Things go for bad to worse.

The next day began with an oily gray dawn and the slow churn of foreboding in my gut. I should have woken feeling triumphant—the pig’s last full day in our home, the air almost clear already. Yet there was something in the way Sarah moved around the apartment, like she was trying to get all the chores done before running out of time, that unsettled me. I left early, barely saying goodbye, and skipped breakfast for coffee at a strip mall McDonalds.

At work, I spent the day pacing through my tasks, pretending Wiley’s existence was a bad dream and not, as it turned out, the next phase of my career. The office buzzed with talk, most of it about the new boss, the company’s acquisition, who’d be getting raises, who’d be getting axed. I tried to avoid the rumors but they kept crawling into my ears, every third sentence a mutated version of my name or Wiley’s.

After work, Sarah called me into the kitchen with a clipped, businesslike voice. The table was set with cheap plastic cutlery, instant rice, and the half-cold remnants of some microwaved chicken. Wiley sat at the head of the table, his hair aggressively parted and glistening with budget gel, an unopened Coke sweating in the crook of his elbow. He looked like a child on job-shadow day, out of place and yet in command by the **** of circumstance alone.

I hovered in the doorway, hands jammed deep in my pockets.

Wiley cleared his throat and gestured to the seat opposite. “Hey, Liam. Grab a chair, yeah?”

He didn’t look at me. He looked just past me, like I was a loose post-it note on a much larger spreadsheet.

Sarah waited, arms folded, the air electric and cold. I caught the faintest twitch in her eyebrow, a warning not to make a scene. I sat, only because it would have been more dramatic to stand, and I was tired of drama tonight.

“So.” Wiley planted his forearms on the table, interlacing the stubby fingers with the ponderous air of a TED Talk speaker. “I guess this is kind of awkward, huh? Me being your boss and all.”

I shrugged. The chicken smelled like it had been reheated from the last time we’d had this conversation.

He rocked in his chair, the thud of it a kind of metronome. “Look. I know we’ve had our differences. Some of that’s on me, some of that’s…you know. Ancient history. But Sarah cares about you. I mean, she really does.” He shot a glance at her, then back to the table. “And for her sake, I want things to be cool between us. Just work, just professionalism, you know?”

Sarah’s face was impassive. I couldn’t tell if she was proud of Wiley for being the bigger man, or disappointed at how small the moment actually was.

“Sure,” I said. “Cool.”

Wiley relaxed, just a hair before the business returned to his face. “So that’s why I wanted to talk to you tonight, before things get weird at the office. The managers, they’re saying—” He stopped, and looked at Sarah again, searching for approval or rescue. “They say if I don’t demote you to a trainee, they’ll walk.”

The word hung there like a dead fly in a glass of water.

I snorted. “Then let them.”

Wiley shook his head. “I can’t do that. Not my first week. But I managed to convince them to let you keep your salary, as long as you, uh, make some improvements.” He delivered the line like it was a generous offer, a coupon for half-off on dignity.

I didn’t even try to mask my disgust. “I’ve never been a trainee and I’m not going to start now.”

“That’s the fucking problem!” Wiley’s hands slapped the tabletop—then instantly recoiled in shame.

I shrugged again, savoring the edge. “Keep dreaming.”

Sarah reached over and grabbed my arm, her nails digging into the tendon. “Just listen! He’s actually trying to help you for once.”

“Help?” I couldn’t keep the volume down. I jerked my arm free. “How is this helping? Everything was fine until you brought—” I cut myself off, glaring at the man who’d haunted fifty percent of my childhood and was now apparently here to colonize the rest. My voice went raw. “Everything was just fine before you showed up. Now it’s all shot to hell.”

Wiley, emboldened by Sarah’s alliance, leaned in. “You call the company being ninety-nine percent in debt fine? You call your dad running the company into a crater fine?”

The words stung more than I’d let on. Rage crept up my neck like an allergic rash. But the kicker wasn’t what he said—it was how Sarah looked at him as if everything he said was objectively, scientifically correct.

In half a second, I was over the table, my hands knotted in his shirt, his glasses askew on his nose. “You don’t get to talk about my dad!” I hissed and felt the first real urge to break another person’s nose.

But Sarah was faster. She as she tugged on both of my arms, her voice dropping to a feral, almost inhuman tone. “Liam! You have to learn to control yourself!” Her face was wild, flushed, her eyes full of some decision I couldn’t read.

“I show him how I fucking control myself” I grunt as I push her hands off of me.

Sarah whimpers “Can’t you see he is just trying to help.”

“Demoting me and insulting my dad is not helping.”

Sarah “Fine than if you're not going to listen to reason, I’ll show you something unreasonable! “

She without another word she pulls my hands off of him before grabbing Wiley by the wrist. He looked at her, stunned, then at me, then back at her.

“Sarah-bear?” he said, his voice half a whimper.

She didn’t even blink. “We’re going to my room.”

