Chapter 1: The Ruined Bed (Present Day)

I sat on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, and the tears would not stop. The room smelled like sex. Not the soft, careful sex Nick and I have when the lights are low, and I try to keep my voice down. This was heavier and was a mixture of sweat and skin and the sharp, unmistakable scent of semen left in the open air too long. The mattress was crooked, and the sheets were half off and twisted. The headboard had banged into the wall hard enough to dent the paint, and I was at a loss for what to do about it. My nightgown was bunched around my waist, and my thighs were sticky. I could feel the wetness leaking between my legs every time I shifted, and I hated that I noticed it. I hated that some part of me kept noticing it.

Nick was downstairs in the spare room where we had left him last night. That was the only good thing about the night; he at least hadn’t seen or heard what had happened. Ryan had helped me get him there after he passed out, and then Ryan had stayed to talk and tried to comfort me, or at least that is what I had thought when we had moved back into the living room. I had told myself that we would talk and then he would leave. Instead, he had kissed me, and then I had ended up underneath him on the couch, and then on my marital bed and finally on my knees in our kitchen this morning with his cock in my mouth while Nick slept twenty feet away. I had swallowed when he told me to, and I am not sure why. I had never swallowed for Nick. Not once in twelve years. Ryan’s taste was still on my tongue. Bitter. Thick. I had wiped my chin in the kitchen and walked upstairs as I could outrun it, and now I was sitting in the wreckage of our bed crying because I could not.