Chapter 5: The Precipice

The weeks that followed were a blur of growing intimacy and barely restrained desire. Every day brought us closer to the inevitable collision I had planned since the moment I first saw her. I started with things that were simple and innocent, the first of which came about when I found out she didn’t know how to cook.

So, I taught her to cook simple things, a casserole, pasta with jarred sauce and garlic bread, and roasted vegetables with olive oil and salt. Having spent over a decade as a millionaire’s wife, I didn’t really know how to cook either, but I muddled through. I stood behind her at the stove, my breasts sometimes pressed against her back, my hands guiding hers as she stirred. My lips brushed her ear when I spoke to tell her when the water boiled or how to tell if the garlic was browned enough. She trembled every time, her breath catching in her throat, but she did not pull away. She leaned back into me, almost unconsciously, seeking my warmth, my presence, my guidance.

We talked constantly, about everything and nothing, sharing secrets like girls at a sleepover, except the tension between us was nothing like friendship. It was hunger, plain and simple, hunger that grew the more time we spent together, and every time we touched.

Every evening, we spent time kissing on the couch, but I wouldn’t let it progress any further. It was torture for me, at age thirty-two, but for an eighteen-year-old that still had so many hormones raging through her body, it must have been pure agony. I knew she wanted me to play with her breasts and nipples again, but she couldn’t find the courage to ask me.

I started driving her places in the Honda, the newly serviced air conditioning blasting cold air over our skin while the world outside baked in the Arkansas summer. We went to the library in Little Rock three times that first week, escaping into its climate-controlled silence that felt like another world. We would find a table in the back corner, near the window, and spread our books between us, our thighs touching under the table, our knees bumping as we shifted. She introduced me to her favorites: The Bell Jar, of course, but also others like Zora Neale Hurston and Kate Chopin. They were books about women who wanted too much and suffered for it, women who felt trapped by their circumstances and longed for escape.

I handed her Lolita on our second library visit, pressing it into her hands with a smile that felt dangerous even to me. I watched her face as she read the opening pages there at the table, her eyes widening, her breath quickening. She devoured it in two days and handed it back to me on our third visit, her cheeks flushed pink, saying only, “I think I understand why you like this,” her voice barely above a whisper. I smiled and said nothing, but I knew she was beginning to understand the appeal of the forbidden, the magnetic pull of what society said was wrong.

We also read together for hours in the living room of my trailer, not speaking, just sharing space, sharing breath, sharing the occasional glance that lasted too long to be innocent. Sometimes I would look up from my book to find her watching me, her eyes dark and unreadable, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and she would not look away. She would hold my gaze until I smiled, slow and certain, and then she would blush and return to her reading, but I could see her chest rising and falling faster than before.

Eventually, we had movie nights on my bed, the air conditioning blasting cold enough to require blankets even in late July. I bought half a dozen large, fluffy pillows that we would lean back against. I made sure to sit close, our thighs touching from hip to knee, and when I reached for the popcorn in her lap, I would accidentally brush her breast, my knuckles grazing her nipple through her thin tank top. I would apologize, make it a joke, laugh and say I was clumsy, and then do it again ten minutes later. She would blush and stammer, her face turning that delicious shade of red, but she never moved away. By the second week, she was leaning into my touches, her eyes dark when she looked at me, her body language screaming for more even if her words remained innocent.

One evening, two weeks into our friendship, we sat on my couch with whiskey-laced coffee, the bottle nearly empty on the table, the air conditioning still humming at sixty-eight degrees, making the trailer feel like a refrigerator. We were discussing The Bell Jar again, the book that had started everything, the book I had dropped at her feet what felt like ages ago, even though it had only been a few weeks.

“I feel like Esther sometimes,” Amelia said, her voice loose from the alcohol, her body relaxed against the couch cushions, her legs tucked under her, facing me. “Like I’m suffocating under the jar, and everyone is looking at me through the glass, but no one can hear me screaming. Like I’m trapped in this life that I didn’t choose, in this place where I don’t belong, and there’s no way out.”