Never again? (Closed for SecretEpiphany)

And here she is.

I stare at the screen. After a few moments of stillness, I realise I am actually holding my breath. I let it out. Slowly.

She's found me. OK, so, not such a miraculous act to perform nowadays, although there was a time when I was in hiding from her, and from the world, and when hiding was almost straightforwards. But that's just not an option anymore. "Join Facebook, have a MySpace, do some Tweeting, get some Friends and Followers: it'll all help the book, you know", my agent had enthused. Had I known even then, when I'd relented to his request, what would happen? Had this all been a bid, secret unto myself - well,maybe not so secret, given the topic of my novel - to find her or to have her find me?

Well, through the wonder of social networking, here she is: Sheila Quinn Covey, 33, I quickly guess. Or maybe 34. In one guise, Sheila has become a Fan of "Will Schumann - author"; in another, Sheila wants to be my "Friend".

Sheila wants to be my friend.

A line of text and a few pixels passing for a photograph. It's hard to tell it's her, I kid myself. It's obviously her: even at this poor resolution, I can see her rosy lips, the tantalising arch of her brow, the blur, perhaps, of freckles bursting out instead of a tan. She's still beautiful, then. Of course. Damn.

I move the cursor over to the picture and circle her face, the arrow tip brushing her lips, tracing a raised eyebrow, the curve of her jaw. Some kind of caress?

At the thought, I catch my breath again and close my eyes, images rushing my mind in a flurry: snapshots of companionship, openness, the endless tease of anticipation, and then the rapture of sudden release - before the cold smack of shock, numbness, guilt and rejection. And then flight. My flight.

I remember her mouth, _feel_ her mouth, crushing into mine, breaking that last barrier as our hands sought a dozen refuges, all at once, from the rain in that dark, secret alleyway, hidden away in the night of another city, another decade, another life. And then that same mouth, days later, thinning and then hardening as I said goodbye, forever. At least, it was meant to be forever.

I move the cursor closer to "Accept?".

Accept. What does that mean, in this context? Accept what I did, what it meant, what it's always meant to me, if truth be told? Accept the possibility that my world will turn upside down, once again, if I let her through this crack into my life? Accept the possibility - far worse - that my life probably won't turn a backflip and that, instead, like so many "friendships" one renews online, a few nostalgic messages down the line and all there will be left is the acknowledgement that we're strangers with nothing to share but the recognition that we're not the people we once knew, and perhaps we never were - and, by the way, in the time we've just wasted working that all out, we're getting even closer to death?

Yet I already know what I'm going to do. The mind makes decisions about six seconds before one's actions actually take place, carrying out calculations far more intricate that the conscious machinations of a guilt-ridden Facebooker thinking, once again, about the face that changed his life. The face, and the woman, I'd wanted to share that life with, to have children with, maybe, to see the world with, to love a thousand and one times over, to grow old and die with. The one I'd known that, save for that single, lightning-torn night, I could never really have.

I click 'Accept'.

It’s a pretty well known fact that drunken e-mailing is a bad idea. In the new age of social networking, drunken facebook-ing is also a bad idea. “What have I done?” I whispered when the notification came through on my blackberry. The message read ‘Will Schumann accepted your friend request.'

Will Schumann. I had a death grip on my phone now, and I swallowed hard against the surge of nausea that hit me from just looking at his name—at least from looking at his name while I was sober.

“Sheila, are you okay?” Melinda, one of my co-workers, stared at me with concern. “Bad news or something? Is it Steven?”

I shook my head and snapped out of my panic. “No, no. It’s nothing. Just… something I wasn’t expecting. Nothing’s wrong. Steven’s fine. I’m sorry to give you a scare.” I pasted on my calm and professional smile and picked up the stack of papers I needed for this afternoon’s presentation. “Ready to get to our meeting?”

Melinda still cast suspicious looks at me throughout the three hours we spent in the boardroom, but I was determined not to give anything away. No one at work knew that my marriage was on the rocks. No one at work knew much about my personal life at all. And I liked it that way.

The one time I’d let myself get personal with a co-worker… Well, I still bore the scars from my mistakes with Will Schumann. So I didn’t get personal with anyone at work anymore. I kept my personal life personal and my professional life professional. I didn’t even think about personal things while I was at the office. Now, the opposite wasn’t exactly true. I did deal with professional stuff at home—much to Steven’s chagrin. My husband resented my job.

And my husband would resent the fact that I had sent a facebook friend request to a man I had an affair with a decade ago. He would resent that very much. Even more so if he knew I’d sent the request after downing a half a bottle of wine to try and numb the raw emotions ripping through me after we’d had yet another baby argument. Alcohol was not my friend. It never had been. Drinking the wine was stupid. Getting on facebook after drinking the wine was stupider.

“So, do you and Steven have big plans for the weekend?” Melinda asked as we walked down the corridor after the meeting.

“No, nothing big. Just relaxing at home. I’m sure he’ll go play a few rounds of golf.”

Melinda nodded. “John and I are taking the girls to the aquarium on Saturday. I can’t wait. I’ll show you all the pictures next week.” She winked at me. “You know, you and Steven better get busy on having a couple of your own or mine will be too old to be playmates with yours.”

I smiled weakly. “Maybe someday.”

Melinda blushed and seemed to realize she’d overstepped her bounds. “Well, it’s past five and I’m ready to get out of here. I’m sure you are too. See you Monday!” She waved and hurried to her office.

I collected my things, but paused before shutting down my computer. “Personal stuff belongs at home,” I told myself. But I sat down anyway, and within seconds I had logged into my facebook account.

I poured over Will’s pages. I’d done the same last night, but then I’d read everything through a wine-induced fog, and I'd only been able to see what he had set to public access. He looked good in his pictures. Older, with shaggier hair, but still good. He had the same piercing green eyes. They showed up especially well on his book jacket photo where he posed in front of a window draped with green velvet curtains. His expression seemed…soulful? Sad even. I didn’t remember him being a sad sort of person.

But then time changed things. It had certainly changed me. And maybe I was just projecting my own sadness on his picture.

His book was titled The Broken. A sad sort of title. Suddenly, I was desperate to read it. I made a mental note to run by the bookstore on my way home and see if they had a copy.

I found myself clicking the message button. It was a bad idea. I had several people friended on facebook whom I’d never messaged. I’d never even written on their walls. Will was best left in that category, I knew that. But I wrote him a note anyway.

“Will, it’s been a long time. Your book looks interesting. I’m glad you followed your dream. I hope to read it soon. –Sheila”

I went to the bookshelf and found the remains of my best single malt, sandwiched between some dog-eared favorites and other books that had belonged to Emma-Louise, and that I'd kept long after she’d gone, even though I still hated some of the novelists she'd liked the most. How we’d argued. Then, I’d read those books obsessively in the months after it had happened, searching for clues. Failing to find them.

The dirty upturned glass capping the bottle would do for tonight’s drinking. The whiskey would sterilize anything creeping therein. The first sip coating my mouth and throat with a warm fuzz, I turned back to the glow of my laptop screen. I raised my glass: "To Shelia Quinn. Oh, sorry - Quinn Covey. Now fuck off and leave me alone."

Wow. Where had that come from? The bitterness in my own words and tone caught me off-guard. It was me who'd been most deeply in the wrong, back then, and she who had the right to be the angry one now. Yet I was kidding myself, of course, once again. I knew exactly why I’d felt that surge of anger. I’d written a book about it, after all, and paid my therapist several thousands to scrape the bottom of that barrel. Can a single mistake subtly re-engineer the universe, causing it to topple in on its occupants, breaking one and all? In my novel, the hero has a fling that ignites at the precise moment his partner discovers a lump in her breast: she dies, but as a result of what? The cancer, or his cheating, even though she never discovers it? For a while, in the hallucinatory depths of my grief, when I was most deeply lost after Emma-Louise’s suicide, I’d felt that my affair with Sheila – my half-hour, knee-trembler, life-changer of a fling with Sheila – had started a chain of events that had led to my wife taking her own life, even though she’d known nothing about Sheila and me, and never would. Her death was, I’d come to accept, entirely her own concern, like so much else in her life. Writing the hallucinations out in the book had helped me rationalize them, like reporting a nightmare to a friend in the morning and revealing it to be ridiculous. But sometimes, I relapsed into bad, old habits. Like grief, those habits died hard.

I took a longer drink.

Now that I’d allowed myself to be Friended, I figured there was no harm in accessing Sheila’s profile. No longer working at the same firm, I noted immediately: two or three upwardly mobile moves had occurred since we’d last seen each other. I felt glad for Sheila, but also disappointed. Hadn’t we clicked, back then, because I’d felt something she wanted to release in herself: an escape from the rat race realm into something purer? Hell, I guess not. Her status updates were the usual depressing assortment of upbeat boasts and faux-modesty. Ooh, a big presentation coming up and she’s nervous; phew, it went well, ‘as you always knew it would’, her friends/colleagues mock-protest in the comments). All the correct kinds of safe Likes and Pages seem present, alongside various trivial apps and silly gifts. It read like an online extension of her CV. “Hey, you could suggest a few more Likes for her”, the baser part of my brain chipped in. I couldn’t help smiling at that one.

