Chapter 5: Desecration and Priorities
Chloe woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of Tim humming in the kitchen. She lay still for a moment, the sheets tangled around her legs, morning light falling soft across the room. Her body ached in a way she still wasn't used to. A deep, pleasant ache that felt like a secret pressed against the inside of her skin.
She had not thought about how she would feel in the morning. She had not let herself think past the moment, not while Mark was still there, not while his hand was on her back. But now Tim was home, and her bed smelled like another man's sweat, and she had to get up and act like nothing had happened.
She showered until the water ran cold, scrubbing herself with a soap that didn't match the memory of his skin. At breakfast she pushed her eggs around the plate. Tim was talking, something about a group project, something about his mother's birthday. She nodded at the right moments and felt like she was watching herself from far away.
On Tuesday she went to the library and opened her laptop to study. The QOS subreddit lived on her bookmarks bar now, innocuous as a dictionary. She clicked it without thinking. There was a new story, a confession about a girlfriend's weekend trip, the detail so specific that she felt a pulse between her legs. She closed the laptop, opened it again, closed it.
At six she told Tim she was tired and went to bed early. She lay in the dark, thinking about Mark's hands, the weight of him over her, the way he had not asked permission before taking what she had offered. And she thought about how she would never do it again. She meant it.
On Wednesday she saw him at the gym. She had known he trained at four, and she had told herself she was going to the library, but her feet carried her to the campus gym anyway. She watched him move through a track and field circuit, the muscles in his shoulders shifting dark under the tank top. He caught her looking through the glass and did not smile. He just nodded, once, like a man taking inventory.
She left before he could finish his set. She walked home with her face burning and her thighs pressed together, and she told herself that seeing him was an accident. That she had just happened to be there.
Thursday night was the first time she texted him. She had spent three days inventing reasons not to. She had cleaned the apartment top to bottom, had baked Tim cookies, had lain awake listening to his breathing. And then, in a moment she could not fully reconstruct, her phone was in her hand and the text was sent: this can't happen again.
Almost immediately: You're telling yourself that.
She typed, deleted, typed again. I'm serious.
The reply came after a pause. So am I. You're the one who keeps coming back.
She did not reply. She set her phone on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling. But she knew he was right. She had gone to the gym. She was the one who had kept his number. She was the one who had unblocked him after pretending to delete it.
On Friday night Tim was working late. Chloe sat on her couch in her sleep shorts and an old t-shirt, watching a show she could not follow. At eleven her phone buzzed. aisha: you awake? and then Maya: so mark just asked about you at the bar. he wanted to know if you were coming.
She did not go to the bar. She did not go anywhere. She sat in her apartment and felt the walls press in, and when Tim came home at midnight she was in bed, pretending to sleep. He climbed in beside her and whispered goodnight, and she listened to him fall asleep while she counted the hours until she could be alone again.
The second time happened on a Tuesday. She had made it twelve days. She had been good. She had been Tim's girlfriend in every way, had cooked dinner, had laughed at his jokes, had let him hold her in bed and had closed her eyes and thought about the math exam she had coming up. And then she had gone to the campus grocery store at eleven at night because the apartment was empty and she could not sit in the ringing quiet anymore.
She did not plan it. She was standing in the frozen foods aisle when she saw him. He was in a grey hoodie, buying milk and a bottle of hot sauce, and when he turned and saw her, he stopped. For a moment neither of them moved.
"Hey," he said. His voice was easy, like they were old friends.
"Hey." Her own voice came out thin.
He glanced at her basket, then at her face. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Pretending you're not looking at me." He set the milk down and crossed his arms. Somewhere behind them a freezer rattled. "You want to keep lying to yourself, that's your business. But you're in the aisle I told you I'd be in."
Chloe's face went hot. "I didn't know you'd be here."
"Uh huh." He did not look convinced. He picked up his milk and walked past her, and his shoulder brushed her arm, and it was like a wire had been touched to her skin. She watched him pay. She watched him walk toward the exit. And then she was in the parking lot, her own basket abandoned, her heart hammering high in her chest, calling his name.
He turned. The streetlight caught his face. And she crossed the lot and stood close enough to smell the soap on his skin, and she said, "You don't tell anyone about this."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he reached out and took her hand, and he led her to his car.
His car smelled like leather and old cologne. She sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap, watching the streetlights slide across the windshield. He did not ask where she wanted to go. He just drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh. She could feel the heat of his arm across the center console like a furnace.
"How long?" he asked.
"How long what?"
"Since you last touched yourself thinking about me."
Chloe's mouth went dry. "I don't."
He glanced at her, and the corner of his mouth curved. "You're a terrible liar."
