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macfrogrecs · 1 year ago

Text

me reading this while sat at my desk

these two are my heart and my soul and my reason for living. i am screaming my lungs out. delicious and achey and so sweet i could die (the part where he explains what he’s doing????? this stuff is called mortar, okay? fuck off, chloe. i’m dying over here)

seeking what is desirable, three: ziti

Joel Miller x f!reader Explicit, 18+ Series masterlist | AO3

Series summary: Albert Camus said that "A man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them,” and it made me wonder how we justify romantic affairs — if we are free when we enter them in secrecy or only truly free when we have burned the bridges we ran over to reach the arms of the other.

Chapter summary: Could you get a divorce? Could you end it all and start again? Could he? When the opportunity arises for a quiet day with Joel, you both give in to the easy domesticity of a shared fantasy, its comfort, and its desire. You fall into each other so effortlessly, so beautifully, and yet neither of you are free to feel the way you do.

A/N: Many thanks to @5oh5 for helping with my chapter summaries! If you like Seeking, you might also like her plant daddy!Joel fic from Eden, which I consider SWID's less delulu, slow burn sister series 🪴

Warnings: Smut, infidelity, age gap (25/47), no use of y/n, reader is curvy but it's not a plot point, no outbreak AU, reader and Joel are married to OCs, spousal neglect, daddy issues, dick from a man you wish was your father, size difference, size kink, possessiveness, graphic panini description, competency kink, some internal angst, daddy kink, dd/lg dynamics, unprotected PIV, oral sex (m receiving), masturbation (f), sex toys, squirting, slight voyeurism and exhibitionism, let me put on a show for you, daddy

Word count: 11.6k

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“The everyday man does not enjoy tarrying. Everything, on the contrary, hurries him onward. But at the same time nothing interests him more than himself, especially his potentialities.” — Albert Camus

Sometimes you think about divorce — about putting an end to the life you’re living and starting a new one from scratch, from the ruins of your twenties and your marriage. Jeremiah wouldn’t want a mess, wouldn’t want anything tarnishing his reputation, wouldn’t want anything upsetting his mother. He would, most likely, let you off the hook easily, and aside from his ego, he would not be hurt.

It would be tedious, gathering all of your clothes, folding and packing them into your luggage set, probably getting a few boxes as well, having to figure out how many rolls of tape you’d need. Your bathroom would probably be easy to clean out, with the drawers still half empty and the medicine cabinet never opened. If you wanted to, you could sit down now, write a list over all of your belongings, and likely miss less than ten percent. It has never been your house, you have always felt like a long term guest. You never let it get messy, never dirty or unorganized, but sometimes, you wonder who you’re doing it for when he barely seems to notice.

The inevitable alienation is likely what keeps you confined, perhaps even sedated in some ways, complacent with how things are. Even if you worked full time, and your paychecks covered rent for a small apartment, you’d feel like a stranger to this city, this state. Knowing yourself, you’d feel pulled back towards a home you’re not certain you’re welcome in anymore. It would feel like a free fall, severing ties with everyone keeping you here, and being completely on your own.

Those logistical things always come to mind first, way before the emotional fallout, the inevitable grief and heartbreak for the life you thought you would live. Because, even though you cannot honestly say you love Jeremiah anymore, you envisioned a future with him for several years, and you were promised that future with the ring on your finger.

You saw yourself having his children, you saw yourself taking them back to New Jersey to see your old friends. With your husband and mother in law around, and a child or two down the road, you thought it would make up for the painful absence of your parents, for the stinging silence between you. It had to be enough, your found family, because without them, you would be alone.

You look out of the window, onto the back yard, and you close your eyes and try to imagine how it would feel to live by yourself. It feels peaceful when you’ve gotten past the logistics.

So why haven’t you?

What would I do if we got a divorce? Jeeze, I’d take it as a sign that I have to go and mend my relationship with my parents, tell them I screwed up, tell my mom she was right, that she told me so.. Fuck… I’d owe them that much, wouldn’t I?

Or— I mean, I assume they’d want to know about it. They still care about me, I know that, I care about them too but it’s just… You ever feel bad for every time you’ve ever been mean to your mom? Like, have you ever felt that shameful, embarrassing stomach ache from remembering every time you told your mom you hate her, as a kid? Imagine that as an adult.

Like, I never said I hated her or anything, not as an adult anyway, but did my actions express anything other than impulsivity and taking her for granted? I doubt it.. I sacrificed my entire relationship with my mom, for my marriage, like.. She never liked him, at all, she thought he was arrogant and cold and I never listened, I was too infatuated with him and— I don’t know, I guess I just thought he was really hot and mysterious.

Now I realize he was just emotionally unavailable and I saw it as some sort of challenge, or— or something for us to get through that would make us closer as a couple — fuck me, right? It unfortunately makes total sense now, though, cause my dad was almost never there when I was growing up, so I'm used to emotionally unavailable men. He was at work all the time, then when he was home he kinda gave me crumbs. Like, he’d watch a movie with me sometimes and I’d be so happy, then he’d go back to work the next morning and I’d wonder why we couldn’t hang out anymore, why yesterday and not today.

I just didn’t understand, and he never really said he wanted to hang out either, like… He never talked to me about the movies, he never said he wanted to watch the follow-up or anything. He just acted like it never happened, and he obviously didn’t know that I was sitting there and waiting, every weekend, hoping he’d wanna watch a movie with me again.

Isn’t that fucked up, Gianna? Being married to someone and wondering if it’s just your daddy issues making you want them? Dude, Jeremiah's barely even told me about his own dad, about his death and all that. He’s told me he was a cheater and that’s that, now his mom calls him a saint all the time and I seriously doubt she doesn’t know what he did at night.

There’s so much I still don’t know, and I don’t think he has any plans of telling me, but when he does tell me something personal, I feel relieved somehow, and I just sit and wait for him for him to give me another crumb of information about his own past, like I sat and waited for my dad to ask me about school or tell me about work, or his life, anything. If I sit and think about it long enough, I start wondering how well I even know this guy and I’m fucking married to him… Sorry for the word vomit — I’m done after I finish this one, by the way, holy shit.

Were all of these doubles? Oh my god, I’m gonna feel like ass tomorrow. Fuck me.

Don’t tell anyone I told you all this… Shit… I’ve been sitting on it for, like, a year, just waiting to tell someone. I could never tell Jade and them, they’d never even think about leaving their cheating ass husbands as long as they have access to their credit cards, so they can’t relate. They’d probably just shun me or something.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I cheated, like, if I went out next weekend and met some guy and just fucked him then and there. I don't think I'd even feel bad.. At least I'd get some good dick for once, hopefully... God knows it's been a while, I can barely remember the last time.

