Chapter 4 — The Direct Line #3
I read it twice. The casual, buddy-buddy tone. The assumption. The complete blindness. He was texting the prop, checking the prop’s batteries, seeing if the prop was ready for another performance. He had no idea the prop was currently buried inside his wife, in a bed ten miles away.
A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. I choked it down.
“He doesn’t know,” I whispered.
“No,” Leo said softly. “He doesn’t.”
He took the phone back from my limp hand and set it face-down on the nightstand. He looked at me, his expression unreadable in the gloom. “What do you want to do, Talia?”
The question was immense. It wasn’t about tonight. It was about everything. I pulled the sheet up around my chest, suddenly cold. “I don’t know.”
“You could tell him you’re here. Right now.” His voice was neutral, offering a path.
“And say what?” The words came out sharper than I intended. “Hi honey, I lied. I’m naked in Leo’s bed. He just made me come twice. Pass the pad thai?”
Leo was silent for a moment. “Or you could not tell him. You could go home, and he’d never know.”
The simplicity of the lie was seductive. It was also a chasm. One secret led to another, led to a life lived in two compartments. I’d seen it in friends’ marriages, the slow rot of things unspoken.
“He’ll know,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Maybe not the details, but he’ll know something’s different.” I thought of Ben in the car, his hollow eyes. He already knew. The frame was broken. He just didn’t know the new picture yet.
I looked at Leo. “Why did you call me? Really?”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I told you. I’ve been thinking about you.
Non-stop. What happened… it wasn’t just sex for me.
It stopped being that the moment you looked at me and forgot he was in the room.
” He met my gaze. “I wanted to see if it was real. Or if it was just the heat of the… the arrangement.”
“And?” My heart was pounding again.
“It’s real.” He said it without hesitation. “For me. I can’t speak for you.”
The honesty was brutal and beautiful. I had come here for the same reason—to see if the electricity was a trick of the lights, or a fundamental current. I’d gotten my answer. My body still hummed with it.
I threw the covers back and stood up. The air was cool on my skin. I found my clothes in a pile on the floor and began to dress with clumsy, hurried movements. Leo watched me from the bed, saying nothing.
“I have to go,” I said, stating the obvious again.
He nodded.
I pulled my sweater on, my hair catching in the wool. “What happens now?”
“That’s up to you.” He stood up, naked and unselfconscious. He walked over to me, stopping close but not touching. “I want to see you again, Talia. Like this. Just us.”
“Ben…”
“Is your husband,” he finished for me. “I know. I’m not asking you to leave him. I’m asking you to come back to me.”
The dichotomy was impossible. I couldn’t have both. Not like this. Ben’s kink required control, a staged scene, a third party who understood his role. Leo had just declared himself a party of one. He wanted me, directly, privately. The very thing that had broken Ben’s fantasy.
“I can’t promise anything,” I said, my voice trembling.
He reached out, his hand cupping the back of my neck. “Don’t promise. Just think about it.” He leaned in and kissed me, softly, a seal on the night. It tasted like goodbye and a beginning all at once.
I drove home in a daze. The city lights were smears of color.
I replayed his words, his touch, the feel of him inside me without a spectator.
The sheer, unadulterated mine-ness of it.
Then I pictured Ben’s face, the confusion and hurt already living there, waiting for me to explain a shift he could feel but not see.
The house was dark except for the porch light. I let myself in quietly. The smell of Thai food lingered in the air. A single container sat on the kitchen counter, chopsticks laid neatly beside it. He’d saved me some.
Guilt, sharp and acidic, rose in my throat.
I walked upstairs. Our bedroom door was ajar, light off. I peered in. Ben was asleep, or pretending to be, lying on his side facing the window. The sheets were pulled up to his shoulders. He looked smaller in sleep.
I went to the guest bathroom, turned the shower on as hot as I could stand. I scrubbed my skin, trying to wash away the scent of Leo, of sex, of betrayal. But it felt embedded, not on my skin, but deeper. I came out wrapped in a towel, my skin pink and raw.
Ben was sitting up in bed, the lamp on his nightstand casting a low pool of light. He watched me walk in.
“How was Megan’s?” he asked. His voice was carefully casual.
“Fine,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “Lots of flower choices. You know how she is.” I busied myself with lotion, rubbing it into my arms.
Silence stretched. I could feel his gaze on my back.
“You’re late,” he said.
