Cristin woke an hour before he could. Oscar looked younger than in the club last night. Was this the case of anyone asleep? Unconscious, we lose our guile and defenses and become innocent once more. She could stand more of that.
She considered the hay-colored patch of hair above his boxers, then delicately slid her hand within. It was not an overture or an invitation to encore -- though it also wasn't not these things -- but a compulsion to confirm the night prior.
She did not want to wake him. Not because he needed the rest. After last night, he might deserve it, but this was not her reason. Once she inducted him into the light through her bedroom window, she would have the conversation with him. All through last night, every moment of it, she heard the whisper of what she would have to say, as though the discomfort of a morning could chide away the overdue pleasure of a night.
She would not be the other woman -- or would not be a second longer than required. He said her kisses gave him something he didn't know he had been missing. She chose to believe he meant this, that he was not only carried away by her tide.
He didn't say this to get her into bed. By then, she was taking him to bed if he breathed a word of consent -- and he did far more than that.
When she locked eyes with him an hour into her set, trying not to see him for the thousandth time, she knew this was the right moment. There had been other right moments, more perfect ones that this, but she could not stomach letting another slip away.
She transitioned from "Rejazz" into "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover."
Maybe he would blame her when he woke up, as though she had set a trap. She hoped he wouldn't, but that was on him. She had cheated on no one. That wasn't in her nature. She wasn't sure how to take that it was in his, even though his infidelity had been in her favor.
Was it in her nature to sleep with a man in a relationship? She couldn't take it back, so she wouldn't be sorry she had done it. What would be the point? She had no interest in making a practice of it. He wasn't a man who had helped her make herself a homewrecker. (Did they live together? Cristin didn't know.) He was Oscar, who finally succumbed to their attraction. Those were not the same animals.
It was not one night. This had deep roots. She had not been kissing him since the moment they had met at a coffeehouse show, active inaction. There was a moment around Christmas, the joke of mistletoe they had evaded with embarrassed blushing. Their first kiss could not have an excuse. When they kissed -- an inevitability -- it would be only them, because they needed one another. And it was. And they had.
She wasn't sorry that they had, kiss progressing to touch to the clothes-tugging frenzy. Before her shiny black leggings were entirely off, Oscar was inside her. She did not notice the constriction of her left calf until he finished -- she nearly did notice, but not quite. They were off and cast to the corner the second time. She climaxed the third, though she was so possessed by then that the right word from his lips might have been enough to push her over.
He hadn't said the right word. It would have been clownish had he, something confined to low drama. She couldn't respect it because it wouldn't mean as much when he said it, assuming he would. He didn't love her, nor did she love him. She wanted and liked him and suspected she would love him one day if they kept this up. She was okay dwelling in this exaggerated infatuation, coming with a sense of accomplishment she resented. She had not achieved anything in bedding him. She had bedded others and recently. Would she bed men after Oscar? But there was no sense going into a relationship with speculation of an end.
The other woman could not have thought it would end this way, or maybe she would. You had to sense on some level your partner was pulling away. Had he been, though? Their mouths were too occupied last night to discuss the nature of her eclipsing -- it would have killed the mood. With her bra slipping from her shoulders, her concern was not vivisecting a subject she intended to euthanize come morning.
He stirred with a little sound in the back of his throat, something that belonged better in the sharp mouth of some old semi-feral cat. She noticed then that he clutched her black and white checked button-up shirt from the night before. His grip was loose enough that she could have pulled it free and put it back on -- her nudity occurred to her for the first time. Why did he slip on his boxers, but she had not thought to guard herself? Didn't she have both physiological and metaphysical reasons for doing so?
Her shirt was boyfriend cut. She didn't restrain her smirk. He looked at her on the sofa and thought this smile was about his waking slow.
"What happens now?" he asked with a lilt, something borrowed from a dream. He meant, Cristin gathered, did they have sex again? Or it was that he wanted breakfast but did not want to ask for it directly, as though it might be an imposition.
After last night, what was the etiquette? Cristin thought he ought to offer to buy her breakfast. Then she would decline, and they could have-- Her mind ran ahead of her, taking an inventory of what she knew she had in her apartment and what she could make of these ingredients. She could handle pancakes and eggs if they were not too carefully scrutinized, but she would prefer they both have some cold cereal. Or he could get the necessity out of the way before they considered anything so commonplace as Cheerios.
She sat beside him, tugging once on the shirt so he would release it. She slipped it on, fastening some but not all the buttons. Enough to get her point across -- we are in the light, and you have me at a disadvantage -- and not to imply that their time had passed. She did not, after all, have anything else on.
"I am not telling you what you have to do. You woke in my bed, in my home, but it is not my place." Oscar looked at her with open eyes that did not comprehend the fuller import of what she was saying, so she opted to make it explicit. "Call your girlfriend. It isn't her fault what happened last night or what is going to happen tonight."
