I explode, losing myself in the blue sea of his eyes. Arsen kisses me, smothering my cries with his mouth as he begins to slide out of me like he always does. I’m not sure if it’s me tightening the grip of my legs on his hips, or just getting lost in the heat of the moment, but instead of withdrawing he pushes himself deeper into me, coming inside as his large body vibrates fiercely with the power of his cl**ax.

After a couple minutes pass and our breathing evens out, Arsen pulls out of me, making me flinch as his softening erection leaves my sore body. He zips his pants up while staring at me.

Without saying a word, Arsen hands me a tissue to clean myself up as the skirt of my dress falls from my waist down to the floor in a river of black silk. In a daze, I can barely manage to look at him as I clean the sticky liquid in between my thighs.

Once I’m done, Arsen takes the tissue from my hand, walks to the garbage can and throws it away for me. As he makes his way back, he spots my thong on the floor. Thinking that he’s going to discard it himself, I’m surprised when Arsen picks it up and tucks it inside his jacket instead.

“Let’s go back before people start wondering where the f**k we are. But, Dimples, as you walk back to meet Ben I want you to remember what you said to me.” Stepping closer to me, he wraps my hair in his hand, giving it a tug so that I’m staring at him. “When you go back to him, remember that I am inside you…that you belong to me.”
I leave before him while he waits inside the room so that we don’t raise any suspicion. My legs are shaking from the hard grip I had on his h*ps as I make my way back to Ben. I am trembling and so ashamed. I can’t believe I just let Arsen screw me against someone’s door while my husband is in the same building, and not once did I think about him. Not once. Not even as I was coming and saw f**king stars. As guilt tries to take over me, I try not to think of what just happened, pretending like it never did.

When I return to the main room, Ben immediately spots me walking towards him. At first he looks angry as he scans my countenance from afar, but by the time I reach him all I can see is sadness in his eyes.

Such despairing sadness.The eyes that used to shine so bright with love now look empty and drained. Lifeless.

When Ben lifts a hand, I instantly assume that he’s going to take mine in his, but instead, it goes to his front pocket. Retrieving a handkerchief, he hands it to me.

“Your lipstick is smudged,” Ben says quietly.As I look at Ben’s eyes filled with such raw pain, I think that I shouldn’t be here. Not after what happened last night. I should have gone to a hotel and spent the night there.

My mind is a cluster f**k of thoughts, so many of them swimming through my head not letting me be at peace. But I guess I don’t deserve peace, right? A lying, cheating, and deceitful woman like me should suffer.

Oh my God. What have I done?

This is over.

But it has been for a while.

Since the first time I went back to Arsen’s place.

Oh, Ben.

Ben and I are over.

My marriage is over.

I did this.

I did.

Can you be physically ill from a broken heart?

Because it hurts. So much.

I feel dirty.

Worthless.

I don’t deserve to feel pain, though. I don’t deserve the tears that are beginning to form in my eyes. I don’t deserve him. But after today he will be free of me. He will be free of me once he knows the truth.

What have I done? Shortly after I return from having f**ked Arsen against the wall, the soreness between my legs proof enough, Ben decides he’s had enough of the party and that it’s time to leave. As we are saying our goodbyes, someone disguised as a lion approaches us needing to speak to him about work. Excusing himself, Ben follows lion man and gets lost in a sea of masked strangers.

Feeling a strong hand wrap around my elbow, Arsen whispers in my ear, “Don’t go back with him. End it now. Come back with me. Call him on our way to my apartment. Just don’t go back with him,” he pleads with ferocity.

I shake my head and pull myself away from his hold. “I have to. I need to end it the right way, Arsen. Not that there’s a right way to do this. Now, please, stop it. I told you already that I’m leaving him, but you’ve got to let me do this in my own way. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

If Arsen in his jealousy thinks that my going back home with Ben means that something is going to happen, he is insane. I can still smell him on my skin, on my clothes, taste the cigarette he had smoked before…Arsen is everywhere.

He is on me.

