If he tells me to relax, I will bolt up from this chair and out the door. If he touches me, I will explode. As it is, everything inside me has gone tight and coiled. I want to shake and can’t.
It’s just a picture.
But he doesn’t take it. Will puts the camera to his eye, but nothing snaps. He just looks. Then he puts the camera on the desk and steps back.
“Another time,” he tells me.
I blink and blink again. “What?”
Will hands me my mug of coffee as I get up from the chair. “Let me show you something else, okay?”
“Okay.” The liquid in the mug should be sloshing, but I guess my hands aren’t as shaky as they feel. I sip. It’s lukewarm, the whiskey more potent in it.
He sees me make a face, and laughs, takes the mug and sets it back on the desk. “You don’t have to drink it. But here, look at this. Tell me what you think. And, Elisabeth...”
“Yes?”
“Be honest.”
I understand what he means as soon as he pulls the sheet off the framed print leaning against the wall below the window. There are others in that stack, half a dozen at least, with a few more dozen smaller frames next to it. The black-and-white shot is of a tree, bare branches like spreading fingers against the cloudless sky. The photographer caught the shadows at such an angle that it looks as if the tree’s spindling branches are its roots. It’s impossible to tell that sky’s color. In the print it’s pure, pure white. I imagine it must’ve been a clear, pale blue.
There should be nothing special about the shot. Ansel Adams took thousands of nature shots, and he’s considered a master. This picture has nothing of Adams’s vast scale. It’s one tree, one sky. It’s beautiful. It makes me want to cry.
“Would you hang it in your house?” Will asks. “Would you put it in your foyer to impress people?”
“No.” I haven’t gone to my knees in front of it, though the picture makes me want to. “If I bought this, I would hang it in a place only I could ever see.”
He smiles. I’ve said the right thing. This is it, I think, when he takes my hand and tugs me a step closer. This is when he kisses me.
Of course he doesn’t. Why should he? We’ve only just met. I’m no cover model. I’m bedraggled and unkempt and old enough to know better. His fingers stroke my wedding band.
And oh, there’s that.
He has a cuckoo clock I didn’t see when I came in, and now it whirs into life at the half hour. Two men saw busily at a log while a waterwheel spins. A bird pops out to chirp once before retreating.
“Shit,” I say, and recover my hand as if he’d never taken it. “It’s late. I have to catch the train—”
“You won’t make it.”
I knew that when I’d agreed to come here, didn’t I? Traffic, distance, the rain. The timing. I could pretend to be upset and surprised, but the truth is I’m only a little upset and not at all shocked.
“Stay here. I have a guest room.” He points to the loft. “You can get up early. Catch the first train home. I’ll make you eggs in the morning, if you want.”
It sounds like a come-on, but I pretend I don’t notice. “Oh...I couldn’t. I’ll go find a hotel room.”
“Uh-uh. No way. I’m not letting you wander around in the dark, in the rain, trying to find a place to stay. That would be ridiculous.” Will shakes his head. “I have a pair of pajamas that will fit you.”
“I really...” I want to say can’t. I want to say shouldn’t. The words clog up my throat. Won’t come out.
“Do you need to call someone? Tell them you’ll be home tomorrow?”
There is nobody at home. The girls are off at college, probably still out at a party or tucked into their boyfriends’ beds—not that I like to dwell on that, but I’m not stupid. Ross is out of town. I should know where he is, what he’s doing, but though he told me, I didn’t pay attention. It didn’t matter, beyond knowing he would be gone.
“No. I don’t have to call home.”
Will smiles. “Okay.”
He gives me a pair of pajamas that belong to him, not a pair inherited from an ex-wife, as I feared. Faded flannel pants, an oversize white T-shirt soft and worn from the wash. I should feel awkward wearing his clothes, but he handed them to me so matter-of-factly, along with a toothbrush still in the package, that feeling odd would only make it so, and clearly it doesn’t have to be. The bed in the loft is soft, the pillows fluffy. He doesn’t follow me up the stairs to tuck me in, so it’s definitely not weird.
I sleep right away and wake when the alarm I set on my phone goes off. I’ve had only four hours of sleep, not enough, but I need to get up and get to the train. Get home.
First, though, I need the bathroom. I dress quickly, not sure what I should do with Will’s clothes. I settle for folding them neatly and putting them on the chair at the foot of the bed. Down the spiral stairs in my bare feet, I’m careful not to trip or knock into anything, because the apartment is big and silent and full of echoes from sounds as soft as breathing.
I hear the shower running just as I move to push open the door, which is ajar. I stop, of course. Or in fact, I don’t, because my fingertips nudge the door just...a little...wider. The way the bathroom’s set up, I have a straight shot gaze toward the claw-foot tub and glass-enclosed shower next to it. In addition to envying the apartment and coveting the cover model’s boots, that shower sends a thrill of jealousy through me. Tiles, glass brick, sunflower showerhead. I want it.
Steam hovers between me and the shower, Will inside it, but there’s not nearly enough to obscure any details. There he is, naked in the water, head bent as it sluices over him. His eyes are closed. One hand is on the wall. The other’s on his dick.
I swallow the noise my throat tries to make, but I’m frozen. Can’t move. Don’t want to move, let’s be honest, because everything about this sight is beauty and glory and oh, my God, he’s stroking himself slowly, as if he’s going to take an hour to make himself come. Up, down, twist of the palm around the head of his cock. His knees are bent and his fingers curl against the tile, slipping because he can’t make purchase.
If he looks up, he’ll see me watching. I should go; it’s not right to watch something so private. This isn’t for me.
His hand moves faster. His mouth opens, water filling it and overflowing when he tips his face into the spray. He fucks his fist with deliberation, and I watch the muscles cord in his arm and back, in that spot just above his ass where the dimples dent his skin.
I want to watch him come. I covet and crave it, as a matter of fact, more than I did this apartment or the boots or the shower itself. I want to see Will jerk and moan and finish, and that desire is what finally pushes me away from the door. Down the hall, to the kitchen where I use the toothbrush he gave me at the kitchen sink. I brush and brush, I rinse and spit and rinse again, my eyes closed and my mind filled with the sight of him.
I know he’s there before I turn from the sink, but though I brace myself for the sight of him in a towel, he’s wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt like the one he lent me. Wet hair, slicked back. Bare feet I carefully avoid looking at, as though the sight of his toes could possibly be more intimate than the picture of his cock already permanently sealed in