I’m going to the bathroom, can you ask the waiter for a refill when he comes by?

—

“You’re home today, right?”, Jeremiah asks while he puts his coffee mug in the sink, checking the time on his wrist. You nod behind your own cup, still sitting at the dining table while you take a sip. “Guy’s coming to do the shower at nine.”

“Mason’s guy?”

“Nah, he got caught up on some other reno — called a local company, talked to some guy named Tommy, sounded like a real cowboy, yeehaw. Him or his brother will be here, he said. Sounded nice enough.”

There’s no way. Please say there’s no way.

“Okay,” you chirp, and say goodbye as he disappears into the hallway, telling him to have a good day at work, hiding behind your coffee, feeling your breath go shallow and your hands start to tremble. You wonder if Joel knows, or if Tommy sent him the address and the assignment and he didn’t pay much attention to the name. There has to be more Jeremiahs around here, no? But Joel wouldn’t overlook that, you’ve already felt how observant he is, taking in every word you’ve said to him, noticing every change in your voice and body language, his eyes tracking your limbs at that parent-teacher meeting, watching your hands disappear under the sleeves of your sweater.

You’re pretty sure you can never hide anything from him, not who you’re married to and not how you feel about him already. In your desperation, you’ve already gone and told him you need him — what dramatic wording, as if anyone truly needs someone they barely know. It feels like you already know him, though, like your body and your soul know him and all that remains is factual knowledge about his life, about how he ended up with Ellie in his care, how he married someone who doesn’t take what he seems to give so selflessly.

It was strange, watching how Gwen looked at Joel as they sat across from you. You’d think that knowing they had a child together would make her look at him with more than half-focused attention. The thought of having a baby with him, no matter if that baby is inside of you or close to leaving the nest like Sarah is, makes you feel a sort of yearning you could never even conjure up in your wildest, most unhinged imagination. To think of a man like that changing you so viscerally, creating cells that would stay in your body for as long as you exist, altering your bone structure, making you a mother — it makes you dizzy with need. You ache to feed a child with his eyes, and yearn to wait for him to come home to you every night. You want to stay awake into the early mornings, listening to him softly snoring while you feed his baby and soothe her to sleep on your chest.

You don’t think you’d ever be able to look away from him if it were you sitting there at that tiny desk in the classroom, if it was you and his child you were there to discuss. He asked so many questions, wanting to make sure both of the girls were doing well in school and socially. He’s a good father, an exceptional one, so involved and interested and attentive that it hurt to witness — in your heart and womb and your bones. You didn’t see that ache in Gwen’s expression, she only seemed to touch him or pull him closer when he had your attention. But you couldn’t help the way you looked at him and you can’t help the way you feel when you know you’ll see him in only an hour.

—

When the doorbell rings at nine AM sharp, you take a deep breath, lift your hair back over your shoulders, crack your neck, and stand up from the couch. Your steps are muffled by the fuzzy socks bunched up around your ankles, padding through the kitchen and the hallway to reach the front door. You wrap your fingers around the handle, push down, and with your heart in your throat, you see him. Your pulse skyrockets.

He’s looking out onto the front yard, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, and he’s wearing a green flannel shirt, different from the blue one he wore the last time you saw him but just as worn and lived in. The fluttering in your chest is almost unbearable, making your hands shaky and your mouth dry. No matter how much you prepared, scrubbing and shaving and moisturizing just to feel your best, no part of you was ready for the visceral reaction you’d have to seeing him in front of you.

His surprise turns into a reluctant chuckle when he recognizes you, and he runs his hand through his hair, mumbling a cross between a greeting and an apology. You smile and shake your head, holding the door open. “I knew, don’t worry. Jeremiah talked to Tommy and told me an hour ago that you were coming over,” you say, and when you can tell he’s about to ask about the name on the contact information for the job, you hold up your left hand, engagement ring and wedding band sparkling in the reflection of the sun, “Kept my maiden name. I figured Tommy would show up if you knew but I couldn’t really object to anything without an incriminating reason. That, and I wanted to see you.”

He nods carefully and subtly cranes his neck to look past you. “He’s at work — come in,” you nod towards the interior and take a step back, letting him walk up the stone stairs in front of the house and past you as he gets inside the room.

He seems to hesitate a little as he stands in front of you, tall and broad, so much larger than yourself, but never threatening. The hallway seems smaller with him in it, the ceiling not as tall and the space a little more crowded. His eyes are fixated on yours, and he’s frozen still before pulling you in for a hug.

“Hey,” he says, with his face in the crook of your neck and your hand on his nape. His cologne hits you immediately, the fresh scent of his body wash and shampoo and deodorant — not as intoxicating as his sweat at the end of a long summer day but enough to make you bite back a smile. Hey yourself, you kiss his cheek the same way you do to your friends. It’s cautious, careful — you want more.

“It’s the shower in my bathroom, take your shoes off and I’ll show you, then you can get your stuff or— you have to get stuff, right? I don’t know how any of this works,” you laugh a little nervously. He kicks off his boots with a nod, sounds good, and follows you up the staircase and down the hall, looking at how you slide across the hardwood flooring in your bright blue socks, barely lifting your feet on every step. A chuckle escapes him, and you immediately stop, whipping your head around, “What?”

He stops in his tracks too, takes a step forward and hooks his hand around your waist to pull you into him, to look down at you and touch your hair. Every room he sets foot in suddenly feels less empty, less cold. The bare, sterile white walls feel less suffocating when you imagine what it might be like to tag along with Joel to work on someone else’s house. It can’t feel much different than this, with Joel leaning in to steal a kiss from you when he should be getting to work, when you shouldn’t be tempted to get in someone else’s bed with him. It’s Jeremiah’s bed, it always has been, and when you feel like a guest in your own home, who is to stop you from clinging to the only thing that has felt familiar in years?

You feel his hand on your jaw, his thumb on your cheek and his fingers around the base of your skull as he walks you backwards until you reach the end of the hallway and your back meets the wall. He presses up against you lightly, with your hands on his chest and your gaze locked with his.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs, and his other hand finds the small of your back to pull you closer, “I still miss you, I still think about you all the time. And I want you. More than I’ve ever wanted anything, I want you, and I’m married and you’re married and I don’t— I don’t know what to do about that but I need you to myself.” His voice lowers as he comes closer, his lips barely brushing yours, “You belong to me, and don’t tell me you don’t cause you know just as well as I do that you’ve been mine since I had you in that bed. That wasn’t an accident,” his eyes shift between yours as he shakes his head, “That was meant to happen, you know that.”