She flushed at this latter statement as though she were forward or presumptuous. It felt less rude than assuming breakfast, though she could not fully parse why.
"I am not going to be the other woman. I don't know how, and I don't have it in me," Cristin said, hoping this was true. "You can't stay with her. Not after last night. You can't hide it, and you don't care to, not really."
She was uneasy dictating what he thought and felt, affirming the truth as it must be to her but possibly not how it was more objectively.
He didn't argue with any of her points. She thought he may have been too moony or was still in the accumulated afterglow of the night. She had heard the thin purple of the morning before she closed the blinds, more exhausted than aroused. Sleeping with him -- unconscious beside this man -- had become a greater potential intimacy than having him inside her.
It wasn't morning anymore. Not for a few minutes. Cristin had been up, so she had more of a right to still think of mornings.
"I can't give you a script of what you say," said Cristin. She was not the one breaking up with anyone.
"I don't want to hurt Clair."
Cristin knew her name, but hearing it from his lips shot her bones with a charge of panic. It was not that it made her any guiltier. She would concede she was almost equally culpable for last night but not guilty. She could take credit but not blame.
With her name in the air, Clair came closer to the scene as though she might appear at the door, summoned by his casual blasphemy. Cristin pushed herself a little away from him as though these two inches more distance might grant a broader perspective on his expression. His growth of beard made him more striking, her gaze not wanting to leave the curves of his jaw. He rubbed his hand over his cheeks, appraising, as though he could read this thought, which grew closer to a compulsion for Cristin. Would this ease with time? It had to, but it had not yet. She couldn't imagine what day this would change or why. It would not be soon; of this, she had no doubt.
She could manage not to be mushy. She was not a child, no matter the fluttering in her chest. Confirming how she felt about him- how she knew they felt about one another now- gave her patience. Their first union had occurred, gone splendidly, and promised to give way to more. (More of that more, that was.)
She could wait until she was his girlfriend properly before pouncing on him, but he had not to try her resolve.
His oaken eyes focused elsewhere, then back on her.
"Here is what you say," said Cristin. "Or, no. I said I would not give you a script -- I won't -- but I can give you a list of what not to say." Cristin decided she would not use the other woman's name, wanting a little emotional distance and depersonalization. Cristin was sorry for her. She wasn't heartless -- seducing Oscar in song was an act that proved she had something like a heart. She did not struggle to say, "It isn't her fault. She didn't do anything wrong -- or, if she did, this is not when you imply anything like that. There may not come a time when you get to. Don't let her second guess your relationship. You are still her friend."
Cristin looked back at him, eyes wider, worried he would contradict her.
Oscar laid his hand on hers. "I will never stop being her friend."
"Good, say that. But she gets to hate you. She should hate you."
"Would you hate me?"
Cristin kissed him without thinking, but it thrilled her the half-second after she had. "I don't expect I will ever hate you, but you must promise you have no intention of testing this."
He laughed, which was almost as good as promising.
Cristin stepped off the bed, retreating to her sofa. Her apartment was not generous. One could see the kitchen, living room, and bathroom from her bed, but she could feel safer saying she witnessed the breakup from what she called the living room rather than from the edge of her bed.
Cristin told him what he must not say to the other woman because they were what she would not want to hear.
He kicked a pile of clothes on the floor until it dislodged his jeans, then pulled the phone from it.
It seemed all too quick, though it was what she said she wanted -- and she did. Still, Cristin asked, "Does she know about me?"
"You?" asked Oscar, opening the screen. "She knows you exist. She wouldn't expect--"
She shook her head to stop him from finishing that declaration. "Friend, acquaintance, favorite musician? What am I?"
He laughed again. It was a measure of music to her. "More the third."
She liked that better, which surprised her. "You met somebody new."
"Is this part of the script, or are you asking?"
"I'm not giving you a script," Cristin said. "Or I am, but I don't mean to be. You met someone new. You still love her -- your girlfriend, ex."
He nodded. Of course he would. He loved that woman, but he did not love Cristin. She couldn't have trusted him if he had said he loved her, not after one night, though maybe she would have wanted him to think he loved her. Maybe it was better to be wrong about loving her than right about wanting to fuck her. Oscar could love his girlfriend -- ex, soon-to-be ex -- but he wasn't in love with her. This was no minor distinction.
Would she and Oscar be in love, Cristin wondered? Probably. She would prefer it come sooner to justify last night better, but not too soon. They had been rash enough and had exhausted their justifiable supply.
"Be definite. You met someone. You are going to be with her -- with me -- now. Let her down gently but firmly. Don't give her false hopes of reunion."
He reached for Cristin's hand, which she gave, which he kissed.
"Are you my girlfriend?" he asked softly.
"I don't think so," Cristin said. She had slept with few men who were not already her boyfriend, so admitting this thickened her throat. "Not until you break up with her. Then you can ask me."
