Elena's Bed With Her Husband's Friend

I watched Marcus’s taillights disappear down the street, the black Mercedes swallowing the last of the morning light as he headed for the airport and another three-week stretch of boardrooms and hotel suites. Three weeks. Again. I stood on the porch in my thin silk robe, arms crossed under my bare breasts, the midsummer air already thick enough to taste. The neighborhood was quiet except for the distant hum of a lawnmower. I should have felt relief. Instead the familiar hollow ache settled low in my belly, the one that had been growing for months every time he packed another suitcase and left me rattling around this too-big house with nothing but my vibrator and the memory of how his hands used to feel.

I turned to go back inside when I heard the gate latch next door. Ryan. Of course. He lived right there, shared a fence line, had been Marcus’s best friend since college, the charming one who always stayed for dinner and lingered over wine. Forty-one, dark hair going silver at the temples, that easy grin that made every woman at the country club lean in a little closer. He came up the walk carrying nothing, just wiping his hands on his jeans like he’d been working on something.

“Morning, Elena,” he said, voice low and rough from sleep. “Hate to bother you this early, but I need to borrow that socket set Marcus keeps in the garage. My truck’s being a bitch again.”

I held the door open wider. The robe slipped off one shoulder. I didn’t fix it. “Come in. He’s already gone. You know where everything is.”

He stepped past me into the cool foyer and the air changed. It always did when Ryan was near—thicker, charged, like the second before a summer storm. I closed the door. The click sounded final. He turned, eyes dropping to the open vee of my robe, the inner curves of my breasts, the bare length of my thigh where the silk split. I felt my nipples tighten under the thin fabric. Months of nothing. Months of Marcus falling asleep mid-sentence or jerking off quick in the shower because he had an early flight. My cunt was already slick just from Ryan looking at me like that.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. I glanced at the screen while Ryan pretended to study the framed photos on the wall.

Marcus (trainer): You skipped again yesterday. Everything okay? I can come by this morning if you need to talk. Or train. Or whatever.

I thumbed it silent and set the phone face-down. Ryan’s gaze flicked to it, then back to me.

“Everything all right?” he asked.