The Sole of the Matter

My name is Martha Ibarra, I'm twenty-eight, and I have a secret I've kept for most of my adult life. My husband Claude is thirty-one and we've been married five years. We met at a claims adjuster conference when I was twenty-two, back when he still scouted locations for commercials instead of movies. He's the only man I've ever loved and the only person on earth who doesn't know what I'm about to tell you.

Here's how the secret came out.

Claude's company sent him to a coastal resort to scout it for a period film. Some drama set in the forties. The resort was quiet that weekend, mostly empty, and they let him bring me along. We got a bungalow right over the beach. You could hear the waves all night. It was the first real time off we'd had since our anniversary, and we both needed it. Our marriage is good. Steady. But steady can turn into routine if you let it, and we'd been letting it.

Saturday morning we walked down to the shore. Claude kicked off his sandals at the edge of the sand and I watched his bare feet sink in, and that's when my pulse picked up like it always does. I know how that sounds. I've known for years.

He walked ahead of me toward the waterline and I followed, and I couldn't stop looking. His feet pressing into the warm sand. The way the arch flexed when he pushed off. Sand sticking to his heels. He stopped and looked out at the water and I stood there maybe ten feet behind him, staring at his feet like a weirdo, feeling my face get hot.

I've had this thing since I was twenty-two. Feet. Specifically his feet, though not only his. I've never told anyone. Not my college roommate, not my sister, definitely not Claude. There's no good moment to bring that up over dinner. Hey honey, by the way, I've been secretly fixated on your feet for our entire marriage. It never fit into a conversation.

But standing on that beach, watching him wiggle his toes into the sand while he squinted at the horizon, something in me sort of broke loose. I thought, we're away from everything. No jobs, no neighbors, no routine. If not now, when?

"Come look at this," Claude called. He pointed at a tide pool. "There's a crab in here the size of my hand."

I walked over and looked at the crab and tried to act normal. I was failing. My heart was doing too much work for a Saturday morning.

"You okay?" he asked. "You've been quiet since breakfast."

"I'm fine." I looked at the crab. The crab did not help.

That evening we ate on the little patio of the bungalow. Claude had picked up grilled fish at the resort restaurant and carried it back on a plate like we were camping. We had a bottle of wine between us. The sky went orange and then dark and the waves kept up their noise.

I had maybe two glasses of wine in me, which is not enough to blame anything on, and I want that understood. I was clear-headed. I knew exactly what I was doing.

"Claude." I set my glass down. My hand was shaking a little. "I have to tell you something."

He put his fork down. "Is it bad?"

"It's embarrassing. It's not bad. I think it's not bad."

"Okay." He turned his chair toward me. "Tell me."

And here's where I stalled for a full minute. I picked at the label on the wine bottle. I looked at the water. He waited, which is one of the good things about him, he actually waits.

"I have a thing," I said finally. "A thing I've never told you. It's about feet. I have a thing about feet."

He blinked. "Feet."

"Feet. Yours specifically, but feet in general. I like them. I've liked them for years and I never told you because it felt strange and I didn't want you to think I was broken or something." The words came out fast once they started. "And today on the beach I was staring at your feet in the sand and you probably noticed and I decided I'm tired of hiding it."

Claude was quiet for a second. I braced for him to laugh. He didn't laugh.

"Wait," he said. "You've been hiding this for five years? Since before we got married?"

"Since my twenties. Right around when I met you."

"Martha." He reached over and took my hand. "That's it? That's the big secret? Honey, that's not bad. That's barely even strange. People have all kinds of things they're into. Feet are like the most common one there is."

"I know it's common on the internet," I said. "It feels different when it's you confessing it in real life."

"Okay, so tell me more." He leaned back. "What do you like about them? Mine? Anybody's?"

"Yours. Yours mostly." My face was burning. "The shape of them. The arches. When you walk barefoot I watch how they move. I've done it our whole marriage and you never caught me."