“I do,” you breathe, closing your eyes and surrendering to his hold on you, “But I don’t think you understand, baby, I’ve been yours since the first time you touched me.” His shoulders relax at the term of endearment, at your fingers twisting in his curls, your eyes opening to see him softening for you, looking at your lips, blinking slowly, kissing you as if it is the first of an immeasurable amount of times that it’ll be just the two of you together, all alone. He gives you his tongue gently, with slow sweeps across your own while the light smacking sounds fill the room.

You pull him away by his hair and he gives in, leaning his head back like you’re scratching his skin right where it itches. “I don’t wanna mess up your schedule,” you whisper, “I’ll make us lunch in a few hours, okay? Then we can talk. I’m home all day, if you need anything just call my name and I’ll be there. Jeremiah’s working late, he won’t be home till after you’re gone.” Joel nods, and with a soft kiss, slow and tender, with your head and the curve of your hip in his hands, he releases you from the wall and lets you show him what he’s here for.

“This is my bathroom,” you say, tilting your head to the left, then run your hands down his chest and motion for him to step in first. You follow behind as he looks around the room, at the large bathtub facing the door, the spacious marble countertop, and the ripped up shower in the corner, enclosed by clear doors. “We already had a guy take off the old tiles, and he was supposed to come back and put the new ones in but I guess he got delayed doing something else and… Yeah, that’s where you come in.”

“Alright,” he says with his hand covering his beard, brows furrowed as he opens the glass door and looks around, then nods as he gently closes it. “Where have you got the tiles?”, he asks, and you take his hand, bringing him down to the garage, where stacks of tiles and mortar are ready, left here by Mason's crew.

“Tell me if you need anything, otherwise see you at—”, you look at your watch, then back up at him, “Twelve?”

He nods, smiles, and you head back into the house, sitting down in the living room to grade papers while you watch Joel carry the tiles up the stairs, then the mortar, then the necessary tools. You listen to his truck door slamming shut and wish you could hear that sound every day at the same time, the sign that he’s home and you have him to yourself for the night. You never hear Jeremiah’s car door closing when he comes home, only when he leaves and you’re still eating breakfast.

—

You leave him alone for the morning hours, going through your to-do list, grading papers in the quietness of the living room, hearing a few soft sounds from upstairs. His presence in your house soothes you like a blanket, it lets you focus and get through the assignments you’ve put off grading since Friday. You can still taste him on your lips, can still smell his cologne when you turn your head and brush the tip of your nose along your shoulder. The soft fabric of your sweater absorbed his cologne so quickly. You absorb his touch even faster, you let his heat seep into your skin and warm you.

Next item on the list, another one you’ve been putting off; a phone call to the store on the other side of town that you and Jeremiah visited and bought a couch from — one that looked suspiciously small as it was loaded off the truck and turned out to be entirely the wrong size. You were tasked with arranging the return, Jeremiah too irritated to want to do it himself, one of several phone calls you’ve made due to his lack of time and patience. You dial the number from a card you got from the delivery person and wait for the store to pick up, looking at the front and back of the card as you hear the beeps, until a lady picks up and you break the silence that’s filled the house for the last two hours.

Joel perks up when he hears you from downstairs, freezing while he spreads the mortar over a section of the wall, puts down the trowel and breathes as quietly as he can, soaking up the sound of your voice as you say hello, as you speak to the customer service representative so kindly. He wonders if you’re the one who’s responsible for all of these types of calls in your household, the way he is in his, if you’re the more patient spouse, just like himself, if you’re unlike Gwen who is quick to escalate complaints and never sets foot in the establishment again.

“Hi!”

“I’m good, how are you?”

“Yeah, so, my husband ordered this new couch for his office and we got a two seater instead of a three seater. I don't know how that happened—

“Oh, no, no — it's not your fault, I was just hoping you could help me set up the pickup and dropoff for the new one, yeah.”

“The order number—”

He refocuses, gets back to work, listening to the soothing sounds of your voice from downstairs. He listens to how you thank the person on the other end, how you apologize for the inconvenience. God knows how long it’s been since he heard an apology coming out of anyone’s mouth besides his own.

You say goodbye and hang up the phone, leaving it on the coffee table as you go to the kitchen to start making lunch. For a moment, you wonder if you should ask Joel if he has any preferences, any likes or dislikes, but just as you consider going up there and asking, you change your mind and step over to the fridge, starting to pull stuff out before plugging in the panini grill. You weren’t planning on anything too interesting for lunch, and you wish you’d prepared for something more complex than a goddamn panini, but it’ll have to do, and you slather balsamic aioli on a few pieces of sourdough, throw on some turkey, sliced tomato, mozzarella and basil before sticking it in the grill and pressing it down, grimacing to yourself a little, hoping he won’t hate it.

The little light switches from red to green with a click, and you pull the handle up, fish them both out and dump them on a plate before starting the next batch. After pressing the lid down on the next two sandwiches, you step out into the hallway and look up at the staircase as you call to Joel, hoping you don't sound hesitant, “Hey, lunch is ready!”

He comes downstairs less than a minute later, when you’ve set your plates and two cups of coffee on the dining table and sat down, looking out of the window until you see him in the corner of your eye and turn to face him with a hopeful smile. His brows knit in what looks like concern as he comes up and gestures to the lunch on the other side of the table, “Is this—”

You interrupt him and wave towards yourself, “It’s for you, sit down.” There’s an air of hesitance to him as he pulls his chair out, looking between you and the meal, and you roll your eyes, waving again, come on, come on. It’s just a lunch for God’s sake, not even a special one at that, but he thanks you so sincerely, taking your hand and lightly squeezing it, rubbing his thumb over the inside of your palm.

You try to dismiss it with a wave, pshh, but he insists, and you can’t entirely take in how it feels to have someone truly appreciate the effort you put into cooking for them. It makes the coldness of your husband’s thank you’s sting so much more, the fact that he has never spent a full minute looking at you in awe and thanking you before even taking a bite, never been speechless over a little sandwich you slammed together in five minutes. Enough flattery — you have to firmly insist that Joel start eating before he actually does.

“First time someone’s made lunch for me in a long time,” he says, rotating his plate around and looking at the cross section of his sandwiches. You have to stop yourself from cracking up at the way he examines his meal, takes a sip of his coffee and nods in approval.