Inside me.

Around me.

I know I have to go home and somehow manage to come clean with Ben. My sweet, sweet husband. He deserves to know the truth. He deserves to know how the woman he claims to know and love, has been f**king a younger man for a while now, loves it, and doesn’t plan on stopping.

I need to get out of here.

When Ben sees me walking towards him, he stands up. Frowning, he watches my clothes, my hair, my every move. It makes me think that he already knows.

Good. I want to get things over with.

I’m about to ask if he is ready to leave, but his empty eyes rob me of words. I wonder how much he knows, and if he will hate me once he learns the truth.

There are two warring parts of me in this whole fiasco. The one who wants to do right by Ben, and the selfish one who just doesn’t care anymore. The Cathy who loves him wants to take him in her arms and beg for forgiveness, promising him that it meant nothing.

But that’s the thing…

It isn’t about the thrill anymore, the high Arsen makes me feel whenever he makes me come, or the numbness he provides me. Now it means something.

We ride together in the car in silence. He has an arm around my shoulders for the entire ride, sometimes leaning his cheek on top of my head, sometimes kissing my hair, inhaling the smell of it…I want to drown in the current of tenderness flowing between us, but what if he can smell Arsen on me?

I keep my head reclined on his shoulders with our hands linked together. It is uncomfortable with the console between us, but that is the last thing on my mind—I just need to feel him close. Looking at our hands intertwined makes me feel as if I am being sucked into a black hole of sorrow and pain. I know with certainty that this is going to be the last time Ben and I ride in his car together like this.

I lift my head and look out the window for a moment. The moon looks red tonight. Beautiful.

By the time we are home, our masks long gone, I’m about to tell Ben that I am going to take a shower, when he takes my hand in his and makes me follow him to the kitchen without saying one word. After turning the lights on, he lowers his body and embraces me in a hug so fierce in its nature that it leaves me breathless and a little shaken. When he opens his eyes to look down at me, he shatters me.

“How about a glass of wine?” he asks softly, smiling sadly at me.

I can’t do this tonight. I can’t do this to Ben. But I already have. Returning the hug, I stand on my tip-toes and kiss his chin as I feel a full blown panic attack coming on. I can do this. Just don’t think about it. Talk to him tomorrow.

“Would you mind if I shower first?” I need to take a shower and wash Arsen off. Will the guilt of what I have done wash off too? I doubt it.

When I’m out of the shower, Ben has changed into sweats and a Columbia t-shirt and is cooking something.

“Dinner?” I ask.

“Yes, I’m starving. I don’t understand how people expect men my size to be satisfied with hors d’oeuvres. It boggles my mind.”

Ben and I hardly speak through our late meal, but I don’t mind the silence. The last thing I want to do in what will be our last night together is make small talk. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink the wine he served me. I just want to watch him. Memorize the patterns of his dark stubble, the way his dimple peeks at me every time he chews, begging me to kiss it.

After I help Ben remove the dishes from the table, I start to wash them. The hot water burning my hands is a welcome relief. Nothing like physical pain to numb you. The haunting voice of a man singing about how he can’t take his eyes off of his lover envelops the whole kitchen. I close my eyes and get lost in the singer’s melancholy voice telling his lover that without love there is no glory.

With a knot in the back of my throat, I feel Ben’s warm arms wrap around my waist from behind. Letting go of the dish, and wiping the soap on my yoga pants, I bring one hand behind his neck, pulling his face closer to the curve of my neck as my other hand rests on top of his on my stomach. With my back against his front, we sway to the gentle rhythm of the music…slowly…tenderly. Ben kisses my neck, my hair, behind my ear, showering me with kisses that feel final.

The knot in my throat keeps getting bigger and bigger until tears fall down my cheeks. Treacherous tears. I don’t know if Ben sees them. I don’t care. I just want to get lost in his touch, in his warmth, in him for one last time.

