“What are you doing?” Alex asks from the bathroom as she rubs a third application of cream into her face.
I stand in the bedroom, flipping through the mobile train schedule on my phone until I find the first one leaving for Manhattan tomorrow. It departs at seven twenty a.m. I glance at the clock on the nightstand.
Six hours from now.
I let out a captured breath that has gone stale.
Six hours.
That’s all you have to get through.
I plug the phone into the charging cable that’s lying on the floor and sit down on the bed to unlace my shoes.
“Hello?” Alex calls.
I glance up and see her posing seductively in the doorway of the bathroom. She’s changed into a pair of my boxer briefs and a white tank top. A deadly combination.
Or at least it used to be.
She knows how that very outfit used to drive me crazy in high school. How much I loved sliding those briefs down her delicate, bronzed legs. I would practically come before I even got them around her ankles.
But a lot has changed since high school.
Fuck, a lot has changed since yesterday.
I swallow and go back to removing my shoes. She doesn’t appreciate the snub.
I hear her clear her throat behind me. “I asked what you were doing. On your phone.”
I pull my socks off and tuck them into my shoes. “I got an email. From work.”
I know better than to look at her while I lie.
“And?” I feel the mattress shift beneath me and I know she’s climbed onto the bed. No doubt twisting herself into another blatantly erotic pose designed to make me hard.
Any other night it would work.
“And it looks like I’ll have to take the first train back to the city tomorrow.”
“What?” She sounds more curious than mad and I take this as a small victory. “But you said you could get off until Tuesday.”
I stand and pull my shirt over my head, deliberately facing the wall. “Something came up.”
“What came up?”
I should have known she’d want details. I should have prepared better.
I sigh, trying to sound put off by the news. “It’s the Hong Kong deal. They want a new analysis by tomorrow night. Surprisingly, they don’t celebrate Labor Day in Asia.”
I fold the shirt and place it in my suitcase.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” I finally turn around. Alex has fallen out of whatever porn star position she previously folded herself into and is now sitting crossed legged on top of the covers, her whole body slumped in disappointment. I walk around the bed and touch her knee. “You should stay with your family. You haven’t seen them in a long time. Besides, I’ll likely be at the office all day. There’s no reason for you to be there.”
She frowns and picks at a loose thread on the comforter. “Okay.”
But I know it’s not okay. Alex is using her pout-pout voice. The one that’s so damn adorable I’m usually never able to resist it.
But tonight, I simply touch her cheek and say, “I’m sorry, babe,” and disappear into the bathroom.
I take my time, hoping that when I re-emerge, Alex will be asleep.
And she is.
I stand in the darkness in only my shorts, my ear tipped toward the wall, listening for any sign of Lia in the bedroom next door.
When we got home earlier, she didn’t come upstairs with us. She stalked into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator, and started making herself a sandwich.
I thought about trying to talk to her again, but it’s become evident that I can’t talk to Lia. Bad things happen when I try. Maybe I’ll never be able to talk to her again. Maybe we’ll spend the rest of our lives avoiding eye contact and trying not to end up in the same room together.
Maybe my karmic payback for that one night in the kitchen will be a lifetime of awkwardness.
I hear the screen door slam downstairs and I shuffle to the window, pulling back the curtains.
My chest hitches when I see her, barely visible in the porch light, lumbering down the walkway to the beach, the blackness of the night swallowing her up with each step.
I eye the door to the hallway.
The door to everything that happens after this moment.
I suddenly feel like my entire life will be decided by which side of it I’m on.
This side—right here where I stand—is the side I’ve always known. The one I have all the answers to. This is the side on which I marry Alex and she bears my children and we buy a town house in Brooklyn together. This is the side I always thought I wanted to be on.
And that side, over there—through that doorway, down those stairs, onto that beach—that is the side I know nothing about. A foreign land. With no certainties and no answers. The side that terrifies me.
My gaze drills into the wooden door. My skin feels hot. My mouth is dry. My fingers twitch.
And then suddenly, there is no more choice.
My body moves without permission from my mind.
In three paces I’m in the hallway. In ten juddered heartbeats I’m down the stairs. In a dizzying montage of choppy, breathless still frames, my bare feet stagger down the walkway, sinking into the cool sand.
Lia stands motionless at the edge of the water, staring out into the darkened horizon, as though she might find answers there. As though the world beyond this shore might make more sense. The full moon casts a faint light on the side of her face, causing her skin to glow.
The sand hides the sound of my heavy footfalls as I stride toward her.
When my hand tightens around her arm, she is startled but doesn’t scream. When I pull her around to face me, she opens her mouth to protest. To continue the tirade she began in the parking lot of the bar. But when my lips crush decisively against hers, claiming her with a consuming, covetous kiss, everything falls silent.
Only the waves dare to breathe.