Chapter 41: The Redemption of Bodies

Chapter 41: The Redemption of Bodies

When he got home, all traces of containment got completely out of control. We crossed the threshold of the house with the green roofs and there was no longer room for prudent distances, nor for invisible threads, nor for wicker zip lines. We just wanted to be together. To enjoy our new life, but with the strength of that word written in capital letters: TOGETHER. At that moment, stripped of their coats and fears, the hut was reduced to its purest essence. We were no longer two castaways calculating the waves; We were simply a man and a woman with a flood of retained desires. Desires that had been buried under tons of contempt, desires that we thought were dead in the darkest corners of our past.

As the garments fell on the pine floor, a flurry of questions hit my mind, but no longer to torture me, but to make me see the magnitude of the miracle: When was the last time I felt truly desired? I didn't remember. Marriage to Anthony had become a desert of coldness where my body was just an invisible object. Since when did Ethan not make love with a real, fierce desire, and not out of pure inertia or to comply with the demands of someone who was ashamed of him? How long had it been since I felt the absolute liberation of an orgasm? Since when had I not received a caress with the devotion and fire with which the man who was now above me was giving it?

There were many questions floating in the gloom of the room, but the most important of all ran down my spine like an electric shock: Since when did I not feel like a woman?

In that, our first physical meeting, Ethan gave me a meticulous concern, an overflowing affection, a total dedication and a passion that I did not receive in fifteen years of marriage. There was no hurry, there was no selfishness; There was a perfect synchronicity of two skins that knew what it was like to be hungry for affection. It was then that pain and happiness crossed at the same point. We both cried.

Tears rolled down my cheeks and mingled with his as he lashed out at me with savage tenderness. We stared into each other's eyes, without taking our eyes off, and moaned each other's name as if we were praying. "Astrid", "Ethan". We cried with our chests open because, in every movement, in every wet touch and in every gasping breath, we knew we were healing. We cried because, in the exact way I felt—resurrected, valued, sacred—he was also feeling. We gave ourselves back the dignity that had been taken from us. Thus, between the cry of liberation and the fire of the north, it was our first meetin