keep going blindly straight ahead

But still, I message her “You’re not give all your attention if you keep messaging me, and its not going to work unless you give him all your attention.” As my hand pulls on my cock.

She messages me back “He is sleeping on my tit again so can I at least talk to you now.”

“No, focus on him!”

Then the line goes silent. She doesn’t message all Saturday.

The next message from her came Sunday morning at 4 am “Liam please come home now. I feel so sick right now. I can’t even look at myself. I just spent the last hours dreaming of him fucking me. I can’t even escape this in my dreams!”

All I message her is “I’ll be home when he leaves… So go back it him.”

At 5:12 pm she messages me “Ok he is gone, so please get here now.”

“Five minutes out.”

By the time I reached the front steps, my hands were shaking. I fumbled with the keys, nearly dropping them twice before jamming the right one into the lock. The knob was sticky, slippery with sweat or oil or something I didn’t want to consider, and the door swung open with the quiet, yielding defeat of a house long since surrendered.

My apartment—our apartment—looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, or maybe an unnatural one. The living room was littered with evidence, talismans of what had transpired: Sarah’s slinky blue dress, the one that hugged her curves so tightly, bunched up and abandoned in the dead center of the shag rug. Her white bra, cups inside out, dangled from the lamp, one strap twisted as if it had been torn off in a hurry. A pair of black lace thongs—her favorite, the ones she always said made her feel "dangerously pretty"—was draped across the back of the couch, the crotch stained with a dark, waxy gleam that caught the sunlight. One Wiley forgotten socks were slightly hidden on the sofa as if it was thrown off in a hurry. There was an overturned tumbler on the coffee table, still beading with condensation, next to a makeup compact with its lid hanging off and a mascara wand streaking the Formica. An empty pizza box lay half under the TV stand. There were two slices left, untouched, except for one with a single bite mark and a greasy indentation from a thumb.

Most of all, there was the smell. It was everywhere, a stifling fug that pressed itself into your skin, your lungs, your tongue. Sweat, and sex, and Sarah’s floral-vanilla shampoo, but all of it clotted through with a reek that was unmistakably Wiley’s. The whole house reak of Wiley’s rut. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see the molecules swirling in the air, colonizing the apartment, smothering the oxygen. My hands clenched the duffel bag tighter, as if by sheer will I could defend my own nostrils from invasion.

Despite the visual cacophony, there was no sign of Sarah herself. The kitchen faucet was running, a thin stream hissing against a pile of dishes, but otherwise the place was silent. I set my bag down in the entryway, tried to steady my breathing, and called out, "Sarah?"

A beat, then another. Then, from the back of the apartment, a voice, cracked and wet: "I’m in the bedroom. Please come here." There was something off in the syllables—not "our bedroom," not even the proprietary "my bedroom" of the past, but the flat, impersonal the. She didn’t want to, or couldn’t claim it anymore.

My stomach twisted, but I **** my feet to move down the hall. The carpet was spongy beneath my feet; the air got thicker as I approached. The door was open, but just barely, as if inviting me to look while daring me to stay away. I pushed it in gently.

She was on the far side of the bed, curled up in a fetal position, completely naked. Her knees were locked to her chest, arms wrapped around them so tight her knuckles were bloodless. Her face was half-buried in the comforter, but I could see the streaks under her eyes, purple and angry. Her hair was matted, sticking out in wild tangles, the platinum roots shining through. The sheets were a mess, the fitted one peeled halfway off the mattress, the top sheet on the floor, the comforter twisted around her like a lifeline. On the nightstand, three empty bottles of Gatorade stood sentry next to a phone charger and a balled-up tissue.

She didn’t look up when I entered. She just kept staring at her knees, breathing in shallow, rhythmic gasps, like she was running a marathon under water. For a long moment, neither of us said anything. The only sound was the distant hiss of the faucet, and the tick of the digital clock.

I took a tentative step forward, and she flinched. Not visibly, not in a way anyone else would notice, but I knew her well enough to see it: the micro-tightening of her shoulders, the way her toes curled inward.

"Sarah," I said, as gently as I could manage.

She flinched again, turning her face slightly toward me. Her eyes were red and raw, hollowed out by some combination of tears and exhaustion and, I guessed, whatever Wiley had filled them with. Her lips were dry and chewed bloody at the corners.

"It didn’t work," she said. The words seemed to cost her everything. "Nothing worked. It was still... it was still better with him." She shuddered, covering her face with her hands for a second before letting them fall away.

I stood there, rooted to the spot, my hands at my sides like a condemned man’s. "Even when I wasn’t here at all?"

