A Weekend of Learning

Dwayne had never been up a dirt road this rough in his life. His old truck bottomed out twice on the way to the fire tower, and each time Bianca laughed like it was the best entertainment she'd had all year.

"You're going to shake the welds loose on that thing," she said from the passenger seat. Her boots were up on the dash, and the late September sun was coming through the window and landing on her face.

"It's a solid axle, it's fine. I welded half the brackets myself."

"I know, babe. You tell me every time we drive anywhere."

He grinned and kept climbing. He was twenty-three, four months past his first wedding anniversary, and he still got a little buzz in his chest whenever she laughed at him like that. Bianca was twenty-seven, four years older, and she'd known things when they met that he hadn't even known existed. That was part of why he loved her. It was also, lately, part of what was eating at him.

The tower came into view around a bend. It was one of the old ones, sixty feet of steel legs with a glass cabin on top and a wooden deck running all the way around. Somebody had built a small bunk room at the base of the stairs. The rental listing had promised "rustic charm," which apparently meant a propane lantern and an outhouse with a crescent moon cut in the door.

"Okay, this is actually amazing," Bianca said when they got out. The air was crisp and smelled like pine and cold rock. She stretched her arms over her head and looked up at the whole mountainside going gold.

Dwayne hauled their bags out of the bed of the truck. "Three nights, right? You never really said what the occasion was."

"I told you. Weekend getaway. Just us."

"Just us?" He glanced at the bags. There were more bags than a just-us weekend usually required. One of them rattled.

She took the rattling one from him and kissed his cheek. "Mostly us. Carole might come up tomorrow."

He stopped halfway to the stairs. "Carole? The woman from your... the party?"

"The college party, four years ago, yes. That Carole." She was already climbing the first steps, talking over her shoulder. "She's thirty now, she's between jobs, and she's going to help me with something."

"Help you with what?"

Bianca turned around on the stairs and looked down at him. She had that face on, the one she got when she'd already decided something and was just waiting for him to catch up. "Dwayne. Come up here and sit with me first. Then I'll explain."

So he climbed. The deck around the cabin was wide and weathered gray, and the view went on forever, ridges stacked on ridges all the way to the haze. She sat him down on one of the wooden benches bolted to the railing and sat sideways across his lap like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, which for her it was.

"Here's the situation," she said, and she took both his hands in hers. "You're a wonderful husband. You work hard, you fixed my car in a parking lot on our second date, you made me a fire pit for my birthday. In bed, though, you keep acting like I'm going to break, or like you're taking a test you didn't study for."

He felt his ears go hot. "I just don't want to do it wrong. You always know what you want and I'm just... following you around."

"Following me around," she repeated, and she squeezed his hands. "That's exactly it. And I love leading, I do. But I want you to know things. I want you to be able to look at me and just know, the way I know you. So I asked Carole to come up tomorrow and help me teach you."

"Teach me." He said it flat, to hear it out loud. "Like, what kind of teach?"

"The hands-on kind." She smiled. "She's a good teacher and she doesn't get weird about bodies. And I'll be right there the whole time. Nothing happens unless you say yes, and anything you say no to stops, no questions. That's the deal, and it goes for her too."

Dwayne sat with that for a minute. The wind moved through the trees below them and the whole hillside whispered. "You're not mad about anything? This isn't a hint?"

"Babe, no!" She cupped his face. "I hit the jackpot with you. I just want you to feel what it's like when you're not scared of it."

"Okay," he said. Then, because it felt like it needed saying, "Okay. Yeah."

"Good. Now, lesson one starts tonight, just us. Consider it the syllabus."

The propane lantern threw a soft white circle over the bunk room. There was a narrow bed, a table, two chairs, a little wood stove that Bianca got going while Dwayne put the food away. When she turned around, she'd already pulled her flannel off and was standing there in her undershirt with her hair coming loose from its tie.

"Okay, welder boy," she said. "First thing. Come here."

He crossed the little room and she took his hand and pressed it flat against her stomach, over the cotton.

