There was her regular, daytime life as a nurse, studying harder than ever before, stressing about upcoming exams, cramming with Della and a group of trainee nurse friends, trying not to kill anyone during their practical sessions on the wards, and generally holding body and soul together by the thinnest thread.
And then there was her relationship with Jake, her ‘evening life’, one so distant from the pharmacology lab and syringes and prescriptions that it seemed, at times, thoroughly unreal. This was a world of being picked up in a nice car, eating at some of the best restaurants in the country, visiting museums, going to the opera, and generally being pampered like a princess. It was also, Megan liked often to remind herself, the time of the greatest physical pleasure of her entire life.
Sex evolves, like a relationship evolves, and her sex with Jake was becoming richer, more daring, even occasionally experimental. Something had been opened up by their mid-air tryst, a new willingness to go further, to risk being refused or stared at incomprehensibly, or simply laughed at. But neither of them ever said no. It was like living the plot of an erotic novel, with scenes of almost absurd opulence nestling between each astonishing session of breathless, unashamed fucking.
Although he claimed never to have tried it before, Jake turned out to be a master of sexting. It became the number one reason why Megan checked her phone, and never failed to add a little excitement, not to mention more than a little wetness, to her day. Hard at work in the lab, the morning after a particularly open-minded night of lovemaking at Jake’s apartment, Megan received:
Hey sexy... Careful not to work your ass off today. I know you want me inside you there again tonight. So tight and hot... mmm.
When Jake was traveling, which was perhaps three nights a week, they figured out the time zone in advance and arranged brief but intensely sexy Skype or FaceTime calls. Megan loved pretending to be her distant lover’s sex slave, growing through her initial reluctance and shyness to become an enthusiastic webcam performer. Jake even bought her a top-of-the-line HD webcam to enhance the experience, letting him see in detail Megan’s acquiescence to his demands.
It made Jake smile, as he sat waiting in the airport lounge, to think that he appeared hard at work at his laptop, when actually he was directing a porn movie of his own devising. As his flight to St Louis was called, his personal actress was playing with a whole fruit bowl full of props, climaxing with the biggest and thickest one deep inside her.
A few hours after this luridly sensual display, Megan sent Jake a selfie which showed her obeying the one command Jake had not had time to witness; the same long, curved banana being pushed into somewhere Megan had originally thought too small and tight for the purpose. She grinned to herself as she pressed ‘send’, and then brought herself to orgasm more conventionally, with a bullet vibrator Jake had bought her for those nights they were apart.
But then hours passed. Many hours, and then a whole day. She texted him again, hoping for another webcam session, but there was no reply.
And then a whole, agonizing, inexplicable week passed without a single word from Jake.
It took two days for panic to set in, and five before she plucked up the courage to call Tom. She had the phone in her hand, Tom’s number ready to dial, for half an hour before calling him. It doesn’t make any sense. He said he’d just be gone overnight, and that we’d be together as soon as he got back. In the end, she convinced herself that it wasn’t just vanity or the need for attention; she was actually worried about him.
“Tom, hey...”
“Megan, how are you sweetie?”
He had called her that for so long that it no longer seemed flirty. Just kind of comforting. “I’m... Well... Have you heard from Jake in the last few days?”
Tom thought for a second. “Sure, he called in from Manila yesterday with an update on the meetings over there.”
Manila? He said he was going to St Louis. Who makes a mistake like that?
“Oh, yeah,” Megan said. “Of course. It’s just that he promised to bring me back some fabric for a dress I’m making,” she lied elegantly and with surprising imagination given her stress levels, “and I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Well he’ll be back in a couple of weeks, I think,” Tom said, checking his own schedule as he spoke. “Want me to let him know you’re asking about him?”
Megan toyed with the idea, but decided against it. “No, I’ll just see him when he’s back. Must have slipped his mind.”
“OK, well I’ll see you after Andrea’s lesson tomorrow?”
“Sure. Bye.”
She ended the call, sat on her sofa by the window, and cried for hours.
Erica came home to find her curled up, eyes reddened, face a mess. Without a word, she brought over a bottle of good red wine and two glasses, opened the bottle with an experienced twist of the corkscrew, and set a very full glass in front of Megan. The stricken girl gave her a pleading, damaged look.