Sarah

1.

She smelled of stale urine mixed with perfume, and her dress was thin enough that he could see the point, half-way across her breasts, where her bra ended. Her cleavage spilled out a little from her dress, so you could see just enough to make you want more. She didn't move gracefully exactly - her walk was awkward, and she hunched her shoulders slightly. But she knew how to salsa and shimmy - sober, with the lights on.

The first time he met her, he was at a party, in the process of getting wasted. She was two drinks behind him. The entire evening, every time she laughed she caught his eye. Well, he was no fool. He had long ago learned to pick up the signals women sent - when to smile, when to flatter them (always), when to pull them closer while you were watching TV….

2. Their first date was a fiasco: They were supposed to meet at some new club downtown. They circled around the club for an hour, only to find each other just as someone pulled the fire alarm. "Who pulls the fire alarm at a club?" she asked. He shrugged. That was the night he first noticed her awkwardness.

They bumped into some friends of his, and decided to all go out for coffee together. She clearly felt out of place. After a few minutes, she got up. "I think I'll go now", she said, waiting for the requisite "I'll go with you", but he remained silent. He watched her ass until she turned the corner.

3. After that, Ed had little desire to see Sarah again; finding cunt had never been a problem. Yet still, something about the way her hair danced when she shook her head while laughing stayed stuck in his mind, reappearing at awkward moments, like the middle of board meetings, or when he and Christine were in bed.

He and Christine had been "not going out" for years. She was always up for sex, except for when she was "in a relationship", but such relationships tended to be brief, and to end in crying followed by late-night phone-calls. This was followed by what he termed "comfort sex", pointing out that it has Biblical roots, and could be traced back to David comforting Batsheva "with lovemaking".

4. "Lovemaking" - God, that word was so corny, it made him shudder the first time Sarah used it in bed. She thought he was shivering with delight, and began kissing his thighs. He soon found that using that word gave him a 90% chance of getting a blowjob.

They were living together when she used that word for the first time. They had gone on a second date, of course. She had called him, offering to come over to his house with a bottle of wine.

Christine had once told him, "We women aren't as stupid as you guys think. When we choose to come over to your house with a bottle of an inhibition-reducing substance, we know exactly what we're doing."

The morning after he and Sarah's second date, Ed called Christine to tell her she was right.

5. Soon Ed and Sarah were living together, though neither one was quite sure how it happened. The melodies of their lives became a fugue, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant.

He loved it when she sang in the shower, letting his tenor join her soprano, and soon they were a tangle of arms, legs and suds.

He also loved it when he woke up in the morning to the smell of omelets, or how his sheets were always clean. Not that she did all of his laundry of course: "No way am I washing your dirty underwear", she'd say, jutting out her chin like a rebellious five-year old. He discovered that angle was perfect for kissing.

He saw Christine less and less. One day, she called him. "Just because you have a relationship doesn't mean you can neglect our friendship. I never abandoned you for my boyfriends", she said. He was tempted to say, "Those weren't boyfriends. They were two-week fuck-buddies who bought you coffee", but he knew she was right, so he said, "Where do you want to meet?"

Their coffee-date was fun - more fun, in fact, than he had had in a long time. He and Sarah had stopped going out a while ago, and the smell of omelets and clean sheets was beginning to lose its charm. Crunch-time at work meant little time for joint morning showers, and Sarah rarely wore her skimpy negligees anymore.

Meanwhile, Christine seemed to have blossomed in Ed's absence. Had she always been this hot, or had something about her really changed? How could he not have noticed that her breasts were shaped like flowers, waiting to be plucked, stroked and smelled? How could he have missed her straight black hair falling gently on her shoulders?

It was not until he was halfway home that her remembered to feel guilty about having those thoughts. "You're with someone now", he reminded himself, "You're with someone else".

7. He was greeted by a passionate kiss the moment he walked through the door. Sarah looked amazing. She had done her hair, and was wearing a dress that begged to be taken off. "Do you like it?", she asked, noticing the path of his eyes. "Wow." he said. She laughed, her eyes glittering, her hair jingling in the way he had found so charming when they first met. "We're going dancing" she said, taking him by the hand. "Wait a minute", he said. She stopped. "What is it?" "I have to pee."

Throughout the night, dancing with her and later on in bed, he thought he could stay with her forever. The next morning, waiting for her to bring him breakfast in bed, he chided himself for being so corny.

8. When Christine called him the next day, his first reaction was not to answer, but then he felt guilty - after all, she was his friend…Apparently, she had just broken up with her new boyfriend (funny, she hadn't mentioned him when they went out for coffee) could they maybe meet during his lunch hour? She needed someone to talk to - his house were near his office, it would be the most convenient place.

