It was one thing to say just this once. To pretend that the night was a slip. A true accident that would never happen again.
But it was another thing altogether to wake up the next morning in Max’s bed.
Mare’s eyes fluttered open, and for the briefest moments she didn’t know where she was. There was a window by the bed, and she found herself staring at a slate gray sky. The world felt upside down and different. Happy and new and incomprehensibly quiet.
Then she felt his hand on her bare stomach, reaching for her, pulling her closer to him and she remembered again. Tumbling into this room with him last night, tearing at each other’s clothes, like they were obstacles that had been in their way for a million years. Their mouths on each other. Their hands on each other. Max.
She sat up quickly, and wrapped the sheet around her chest, suddenly modest in the light of day. Though the baby was almost two, she hadn’t lost all the pregnancy weight. The flesh around her stomach was still soft and puffy, with purple trails of stretch marks. She and George had only been together a handful of times since the baby was born. And she and George had never been together like this.
“Hey.” Max touched her bare shoulder gently. “You don’t have to get up. It’s early.”
But she did. The writing workshop had ended yesterday. She had a flight home this morning. She might have already missed it. “What time is it?” She looked around but couldn’t find a clock. So she jumped out of his bed, wrapped herself fully in the sheet and began gathering her things from the floor. Where was her purse?
Max got up too, pulled on his boxers and strode over to her, putting his arms on her shoulders to stop her from moving. “Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re going, please, wait a minute.” His voice was soft but steady.
“My flight...” she stammered.
“I know you’re married, and I know this is complicated.” Max’s voice was controlled, certain. “But I have been in love with you since the afternoon I first met you in the library. Please don’t just walk out of here. Let’s talk first.”
In love with her, since that afternoon in the library? Is that what this was? Love? She remembered Bess asking in the darkness of their tiny dorm room if she loved George, and she’d lied and said she did. Love was only a word. An empty and ultimately meaningless word. It could be anything. Or nothing at all. Her entire life up until now had taught her that.
“Max,” she said his name softly. “We both had too much to drink last night.”
He shook his head. “I only had one beer.” Had he? Had he been sipping from the same glass all night and she hadn’t noticed. “I was completely sober last night,” he added.
“I wasn’t,” she said. Because of course if she had been, she wouldn’t have ended up here, naked, with Max. Not because she regretted having sex with him. But because now that she had, it felt impossible to go back to how it was with them before, when she kept him at an arm’s length.
Now that she had made this mistake once, she knew that she really could never see Max, ever again. And at that thought, it took everything in her not to cry.
“Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me too.” Max gripped her shoulders, but even his grip was gentle, warm. Like his hands only knew how to take care of her, not hurt her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, and looked at him. “I don’t,” she said petulantly.
“You don’t what? Say it.”
I don’t love you. The words rang in her head, but she couldn’t force them to come from her lips. “I can’t,” she said softly.
And that’s when she spotted a clock on the wall, in the tiny kitchen a few paces away. It was nine thirty. Her flight was at nine. She’d already missed it.