The Translation Toy

I woke up early on day four of our vacation and Nik was still asleep, face down, one arm hanging off the side of the bed like he'd fallen out of a plane onto it. I lay there and watched him for a while. He's forty-four, and he's got this gray coming in at his temples that I pretend to tease him about but actually love.

Eight years ago I met him at a company retreat when I was thirty-four. I was the HR manager doing the icebreaker games and he was the photographer hired for the weekend, and he asked me if the trust fall exercise counted as a work injury. I laughed so hard I knocked over my coffee. We started dating two months later. Our first real date, he was so nervous he told the waiter his own name wrong. He ordered "table for Nik" like it was a dish. I was gone for him after that.

So here's the problem. Eight years later, in a beautiful hotel in San Miguel de Allende, we've gotten sort of polite with each other. We say good morning, we plan the day, we eat, we sleep. It's nice! It's also boring, and I've been quietly panicking about it for months. This trip was supposed to fix that. Four days in, it hadn't.

* * *

Wednesday morning we hit the artisan market in the old town. Cobblestone streets, every doorway bursting with color, paper flags strung overhead. Nik wandered off to photograph a doorway for the tenth time and I ducked into a little boutique that smelled like cedar and candle wax.

The woman behind the counter was maybe thirty-nine, warm smile, silver rings on every finger. Her sign said Raquel's, and I figured that was her.

"Can I help you find something?" she asked. "Souvenir? Gift?"

"Just browsing," I said, and then I saw it.

In a glass case, among the wooden animals and painted tiles, was a small carved object. It looked like a rose, deep red wood, the petals folded so realistically I almost thought it was real. Then I noticed the seam. Then I noticed the little twist base. Oh. Oh my.

"May I see the rose?" I asked, trying to sound normal.

Raquel lifted it out and set it in my palm. It was heavier than it looked, smooth as glass, and when I turned the base there was the faintest hum. I looked up and she was watching me with a knowing little smile.

"Handmade," she said. "Oaxaca wood. Very good motor." Then she leaned in slightly and added, in that accent of hers, "For love."

She winked. I swear she winked!

"I'll take it," I said, probably too fast.

She wrapped it in tissue paper like it was a piece of jewelry and I paid her before I could talk myself out of it. I found Nik outside and he asked what I bought and I said a candle. I am not a good liar. He squinted at me and let it go, which is its own kind of married-couple superpower, isn't it?

* * *

That evening Nik went down to the hotel bar to look at some shots on his laptop with the concierge, a friendly guy named Billy who had been bending over backwards for us all week. I said I needed a bath. The rose needed me too.

I locked the bathroom door, filled the tub, and sat on the edge with the toy in my hands feeling kind of ridiculous and very excited. I'm forty-two years old and I was blushing alone in a hotel bathroom in Mexico. Fine! Whatever!

I got in the water, leaned back, and closed my eyes. I thought about Nik's hands, how they look around a camera, how he tucks my hair behind my ear when he thinks I'm asleep. My fingers went between my legs and found my clit already swollen. I twisted the base and the rose came alive against me and I gasped out loud, thank god the walls are thick.

I pressed it in slow circles, hips lifting off the porcelain, and imagined it was his mouth instead. His fingers sliding into my pussy while his tongue worked my clit, the way he did on our third date when he looked up at me like he'd won something. I slid two of my own fingers inside, fucking myself with them while the toy buzzed my clit, and the water sloshed and I did not care.

"God, Nik," I whispered to nobody.

I came hard, thighs clamping around my hand, the orgasm rolling through me in waves while I bit my lip to keep quiet. I sat there panting in the cooling water like someone who'd just run a race. Best bath of my life. Zero regrets.

I dried off, wrapped the rose in its tissue, and tucked it into my suitcase under the lingerie I'd packed with big plans and never used.

* * *

The plans lasted about ninety minutes. Nik came up while I was brushing my hair, said he'd forgotten his charger, and opened the suitcase. I heard the tissue paper crinkle and my soul left my body.

He held the rose up between two fingers, turning it, and I watched the exact moment he found the twist base. His eyebrows went up.

"A candle," he said.

"It's decorative!"

"It's a vibrator shaped like a flower, Rory." He was grinning so wide his eyes had disappeared. "Where does it go, the windowsill?"

"Give me that!"

He held it out of reach, laughing, and I was mortified and also, annoyingly, turned on by the whole thing. Then his face softened and he lowered the toy and sat on the bed.

"Hey. Don't be embarrassed!" He turned it over in his hand. "Honestly? I think it's kind of great. I've been feeling it too, you know. Us being all... roommates."

I sat down next to him. This was the opening I'd been waiting for all week, so I grabbed it.

"Then use it with me," I said. "Tonight. Us. Please?"

He looked at the rose, then at me, and something shifted in his whole posture. "Yeah. God, yes. I'd like that a lot."

We didn't even make it dramatic. He kissed me, slow, his hand coming up to my jaw, and I melted into it like it was eight years ago instead of just now. His mouth moved to my neck and I was already pulling at his shirt.

"Bed or bath?" he asked against my ear. "And are you sure? Tell me if you want to stop at any point."

"I'm sure. And I will."

"Bed. Definitely bed."

* * *