I need to know what that look was

“Yeah,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Ah sarah… how was it? The sex I mean. Was I good?” I couldn’t help myself I needed to know what the look was about

She looks at me with a smile “Yes of course. Why do you ask” as she rings out her hair.

“Because you didn’t sound like you did with Wiley.”

Her face goes ghost white as she freezes “yeah I guess.”

“So did you enjoy it?”

She nervously bit her lips “Yes I enjoyed it but…” She fell into silent shame.

“But what?”

She tells me “I love you with all my heart. It’s just because I feel like I am being **** to do it now, and I wasn’t before.”

I look her in the eyes and ask, “So when would you want to have sex with me.”

She dabbed at her eyes, then smudged the tears away with the base of her palm. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice a cross between a sigh and a whisper. “I’m sorry, I just have a lot on my mind.”

We spent the rest of the day in separate rooms—Sarah on her phone, texting Wiley and every other person she’d ever met, me pacing circles in the backyard, kicking a sagging soccer ball against the fence until the neighbor’s pug started barking hysterically. At dinner, she barely touched the takeout lo mein and didn’t mention the morning at all, but before bed she sat on the edge of my mattress, legs crossed under her, and leaned in so close I could feel her breath. “You know I care about you, right?” she said. She sounded **** for me to say yes, to believe it, to let her off the hook for something she hadn’t done yet.

“Yes,” I said, and kissed her. Her lips were dry and tasted faintly of soy sauce.

She curled up beside me for the night, shivering even with the blanket up to her chin. She let me hold her, but just for a little while, and then gently pushed my arm off as she rolled away, facing the wall.

I watched her until I fell asleep, cataloguing every small sound she made—the catch in her breath, the almost-silent sniffling, the way she whispered my name once before finally drifting off.

When I woke in the morning, she was already gone, her pillow still warm but the rest of the room empty, not even a note on the dresser. My first instinct was panic. My second was anger, the hot, acidic kind that sits in your throat and burns every time you swallow. But when I found her in the kitchen, she was just staring at her phone, elbows braced on the countertop, thumbs frozen above the screen.

“I told him,” she said, without looking up. “I said we did it. I said it was good.”

I opened the fridge, took out two sad-looking oranges, and turned one around and around in my hand, pretending to inspect it for bruises. I said “You know you don’t have to tell him every part of our personal life’s.”

She looked up at me, her eyes so tired they were almost gray. “Liam he is like a brother to me,” she said.

I set the orange down, walked to her side, and joked “A brother that your fucked.”

She nervously laughed back “Don’t remind me. Just think about it still makes me sick.”

That week, we acted normal—work, errands, movie nights. But there was a crack in the routine, a wedge that let in three a.m. silences and awkward pauses where laughter used to be. I started watching her more closely: the way her eyes darted to her phone every time it buzzed, the way she bit her nails until the tips turned raw, the way she never let me touch her for more than five minutes at a time.

Sarah and I tried fucking again two nights later. This time, she said, it felt “better, actually,” but she still sounded like she was reading from a script, like a therapist reassuring a compulsive liar they were making progress. I did everything differently—went slow, then fast, then slow again, kissed her neck, stroked her thighs, even whispered dumb things I thought she’d want to hear. She said she liked it; she said I was getting better at reading her cues; she said, “Thank you for being patient with me.” But afterward, we didn’t cuddle, and she pulled on her robe with the staccato efficiency of a cardiac surgeon removing her gloves after a failed operation.

I asked, “Why are you going?” The question had an edge, and I didn’t try to blunt it. We both knew what I was really asking: Why are you giving up on this, on me, after one failed attempt? Why do I still feel like the substitute teacher in a class you used to love?

Sarah kept her face turned, as if speaking to the tile grout. “Sorry. It was better, but it still feels like I am being ****, so I just can’t…” She let the words trail off. There was no drama in her voice, only the resignation of someone who knew that certain feelings could not be willed into existence.

We didn’t go to bed angry, because there was nothing left to argue about. Instead, we lay on our separate halves of the mattress, scrolling through our phones in silence—me reading the same news headline five times, her composing and deleting texts like she was prepping a legal brief. When I finally drifted off, it was to the blue glow of her screen and the click of her nails tapping out a message that never seemed to end.

The next night, after we both pretended to forget the weirdness of the previous twenty-four hours, Sarah and I agreed that Friday morning would be the best time for my “make-up Anal.” She said it as a joke, but I could tell she’d already marked the event in her internal calendar, the way she did with dental appointments and car insurance payments. The plan was: wake up early, shower together, give it one more earnest try, before Wiley interject himself in our lives again.

It was Thursday night, not yet 12 hours till our mark appointment as Sarah was calling it, and Sarah and I were in the middle of a nice dinner when the doorbell rang. It was not a sound I heard often, not even for package deliveries; it landed with the weight of a fire alarm, a metal clang in the stillness. I watched Sarah’s face freeze, her mouth caught mid-smirk, and then she looked at me as if I was supposed to have an answer.

