Elena Marsh

"It's just a date. One night. Can you do this for me?"

I hear it again as the hostess takes my coat. I tighten my grip on it, shake my head, and keep it. She gives me a small, practised smile and leads me across the floor. Candles. White linen. A pianist in the corner picking his way through something sad. A view of the harbor, black glass scattered with tiny gold lights. It is the most beautiful room I have ever been in, and I would like to set it on fire.

Daniel. You said it so easily.

It was four in the morning, on the fifth night of our honeymoon. I woke to the door closing, and he was standing at the end of the bed, grey-faced, still in last night's shirt, with sweat drying at his hairline. He'd been at the casino. He'd been drinking. He sat on the edge of the mattress and said my name three times before I understood he was crying.

Eighty thousand. That's what he'd lost. To one man, across a green felt table, in a suit that cost more than our car. The man hadn't raised his voice. Daniel said everyone on the island seemed to know him and nobody seemed to want to cross him. He'd looked Daniel in the eye, as calm as anything, and said the debt would be forgotten for one evening of my company.

Daniel took my hands. "It's just a date," he said. "That's all he asked. One dinner. One night. He's not... he said it's only dinner." His thumbs shook against my knuckles. "Lena. Can you do this for me?"

I've known him since I was nine. He carried my books. He held my hair back at my first terrible party. He proposed on the roof of our school with a ring he saved for for eighteen months. And he looked at me and asked, like it was a favor. Like it was the dishes.

I said yes. I don't know why. Maybe because I was too tired to fight. Maybe because I couldn't bear his face. Maybe because the part of me that has believed in him my whole life is still hanging on to a ledge, and hasn't realized the ledge is gone.

The hostess slows. My heart slams once, hard, against my ribs.

Spine straight. Chin up. Don't cry. You are not going to cry in front of him.

He's at the corner table by the window. A man in a dark suit, alone, with a bottle of wine and two glasses, and he isn't looking at the view. He's looking at me. He stands as I approach, calm and unhurried, the way a man stands who has never needed to hurry. I expected a monster. I expected a gold tooth, a scar, a cigar. He looks like he could be anyone, and that's so much worse.

I don't offer my hand. I take the chair across from him, sit with my back as straight as a plank, and fold my hands in my lap so that he can't see them shaking.

"Mr...." I let it hang. "I didn't catch the name. Daniel was too busy sobbing."

He sits. He doesn't flinch. He thanks me, in a quiet, even voice, for coming. He says he knows it can't have been easy. He starts to say something about the debt, and I cut across him, because I've been rehearsing this for four hours.

"How magnanimous." I smile, thin and hard. "Do you do this often? Find a drunk husband, take everything he has, and then let him pay in kind? It's a very elegant system, Mr. Whoever-You-Are." My voice drops. "A weak man would need to do that. A man who couldn't find a woman any other way. So tell me, was it the poker, or the blackmail? Which one's your talent?"

The pianist plays on. A waiter hovers, thinks better of it, and retreats. Candlelight trembles on the stem of my glass. My throat is so tight that it aches.

Say something. Hit me. Show me what you are. I'm ready.

He's silent for a moment. Then he says, mildly, that it's only a date.

I blink.

He says that's all he's asking for. A dinner. Some pleasant company. Perhaps a drink or two, if I'd like one. And afterward, his driver will take me home to my husband, without a word said to anyone. Nothing more.

My hands go very still in my lap.

"...That's all?" It comes out thin, nothing like the voice I rehearsed. "That's really all you want?"

There is no sheet. That is the first thing I notice, and it is a terrible thing to notice.

Pale gold light is coming through the gap in the curtains. The sheets are in a heap on the floor, the pillows are scattered, and I am lying face down across the mattress, completely bare, with my hair stuck to my cheek and one arm hanging off the edge of the bed. There is nothing between me and the morning. Nothing between me and the evidence.

Evidence. Of course there's evidence.

I lift my head an inch and look down my own body. A dark bruise sits on my hip, a ring of fingertips. Another on my thigh, higher than I would ever say aloud. A mark under my collarbone, one at the curve of my breast, and a faint red scrape across my shoulder blade where I must have dragged against something. Everything between my legs is tender and sore and swollen, and when I shift, a slow, deep ache rolls through me and makes me bite my lip.

God. He was...

I shut my eyes.

He was more than Daniel.

The thought arrives clean and unwelcome. I'm blushing before I finish it. I think the word "bigger," and flinch so hard I almost fall off the bed, and bury my face in my arm.

