2
A week later, Laura had a new wardrobe rotation. Not dramatic. Just sharper. Blouses instead of T-shirts. A skirt she hadn’t worn since our son had left for college. Lipstick on a Wednesday.
“I’m heading to campaign headquarters,” she said, checking herself in the hall mirror. “Don’t wait up.”
“You’ve never volunteered for anything,” I said. “Not even the PTA.”
“Exactly. It’s about time I did something that matters.” She turned from the mirror. “You should find a hobby, Greg. You’re turning into furniture.”
She was out the door before I could respond.
I spent the evening on the couch with leftover pizza and a baseball game I didn’t care about. I fell asleep around the ninth inning and woke up in the dark to my phone buzzing. Laura texting that she’d be late. So much energy down here, she wrote. Everyone is so motivated.
I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling.
My mind did what it had been doing every night since Ellis had sat at our kitchen table.
It built a picture. Laura in that new skirt, leaning over a desk.
Ellis behind her, his hand on her hip. The image was vivid enough that I could hear her breathing.
I told myself to stop. My cock told me something different.
I didn’t touch myself. Not that night. I lay in the dark and let the picture sit there, and I felt something I couldn’t quite name.
Not jealousy. Not yet. Something adjacent to it.
Something that ran alongside jealousy the way a frontage road runs alongside a highway, close enough to see the traffic but not quite on it.
Laura came home after midnight. I heard her shoes in the hallway, the bathroom faucet, the soft click of the bedroom door. She slid into bed and fitted herself against me. Her hair smelled different. Perfume she didn’t usually wear.
“Fun night trying to save the good city of Akron?” I said to the dark.
“Mm. Go back to sleep.”
I didn’t. I lay there with her back against my chest and her breathing slowing. I waited. Around three, she murmured something. A sound, not quite a word. Then again, softer. It could have been “Damon.” It could have been nothing.
I lay awake until morning, telling myself it was nothing. My cock, pressed against the small of her back, had its own opinion.