were faking it because you closed your eyes? That’s insane. No dude pays that close of attention to his wife’s come face.”
I hadn’t wanted to point out she didn’t have the best frame of reference, so I answered simply. “Matteo has always been an attention-to-detail kind of guy. After he figured it out, he waited for me to tell him about what was going on, and when I didn’t, he took things into his own hands.”
A few servers arrived a moment later with our food, and we fell into a comfortable silence as we ate. I could see the girls’ minds swirling. My last comment was pretty vague, and I knew they had follow-up questions, so I laid out the rest of the story.
“He snooped through my iPad, looking for clues. He thought maybe I was discussing why I couldn’t . . . umm . . . finish with you guys or someone else.”
“But you never said a word to us,” Penelope cut in.
“Yeah, why didn’t you tell us about this?” Norah added.
My eyes were glued to my alfredo as if it was Van Gough’sStarry Night. “It was kind of embarrassing,” I finally admitted. “Matt’s great, and it felt wrong to say that I was bored. Guilt weighed heavy on me. As if I was betraying him or something.”
Norah nodded as if she understood. “Then what happened?”
“When he didn’t find anything in text or email”—I lowered my voice—“he checked my browser history.”
Both girls’ eyes widened with surprise. “No . . .”