“Oh?”

“I do all the cooking at home — breakfast, lunch, dinner for me and the girls,” he hesitates a little on the inevitable end of the sentence, “Gwen too but she ain’t really a breakfast person.”

You nod, interesting, then eat in silence with him for a while, a comfortable silence, listening to the rustling of the leaves outside the kitchen window. It’s a beautiful fall day — the trees in the backyard have turned to burning shades of red and orange, moving slowly in the wind. You look back at him and take a sip of your coffee, the perfect temperature now, taking in the sight of the little creases by his eyes as he looks back at you with curiosity.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Joel? It’s okay if you don’t want to answer, I just didn’t get a lot of information from the school and I— I wanted to understand Ellie a little better, so I was wondering how long she’s been staying with you and your wife. I’ve seen students at other schools stay with their friends’ families for a couple weeks at most, but I mean, you’re going to Ellie’s PTA meeting, all the paperwork gets sent to you specifically, so—”

“Totally fine,” he assures, “She’s been stayin’ with us for about three years. Things were a little rough at her folks’ house, dad wasn't always around and she’s got two younger siblings, much younger siblings, who needed a lot of attention. She essentially had the choice between being overlooked or being a third parent, unfortunately. But she was spending a lot of time at our house at the time — she’d been friends with Sarah for years but I had no idea what was going on until they were both about thirteen.”

“What happened?”

“Nothin’ really happened per se, but their whole class went on this school trip to Big Bend — you know, the national park?”

“I think— I think so?”, you mumble with your mouth full, eyes shifting back and forth a little.

“Few hours west,” he says with a wink, and he must be getting lost in your eyes because he sits in silence after that, his story long forgotten as he watches you eat.

“And then?”

He takes a breath, a sip of his coffee, and then another bite before he continues, “Sarah and Ellie’s class went, and for some reason all the dads were chaperones — us and a couple teachers. If I remember correctly, I think it was some sort of initiative to have the dads a little more involved in student activities cause it was mostly the moms showin’ up to sports and science fairs and all that, but— anyway, Tommy has a son who’s Sarah’s age so he and I were there. Then, one morning, we made pancakes for all the kids, and I guess Ellie’d snuck out the night before and her punishment was to help make breakfast, so she came over and helped us out while the kids were out doing whatever they were gettin’ up to, and all the other dads were watching a game, I guess, in one of the other cabins—”.

Your heart sinks for a reason you really don’t want to acknowledge now, a reason that you’re sure will scare him off and convince him that all you want from him is some sort of pseudo-father, a replacement for the man who you don’t even know well enough to miss. You’ve always been aware of your father’s emotional absence, but it has been an abstract type of absence, one that shape shifts but never latches onto specific instances — not until now, when you can so clearly picture Joel doing the things he never did, being present for Sarah in a way you cannot fully comprehend. It's as if your own father abandoned you, that his presence and absence sort of felt the same, that he was absent even when he sat at the dinner table with you and your mother.

And now Joel is sitting across from you, having lunch and telling you so lightly about how present he is in his daughter’s life, and in the life of a girl who isn’t even his own but who might as well be by how he takes care of her too, expecting nothing in return. You wish he could take you in as well, to protect you and nurture you. It feels incredibly messed up to feel the desire to be cared for by him as a father while you’re sitting across from him, unable to stop fixating on how handsome he looks, wanting him to fuck you into your mattress until you can’t see straight. Something to keep to yourself, that should never see the light of day.

“So Ellie came over to our cabin, and we already knew her pretty well but her dad didn’t come along on the trip and she basically told us that he’d left for an extended period of time and that things at home were pretty rough with her siblings. At the time, they were only, jeeze, they couldn't have been more than five and seven? Real young and rowdy, so her mom was stretched pretty thin. She basically asked, like you mentioned, if she could stay with us for a few weeks, just while she had her final exams and all that, but she ended up stayin’, and by the time next school year started, we had a talk and kinda figured out that she felt like she could focus better by staying with us during the week and going home over the weekend. Now she goes back every couple weekends but she’s mostly with us.”

You look at Joel with a frown marring your brows, and he smiles while he tilts his head — “What?”

“You made pancakes for all the kids? You and Tommy?”

He chuckles carefully and leans over the table, resting his elbows on the surface, the sleeves of his flannel rolled up to show his forearms, decorated with a few specks of mortar from his work, “That’s what you got from that whole story?”

“Yeah, kinda..”, you admit, trying to fight the urge to spill your issues with your own dad all over the dining table, the want to tell him that you wish your own father was like Joel — an unhinged and likely very fucked up thing to say to someone you’ve had sex with. But when you look up at him, at how intently he looks back at you, how he smiles in genuine curiosity and interest, in a wish to understand you, you can’t hold it in anymore.

“My dad would never do that,” you mutter and pick at the last half of your panini, scratching the little grill marks on the top, “He’d be one of the dads watching the game and then he’d feel like he’d done a year’s worth of bonding. He’d probably brag to my mom, saying we had such a good time together and she’d believe him, then whenever I’d ask him to do something together, he’d be all ‘oh, well, we just spent that entire weekend together recently’, even if it was months later. I can’t remember the last time we did anything together, even when I used to go home and visit.” You force a laugh, but Joel sees through it, and his face turns serious, a frown marking the space between his brows while your face goes softer, eyes avoiding his, your cheek resting on your palm while you look down.

“Are you in contact with your parents?”

“Not really… Not since I moved here.”

“That’s too bad,” he says, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

You shrug and pick up your sandwich, looking up again to see him taking your other hand in his and brushing his thumb over the top of it, not wanting to push. You can feel his concern, his want to ask more questions conflicting with the space he wants to give you.

“Can I ask you a personal question now, since you asked me one before?”

“Go ahead,” you smile carefully, looking at how he touches you so gently, how he rubs the pad of his thumb carefully over your skin, soothing you.

“Why did you become a guidance counselor?,” he asks, “I know you said someone at the school got canned but you already had the education, so I was curious.”

You laugh through your nose for some reason, then let your eyes trace up his chest, his neck, all the way to his face, landing on his eyes. “Not every Ellie has a Joel,” you shrug, “Some of these kids don’t have anyone to take them in or help them, so I guess I wanted to be there for students who were struggling with academics or having trouble at home, you know? I already knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I was almost halfway done with my degree, then I had an academic advisor suggest I do this double major in education and school psychology, bla bla, anyway,” you wave dismissively with the hand that isn’t held in his clutch, “Now I’m finally doing both.. For a long time I was just teaching part time, but.. Now I work, I don’t know, seventy five percent, I guess.”

