24. Fresh Sheets
Fresh Sheets
It was well after one in the morning when Markus stumbled into the building.
The stairwell lay silent, pale yellow light falling across the peeling walls and making everything look cold and eerie. His key rattled in the lock. Before Markus pushed down the handle, he stopped and drew a deep breath.
The sweet scent of Leonie’s perfume still clung to his worn jacket. The smell of hotel sheets. Sticky sweat. A night he didn’t want to remember too clearly.
He told himself he had pulled back in time. That he had not crossed the final, absolute line.
Markus exhaled and pushed the door open. The apartment was dim. Only the small reading lamp in the corner of the living room was still on.
Nadja had fallen asleep on the sofa. She wore comfortable loungewear, her brown hair tousled around her face. The thin blanket had slipped halfway off her and hung down to the hardwood floor. Asleep, she looked tired, but softer, more defenseless than behind the cool facade she wore by day.
The simple sight tightened Markus’s stomach.
He walked quietly over to her, bent down, and gently shook her shoulder. “Nadja… I’m back.”
Nadja’s eyelids slowly opened. She blinked in confusion for several seconds until she realized she had fallen asleep in the living room. Her drowsy gaze sharpened.
Markus forced a tired smile. “You fell asleep. Come on, I’ll take you to bed.”
Markus slid one hand beneath Nadja’s shoulder and helped her up. Still half asleep, she swayed slightly and instinctively rested her head against his chest.
As he leaned down toward her, the collar of his white shirt moved directly into Nadja’s line of sight.
In the weak light of the living room, two or three dark-red smears of lipstick were clearly visible along the collar and lapel.
Nadja’s body tightened instantly. The drowsy softness of a moment ago was gone without a trace. She slipped out of his hold, straightened up on her own, and stepped back, putting distance between them.
Markus frowned faintly. He noticed the sudden change, but his exhausted, still slightly alcohol-clouded mind took it for lingering grogginess.
Without a word, Markus followed her into the bedroom. The moment he entered, his gaze landed on the bed.
Fresh sheets. Pulled smooth. Brilliant white. Far too clean.
He remembered clearly that they had changed the old sheets only a few days ago. A brief thought shot through his mind. Why had she suddenly changed the bedding?
He opened his mouth to ask. But when he looked at Nadja, she was standing an arm’s length away from him. Her gaze was sober. Cold. And strange in a way he couldn’t quite understand.
The question about the sheets died in Markus’s throat. His own guilt clouded his mind too heavily for him to dwell on the inconsistency any further.
“How was the celebration?” Nadja asked. Her voice was even. Completely flat.
Markus’s entire body tightened. “Fine,” he answered too quickly, purely out of defensive instinct. “We went to a place nearby. Talked a bit, then I came home.”
It wasn’t an outright lie. But he broke the truth into small pieces and hid Leonie, the nighttime drive, the hotel room, and a kiss that had lasted far too long.
Nadja looked at him for another agonizing second. “A bit?”
Markus swallowed dryly, his gaze slipping away for a moment. “Yeah. It got a little late because the others kept talking.”
A muscle twitched in Nadja’s jaw. She turned away and stopped looking at him.
Markus covered his own nervousness with a strained smile. “I’m going to take a quick shower. The drive was exhausting.”
Nadja said nothing. Not a single word.
Markus hurried into the bathroom and locked the door.
The cramped room was glaringly bright beneath the white fluorescent tube over the mirror. He took off his worn jacket and tossed it into the laundry basket. Then he hurriedly unbuttoned his shirt.
But as he pulled the shirt off his shoulders, he froze.
Lipstick.
Not one faint, harmless mark. Three dark-red smeared prints on the collar and edge of the fabric. Faint. But unmistakable. Undeniable. Markus’s heart dropped into his stomach.
The hotel room crashed back over him. Leonie’s dark-red lips against his neck. Her sharp perfume. Her naked skin beneath his hands. And that sentence— “Fuck me.”