Wiley’s confusion bled into giddy panic. “For…what?”

Sarah voice was cold and harsh "The thing he doesn't want us to do the most! "She turned to me, her lips trembling with anger and maybe something else. “Liam. Here’s how it’s going to be. You don’t follow us, you don’t knock, and if you so much as step a foot inside that bedroom or raise your voice, we are done. You’re single, and you can consider yourself unemployed. Got it?”

I stared at her, mute, the world fracturing into a thousand ugly pieces.

She didn’t wait for my answer. She pulled Wiley down the hall, his shoes squeaking like a toddler’s as he stumbled behind her. The bedroom door slammed open, leaving a mark on the wall as they walked through. She was is such a rush they didn’t even stop to close it.

I slumped at the kitchen table, listening to the increasing volume of their voices through the thin apartment wall. For a minute, I thought they were arguing. Then I realized Sarah was giving him instructions, actual instructions on how to fuck her, every word deliberate and just loud enough for me to hear.

The sun had barely set, leaving the kitchen in that radioactive blue half-light that made every surface look like it belonged on a morgue table. My own hands looked dead and unfamiliar, splayed on either side of the cereal bowl as if I might try to block my own ears by bracing my skull between them. It didn’t work; with every word from down the hall, the mental slideshow sharpened in focus, coloring itself in with details dredged up from ancient humiliations.

For a minute I tried to convince myself they were still fighting in there—maybe Sarah was throwing out ultimatums or giving Wiley a crash course in boundaries. But then she said it again, slower this time:

“It’s fine. Just relax and Look me in the eyes.”

A shuffle of limbs; then Wiley’s voice, small and afraid: “Are you sure?” Like he was asking for permission to exist.

She laughed quietly—a sound that once felt like home but now grated along my nerves like a zipper over sunburn.”Yes.”

Wiley whimpered “I am sorry, I don’t really know what to do. It’s my first time.”

Sarah softly said “Don’t worry, it's mine too. We will figure this out together. Just follow my lead.”

Another thud—a mattress protest? A knee careening off drywall? The building itself seemed to vibrate with their motion. Followed by Sarah gentle voice saying “You can put your hand there, it’s fine.”

Wiley voice cracks “I can’t—I think it’s, uh—wait, does it go in all the way?”

“Yes, just a little more. Here, let me—” Sarah erasures him

I stood up and paced three steps toward the living room before realizing there was nowhere to go; our apartment was 900 square feet of Ikea purgatory with no closets deep enough to hide in. The fridge hummed louder than usual, as if trying to compete with what was happening beyond the wall. I opened it anyway and stood with my head inside until my breath came out in plumes on the top-shelf Tupperware. When I closed the door again all I could hear was Wiley’s nasal panting and Sarah’s even voice corralling him through unfamiliar territory.

“Try moving slower,” she said.

Wiley gave out an animal grunt—half embarrassment, half effort—and then there was a burst of wet noise I never realized could come from two human bodies colliding at close range. It sounded more like someone kneading bread dough than anything remotely sexual.

“Like that?” he said.

“You’re okay,” she replied. “Just remember to breathe.” She said it with this gentle, maternal tone that somehow made everything worse.

I went back to the table and sat down hard enough for the chair legs to squeal against linoleum. Time began collapsing into itself: minutes smeared together into an endless present tense defined by the rhythm of Wiley’s haunted-house moans and Sarah’s soft affirmations.

At first their voices were just abstractions—the kind of noises you mentally file away when overhearing neighbors or subway couples making out—but soon every syllable took on weight and specificity:

“Don’t stop,” Sarah said.

“I’m not—I mean—” Wiley’s breathing hitched, then steadied. “Okay.”

A new pattern established itself: Sarah provided directions; Wiley repeated them back in a **** bid for approval; somewhere between those exchanges they met in a language only they understood. Sometimes Sarah would let out a quick sigh—mild frustration edged with amusement—and then adjust the tempo:

“Relax. Just, yeah, like that. No, you’re not crushing me, I promise—”

Wiley whimper in his sad voice “Are you sure?”

“Yes… just go Little farther back… yeah, now forward…”

And he’d parrot: “Back… then forward… got it…”

What fucking algorithm were they running?

It wasn’t just the words—it was how casual they sounded doing it. As if transforming years of adolescent awkwardness into competence right before my eyes (ears). Worse still: after ten minutes or so, the noises from their side of the wall changed pitch entirely. Less instructional now, more… coordinated? The slap of skin-on-skin grew louder and more regular; Wiley stopped apologizing quite so much; Sarah laughed less but gasped more often, her voice slipping into registers I’d never heard her use before.

I found myself locking eyes with my own reflection in the glass oven door, searching for evidence that this wasn’t really happening—that this was some kind of fever dream brought on by stress or hunger or too many hours spent hating that man across the hall. But every time their voices rose above ambient volume, reality reasserted itself more cruelly than before.

“Harder!”

