Tear You Apart Read online

  Upstairs, the metal door creaks and clangs shut, leaving behind only echoes and the faint, drifting scent of their smoke. Neither of us move. Will is supporting me, arms around me, his face pressed against my skin. We breathe and breathe, and finally, I have to move. I extract myself from him one limb at a time until I’m standing in front of him. Panties around my ankles, slickness coating my thighs, my clothes and hands filthy. I’ve left the marks of my fingers on his shoulders. I hold his face for a moment, forcing him to look into my eyes.

  We say nothing.

  By the time we’ve gathered our things and taken the stairs all the way down to the street, Will is making jokes that deflect attention from what we did in the warehouse. I’m quiet, looking out the window of the cab we share back toward the gallery, where I’ll get out and he’ll keep going. We have a history in cabs, I think, and wonder if he’ll kiss me again or if he’ll just keep pretending we don’t do that sort of thing.

  At the gallery, the driver stops and I pay him, but before I get out, I slide across the seat and take Will by the front of the shirt. Not hard, not grabbing. He could pull away, if he wants to. I offer my mouth without saying anything, just a tilt of my head, a parting of lips. I wait. Wait, wait, wait.

  And then, just before it would become awkward even for the cabbie, Will leans in to brush his mouth across mine. It’s a sweet kiss, brief and perfect and exactly what I wanted. I smile into it. He smiles back.

  “Talk to you later,” I tell him. Not a request.

  I get out of the cab and don’t look back to see if he’s watching me from the window, but I figure he probably is. Inside, I head for my office, avoiding Naveen, who is tied up with some clients, anyway. At least until he comes to find me and I’m busy doing my best not to fiddle with my hair, which I’m sure is just-fucked messy, or my lipstick, which is just-been-kissed smeared.

  “Hi.” I’m casual.

  Naveen isn’t paying attention. He hands me a stack of invoices and folders, sending receipts fluttering to the floor like errant butterflies. He’s blathering on and on about some sort of show he wants to put on at the end of the year, how the gallery will need to be redesigned to accommodate some bigger pieces, blah, blah, blah.

  He stops almost in the middle of a sentence I’m not really paying attention to, because I’m so busy reliving the feeling of Will entering me. Startled, I realize Naveen’s asked me a question. “Huh?”

  Not a question, though he’s looking at me expectantly, as though I’m supposed to provide an answer. “Next week. On Thursday.”

  If I ask him to repeat himself, he’s going to be pissed off, and also wonder why I wasn’t paying attention, which could ultimately circle around to why I’m distracted, a subject I want to avoid. “Thursday is probably...fine?”

  “So you think I should see her.”

  I get it now. “Oh, Naveen. You have to ask me that?”

  “Yeah. I should tell her to fuck herself.”

  I roll my eyes. “Shut up.”

  He looks distraught, running a hand through his hair to mess it up, then smooth it. “She said she has something to tell me. Something important.”

  “Well,” I say slowly, understanding now why he’s so nervous, because it’s about that woman he told me he was in love with, and not some random bang, “I guess you just have to be prepared for what she might say. What do you think it could be?”

  “She’s leaving her husband,” he says confidently.

  “Would that be a good thing for you?”

  His mouth works. He shrugs then. “No. I don’t know.” He gives me the old, helpless look that used to melt me. “What do I do?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I had an answer for you.”

  He sighs, shoulders lifting. “Fuck, it’s so complicated.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That. Twice.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We talk every day.

  A call in the morning if I’m on my way to work at the Philadelphia office, maybe a video chat if I’m working from home. If I’m going in to the New York gallery, we meet for lunch, and mostly, just eat lunch. We talk again on my train ride home, and those couple hours are never long enough.

  We talk, and talk and talk. About everything from alien abduction to the zombpocalypse—I’m uncertain about the former and adamantly opposed to the viability of the latter, while Will’s a believer in all of it, including Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster. On the existence of God we are both torn.

  We message each other throughout the day. Silly quotes. Commentary on whatever it is we’re doing. He sends me pictures of what he’s working on and I reciprocate, though of course his are always artistic and beautiful and mine are stupid, out-of-focus snapshots. I have an entire gallery of the work he sends me, hidden in a folder on my phone.

  He makes me laugh.

  Oh, God, how he makes me laugh.

  He tells me the dumbest jokes, or subtly imitates the lady on the bus with the shopping bag or the guy behind the counter at the corner grocery—never unkind, never mocking, just perfect mirroring of gestures and phrases. He replays them for me late at night in front of the computer while we sneak in a video chat, and I have to be quiet so as not to alert Ross, sleeping in the room down the hall. I hold both hands over my mouth and laugh, and laugh and laugh until my sides are sore.

  And then...there is nothing.

  I wait for my early morning message, and when the hours pass without one, I start to wait for the lunchtime invitation. When that doesn’t come, I break down and call, leaving a short message on his voice mail when he doesn’t answer. Just before I go home for the day, I send another instant message. Ignored.

  At home, I find dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter, a pile of laundry by the washer and the sounds of the television coming from the den. That’s where I find my husband, firmly ensconced in his favorite recliner with a beer in one hand and some kind of sports on the big screen.

  Maria will clean the kitchen, of course, if I decide to live in filth and leave it for her when she comes in a few days. That’s why we hired her. That is why my husband thinks it’s perfectly okay to live in our house like it’s a hotel. But I don’t want to live this way, housekeeper or not, so I pull out a dishcloth from the drawer and attack the counters as if they’ve done me wrong.

  I’m not hungry, but I make myself a bowl of soup, anyway. I eat it at the counter with my silent phone next to me. It refuses to buzz or beep or chirp. I refuse to look at it.

  Later in bed, Ross rolls over, groping expectantly. He doesn’t fumble. He knows just where and how to touch me, but I’m instantly tense, waiting for him to make it all go wrong. He doesn’t. He eases me into arousal even though I don’t want it. His fingers stroke and probe, and his mouth finds places to tease. We find one of the tried-and-true positions, me on my back with him on his side. It should work. I’m wet, he’s hard, his fingers toy with my clit as he fucks into me...but it’s not working. He finishes, and I’m left with a vague sense of loss. That’s what this has become.

  Loss.

  Dozing, Ross sounds like a chain saw. His arms and legs are still tangled with mine. He’s sweaty. I need to pee. I cannot fall asleep this way, so I do what every wife learns to do—I shove him until he rolls off me, and mutter, “Turn on your side, you’re snoring.”

  He does, and I stare up at the ceiling for a few minutes before I manage to get out of bed and go to the bathroom in the dark. I wash my hands, also in the dark. I grip the sink while the water runs to cover up the sound of my sudden, gasping sobs.

  Back in bed, fully dressed, covers pulled to my chin, I cannot sleep.

  There used to be nights when Ross and I stayed up late talking. Not just in the beginning, when we were dating and everything was new and sweet, and staring into his face was as deliciou