It echoed so clearly in his head that he had to brace both hands against the sink to keep from folding.
Then came the moment he had recoiled in shock. He stared at the rumpled shirt in his hand.
Nadja’s cold, unfamiliar look in the bedroom flashed before his eyes again.
Now he understood. She had seen it.
Markus’s first instinct was to rush outside, grab Nadja’s hand, and explain everything. That he had not slept with that coworker. That he had stopped at the last moment. That he had chosen her. His wife.
But the instant his hand reached toward the door handle, his entire body froze. How the hell was he supposed to explain it?
Was he supposed to tell her he had driven a young coworker home? That he had gone with her into a hotel room? That he had personally unhooked her bra? That he had kissed her, touched her, buried his face between her legs, and only come to his senses at the very last boundary?
And all of that after he had just lied straight to Nadja’s face by claiming he was only home late because everyone had kept talking.
Markus squeezed his eyes shut. There was no way to speak that filthy truth without destroying Nadja’s trust completely. And there was no slick phrasing in the world that could turn it into, I didn’t cheat on you.
Part of him knew perfectly well: He had cheated on her. Just not through the final thrust.
He turned on the shower. Ice-cold water hammered down over his head and shoulders.
He stood rigid beneath it and clung to the cold, trying to clear his mind again. But the clearer his head became, the more overwhelming the panic grew.
His wife was outside. And he had no idea what to say.
Water ran over the tiles. Markus desperately searched for a way out.
He could tell her a half-truth. Leonie had been completely drunk. He had needed to take her to a hotel. She had accidentally leaned against his shirt, and that was where the damn lipstick marks had come from. Yes. That had happened. But it sounded too cheap. Too contrived.
Or he could deny everything and claim absolutely nothing had happened. Say the marks came from helping a coworker into a taxi. That too would be true in one tiny part and a disgusting lie in every other sense.
Markus planted his wet hands against the cold tiles and breathed heavily.
He hated himself for weighing which lie would sound most believable. But a thousand times more than that, he was afraid of holding Nadja’s gaze and confessing everything.
Finally, he wrapped a towel around his hips, changed into his pajamas, and quietly stepped back out.
The bedroom light was off. Only the faint glow from a streetlamp slipped through the gap in the curtains.
Nadja lay in bed with her back completely turned toward him.
Markus carefully slipped beneath the blanket beside her. There was only a hand’s width between them, but to him it felt like an impossible abyss.
He lay on his back and touched Nadja’s arm very lightly with one finger. “Nadja…”
She immediately pushed his hand away. Not violently. But clearly. With finality.
“Sleep,” she said, her voice quiet and ice-cold.
Markus lay rigid on the mattress.
His throat burned with the urge to say, I’m sorry, but he knew an apology in that moment would be nothing more than an admission of guilt.
He wanted to say, Nothing happened. But he knew how pathetic that would sound.
He told himself it was better to let her sleep. Tomorrow morning, when she was less angry, he would explain it to her.
He would tell her Leonie had been drunk and he had helped her. Whether he would mention the hotel, how much he would tell her—he didn’t know yet. But he promised himself he would tell her. He breathed softly into the darkness.
Beside him, Nadja still lay motionless with her back turned. Neither of them said another word.
Each of them lay there, clutching an enormous, filthy secret of their own. And the freshly made, perfectly smooth bed between them felt like one enormous white lie.
Markus closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep. But in the silent night, two images kept sliding mercilessly over each other in his mind: Leonie’s naked body writhing on the hotel mattress. And Nadja’s cold back against the white sheet.
He had stopped himself in time with Leonie. But with Nadja, he had retreated like a coward.
He clung to the lie that tomorrow everything would be all right again. Finally, Markus closed his eyes and let the darkness swallow everything.
Beside him, Nadja’s breathing remained calm and even.
She was still familiar to him. And yet she lay beside him so icy and strange that a chill ran down his spine.