She did not answer. She watched the campus buildings give way to brick apartment complexes, the streets getting quieter. He parked in front of a building with a wrought iron gate and killed the engine. For a long moment neither of them moved.
"You can go home if you want," he said. "Your car's still at the store. I'll drive you back."
She thought about her abandoned basket. She thought about Tim, asleep in their bed with the TV still on. She thought about the twelve days she had been good, and how empty they had felt, and how she had walked into that grocery store knowing, on some level she refused to name, that he would be there.
"No," she said. "I don't want to go home."
He nodded slowly, like he had known she would say that. He got out and came around to open her door. She took his hand and let him lead her up the stairs.
His apartment was nothing like hers. It was sparse, almost empty: a couch, a low coffee table, a TV on a stand. Weight plates stacked in the corner. No framed photos. No plants. It smelled like him, like clean sweat and cologne and the particular musk of a man who lived alone.
He did not ask her if she was sure. He did not warn her, not this time. He turned her around and pressed her against the door and kissed her hard, and she made a sound she barely recognized, a small desperate moan that rose up her throat like it had a will of its own.
"Tell me what you want," he said against her mouth.
She could have said his name. She could have said I want you to fuck me. But what came out of her mouth was: "I want to forget his name."
Mark paused. His hand was on her hip, his thumb pressing into the bone. He looked at her for a long moment, and then something in his face shifted, a flicker of understanding that made her feel seen in a way she had never been seen before.
"Okay," he said. He reached down and pulled her shirt over her head. He undid her jeans and worked them down her thighs, and when she was standing in her underwear he stepped back and just looked at her. The light was low and yellow, and it made her skin look warm.
"You're beautiful," he said, and it was not flattery. He said it like it was a fact, like he was making an inventory.
She crossed her arms over her chest without thinking. He caught her wrists and drew them away.
"Don't," he said. "Don't hide. You don't get to hide anymore."
She felt a shiver run through her, not cold, not fear. Something else. Something that made her drop her hands to her sides and stand there trembling while he took off his hoodie and his t-shirt. The muscles in his chest were cut sharp by the lamp light. She had seen him at the gym, but this was different. This was close enough to touch.
"Come here," he said.
She crossed the room. He stripped her underwear off, and she felt the fabric slide down her thighs and pool at her ankles. She stepped out of them and stood before him naked while he still wore his jeans. The power in that imbalance made her stomach tighten.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing. She wrapped her legs around him, and he carried her to the bed in the corner, a mattress on a low frame with rumpled dark sheets. He laid her down and came over her, and the weight of him pressed her into the mattress, solid and heavy and real.
He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. She arched into him, her hands finding the plane of his back. She wanted to say something, to reclaim some ground, but her mind had gone quiet. There was only his mouth on her skin and the slow roll of his hips against her, the pressure of him through his jeans.
"Say it again," he said.
"Say what?"
"That you want to forget."
She swallowed. Her voice came out rough. "I want to forget."
He sat back and undid his jeans. The sound of the zipper was loud in the quiet room. He pushed them down, and then his boxers, and he was bare above her. He took himself in his hand, stroking once, and she watched, her breath catching in her throat.
"You sure?" he asked.
"Yes." She did not hesitate.
He positioned himself between her legs and pushed in slowly. She moaned, low and long, her head falling back into the pillow. The stretch of him, the fullness, the way he filled her completely. He stayed still for a moment, letting her adjust, and when he began to move it was a slow, deep rhythm that made her dig her heels into the small of his back.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened her eyes. His face was above hers, jaw tight, eyes dark. He was watching her, really watching, and she felt her own face flush with something that was not shame anymore.
"You're not thinking about him," he said, a statement, a fact.
"No," she breathed.
"Say it."
"I'm not thinking about him."
He drove deeper, and she cried out. She had told herself, in the dark of her bedroom, that it had been a one-time thing, an accident, a slip. But now she felt the truth in the grip of his hands on her hips, in the way her body opened for him. She had not slipped. She had jumped. And she did not want to climb back.
He fucked her like he had nothing to prove and all the time in the world. Slow at first, then harder, his hands sliding under her to grip her ass and tilt her up so every thrust dragged across a place inside her that Tim had never found. She stopped being quiet. The sounds came out of her ragged and shameless, and the neighbors could have heard and she did not care.
"Touch yourself," he said.
She reached between her legs and found her clit swollen and slick, and the moment her fingers touched it the pressure broke. Her orgasm hit her in waves, her whole body clenching around him, her heels digging into his back, and she heard herself say his name like a prayer she'd been holding in for weeks.
Mark groaned low in his chest and drove deep one last time, and she felt him pulse inside her, hot and thick, filling her until it leaked out around him. He stayed there, breathing hard, his forehead pressed to her shoulder.