When the song ends, I turn around as Ben lets go of my body. Bending down, he lifts me with ease into his arms. Saying nothing to each other, I put my arms around his neck, and rest my head on his shoulder as I inhale deeply into my lungs, trying to absorb his smell. As he carries me, I can hear his breathing accelerating, becoming strained, and somehow I know it isn’t because of my weight.

He can feel it too.

Our last night.

Our grand finale.

I want to say something, but I can’t find the right words.

It isn’t until we make it to our bedroom, and he places me tenderly on the bed, that I know I have to stop whatever is about to happen.

But I can’t…

And not because I care that Ben may erase Arsen from my body. I don’t f**king care about Arsen at this moment. I can’t do it because I don’t want to sully Ben with my body. I don’t want our last time together to be the day I let someone else come inside me while panting his name in an empty room.

Slowly, Ben removes our clothes until there’s nothing left between us.

“So beautiful…” he whispers hoarsely as he runs a hand over my breasts. “You’re so damn beautiful.”

I’m about to stop Ben when he leans over me. What I see punches me in the gut, leaving me speechless. Taking my hands in his hold and looking down at me, I see the glimmer of tears in his eyes as he whispers against my mouth, “Please, Cathy…not tonight. Not tonight. Let us…let me just kiss you.”

He kisses my tears away, licking them off my face and swallowing them as if they are his own.

“It’s always been you, Ben…” I choke as deep emotion overpowers me. I want to tell him that it will continue to be him forever, but that would be a lie.

Ben lowers his forehead to press against mine. I feel the moisture from his tears, my tears, our tears. Together.

“I don’t want tomorrow to f**king come, Cathy. I’m afraid.” His voice is hoarse with pain as he pleads. He bends down to kiss my lips, my eyes, my temples, my nose. I try doing the same as my arms and legs wrap fiercely around his body. I want to consume him, absorb his body in mine and keep him that way. Just the two of us, filling each other, surrounding each other.

Holding both my hands over my head, he looks down at me as he slowly and gently slides inside me. He looks so lost, so hurt, so vulnerable…it is so tender, so sweet, and so painful. Our emotions guide us through the dance of two bodies trying to communicate at their most honest, vulnerable, basic, and raw moments together what they can’t with words.

I love you.

Please forgive me.

Don’t leave me.

How could you.

I hate you.

I love you.

I will f**king die without you.

You are mine.

Only mine.

I belong to you.

Only you.

It is beautiful. It is soul shattering. It is good-bye.
Late Sunday morning. I watch as my husband’s large and powerful body falls to the ground in surrender.

Broken…by me.

“I f**ked Arsen,” I tell him quietly.Earlier that morning.

After taking a shower, I wrap a towel around my waist and make my way to bed where an exhausted Cathy is currently sleeping.

Cathy.

My past, my present, and my future—my forever.

Or so I thought.

Watching her sleep with messy hair and no makeup in the aftermath of having f**ked all night long, she can still manage to rob me of breath. I bend down and kiss her lips, lips that look red and swollen, and this time I know that I’m the reason behind it and not him. Cherishing the moment, I let my mouth linger on hers as I close my eyes and inhale the smell of jasmine and sex branded on her skin deeply into my lungs, savoring that, for once, she doesn’t smell like him. I grind my teeth and think back to all the times she’s come home, pretending to be too tired to stay awake and keep me company. Or on the few occasions when I’ve reached for her at night, and she turns away from my touch because she doesn’t feel like f**king, all the while smelling like a different man.

I wonder…

I wonder how many times have I been fooled by her? By them?

Sometimes the need to know consumes me, driving me mad with jealousy. Yet other times, when I stare at her pretty face smiling at me, telling me that she loves me, letting me f**k her, I want to smother that need. I want to believe every single lie of hers so I can gladly continue living in denial. I love her that f**king much.

But this love, this madness has become the cross I bear on my back, pulling me down to my knees. My living purgatory. I can’t keep living a life where I question every word, every action of the person I should trust unconditionally. The constant doubting and the unanswered questions running through my head are f**king with my peace of mind. I can’t.