The key turns and the door swings open and the first thing I notice is that Alyssa left the lights on for me.
The second thing I notice is the drink sitting on the coffee table. Something dark over ice, condensation already beading down the glass like it’s been waiting a while.
I set my bag down by the couch and look around the living room. Lights on, drink waiting, no Alyssa.
“Alyssa?”
What comes back through the bedroom door is not a response so much as a performance. Her voice lifts into this bright, theatrical melody, the kind that belongs in a musical written by someone who’s never been to a musical.
“I’m in here, my lovely husband.”
Something in my chest does a little flip.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the crystal.
It sits in my palm heavy for its size. I stand there for a second, turning it over.
I’m not bringing this into the bedroom without talking to her first. That much is obvious. I set it on the bookshelf near the door, spine-out between two paperbacks like it belongs there, and I’ll deal with the conversation later.
I cross the living room.
I push the bedroom door open and enter before letting it close behind me.
My brain takes a moment to catch up with my eyes.
She’s on the bed, back pressed flat against the wall, and she’s holding her thighs up and back with both hands, legs pulled all the way toward her shoulders. The position makes a shape that my nervous system responds to before my higher reasoning has a chance to weigh in. A wide, deliberate V, nothing hidden, everything offered, and she’s looking at me with those green eyes gone enormous and bright like she’s been waiting for exactly this reaction and is extremely pleased with how it’s landing.
She’s also wearing one of my black shirts.
I recognize it immediately, which means it takes me about two seconds longer than it should to read what it says, because the first second is spent processing the memory of Josh handing it to me in a gift bag with tissue paper and a card that said ‘you’re welcome’ before I’d even opened it. The shirt that I wore only once before it got buried at the bottom of a drawer because I didn’t know what to do with it.
She found it. And she’s modified it.
The original text runs across the chest in the font Josh picked out, which I will never forgive him for. But there’s new text added in white marker, the handwriting unmistakably hers. She’s gone in and inserted my name into the equation. Made it about me in a way that is both completely unnecessary and somehow the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks.
The shirt now reads, in full: I am a machine that turns Caleb’s dick into sucked Caleb’s dick.
The added Caleb’s and crossed out S’s on the dicks is crudely done.
I love it. I love it so much it physically hurts somewhere behind my sternum.
Her pussy is out, the shirt riding up above her hips, and the way she’s holding her legs makes something primal and unreasonable wake up at the base of my skull and start making suggestions I’m not equipped to argue with right now.
“Hey, baby.”
Everything from the last few hours just dissolves. She smiles at me and the numbness that’s been following me around all day like a stray dog just evaporates, replaced by something so clean and uncomplicated that I almost don’t recognize it as joy.
I climb onto the bed.
On my knees, moving slowly, taking my time with it, watching her face the whole way.
“Like the view?” she asks.
“It’s stunning.”
Her eyes go a shade darker. She holds her legs exactly where they are, and the shirt rides up another inch letting me get a peek at her naval.
I love her so much it’s genuinely embarrassing.
“You hungry, baby?”
“Starving.”
Her mouth curves. “Well.” She tilts her head downward a little bit. “The food’s getting cold, Caleb.”
I lower myself toward her. My hands find the insides of her thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft skin there, and I can feel the heat coming off her before I’ve even gotten close, and I’m completely gone, there’s nothing left of me that belongs to anything outside this room…
The crystal.
It lands in the front of my brain like a dropped plate.
I stop.
I exhale through my nose, long and slow, my forehead almost touching her inner thigh.
“What?” Her voice comes out sharp and suspicious.
I straighten up slightly and look at her face.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
“Right now?”
“Yeah.” I say reluctantly.
She sees my face.
Something in her expression shifts immediately, the sharp edge of suspicion softening into something else. She doesn’t let go of her legs. Just holds the position and studies me, and whatever she finds there makes her nod once, slow and deliberate.
“Okay,” she says gently.
So I tell her about Lara. The crosswalk. The alley. The candy cigarette and the blue suit and the crystal sitting on my bookshelf right now between two paperbacks. I keep it short because there isn’t that much to tell, and also because I want to taste her so fucking badly.
“Fucking Lara.” The words come out flat and exasperated, like she’s heard a forecast she already knew was coming.
“You know her.”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t elaborate.
I don’t ask about it.
“So what do I do with the crystal,” I say.
She tips her head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling for a moment. “Leave it. It’s fine.”
“Okay.”
“She wasn’t trying to hide what she was doing. If she wanted to be subtle about it she wouldn’t have walked up to you at a crosswalk and introduced herself.” She looks back at me. “That’s not how you hide something. That’s how you make a point.”
“So you’re fine with a listening device in the house.”
“It’s complicated.” She laughs a little.
She looks at me with fondness and exhaustion in equal measure, the way someone looks at a dog that keeps getting into the trash.
“Caleb.” Her voice goes soft. “How is it even possible that you’re this defenseless. She handed it to you and you just took it.”
I shrug. “It made sense in the context of my life with you.”
She closes her eyes and she breathes out through her nose in one long, controlled exhale.
Then she shakes her head.
“What am I going to do with you,” she says.
Her eyes shoot open.
Not the soft, sleepy blink of someone coming back from a thought. All the way open, instant, like something just tripped a wire behind them.
Then they go unhinged.
I love this specific thing that happens to her face, the way the green of her eyes goes electric and wild and completely untethered from anything resembling reason. It happens so fast there’s no transition between the woman who was looking at me with love thirty seconds ago and whatever this is now.
“WAIT A MINUTE.”
The words come out of her like a gunshot.
“YOU TALKED TO ANOTHER WOMAN, CALEB.”
“She approached me,” I say.
“I DON’T CARE WHO APPROACHED WHO!”
“Okay.”
“You are not supposed to be talking to other women!” Her voice cracks. “That is a rule, Caleb! That is a fundamental, load-bearing rule of this marriage and you just broke it!”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Her chin drops. Her eyes travel down from my face and then back up, slow and deliberate.
“Well.” Her voice drops out of the scream register entirely, landing somewhere low and controlled that is somehow worse. Her legs stay exactly where they are, the shirt still rucked up, everything still on display, and she tilts her head just slightly. “Show me how sorry you are.”
I look at her. The shirt. The legs. The possessiveness.
My heart explodes.
I lean forward and wrap my arms around her instead.
The position makes it complicated. so I have to work around the geometry of it, my arms sliding around her legs, my face pressing into the side of her neck. I hug her tight.
She makes a sound like she forgot how to breathe.
I feel her go completely soft against me. The tension in her body just drops, instant and total, like a string someone cut. The dangerous low register she was doing, gone. Whatever controlled thing she was building, gone. Just her, warm and slightly stunned, melting into me while somehow still holding her legs up because she is who she is.
I feel the heat of her blush before I see it.
“Caleb.” Her voice comes out small. Confused. “I meant eat my pussy.”
“I know,” I say into her neck. “I wanted a hug first.” I pull back just enough to look at her face. “I love you.”
The blush deepens until it reaches her ears. Her green eyes go wide and soft and completely helpless, and I swear she might have hearts for pupils.
“I love you too,” she says. The words come out quiet. “It’s just.” She exhales, the sound slightly ragged. “I get anxious. When you talk to other women. I can’t help it.”
“I’m yours,” I say.
She sighs through her nose in a way that sounds like I’m making it genuinely difficult for her to stay mad at me.
“Well. Show me how much you love me then.”
“With pleasure.”
Alyssa and her new shirt (close enough):