Chapter 3: What happens under the table
The morning light through the floor-to-ceiling windows was a liar. It was bright, clear, and utterly surgical, exposing every crumb on the polished mahogany table, every shadow under a sleepless eye. Jess sat in its merciless glare, pushing a single blueberry around her porcelain plate. She wore her own clothes from yesterday, hastily retrieved from the main suite while Leo showered. They felt like a costume.
Leo hadn’t sat next to her. He’d taken the chair directly across, angled toward Mackenzie, who was scrolling through her phone with one hand and sipping green juice with the other. He was a storm cloud in a tailored navy robe. His silence was a physical weight.
“You just vanished last night,” he said finally, not looking at her. He lit a cigarette, the flame from his gold lighter a brief, angry flower. He blew the smoke across the table. It curled, thick and deliberate, between him and Jess, a hazy wall. “Not a text. Nothing. I came looking for you. Mother said you’d gone for air. For, what, six hours?”
Mackenzie glanced up, her expression one of polite, detached interest, as if observing a mildly flawed business proposal.
“I had a headache. I didn’t want to bother you at the club,” Jess said. Her voice sounded thin, unconvincing even to herself. The lie was ash in her mouth. She felt the memory of the kitchen, of being hidden against silk, burn her cheeks.
“You’re never a bother, babe,” Leo said, but the words were automatic, empty. He took another drag. “It’s just rude. Makes me look like an idiot, not knowing where my own fiancée is.”
Leah entered then, a serene counterpoint to the tension. She wore a stark white linen shirt and black trousers, her dark hair slicked back, smelling of grapefruit and cold cream. She moved to the head of the table, the seat adjacent to Jess, and sat without a word. A housekeeper materialized, placing a cup of black coffee before her.
“It’s not a performance, Leo,” Leah said, stirring her coffee slowly. “She had a headache. She slept in the spare suite. End of story.” Her tone was crisp, dismissive. “Must you smoke at breakfast? It’s barbaric.”
Leo ignored her, his eyes still on Jess. “The spare suite? Why not our room?”
“Because you weren’t in it,” Jess said, a spark of genuine irritation cutting through the fog of her guilt. “And you came back late. I didn’t want to wake you.” This, at least, was true.
He seemed to weigh this, the accusation in his eyes softening marginally into something more like petulant inconvenience. He shrugged, turning his attention to Mackenzie’s phone. “Look at this, Mack. The Brentwood listing. Stunning, right?”
As they bent their heads together, a new tension entered Jess’s world, hyper-focused and intimate.
She felt it first as a pressure against her calf, through the thin fabric of her trousers. The cool, hard tip of a shoe. Leah’s stiletto. It rested there, a casual, seemingly accidental touch. Jess froze, her fork poised over the rogue blueberry.
Then it began to move.
With glacial slowness, the pointed toe slid up the line of her calf, a deliberate, shocking caress. Jess’s breath hitched. She kept her eyes locked on her plate, on the stupid, smeared blueberry. Her whole body was a live wire. The sensory memory of the lace pajamas, of Leah’s hand on her breast in the dark, flooded back, mixing violently with the mundane morning scene: the clink of china, Leo’s low murmur about square footage, the scent of smoke and fresh coffee.
The shoe crept higher, past her knee, along the inside of her thigh. Jess’s knuckles were white around her fork. She pressed her legs together, trying to trap it, to stop its progress, but it was relentless. A bolt of pure, destabilizing heat shot through her. She could feel the exact moment Leah leaned back in her chair, taking a slow sip of coffee, the picture of elegant composure.
“Jess, you’re awfully quiet,” Leo said, glancing up. “You okay? You look flushed.”
“Fine,” she managed, her voice tight. She grabbed her orange juice, the cold glass a shock against her palm. She drank too quickly, almost choking. “Just… tired still.”
Under the table, the pressure intensified. The shoe pressed firmly, insistently, against the apex of her thighs. Jess jolted, a tiny, involuntary movement that rattled her cutlery.