"To be my girlfriend?" This amused him, but she didn't mean for it to be funny.
"Ideally."
"And you will say yes?" he asked, still amused, but there was the faintest somberness.
She inhaled. "Also ideally, but we can't know until you are briefly single enough to find out."
She wanted him to leave her apartment while he did this unpleasant business. Even as a tinny buzz in Oscar's ear, this other woman didn't belong in the apartment. Cristin had heard her before, had met her at a party, and found her without conspicuous fault beyond sleeping with the man Cristin wished to kiss. Cristin had done a superficial search. The other woman was pretty, eleven months Cristin's junior. She had studied biology and worked toward a Master's in secondary education. She had a bevy of friends who looked as good in bridesmaid dresses as torn stockings and artfully grungy makeup. That latter fact soothed Cristin. The woman would be okay. Her friends would rally around her, despising Oscar (and Cristin by proxy, which grated on her; she did not want to have the ire of women she might have liked as friends or fans in a better context). Before Oscar woke, Cristin had skimmed social media photos for attractive men in the other woman's friend group, those whose bed might offer a soft landing pad. This was selfish. The other woman could get over Oscar without getting under another man.
Cristin settled into the corner of her sofa, squeezing a throw pillow to her chest as though trying to hide behind it.
She had unprotected sex with Oscar more times last night than in three months of her previous relationship -- which she granted was stupid, but only in the top ten stupid things she had done in the last twenty-four hours. Watching him explain to this woman -- this completely innocent woman who had done nothing wrong except loved a man longer than she should have -- was more intimate and obscene than any comingling of fluids. Cristin wanted to put in her earplugs to mute it, but she was a causal agent (there must have been others) in this woman's pain. Listening to the one-sided conversation, the tide of his emotion ebbing and flowing, was a small penance.
Part of Cristin reacted with curiosity. She had made and received this call but never spectated it. She had no business hearing it. Cristin thought less of him for dumping this woman this way, for cheating so egregiously and then shifting his affections to some skank, even though she would be the skank in this scenario. It was, at best, tacky, but it was what had happened. It would be worse by far to have one's boyfriend get his brains fucked out -- and Cristin conceded she had -- and then come crawling back to lie about it. She would want a clean break for this woman. It could not be immaculate, but it could at least get no smut on the innocent party. How much dirtier it would be to have a cheating boyfriend sleep with you again. It made Cristin shiver even to consider it.
Oscar paced. He cried. Good. He should cry. He was gutting some woman whom he had misled -- though maybe it hadn't just been a night. He wanted Cristin longer. He had to. So, he lusted in his heart. She didn't know for how long. She could not directly project her feelings onto him, so maybe he didn't even know how long he was not wholly invested in the woman who was, by degrees, ceasing to be his girlfriend.
Breakups were never all at once. You say the words, and you are broken up on paper. You get to say you are single then, but you aren't. A part of you is theirs. You have dreams when you are with them, or you open your phone to text them a meme and realize it is no longer something okay to do. It wanes.
His voice trailed off in a series of "I know. I know. I'm sorry," then a blank where Cristin knew he was not saying, I love you. He did, or would normally, or there would be no space. It was not for Cristin's benefit that he didn't say it, as though he needed to keep that word at bay. It would border on cruelty to tell the other woman this truth.
Calling may have been wrong. Weren't these things better done in person? But Cristin had not told Oscar this, and she didn't want to spare him before she had to. She noticed then the maroon splotches she had left on his neck and shoulders. Calling was the better move. She didn't know how else she had marked him as hers. Even though he said there was someone else -- she listened attentively to how he described her and didn't -- it would have been ghastly to make a show of how intensely that had been the case. The other woman's head must already be a shattered mess.
Oscar sat beside Cristin again. His eyes were clearer from the tears. She now had the sense he could no longer see her fully. He kissed her once, twice, on the forehead, then a longer one on her lips. She did not relent at first. It was a fraction of a second before she kissed him back, but it was there. She kissed him more deeply, as if in apology, then in the wanting of more.
She had kissed (and more) the recently single, had served as the rebound. She had not been the cause before and found a delicious discomfort in being chosen over another woman. Sympathetic though she was to the other woman's situation, there was satisfaction in having been ruled better by some metric, even if it was only her newness. Relationships, even ostensibly happy ones, could acquire a patina with years. Was Cristin only shiny to him, silver-plated rather than filled?
"So," said Oscar, "do you want to go out with me?"
"Oh," Cristin said. "I suppose."
"You suppose?"
"I mean, yes. Of course."
He kissed her again, but this felt more like an act of consummation than their sex. She did not break from it since this was her first kiss with Oscar as her boyfriend. You couldn't start a relationship proper with a question any more than you could end it with a statement, but the gradualism tantalized on this side of the equation.
"I can't believe I get to call you my girlfriend now."
She smiled at "girlfriend" but could not make it reach her eyes.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
