Sometimes, Sunday morning after sex, I make Laura a cup of coffee and me a cup of tea, and we sit across from each other sipping our drinks and staring at each other, remembering how good it was to be in each other’s arms, and after a while one of us gets up, and the other follows, and back to bed we go.

This Sunday started out pretty much the same. Laura and I had some lovely good morning sex. I made coffee for her and tea for me, and we sat across from each other sipping our tea. Laura got up, and I thought we’d go back to bed as usual. “I’m going to the gym,” she said.

I must have had a sad look on my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“You could get more exercise in bed,” I said.

“I know,” she answered, “but I have this monthly membership, and you know how you’re always figuring how much it cost per session. Thirty dollars divided by eight visits is four fifty a visit, or whatever it is. So the more I go the less per visit. Smart of me, right? While I’m gone you could go running or take a shower or something.” And off she went.

I didn’t go running but I did take a shower. A long shower. Then I looked at stuff on the Internet and made the bed and got dressed. Laura still wasn’t home. Extra time at the gym wasn’t going to reduce her per session cost. But of course she knew that. Maybe she was shopping, but almost all the stores were closed on Sundays.

Finally she got home.

“Did you have a good workout?” I asked.

“I did,” she said.

“Seemed like it took longer than usual.”

“It did.”

“Any special reason?”

“Kind of special,” she said. “There was this guy there. Cute guy. He was watching me do my workout. I was doing my usual routine. Weights. Treadmill. Yoga stuff.

He said I must be getting really hot doing all that in my sweatpants and sweatshirt. I told him I was pretty hot but I didn’t have anything on underneath, so my only choice was sweatpants and sweatshirt or bare naked. He laughed and said he wouldn’t mind bare naked. I laughed. He said, ‘What kind of exercises are you doing anyway?’ ‘Kegels,’ I told him. ‘What are kegels?’ he wanted to know. So I told him they were an exercise to strengthen the clench of my vagina. I explained how I contracted myself and held it and repeated again and again. I told him it led to much more powerful orgasms for me and my husband. ‘It really works, huh?’ he said. ‘It does,’ I said. He looked a bit doubtful, so I asked him if he wanted a demonstration. And that’s why I’m late, and I really need a shower now.” She gave me a coy look and strode off toward the bathroom, removing her sweatshirt and sweatpants as she went.

She stopped just short of the door, the sweatshirt rumpled on the floor behind her, the sweatpants dangling from one leg. Bending to free the pants, she brushed her hand briefly between her legs, but not so briefly that there wasn’t pause enough perhaps for her fingers to part her sex lips and dip into the cove of her cunt. Her hand came up, fingers touching her lips, her nose. As if an afterthought, she blew me a kiss, then hopped free of her sweatpants and disappeared through the doorway.