Page 76 of The Romantic Agenda
“Well, we don’t have a sauna, but we do have a hot tub.”
Joy cleans the dried face mask off and moisturizes his face before they head downstairs. They raid the kitchen, ending up with a platter of leftovers, breakfast pastries, and fruit, and snag a bottle of champagne from the bar room to make mimosas.
It isn’t quite warm enough outside to worry about heatstroke just yet. In fact, the last few remnants of the overnight chill still hang in the air. It prickles at Joy’s bare skin, and coats the grass she walks on, tickling the bottoms of her feet. She opted to wear her second bathing suit—one-piece, all black, with geometric cuts of fabric in clever places.
Joy sets up the table for their food so it’s within reaching distance, while Fox peels back the hot tub cover.
“I think it takes a couple of minutes to warm up,” he says as the jets kick on.
“I can take it.” Joy climbs the steps and gets in immediately, feeling perfectly fine and chilly.
“Isn’t it cold?”
“Freezing,” she says, excited. “I love it.”
Fox, on the other hand, waits until he can see steam rising off the water. He settles in next to Joy, who immediately asks, “Have you thought of anything else you’d like to do?”
He shakes his head. “This is okay.”
“You should still pick something,” she says. “How do you feel about massages? Would you like one?”
“From you?”
“That had a tone.” She laughs.
“No, no tone. Just surprised,” he says, completely blush free. Either he never turns red or he truly isn’t embarrassed. “Would you be okay with that? That’s a lot of touching.”
“I’m okay with you, Fox,” she says. “If you’re cool with it, then so am I.”
And she is. She doesn’t even have to think twice about it. Ever since that first moment in the kitchen when he let her touch his hand to see how comfortable she felt, she’s been openly inching toward him, closer and closer.
Fox nods and Joy moves to sit behind him. He scoots forward, giving her room on the bench.
Joy says, “You don’t have to sit so far away. Come here, please.” She only has the basics down: effective ways to use her hands and which muscles to look for. She hits a knot right between his shoulder blades almost immediately and tries to work it out, but she can’t. He doesn’t seem to mind how bad she is at it, leaning into her touch and exhaling in delighted surprise when she hits certainspots. She’s glad he can’t see her face—her pleased smile is practically criminal.
Fox says, “You didn’t answer my question last night.”
“I didn’t?” Joy plunges her hands under the water to reach his lower back. He sits up a little straighter with a tiny noise of acknowledgment that sounds low in his throat.
“About what kind of life you want. You fell asleep while you were thinking.”
“Wrong, I was resting,” she jokes. “I really want a house. Something small with a yard so I can get the kind of dog Pepper will like. I love my jobs, so I think I’d still want those to keep me productive. Travel a couple times a year to see the world with my family. That seems really basic, I know, but it also feels really fucking impossible and far away.”
Between student loans and systemic racism, it’s hard to feel hopeful about something even as standard as that. The American dream came in different flavors of privilege. Some people could never even hope to taste a single one of them. But being shut out was becoming more and more common—eventually the jig will be up foreveryone. Maybe things would change then.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he says. “My parents bought a house for dirt cheap in the seventies and my dad put himself through college with a minimum wage job while taking care of a family. He doesn’t understand why I can’t do the same thing. My mom gets it. She understands, but not my dad.”
“Do you get along with them?”
“Sometimes. My dad is... difficult.”
Joy can’t relate—her parents are unbelievably supportive. They even call her every week only to say,I didn’t want nothing. Just saying hi. How’s the weather?“Your turn,” she says.
“My life is good,” he says. “I’m happy.”
“Being happy is great. Most people can’t even get there.”
“You think so?”