Her info confirmed she is married, although not to whom she is hitched (perhaps he stays off Facebook – smart guy, I almost liked him). I decided to search the photos for evidence of his existence, beyond the double-barrel of her surname. Seeking out a competitor to size him up? I cast that thought aside.

As I clicked through her photos, the cynicism inside me finally began to melt. There were older photos in abundance, and while no guy appeared therein, there was obviously a special recipient of the disarming smile dominating many of the shots. I felt a bit jealous and, in one case, ever so slightly aroused. One image showed her lying on white sands, an open azure sky framing her, facing the camera and slightly spilling out of a modest bikini top. A few grains of sand clung to the curve of her breasts, begging to be brushed away. It was a morning-after-a-wonderful-night-before smile, all secrets and light, and all for the cameraman. I stared a little too long at that one. Lucky bastard.

But there were less of these photos from more recent years: she’d been tagged here and there at dinners and functions, and there were photos from business trips and conferences. She had that beaming smile on tap, it seemed, but was it just me, or did it seem a little more forced in the later images? Probably just my imagination.

“OK, quid pro quo, Clarice,” I muttered. On a whim, I entered my own page’s settings and added her to my Real Friends list. Now she could see my updates, my photos, my likes and pages, the link to Emma-Louise’s online shrine, my publisher, my short fiction, the works: a fairground hall of mirrors offering reflections, distortions and a few surprises for my newest, old friend, even though she already knew me more completely than any website would ever permit.

I figured she’d take a look and never contact me again. And then her message arrived:

“Will, it’s been a long time. Your book looks interesting. I’m glad you followed your dream. I hope to read it soon. –Sheila”

I’d imagined this before, of course, but never with such clarity. I pictured the woman in the photos buying the hardback in some upmarket store, reading the first few pages over coffee and a croissant, then ceasing to chew and swallow as a cold burn takes hold of her chest and she realizes who the characters are and what the situation was inspired by, as in the space of one chapter – a bit the critics all loved – the hero and his lover screw desperately in an alleyway, the action cutting as hard as their eventual thrusts between their fucking and the hero’s wife receiving devastating news in a sterile office.

I drained the glass, paused, and then entered my reply. Screw her carefully policed tone and its invitation to pleasantries and protocols. After all we’d been through? No way:

“Well, brace yourself, and have the salt handy. You’ll need a pinch or three by the time you’re through. I missed you.”

What was I thinking? I erased the last three words and hit send.

It was almost eight by the time I got home. I’d stayed late at the office looking at Will’s profile, although I’d logged off right after sending him that message. I’d stopped by the bookstore and then a few other places while I was in that part of town. Time had gotten away from me.

“You’re late,” Steven called from the den where he was watching ESPN with his feet propped on the coffee table. “Again.”

“Sorry. I stayed at work late and then had a few errands.” And I just didn’t want to come home. But I couldn’t say that.

Steven walked into the kitchen were I was unpacking some groceries. “It’s Friday, Sheila. Your work doesn’t expect you to stay and pull all nighters anytime, and especially not on Friday.”

I gestured to the bags without making eye contact with him. “Errands. I just told you that.”

“I bought groceries yesterday.”

I shrugged. “Well, I bought some more.”

“Why do you care if there’s food in the house? You’re never here to eat it!”

“Steven,” I said, trying to summon patience. “Can we please not fight right now?”

He was tense. He always looked tense these days. I was his wife. I should care about that. Try to… help him. But I didn’t care. And I didn’t want to help. And I knew that made me a bad person, a cold person, an unfeeling wife… And the knowing just made me angrier. Sadder too, once the fury boiled off and I was left to think about the whole messed up situation.

“Jesus, Sheila.” His hands were balled into fists. “I don’t want to fight. I just want to talk to you. I want… I want to spend time with my wife.”

We hadn’t had sex in almost a month. Or was it longer? How long? I couldn’t remember… How sad was that? I sighed.

“Just… Let me finish putting all this away and give me a little bit to soak in the tub. Then we can… spend time together, okay? I’ll meet you under the sheets?” I offered him my best attempt at a smile.

He didn’t return it. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. A few seconds later I heard the front door slam and his car’s engine rev to life outside.

I leaned over the kitchen countertop and buried my face in my hands. I hated this. I hated making him miserable. I hated being miserable. And I hated my sense of relief that Steven didn’t want to have sex. What had happened to us? I could vaguely remember a time when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I used to be crazy about him. But I just…wasn’t anymore.

I went upstairs, ran a hot bubble bath, and undressed. Before getting in, I got Will’s book out of my purse and set it beside the tub. A chapter or two while I soaked sounded good. I switched on the tub jets and lowered myself into the bubbles until I was immersed up to my neck. The hot water soothed my aching muscles as it swirled around me, caressing my skin. I leaned back so a couple of the side jets pulsed water onto my breasts, a teasing sensation that left me wondering if I should have tried harder to convince Steven I wanted to sleep with him. It had been so long…

My hands found their way to my chest and I touched myself, concealed beneath the foamy bubbles on the surface of the water. I squeezed and kneaded. I thumbed my nipples until they were erect, then pulled them hard enough to lift the undersides of my breasts from my body, letting water swirl beneath them. I missed feeling passion and lust and desire and raw need. I missed feeling a man’s desperate hands on my body. My own were a poor substitute.

With a sigh, I reached for a towel and dried my hands and forearms, then I opened The Broken.

The bubbles had fizzled away and the water had grown cold by the time I finished the first chapter, but I was barely aware of it. Will’s book was based on us. It was right there in the first few pages—an account of the one and only time we’d had sex. The alley, the rain, the wine, the urgency.

My hands, actually my whole body, shook as I closed the book and climbed out of the tub. I tried so hard not to think about that night, not to think about Will at all. What good did it do to think about things you couldn’t have? Dwelling on past regrets and empty wishes was poison. I’d moved on from my mistakes with Will. I’d found Steven. I’d gotten married…

But now my stomach hurt and the emotions swelling in my chest were as fresh as they had been ten years ago. The account in the book was so eloquent. I remembered, vividly, how I’d known every time Will had walked into a room. Even if I couldn’t see him. It was like I could sense him, smell the unique mix of musky cedary Will-ness before anyone else was even aware of his presence.

And my body reacted now, just like it had then. It was as if he were in the bathroom with me. The sudden tightness in my tummy, the slight clench in my pelvis, the rapid kick of my pulse, and the sharp intake of breath… Will.

I didn’t dry off. I walked naked into the bedroom and started my laptop, mindless of the water I was leaving on the floor, mindless of the chill that left goosebumps all over my body and hardened my nipples into tight nubs. How much of the story was true? How much was fiction? I logged on to Facebook and Will’s reply message popped up:

“Well, brace yourself, and have the salt handy. You’ll need a pinch or three by the time you’re through.”

My eyes stung with unshed tears. What could I say to that? The old wounds the book had ripped open hurt enough without rubbing salt in them. Then I realized that he had unlocked more of his profile to me. I could see his private posts and status updates now, more pictures, links…

It was worse… Reality was worse than the fiction of his book… His wife, Emma-Louise, hadn’t had cancer. She’d committed suicide. How she’d done it wasn’t clear, but it was obvious from the comments on her memorial page that she’d taken her own life. And she’d done it… barely a month after that night in the alley. Dear God, how had I not known about this?

But I already knew the answer. I hadn’t wanted to know. I’d made a concerted effort to keep anything and everything associated with Will out of my mind and my life in the weeks following that encounter in the alley. I’d tried, and partially succeeded, at compartmentalizing the whole thing and pushing it to the back of my mind while I threw myself into work.

I’d been focused on getting promoted while Will had been burying his wife. The wife he’d cheated on just before she’d killed herself…

I hit the reply button:

“My God, Will. I didn’t know about Emma-Louise. I’m sorry. So sorry about everything… You’ll never know how much.”

I sent it. Then I curled up on the bed and cried harder and longer than I had in years, maybe even in a decade.

Red strobe lights flared from an ambulance roof. It’s going to be a busy night for the hospital opposite my apartment block, I figured, as I slipped out into the drizzly dark of the evening. Friday rush hour traffic, meet Manhattan rain. Chaos, please ensue.

I shuffled through the crowds heading uptown towards my favorite Indian takeout. My part of midtown has lots of great eateries, but this was among the cheapest. Tonight’s selection included green, yellow and orange forms of curried slop. I ordered a naan the size of a small coffee table and the green one, suspecting goat, but already anticipating washing it down with the beers chilling back in my fridge.

As I walked back along the wet sidewalk, I wondered, a little doubtfully, if Sheila had purchased my book yet and, if so, read the opening chapter. If so, what on earth did she think? At the start of The Broken, glimpses of frantic love-making are juxtaposed with the lead character’s wife receiving her terrible news: bodies rampant are cut and spliced with the devastation of a body overrun by cancer. I had been surprised how many critics thought this (to me rather obvious) conceit was impressive: the images of invasion and engorgement, sexual and cancerous, gradually blurring into a single mirage.

