“You’re still up.”
“I was reading.”
“How was your night?”
“Fine.”
She waited for the question.
Where were you?
Who was he?
Did you sleep with him?
I asked none of them.
She changed clothes in the bathroom.
When she came to bed, she smelled faintly of perfume that was not hers.
Not another woman’s perfume.
Men’s cologne.
Wood.
Citrus.
Something expensive.
Vanessa lay beside me.
The mattress moved.
For twenty minutes, neither of us spoke.
Finally, she said:
“This only works if you don’t punish me afterward.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Silence can be punishment.”
That almost made me laugh.
“You asked for no questions.”
“I did.”
“So I’m not asking.”
She turned away.
The second Friday, she left more confidently.
Black skirt.
Cream blouse.
Overnight bag this time.
“I might stay out.”
“Okay.”
Her eyebrows pulled together.
“You really aren’t going to ask?”
“No.”
She studied my face.
I could see suspicion there.
Vanessa had expected jealousy to prove I still wanted her.
She did not understand that I did want her.
That was what made the whole arrangement hurt.
But wanting somebody does not obligate you to perform pain in the way they find reassuring.
I slept in the guest room that night.
Not as punishment.
Because our bed smelled like her perfume and my imagination.
She returned after one in the morning and found me asleep upstairs.
Saturday morning, she made coffee.
“Are we okay?”
“No.”
She stared.
“You said yes.”
“I said you could go.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A large one.”
She looked irritated.
“This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Then stop.”
Vanessa said nothing.
That told me she would not.
By the fourth Friday, the hesitation was gone.
New clothes began appearing.
A wine-colored dress she never wore with me.
Heels still in boxes.
A perfume she kept in her work bag rather than on the dresser.
Vanessa started getting manicures on Thursday nights.
She changed the password on her phone.
That amused me because I had never known the old one.
Our rules became stranger.
No questions about Friday.
No checking locations.
No unexpected calls.
No discussing the other person.
No bringing anyone to our home.
No staying away past Saturday morning unless she texted first.
Vanessa described these as boundaries.
I began thinking of them as walls.
The first small mistake happened on the fifth Friday.
It was so ordinary I almost missed it.
Vanessa worked from home that afternoon.
Around four thirty, I walked into the upstairs office to retrieve a file from the printer.
Two pages were resting in the tray.
Concert tickets.
Not a hotel receipt.
Not a love letter.