Eva doesn’t immediately comment when I come into our living room and flip off the TV, silencing Pat Kiernan mid-word. She’s dressed in the sheer pink robe she wore the first night we were together. Her nipples show through as dark, sensual spots and the fabric rubs against them, frequently keeping them erect - even in contravention to serious, apparently unsexy moments. The first time she wore that robe for me, I’d just calculated the day and date I might make a pass at her without being a monster in the eyes of our mutual friends and determined that it wouldn’t come before she could find and fall in love with someone more appropriate. My wife is a beautiful woman and was no less so with tear-reddened eyes and wine-flushed cheeks.

The first time I saw her in that robe and saw how much of her it exposed, I took it as not just permission to be as monstrous as I desired, but a request to take the entire mantle of that monstrousness onto my own shoulders, absolving her of any shared responsibility for the sin we were about to commit against her lover and my oldest friend, his mortal remains barely cooled beneath tons of concrete less than a mile from where we betrayed him. When I kissed Eva on the balcony for the first time, I could still smell the ashes of Stephen’s murder on the air and imagine the metal-chemical tinge was jet fuel.

Eva presses a mug of fresh, hot coffee into my hand. “When do you think they’ll stop dedicating so much time to it every year?”

I sip the coffee. It’s prepared to my liking, a small sacrament of our life together. “Not next year certainly. Five is a magic number.”

“It’s so morbid, don’t you think?”

I know what she’s really saying. Morbid or not, it seems particularly sharp and cruel to remind the two of us that another year has passed. “I was thinking I might just seal myself away for the day.”

Eva is startled. “And do what?”

I haven’t thought that far ahead. Another sip of coffee gives me time to do so. “You could stay home too.”

Eva frowns. “I volunteered for the coat drive.”

With our history, she can’t imagine this would deter me. I step in close, wrap an arm around her waist, and kiss the crook of her neck. She shivers and wraps her arms around my chest, holding me close. Once again, it’s on me to make the decision we both want. I kiss the same spot and kiss the other side of her neck. “I don’t think anyone’s going to freeze to death this winter if there’s one less pair of hands at a coat drive in mid-September.”

“If you need me here, I could call Mrs. Walker and tell her something’s come up.”

She doesn’t loosen her grip on my chest even when I place my cup on the counter. I take the opportunity to pin her against me with one arm around her waist. My other hand traces down, following hot skin beneath soft fabric until I am cupping her breast. “I always need you here, Eva.”

I save her the need to answer by tracing over her nipple with my thumb. Her whole body shivers. When I tease the knotted belt of her robe, she nods against me, hair tickling my chin. I tug the belt so it comes loose, exposing smooth flesh and impossibly sensual curves. When I kiss her, she yields with a low moan.

I’ve barely touched her and she is quivering with need. I think I wanted Eva for years before she wanted me. I have come to terms with the razor-blade balance between desire and guilt. When I first knew her, the constant, throbbing need to possess her was locked behind a wall of shame that I would ever think such things about Stephen’s girlfriend. Stephen was my best friend and, even if that was more of a statement on the quality of my other friendships than his character, there were simply some lines I would not cross. If Eva returned my attraction, she gave no more sign than I did. This is one of the things we’ve never discussed. Our marriage is a church big enough for only two people and that church is built on mysteries that must not be spoken.