But now I was wondering, rather differently, how the woman who’d inspired the scene’s erotic content would find it, primarily as a record of that one time we’d been together. A historian I am not.

It all lay so far in the past – a decade now, and it was even five years past by the time I’d started the book – so my memory of that night was far from complete. It had also been shattered by Em’s death and the guilt that had ravaged me thereafter. All I had left in my mind of the time before she’d gone, it sometimes seemed, were shards of a bigger, now broken, picture. And yes, those shards could cut. The images in the novel were, in truth, all I could remember, but perhaps they were also all I could bear to remember, not least because my one time with Sheila had eclipsed ever erotic moment of my marriage, even at its peak and before Em’s descent into chaos. I’d long felt guilt about that one, but especially when fleeting memories of that night cut into my darkest periods – standing at her graveside, say, in the months, the years that followed. It was around then arousal turned to anger.

As I approached my apartment block, I recalled the images seared into my mind and the book. It was a while since I'd unlocked them, but they flooded back eagerly:

- Our teeth clattering as our mouths crushed into that desperate first kiss;
- The button than flew from her blouse as I half unbuttoned, half tore it open;
- Coldness seeping from her flesh into my lips as I kissed the underside of her throat and then her breasts, rivulets of hard winter rain streaming down her gleaming skin and into my mouth;
- One of her nipples elongating dramatically on my tongue as I sucked on it hard enough to make her gasp my name;
- Our hands shaking, not with the cold but with desire;
- Her trembling fingers tussling with my belt as I stretched and shoved her knickers down her legs (she never found them later);
- My hands lifting and holding her firm, tensed buttocks as I crushed her against the alley wall, deeply grazing my knuckles as I did so (although I didn’t notice the wounds until I was on my train back home);
- My shout of surprise as she forced back the skin of my cock, then tightened her grip to bring it forwards again, twice or maybe three times before – and this has never happened to me before or since – I immediately came;
- And then the contrast of her hot mouth to the cold air as she sank to her knees to catch the remainder of my cum between her lips;
- My hands in her hair;
- The look of dire urgency on her face as she stood up and, wrapping one leg around me, pressed my still rock-hard cock against her slit, and then her bite – she actually drew blood – as she came, fast and convulsively, as my length slotted fully into the burning warmth of her pussy;
- That we both came twice more before that near-miraculous erection finally gave out (although I can’t honestly remember how that had happened, save for even more fragmentary images – this part of the night, as the wine we’d consumed finally took deeply hold, has become a whirling, ecstatic dream…
- Her body, shaking with a different emotion, as I held her afterward, half lying, half leaning against the alley wall, cocooned snugly inside my greatcoat;
- Her caresses on my face as she nursed my now painfully spent cock, and her joke – and oh, how I’d adored her for the joke, so typical of her cheeky wit, and yet made as our world finally fell apart – ‘Who needs Viagra?’

But is this what had actually happened? How true were my memories? What couldn’t I remember? What had I forgotten? Or imagined? What might Sheila recall of that night – her perceptions could be so different. If only I could ask her. Obviously, that would never happen now.

My breath was quickening, I noticed, and not just from walking briskly through the rain, as I got back to my block and entered the lobby. As I passed the doorman, I mumbled hi, shifting the carrier bag containing the food to hide my erection. Those images… those memories: too much. The warmth pressing through the cloth from the warm curry was actually making matters worse, like a lover’s hand massaging me through my jeans.

As soon as I got inside my apartment door I dropped the bag, unhitched my belt and unsnapped my fly. I sprang gladly into the open air and the familiarity of my right hand, and began firmly rolling back and forth my skin against the sinewy rope of my core...

A few minutes later, having used the paper napkins from the takeout bag to clean up the mess I’d shot halfway up the hallway wall, I slumped down at my dining table, slopped out the food and flipped open my laptop. Facebook was still open and, as the internet connection sprang into life and updated, I could see that Sheila was online, but – from that wistful little half moon in the chat application – she was dormant. Too bad. No chance to reminisce. I forked a mouthful of green curry into my mouth - mutton maybe - washed it back with some beer, and clicked to read my messages. I immediately opened hers to consider her words.

I’d read the same thing a hundred times or more from Em’s friends and mine, of course, but I realized these words represented a dam holding back a wholly different category of emotion. So I typed quickly, because she needed to know and I needed to say this, even now, so late in the day:

It’s not your fault, Sheila. She never knew. She never knew anything about it. Although I could never forget it.

I dispatched the message and ate, very slowly, mulling over what I’d just done. The curry was hot, but inside my stomach began to chill like stone.

I woke up with a headache and a stiff neck. I’d cried myself to a fitful sleep, and woke naked, curled into a ball and tangled in the sheet, with my arms wrapped around a pillow. My laptop was still perched on the edge of the bed. It was a wonder I hadn’t kicked it off while trying to escape miserable dreams of Will and Emma-Louise and Steven…

The clock read 1 o’clock am.

I got up and washed my face, but I didn’t dress. Still naked, I roamed through the empty house. Steven hadn’t come home. He hadn’t locked the front door behind him either. I turned the deadbolt and set the alarm system before wandering into the kitchen.

The tile floor was cold against the soles of my feet, but I didn’t care. I opened the liquor cabinet. Wine didn’t seem strong enough to chase away the old ghosts suddenly stirring in my life. I pulled out a half full bottle of Cuervo and a shot glass.

“To Emma-Louise,” I said before tossing back a shot.

The alcohol burned and hit me fast and hard. I’d never been a huge drinker, especially not over the last few years. I liked a clear head so I could focus on work. I wasn’t a drunk and didn’t use booze as an escape or as an inappropriate coping mechanism. I had more sense than that. Or at least I had until now. The last week had been an exception with all the wine, and now the tequila…straight, without even salt or lime…

Did we have any of that? Salt, sure, but lime? I rummaged in the fridge. Nope. Oh well, straight it was. I poured another one and stared at it. Well, maybe salt… I set the shaker next to the shot glass.

“You know,” I said, talking directly to an imaginary Emma-Louise now, “I always hated you.” I pointed my finger. “I only ever laid eyes on you once, but I despised you…before and after we met. And I think… I think I hate you even more now. Because you had what I wanted. I loved him, Emma-Louise. And if I had been his goddamn wife, I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone and fucking killed myself. Fucking bitch.”

I tossed back the other shot, forgetting the salt, and slammed the glass down.

Hot now from the alcohol, I leaned against the stainless steel refrigerator and hissed at the intense cold against my skin, but I pressed into it. Then I turned and stepped close enough for my hardened nipples to touch the shiny surface. I dropped my forehead against the door, cupped my breasts with my hands and rubbed my tits against a kitchen appliance.

“Shit,” I murmured, squeezing my breasts. Tequila gave me a potty mouth and made me horny as a cat in heat. Any more and I’d start howling.

With a sigh, I left the kitchen. The staircase looked huge, but I climbed it, holding on to the railing the whole way up.

“Will Schumann,” I muttered. “When I finally get to the fucking top. I’m gonna write you a message that will knock you on your ass.”

I flopped on the bed, sprawling on my stomach, and pulled my laptop to me. Typing this way was awkward, but typing any way was awkward after two shots of tequila. I spread my legs apart, liking the way the cool air felt against my pussy. I should’ve picked a different kind of booze. Nothing got me hot like tequila…

I woke up the computer and realized I was still logged into Facebook.

A new message from Will: It’s not your fault, Sheila. She never knew. She never knew anything about it. Although I could never forget it.

I clicked reply:

Thanks for the sentment, Willy, but we both no that her not knowin doesn’t make anybody ducking faultless. Don’t even talk to me about forgetting. I’d finally managed to stop reliving my moments with you on a ducking dayly basis, but now I started reading your damn book and I’m lying here naked after drinking too mcuh Hose Curvo tequila and I can’t stop remembering. And I could never stop hating her for having what I coudn’t. I hate her still, even though I kno she’s dead. Go ahead and juge me for that. Write another ducking book. About my life this time. You can call it The Pathetic.

I sent it. And then I wanted to stop it, but it was too late. I re-read it from the sent file, but it took quite a bit of concentration to do so. I had some spelling errors, I thought. Did it say “ducking”? Oh hell, the auto correct filter had modified my curse words. That was a nice feature to keep accidental typo curses out of presentations but it interfered now that I was trying to make a Facebook point.

Ducking.

I started to giggle, then I was full fledged laughing. I had to roll onto my back to breathe and I held my sides as I laughed some more. Drinking alone was such a bad idea… Another fit of giggles struck me.

Flicking around the cable channels in the early hours is no substitute for having a life. Still, tonight I’d happened across a strange, violent, sexy David Lynch movie and I was hooked. Naomi Watts was doing bad, bad things to herself in cut-off denim shorts. I was having no problem staying awake.

