Megan Hart - Tear You Apart

I sleep right away and wake when the alarm I set on my phone goes off. I’ve had only four hours of sleep, not enough, but I need to get up and get to the train. Get home.

First, though, I need the bathroom. I dress quickly, not sure what I should do with Will’s clothes. I settle for folding them neatly and putting them on the chair at the foot of the bed. Down the spiral stairs in my bare feet, I’m careful not to trip or knock into anything, because the apartment is big and silent and full of echoes from sounds as soft as breathing.

I hear the shower running just as I move to push open the door, which is ajar. I stop, of course. Or in fact, I don’t, because my fingertips nudge the door just...a little...wider. The way the bathroom’s set up, I have a straight shot gaze toward the claw-foot tub and glass-enclosed shower next to it. In addition to envying the apartment and coveting the cover model’s boots, that shower sends a thrill of jealousy through me. Tiles, glass brick, sunflower showerhead. I want it.

Steam hovers between me and the shower, Will inside it, but there’s not nearly enough to obscure any details. There he is, naked in the water, head bent as it sluices over him. His eyes are closed. One hand is on the wall. The other’s on his dick.

I swallow the noise my throat tries to make, but I’m frozen. Can’t move. Don’t want to move, let’s be honest, because everything about this sight is beauty and glory and oh, my God, he’s stroking himself slowly, as if he’s going to take an hour to make himself come. Up, down, twist of the palm around the head of his cock. His knees are bent and his fingers curl against the tile, slipping because he can’t make purchase.

If he looks up, he’ll see me watching. I should go; it’s not right to watch something so private. This isn’t for me.

His hand moves faster. His mouth opens, water filling it and overflowing when he tips his face into the spray. He fucks his fist with deliberation, and I watch the muscles cord in his arm and back, in that spot just above his ass where the dimples dent his skin.

I want to watch him come. I covet and crave it, as a matter of fact, more than I did this apartment or the boots or the shower itself. I want to see Will jerk and moan and finish, and that desire is what finally pushes me away from the door. Down the hall, to the kitchen where I use the toothbrush he gave me at the kitchen sink. I brush and brush, I rinse and spit and rinse again, my eyes closed and my mind filled with the sight of him.

I know he’s there before I turn from the sink, but though I brace myself for the sight of him in a towel, he’s wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt like the one he lent me. Wet hair, slicked back. Bare feet I carefully avoid looking at, as though the sight of his toes could possibly be more intimate than the picture of his cock already permanently sealed in my mind.

“Hey,” Will says. “You’re heading out? I thought I’d make you some breakfast, at least.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m not a breakfast person, anyway. I have to go. Really, you’ve done enough already. Thanks for everything.” I rinse the toothbrush and hold it out to him, as if he’d want it back.

He takes it, but puts it on the counter. “At least let me give you something for the road.”

I want to protest further, but he’s already opening the fridge door and pulling out a pitcher of orange juice. The smell sends saliva squirting in my mouth. It will taste like summer.

“Fresh squeezed,” Will announces. “The ex left a juicer, too.”

He pours me a glass, not a quarter full, not half full, but almost brimming. Our fingers touch when he passes me the glass, but the juice doesn’t spill. He watches me while I drink it, and though I think I’ll just sip it once or twice to be polite, the second the flavor hits my tongue it’s all I can do not to gulp the entire glass. As it is, I finish it faster than is mannerly, and I wipe my mouth with the tips of my fingers when I’m finished.

“See,” Will says. “You never know how thirsty you are until someone offers you something to drink.”

Chapter Three

I used to greet my husband at the door every night, no matter what time he got home. I’d wait up for him if he was late. I never wrapped my naked body in cling film or had a martini in my hand, and there were days when the smile on my face was definitely forced...but I always met him.

I don’t meet him anymore.

The way the earth turns you’d think we’d need to run in place to keep from spinning right off it, but the truth is we all just turn along with it. Ross and I married young, had our children, watched them grow and sent them off to college. Jacqueline and Katherine are twenty-two now. Getting ready to graduate from two different colleges, both hours from home. Jac’s got a job all lined up in another state for after graduation, and Kat’s waiting to hear on an internship that could lead to a job for her, too.

When the girls started high school, I went back to work. Naveen had been struggling with his Philadelphia gallery for a few years, asking me repeatedly if I’d come work for him and keep him in line. I’d always declined, partly because being a mom had been a full-time job and partly because I thought working with him might effectively kill the friendship that had already suffered more than its share of ups and downs. Still, taking the job with him was easier than trying to find one on my own, and though I didn’t “need” to work, I wanted to.

That’s when I stopped meeting Ross at the door. Because on the days when he got home first, he never met me. I never came home to dinner waiting for me, or the laundry folded or a glass of wine. Even when the girls were still in high school, I mostly came home to a silent house, dark in the winter, because they had after-school activities or were with their friends. I’d find him in the den, feet up in the recliner, flipping channels on the television set. I would kiss him dutifully while he pretended to listen to my answer when he asked about my day, and I pretended I wanted to tell him.

I don’t remember the first day I resented this. I don’t remember wondering why all the years I’d made the effort were not reciprocated. Nothing jumped up and bit me or slammed like a door in my face. That’s not how it happens. What happens is you get married, you raise your kids, they go off to school, and you look at your spouse and wonder what on earth you’re supposed to do with each other now, without all the distractions of having a family to obscure the fact that you have no idea not only who the other is, but who you are yourself.

Today I come home to an empty house that smells faintly of the lilac air freshener the cleaning woman sprays in all the bathrooms when she’s finished scrubbing them. My kitchen is spotless. My living room, too, the hash mark lines of the vacuum still fresh in the cream-colored carpet we installed after the girls left for college. In my bedroom I fall down on the unrumpled bed, the comforter matching the pillows matching the sheets matching the curtains matching the carpet. I spread out my arms and legs as if I’m making a snow angel, and I move them slowly back and forth. When I get up from the bed, I’ve left behind no mark.

I should be leaving for work soon. Naveen will expect me to call him to go over invoices and details and things I don’t want to talk about. At the very least, I should check my email and phone messages to see if anything important happened since the last time I looked. Instead, I go to my closet. I look at my clothes. Everything in there is black or white or gray or beige. When’s the last time I wore anything bright? A color, a real color?

In the back, shoved behind a bunch of summer dresses in navy and white, the lines severe but classic, I find an emerald-green blouse. Silk. Shoulder pads and a bow at the front, which should make it clear how long it had been since I’d worn it. I bought it to wear for my first job, when I believed making an impression was important and women needed to wear high heels to office jobs because that’s what they did in the movies. The shoes are long gone, as are the black pencil skirts I’d never be able to squeeze into again, but this shirt had been a favorite. I press it to my cheek for a minute, thinking about the rain and the taste of coffee and whiskey. The bright light showing everything.