October 2013
When he rolled over, she was already sitting up, facing away from him, moonlight and shadows tracing patterns across her back. He reached out to trace a shape, but before his fingers made contact, she stood, running her fingers through her hair, and glided across the room to the pile of clothes lying in the center of the floor. Methodically, she began to dress, shrugging into her blouse, sliding her skirt over her slender hips. He’d thought undressing her the night before had been the highlight of his day, but her sensual movements while she put her clothes back on made him reconsider.
He watched her through the darkness, the color of her tawny skin just discernable. When he spoke, she started, as if she hadn’t known he was awake.
“Are you leaving?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, her features unreadable in the dark. She didn’t bother answering with the obvious.
Instead, she turned her back on him, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom. She flipped on the lights but didn’t close the door, which he took as an invitation.
The light spilling from the open doorway just barely illuminated the bedroom. The carpeting was storm-cloud grey, the walls a few shades paler. She had picked out the sheets for the bed, blue like her eyes. The blinds over the windows were drawn, but there was nothing but darkness outside right now, anyway. The apartment building was in a quiet area of the city, far away from busy downtown; it was always peaceful here. He’d gotten this small, one-bedroom apartment several months ago, when he realized she was special. Neither of them actually lived here, but the place had the cluttered feel of a lived-in space. She’d brought extra cosmetics, a second brush, a few changes of clothes. Her supplies on the counter in the bathroom and hanging in the closet were complemented by all of his things, his-and-hers style. This was their escape, their home away from home – or, in his case, a home away from hell. He puzzled over why she’d put on her outfit from the night before when she could have chosen from any number of outfits in the closet.
He slid off the bed and grabbed a towel that had been discarded at the foot of it the night before. Only taking the time to wrap himself more or less securely in it, he strode across the room to the open bathroom door and leaned against the door jamb, watching both her and her reflection. She stood over the white ceramic sink, doctoring the blonde hair that had become so tangled the night before as he repeatedly ran his hands through it. The soft light spilling from the fixtures above the large mirror lit her hair with a golden glow. The speckled countertop gleamed, shadows from her movements dancing over the patterns.
“What are you doing?” His voice too loud in the small room, he winced as the sound reverberated off the tiled walls back at him. Again, she didn’t answer – she continued to comb and fluff her hair with her fingers. He wondered why she didn’t use the brush sitting on the counter; maybe she thought that would muss it up more. He sighed quietly and let his eyes roam over her body again. Her blouse was mostly unbuttoned, revealing the bra he’d peeled off of her last night. Her tight-fitting skirt was rumpled, creased in all the right places, from when he’d slid it off her narrow hips and left it in a wrinkled pile on the floor.
Once satisfied with her hair, she pulled her cosmetics bag toward her and started working on her make-up. Even he could tell it was a lost cause, so she gave up on fixing it, instead opting to wash it off and start from scratch. She was toweling off her face when he finally got up the nerve to speak again.
“Audrey?”
She finally turned to look at him, but she kept her eyes downcast. She slowly trailed them up his body, from his bare feet to his bare torso; he wasn’t sure why her gaze suddenly made him feel uncomfortably bare. She didn’t react as she looked at him, apparently devoid of the excitement that usually vibrated between them when they were together – even though just a few hours ago, she had run her hands over his skin, tangled them in his dark, curly hair, looked deep into his green eyes and smiled as he leaned in to kiss her. Now, his eyes searched her unpainted face, beautiful without make-up; she looked vulnerable and honest without the mask, bare and sincere. He took a step towards her when her eyes finally met his, but she immediately turned away, giving her head an infinitesimal shake, freezing him where he stood.
“I met your wife yesterday,” she told the mirror.
He sucked in his breath. She’d known he had a wife; for a while, in fact. It was the way she said it, like it suddenly mattered to her, that made his stomach clench.
From his vantage point, he couldn’t see her real face; her hair curtained it from him. Instead, he stared at her reflection in the mirror, but she astutely avoided his eyes. As he watched, she began to brush foundation over her face, brushing away all the natural imperfections that made her so perfect.
“How?” he asked, his throat tight.
“My friend scored me that job interview she promised.” She said it so casually, like it had been arranged for so long. He hadn’t even known she had been promised an interview; this was an unwanted reminder of how separated from her life he really was, the kind of reminder he tried so hard to keep out of this apartment where it was so easy to forget that she wasn’t the one who shared his life.
“With…” He paused, hit with momentary indecision, trying to figure out which would be worse, the name or the title. “…Sara?”
“I know someone who works for her. Didn’t I tell you?” she asked, as she brushed on eye shadow; dark indigo, to bring out the blue of her eyes. Her tone drove a knife through him. So light, so superficial…the tone he used when he spoke to his wife.
“No, you didn’t tell me you know someone who works for Sara.”
She shrugged unconcernedly, putting away the shadow and pulling out her mascara. “Sorry.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the door jamb.
After surveying her handiwork in the mirror, she moved on to blush. She smoothed the large brush over her high cheekbones, her face an emotionless mask.
“I guess it never seemed important,” she answered noncommittally.
“Didn’t seem important?” he echoed incredulously. “How is it not important that you knew Sara – “
“I didn’t know Sara,” she immediately corrected. “I always knew about Sara; that doesn’t mean I knew Sara.”