She nodded, mouth working at the air. "Even when you weren't here. Even when I tried not to think about you. Even when I told myself how much I should be disgusted by it. Even when I told myself all the things that every other girl finds revolting about him."

She nodded miserably. "Even when you weren't here. Even when I tried not to think about you. Even when I told myself how much I should be disgusted by it. Even when I told myself all the things that every other girl finds revolting about him."

she took a shuddering breath, "I came so hard last night I thought I was going to pass out. And then again, this morning. And right after that, too. He—" She stopped, eyes glazed over with shame. "He’s gone now," she whispered. "He wasn’t going to leave but I told him you were on your way. That he had to leave." She looked up at me, and her stare was a direct hit. "But it doesn’t matter. I can still feel it, like he’s everywhere. Like he’s still inside me."

She blinked rapidly, once, twice, three times, and then started to sob in these dry, hiccupping gasps, as if her body was too wrung out to make proper tears. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. Why it’s like this. I love you. I want to be with you. But when he touches me, it’s like my body isn’t mine anymore and I don’t know why. There’s nothing special about what he does.” She laughed, a short, violent bark. “He’s not even particularly skilled or creative. It’s just—” She couldn’t say it, or wouldn’t. Her face collapsed in on itself. “I’m so sorry. I can’t stop it.”

My voice cracks as my cock feels like it going to burst out of my pants. “Sarahs?!?”

She finally looks up at me with tears filled eyes “ I can’t stop thinking about the way he looks on top of me, the way his sweat smells as he thrust into me, the way his cock feels inside of me… the way his cum feels inside of me… And I can’t look at myself in the mirror because of it. So please fuck me… please make me forget about this weekend. I need you to win right here and right now…”

I stared at her, my beautiful Sarah, broken and **** on our bed, begging me to save her from something I'd pushed her into. The sight of her like this—naked, crying, smelling like him—should have filled me with rage or disgust. Instead, my body responded with an intensity that horrified me. I was harder than I'd ever been in my life.

"Please," she whispered again, reaching for me with trembling hands. "Make me forget him."

I nodded, fumbling off my clothes in a haze, my limbs disconnected and mechanical. I had never felt less like a man, but never wanted anything more. I wanted to obliterate Wiley’s fingerprints from her skin, his taste from her mouth, his stench from her hair. I wanted the bed to remember only us.

But the second I crawled onto the bed, I felt it all over again: the ghost-layer of Wiley, his scent, the dent in the pillow, the way Sarah’s body reached for me and then recoiled.

She lay on her back, arms above her head, legs spread but rigid as tent poles. She was so beautiful I almost couldn’t breathe, but she wasn’t looking at me. She had her eyes closed, jaw locked, like she was bracing for an impact.

I kissed her, and she kissed me back, but the kisses were too soft, too careful, like we were both afraid she’d shatter. I tried to work my way down her body, pressed my face into her breasts, her ribs, her stomach, inhaling every inch of her, but the scent of Wiley was everywhere. It was slick and sour and animal, and the more I tried to chase it away, the more it clung to her, to me, to the air between us. I hated myself for noticing it, for comparing it to the way Sarah usually smelled after sex with me. Hated myself for wondering how much of him was still inside her, how deep he’d gone, what little pieces he’d left behind.

I reached between her legs, and she was already wet—so wet it almost didn’t seem possible. I wanted to believe it was for me, but her body was still moving on autopilot, still riding the aftershocks of Wiley’s tectonic presence. Her hips rose and fell under my touch, but her eyes stayed squeezed shut, her mouth set in a hard line.

I tried to shift gears, to go slower, to draw her back in. I tried everything I could think of—dirty talk, gentle teasing, apologetic tenderness. But The moment I pressed my cock into her from the look in her eyes I knew two things. One we were about to have some of the best sex with we ever have, and it wouldn’t be close to what she just empierced with Wiley.

The whole time we fucked, I was haunted by images I couldn’t stop: Wiley’s fat, ugly hands pawing at her, his reek stamped into her flesh, his voice in her ear. It was like he was here in the room with us, leering, smirking, waiting his turn. I tried to shut it out, to give Sarah what she needed, but I could feel myself losing the fight with every passing second.

When I finally came, it was with a mixture of relief and self-disgust. She shuddered around me, let out a thin, exhausted whimper, and then sagged onto the mattress like a marionette with its strings cut. For a minute, neither of us moved. My muscles twitched with aftershocks; I rested my forehead on her shoulder, breathing her in, **** to find some trace of myself in her scent. But all I got was Wiley, Wiley, Wiley.

When we finished, she held me close, her face buried in my neck. she whispered. "Liam, I love you so much." I know what that meant, it was a participation medal, like saying you try and did great, but you didn’t win.