Chapter 10: The Morning After
Ellie woke to the smell of Javier—coffee grounds, turpentine, and a clean, male sweat that had gone slightly stale with sleep. Her body registered the details before her mind did. A heavy forearm, corded with muscle, draped across her ribs, the weight pinning her to the mattress. The unfamiliar prick of stubble against her shoulder blade. A deep, regular breathing behind her.
Sunlight, brutal and unfiltered, cut through the high windows of his loft, exposing everything. Dust motes danced like agitated atoms over the scarred wood floor. An empty bottle of wine stood sentinel on an uptocked crate. Her dress, a slip of emerald silk she’d bought just for this trip, was a puddle of regret by the door.
She shifted, and the arm tightened, pulling her back against the solid warmth of him. The movement sent a dull ache through her breasts. They felt heavy, swollen against the fine silk of her camisole—Javier had peeled off her dress last night but left the rest, finding the lace a pleasing obstacle. The pills. They made everything…more. A constant, low hum of sensation. Her body was a different country now, its borders fluid, its topography rewritten by desire. Dresses were the only thing that fit properly anymore. She was a shape she barely recognized, impossibly responsive, getting wet with a thought, a glance. Last night, it had felt like power. Now, in the stark light, it felt like a betrayal of a different order.
She remembered his hands on her, the greedy appreciation in his dark eyes as he’d filled them. “Dios mío,” he’d murmured into her neck, “you are a revelation.” And she’d revelled in it, in being seen as pure, uncomplicated sensation, free of the tangled history she carried with Ben.
Carefully, she extricated herself from his arm. He grunted in his sleep, rolled onto his back. The sheet fell to his waist, exposing the flat plane of his stomach, the dark trail of hair. He was objectively beautiful. In sleep, his face was less sharp, the confident swagger of his jaw softened. But it was a stranger’s face. The passion of the night before—all biting kisses and artful dominance against the brick wall of his studio—had cooled into a film over everything, sticky and thin.
This was what she’d wanted. The freedom. The separate, radiant self that existed outside the comfortable, worn-in confines of her marriage. She’d proposed this. She’d insisted on it, spinning it as a way to save them from the slow suffocation of routine, to pour new experiences back into the well of their own love.
So why did she feel like she was standing on a cliff edge, the wind threatening to pluck her from everything solid?
She slid out of bed, the floorboards cool under her bare feet. She found her phone on the kitchen counter, next to a half-finished charcoal sketch of a woman who was not her. The screen was a burst of light in the dim morning.
Ben’s name. No new messages.
Her heart did a stupid, clumsy lurch.He was probably asleep. Or at work. Or maybe… He had permission. The same permission she was using right now. He was in London. A city full of women who weren't her. The thought was a cold, sharp needle sliding between her ribs. She could picture it too easily: Ben, quiet and intense in some moody bar, a woman leaning in to catch his soft-spoken words. The image was visceral, painful.
She accepted the pain. She had to. This was the bargain.She opened her photos. Scrolled past last night’s blurry shots of the gallery opening, past Javier’s hand on the small of her back, possessive and proud. She scrolled back, back, until she found a photo from six months ago. Her and Ben on the couch in their old apartment, the one they’d just sold. She was curled into his side, her short red hair a mess, laughing at something off-camera. Ben’s face was relaxed, his smile a quiet thing that reached his eyes. He had flour on his cheek. They’d been baking. It had failed spectacularly.
The memory was a physical ache, a homesickness so profound it stole her breath.
Her thumbs moved over the screen, typing without conscious thought.
Ellie (7:14 AM): I miss you.
She sent it before she could overthink it. It wasn’t a confession. It wasn't a plea. It was just a true thing, released into the digital void between them.
A rustle of sheets came from the bed. Javier was awake, propped on one elbow, watching her. His eyes were dark, assessing.
“Regrets already?” he asked. His voice was a morning rasp. He didn’t sound concerned, just curious.
“No,” she said, too quickly. She made herself look at him, lean against the cold concrete of the counter.“No regrets. Just… morning.”
He smiled, a slow, languid unfurling that was all confidence. “Morning is the best part. The light.” He pushed the sheet back entirely and stood, unselfconscious, stretching. He walked to her, naked and utterly at ease in his own skin. He took the phone from her hand, placed it face down on the counter. His fingers traced the line of her jaw. “You think too much, corazón. This is simple. You are a beautiful woman. I am a man who appreciates beauty. We have an understanding. No strings, no sad songs in the morning. Just this.”
