Monogamy

by Sue Miller

Sometimes, though, at the end of one of these casual relationships, she experienced a kind of melancholy that lingered for days or longer, a sense that, free as she felt she was, pleasurable as she felt that freedom to be, there was part of her that might be hoping for something else. Some deeper connection. Even, perhaps, monogamy again.

This was the trouble with these ruleless relationships, she thought. You couldn’t really know anything for certain about what the other person might be feeling.

She said he might as well attach reins to his penis and gallop around after it.

She thought for the first time too of the way in which her presence at so many important moments in Annie’s life with Graham might have been intrusive. Unwelcome. She actually began to feel an element of embarrassment for herself—she must have seemed so needy sometimes, so desperate.