“Working part time seems nice,” he muses, and you wish you felt the same way. His eyes narrow and his expression changes, grows more serious somehow. “Or?”, he tilts his head, picking up on what you wish he didn’t, feeling his focus and attention wrap around you tightly like vines creeping up your body, unable to get away but not desiring to either, needing to be seen and yet wanting to hide.

“Uhh,” you clear your throat, avoiding the question or buying time or generally looking for any way not to bring up your husband, then immediately realizing you’ve backed yourself into a corner. “Well, Jeremiah didn’t really want me to work, so to speak, or— it’s not that he wanted me not to work, he just… It was more important for him that the house was clean and there was dinner on the table when he came home from work, so that’s all I did for a couple months, but then that got old fast and I had to convince him that I could do all that and work at the same time.”

“Why doesn’t he help you?”, Joel asks, feeling a sort of resentment that you both seem to carry towards your spouses, a resentment that is inevitably followed by guilt and self-admonishment for feeling that way towards someone he’s made a lifelong commitment to.

“He works a lot,” you say, voice defeated.

“So do I,” he scoffs, “And I still do all that — still do all the chores, all the cooking, all the homework help. Work ain’t an excuse for him not to help out. Even if he works late, there’s the weekend, he could do all the laundry or clean, that shouldn’t fall on you, you’re not his maid.”

“Stop turning me on,” you say with a slight laugh, and he chuckles while he rolls his eyes, taking your other hand too, turning both over and smoothing his thumbs over your palms.

“That’s all it takes? A little vacuuming and a roasted chicken?”

“Yeah, pretty much — Jeremiah can barely make a fucking Hot Pocket.”

He laughs at that, and you know he’s shaking his head in disapproval. It boggles your mind to think about how much you seem to have in common with this man, who is nothing like your husband and nothing like your father and nothing like any man you’ve ever met.

“Another personal question,” you say, seeking permission in his eyes before you ask, “What would you do if Sarah moved really far away from you? Like.. Several hours on a plane type of far away.”

“I’d miss her, I’d make her promise to call me here and there, but… I’d let her go, let her live her life.”

“What if— what if she moved somewhere for someone, and you didn’t like the person she was with?”

He shrugs, tilts his head side to side in contemplation and looks around. “I don’t know what I would do, it’s hard to say… I can’t imagine I’d be very happy but I’d try to understand and I’d tell her I’m here if she needs me,” he admits, and thinks for a moment before he redirects his attention back to you, softening his voice, “Why are you askin’ me this?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“You don’t wanna be here, do you?”

“What do you mean by here? You mean the marriage that doesn’t feel like a marriage, the house where I own nothing or the state I’d never been to before I moved here for someone who would never move for me?”

The silence between you is deafening, your eye contact intense. “Why did you marry him?”, Joel asks, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper. He has spent the last weeks looking for an answer to that very question, unaware that you’ve been asking yourself the same for two years.

“Long story short, I thought that if I married him, he couldn’t leave me. He made a lot of promises back then, said that if I moved here with him for this job he was offered, I’d be taken care of, and at the time I thought it was a good idea. I was tired, exhausted from school and work… I worked my ass off, I have no student loans or anything. I’d been working since high school, I saved up for, like, three years then got my piece of shit Honda Civic that’s out there in the driveway. I got that seven years ago, I’ve paid for everything myself except this fucking house.

But anyway, by the time I graduated college, I was just burnt out and I got this big sparkly promise of a cushy life in a nice sunny state, and all I asked in return was that we get married, so I could be sure he wouldn’t pick up and leave me somewhere I didn’t know anyone. But now, it— it feels like he did. It feels even worse, actually, cause not only am I alone but he broke that promise in so many other ways.”

Joel wants to ask how, so badly. He wants to know everything there is to know about you in this world, and even though any intimate details about your marriage would make him sick to his stomach, he’s consumed with the need to know. But for now, he thinks better of it. “You don’t have to be alone anymore, if you don’t want to,” he murmurs, lifting your hand to his face and kissing the tips of your fingers while you feel a flash of heat across your cheeks, too scared to smile and hoping your eyes can convey what you can’t express.

“What about your marriage?”, you say, voice a little shaky while you feel the press of his lips to your skin, and the silence in the room lets you hear the gentle scratching of your nails against his mustache.

“Do I seem happy in my marriage?”, he raises an eyebrow, “Does it seem like my wife wants me the way you do?”

“No.”

“Then maybe we can be alone together.”

—

Joel gets back to work after clearing his plate, waiting for you to clear your own, and thanking you for lunch with words and kisses and the touch of his fingers down your spine while you stand on the very tips of your toes to wrap your arms around his neck. You wish you could make him lunch every day.

You clean the kitchen and listen to the radio, wondering if he can hear it from upstairs. The way he thanked you for lunch could make you cry — how it warmed your heart to see him enjoying what you made him, insisting you were full so you could feed him the last little piece of your sandwich just to feel what it would be like to share, then sending him upstairs with a second cup of coffee. You’re not unhappy with the concept of being married, of being tied to someone legally and financially and emotionally for the rest of your life, and if you imagine that you and Joel are the ones living in this house, that you have lunch together every day and that the rings you wear were exchanged between the two of you, you can’t imagine a better life for yourself.

Another hour goes by, cleaning and putting on the laundry, dusting and mopping the floor, and you find yourself both bored and curious about what Joel is doing. He hasn’t left the bathroom since he went back up, clearly focused by the scraping sounds you hear from the hallway, so you put the mop back into the closet and slide over on your socks, appearing in the doorway with your sleeves covering your hands and one fuzzy socked foot on top of the other. “Hey,” you say carefully, pursing your lips to hide your smile at seeing him again.

“Hey,” he says back, “What’s up?”

“Just bored, wanted to know what you were doing,” you shrug, looking and sounding like a little girl, talking in a voice that is only for him, standing there with big eyes but feeling small in the presence of a man who seems to know how to do everything, “You mind if I watch?”

“Go ahead, baby,” he says and picks up a tile before placing it on the wall, “Not very interesting to watch but, by all means—”.

You coo to him as you sit down on the floor, next to the bathtub, folding your arms over the edge, resting your chin on them, pulling your legs in under yourself and watching him work. The muscles in his arm flex under his t-shirt as he spreads the light colored mortar over a section of the wall, his flannel slung over the edge of the bathtub now, close enough for you to breathe in his scent on every inhale, intoxicating whiffs of his cologne after it has developed on his skin and in the fabric of his clothing. You watch his hand, how it grips the trowel, the thick veins bulging out of his skin, the reflection of the lights bouncing off his wedding band. You hear his breathing, even and deep, just a tiny little bit labored if you listen closely enough. He looks back at you, and you can see his lips moving but you don’t register a word. “What?”, you mumble as you snap out of your haze.