"Oh, you terrible woman," I whisper into my elbow. "You absolutely terrible woman."

I'm not supposed to be comparing. I'm not supposed to be doing any of this. And I'm still sore in a way I didn't know was possible, because he took me almost all night, again and again, as if there was no clock, as if the whole world had stopped outside that door. And before that, the other things he did.

I take a long, slow breath and stare at the ceiling.

Are men supposed to do that with their mouths? Is that normal? His tongue was...

Heat rises in my stomach. My thighs press together, and I swear I can still feel it. Daniel never. Daniel didn't know it was a thing you could do. I lie there in the golden light, scarlet from the neck up, and my body, my shameless, sore, traitorous body, starts to hum.

Stop it. Get up. Find your dress. Your husband is on the other side of the island, wondering where you are.

I don't move.

Behind me, the mattress shifts. A low, rough sound rumbles in his chest, and a heavy arm slides across my waist and drags me backward across the sheet until my spine meets his chest. I make a small, startled noise, half protest, half mewl, and it echoes in the quiet room.

"I should go," I whisper, to nobody, not moving. "I have to go back. Daniel will..."

His mouth finds my shoulder, hot and slow. He says, against my skin, in a voice thick with sleep, that I'm not going anywhere yet.

Then he kisses me all over. My shoulder, the dip of my spine, the curve of my waist, the bruise on my hip, one kiss at a time, unhurried, as if he's counting each mark. I shiver. My fingers curl in the pillowcase. I can feel him behind me, hard and thick and hot, pressed against the small of my back, and I know it isn't an accident.

"You're being... you can't," I breathe. "I'm sore."

His hand slides over my stomach and stops, flat and warm. "And?" he speaks, commanding, his thumb moves in a slow, lazy circle, and I let out a shaky breath.

I'm not saying no. Why am I not saying no?

I turn my head and look at him over my shoulder, tousled and heavy-lidded in the morning light. He looks back at me without a trace of apology. He says he doesn't want me to leave yet.

A pause.

He says, quietly, that he doesn't want me to leave at all and his hand starts to move lower.

"Somebody could see," I whisper, and I do not mean it nearly as much as I'd like to.

I'm backed against my own office door at half past twelve on a Tuesday, in the hospital's administrative wing, with my lanyard crushed between us and my back flat against the wood. My blouse is half untucked. My hair is coming out of its pin. There's a cold cup of tea on my desk, a budget spreadsheet open on my screen, and a man's mouth on my throat who is not supposed to be here.

He signed in as a donor. A donor. Who does he think I am?

"Mm... stop. Wait." I put both hands on his chest and break the kiss, breathless. "Someone could walk in. Marguerite from billing doesn't knock. She has never knocked. She'll just open it and say 'Elena, do you have a minute,' and..."

He chuckles. It's low and warm and entirely unbothered. He says he doesn't care.

"Well, I do." I glare up at him, flushed to my hairline. "This is my job. I work here. I have a name badge."

I pout. I know I do. I can feel it, and I can't stop it.

He pulls me in firmly, with one hand flat at the small of my back, until our hips meet. His voice drops. He says I don't have to worry about work. That he could take care of me for the rest of my life. That I could stop tomorrow, and never think about a spreadsheet again.

I roll my eyes so hard it hurts.

"I don't want your money."

He laughs again, a short, pleased breath against my ear. Then his teeth close on my neck, just under the jaw, light and deliberate, and a violent shiver goes through me. I grip his lapels. My knees threaten to go.

He murmurs, filthy and low, against the bite, one question: what do I want, then?

Oh, no. He's going to make me say it.

"I'm not..." My voice cracks. "Don't ask me that. Not here."

He waits. His hand slides lower, over the curve of my hip. He says he asked a question. He says he'd like a plain answer, no poetry, no dancing around it. Just what I want.

I close my eyes. Every sensible thought I had is draining out of me, one by one. The office is silent. The air conditioning hums. Somewhere beyond the door, a trolley rattles past, and I hold my breath until it's gone.

"I want..." I swallow. "I want you to fuck me. Here. Against the door, or on the desk, I don't care. Hard. I want it to hurt a little. I want to forget what's on that spreadsheet."

I open my eyes. He's watching me, calm and heavy-lidded and utterly serious.

"That's what I want," I whisper. "That's the whole answer."

That's it. That's done. Now I'm done for.