He kissed her then, a deep, claiming kiss that tasted of sleep and wine. Her body, traitorously, responded. That humming wire inside her buzzed back to life. His hand slid down, cupping her through the thin lace of her panties, his touch expert, undeniable.
“See?” he murmured against her mouth. “Simple.”
But it wasn’t. As he led her back to the rumpled sheets, as the morning light painted gold bars across his back, her mind splintered. One part was here, lost in the sheer physical mechanics of pleasure, the feedback loop of her own amplified senses. Another part was floating somewhere near the ceiling, watching this woman with red hair writhe under a handsome stranger. And a third, desperate part was thousands of miles away, clinging to the ghost of flour on a cheek, to the memory of a laugh in a kitchen that belonged only to them.
Later, as she dressed in the harsh light, Javier handed her a coffee in a chipped mug. “You’re quiet.”
“Just thinking about my work,” she lied, pulling the silk dress over her head. It zipped tighter than it had yesterday. “The… logistics.”
“The piece with the swan? The angry one?” He chuckled. “He was a character.”
“He is,” she said.“Thanks. For last night. For the coffee.”
He nodded, that easy, unbothered acceptance. “Anytime. You know where I am.”
Outside, the city was fully awake, loud and indifferent. She walked for blocks without direction, the ghost of Javier’s hands still on her skin, the echo of Ben’s silence a hole in her chest. The pills in her bloodstream made the sunlight feel like a tactile thing, pressing on her. She was so aware of her body, this new, hungry vessel. It had gotten what it wanted. It throbbed with a satisfied ache.
So why did she feel so utterly, utterly alone?
Her phone vibrated in her purse. She fumbled for it, her heart in her throat.
It wasn’t Ben.
It was a notification from her bank. A transaction for the hotel in London. Ben’s hotel.
Last night.11:47 PM. A charge from a place called The Badger’s Den. £89.60.
She stopped walking, right in the middle of the sidewalk. A man bumped into her, muttering an oath.
Ellie stared at the screen.A bar. Late. A charge that wasn't for a room service sandwich.
The jealousy was immediate, a green-hot wave that tightened her throat. She could see it. She could smell it. The low lights, the quiet conversation, the decision in the charged air. Her Ben. Her quiet, analytical Ben, in a place with a stupid name, making a decision that ended with a receipt for eighty-nine pounds and sixty pence.
She closed her eyes. A long, shaky breath.
It was allowed. It was the deal. No strings, no sad songs.
She had woken up in a stranger’s bed. He had bought a stranger a drink.
The math was supposed to balance. It just felt like two different kinds of falling.
The neon badger from the receipt seemed to pulse behind her eyelids, a garish pink phantom. Another tremor went through her body, a confused mix of stimulation and sickening dread. The distant wail of a siren felt like it was tearing through her own chest. She unlocked her phone again, thumb hovering over his name, her message—"I miss you"—now feeling pathetic and small, swallowed by the transaction below it.
Then, three dots appeared. They pulsed once, twice. A lifetime compressed into those silent ellipses.
His reply slid onto her screen.
Ben (9:22 AM): This rain is a monster, Sprout. Made a friend who thinks all architects need steel. Miss you, too.
The air left her lungs in a sudden, choked rush. Sprout.
He hadn’t called her that in years, not since the first tiny, sun-drenched balcony garden in their old apartment had yielded a single, crooked chili pepper. Her proud, ridiculous sprout. A laugh burst from her, sharp and wet, the sound swallowed by the city’s grumble. A man pushing a garment rack glanced at her like she was unhinged. She didn't care.
That single word unlatched something deep inside her ribcage. It didn’t erase Javier’s smell on her skin, or the ghostly imprint of the bar bill. It didn’t smooth over the jagged, new geography of her own body. But it was a line thrown across the chasm. It was Ben, recognizing her not just as Ellie, but as his Ellie, from a time before all this open, aching space.
Everything would be fine. It was an absurd, instant conviction.Irrational. She gripped it like a talisman.
She typed, her fingers shaking, trying to match his tone, to knit them back together through the screen.
Ellie (9:23 AM): Steel, huh? Sounds sturdy. My friend is more of a ‘let the morning light do the work’ type. Less steel, more... exposed brick.
She cringed a little at her own description. It was too much, too clear. She sent it anyway, a raw piece of the truth offered back.