Lana

Lana is at the door.

Not dressed for a night. Jeans. A sweater. Hair still damp. She looks past Adam at Mia on the couch in his shirt, bag half-packed on the chair, and the question is already on her face.

Adam steps aside. Lana comes in. The door shuts.

Mia stands.

“What is this?”

Adam does not answer her yet.

Lana looks between them. “I don’t know. He said come over. I thought the first had moved. Or you wanted to change some rules.”

Mia’s eyes stay on her husband. “Adam?”

“Trust me,” he says.

She does not sit back down. Lana does not take her coat off. The three of them stand in the living room.

Adam tells it plain.

“Mia’s been assigned abroad. Six months. She leaves tomorrow.”

Lana’s face changes. The calculation is immediate and ugly in the way a person calculates a door closing.

“So tomorrow’s off,” she says. “The girl. I should tell her.”

“No.”

Lana blinks.

“Mia doesn’t want it cancelled,” Adam says. “She told me that an hour ago. The night happens. You bring the girl. I fuck her. The arrangement doesn’t stop because Mia is on a plane. She was clear. She doesn’t want my cock denied the pleasure just because she won’t be in the room.”

Lana looks at Mia.

Mia nods, once. “He’s not lying. Don’t cancel. Bring her.”

Something in Lana’s shoulders drops. Not relief exactly. The leash still exists.

Adam keeps going.

“That’s not why I texted you.”

The room waits.

“She’s sad,” he says. “Not about the flight. About watching. She set this up so she could see it. Spread them. Hear them. Watch me ruin them. Six months of that gone if we just do the nights and tell her after. She told me to go ahead anyway. I don’t want her to miss it.”

He looks at Lana.

“That’s where you come in.”

Mia’s brow furrows. Lana’s does too. Two question marks, aimed at him, neither of them ahead of the sentence.

Adam’s mouth curves, small, like the plan is already built and he is only now going to say it.