Intermittently, during the ad breaks, I was also checking my laptop, messaging friends real and virtual around the world. There was a serious possibility of visiting some adult sites soon, I realized, but I was trying to be high-minded and put that off for a while. After the movie, when I needed to crash out and sleep, I’d trawl a few favorites, then drink and toss myself off into a blackout. I didn’t have another appointment until late afternoon the next day: some reading in The Village. I could sleep until then.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was a message, this late, from Sheila. As I read it, I began to smile. I even laughed. It wasn’t the resentment and bile – another day, after less beer and whiskey, I’d no doubt feel sad about that all. Well, maybe. Actually, it was the typos and her arrogance: who did she think she was talking to?! I wrote the book on that shit: literally! So before I could bring myself to do the sensible thing – log off, finish watching Miss Watts, surf for something naughty then sleep - I wrote back:

“Hey, how about I call my next book Ducking Responsibility?

Will

P. S. Lying naked on the bed at 1am with a glass of Cuervo in one hand and with your other, presumably, tucked inside your panties, while messaging back and forth with an old flame ? Tut tut, Shirty Sheila. What would hubby say?

P. P. S. I’ve never judged you, and I never would. As if. Once upon a time, you’d never have judged me either. But I guess you’ve changed. Now please go back to being naked, feisty and tipsy. Definitely more like the Sheila I remember. And for what it’s worth, have a nice life.

P. P. S. S or whatever. I remember that tipsy potty mouth well, by the way – what was it you said, that one time, when I said we should leave the bar, because I was worried about getting wet in the rain…? Never mind. So long ago. Nighty night and hasta la vista. Have a happy life; yeah, I think I mentioned that already. I also recommend Ibuprofen tomorrow morning. And that we definitely, once and for all, stop writing to each other right now.”

I turned back to the film, grinning, and knowing that stopping this exchange would be the very last thing she could bring herself to do, if there were vestiges of Sheila – the woman I’d known – beneath that shell of indignation and fury.

And suddenly it struck me: I was having fun. And I hadn’t had fun, quite like this, in a long, long time.

At the end of the Lynch film, incidentally, every character transformed into someone else. Maybe there was hope for Sheila yet.

He wrote me back. Promptly. More promptly than I found it. I turned the sound on my computer so it would chime when I had a message.

I laughed as I read his reply, but the more I looked at it, the less funny it became.

What would hubby say?

I looked at that line for a long time. I didn’t know what he would say. I didn’t even know where the hell he was. A good wife would be worried if her husband left in a huff and didn’t come home.

I wasn’t good.

Who did Will think he was? Asking me something like that? Didn't he know that I didn't want to think about my fucked up excuse for a marriage or I wouldn't be downing shots of tequila by myself? That I wouldn't be laying in bed alone...and so fucking horny I could hardly stand it if my marriage was good and I could ask my husband for a good fucking without him asking me if that meant that I was ready to have a goddamn baby?

I hit reply.

First. Don’t make me think about shit I don’t want to, Will. You dont ask me about hubby and I won’t ask you what Ema-Louise woud have said about us if she had knon. We might have only screwed once in an ally, but the emotonal afair lasted a hell of alot longer then that. Unless you want to go down that f-ucking (not durcks) road, but I think I’ll need more tequilla for that and the stairs are really high—long—tall.

2nd. Don’t tell me wat to do. I don’t take orders form the likes of you. I’ll write you back as mnay times as I want. I you better read evry goddamn message.

3ird. Look up naked. I dont have on panties.

4th. I said I didnt have to go outside to get wet. One of the f-ucking benefets of being a woman. And when I said it I was already so f-ucking wet…I just wanted you to touch me. That’s what I rember.

I sent it.

Then I rolled over on my back as I kept remembering… I slid my hand down over my stomach, my pelvis, until I was cupping my mound, the tips of my fingers barely grazing my pussy lips. “I just wanted you to touch me, Will,” I whispered as I eased my middle finger between my lips, finding the hot moisture there and slowly spreading it around. “Like this…”

Wow. This woman was drunk. Either that or she'd had some kind of stroke. No memory impairment though. By the time I got to point four of my response, I was hard.

First. It is literally impossible to make anyone else think anything. Well not impossible. But your thoughts are your business, not mine, Shirty.

2nd. Giving orders? What, when I said 'have a nice life'? Sweet Lord. OK: pretty please, with sugar on top, if you would be so kind: might you consider having a nice fucking life?

3rd. OK. You got me. But it was worth it just to read you type the line 'I dont have on panties'. For what it's worth, neither do I.

4th. And I you. Would you like me to touch you right now? Should I tell you what to do? Sorry: invite you to do certain things? Typing is ceasing to be your strong point. Maybe we should give your fingers something else to do. Hey, if you want to, add me on MSN. I can offer you advice on your what to do with your digital predicament, and you can switch on your webcam - you'll soon be too busy to type.

I added my e-mail address, hit send, and then wondered if she'd be able to type straight enough to enter it.

And then I asked myself: what the hell are you doing, Will? She's obviously in all kinds of pain. Some of it may relate to your book, much of it probably has more contemporary sources. (To whit: what the hell is she alone for this late on a Friday night? Why isn't someone there helping her fingers do something more interesting than key strokes?) Are you enjoying the rush? The cruelty? Are you pissed off with her still? Do you want to hurt her? Humiliate her? What?

What I wanted was a sign of authenticity. This wasn't the woman I'd known. I figured some over the top suggestions would either, finally, prompt her to let down the defences and say something meaningful - or maybe this would all just make her laugh. I didn't seriously consider the possibility that she was actually naked and turned on, and that the release she was going to show me would be something so unexpected. And when it was all over, I would think, long and hard, about the ramifications of her subsequent actions: their peculiar mix of empowerment and utter desperation. The Sheila I'd known - the woman I'd spent every lunchtime with for two years, who had shared her innermost ideals and beliefs with me, who had helped me through the early stages of the troubles ahead with Emma-Louise, and who had been so liberated in thought, if not always in deed, given the corporate world we were both working in at the time, and her need to keep up appearances.

At some point, had her appearance become her soul? Or was she still in there, waiting to escape - or perhaps to be liberated?

I squeezed one breast, and tugged hard on the nipple as my fingers played in my pussy, sliding in my wetness, and every once in a while, venturing high enough to bump my sensitive clit. My breathing was ragged as I lay on my back with my legs spread wide apart-fingering myself.

I hadn’t done this in ages…years and years. Maybe not since I’d been married. At least not alone since I’d been married—back when Steven and I still had chemistry we’d watched each other or touched ourselves while talking on the phone if one of us was out of town. But that was a long, long time ago.

It was Will’s fault. When I’d known him before, when I’d loved him so much my heart literally hurt every time I saw him, I’d touched myself almost every night. Laying in bed, resenting Emma-Louise and wishing he was laying there with me, I’d imagine my hands were his hands and for just a few minutes I could pretend that I had what I wanted and needed more than anything else in the world—Will, happiness, love… Reciprocated love. He was making me want those things again.

My head was swimming with tequila and painful memories. I knew I was drunk—and terribly, terribly horny, but in my head I could still articulate coherent thoughts. Spitting them out, verbally or via writing, was another story…

I grunted softly as I pushed two fingers inside myself, hard and deep. Then again, and again.

The computer chimed. Will. Damn it. I wanted to finish this… But I wanted to know what he said. I needed him to talk to me. He’d said in the last message that we should “once and for all” stop talking to each other. I’d felt so desperate when I read that. Every word from him hurt me to my core, but I needed it, I needed any connection I could have with him.

The room spun a little as I rolled over and wiped my sticky hand on the bedspread.

“Oh, god…” I moaned as I read his reply. MSN, webcams… “NO,” some little part of me screamed, but the horny part had me gyrating my hips and restlessly moving my legs.

I hit reply and typed a response, trying extra hard this time to get the typing right. It took me forever to write it.

1st. You don’t know what your talking about. You don’t understand. You’ve always made me think things, want things I couldn’t have. My thoughts have never been my own where your concerned.

2nd. I just didn’t want you to stop talking to me, to walk away with a “hav a nice ducking life” and me never here form you again. I can’t take that again. I just can’t. I'm sorry.

3rd. I’m naked and wet and so horny it literally hurts… Theirs a f-ucking void, a emptyness in me, between my legs, and I just… I just need it filled…so bad.

4th Yes I want you to touch me. I always wanted you to touch me. Always.

I sent it. Then I stared long and hard at his email. MSN, webcam… I’d never done that sort of thing. Never.

But it was Will… And if he wanted to… If it would keep him in my pitiful, drunk life just a few minutes more, then maybe…

I copied and pasted the address into my Messenger and added him.

Her response was a long time coming. In the meantime, I’d put my apartment to bed, slipped out of my jeans and under the duvet, with a replenished glass of scotch by the bedside.

When her e-mail came, desperate thoughts began to cloud my mind. I read the first two points several times before even getting to the end of the message.

I manipulated her thoughts? Yes. Knowingly, on purpose? But of course. Did I enjoy the power? Oh yes. I liked that sort of thing. There was a subtly sadistic streak to my temperament, I already knew, and what I was evidently doing to Sheila was beginning to remind me of the times I’d pleaded with Em to be, say, less pessimistic, as if it would make us both so much happier - while knowing, on some level, that these “helpful” or “well-meant” comments were, in fact, disguised barbs. It is miserable, living with someone depressed. You hit out, albeit often in disguise. Then you hate yourself for being so petty in the face of their illness. She couldn’t change how she acted, although I can kid myself retrospectively that I didn’t know the full extent of her illness until it was too late – well, maybe I honestly didn’t – but looking back, would it have changed the manner in which I’d taunted her? I’d love to think so.