Leo frowned. Mackenzie looked over, a faint, curious line between her brows.
Leah set her cup down with a soft click. “She probably didn’t sleep well,” Leah said, her voice a smooth, conversational balm. “Unfamiliar room. All that excitement yesterday.” She turned her head slightly, and Jess felt the woman’s gaze like a physical touch on her profile. “The mind races, doesn’t it, Jess?”
It was a challenge, wrapped in concern. Jess dared a glance. Leah was looking right at her, a faint, knowing smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes, those smoky, alluring pools, held a glittering amusement at Jess’s frantic attempt to maintain composure. She saw the panic, the shame, the unwanted arousal, and she was cataloging every flicker.
Jess wanted to scream. She wanted to shove the table over and run. Instead, she felt a treacherous warmth pooling under the relentless point of that shoe. Her face was on fire.
“Yeah, well, try to rally,” Leo said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Mackenzie’s got a buyer viewing the Pasadena property at eleven. I said we’d tag along. Good networking for you.” It was an order, not an invitation.
“I have work to edit,” Jess protested weakly.
“It’s a Saturday. It can wait.” He stood, dropping his napkin. “Come on, Mack. Let’s get ready. Jess, be downstairs in forty. Don’t be late.” He walked out without touching her, without a backward glance. Mackenzie followed, giving Jess a brief, inscrutable look that felt like a clinical assessment before she disappeared.
The silence they left behind was deafening. The shoe withdrew.
Jess finally exhaled, a shuddering, shaky breath. She felt exposed, scraped raw. She couldn’t look at Leah.
Leah stood, smoothing her trousers. She walked around the table, coming to stand behind Jess’s chair. Jess could feel her presence, a charged field in the bright, smoky room. Leah’s hands came to rest on Jess’s shoulders. Her thumbs dug into the tight muscles at the base of Jess’s neck, not quite a massage, more like a claiming.
“See?” Leah murmured, her breath stirring the hair near Jess’s ear. Her voice was low, for Jess alone. “He didn’t see a thing. He never does. All that delightful… turmoil. Wasted on him.”
Jess closed her eyes. The touch was simultaneously a comfort and a violation.
“I can’t do this,” Jess whispered, but it was devoid of conviction.
“You already are.” Leah’s thumbs stroked once, slowly, then her hands were gone. She walked toward the doorway. “Forty minutes. You should change. That outfit has yesterday’s decisions all over it.”
At the archway, she paused. She didn’t turn back, but her voice carried, clear and soft.
“The rent’s due, Jess.” A pause. “I’ll collect tonight.”
And then she was gone, leaving Jess alone at the vast, sunlit table with the ghost of a touch burning between her legs and the taste of betrayal, both given and received, sour in her mouth. The city skyline outside was sharp and defined, but Jess’s future had never been more blurred. She dropped her forehead to the cool, scarred wood of the table, right next to the smashed blueberry, and let out a single, soundless scream.
She dropped her forehead to the cool, scarred wood of the table, right next to the smashed blueberry, and let out a single, soundless scream.
The pressure stayed in her chest, a trapped bird of panic and shame. She found Leo in his dressing room, a space of mirrors and the faint, astringent smell of his citrus cologne. He was knotting a tie, his reflection perfectly composed. “Leo,” she began, her voice unfamiliar to her. “I really don’t want to go to Mackenzie’s thing.”
He glanced at her in the mirror, his fingers never faltering. “Why not?”
“I just… I’d rather stay here. With you. We could order in, watch something stupid.” The words felt pathetic as she said them, a child’s plea. “We haven’t done that in forever.”
He turned, his expression one of genuine, exasperated bafflement. “It’s a couple hours, Jess. It’s business-adjacent. It’s important.” He shrugged, turning back to his reflection. “Bring your camera if you’re bored. Get some shots of the architecture. It’s a Greene and Greene.”
“That’s not the point.” The bird in her chest beat its wings harder.