"I never looked," he admitted. "I'm not observant. I walked past a fully equipped film crew once because I was looking at a building."

I laughed and that broke some of the tension. He refilled my glass and we sat there and I told him more than I'd ever said out loud. That I liked looking at them, that I'd thought about touching them, about kissing them, and that I'd never worked up the nerve to ask because it felt like too much.

"So you've been sitting on this for years and never once asked?" he said.

"It felt weird to ask. What was I going to say, rub your feet so I can enjoy it sexually while you think it's just a nice massage?"

"That does sound kind of great from my side though," he said, and grinned, and I threw a napkin at him.

Then he got serious again in that way he has, where he tilts his head.

"So what do you want to do about it?" he asked. "We're here all weekend. Nobody knows us. You could show me. I mean it. Show me what you want."

My mouth went dry. "Right now?"

"Right now. Or not. Your call. I'm not pushing you."

I thought about it for maybe five seconds. Five years of hiding something and it took me five seconds once the door was open.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. Come inside."

We went in and shut the door on the sound of the waves. There was one lamp on, warm and low. Claude sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me, waiting, and I realized he wasn't going to lead. This was mine.

"Take your shoes off," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected.

He pulled off his shoes and his socks, slow, watching me watch him. His bare feet on the wooden floor of the bungalow. Five years of marriage and I'd never once let myself look like this, openly, on purpose.

"Can I?" I asked. I knelt down on the floor in front of him. "I want to show you."

"Yeah," he said softly. "Show me."

I reached out and put my fingers on his foot. Just rested them there at first, on the top of it, feeling the warmth of his skin. Then I slid my hand down to the arch and traced it, slow, the curve of it, and Claude made a small sound of surprise.

"That actually feels good," he said. "I thought you'd be all ticklish about it."

"I'm being serious. Don't wiggle."

"Sorry. Go on."

I used both hands then. One under his heel, one working along the arch with my thumb, pressing in the way I'd imagined pressing a hundred times. His foot was warm and heavy in my hands and real, so much realer than the version I'd kept in my head. I traced the sole from heel to toes and back down again, slow, learning it with my fingers while he sat there breathing easy above me.

"Martha," he said after a while. His voice had changed. Lower. "You're really into this."

"I told you." I didn't look up. My thumb circled the ball of his foot. "Five years, Claude."

"And this is just the start of what you want?"

I looked up at him then. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read at first, and then I could. It was the same look he got scouting a location when he found something better than what the script asked for.

"There's more," I said. "A lot more. But I've never done any of it, so you'd have to be patient with me."

"We've got all weekend," he said, "and honestly, the rest of our lives after that."

I bent my head down toward his foot. I stopped an inch away, my breath on his skin, and asked, because I wanted to hear him say it.

"Can I kiss it?"

"God, yes," Claude said.

I kissed the curve of his instep. Just that, just one soft press of my lips against the bone there, and I tasted the day on him, the salt from the beach still on his skin. It sounds like nothing. It was not nothing. Five years of wanting to do that one thing, and I did it, and something in my chest unlocked.

Claude made a sound above me. Not a laugh. Not surprise exactly. Something between a groan and my name.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, wow. Okay!"

I did it again, lower, on the soft part where the arch dips, and I kept my lips there longer. His skin was warm and a little rough and smelled like salt and sunscreen and him. "Does it bother you?" I asked against his foot. "Tell me if it bothers you."

"It doesn't bother me. It's the opposite of bothering me. Keep going, I'm just processing."

I grinned against his arch. He felt it, because his foot twitched, and he laughed too, a shaky kind of laugh, and then he went quiet when I kissed the inside of his ankle and worked my way back down. I held his calf with one hand and his heel with the other and I kissed that foot like I'd been practicing in my head for a decade, which I had, sort of, though nothing in my head matched the real weight of it in my hands.

"Martha." His voice was rough now. I looked up. He had leaned back on one hand and the other hand was just hanging there, wanting something to do. "You look happy."

"I am," I said. "I feel like I've been holding my