And I also knew, of course, that – for better, but probably worse – Sheila was back in my life now, and for good. I'd felt more alive in these last few hours than I’d felt in ten years. I didn’t want to die again. I’d been fishing for confirmation of her need in my last message, desperate not to seem weak. (Let’s ignore for now that this fact, in itself, exposes my true weakness.) And she’d duly exposed herself, as I’d invited – manipulated her – to do.

Then I read the third message. My earlier erection had waned, understandably, as I considered Sheila’s pain and my part in it, but as I moved on to point four, inside the taut fabric of my jockey shorts I was on the move again – seeking due north, uncurling from my nest, slightly wrenching some of my tangled pubic hairs as I strained against them and the fabric. To relieve the pain, and out of old habit, one hand slid under the covers and lifted the band of my shorts, allowing my aching head free. I could feel it twitching slightly with each beat of my heart. It was beating a little faster than normal, too. My pulse was beginning to accelerate.

Suddenly, I felt a rush of shivering cold – the adrenaline releasing. I’d had this experience many times before: the thrill of the chase, a sickening lurch into nausea before my prey committed herself to the act. To speed up the transition, I slid my shorts down – leaving them just below the base of my stem, so the elastic could gather my balls into a bulging knot, slightly uncomfortable, but I liked the feeling of pressure, like a lover's firm embrace. I also gripped myself more firmly, feeling the heat within the tube of my encircling hand.

Now I began to tease my uncut skin up and down, exposing then covering my tip, pulling at its tautness, increasing the tension. I could smell the cum from earlier on that had gathered beneath the foreskin; it turned me on more. I began to imagine Sheila naked. I’d never seen her nude, but my knowledge of her form felt complete from all the times I’d studied her up close, and from the tactile memories of that one night together.

I closed my eyes: the gorgeous combination of her full, round breasts and their firmness; her full pink lips, sucking mine into her mouth and between her perfect white teeth; that mouth closing over my cock for the first time as I’d spurted what seemed like a lifetime of cum into the air, her eyes gleaming in the lamplight as they stared knowingly up into mine; the searing heat of her pussy as I’d slid into her; the firmness of her cold buttocks in my hands, as I’d lifted her up, and then allowed her to sink down, fully, onto my shaft…

A ping interrupted me. I opened my eyes. My God: she’d added me.

That cold rush again. I drank all the whiskey in one gulp.

I should do anything but this, anything but this, anything at all, but not this. She’s broken; you can only hurt her. Back away, now. Log out. Shut down.

But her needs, and my own, were tangled with the whiskey, and moral judgment was slipping down the agenda. Those words ran through my addled mind:

…I’m naked and wet and so horny it literally hurts… a f-ucking void, a emptyness … I just need it filled…so bad…

(Me too, Sheila. I need to be filled. With something other than this pain.)

…I want you to touch me. I always wanted you to touch me.


I took a deep breath, brought my hands back together at the keyboard, clicked to open a chat window, and then breathed out slowly. As if calmly. The tension inside my body did not dissipate, though, and I found myself rocking my hips beneath the heavy duvet as I awaited her response, imagining as I slid against the bedding the folds of her beautiful form into which I might slip. That form which, I suddenly realised (muting my own camera - she’d be reading, not seeing me… at least for now), I was probably about to see for the first time in a decade.

I’m here.

I typed again:

What do you need?

A chat request. I stared at it—the blinking little icon taunting me, maybe even judging me for what I was inevitably about to do.

I turned and looked at the bedroom door. Chances were if Steven came home, he’d just sleep downstairs. My eyes shifted from the laptop to the door and back again, like I was following a tennis match. Finally, I got up and turned the lock.

I locked my husband out of our bedroom. Somehow, that actually seemed minor considering the rest of my actions tonight. But that didn’t mean I was going to stop. I couldn’t stop. Not when it came to Will…

I made sure my camera was off—for now—and clicked into the chat.

He’d written to me: I’m here. What do you need?

Something. Anything. Everything. I didn’t know. What a loaded question… And there were so many ways to answer it. And there was no answer for it. My brain was swimming and I was getting sentimental—something I tried to never do, not anymore.

I started typing:

I don’t know. I don’t feel like I know anything anymore. I need to feel wanted, to fell sexy, to feel like somebody gives a shit, to fele satisfied, to feel crammed full of a hard cock, to fell a orgasm that I don’t give meself or fake, to feel happy, to feel content, to fell love for somebody else and to feel like they love me back, to stop living a lie every goddamn day. I need a bunch of stuff that nobody gets in reel life.

I paused, staring at the screen and waiting for his reply to my whiney tirade. Then I typed again:

What do you need Willy?

What do I want?

To save you. To rescue you. To do what I couldn't do with Em.

Well, I want to help you... I began typing.

Boy, that sounded lame. I deleted. I tried again. This time worked a little better.

I can read your pain. It's like a untended wound, angry and raw. I know you bear scars from our time together, but I can also tell you've changed, or been changed, profoundly during the last ten years. I want to make amends for the scar... but I also want to help you with the new wounds.

I want to dress them, caress their edges, help you heal them, make you whole. I hate reading that you do not feel loved, or that anybody gives a shit. How can that possibly be true? Sheila, I can tell you need a bunch of support and love, and you say we never achieve happiness in real life, but we do - fleetingly. It tears me inside that you've lost sight of that. We experienced one of those fleeting glimpses of joy once, together. It was the brightest spark in the darkest time of my life. I see that now. Have you read the final chapter of the book? "My character" revisits the events of the first, but tenderly, not sexually, and realises that none of it was his lover's fault, or his fault - his wife's death was beyond his control, his guilt was his grief, and he opens himself to the world again. We can all do that. With a little help. I want you to feel joy again.

I was rambling. And this was far from sexy, even taking into account that emotions are the centre of anything vaguely erotic for many women, and certainly for Sheila, as I remembered her. Rambling, however - no, probably not.

So I went for broke.

But you don't need to read the final chapter. I'll do it for you. I'm in your home town in a fortnight. Come to my reading. Afterwards, we can have dinner. I can try to be your friend again. I can help you. If you like.

Now, onto that other bunch of topics...

Meanwhile, there are some more urgent needs that, perhaps, we could consider addressing right now? I wish you could see what's under my duvet here. I mean, you could, if I turned on my webcam, couldn't you Do you remember how hard I get, how you can't bend my cock more than 90 degrees down from my body, how that feels when it hits you deep inside... But have you ever used a cam for this? I haven't. But if you want me to, I will.

I can't cram you full with it, of course... although, God, how I'd love to. I haven't been with a woman for over a year now. 402 days, to be precise. Before that, nothing but one-night nothings.

And, of course, if you have an orgasm - and boy, do you sound like you need one - then you'll have to do it mainly by yourself. But perhaps I could help? Perhaps then it wouldn't feel quite so lonely, so bleak? I know it wouldn't for me.

Then, after we've dealt with that, maybe we can move on to bigger things next time. Over dinner; we can email in between. So orgasm first, existentialism second. What do you say?

I positioned my laptop so it was lying on the pillow next to mine, as if it were a lover turning her head to face me. As if it were her. I tried not to feel silly, and lay down next to it, framing my face in close up, and then turned the camera to broadcast.

Now she could see me, hear me, as if I was lying right there with her. Hopefully, I didn't look too dreadful. Although it's probably just as well she couldn't smell me too... unless she'd gotten into the whole musk, whisky and curry cologne.

So, I said to her, on cam, so she could see and hear it: What do you say?

And then...

You know, you used to enjoy my stories, I remember... the ones we made up on the spur of the moment, lying in the grass by the river, over lunch, in the sun. I smiled... hopefully in a non-creepy way. Just thinking back made me smile.

So how about I tell you one now, and you lie back, relax, and enjoy yourself... um, in kinda anyway you see fit? Cam optional, although a signal you're alive and having fun, now and again, would be just great.

That was it. I'd given her my best shot. I was trying so hard to be good, to go against the dark torrents of emotion raging through me, it was killing me. I wanted to delete that last five minutes, to send a complete alternative, to make her do everything I needed to see her, someone do, right there and then. To show I could still have some impact on someone real, and not just empty cyphers on a page.

But her camera was not on. The chat dialogue box? Silent too.

She's gone, I told myself. You put yourself out there, but she's gone. Or maybe she's just powdering her nose? I smiled my Harrison Ford half-smile for the camera.

Sheila? How about it? Once upon a time?

I read every line of chat text as it popped up, feeling like a fool.

Will could “read my pain” and wanted to “make amends.” I shook my head, getting angry again.

I typed: I’m drunk. The puthetic whining is the tequilla talking. Forget it.

But he was on a roll, sending lines of text as fast as my fuzzy brain could read them and I forgot to push send.

He wanted to “make me whole” and thought I needed “a bunch of love and support.” Wasn’t that just fucking fantastic? All of a sudden—after all these years, he could read a few drunken messages from me and psychoanalyze me and declare himself worthy of fixing me?