“Are you entertained?”, he asks again, and you nod with a smile, digging your face further into the soft sleeves of your sweater covering your arms. “Want me to tell you what I’m doing?”

Another nod, and he clears his throat before he tells you. “This stuff is called mortar, okay? Makes the tiles stick to the wall,” he scoops it up and spreads it over the wall, then picks up one of the little tiles, and you suddenly feel terrible for picking such an intricate design for your massive shower. He’s been in here for hours, prepping the wall and aligning all the tiles and the stones that go inside the wall shelf. It’s turning out so beautifully, and you admire it from outside the glass cabinet, nodding when he tells you how he aligns the stones and puts in the levels. You don’t understand much of what he says but you watch him intently, trying to focus on the calming sound of his voice.

Maybe you could go to work with him every day and just watch him build stuff, watch him install drywall or set tiles or anything else he might find himself doing on a regular day. Watching him is calming, entertaining in a strange way, satisfying as you see the tiling come together just the way you imagined. You’ll never trust anyone else to build anything else for you, other than Joel, now that you’ve seen how meticulously he works, how little mess he makes as he reaches the far corner of the shower, spreading the mortar and sticking the tiles on the wall and on the floor.

He groans a little as he crouches down to scoop up more of the gray paste, then stands to his full height and reaches the top of the wall, barely lifting his arm. There are gray marks, little specks of mortar, on his work pants and his black t-shirt, and he has never looked better in your eyes. He’s clearly worn them a lot, the color is all faded where they sit tightly over his quads, and you can tell there’s stuff in the pockets on the side. You want to stick your fingers into them and wiggle around to see what’s in there until inevitably swats your hand away.

“I gotta go pick up some supplies,” he says after finishing the stone arrangement inside the shelf where you always keep your shampoo, “Shower’s a little bigger than I expected so I don’t think there’s enough grout — shouldn't be more than twenty minutes.” He helps you up from where you’re sitting and you look at the dried mortar on his hands, then look into his eyes and thank him. Of course, he whispers and wraps his arms around you, in this shower where you wish he would hold you up against the tiles and fuck you under the waterfall from above. He sneaks a hand under the back of your sweater, brushing the rough calluses of his palm over your skin, pushing you closer to himself, his other hand under your chin to angle your face up — still not tall enough to reach his face until he leans down and kisses you.

Your nipples go tight and stiff against the top of his stomach as you wrap your arms around his middle, and he notices so easily, he notices every little change in your body, and he cups the back of your head, licks across your tongue and shamelessly lets his cock harden against you. You moan when he bites your lip and he pulls away with a heavy exhale, running his thumb across your wet bottom lip.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise,” he whispers, leans in for another kiss, then lets go.

—

You close the door after him and head upstairs to get a hair tie, ready to get started on another stack of papers waiting to be graded, when you spot Joel’s flannel still hanging over the edge of the tub. Picking it up, you hold it to your nose and inhale deeply, burying your face in the fabric and filling your lungs with his scent. It makes your eyes slide back, a smile tug at your lips, and your damp panties cling to your center, still feeling hot and wet from the way he held you earlier, the way he growled and sucked on your tongue.

A few more whiffs, trying to muster up the will to fold it and put it on the countertop, but you can’t find it in yourself to put it away, and you slip your arms into it instead. The sleeves hang limply from your hands and you roll them up as you head downstairs, feeling the warmth of the soft fabric draping over your torso.

It is incredibly distracting to sit at the dining table, surrounded by Joel's scent and the light smell of his sweat from the underarms of his flannel, the sign that he probably wore this shirt another day and tossed it over the back of a chair at night, not quite dirty and not quite clean. You try to shift around in the chair and ignore how sensitive your clit feels, aching and in need of attention, his attention, your body reminded of the effect he has on you. Trying to ignore it, your attention is forcefully directed back to the paper in front of you, taking in sentence by sentence, correcting slowly and keeping Joel at the periphery of your mind.

You look over at the time to see that twenty minutes have gone by, then thirty, and when forty five have elapsed, you figure that something has come up and that he won’t be coming back, and decide to take a well deserved break from grading to relax and take care of the persistent, aching need you’ve been fighting since Joel pinned you against the wall many hours ago. Your pencil is tossed on the table and you run upstairs to start running the bath, then head into your closet, all the way to the very back, where you pull out your box of toys and select one made of glass, not nearly as thick as what you would like to have inside you, but just as warm after submersion into a hot bath.

The text messages from Joel on your cell phone, left on the dining table, go unnoticed while you strip off all of your clothes and dim the lights as the water fills up, throwing your outfit to the other side of the bathroom before you dip your toes in, gradually getting used to the heat before you sit down, lay back and and start to brush your fingers over your nipples.

“Hey, sorry I was a little longer, had to help Tommy unload a truck. Be there in 10.”

You slip the slightly heated glass toy in through your opening, rolling your head back at the sensation of being filled, slowly pulling it out and pushing it back in, feeling the little bumps on its surface rubbing against your walls. The pads of your fingers make contact with your clit, gently start to rub, making you moan and wish so desperately that Joel was there to hear it, wanting and needing his touch, his attention, his love.

“Assuming you’re still busy grading papers. I’ll just let myself in if that’s OK?”

You fuck yourself slowly, letting go of your clit when the sensation builds too high, getting too close to your release, wanting to prolong the feeling of how Joel arouses you. The subtle waves of the bathwater crash against your skin, soothing and warm, making you close your eyes, and when you open them up again, you see him in the doorway, frozen still, looking at you while his chest heaves.

“You can come in, it’s fine,” you say as your eyes trail down to his pants, seeing his erection straining the fabric, “You can watch too, if you want, it’s nothing you haven’t seen already. Just being around you all day… It made me a little tense, you could say, started feeling a bit needy.” He slowly puts the container of grout on the floor, but stays where he is, staring at the glass in the water, disappearing into your center and making your hips wind, legs spread with one foot on the edge where the tub meets the wall and the other dangling over the side. You moan for him when the tip of the toy nudges into a particularly sensitive spot, and you watch his eyes narrowing, his hand flexing while the other comes to the back of his neck.