“It took a while.” I kept rubbing lotion I didn’t need.
“Your phone was off.”
I froze. I’d turned it to silent when I got to Leo’s, and never turned it back on. “Battery died,” I lied, the words ash in my mouth.
“Right.”
I turned to face him. He was just looking at me, his expression weary. He knew. He didn’t know the specifics, but he knew the shape of the lie. The space between us was charged with everything unsaid.
“Ben…”
“Don’t,” he said softly. He shook his head. “Just… don’t, Talia. Not tonight.”
He turned off his lamp and lay back down, turning away from me.
I stood there in the dark, the towel around me feeling like a shroud. I had crossed a line, and the distance back seemed infinite. I got into bed, keeping to my side, the cold continent between us now a frozen tundra.
The next week was a study in quiet devastation. We orbited each other, polite and distant. He didn’t ask about another session. I didn’t offer. We made love once, a quiet, desperate act that felt like two ghosts trying to touch. Afterward, he held me and said, “I miss you.”
“I’m right here,” I whispered.
“Are you?”
I had no answer.
Leo didn’t call or text. He was giving me space, keeping his promise. His absence was a presence in my life, a constant hum underneath the silence of my marriage.
On Friday afternoon, my personal phone buzzed with a text. Not from the burner number. From Leo’s real number, the one I’d saved after the first meeting.
A friend gave me two tickets to a gallery opening tonight. Artist you might like. No expectations. Just a night out. If you want.
Attached was a link to the gallery. It was a show by a feminist photographer, known for intimate, unflinching portraits. It was exactly the kind of thing I loved. Ben hated openings, found them pretentious.
This was a test. A date. A real one. No hotel room pre-booked. No audience. Just him and me, in public, like normal people.
My fingers hovered over the screen. I could say no. I could delete the message, block the number, try to glue the pieces of my marriage back together.
I thought of Ben’s hollow eyes. Of the front-row seat that had become a prison of observation. I thought of Leo’s bed, the feeling of being seen, not watched.
I typed back: What time?
The reply was immediate. 7pm. I’ll pick you up?
I’ll meet you there, I wrote. A flimsy shield of independence.
See you then.
I told Ben I was meeting Megan for dinner and a movie. He nodded, absorbed in a project on his laptop. “Have fun,” he said, not looking up.
The gallery was in a trendy warehouse district. I wore a simple black dress, boots, a leather jacket. I felt like I was playing a part again, but this time it was a part I’d chosen: a woman going on a date.
Leo was waiting outside, leaning against a brick wall. He wore dark jeans and a tailored jacket over a t-shirt. He looked up as I approached, and his smile was like the sun breaking through clouds. It was a smile for me, and the simplicity of that joy was breathtaking.
“You came,” he said, echoing his words from the loft.
“I did.”
He didn’t kiss me hello. He just took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. The contact was electric. “Ready?”
We went inside. The space was white-walled, crowded, buzzing with conversation and the clink of wine glasses.
We moved through the rooms, looking at the photographs—striking, powerful images of women in various states of undress and emotion.
They weren’t erotic, but they were deeply sensual. They felt true.
“What do you think?” Leo asked, leaning close to speak in my ear over the din.
“They’re beautiful,” I said. “They feel… private. But not stolen.”
He looked at me, his eyes thoughtful. “Exactly.”
We got glasses of wine and found a slightly quieter corner near a large print of a woman laughing, her head thrown back, utterly unselfconscious.
“This is nice,” I said, gesturing around. “Normal.”
“Is it?” he asked, his gaze intent.
I knew what he meant. There was nothing normal about this. I was a married woman on a date with a man who wasn’t my husband. The thrill of it was a live wire under my skin. “It feels real,” I amended.
He nodded, satisfied. We finished our wine, walked through the rest of the show.
His hand stayed in mine, a warm, steady anchor.
He introduced me to a couple of people as “Talia,” no last name, no explanation.
They smiled, asked what I thought of the show.
For an hour, I was just a woman at an art opening with an attractive man.
Afterward, we walked down the street, the night air cool on our faces.
We ended up at a small, dimly lit wine bar.
We took a booth in the back. The conversation flowed easily—about art, about music, about stupid things we’d done in our twenties.
He told me he was a freelance photographer, hence the camera in his loft.
He did commercial work to pay the bills, personal projects for his soul.
I told him about my job in graphic design, the parts of it I loved, the parts I found tedious.