Upstairs, the metal door creaks and clangs shut, leaving behind only echoes and the faint, drifting scent of their smoke. Neither of us move. Will is supporting me, arms around me, his face pressed against my skin. We breathe and breathe, and finally, I have to move. I extract myself from him one limb at a time until I’m standing in front of him. Panties around my ankles, slickness coating my thighs, my clothes and hands filthy. I’ve left the marks of my fingers on his shoulders. I hold his face for a moment, forcing him to look into my eyes.
We say nothing.
By the time we’ve gathered our things and taken the stairs all the way down to the street, Will is making jokes that deflect attention from what we did in the warehouse. I’m quiet, looking out the window of the cab we share back toward the gallery, where I’ll get out and he’ll keep going. We have a history in cabs, I think, and wonder if he’ll kiss me again or if he’ll just keep pretending we don’t do that sort of thing.
At the gallery, the driver stops and I pay him, but before I get out, I slide across the seat and take Will by the front of the shirt. Not hard, not grabbing. He could pull away, if he wants to. I offer my mouth without saying anything, just a tilt of my head, a parting of lips. I wait. Wait, wait, wait.
And then, just before it would become awkward even for the cabbie, Will leans in to brush his mouth across mine. It’s a sweet kiss, brief and perfect and exactly what I wanted. I smile into it. He smiles back.
“Talk to you later,” I tell him. Not a request.
I get out of the cab and don’t look back to see if he’s watching me from the window, but I figure he probably is. Inside, I head for my office, avoiding Naveen, who is tied up with some clients, anyway. At least until he comes to find me and I’m busy doing my best not to fiddle with my hair, which I’m sure is just-fucked messy, or my lipstick, which is just-been-kissed smeared.
“Hi.” I’m casual.
Naveen isn’t paying attention. He hands me a stack of invoices and folders, sending receipts fluttering to the floor like errant butterflies. He’s blathering on and on about some sort of show he wants to put on at the end of the year, how the gallery will need to be redesigned to accommodate some bigger pieces, blah, blah, blah.
He stops almost in the middle of a sentence I’m not really paying attention to, because I’m so busy reliving the feeling of Will entering me. Startled, I realize Naveen’s asked me a question. “Huh?”
Not a question, though he’s looking at me expectantly, as though I’m supposed to provide an answer. “Next week. On Thursday.”
If I ask him to repeat himself, he’s going to be pissed off, and also wonder why I wasn’t paying attention, which could ultimately circle around to why I’m distracted, a subject I want to avoid. “Thursday is probably...fine?”
“So you think I should see her.”
I get it now. “Oh, Naveen. You have to ask me that?”
“Yeah. I should tell her to fuck herself.”
I roll my eyes. “Shut up.”
He looks distraught, running a hand through his hair to mess it up, then smooth it. “She said she has something to tell me. Something important.”
“Well,” I say slowly, understanding now why he’s so nervous, because it’s about that woman he told me he was in love with, and not some random bang, “I guess you just have to be prepared for what she might say. What do you think it could be?”
“She’s leaving her husband,” he says confidently.
“Would that be a good thing for you?”
His mouth works. He shrugs then. “No. I don’t know.” He gives me the old, helpless look that used to melt me. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know. I wish I had an answer for you.”
He sighs, shoulders lifting. “Fuck, it’s so complicated.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That. Twice.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
We talk every day.
A call in the morning if I’m on my way to work at the Philadelphia office, maybe a video chat if I’m working from home. If I’m going in to the New York gallery, we meet for lunch, and mostly, just eat lunch. We talk again on my train ride home, and those couple hours are never long enough.
We talk, and talk and talk. About everything from alien abduction to the zombpocalypse—I’m uncertain about the former and adamantly opposed to the viability of the latter, while Will’s a believer in all of it, including Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster. On the existence of God we are both torn.
We message each other throughout the day. Silly quotes. Commentary on whatever it is we’re doing. He sends me pictures of what he’s working on and I reciprocate, though of course his are always artistic and beautiful and mine are stupid, out-of-focus snapshots. I have an entire gallery of the work he sends me, hidden in a folder on my phone.
He makes me laugh.
Oh, God, how he makes me laugh.
He tells me the dumbest jokes, or subtly imitates the lady on the bus with the shopping bag or the guy behind the counter at the corner grocery—never unkind, never mocking, just perfect mirroring of gestures and phrases. He replays them for me late at night in front of the computer while we sneak in a video chat, and I have to be quiet so as not to alert Ross, sleeping in the room down the hall. I hold both hands over my mouth and laugh, and laugh and laugh until my sides are sore.
And then...there is nothing.
I wait for my early morning message, and when the hours pass without one, I start to wait for the lunchtime invitation. When that doesn’t come, I break down and call, leaving a short message on his voice mail when he doesn’t answer. Just before I go home for the day, I send another instant message. Ignored.