I realized I’d never sent my last message. I deleted it and typed: What is this? A internvention? I dont need help from you unless you want too com over here and fuck me. I didn’t hit send for that one either though.

Will was still going. Didn’t know when to shut up. Thought since he was a writer, he could just fill the chat box with all this crap and I’d think it was meaningful or something. Now I was tearing him up inside… So what? I was supposed to feel sorry for him?

We experienced one of those fleeting glimpses of joy once, together. It was the brightest spark in the darkest time of my life.

“Bastard,” I muttered. Saying the words was so much easier than typing them. Typing was just way too hard. Reading was hard enough. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I verbally replied to his rapidly appearing text anyway. “You fucking walked away from me. You wouldn’t return my calls the next day. You barely spoke to me in the office when you finally showed your face. You just walked in, resigned, said we’d made a mistake, and walked away.”

Away from me and back to Emma-Louise. Always back to Emma-Louise.

“If I was such a fucking bright spark then why did you go back to the dark, Will? Explain that one. You took my bright spark with you when you left me standing there alone.”

He wanted to help me feel joy again?! My hand shook with fury as I deleted my unsent line about the intervention. I typed: Who the fuck do you think you are Will Schumann? And let the cursor hover over the send button.

Jesus H. Christ. He was still typing in a steady stream. Didn’t he know I was drunk? I was pretty sure I’d told him. How was I supposed to keep up with this?

I'm in your home town in a fortnight. Come to my reading.

My world tilted. And this time the tequila had nothing to do with it. Here. He was coming here. In two weeks. I didn’t realize I was backing away from the computer until I nearly fell off the bed. Grabbing the bedspread to steady myself, I saw his next lines.

We can have dinner. I can try to be your friend again.

Will was coming here and he wanted to see me, to have dinner with me. He wanted to be my friend. No, to “try” to be my friend. Hadn’t that always been our problem? “Trying” to be friends, when what we’d both wanted—at least what I’d wanted—was so much more than platonic friendship.

I got off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. I needed to pee and scrub my face with ice cold water. What had I started with just one friend request? And had I known, somewhere in the back of my mind, when I sent that request, that I wasn’t really asking for just friendship?

The cold water I doused my face with gave me shivers, and when I glanced at myself in the full length mirror mounted on the bathroom door, I stopped to stare. My nipples were hard with cold and arousal. My pale, freckle-splashed skin stood out in stark contrast to the rich red and brown décor in the room. I turned sideways and looked at my profile. I didn’t have the tight twenty-something body I’d had when I knew Will before, but then, he’d never seen my naked body. I still looked pretty good. Slender. Toned. My breasts weren’t quite as perky as they once were, and my ass wasn’t quite as high…

Was I sexy? I didn’t really know. Steven didn’t seem to think so—at least not any more. I didn’t necessarily feel sexy right now as much as I felt the need for sex. I cupped my breasts and pulled on the nipples. Damn tequila. I was going to have to masturbate in order to fall asleep.

I glanced in the bedroom where my laptop waited on the bed. Going back in there meant facing the fact that Will was coming here and had asked me to dinner. Last time, he was married. This time, I was married. What good could come from this? The heartache had ripped my soul apart all those years ago. Did I really want to set myself up to feel that pain again?

I heard something, words I couldn’t make out. A man’s voice. Steven. He was home. Would he know what I’d been doing? Would he try to get in the bedroom and realize I’d locked the door? Would he even care? Tentatively, I moved through the bedroom, heading toward the door. Wait. That wasn’t Steven.

It was Will, talking to me on my computer. His voice… It took me back ten years, just hearing it. I pressed a hand over my heart and blinked back the sting of tears that came out of nowhere just at the sound of his voice. He was talking about stories and how we used to make them up together. So many memories I’d forced myself to lock away were creeping out and filling my mind.

I didn’t want to think about those times. Not now. Not ever. It hurt too much.

On screen, Will was obviously laying in bed. He’d positioned his webcam so I could only see his face and shoulders resting on his pillow. He grinned at me. Once, that grin had been my undoing.

“So how about I tell you one now,” he asked. “And you lie back, relax, and enjoy yourself... um, in kinda anyway you see fit? Cam optional, although a signal you're alive and having fun, now and again, would be just great.”

Oh, God… That face. That voice. They drew me in, just like they always had. I was back on the bed tracing the outline of his face on my computer screen within seconds.

“Sheila? How about it? Once upon a time?”

I was already in too far. I had been from the first few messages we’d exchanged. Heartrending pain or not, I was going down this road. Consequences be damned.

I moved my computer to the head of the bed, propping it up on Steven’s pillow. Then I mimicked Will’s position, laying back and focusing the camera on just my face and shoulders.

He was going to see me drunk, without makeup, without clothes—even though I wasn’t showing my body. Based on the conversation we’d had thus far via message and chat, he’d already seen a large part of my bare soul. Normally, I wouldn’t let anybody see me like this. Not even my husband. But Will had always been the exception to all my rules.

With a deep breath, I turned the cam on and looked him in the eye.

“Okay, Will. Tell me a story.”

And here she is.

Intake of breath. Heart galloping. Sting in my eyes... what? Tears? I smile, and one rolls down my cheek. How can you miss someone so much but only know it when you see their face?

Hey, I just about manage. And the truth: It's so fucking good to see you.

She looks away from her screen. I can see she's trying not to lose it. I feel the same way. This is... overpowering.

Shelia? Shelia?

She looks back. A longer, steady look. I can see her face. Puffy eyed. Harder than I remembered. But, God, how beautifully put together. She'd grown into her beauty, and then some.

You want to just... quit it?

Quick shaking of head. Two shakes. Finality.

OK. There are... thousands of things I want to say to you. Another time though. For now, I just want you to lie back, relax, have fun - she grins a little, and it's like day break after a cold, sleepless night - and enjoy. I just want to see your face... as you, well...

I chuckle to myself, and to her. Seriousness, Will. Tell a story. It's what you're meant to be good at, for God's sake.

Once upon a time, there was a princess.

And boy, was she ugly. I mean: titanic ugliness. She was so grotesque to look at that the schmuck of a handsome prince who'd married her - well, I say married, but truth be told he'd actually won her in a game of cards. He was still pissed about that. He'd wanted the horse. Anyway, he was so revolted, that he'd locked her up in the highest tower of his castle and thrown away the key.

She was laughing in all the right places. All good so far. Her face relaxed a little more every time she laughed. I was smiling too.

Yet once upon another time, he'd been quite the babe: a real hot Dame. The guy who'd lost her at cards, though, had been more into gambling, booze and - let's be blunt - the sheep in his kingdom, so he'd isolated and ignored her. He's abandoned her at home, alone, with nothing to do but, you know, sew tapestries and shit. Which palls after the first hundred or so feet, let me tell you. And the less people looked at her, the less beautiful she was. At first, she merely became pretty. Later, she was bordering on plain. Then she slid into ignorable. Finally, she became a disgrace. That was when she was lost in the card game and locked in the tower. Everyone agreed, it was probably for the best. Except a few militant feminists, but the Prince had them burned at the stake.

Everyone thought it, that is, but the feminists and the princess. She didn't like it at all. But she also had a secret.

All those years alone and ignored had given her ample time to develop a special skill. She was a sorceress. There was a dusty book under the bed, propping up one post. It contained spells. And some nice pictures of dragons. And she had discovered that, alone in her tower, she could create a special set of circumstances which, if everything went just right, would not only turn her back into a hot babe again - they would release her altogether and send her flying out of the window, as pure spirit.

Into freedom.

There was a lot of preparation involved, and all her bids thus far had failed. But she'd fasted, and she'd meditated, and one dark night, she was ready to try it again. So she'd uttered the ancient incantations. And a few new ones she'd made up for fun, because, well, you never knew, it might help. And she'd knelt upright in the middle of her four poster bed, naked as the day she was born, and she'd chanted, and swayed, and conjured up the spirits of the wind, the moon and the air. She'd asked the air to warm things up a bit, as it was getting rather nippy in the tower. Duly obliged, she began the final part of the spell. It could only be completed with an orgasm. And not just any orgasm. The kind that threatens to tear your body in two from tip to toe, releasing your pure spirit into the air. Remaking you.

She'd not quite made that happen the last dozen or so times she'd tried this, but at least she was having fun trying.

So she took a deep breath, let it slide out, the vapour tracing steam as it passed from her body into the still night air, and she began.

As she always liked to begin, she opened the practical phase of the spell by gently tracing a path from the underside of her chin down, past the nape of her neck, parting to slip down her breasts, brushing against the granite of her nipples - the air was warmer, yet they weren't getting any smaller - and then to her belly, and the top of the fuzz of her hair, and off into the air...

Then back up again, a little more pressure this time, her finger nails grazing here and there on her belly, and her index finger nails catching the tip of her painfully hard nipples, lingering, before they went up to her neck and on into her hair, where she massaged her scalp and temples, her breasts rising high as her elbows passed her shoulders.

She then began the journey again... but this time, she sucked the first two fingers of each hand as they passed her unctuous lips.

