I think it was the hottest thing I ever saw

There are not enough words in any known language to describe the stew of emotion boiling inside me that morning. The English language, for all its borrowed words and double meanings and endless nuance, failed spectacularly at capturing the pure lava running through my circulatory system as I lay in bed, eyes gritty and body pulsing with a hangover that was only 5% **** and 95% shame, jealousy, awe and disgust. If someone had asked me to name a single emotion, I’d have responded by projectile vomiting blood at their shoes and then weeping in their lap.

Here, in the morning’s abrasive sunlight, a new record for hate was set. I hated Wiley. I hated everything about him: his fat, his sweat, his cratered face, his perverted smile, his knack for inserting himself into every moment of Sarah’s life, and now, as of last night, every atom of Sarah herself. I hated Sarah for probably smelling like him right now, that unique cocktail of his DNA riding her skin like a flea. I hated the mewling, post-coital intimacy I’d heard through the wall, the stamp of their unrepeatable, monstrous union. But most of all, I hated that what happened was the HOTTEST THING my poor brain had ever processed. My rational mind wanted to repost a discourse on emotional boundaries, but the lizard on my shoulder was jerking off with both hands while screaming.

I don’t know what about it I found so hot but Nothing—not the premium subscription porn with its carefully curated power impossibilities, its cinematic performances, its high-def watermark of shame and class—came close to last night’s soundscape. It would be with me forever, like the tinnitus you get after a firework explodes six inches from your ear. I didn’t know if I wanted to die, or kill, or give Sarah a standing ovation for her performance.

Would Sarah want to talk to me when she got out. I sure hope not because I don’t know what I could say to her. How was I supposed to describe the way I am feeling when I don’t even know how I am feeling.

My alarm went off at nine, but I’d been up since four, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince myself that the gnarled shadow in the corner wasn’t the ghost of my self-respect. When I finally got up, I walked the slow mile to the kitchen table, my legs leaden, my hands numb, my heart some semi-deflated basketball thudding against my ribs. Sarah and Wiley were already there, two silhouettes in the sun-soaked gloom, quietly sipping coffee from chipped mugs and regarding each other with the spooked reverence of people who’d just spent the night killing a man.

They looked up at me with a mixture of dread and expectation, waiting for the next move. Wiley’s hands were shaking so badly he was spilling coffee onto the tablecloth, his eyes sunken and glassy. Sarah’s hair was a rat’s nest, her makeup smeared into abstract art, and she looked every inch the woman who’d made a conscious, possibly irreversible choice. There was a new heaviness about her, a layer of guilt or knowledge I’d never seen before, something that set her apart from the Sarah I’d known, or thought I’d known, for years. She caught my gaze for a microsecond, then looked away, lips pressed into a single, deadline.

Last night replayed in my head like a filmstrip jammed in the projector, loud and jerky and impossible to ignore. I’d heard every sound, every whimper and gasp, every pleading entreaty and guttural groan. It had been perversely erotic, yes, but also sickening. I was furious at Wiley, at Sarah, at myself. Wiley had always been pathetic, a doughnut-devouring parasite with no game and no future, but Sarah—Sarah was my sun, my one point of reference, and now I couldn't even look at her without wanting to both strangle her and fall to my knees in abject worship.

Wiley, always the coward, broke first. He coughed, splattered coffee onto his sleeve, then looked at me with the watery terror of a lab mouse about to become a science experiment. “Ah, Liam, about last night—”

I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I wasn’t going to let him see how fractured I was, so I went for anger, the one language Wiley had ever understood. “What about it? You really want to talk about how you fucked my girlfriend.” I let the words hang in the air, the way you let a corpse dangle from the gallows as a warning.

Sarah flinched, but she didn’t look away, which somehow made it worse. “Enough, you two.” Her voice broke on the last word, a spiderweb fissure in her composure. She took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the table. “It happened, okay? It happened, and it’s over, and I never want to talk about it again. I just want things to go back to normal, if possible. But only if you’re not going to explode every time Wiley walks into a room.”

Wiley nodded, his neck fat jiggling in agreement, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Sarah, or at me. “OK Sara-Bear”

Sarah turned to him with pleading eyes “I know it’s not your fault what happened last night, and it’s not forever, but can’t you please not call me that for a little bit.”

I felt completely conflict. On one side it meant for as long it is taking Sarah to deal with what happened I didn’t have to hear Wiley use that stupid nickname again, but on the other side, it made something about last night feel incomplete and wrong. And if that was wrong, and incomplete, what I was feeling, what was taking over me was wrong and incomplete, so I spoke up “Are you sure, Sarah.”

Sarah Look at my confused “ah… yeah. Just give me today ok.”

I could see life leave Wiley’s eyes as if someone took away his favorite toy as he answers “Ok.”

The three of us sat in silence, and I realized with a start that I had no idea what came next. Everything felt so fundamentally broken. If I’d been the bigger person, I would have tried to comfort Sarah, or at least offer her a way back. But there was a splinter in my heart that I couldn’t dig out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I could see the wheels turning in Sarah’s head—she was all calculation now, summing up the damage.

An hour later, Wiley excused himself to go back to his house—five hours away by car, and as far as I was concerned, not nearly far enough. He hugged Sarah, but she didn’t hug back. He offered me a hand, but I ignored it, pretending to read a text message. After he left, the house was very quiet, as if someone had turned off the oxygen. Sarah wandered around the living room in her pajamas, checking her phone, watering the plants, rearranging meaningless objects in the sunlight. Every so often she would glance at me, but when our eyes met she would look away, embarrassed.

It was clear that neither of us knew what to do next. The breach was total, the atmosphere radioactive. I wanted to shout, to run, to go back in time and erase whatever moment of kindness had ever allowed Wiley into our lives. But beneath all that, deeper and darker, I wanted to relive it all, to turn every second over in my mind and savor the pain like a mouthful of chipped teeth.