At home, I find dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter, a pile of laundry by the washer and the sounds of the television coming from the den. That’s where I find my husband, firmly ensconced in his favorite recliner with a beer in one hand and some kind of sports on the big screen.
Maria will clean the kitchen, of course, if I decide to live in filth and leave it for her when she comes in a few days. That’s why we hired her. That is why my husband thinks it’s perfectly okay to live in our house like it’s a hotel. But I don’t want to live this way, housekeeper or not, so I pull out a dishcloth from the drawer and attack the counters as if they’ve done me wrong.
I’m not hungry, but I make myself a bowl of soup, anyway. I eat it at the counter with my silent phone next to me. It refuses to buzz or beep or chirp. I refuse to look at it.
Later in bed, Ross rolls over, groping expectantly. He doesn’t fumble. He knows just where and how to touch me, but I’m instantly tense, waiting for him to make it all go wrong. He doesn’t. He eases me into arousal even though I don’t want it. His fingers stroke and probe, and his mouth finds places to tease. We find one of the tried-and-true positions, me on my back with him on his side. It should work. I’m wet, he’s hard, his fingers toy with my clit as he fucks into me...but it’s not working. He finishes, and I’m left with a vague sense of loss. That’s what this has become.
Loss.
Dozing, Ross sounds like a chain saw. His arms and legs are still tangled with mine. He’s sweaty. I need to pee. I cannot fall asleep this way, so I do what every wife learns to do—I shove him until he rolls off me, and mutter, “Turn on your side, you’re snoring.”
He does, and I stare up at the ceiling for a few minutes before I manage to get out of bed and go to the bathroom in the dark. I wash my hands, also in the dark. I grip the sink while the water runs to cover up the sound of my sudden, gasping sobs.
Back in bed, fully dressed, covers pulled to my chin, I cannot sleep.
There used to be nights when Ross and I stayed up late talking. Not just in the beginning, when we were dating and everything was new and sweet, and staring into his face was as deliciou
s to me as ice cream. Later, when the kids were small and the only time we had together were these late-night conversations under the blankets. There were times when we fought in fiercely hissing whispers, and times, too, when we giggled ourselves into hiccups. Now I can’t remember the last time Ross said anything that barely raised a smile, much less made me laugh so hard it was as good as having an orgasm.
There are a lot of reasons to stay in a marriage, and I’ve learned that love can be the least of them. Debt. Family. History. Laziness. Those can keep a person from leaving.
Fear can, too.
Lying beside my husband now, I want to turn and kiss him the way I used to. I want us to laugh under the covers again. At least, I try to want those things, but the truth is...I no longer really do.
I give in to the embarrassingly obsessive and desperate urge to check my phone, but there’s still no message from Will. No reply. I’m still awake when the sun comes up. Everything changes, I think.
Everything ends.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I won’t chase and I won’t beg. More days pass without a word, and eventually, I stop checking. So there’s this sense of relief, this lifted weight, and I face the day with confidence that everything will be okay. I go out to the yard, to the flowers and the grass, and I put my face toward the sun and close my eyes against the brightness. I smile. I spread my arms, not caring what the neighbors might think. I spin.
I spin.
Inside the house, I face the disaster of my kitchen and, determined, roll up my sleeves as I put on some music—loud as I want. There’s nobody here to judge if my choice runs to teeny bop pop I heard on the radio, or classic rock I’ve loved forever. With my iPod set on shuffle, I get to the business of straightening and wiping and scrubbing and organizing.
And then...I find myself standing at the sink staring out the window for a long, long time as the water runs over my hands, gone red from the heat. They should sting, but I don’t notice. I stand and stare as the iPod plays one song after another, plays one of the songs that make me think of him.
They all make me think of him.
And I haven’t danced at all.
Slowly, slowly, I push the faucet to turn off the water. I stare at the suds in the sink, the dishes I was washing. How long have I stood there, staring at the grass and flowers through the glass, but seeing only Will’s face? Too long, that’s the only answer. One minute, one second, one breath is too long to have spent dwelling on this, and still I stand and stare, until I sit with a cup of coffee I don’t want, and stare at my hands, laid flat on the table, and remember how it felt to touch him.
It’s the middle of the day and I don’t care that I get into the shower with the water as hot as I can stand it, or that I curl into a ball on my side and close my eyes and pretend that the rush and hiss of the pounding shower is the roar of the ocean in the way he says my name. I don’t care that I pretend my hands are his when I touch myself, or that when I come I’m thinking about the way he tastes. I should be ashamed of this hungry, aching desperation, but I’m only sad and empty and disappointed.
And then, that tiny ping, that subtle notification sound I’ve almost forgotten. Like Pavlov’s dog, I jerk and twist beneath the water, certain I’ve imagined it. But no...when I get out without even taking a towel to dry my sopping hair, when I lift up my phone from where I left it as an afterthought on the edge of the tub, there it is. The small red “1” of a notification.