Wet and shiny in the moonlight, she drew slippery moons around the puckering edges of her welts, using her thumb and fingers, kneading the goo to the tips, pinching them harder with each pass, making them blush white and then flush red again... and ringing with pleasure as the saliva cooled and lifted from her, like a mist of silk. The first gasp escaped her mouth, which was becoming dry now... where would she get more liquid from to carry on the spell?

Her fingers, regretfully, began to drift lower again, over the curve of her belly's smooth hump and beyond...

In the mirror, she'd already lost ten years.

I paused, and admired my handiwork. Hmm. Ten years indeed.

I couldn’t speak. I knew if I tried, I’d break down and cry like a baby, especially after seeing that tear go down his cheek. I wanted to tell him that it was good to see him too, that I had things to tell him, that I had missed him so much… But all I could do was shake or nod my head and stare, transfixed by his face as he started his story.

He wanted to watch my face while I listened to his voice and touched myself. Somehow that seemed more intimate than if I had angled the camera straight at my breasts or between my legs. I agreed to it though, and I laid there with my hands folded on my belly as his story floated out of my computer’s speakers.

His voice made me happy in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time, years and years. There was a lightness inside me as I laughed at this ugly princess and the unlucky prince who’d won her in a card game. Only Will could come up with crazy shit like that. I loved it.

As much as I loved looking at his face while he talked, my eyes drifted closed and I pictured this trapped woman practicing her sorcery skills in her tower. Will’s voice relaxed me, and I sighed and smiled as I listened.

The princess needed an orgasm. Now didn’t that sound familiar? In my mind, I became that trapped princess. My hands slid over my body, from my neck to my breasts to my mound. I lightly scratched with my fingernails and gooseflesh broke out over my arms and legs. With a sigh, I ran my fingers through my hair and arched my neck.

I reveled in my own touch, but I was still aware that Will was on the other side of my computer screen. That he was watching me while he talked. He couldn’t see me touch my body, but he could see me touch my head and face so I slowed down and emphasized every movement. I breathed in deeply as I lightly tugged on my soft blonde streaked hair and I parted my lips and exhaled slowly when I moved my hands back down to my neck.

Just knowing he was watching got my heart racing. I licked my lips when he talked about the princess sucking her fingers. Then I had to laugh softly. Unctuous? What the hell did that even mean? I licked first one index finger, then the other, before taking one into my mouth. I laved it with my tongue up to the second joint and slid it around inside my mouth like a sweet, sugary sucker. When I pulled it out, I traced my lower lip with my wet fingernail before repeating the whole show with the other finger.

I started it to make Will hot. Sucking my own fingers wasn’t typically part of my masturbatory experience, but surprisingly, it was turning me on. Eyes closed, I squirmed on the sheets, wiggled my hips, and resisted the urge to forsake the rest of the story and slide a hand between my legs right then.

The princess was pinching her nipples, so I moved my hands to my breasts. Cupping and squeezing them, I moaned a little. They were extremely sensitive. I’d been aroused for a while now, after all. I pinched my nipples, pulled them, lifting my breasts up and away from my body. A sizzling sensation went straight from my nipples to my womb. I whimpered a little, wishing I didn’t have to do this to myself, wishing it was Will’s hands on my body, Will’s mouth on my breasts.

With one hand, I kept tweaking my nipples, more gently now. I slid the other down over my belly, down, down, between my legs. I was so wet. My fingers delved into the moisture and lightly circled my clit. God it felt good.

I didn’t know how long it had been since Will stopped talking, but I suddenly realized the speakers were silent. I licked my lips and looked at the screen. “What’s wrong? Why’d you stop?”

I was smiling. As soon as she saw that, she relaxed. I was also, if she looked carefully, moving a little on screen, as the bed jiggled in response to the attention I'd begun giving my achingly hard cock in response to Sheila's masturbation. She was incredible. The moans, the little gasps, the sight of her face, contorting with the building pleasure. I'd stopped speaking a few moments ago, but she was on a roll. I guessed she'd begun touching her pussy, as the furrows of her frown had deepened in response to needs ploughing deeper and deeper.

Just admiring the sights and sounds. Now, where were we...

The arrow of her index and middle fingers parted her hairs as they slid down across her mound. She began to breathe harder as they found the tip of her slit. Here the fingers parted, one to the left, the other to the right of her bulging rose. She held her breath, pressing hard as she slid down, then back up on either side, then brought the fingers together so they pushed her clit into a hot, sticky bunch... at which point, she knew she'd released all the necessary juices - she could feel one drip slithering down her inner thigh. Which was now almost entirely devoid of cellulite. What a spell.

So her fingers slid slowly lower, and she allowed her knees to spread further apart on the bed, eased by the silk of the crimson sheets on which she was writhing. The cold air greeted her, and she could feel it seeking to enter her, like a spirit... The key to the spell would be realising that potential... turning air into steel.

Her other hand was teasing her stiff and sore nipples, marvelling at the way - after each elongation, pulling it up and away from her body until it had risen fully - that each time, her breasts were springing back into a firmer, perkier state. She squeezed one hard now, her nails digging in to leave red scratch marks, as her other fingers entered her sopping hole. Two slid in, up to the first knuckle and then the second and beyond with ease, such was her state of arousal. She brought them up to her lips and sucked them, tasting her spirit. The tang of life. Then she did the same again, using three fingers this time to penetrate, before bringing those juices up to her upright, now gorgeous breasts. She circled the nipples more frantically, and as her juices made contact with them, she felt a jolt pass from them down to her core, back up her spine, and into her head, electrifying her. And also removing all the split ends.

Now both hands slid down across the subtle toned muscles of her belly and to the heart of the spell...

I stared at him, feeling a little empty despite being so aroused. I loved that we were talking, that he was telling me a story, that he was part of something giving me pleasure. But it wasn’t the real thing. My hands weren’t his hands.

But Will smiled at me and said, Just admiring the sights and sounds.

I’m pretty sure I blushed, or I would have if my face hadn’t already been flushed with desire. The sounds. I’d never been especially loud during sex. Circumstances always seemed to prevent it. Thin walls and roommates when I was college age and first discovering sex. A public alley when I’d been with Will. Steven’s whispered shushes early in our relationship—I caught on fast and choked back any verbal responses.

Would Will like it if I was a little more expressive? Would I?

He’d started the story again. The very wet princess had juices trickling down her thighs. I might not be quite at that point, but I was wet enough. I sighed as I dipped two fingers into my wetness and began to caress my outer lips, parting my opening, but not sliding inside or touching my clit. Not yet.

With my free hand, I squeezed my breasts, mimicked the princess, and pulled my nipples hard. I whimpered and arched my back. Trying to listen and do this at the same time was so hard… Will’s words or my hands kept distracting my mind. But then he said she sucked her own juices from her fingers.

The image stuck me as so incredibly erotic, I let out a low, “Ohhhh…” and the muscles low in my belly contracted involuntarily. I tilted my hips up and eased two fingers inside me, rubbing my walls. Then I brought those glistening fingers to my lips, into my mouth.

I sucked them, swirling my tongue around them, tasting the salty sweetness of me. I imagined they were Will’s fingers. Or even better, Will’s cock, and I sucked harder, getting wilder with need. I grasped a breast hard, hard enough to leave red marks and I rocked my hips upward off the mattress—seeking a connection with someone who wasn’t there.

I moaned in frustration, no longer listening to Will’s words but aware of his voice drifting over me. I wanted this. I wanted him. I slid both hands over my body, touching breasts, nipples, belly, thighs. My ragged breathing and pitiful sounds getting louder.

I plunged one hand between my legs and circled my swollen clit with the tip of my middle finger. My eyes clenched tight, I groaned when I felt the roller coaster drop sensation low in my tummy that indicated I was close. “Will,” I said, my voice strangled. “I’m not sure I can wait to find out what happens to the princess.”

What magic words to hear...

And so she said the magic word: Abracafuckingdabra.

Her thumbs, fingers, from both hands, enacted a filthy counterpoint all around her clit, as she watched the mist begin to form the shape she so desired. As she rubbed herself, feeling the hardness beneath the skin on either side now matching the stiffness of her tangled, fleshy heart, the vapour drew together, became a harder-edged object... long, cylindrical, about the width of one of her sturdy four poster bed posts. As it snaked through the air, just above the rumpled bed clothes, its head became a dome, gleaming white, like marble. Down its length, she could now see sinewy veins, like those standing out in her neck as she tensed, close to the orgasm she needed to break free.

It moved so slowly, coming within an inch of her gaping, soaked hole... Then it seemed to rear back a little - before...

It strikes. Like a viper, going in for the kill, into the burrow, to find its prey.

"Oh my liege, my big fucking liege", she gasped, as it lifted her clear off the bed, before slamming her onto her back, taking all her breath from her.

(Did she black out here for a few moments, in a blinding flash of ecstasy? Hard to say. But when she opened her eyes again, she noted that her cuticles were looking just fantastic.)

