Love the one youre with

'So what then?' Andy pressed. 'You loved him to the heavens and back?' His voice dripped with playful sarcasm, but his hurt look remained.

'Not that kind of intense either,' I said, struggling to find a way to put a detached, nonpassionate spin on intense. Which is impossible to do. Sort of like inserting a joyful note into the word grief or a hopeful note in doomed.

I cast about for a few more seconds before I finally offered up a weak, 'I didn't mean intense… I take it back… It was a bad choice of words.'

It was, indeed, a bad choice of words. But only because it was true-intense was precisely what Leo and I had been together. Nearly every moment we shared felt intense, starting with that very first night in my dark hotel room when we sat cross-legged on my bed, our knees touching, my hands in his, while we talked until sunrise.

'Too late,' Andy said, smirking and shaking his head. 'No take-backs. You can't strike this one from the record, Dempsey.'

And so it was too late.

Fortunately, Andy wasn't one to beat a dead horse, so Leo's name seldom came up after that. But for a long time, whenever someone used the word intense, Andy would shoot me a knowing look or make a wisecrack about my 'oh-so-smoldering, ever-passionate' ex-boyfriend.

I am not up for that kind of scrutiny now-joking or otherwise. Besides, I reason, as I peel off my jacket and hang it on our wobbly wooden coat rack, if the tables were turned, I'd rather not know about a chance run-in he had with Lucy, his most-beloved and longtime ex, who is now a third-grade teacher at a snooty private school in Atlanta. According to Margot, Lucy was as smart and wholesome as they come while still looking like she could be a body double for Salma Hayek. It was a direct quote I could have lived without.

With this rationalization, I decide once and for all that it is in everyone's best interest to keep my insignificant secret a secret. I plop down on the couch next to Andy and rest my hand on his leg. 'So why are you home so early, anyway?' I ask him.

'Because I missed you,' he says, smiling.

'C'mon,' I say, feeling torn. I like this answer, but almost hope there is more to it this time. 'You've never been home this early.'

'I did miss you,' he says, laughing. 'But my case settled, too.'

'That's awesome,' I say. I know how much he had been dreading the even longer hours that come with a full-blown trial. I had been dreading them, too.

'Yeah. Such a relief. I have sleep in my future now… So anyway, I was thinking we could get changed and go to dinner? Maybe somewhere nice? You up for that?'

I glance toward the window and say, 'Maybe a bit later… It's really coming down out there… I think I'd rather just stay in for a bit.' I give him a seductive smile as I kick off my boots and sidle onto his lap, facing him. I lean in and plant a kiss on his jaw, then another on his neck.

Andy smiles, closes his eyes, and whispers a bemused, 'What in the world?'

It is one of my favorite of his endearing expressions, but at this moment it strikes a small note of worry in my heart. Does my initiating foreplay really warrant a What in the world? Aren't we occasionally spontaneous when it comes to sex? My mind races to come up with some recent, juicy examples, but disappointingly, I can't think of the last time we had sex anywhere other than in bed, at bedtime. I reassure myself that this is perfectly normal for married couples-even happily married couples. Andy and I might not swing from the chandeliers and go nuts in every room of the house, but you don't have to be nailing each other willy-nilly on the kitchen counters and hardwood floors to have a solid physical connection. After all, sex on and against hard surfaces might look hot in the movies, but in real life it is uncomfortable, overrated, and contrived.

Of course there was that one time with Leo in his office…

I desperately try to push the memory out of my head by kissing Andy again, this time on his mouth. But as is the way when you're trying not to think of something, the scene only grows more vivid. And so, suddenly, I am doing the unthinkable. I am kissing my husband while picturing another man. Picturing Leo. I kiss Andy harder, desperate to erase Leo's face and lips. It doesn't work. I am only kissing Leo harder. I work at the buttons on Andy's shirt and slide my hands across his stomach and chest. I take my own sweater off. We hold each other, skin to skin. I say Andy's name out loud. Leo is still there. His body against mine.

'Hmm, Ellen,' Andy moans, his fingers stroking my back.

Leo's hot hands are digging into my back with crazy pressure, urgency.

I open my eyes and tell Andy to look at me. He does.

I look into them and say, 'I love you.'

'I love you, too,' he says, so sweetly. His expression is frank, sincere, earnest. His face is the face I love.

I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on the feel of Andy growing hard against my thigh. Our pants are still on, but I center myself over him, grinding back against him, saying his name again. My husband's name. Andy. There is no confusing who I am with right now. Who I love. This works for a while. And continues to work as Andy leads me to our bedroom where the all-or-nothing radiator is either dormant or sputtering steam everywhere. Right now, the room is downright tropical. We push away our goose down comforter, and slide against our soft sheets. We are completely undressed now. This bed is sacred. Leo is gone. He is nowhere.

And yet, moments later, when Andy is moving inside me, I am back in Leo's apartment on the night the not- guilty verdict finally came down. He is unshaven and his eyes are slightly glazed from our celebratory drinks. He hugs me fiercely and whispers in my ear, 'I'm not sure what it is about you, Ellen Dempsey, but I have to have you.'

It was the same night I gave myself to him completely, knowing that I would belong to him for as long as he wanted to keep me.

And, as it turned out, even longer than that.

six

Margot calls the next morning long before the sun is up-or, as Andy would say, before anyone in their right mind is up. Andy seldom gets agitated, but three things consistently set him off: people who cut in lines; bickering about politics in social settings; and his sister calling too early in the morning.

'What the hell?' he says after the second ring. His voice is scratchy, as it always is the morning after a few beers, which we ended up downing the night before at a Third Avenue bistro, along with burgers and the best shoestring fries in the neighborhood. We had a good time, laughing even more than usual, but our dinner didn't jettison Leo any more than sex had. He was stubbornly there with me all night, remarking on the crabby man at the table beside us and the Joni Mitchell background music. As I finished my third beer and listened to Andy talk about his work, I found myself drifting back to the morning Leo told me that my face was his favorite in the world. He said it just like that, utterly matter-of-factly and unsentimentally over coffee. I was wearing no makeup, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, sun from his living room window streaming in my eyes. But I believed him. I could tell he meant it.

'Thank you,' I said, blushing, thinking that his face was by far my favorite, too. I wondered if this, more than anything else, is a sign of true love.

Then he said, 'I will never get tired of looking at you… Never.'

And it is this memory, perhaps my top-ranking memory of Leo, that once again fills my head as the loud ringing continues in our bedroom. Andy groans as the caller finally gives up, waits a few seconds, and tries again.

'Let it go to voicemail,' I say, but Andy reaches across me and grabs the phone from my nightstand. To be