The sour taste of anger coats my tongue when I thumb the screen to check the message. All it says is Hi, how are you? I want to throw the phone across the room, while simultaneously flipping it the bird with both hands.
I think about ignoring it; he’ll be able to see I read the message and that I’m not replying. But just as I don’t chase and I don’t beg, I do not fucking play games, either. I type in an answer as neutral and meaningless and stupid as his: Fine. You?
And he doesn’t reply.
For hours.
By the time I get another ping, my stomach is full of acid-eaten holes and I’ve called him every name I can think of, including motherfucking prickblister, pus-encrusted douchenozzle and cock-kicking fuckpucker. I’m kind of proud of the last one. I’ve called myself worse, because I know I’m stupid and undone, and I’ve made this too important. Given him too much power. I hate it, but when I hear that tiny, sly ping I’m snatching up my phone as if I’m on fire and it’s going to put out the blaze with piss.
Hi, how are you?
Fine, I type, and it’s a good thing there’s no way to hear tone in a text message, because mine is bitter and full of fury. You?
Good. Just finishing up some editing on a couple pics.
To this I have no reply. I think of lots of things I could say, but all of them will come out sounding angry, and I refuse to give him that. I will keep my crazy in my basket, thank you very much. He doesn’t deserve to know I’ve spent one single fucking second thinking about him....
Lunch tomorrow?
My fingers type then, moving on the phone’s touch keyboard so fast I make a message full of autocorrected typos that would completely dilute the scathing, furious words I intend to send. I delete it all. I type some more, knowing he can see that I’m replying, and hating even that, because fuck it all, I’d like him to think I’m just blowing him off. I delete everything again. Then once more. And then his next message appears.
I M Y
“Fuck you,” I say aloud. “Fuck you sideways and upside down with a red-hot poker covered in broken glass, you fucking fuckety fuck.”
But my fingers press the spaces on the keyboard that make different words than that, because they are both smarter and more stupid than my mouth or my head or my fucked up heart. I type and do not delete. This time, I say, What time?
Chapter Twenty-Five
He’s standing outside the restaurant smoking, not looking my way, and do I imagine myself walking away without speaking to him, leaving him standing there for an hour, or for forever, waiting? Hell, yeah. Do I imagine myself running across the street and leaping into his arms, cling to him like a baby monkey, like a fucking barnacle?
Oh. Yes.
When I cross the street to face him, he turns to me with a smile so wide and bright and genuine that I want to kiss his face off. I want to run my hands through the mess of his hair and smooth my fingertips over those brows and trace the curves of his ears with my tongue. I want to eat him up like a peach until the juice drips down my hand and wrist and arm and I lick it all away.
Instead, I give him the barest hint of a smile. “Hey.”
“Hi.” He moves as though to hug me, but I step back so deliberately there can be no mistaking my message.
Do. Not. Touch.
“You look...great,” Will says.
I don’t answer that. I look at the restaurant menu in the window instead, though honestly, I don’t give a fart in a high wind what they serve. I won’t be able to eat. I plan on ordering the most expensive thing they have and making him pay for it, though. Maybe I do play games, after all.
He opens the door for me, and the solicitous hand at the small of my back as he lets me go in front of him should not make my knees weak. We take a booth near the back, in the shadows. It’s curved, which means I slide in first, but I put my purse on the seat between us so he can’t sit too close.
We order drinks. We order food. We make small talk that sounds like pebbles rattling in a pie pan. At first, Will is animated and effusive, but as he watches me pick at my salad and give him brief answers without smiles, he sits back in the booth.
“If you don’t want to be here,” he says, “maybe you should just fucking go.”
My fork shakes a little against the edge of the plate before I set it down very, very carefully. I wipe my fingers on my napkin. Then my mouth. I
put my hands on the edge of the table, fingertips barely touching the smooth, polished wood. And I say...nothing.
He shifts in his seat with a frown. “That’s it? I get the silent treatment?”
“I’m being careful with what I say, that’s all. I want to make sure nothing comes out that I can’t take back.”
“Maybe you should just say whatever you think,” Will says with a sneer. “You think I can’t handle it?”
My fingers slip on the smooth wood. “I don’t want you to handle it. I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret, that’s all.”
“If you’re pissed at me, you should just say so.”
“Should I be?” I press my lips together and rub my tongue slowly on the inside of my teeth to keep my voice low.
“Are you?”
I think of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, telling Michael Douglas how she will not be ignored. But that’s exactly how it felt those long weeks when Will stopped talking to me. Ignored.
“I would never just stop talking to you,” I tell him, whispering only so I don’t scream. “I would never just disappear like that. That was a shitty thing to do to me, Will.”
“I was busy,” he begins, and I’ve had enough.
I need to get out of this booth, and now. But the other side is blocked by a tray of food waiting to be served, and the only way out is past him. “Move.”