He tried not to flinch at each use of his wife’s name, at how foreign it sounded coming from Audrey’s mouth, and how wrong it seemed to hear it in this apartment.
“Is that what this is about?”
“What do you mean?” She sounded genuinely confused, but she still refused to look at him, even via the mirror.
“You’re leaving early,” he clarified. “Is it because you met…her? Because she’s suddenly real to you?”
Her eyelashes fluttered, as if she were trying to avoid rolling her eyes. “If that were true, why would I have come over at all?”
A fair point and reasonable enough to confuse him further, he tried again. “Then why are you leaving?”
“Because I’m busy tomorrow.”
He might have believed her, albeit out of desperation, if she hadn’t shrugged as she said it.“That’s never been an issue before.”
“How would you know?”
He ran his hands through his hair, frustration boiling in his blood. For the life of him, he couldn’t tell what had changed, why she was suddenly being so distant, so casual. As if they hadn’t been meeting for months, as if she hadn’t turned his entire life upside down, as if this thing they were doing was just some hotel-room tryst and not a relationship involving an apartment.
Then, it hit.
“Is this about last night?”
“What about last night?” He could hear a laugh in her voice, as if she found his question amusing. As if she thought last night was no different from any of the other nights they’d spent together, as if his question were ridiculous considering the normality of last night.
But last night was anything but normal.
“What I said last night.”
Sobering instantly, she finally turned to look at him directly, her mask of make-up finished.
“Yes.”
His gut wrenched.
She looked down at the speckled tiles beneath his feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But we agreed to keep this light. We agreed it wouldn’t mean anything because you’re married.”
He focused on breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. They had agreed upon that, he could admit it, but that agreement arose months ago, before they started spending nights together, before he got the apartment so they could spend more nights together.
Before he broke the cardinal rule.
He couldn’t stop himself last night. He’d murmured those three little words—moaned them, really—against her lips, their bodies pressed together. He’d wondered if she’d even heard; he said the words so quietly he barely heard them himself over the blood pounding in his ears. But then, she’d pushed him off of her, rolling onto her side with her back to him, murmuring something about getting some sleep. He’d had no idea what was running through her head, but he knew enough to leave her be. So he’d rolled over, his back to her, and tried to drift off, hoping everything would be better when the light of morning slipped in through the blinds. He’d turned back a while later, when he felt the bed move. Apparently, she’d decided to try to sneak out while he slept, while it was still dark outside.
“But…I love you,” he said again, wondering if it would be better if he said it when she could see his face.
It wasn’t.
She cringed, her face contorting, as she turned back to the mirror.
“I’m sorry,” she said flatly, gathering her cosmetics and the other toiletries within arm’s reach into the bag, then buttoning her blouse the rest of the way. “But that’s not where I wanted this to go.” She took the bag of cosmetics and walked towards the door where he stood, her head down, expecting him to get out of her way.
When he didn’t, she brushed past him, dislodging his towel as she did so. He grabbed at it, a hot flush sweeping over his face as he fumbled the fluffy material between his fingers, even though she hadn’t even noticed the sudden source of his embarrassment; she serenely continued on her way across the room, without looking back. Gaining a better handle on the stupid towel, he stumbled after her.
She had paused before the closet, her back to him, pulling her clothes from the hangers inside. He was surprised by how little there was. He’d thought she’d put in more.
“Is this about Sara?” he tried again. “Because you don’t need to worry. I have nothing with her. Do you know how it feels when I’m with her? It feels like a betrayal of you,” he admitted. “Like I’m cheating on you.”
She shook her head, refusing to look at him. She dumped her few articles of clothing into the laptop bag she carried everywhere.
“Stop, please.” She said it quietly, but the words ripped through him nonetheless. “I really don’t care how you feel around Sara—”
“I’ll leave her, you know.” He was grasping at straws now, and she knew it. He was also pretty sure she knew he’d never leave his wife, that he couldn’t leave his wife. He didn’t love Sara, and Sara didn’t much love him, either, but their marriage worked too well for either of them to end it.
“No, you won’t,” she responded quietly, confirming his assumption, as she zipped up her bag.
“You can’t tell me you don’t feel anything for me.”
She finally stopped in her busy work, turning to face him head on.
“I don’t feel anything for you,” she told him sincerely.
“So why did you come here?” he asked. “If you’ve taken a job with my wife, and you’ve decided this is as good as over, why did you come?”
She faltered before she spoke. “To end it.”
Her hesitation said it all. He crossed the room, pinning her against the wall when she tried to escape him.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rougher than he intended. “That’s not why you came,” he said, once she raised her eyes to look at him. “You didn’t decide to end it until I told you I loved you.”
Audrey was silent, staring into his burning green eyes. Finally, she said, “I can’t keep sleeping with my boss’s husband.”
He sighed and pushed back, releasing her for all intents and purposes.
She didn’t leave.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She paused a moment, as if to say something more, as if she almost couldn’t bear to leave it like this.
A moment before, he might have grasped onto this last hope; instead, he just shook his head and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice small. Then, he heard a rustle as she picked up her bag. When he turned back, she was gone.
After she left, he meandered through the apartment, turning on all the lights and trying to find some hint of her presence, but he couldn’t find a single thing.
It was as if she’d never been there at all.
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.