The word hit like the crack of a starter pistol, sharp enough to jolt me from my fugue. Sarah’s voice, but not remotely the tone or register I was used to. Not the dry, performative moan I heard when I watched porn, not the singsong encouragement she gave whenever a task needed doing and she wanted to sweeten the deal. This was the sound of an animal crossing some internal finish line, a barked command that brooked no hesitation.

All of my reflexes misfired at once. My hands, which had been numb and flexed around either side of the cereal bowl, spasmed with intent. My head snapped involuntarily toward the open portal of our bedroom. There it was: the scene I’d spent endless months fantasizing about in panicked nightmares and forbidden daydreams—now rendered in daylight, in 4K, in real time.

I had completely missed Wiley stealing Sarah virginity. A virginity that should be mine! As now Wiley Henderson’s fat sweatybody was naked except for the loose torque of his undersized gym socks, as it jackhammering into my girlfriend on the IKEA queen-sized bed we’d built together last spring break. His face—pale and flushed, sprouting an angry rash across jaw and temple—was buried between Sarah’s breasts. Not just pressed to them in worship but suctioned on like a barnacle, making wet slurping noises as he lost himself in her skin.

Sarah’s eyes weren’t closed in bliss—they were open and locked on him like a predator staring down its first kill. Every muscle in her arms and legs seemed drawn taut by some electrical current; when she reached up to pull Wiley closer, her hands left pale bite-marks over his back.

I watched as his greasy, fat-ass stomach pressed into Sarah’s naked tits, squashing them flat, as she was looking up at a man who’d once shit himself on a Tilt-A-Whirl, who spent the first eleven years of his life with a permanent ring of Cheeto dust around his mouth. A man that forever smelled as if he hadn’t showered in a year, And she was letting him fuck her, letting him erase every atom of difference between himself and me, because she said so and I couldn’t stop her.

I watched as she told him to rock his hips back and forth.

“There you go. That’s perfect. See, it’s not so hard…”

A deranged little giggle. “Sorry,” Wiley offered, “I’m probably not very good at this.”

“You’re fine,” said Sarah, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it.

I watched as he quickly started dripping his smelly sweat onto Sarah’s soft skin. He apologized again, and she said, “It’s okay. It’s natural.”

I could hear her smile in the way she said it. I had to grip the table with both hands to keep from driving my knuckles through the cheap wood laminate.

When I first heard her deep lustful moan, I thought she was faking it, for Wiley’s benefit. But the sound had a depth I’d never heard before. It kept going, rising and falling, punctuated by Wiley’s nervous apologies.

I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t hold me. I slumped back down, forehead pressed to the table. There was a sharp, repeated thud from the bedroom—a pattern I recognized from our own nights together, though the rhythm was hopelessly off, clumsy where it should have been deliberate. It went on, and on, and on, and every time I thought it would end, it started again, like a pop song with too many **** reprises.

Through the constant clatter, I could hear more instructions from Sarah.

“Hold my waist. Pull closer.”

“Faster Wiley…Don’t worry, you can’t break me.”

At first, Wiley’s voice was a series of apologetic yelps, but after a minute or two — Fuck, how long had it been?—he got louder. More confident. It was like a dog learning to bark, thrilled by the echo of its own noise.

I tried to think of anything else—of my own father, drunk and unshaven, licking the rim of his can of beer; of Sarah and I in the first months, refusing to let each other sleep, so nervous with affection it made us sick; of the math problems I’d solved in high school, the ones Wiley never could, because his brain didn’t work that way. None of it worked. The only thing that cut through was the monotonous squeal of the bedframe and Sarah’s voice, alternately giggling and gasping, never quite crossing that line between disgust and delight.

And then, finally, I heard her voice say, “Oh, Wiley. Fuck—oh Wiley!”

Wiley’s voice shrieked: “FUCK, Sara-bear, I am going to cum!”

Sarah: “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT WITH MEEEEEEE!”

I could visualize it, frame by frame: Wiley’s stupid, sweaty face twisted up in orgasmic agony; Sarah bracing herself, fingers digging into his back to steady the tectonic rolling of his body; the two of them frozen together in that moment, neither one willing or able to let go.

Wiley’s body shook on top of my girlfriend for what felt like fifteen seconds before he collapsed next to her, panting, a post-nut stupor settling in like a summer storm.

There was a long silence, punctuated only by the soft, almost maternal sound of Sarah running her fingers through Wiley’s hair, comforting him through the shock of what he’d just done. He started to cry softly—little hiccups of disbelief and joy—but Sarah hushed him with the same gentle, practiced tone she used for rescue dogs and scared nieces.

Eventually, Sarah got up, leaving Wiley to marinate in the bed, and then silently closed the door.

There was a silence then, a long, echoing peace, broken only by the muffled sound of Sarah’s laughter.

****

Note to reader this is the first fork, First is the angry route. Second is the broken (happy cockhold route) please enjoy the ride