Being completely new to infidelity, I didn’t know the protocol, assuming there was one. And neither did Carrie. I was desperately tired from the late night, the alcohol, the sex, but simply drifting off into sleep seemed wrong, or at least impolite.
So we lay there, wordlessly, in the dark, each of us retreating into our own thoughts. My arm was trapped under her rib cage and all the feeling soon left my hand. It was very surreal, this strange nexus between my past and my present, at once thoroughly disorienting and reassuringly familiar. The smell of her skin. The sound of her breathing. The mind forgets, but the body remembers.
Eventually she said, “I should probably get going” and I nodded. We disentangled ourselves, the bed creaking, and I wiggled my fingers as sensation painfully returned.
I sat up, leaning against the cool wall as she gathered up her clothes and got dressed. She would, I guessed, stop at the bathroom at the end of the hallway to wash up and smooth out her clothing, erasing the wrinkles that would have betrayed her. Although I was confident that even if Daniel suspected something, he would never dare mention it to her.
“OK,” she said finally, when she was ready to leave.
“I guess I’ll see you at our fiftieth,” I said in a clumsy attempt at levity. She exhaled sharply through her nose in what might have been amusement. “Bye, Carrie.”
After a few false starts, she leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, her tongue once again unsettlingly aggressive, and headed out the door. The clicking of her boot heels echoed in the empty hallway, growing fainter as she walked away, until they dissolved into silence.
She was gone.
YOU ARE READING
Bad Sex & Good Scotch: A Reunion Story
Short Story#86 in Short Story (7/11/15) Remember your "first time?" Well, I wish I could forget mine. As a Freshman in college, I met Carrie and we fell in love. We thought we were the perfect couple. We thought we would always be together. But after we decide...