"Feel that? Warm skin. This whole thing is a map. Your job tonight is to learn the map with your eyes shut."

"Shut?" he said.

"Shut. Do you want to? Because I'd like it, but I want you to say it."

"Yes," he said. "Yeah, I want to."

So he closed his eyes. It was strange how much louder everything got. The stove ticking. Her breathing. Her hands guiding his up under the undershirt, over her ribs.

"Slower," she said, close to his ear. "You always go straight for the good parts like you're clocking in for a shift. Start at the edges. Ribs, sides, under the arms. Everybody's sensitive there and nobody touches it."

He did what she said, slow, and she made a small sound that went right through him. He'd been married to her a year and he had never heard that one.

"See? That," she said. "Keep doing that."

Then her mouth found his, and for a while neither of them was teaching anything. When she finally stepped back she pulled her shirt off over her head and stood in the lantern light in front of him, bare from the waist up, and she didn't say anything at all, just waited.

He looked, because she wanted him to look. She was beautiful and she knew it and she liked him knowing it.

"Your turn to ask," she said.

"Can I touch you? Your..." He gestured vaguely, which made her laugh.

"Yes. Nipples first. Soft. Use the pad of your thumb, not the fingertip. Like you're smoothing a bead of weld."

"Welding references. You know me so well."

"I do. Now do it!"

He did it, and she leaned her head back against the wall and breathed out long and slow, and it was the best sound he'd ever been responsible for. She took his wrist after a minute and moved his hand lower, to the button of her jeans.

"Next part of the map," she said. "Down there, everything is slower than you think and wetter than you think. Ask me before you go in."

"Can I take these off?" he asked.

"Ask me nicer."

"Please can I take your jeans off, Bianca."

"See, that wasn't so hard." She stepped out of them and sat on the edge of the bed, and he knelt on the floor in front of her like it was the most obvious thing in the world, because suddenly it was.

"Okay," she said, and her voice had gone lower. "Two fingers, flat, start high and just feel. The little firm spot at the top, that's the clit. Don't attack it. Just say hello."

"Hello," he said, and she barked out a laugh that turned into a moan halfway through, which was honestly the most Bianca thing that had ever happened.

"There you go. Oh, that's nice. Circle it. Listen to my breathing. Faster means good, holding still means very good."

He listened. He circled. She got wet against his fingers and he felt his whole face heat up with pride, actual pride, like finishing a bead he'd practiced a hundred times.

"Bianca," he said, "I think I get it."

"Don't talk, feel." But she was smiling. She pulled him up by the collar and kissed him hard. "You're doing so good. Now. Do you want to fuck me? Because I want you to."

"Yes," he said, no hesitation, and she laughed and reached into the rattling bag and handed him a condom, because she wanted the whole weekend run by one set of rules until everybody had had the full talk, and he took it and rolled it on while she watched with her lower lip in her teeth.

She pulled him down onto the narrow bed, onto her, and guided him in slow, both of them making sounds at the same time. The stove ticked and the lantern flame bent in the draft from the window.

"Slower than that," she whispered. "There. Now stay there and just move your hips in little circles."

He did. The whole world got very small and very bright.

"Lesson two is tomorrow," she managed, grinning up at him with her eyes half shut. "With Carole. Tonight you just practice."

"Best homework I ever had," he said, and she pulled his mouth down to hers.

Morning came gray and cold, and the coffee was done before Dwayne heard the truck on the dirt road. Bianca stood at the window with her mug, watching a dust plume climb the switchbacks.

"That'll be her," she said. "You nervous?"

"A little. I don't really know her."

"You met her at our wedding, Dwayne. You danced with her."

"I danced with a lot of people. I was stressed about the toast."

"Well, relax. She's not here to judge you. She's here because she thinks this whole thing is funny and hot at the same time." Bianca laughed. "Which is honestly the right way to take it."

Carole came up the steps with a duffel and a paper bag of pastries, thirty years old, short dark hair, a grin that arrived before she did. "There he is. The student." She set the bag on the counter and hugged him, quick and warm. "Relax, honey. I can hear your shoulders from here."