After a silence filled with nothing but your moans and the sounds of his heavy breathing, he asks in a low voice, “Do you have sex with your husband?”

You give him a sly smile and shake your head, not anymore, and he continues to look at how you rub your clit, how your hips shift in response to the way you change the movement of your wrist, gliding the toy in and out of you. Last time he saw a woman touching herself like this, outside of occasional porn on the internet, was before he met his wife, many years ago.

The mental image of that one night stand in his early twenties has been conjured up in his mind many times, fodder for the times he’s gotten off on his own, needing the mental image of something erotic, of a woman’s pleasure, uninterrupted and happily shown off. She gave him a show that night, made herself come in front of his eyes before he joined her, and he wondered if he would ever get to see such a thing again. Now he’s standing here, watching you make yourself feel good, with his cock so hard it hurts, and he cannot, for the life of him, understand how a man could possibly not want to have you like that.

“Who does he fuck then?”, Joel asks.

You don’t even flinch as you answer, “Well, there's one named Bianca and one I believe is named Anastasia.”

He shakes his head, confused and angry and jealous and every other emotion he might feel at the thought of another man having access to you in this way and yet taking you for granted. His curiosity gets the best of him, envy and jealousy driving his words, “When was the last time you slept with him?”

The motion of your hands still as you take a second to think. “Around his twenty-eighth birthday, so… Probably a little over two years ago?”

A few moments of silence ensue, a swallow passing through his throat as he sears the image of you into his mind for later reference. He should’ve been able to tell from that first night, that your desperation was not simply the result of a dry spell, that you were deprived of intimacy the same way he was and still is, driving him towards you with no abandon and no consideration for consequences. He sees you get closer and quickly retract your hand, sensing how well you know your own body, and he can’t help the words as they tumble out of him again, his voice hoarse and his cock throbbing, “So you take care of yourself?”

You smile again, nodding to invite him into your space, “I take very good care of myself. I get massages, not the dirty kind, I take baths, I masturbate, I have toys. I don’t need my husband’s useless dick when I have myself. He keeps himself entertained, and so do I.” He finally comes over then, carefully stepping in and making his way across the dark tiles of the bathroom, over to the bath he kneels in front of. He looks at you as he submerges his hand and finds yours, nudging it away gently to grasp the end of the glass and direct its movements, angling it in a way you cannot, reaching a spot only he has ever felt.

“Do you miss it?”, he asks, rotating the toy as he slides it out slowly, then pushes it back in, reaching his other hand into the water to return your fingers to your clit.

“Sex?”

“Mhm.”

You watch how his eyes shift as you moan, and you giggle as you answer his question. “I only miss having deeply intimate sex with someone who knows what they're doing,” you tell him, “Like your sex, I liked that — that's worth missing.”

He makes a rough sound and clears his throat, reaching his free hand down to palm at the bulge in his pants, needing just a sliver of friction to relieve the ache, “What did you like about it?”

“I liked how you made me feel, how you took care of me. I like how gently you touched me but how firm you were at the same time. It felt safe and intimate and erotic, I could tell you were enjoying yourself too. I like that you don't shave, I like your scent, around your neck and chest, around your cock. I like the smell of your sweat. You're a very masculine man, you know that?”

Joel nods subtly, feeling a shy heat across his chest, beginning to understand it himself now, as he observes the difference between your hands, the marks and small scars on his own, from age and work and manual labor, so rough compared to your delicate fingers and long nails, shining under the water. “How does it feel?”, he asks, starting to work at the buttons and zippers above his crotch with one hand, unable to hold back any longer.

“Good,” you purr, “Better with your eyes on me… You wanna watch me come?”

“Are you close?”, he undoes his zipper and pushes the band of his boxers down, freeing his hard, leaking cock from the confines of his clothing and wrapping his hand around the wet tip, shuddering when he begins to stroke it slowly and sees how you watch him, nodding as you moan, rubbing your clit faster and tilting your hips up to let him fill you more deeply.

“Come for me then,” he murmurs, speeding up the movement of the bumpy glass inside of you, and he could lose it from the sound of you moaning his name while you climax, throwing your head back and letting out the loud, breathy moans he knew you held back in that stranger’s bed. His strokes get faster, squeezing around his shaft as he drags his palm along his erection, precome seeping out from his slit and spilling down to his fingers.

“How about you?”, you ask, feeling the waves of your orgasm beginning to taper off, enjoying the internal sensitivity brought on by your climax, “Do you fuck your wife?”

“Rarely,” he huffs, completely uninterested in thinking about her now, about her lack of interest in him that he has tried to understand, tried to mediate and work around but never seems to change. The rejection he has faced for the past year doesn’t matter now, it doesn’t even sting, now that he has you in his hands again, knowing it is only a matter of minutes before he’s inside of you again — the sensation he has missed and yearned for and needed for months.

You sit up, gently circling his wrist to pull the toy out of you and let it fall to the bottom of the tub with a clinking sound, then push his own hand away from his dick, though you could watch him stroke himself for hours. “Does she suck your cock?”, you ask, wrapping your much smaller fingers around his shaft and gently moving up and down, watching the subtle twitches under his skin from your touch.

He’s simultaneously thrown off and aroused by your vulgarity, rubbing the back of his neck as he tells you that he can’t remember the last time she did, not daring to say any more. His eyes trace a droplet of water sliding down your chest as the cold air makes your nipples harden, goosebumps spreading across the skin of your chest, your breasts tightening. You give a few light licks to his tip, thinking back on how he groaned and thrust his hips the only time you ever had him in your mouth, then ask him, while you kiss around the crown of his head, “Do you like it?”

He nods, and almost sounds reluctant to admit that yes, he does, he does like it, he enjoys the sight of plush lips wrapped around his cock, the feeling of a soft, wet tongue running along his underside, fisting his hand in her hair and gently fucking his pretty girl’s face — who wouldn’t?

“What do you do if you dont fuck your wife?”

“Jerk off, I guess,” he shrugs, huffing a laugh and watching the sparkle of your nails as they move along his length.

“Do you watch porn?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you watch?”, you gently suck on his tip, lick his frenulum and stroke his base, thread your fingers through the thick hair at his root and splay your hand across his pelvis, “Describe it to me.”

“Well, I, uh—”, he clears his throat and wraps your hair around his hand while you take him into your mouth, letting him slide in and out at his desired pace, swallowing around his head and gagging just enough to make a bead of precome drip down your throat, “I only watch stuff where the woman is enjoying herself, so I guess— I guess I watch her.”

You let his tip rest on your bottom lip as you look up at him, “And what does the guy do to make her feel good?”

