Chapter 5- Sam
She asked me for a big, greasy hamburger.
It was the least I could give her after blowing up her world.
I ordered it on UberEats, and soon as it came, she ended up sitting cross-legged on my couch, devouring it like she hadn’t eaten in days.
She ate messily and unselfconscious. There was ketchup smudged on the corner of her lips as she talked with her mouth full.
I watched her quietly, not saying much, just letting her purge herself.
She slurred her words a little, the whiskey still heavy on her tongue.
“You know,” she said, pausing to lick a drop of sauce off her thumb. She had the prettiest, plushest lips. I wanted to touch her mouth. Just trace the curve of the bow with my tongue.
I exhaled the thoughts quietly.
“Just a week ago, I begged him to fuck me. I actually begged him.” She laughed, but it was hollow, tinged with bitterness. “He said he didn’t have time. Probably because he was rushing off to fuck yours.”
I imagined her begging—voice shaky, trying to hold on to a man who didn’t even want what she was offering. Who didn’t deserve it, really. It made me want to punch her stupid-ass husband.
Most men cheated on wives like Janet with women like Zane. Something had to be wrong with him.
I leaned back in the chair, fingers tapping the armrest. I didn’t say anything. I could tell she didn’t need my response, just someone to listen.
Instead, I let my eyes wander over her. She was pretty—short hair framing her face like a pixie’s, big innocent eyes.
No makeup, clear skin, her cheeks flushed from the alcohol.
She was striking. I thought about how she'd looked earlier, sitting in my lap, skin so soft, her breath warm against my neck.
The old me would’ve taken her up on her offer without a second thought. I would’ve fucked her so good, she’d walk back into her husband’s house looking at him like he was a joke.
I bet he fucked her with his eyes closed—routine, quiet, lazy.
I would’ve made her remember she was a woman—flesh and fire and need. She would’ve hated him for letting her forget.
She’d sit across from him at dinner and remember the way I made her scream into a pillow.
She’d touch herself under the sheets thinking about how I held her eyes while I was inside her.
I would’ve made her loud. Made her claw at the sheets.
Would’ve demanded she give me every inch of her body like it owed me something.
Old me would have ruined somebody like her.
But I wasn’t the old me.
Despite Janet, I still wanted a wife.
I wanted Sunday mornings and the sound of little bare feet running on hardwood.
I wanted someone who met me at the door like she was glad I made it back.
I wanted a family.
And after trying once, maybe that made me stupid. Soft, even. But I wanted what I wanted.
She kept talking, her words spilling out, her feelings, complaining about him like she’d been holding them in for years.
Then, out of nowhere, she said, “I want a baby,” and burst into tears.
I was caught off guard. She cried so hard her shoulders shook, and I saw the years of pain and disappointment written all over her face.
And that made me angrier at her husband.
Because what kind of man leaves a woman like her—full of want, full of love—with nowhere to put it?
What kind of man makes a woman like her beg just to feel like a woman?
“My momma didn’t like him,” she sobbed. “I haven’t talked to them in years because of him. And now… now I’m just… alone. He won’t let me do nothing.”
She cried harder for a second.
I didn’t know what to do with it—her pain, her need, the way she folded into herself.
She reached for her glass with tears running down her face. I leaned over and took it from her before she could lift it to her lips.
“I shouldn’t have given you this,” I said, my voice low.
She looked up at me, her eyes red and swollen, and for a second, I thought she might argue. But then she just nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“Your wife is old.”
“She’s 45 and I’m 35,” I rebutted.
She pouted and wiped her eyes, her tone shifting. “So? She’s still not attractive enough for you. How’d you meet her? Why’d you marry her?”
She was slurring worse now, her shaky emotions adding to it.
I leaned back in my chair, considering her question.
“My parents own a restaurant,” I finally said. “Had more women by twenty-one than some men get in a lifetime. Too many, maybe. I got tired of it. Then Janet came in one day. She was different. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I just wanted her to be.”
She nodded like she understood.
We sat in silence for a while longer.
Then she started rambling again, telling me about how she wanted to rebuild old houses and about her lonely childhood and her best friend and more about loneliness, then she stopped in the middle of it all. Just stopped talking.
Then she stood.
In one swift motion, she pulled her shirt over her head, shimmed out of her skirt and let it all fall to the floor.
Then she just stood there in front of me in nothing but a matching red bra and panties, her skin glowing under the warm light of the living room lamp.
Jesus. She wasn’t good for my heart, and my dick was already hard from her jumping in my lap—it hadn’t gone down. Now it felt too hard.
“You think I’m pretty, Sam?” she asked. “You think my body’s nice? You saw a lot of women. You would know.”
My jaw clenched. My fists curled. I think this was the most restraint I’d ever shown in my life.
She stood there with this look on her face, begging me to make her feel something—wanted, seen, chosen.
She didn’t know what she was doing.
Or maybe she did.
Maybe it was just the liquor.
Or maybe she was just tired of being invisible.
Either way, I looked my fill. Checked out her thick thighs. Her belly wasn’t flat, but her waist curved in, giving her a figure-eight shape, and her breasts were perfectly round. She looked soft. Womanly.
Fuck!
She had the kind of body built for being held down and fucked deep—and praised with a filthy mouth and long, slow strokes.
And I wanted her.
I wanted to taste her. I wanted to pin her to the wall and eat her until she cried. I wanted to fuck her slow until she forgot her own name.
But I wouldn’t.
Whatever I was feeling wasn’t just lust. It was something meaner. Something needier. Something that had teeth.
I stood up, breathing all heavy. I grabbed her clothes from the floor, redressed her myself.. She didn’t resist.
“You need to sleep this off, Zane. Lay down.”
She nodded, voice small. “Okay.”
She simply laid down and curled into the couch. I pulled the throw blanket from the side and laid it around her shoulders.
I stood over her a moment longer, watching her settle. Still wanting. Still hard. Still restraining myself.
At some point, she fell asleep. I took my spot back in the chair and just watched her for a while, wondering what she was going to do now.
I used to think soft women like her wanted anchors. Someone to cling to.
But in a few hours, I had her figured out.
The cooking. The homemaking. Wanting babies.
Zane didn’t want an anchor.
She wanted to be one.
She wanted to hold someone down.
To be the reason they came home.
To take care of someone the way no one had ever taken care of her.
She wanted to be needed.
Wanted her softness to matter.
Her warmth to mean something.
She wanted to love someone the way she wasn’t being loved.
And it pissed me off to know a woman like her was trying to prove she was enough for someone who never deserved her. Shaking my head, I leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes.
When I woke up, the sun was fully up, streaming through the windows. She was still asleep, her hair a mess, her face peaceful.
For a moment, I imagined what it might be like if this were our life.
We were just two people who’d found each other in the wreckage of our failed marriages. What if I leaned into that? What if I gave her the baby she wanted, let her build the family she’d been begging for?
I could see her in my kitchen, barefoot, humming off-key. I could see her arms being the ones I collapsed into when the world got too heavy.
I could see it.
But could I get her to see it?
I stood quietly, careful not to wake her, and headed to the kitchen to make coffee, thinking about stealing another man’s wife—
But was it really stealing when Mark opened the door and left it unlocked while he was fucking my wife on my living room floor?