When he rolled off her she felt empty in a way that had nothing to do with her body. She lay on her side on his sheets, his come cooling on her thigh, and stared at the ceiling. Her legs were shaking.
"You're going to come back," he said. He was not smug about it. He said it like a weather forecast.
"Maybe."
"Count the days if you want. I'll be here."
She got dressed in the dark and he called her a ride. In the back of the car she wiped herself with a tissue from her purse and watched the streets come familiar, and by the time she let herself into her apartment she had already started building the story. Study group. Lost track of time.
Tim was asleep. She got into bed beside him and he stirred and pulled her against his chest, and she lay there with another man's come drying inside her and listened to her boyfriend breathe.
She tried again after that. She genuinely tried.
She deleted his number and then restored it from the cloud two days later, telling herself it was just data. She told Maya she was done with something, though she never said what. She threw herself into Tim, cooked on Sundays, watched his shows, let him fuck her twice with the lights off while she stared at the ceiling and counted. She went eight days. Then ten.
Then it rained on a Thursday and she remembered the way he'd held her against the door, and by Friday she was in his bed again. Then a lull before exams, and she told herself no, and held it for six days before texting him a single word. Then his bed. Then hers, once, when Tim's late shift ran long, and she lay afterward in sheets she'd washed that morning and felt nothing like guilt, only a warm, spreading numbness.
She stopped counting after that. It was easier that way. Each time she told herself this was the last, and each time the telling lasted about four days. The pattern had its own rhythm now, like a tide. She'd be good, she'd be Tim's girlfriend, she'd bake something and laugh at his jokes. And then some small trigger, a song in the gym, a text she shouldn't open, and she'd feel the tide pull.
But there was still a line. She was clear about it with herself, sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor one night while Tim showered, saying it in her head like a vow. Tim always comes first. His plans, his feelings, his place in her life. She would lie about hours, about where she'd been, but she would never cost him anything. Never cancel on him. Never make him feel second, because he wasn't. He was first. Everything else was just noise that happened in the margins.
She believed it completely. That was the strange part.
She started buying things, too, small and quiet. A black lace set she'd never wear for Tim, ordered online and collected from the parcel locker before he got home. A little silver pendant shaped like a spade, absurd and tiny, that she wore tucked under her sweater where no one could see it. She caught herself touching it through the fabric during lectures. She ordered a second pair of underwear, softer, lacier, with a card she threw away unread.
She told herself these were just things. Just purchases. A woman could buy nice underwear.
It was a Sunday in late October when Tim called. Chloe was lying on Mark's bed, wearing one of his t-shirts, watching him make coffee in the kitchenette. Her phone lit up on the mattress beside her.
She almost didn't answer. Tim never called on Sundays; Sundays were theirs.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey! So, don't laugh, but I got us a table at Volterra. Eight o'clock. The little Italian place on Sixth, the one you said looked romantic." His voice was bright, nervous, pleased with himself. "I've been saving up. I know it's random, I just thought, we haven't done anything like that in a while. Just us."
Mark glanced over from the counter, mug in hand. He said nothing. He just leaned against the sink and watched her.
Chloe pulled the phone against her ear and turned toward the wall. "Tim, tonight's a little..."
"You're busy?" A small pause. "That's fine. I can move it. They do Thursdays too."
Mark set his mug down and crossed the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her free hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, unhurried, his eyes on hers.
"I can move it," Tim said again. "Thursday?"
"I'm not sure yet," she heard herself say. "It's a group thing. Might run late."
"Okay. Thursday, then, if that works. I'll book it. I'm excited. We haven't dressed up for anything in forever."
Mark was drawing her hand toward him, toward his lap, his mouth following.
"Tim," Chloe said. "I might need to just see. I'll text you later, okay?"
"Sure. Love you. I'll book Thursday."
She hung up. The screen dimmed and went dark, and in its black she saw her own reflection, blurred and small.
Mark took the phone out of her hand and set it face down on the nightstand. Then he pulled her shirt up over her head and laid her back against the pillows, and she let him.
She thought about the table at Volterra, eight o'clock, the little candles they'd light. She thought about it distantly, like a poster on someone else's wall. Mark kissed down her stomach and pulled her underwear aside with two fingers, and when his mouth found her clit she arched off the bed and stopped thinking about the reservation at all.
Afterward, at half past eight, she texted Tim from Mark's bathroom. gonna be a long night with the group. rain check? sorry. love you.
Three dots. Then: no problem! thursday it is. hope it goes well :)
She put the phone face down on the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was wrecked. Her mascara had smudged. She looked like exactly what she was, and she didn't flinch.
Tim always comes first, she told herself, and the words came out hollow, like reading a slogan off a cereal box.
She walked back into the bedroom.