“The same stuff we did.”

You smile at that, “That's the best sex I've ever had, you know.”

“Really?”

Mhmm, you purr before taking him into your throat again, feeling his other hand come to the back of your neck, pulling your face close to him and pushing you back, watching his spit slick shaft glide out through your lips and moaning at the sight of your hand as it swivels around his thickness. The diamond on your finger catches the light as your wrist moves, up and down. You don't take it off, you let the gold band heat up from the friction between you. His eyes flutter closed, his head tips back, his breaths heave. He comes back to himself in a moment of clarity and looks down at you, loosens the grip of his hands and tilts your chin up, the tip of his cock coming to rest on your wet lips again. “Do you ever feel like you want something you can't have?”, he asks, and you nod in response, smirking and raising your brows as if it’s a trick question.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he concedes, forcing your mouth open to slide his head back in, growling when it hits the very back of your throat and you start to drool, “I want you and I can't really have you — I shouldn’t have you.”

Keeping him in your mouth, licking and sucking him, you reach over and unplug the drain, letting the water start to lower as you urge him to fuck your face just a little more, until you swallow more of his precome and you let him slip out, kissing the underside of his head before you stand up and grab your robe off the hook on the wall. You wrap it around yourself, let it sit below your shoulders as Joel stands up and helps you step out of the tub. Holding the robe closed with one hand, you reach the other up to his face, tracing your nails down his nose, his cheeks, his lips as you ask him, “Who said you can't have me?”

He takes your hand from his face and threads his fingers between yours, feeling both of your rings scraping against each other. “It’s true that you shouldn't — I shouldn't want you either — but you can have me,” you whisper, and pull on his hand as you turn and step backwards towards the counter, letting go of his hand, discarding the plush robe onto the floor, then hopping up on the counter and spreading your legs, planting both feet on either side of you and leaning back onto your hands — his to do with as he pleases, soft and wet and ready for him. “You can have me right now,” you run your fingers up and down your folds, spreading them apart and coating your fingertips with your slick, “And I know you want to, I know we’ve both waited for this for months, so put us both out of our misery and fuck me.”

He swallows, nods, then closes the distance between you in silence, and although he knows he won’t last long, he braces himself and slides the tip of his cock up and down your slit, scrunching his face at the sound of your whimpers, and when he cannot hold it anymore, when he catches at your opening and feels you start to suck him in, he sinks into you fully, a shared gasp filling the air before you grab the back of his neck and pull him in so that your foreheads touch, and you can both look down at how you take him, how you stretch around him and make space for him inside. Your other hand comes between your legs, the pads of your fingers circling your clit, making you tense up around him while he holds onto your hips and caresses your skin with his thumbs.

“Let me watch you come,” he whispers, looking into your eyes now, bending his knees to fuck up into you a little deeper and gazing at your eyes as they slide to the back of your head. Your fingers move faster, in firmer circles, the heavy weight of his cock stretching you open, filling you, reaching something so tender and sensitive inside of you that you can’t stop the stream of warm liquid that squirts out of you while he fucks you, soaking the bottom of his t-shirt and his groin while he praises you, while he says you’re being a good girl, such a good girl, just for him.

“That's it, just like that, baby, you feel that?” he coos, holding you still by his grasp on your hips, fucking into you deeper now, another wet stream dripping down his crotch and all over his boxers and his pants, more of your come squirting out between your fingers as you touch yourself and moan for him, daddy, daddy, begging him for more. He won’t last much longer, the rough moans ripping from his throat making you tighten and tense, trying to squirm away from the battering of his cock into your g-spot, so intense you can’t think, all senses morphed into a singular focus on him, him, nothing but him.

He wants to come inside you, wants to fill you and mark you the only way he can, but reality pulls him back harshly by the scruff of his neck, yanked away like a rabid dog, and he pulls out of you, slots his cock between your folds and comes all over your stomach, coating your skin with ropes of his semen, warm and runny as they slide down your damp skin, crashing his lips with yours and kissing you with a hunger and ferocity he thought he might have released over your belly, but instead rages inside of him like an out of control fire, pushing his tongue into your mouth and groaning at the taste of your saliva.

Breathing heavily, refusing to move, softening inside your cunt, he reaches a hand up to smush your cheeks together, forcing you to look into his eyes, his beautiful, soft, brown eyes. He stares at you, barely blinking as he holds your attention, and through desperate breaths, he confesses to you, panting as he tells you, “I’m not just fucking you, okay? This ain't just sex. I have real, serious, deep feelings for you.” He looks between your eyes, tilts your face up a little further and moves his hand from your hip to your waist, “I know it's premature but I can't help it — I can't, I think about you constantly, I dream about you, I can't get you off my mind. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, ever.”

“I know, baby,” you whisper back, tugging at his thick curls, then scrape your nails down the back of his neck and under the collar of his shirt, scratching his skin up and down, back and forth, in slow circles. You let him kiss you once more, suck in his bottom lip and run your tongue along it, then pull back to lean your forehead into his, “I feel the same way about you, Joel. I’ve waited for you to come and find me, to remind me that I’m yours again... As if I could ever forget.”

Twenty minutes must go by on the bathroom counter, between kisses and whispers, between him tracing his fingertips up and down your spine and you nuzzling your face into his neck. You’ve never been in love before, not until now, when you would give anything, do anything, say anything, to spend the rest of the night with him, the rest of the week and the month and the year. You never want him to leave, but you know his family is waiting for him, and although his wife might not be awaiting his arrival, you know his daughters are, and you would never want to take him away from them.

They need him, but you need him too, in a way you’ve never needed anyone, and you want to relinquish some of your control, over yourself and your life and your body, to him. You want to give it over, let him take care of you and decide what’s best for you. There is a deep trust between you, an understanding and a kindness you have never felt. When he kisses up along the side of your neck, when you feel him smile from the way he makes you giggle, you feel like you’re home.

But he has to go, he has to tuck himself back into his pants, help you down from the counter, clean you up and dress you in your clothes. He has to dry off his wet shirt and look at the time, then tell you he’ll be back tomorrow at the same time to finish the grout, hopefully seeing you in the door before you head to work in the morning.

And when you’ve said your goodbyes, when you’ve closed the door behind him and gotten dinner started, when you’ve stared out of the kitchen window and wondered what on earth you’re gonna do about being in love with a married man, a father, a man who is much too old for you — a text message from him pops up on your phone screen.

“I still smell like you.”

#jeremiah count ur days #asswipe #chloeangelic

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