Doreen’s voice echoes in my memories. Pay attention to the secrets that you keep. You don’t have to share everything with everyone—but sometimes the very things you hide are the things you least need to keep locked inside.
The secret Jonah and I share is different. Surely it belongs to us alone.
? ? ?
Carmen has a ten A.M. class, so before long she’s headed to campus, as blissfully ignorant of my warped sex life as ever. I need to get into the departmental office soon, so I should follow her, but I linger awhile, restless and unable to focus.
Instead I pace the length of the studio. People will start coming in soon, but for another few minutes, the space is mine alone. My footsteps on the concrete floor echo in the empty space. The air smells like paint. I’m surrounded by drafting tables, a potter’s wheel, easels, X-Acto knives, pots of ink. A few long poles stretch from floor to ceiling, lingering evidence of the spiral staircases that were here back when this was a warehouse. Masking-tape labels proclaim this brush or that canvas to be the property of one of the artists who pays for the studio’s use.
I wish the studio belonged to me. Only me.
Because then I could ask Jonah to meet me here.
He would rip open my work shirt. Cover my mouth with his hand. Thrust against me so that I felt the length and hardness of his erection against my belly. I imagine him using the ragged remains of my shirt to tie me to one of the poles—pulling so tight I can almost feel the pressure. My breaths quicken as I imagine him taking one of the artists’ knives and cutting away my jeans and panties. Then he could force my legs apart and—
“Hey!”
Startled, I spin around to see Marvin—a painter, one of my fellow TAs at the UT department of art, and the guy who told me about this studio in the first place. “Oh! Hi. Hi there. How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Marvin gives me a look as he hangs his messenger bag on one of the wall hooks. “You okay?”
“Sure! Of course.”
“You look a little flushed, that’s all.”
“Just got done working hard.” Wow, that could not have sounded less convincing if I’d tried. Hastily I head for my own bag. “Heading out. Anything you need me to take care of at the office?”
Marvin shakes his head, bemused. “It’s all good.”
Honestly, I think as I drive to campus. You went out with Jonah. You’ve told your friends. The two of you are—normalizing this.
He’s not your mystery lover anymore.
But the whole day, I can’t stop thinking about Jonah. Not the conversation we shared—not the tender kiss at my front door—but endless fantasies, overlapping each other and blurring every other thought I have. Over and over, I imagine him taking me as roughly and brutally as possible.
Concentrate! I tell myself, as I sit through a department meeting, as I grade papers, as I talk to Geordie on the phone about a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. It doesn’t help. My erotic imagination has taken over, and there’s no room left in my head for anything else. Even when I guest-lecture in the Renaissance Sculpture class, I linger too long on the slide of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne. It’s as if I’m drinking in her fear, his lust, and her hands reaching skyward for escape.
I want Jonah to chase me. To catch me. I want it now.
As I walk back to my office after class, my phone vibrates in my hand. I’m expecting Geordie to call back with the final word on the restaurant, so—for once—I don’t look at the screen before I answer. “Hello.”
“Oh. Vivienne.” Chloe sounds dismayed to have gotten me instead of my voice mail. That makes two of us. “How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Very well, as it happens.” As if you care remains unspoken. “Mom’s decided to get rid of the armoire on the second floor. You know, the one that used to belong to Aunt Mignon? It would look just perfect in my guest room . . . but of course I’ve taken the last few heirlooms. So I thought I ought to ask you whether you were interested before I became greedy.”
Sounds generous, doesn’t it? Of course, Chloe’s fully aware that I live in a two-room house that barely has room for my books, much less more furniture. “You should have it,” I say. “Besides, then the armoire will be Libby’s someday.”
“Of course. Well.” A silence falls. She wants to know about Thanksgiving, but she doesn’t want to ask.
I’m so, so tired of jumping through hoops—but if I don’t visit Libby this Thanksgiving, how long will it be before I see her again? Chloe couldn’t keep me from her forever, but she could separate us for a long time. So I stifle a sigh. “I’m planning on coming home for the holidays. For Thanksgiving and Christmas.” That last is only partly true. Christmas day with my family, I can endure. The entire break? No way in hell.