“What is the point?” he asked, his tone flattening. “You’re in a mood. You were in a mood last night. I get it. But moping around here isn’t going to fix it.” He sprayed cologne into the air and walked through the mist. “Come on, it’ll be good for you. Get some air. See people.”
She stood in the doorway, watching him. The chasm between her desperation and his utter blindness was so vast it felt gravitational. “Please,” she said, one last, quiet attempt.
He picked up his watch, fastening the clasp. “Don’t be difficult, babe. The car’s in twenty.” He brushed past her, his hand briefly touching her waist, a distracted punctuation mark. “Wear the black dress. The simple one.”
Of course, he wouldn’t.
She heard the front door close forty minutes later, the sound a heavy, final thud. The penthouse exhaled into a profound, watchful silence. She did not put on the black dress. She stayed in her soft trousers and thin sweater, garments that felt like armor against nothing.
She ended up back in the sitting room with the cold fireplace. The photos of Leo and Mackenzie seemed to watch her with their polished, generic smiles. She picked a book at random from a shelf, a thick volume with a faded spine. She sank into the same velvet chair from the night before, drawing her legs up beneath her.
She was trying not to think of Leah. The book, a collection of modernist short stories, didn’t help. The prose was stark, atmospheric. It felt familiar. She turned a page, and a sentence fragment leaped out, a description of a rain-smattered window. Memory detonated, quiet and devastating.
Back in that week together, Leah had read part of this very book to her. They’d stayed in bed all day at that highway-side hotel, the world shrunk to rumpled sheets and the murmur of her voice. It was quiet, and it was sweet. Jess had been half-dozing, lulled by the rhythm of the words and the warmth of Leah’s body beside her.
But it took a turn, of course. That entire week was a pressurized container; every glance, every casual touch, held a latent, transformative energy. Every way you turned could have turned into sex. Even reading a book.
Jess’s fingers tightened on the page. She could hear it: Leah’s smooth, low voice parsing the complex sentences, turning them into something intimate. And she could feel it, the memory so visceral it was a phantom limb: Leah’s hand, which had been resting on her hip, beginning to move. A slow, exploratory slide across her stomach, down, underneath the waistband of her own borrowed shorts. No pause in the reading, not even a hitch in that hypnotic cadence, as her fingers made their way between Jess’s legs.
In the chair, in Leo’s penthouse, Jess’s breath caught. Her skin flushed. The sitting room, with its velvety shadows and silent judgment, disappeared. She was back in that dim hotel room, the smell of cheap detergent and their own sweat, the weight of a want so urgent it felt like the only truth. Leah’s voice in her ear, Leah’s clever, relentless fingers working her in counterpoint to the bleak, beautiful prose.
That was what she remembered when she read this book now. And it wasn’t helping her not think about Leah. It was pinning her to the memory, forcing her to relive the illicit slickness, the choked-off sounds she’d tried to swallow, the way she’d arched back against Leah, the book forgotten, tumbling to the floor.
A low, helpless noise escaped her. She snapped the book shut, the sound loud as a gunshot in the quiet room. But it was too late. Her body had remembered. A deep, aching pulse had awakened, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She pressed her thighs together, but the pressure only amplified the sensation, a raw echo of the morning’s violation under the table.
She wasn’t thinking of Leah now. She was feeling her. The ghost of that week, of those specific, skilled hands, was mapped directly onto her nerves. She dropped the book on the side table. It lay there, an inert object radiating heat. She stared at the cold, empty fireplace, at the smiling photos, but all she could see was the motel’s cracked ceiling, all she could hear was a voice murmuring literature into her skin.
The penthouse was empty. Leo was gone. And the rent, Leah had said, was due tonight. The memory wasn’t a retreat. It was a preparatory claim, settling into her muscles, her blood, making a space for itself. Jess leaned her head back against the velvet, eyes closed, and let the wave of the past crash over her, surrendering to the current she knew was pulling her back toward the very thing she was pretending to resist.