“Were you expecting anyone?” she said, all casual, but her eyes flicked to the clock and then to her phone.

I shook my head. “Nope.”

The last person I expected was Wiley Henderson, standing on our porch with a battered duffel and an apologetic half-smile, but there he was, looking even flabbier and more haggard than he had in high school. His mop of hair was thinner, his glasses big enough to make his eyes look buggy, and his khakis already stained at the knees. Sarah opened the door and Wiley practically tripped over the threshold, all nerves and sweat.

Sarah looked at him in shocked “Wiley… you hear… didn’t you say you were coming tomorrow.”

“Yeah… Sorry for showing up early,” he said immediately.

Sarah slowly let him in as she said, “It fine… just Laim and I planned on trying Anal tomorrow morning.”

I could see Wiley whinch as he said “Oh sorry, I could leave before them.” As if simply not staying at all wasn’t even an option.

I couldn’t trust him not to sneak back, peak in and record the whole thing. So, I blurt out “No… Sorry but I don’t trust you not to be a pervert and peak now that you know.”

Sarah “Come on Liam… he won’t.”

“The answer is still no…”

After she was finished, we all nervously sit around the table until Sarah finally asks “It’s fine that you came early but why…”

Wiley looks at the table “well my date ask said she had something come up Saturday night but wanted to know if I would hang out Friday night instead.” I knew right away the real reason he was here, not only did he postpone my chance of fucking Sarah in the ass but now he was about to ask to do it before me. His voice got really quiet as he said “And well I think she still wants to try anal this week…”

There it was exactly as I thought an I am having it. “No… no … no…”

Sarah touches me “Liam calm down.”

“Calm down, not only did he stopping me from doing it tomorrow, but he is asking that he gets to do it now, after you and I agreed I got to try first!”

Sarah looks nervously at him, it is clear that she wasn’t mental prepare to let a man’s dick up her ass yet, but she still said, “Liam we him hanging… and you will still get your chance… just later.”

Wiley face lit up most of stolen all the life from mine as he happily gets up and walks Sarah to the guest bedroom.

The sound of Sarah's pained gasp filled the apartment, followed by Wiley's hushed reassurances. "Just relax, Sara-bear. I did some research to get better at this. I know to go slow."

I sat frozen in the kitchen, my fingernails digging half-moons into my palms. My coffee had gone cold hours ago, but I couldn't move to make another cup. Couldn't risk missing a single moment of my own humiliation.

"That's it," Wiley cooed, his voice sickeningly gentle. "Online says just Breathe through it."

Sarah whimpered something I couldn't quite make out, then moaned in a way that made my stomach twist. Not from pain—I knew her sounds of discomfort. This was different. Deeper. More primal.

"Is that okay?" Wiley asked, his voice thick with concern and arousal.

"Y-yes," Sarah managed, her voice trembling. "Just... don't stop."

The rhythmic creaking began again, slower this time, more deliberate. Each sound was a hammer blow to my chest. I'd spent two years imagining our first time together, planning every detail, promising her I'd make it special. Now Wiley Henderson was taking everything I'd dreamed of, collecting her virginities like trophies.

"You're doing amazing," Wiley whispered. "So perfect."

I pressed my hands over my ears, but it did nothing to block out Sarah's increasingly vocal responses. Her moans rose in pitch and frequency, punctuated by breathless encouragements.

"Deeper," she gasped. "Please, Wiley."

The bed frame slammed rhythmically against the wall now, each impact a mockery of my impotence. I should have stormed in there. Should have put a stop to this. But Sarah's ultimatum hung in the air like a guillotine blade. If I interfered, I'd lose her forever. My job too. My entire future.

“oh fuck… oh fuck… oh fucking fuck.” Sarah chanted, her voice rising to a crescendo.

Wiley's grunts grew more animalistic, all pretense of gentleness abandoned. "Fuck, Sara-bear, I'm gonna—"

"Inside!" she cried out. "Do it inside!"

Their simultaneous cries of release echoed through the apartment, followed by breathless laughter and murmured affection. I sat rigid in my chair, tears streaming silently down my face.

Later, the shower ran. I heard them in there together, giggling like teenagers about how she felt like she was going to be shitting his cum for weeks. By know he knew better than to call her Sara-bear after they fucked as a result she didn’t distance herself from him. When they finally emerged, wrapped in towels, they didn't even glance in my direction as they returned to the bedroom.

I called out “Sarah aren’t you going to bed with me.”

Wiley answered for her “Sorry but I need more training…” as he wrapped his arms around her.

Sarah finally turned back to me in the doorway, and with a smile she said, “Don’t worry Liam, I’ll make it up to you.”

****

Note to readers. One more chapter before this path is done