He smiles. It's slow, dark, and satisfied. His hands settle on my hips, and he lifts me, and my legs lock around his waist. I'm blushing, I'm sure I'm blushing, from my forehead down. And somewhere in the back of my head, a small, clear voice tells me that this isn't going to end in the next ten minutes, or the next hour.

I find that I don't want it to.

I shouldn't be crying. He isn't my husband. He isn't my lover. I don't know what he is.

That's the problem. That's the entire problem. I'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my back against the bed and my knees pulled up, in last night's dress, with mascara halfway down my face and a glass of wine going warm in my hand. My phone is face down on the carpet. It has buzzed four times. I haven't looked.

Stop. Stop it. You're twenty-six years old. You don't get to cry about this.

But I keep seeing it. Last night, at the party, the rooftop one, strings of lights and too many people, I'd been looking for him all evening. And then I saw him across the terrace, and my whole body lit up, I felt it, a smile already at my mouth, my heart going. I was halfway across the floor with my arms open to hug him.

Then I saw the girl.

Twenty, twenty-one at most. Blond, bright-eyed, laughing, with his arm around her waist like it belonged there. He bent down and said something, and she threw back her head and laughed. And I stopped dead, with my arms still half-raised, and then I turned around and walked straight out of the party like a person fleeing a fire.

Daniel is gone. I divorced him three months ago. I stood in a lawyer's office and signed my name, because I couldn't keep doing it to him, the lying, the lies about where I'd been, the way he kissed my forehead at night and I felt like a stranger. I couldn't hurt him anymore. I couldn't cheat on him anymore.

And the man I did it for never asked me to.

He never said "leave him." He never said anything. We just kept on, three nights a week, and never put a name on it.

I wipe my face with the back of my wrist, and it only smears everything worse. I hate this. I hate that I'm shaking.

There's a knock at the door.

Three slow raps. I know them before I know why. My stomach drops straight through the floor.

No. Not now. Not looking like this.

I stand. I press my sleeve to my face. I could leave it. I could stay on the floor and let him knock until he gives up. Instead I cross the room, and put my hand on the latch, and open it six inches.

He's standing in the corridor. He isn't smiling. He's in the same dark jacket from last night, one hand braced on the doorframe, and he looks at me with an expression I know very well and have never once seen pointed at me: annoyed.

He asks why I didn't come up and say hello last night.

"I didn't see you," I say. "I was busy."

He says he saw me. He says I was ten feet away. He says I turned around.

"I didn't want to," I mutter. "Is that allowed? Is it all right if I didn't want to?"

He steps closer. I could slam the door. I could shut it in his face, and I know it. I don't. I back up, one step, two, and he follows me into my own room, quiet and unhurried, until my back meets the wall and he's standing in front of me. He doesn't touch me. He asks again, lower, why I ran.

Something in my chest cracks.

"Because you had a girl!" It rips out of me, loud and raw. "You had a girl on your arm, and she was twenty, and she was laughing, and I'm... I'm what? What am I?" My voice shakes. "I'm not some floozy you play with on Tuesdays. I'm not a hobby. I divorced my husband. I hurt Daniel so badly, and you never even asked me to, you just let me, and I did it anyway, because I'm an idiot, and now I don't know what any of this is."

He doesn't say a word. He stands there and listens.

"I don't know if I'm your girlfriend. I don't know if I'm your mistress. I don't know if you'd even notice if I stopped answering the phone." The words are coming too fast now, a wet, ugly flood. "I saw you with her, and for one second I thought, of course. Of course he's got someone younger. Of course I was a phase. And then I thought, I'd have said yes. If you'd asked me to leave him, I'd have said yes in a heartbeat, and you never, you never..."

My voice breaks. I put both hands over my mouth. I'm sobbing, properly, with my shoulders shaking, and I can't stop.

The room is very quiet. He lets me finish. He waits until the last hiccup, until I'm leaning against the wall with my eyes shut. Then he asks, in a quiet, even voice, if I'm done.

"...Yes," I whisper.

He steps forward and draws me into his arms, slow, like a man approaching a frightened animal. I stiffen for half a second. Then my forehead falls against his chest, and I fist both hands in his jacket, and I let go.

His hand moves on my back, slow and steady. He says, low, into my hair, that the girl was his niece. That I'd have known if I'd come up. That I'm not a floozy, or a phase, or a hobby.

A pause.

He says I'm his.

I lift my head, wet-eyed, and look at him. He cups my jaw, thumb brushing away a tear, and kisses me, slow and deep. I kiss him back, and I hold on.