"Sorry. Hi. Thanks for driving two hours."

"You brought me into the mountains for a weekend with two attractive people. You can thank me by not apologizing." She looked around the little room and whistled. "This is cozy. Propane lanterns. God, it's like dating in the eighteen hundreds."

They ate pastries and drank coffee and talked about nothing for an hour, the road, the smoke season, Carole's terrible last boss. Dwayne felt his shoulders come down around ten. Carole was easy to be around, the way some people are, asking him real questions about welding and actually listening to the answers.

Lunch was soup and bread, and afterward Bianca cleared the bowls and stood there a second with her hands on her hips, like a woman deciding weather.

"Okay," she said. "Dwayne. Lesson two. This one's mostly watching, so get comfortable."

"Watching?"

"Carole and me. You're going to watch us, and you're going to pay attention, and then later you're going to tell me one thing you noticed." She turned to Carole. "You good with that?"

"So good with that," Carole said. "You're sure he wants to? No pressure, big guy."

"I want to," he said. "Yeah. I've been, honestly, I've been curious since you told me the plan."

"Then sit." Bianca pointed at the chair by the stove. "And don't touch yourself without asking. That's a rule."

"Whoa. Okay. Rule noted."

Carole laughed and pulled her sweater off over her head, and Bianca stepped in behind her and unhooked her bra, and Dwayne understood very quickly that this was going to be a lot to take notes on. The two of them had a rhythm he didn't expect, easy, unhurried, like they'd done this before, which Bianca had admitted they had, four years ago at a college party and a few times since.

Bianca turned Carole's face toward her and kissed her, slow, one hand in her hair. Carole made a low sound and Bianca answered it with her own. It was nothing like the way he and Bianca kissed, or maybe it was exactly like it, and he couldn't tell anymore.

"See her breathing," Bianca said, not pulling away, talking right against Carole's mouth. "Watch her hands. She's going to lead a little. Let her."

"Bossy," Carole said.

"You love it."

"I do, actually."

They ended up on the bed in a tangle of arms and bare skin, and Dwayne sat in the chair with his hands gripping his knees like the chair was riding a bull. Bianca went down Carole's body in small slow steps, exactly the way she'd taught him the night before, ribs, sides, the soft parts nobody touched. Carole's reactions were louder than Bianca's, unfiltered, and every time Bianca found something new Carole told her plainly, "There, oh, right there, keep that!" Which was itself a lesson, he realized. Talk. Just say it out loud.

Then they switched, and Carole went down on Bianca, and that was different too, bolder, faster to the point, and Bianca's back came off the mattress and she said his name once by accident, which made all three of them laugh and then stop laughing fast because laughing made everything harder to hold.

Bianca came with her eyes open and locked on him in the chair, and that image was going to live in his head for the rest of his natural life, he was pretty sure.

"Okay," she said after, breathless, propped on one elbow. "Report. One thing you noticed."

"Talking," he said. "You both say what you want out loud. Carole narrates the whole thing."

"Give the man a gold star," Carole said, pulling her shirt back on with no hurry at all. "Most guys never figure that out. We're not riddles, honey. If you're doing something good, we will tell you, if you make it safe to tell you."

"Safe how?"

"By not getting weird about it," Carole said. "By not taking it like criticism. If a woman says move left, moving left should not be a whole conversation."

Bianca grinned at him. "Take notes, welder."

"I literally can't. I don't have a pen and I wouldn't be able to write anyway."

"Then burn it in," Carole said, settling onto the bed like she owned it, which for the weekend she kind of did. "Because lesson three is hands on, and you're not sitting in that chair for it."

He looked at Bianca. Bianca looked at him and nodded, slow, and there was a smile behind her eyes that said this was the whole point of the weekend, this exact moment.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah. I'm in."

"Good. Then lie down," Bianca said, pointing at the bed. "Middle. On your back. Carole, you want first or second?"