Sarah To Flash him

Sorry by popular depend I was asked to split the last chapter.

*****

I could sense him steeling himself, as He turned to Sarah and spoke in a voice so calm it was almost detached from what he was about to say. “I’m sorry, but I’m not letting him call me a cheater without some sort of retribution, and this is the only thing I can think of. So, flash me.” He said it not as a dare but as a sentence, a thing determined by laws older than any of us.

The room’s temperature seemed to drop by five degrees. For a moment, no one moved. Time collapsed into the flicker of a dying lightbulb. Sarah’s entire body went rigid, she sat so still she could have been photoshopped into the frame—a perfect, frozen relic of a before-time when things hadn’t yet veered into these dark, recursive loops. The blood drained from her face in a spectacular, slow-motion flush that left her ashen. Only her eyes moved: from Wiley, to me, and back again, as if searching for a loophole in the social contract.

For a moment it seemed she might refuse, or erupt, or simply vanish, but instead, she stood up, knees knocking the underside of the table, and her eyes never left me as she reached for the hem of her shirt. I saw the way her hands trembled, the barest shiver as she gripped the fabric.

Slowly, methodically, she lifted her shirt. Inch by inch, the pale oval of her belly appeared above the waistband of her jeans, climbed the ladder of her ribs in taut, trembling increments. The fabric caught for a second on the underwire of her bra—plain white, utilitarian, almost aggressively sexless—before she hooked two fingers underneath and yanked it up past her breasts. They fell free, flushed from the ambient cold, nipples drawn tight as punctuation marks.

Wiley exhaled, a sound like a tire losing air. Each of her medium size breast swelled with its own distinct gravity, pushed together by the gesture of her hunched shoulders.Her nipples, high-set and almost perfectly round, looked as if they’d been airbrushed on: a soft, flushed pink, faintly stippled, the color deepening in the cold draft of the room. They were so upright and stiff they seemed to point at Wiley, accusingly.

She held the pose, arms crossed above her head, shirt tangled at her shoulders, lips pressed together so tightly the color had drained from them. I watched, stunned, as she stared at me with a cold, quiet fury. The air between us was so charged I could almost hear the ozone crackle.

Wiley’s eyes were wide, unblinking, behind the thicket of his glasses. He didn’t smirk or leer. He just stared, the way a person might stare at something he lusted over for years as his jaw hit the floor. I hated him for it, and then, for a moment, hated myself more.

The whole tableau lasted three seconds, maybe four—an infinity for all three of us. The moment felt obscene, not because of what was exposed, but because of everything it dredged up: the old rivalries, the broken confidences, the secret pacts kids make and adults break. Sarah’s chin was quivering. I wanted to look away, but could not. Wiley didn’t blink.

I caught a glimpse of her in profile, the line of her neck taut with shame, and in that instant hated Wiley with a sincerity I’d never managed before. But he didn’t leer or laugh. He just stared, lips parted, eyes enormous behind his thick glasses, as if he were seeing an eclipse or a catastrophe. Sarah waited until the count of five—she must have been counting—then yanked her shirt down with a **** that left the fabric bunched and wrinkled at the waistband. Her breath was shallow and quick. She did not speak. Instead, she spun from the table, shoulders hunched and arms folded across her chest, and sprinted to the bedroom, slamming the door so hard behind her that a tremor ran through the floorboards.

I tried to follow, but she locked the door behind her, a final, metallic click sealing me out. I heard her muffled voice: “Go away.”

I went back to the living room, where Wiley was still seated at the table, hands folded as if in prayer. He didn’t look at me, but the shame had drained all the color from his face. We sat in mutual disgrace, watching the paint flake from the ceiling, until hours later the apartment slid into silence and the city outside grew cold and blue.

After ten minutes, Wiley stood up. He carried himself as if he were wearing a lead suit, every movement slow and deliberate. He shuffled down the hall, stopping outside Sarah’s door. He knocked, gentle but insistent. “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

There was only silence at first, then the slow, shuddering sound of her breathing. “It’s okay,” she said, muffled. “It’s my stupid boyfriend’s fault, anyway. He should have known you weren’t cheating.”

Wiley: “Still, I shouldn’t have asked for that.”

Sarah’s voice quavered—she was crying, or almost crying, but trying to pretend she wasn’t. “You only asked for what you knew would shut him up. You did what you always do, Wiley. It’s fine. I just want to be left alone for tonight, okay?”

He lingered a moment, then returned to the living room, collapsing into the armchair as if his bones had turned to sand. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. We slept, that night, in our own separate quarters: Sarah curled up in our bed, Wiley cocooned on the couch, and me sprawled on the floor, staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling and counting the hours until morning.

None of us spoke again until sunrise, when the city’s noise seeped back in and the apartment warmed with the promise of another day. The truce was over, the old boundaries erased, and I wondered if anything could ever return to the way it had been.