It snaked in and out, all muscle, twisting, frantic, fast, unbelievably good, and she noticed more cock-like wraiths now coming out of the mist on all sides, some dripping ice-cold and burning drips of essence onto her nipples before smearing it onto her breasts, which were jolting with each thrust of the main perpetrator. Others slid under her armpits and between her legs, pinning her down, holding her in place. Two more slid from either side of her head, and began nudging at her mouth. Another branched off of the main event - looking at her, winking maybe? - before ducking below and, by the Gods, smearing tingly goo around the tightness of her other hole.

She knew she would come, like a volcano, as soon as these other cocks struck and the one inside her, which was bulging to impossible size, burst, filling her with the light that would turn her into spirit and send her out of the tower... She closed her eyes, and prepared to give herself... Any second now...

I really didn’t even know what he was saying. Something about ghostly cocks, something about great cuticles. I didn’t care much anymore because I was so close and the electric hum in my veins felt so good.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this wet, this turned on. But God, I wished I wasn’t alone, that it was Will’s hand instead of mine between my legs. But I’d use what I had—what other choice was there?

I alternated between pumping two fingers in and out of me, and then dragging those two fingers up to my clit to rub hard and slow. The sensations that hit me when I pulled my fingers out and touched my clit were such a contradiction. I was hot, but I had chills. My heart raced, but my movements were slow.

I tossed my head on the pillow and rubbed just a little harder, just a little faster. My breath came in pants. My stomach muscles tightened. Then my mouth opened in a silent scream. Was it silent? I wasn’t sure…

I convulsed from the inside out, waves of pleasure pulsing through me. And I had a vision. Orgasmic visions—such a weird thing, but it had happened before. A time or two in college. And that one time with Will. Even a couple of times early in my relationship with Steven. Only with men I loved, or thought I loved. Only with the most intense sexual experiences. But it had happened.

At that moment, the tipping point where the pleasure is too much and it explodes, scenes or pictures flash through my mind while the electric sensations flash through my body. It might be something beautiful—a waterfall or flower, something erotic—a kiss or a nude, or something completely irrational and unrelated—a storefront or an image of my bathroom sink. But this time it was memory. Sweet, beautiful, and irrational memory.

Will laying papers on my desk. Will grinning at me from across the copy machine. Will handing me a cup of coffee. Will on a park bench. Will chewing on a pencil. Will…Will…Will. Images stored in my mind that I’d had no recollection of until that moment. And I treasured them for the precious few seconds they were there until they faded with the orgasm and left me staring at the black backs of my eyelids.

I couldn’t hear Will’s voice anymore. Apparently, the story was over. I also couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes and look at the screen. Because that would be facing, at least on some level, what I’d just done. While Will was on the other end of a computer connection, he was still here, in bed with me, having a sexual experience. Therefore, I had just cheated on my husband.

The scream overdrove my laptop speakers. I was surprised it didn't dim the apartment lights.

Is there anything more erotic than a woman's face as she comes? The pain; the surprise; the baring of need, and so much more? Just for a second, all is there. The soul aflame.

She'd moved in and out of shot as she'd writhed and worked herself harder. When Sheila came, from her webcam's immobile point of view, it looked as if she'd suddenly been lifted clean off the bed. Then she fell back into shot, and my speakers nearly buckled at the vocal accompaniment. This was also an erotic sound, but something in it...

Something in the whole experience was off. I'd been tugging away as I watched her. My own private show. But as she became more and more embroiled in her own actions, and just when I should have become more and more excited myself, I felt the peculiar sensation of my cock, so near to ejaculation, changing its mind. Usually, it's the other way around: the mind is unwilling, the flesh is raring to go. This was different. It shrank in my hand as her orgasm grew. By the time she'd come, I was nothing. Reset. Back to page 1.

She had her face turned away from the screen, and the camera. The ruby rush around her neck told one story; her face askance told another. I could tell - how? a tilt of her face? the angle of a neck? - that she was hurting. That she was torn. Victorious, yes. But more. Or rather less.

Hey, I whispered quietly. Then a little louder: Hey.

You just woke my neighbours up. It's OK. I hate them anyway. And now I need new speakers for my laptop. Small price to pay.

Silence. She was still, though, listening. This is it, I thought: she's going to close her laptop and shut me out. My stomach tightened, cold and sickened.

Sheila? Hey? You... still there? To my astonishment, in the stillness that followed, I was biting my lip.

Across the street, ambulance sirens wailed laments for the fallen.

I opened my eyes at the sound of his voice, but I still didn’t face the screen. My heart thumped hard in my chest, and it didn’t have anything to do with arousal anymore. Shame. Embarrassment. Anger. Disappointment even. But the arousal that had so enflamed me for the whole evening was thoroughly doused.

Sheila? Hey? You… still there?

I turned my head and looked at him. His faced seemed… pinched, worried, uncertain. He was chewing on his bottom lip—a gesture unfamiliar to me. When I’d known him before he was all confidence and strong body language. Even when he bared his soul to me, on the outside, he looked strong, unshakable.

What the hell was I doing? I didn’t even know this man anymore. Maybe I’d never known him.

I’m here.

I didn’t know what else to say. What was the proper conversation for post-adulterous cybersex? I flashed back to the alley where we’d had our first sexual encounter all those years ago. This same awkward silence had pervaded the aftermath then too.

Apparently, today was all about memories. Because I was suddenly struck with the image of sitting in a work conference room with Will. It was one of the first real conversations the two of us ever had. He’d asked me why I went into business and what my goals were and I told him I was going all the way to the top, but that unlike most CEO’s, my hands were going to be clean when I got there. No shady deals, no backstabbing, no lying, no cheating.

“You’re an idealist, Sheila,” he’d said with a crooked grin. “I like that. I hope you stay that way.”

Now, I’d made several lateral moves, company to company, but the cold hard truth was that I probably wasn’t going to get much higher than the position I currently held. I’d never admitted it out loud, but lately, I’d started to secretly admit it to myself. I didn’t hob-knob at the country club with the right people and many of the higher ups considered me too much of a ‘straight arrow’ and ‘conventional thinker.’ But as an arrow, I was so much more crooked than I’d ever imagined I’d be back when I had that conversation with Will in that conference room.

I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d done my share of professional shady deals and backstabbing. I’d told my half truths. And it wasn’t just professional. I’d done it in my personal life too. Wasn’t my whole initial affair with Will a shady deal? Not to mention what just happened. Didn’t I backstab Emma-Louise back then? Steven now?

Will had liked idealist Sheila. But she left my life a long, long time ago.

I guess I’ve been on both sides of it now, I finally said, glancing at the screen. I looked him dead in the eye. First, I was the other woman. Now, I’m the cheating married woman.

A thought struck me and I stiffened. I don't even know where my husband is. For all I know, he went off and killed himself. Like Emma Louise. Isn't that what happens when Will and I have an affair? I gave myself a mental shake. I knew it wasn't true. Steven wasn't mentally unstable. He was just pissed off at me--with good reason. Emma Louise had been depressed for years. My actions didn't bring about her suicide. I knew that. I did. But my actions weren't without consequences either. I knew that too.

I’m not who you think I am, Will. I'm not the Sheila you used to know. Not even close.

And now she is gone.

The window from Sheila went black. The sound died. She'd left me on my own.

(...the cheating married woman...)

I got out of bed, adjusted my underwear, and leaned against the cold black glass of the window frame. Outside, the ambulances had stilled, but it was not quiet. A couple, the woman careening and drunk, were arguing outside the side exit to the ER. She had blood stains down her top. It was not clear to whom the blood belonged. The guy, I'd bet.

Emma-Louise suddenly flooded my thoughts. This had happened before. I'd had my share of - no polite way to put this - groupies when promoting my novel. Willowy, intense fuck ups, for the most part, barely adequate in bed. I had fucked them like ghosts - as if they were not really there. And I had felt nothing after those encounters. No remorse. No pain. No guilt.

Now, I felt intense guilt. You never quite escape grief. You think you've turned a corner when there it is, standing on the sidewalk, plain as day, nodding grimly to you again. But this was the first time I felt a resurgence of the pain I'd felt when, in my frantic, muddled head, I added 2+2 (me plus Sheila) and came up with 5 (made Em die). But that was not all.

Mixed with it - surely not? Wormy nerves balling in my stomach. Sickening. Guilt - and, unmistakably, the disgusting early stirrings of love.

(...not even close...)

I pulled on a sweater, suddenly chilly. I sat back in bed and opened Facebook. I typed quickly.

The title of the message: "Never Again?"

Don't go. Don't leave it like this.

I've loved two people in my adult life. One is now dead. I don't want you to leave me too.

I accept I do not know you. You need to accept that I do, in ways that matter still. I felt that tonight. I feel it right now. But I want to know more.

Not online though. At least, not like tonight. WONDERFUL though it was. (You coming... my new favourite symphony.)

Mail me. Tell me more. I'll be in your town - you know that already.

Then, after we've written, if you think we have nothing to say to each other, I'll cancel the trip entirely.

But if you want me to be part of your life, in any capacity, I'll come and stay over in a hotel with a great restaurant. And an even better bar.

I miss you, it turns out.

Dammit. Don't go.

I read it back to myself. My eyes stung a little. I ignored them, proofed, and hit send.

Six days later, she replied.

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END OF PART ONE
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