I SHOULD GO.

LOLA

"Excuse me?" I said under my breath.

"You heard me."

"I did."

"Okay?"

"I heard you ask me to seduce your best friend before the week ends," I managed, disgust rising through my chest, clean and cold, like water finding cracks.

"I didn't say seduce. I said ---"

"Eddison! I am not doing that." My voice was shaky but the words were firm.

He didn't back off. He only adjusted in his position, ready to make me want what he wanted. He never listen to me.

"You don't have to do any extra work. Just do what you have always done. Be present, attentive, involved."

"Eddison!" I called out, not a yell, more like a plea for him to not go further.

Slowly, he looked away, pathetically, like he was selling an opportunity I wouldn't want to miss.

"Aren't you tired of enduring a marriage like this?" 

He inhaled deeply.

"Don't you think you need to do something to show my father that this marriage isn't working for us?" he asked, his voice serious and his focus sharp on my eyes.

Us?

He asked like he too felt the pain through these years. Like he wasn't the one that walked me down the aisle two years ago, against my will and promised me an endless pain and shame in disguise of a happy forever."

Eddy wasn't joking.

"You want out too?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

I turned away from him. I walked to the window. Los Angeles glittered below like it always did, indifferent and beautiful, keeping everyone's secrets.

Connor's hands. Fredmon in the bathroom. Greg saying my name like a full sentence.

A week. They were all here for a week.

And my husband was sitting behind me asking me to burn the house down neatly, on a schedule, without making a mess.

"I'll think about it," I said.

It was not a YES.

But it was no longer a NO.

---

Shower. A private dinner because I couldn't face everybody yet. Then, I was back beside him. I couldn't sleep.

That wasn't new. Sleep in this house had always been a negotiation, but tonight's was different, tougher. Tonight, the silence had company.

Somewhere down the hall, three men were breathing the same air as me.

When I became bored of pretending to be asleep, I got up.

---

The house was dark in the way expensive houses are dark — never fully, always some light finding its way in from the city outside, from the garden lights on timers, from the glow of electronics that never fully slept.

I moved through it quietly in my silk night gown, barefoot on the cold marble, finally deciding on where to go - the kitchen for water. It sounded natural.

The gym was on the way to the kitchen.

I heard him before I saw him.

The rhythmic pull of cable weight, the controlled exhale of a man who did this seriously, who treated his body the way he treated everything else — with precision, with intention, with an infuriating competence .

The door was half open.

I should have kept walking.

I stopped.

He was in shorts and nothing else and the room was warm and I was a woman who had been surviving on the memory of a dream, not prepared in any way for the reality of Connor Millow exercising without clothes at midnight.

Shameless, I was lost in the sight before me.

Memories from the dream came unraveling from the quiet corner where they had been still.

My emotions broke out of control, my p*ssy clenching hard under my clothes, above my resistance.

I should go now, but my eyes wanted different. I pulled my legs over each other, and deliberately rubbed my thighs against themselves - the most I could get from what I actually wanted.

I should go now.

But Connor had dropped from the pull up bar, and he had turned, his eyes quickly finding mine like he knew I had been there all along.

Not surprised, not curious, like he had felt the weight of a familiar presence way back before he turned, but had chosen to complete his squat set before acknowledging it.

"Lola," he said my name, like it was a full sentence.

"Hi," I said, my face taking form calmly and composed like I had learned to over the years, but my body trembling under the influence of his gaze.

Slowly, I unclasped my thighs, my p*ssy stil throbbing hard, I felt it inside my stomach.

His eyes still on mine as if searching for an answer to a question he hadn't asked yet, he gracefully grabbed his towel from the weight bench.

As he dabbed the sweat off his face and neck, I avoided looking at his forearms.

This was Connor in another form, different from tuxedos, scrubs and laboratory coats.

This one looked like temptation in it's entire form. I swallowed, a slurpy sound escaping my throat.

I flinched, because I was sure he heard it.

I read somewhere that dreams can manifest if you think about it a lot. My chest tightened against the air.

"Come in," he beckoned, plainly, like I belonged in the space.

"I was heading to the kitchen," my lips fluttered around the words.

I watched his lip twitch, like he decided against a smirk last minute.

Slowly, I crossed over the door, allowing it to slam softly behind me.

"Come here," he said again, making a space for me in front of him.

I pressed my feet against the floor in rebellion.

I should leave.

But then, my eyes found his thighs - bulky as if threatening to break free from the piece of cloth.

Then...

A trail of sweat ran down the center of my back, disappearing through the line of my b*tt.

My eyes lingered longer on the mass of his groin, and as if that was the push I needed, I felt my feet loosen off the ground. I moved towards him, settling into the space he wanted.

"Look ahead," his voice came again.

I straightened my shoulders to look at the mirror in front of me, the contrast of him standing behind me, eyes focused somewhere around my neck made my knees weak.

"Loosen up. Don't be scared of occupying the space around you."

I exhaled deeply, something inside of me releasing back into form.

"Lola, your cardiovascular health, energy levels, your sleep, all of these counts for a perfect and working body. Do you mind?" he said, but it sounded different. Not an attack, not a verdict, more like concern for something important.

I obeyed him as he pushed down lightly on my shoulders, causing me to squat.

My body tingled to the cold of his sweaty palms against my skin.

"You've never done this?" he asked, dropping a hand from my shoulders to my side, just under the weight of my br*asts.

I froze - at his sudden movement, more at where the question he had asked led.

"Don't stop. Go down," he commanded, and like a child would obey for a piece of candy promised, I lowered my body.

"You shouldn't allow anyone to convince you to hate yourself," he continued, guiding me up with his hands still in place.

Something knotted in my stomach.

"I don't know what you are talking abo---"

"You don't have to pretend around me, Lola. I have seen how even the mere sound of his voice makes you shrink."

The space around us closed in on me as I turned to face him.

I wanted to defend Eddy, but I couldn't find the courage to.

I just stood there - silent, defeated.

He moved in closer towards me, leaving just enough space for our bodies to not touch.

I rose my head to look at him, but a sudden light hit my eyes.

The door opened. Light from the hallway fell across the floor in a long triangle, casting a warmth on Connor's face.

Eddy. 

In his silk pajamas, phone in hand, eyes still heavy but not shut. He could see us - I, in my night dress with nothing underneath, my n*pples had become pointy.

His best friend dressed in just a pair of shorts, his body glistening with sweat. Standing just two inches away from each other, alone in a room in the middle of the night

He didn't smile.