He wasn't exactly sure how it happened. First, they were sitting together on the couch, and she was crying. Then he was putting his arm around her, then they were kissing and his hands were moving down, taking off her shirt…

Afterwards, they got dressed silently, without looking at each other. They walked out of the house, he ahead, she following behind. It was only when he turned to lock the door that he saw her face, and even then he refused to meet her eyes. "Thank you" she said, pecking him on the cheek and running off, leaving him to lock the door and go back to the office alone.

9. That night, Sarah said he was tense. "What is it?" she asked, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Nothing." he snapped, pulling away.

Later, he could hear her in the bathroom crying. A few months ago he would have knocked on the door, pleading until she unlocked it and let him comfort her. Tonight however, he was not in the mood for those games. Besides, he was tired and had a very important meeting at work tomorrow. So he turned off the lights and went to bed.

10, When he woke up the next morning, she was not there. He panicked. Could she have left? But her clothes were still strewn across the floor, and her book was still on the nightstand. There was no way she would have left without her book. Could she be in the bathroom? He tried the door. Locked. "Sarah? Sarah?". He started banging. "Sarah?". "Mmm" her sleep-filled voice wafted through the door.

"My God, Sarah - are you ok? If you don't open up in ten seconds I'm going to bang down the door. Ten, nine…" He heard the patter of her bare feet, a click, and then - "Hi." she said. Her hair was a mess, and she was still wearing her work clothes. "Hi." he said. She crumpled into his arms.

11. He had to call Christine to let her know it could not happen again. He had almost let one stupid (yet pretty amazing) fuck ruin his relationship with Sarah. That morning, holding her in his arms while she cried, he realized that she was his, and he was hers, and that was that.

When he told this to Christine on the phone, she laughed at him. "You sound like a guy in some fucking movie", she said. "Well, sometimes life imitates art." "Bravo, how Oscar Wilde of you." He laughed.

They agreed to meet one last time at his house, to discuss what had happened. "Don't worry", she said before hanging up, "I won't be bringing a bottle of wine."

12. They were in the middle of it, on the living room floor, when Sarah walked in. She stood silently transfixed like a greek statue, as Ed and Christine, alerted by the click of the lock and the clang of high heels, tried to disentangle leg from leg, thigh from thigh.

Christine got dressed quietly, as Ed sat, still naked, on the floor, looking down at his feet. Sarah remained a stone as Christine walked out, but she jumped when the door banged. She sat down on the couch; each waited for the other to speak.

"What do you expect me to say?" she asked. "I expect you to scream at me, to tell me that I'm scum, that I - oh God, Sarah, I am so sorry." "Are you? Are you really sorry?" "Yes, you have no idea how much I - she called a few days ago, saying she had broken up with her boyfriend, needed someone to talk to, and it - it just happened, and today, I wanted to meet Christine, to tell her why it could't happen again -" "But you fucked her anyway." She laughed, but it was not the kind of laugh Ed knew. "You fucked her. You -" and she was crying.

He got up to hug her, but she pushed him away. "I need to be alone." she said. "I'm not leaving you." he replied. She laughed. "So now you love me? Now, when it's too late?". "Is it too late?" "I don't know, I don't -" This time she let him hug her when she cried. It took a few minutes before he realized that he was crying too.

13. When they had cried until they had no more tears, they sat silently in the dark apartment, holding each other. "Where do we go from here?" she asked in an almost-whisper. "I don't know." "I'm going to go shower.", she said, slipping beyond his reach.

As he listened to the water, he tried to remember why they had decided to live together, to imagine a life apart. He couldn't do it, but wasn't sure if his failure was because he had to pee. Yesterday he would have peed while she was in there, but today he felt the need to protect himself, as if seeing him tend to his biological needs would give her some sort of power over him.

Damn it! He really had to go. So he knocked on the door. "What is it?" "I have to whizz". She laughed - the old laugh, the one he knew. "Come in."

She had pulled the curtain shut around her; in the past, she would leave it open, allowing him to admire her body.

The toilet flushed, accompanied by shouts of "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!". "What's wrong?" he asked. "The toilet took all the cold water.", she said. He knocked on the curtain. "Can I come in?" All his knowledge of how to read girls' signs was finally failing him. "Fine" she said, and, as he pulled back the curtain, "but that doesn't mean I've decided to stay with you." "I know", he replied, as he bent down to kiss her collarbone. She allowed his lips to work their way downwards, lingering across her breasts, on to her belly, and finally between her thighs.

Afterwards, he remained kneeling on the tile floor, feeling her taste in his mouth. The tip of his nose brushed her pelvis. His knees were killing him, but he felt unable to move. The warm water flowed down his body, joining the river of suds that surrounded his feet.

"Get up," she said, "your knees must be killing you." "I can't." She laughed. "I feel like I'm in a movie." He could feel her body trembling.

He had always both admired and loathed her ability to disassociate herself from a situation, to recognize - and ruin - the corniness of romantic moment, but now he realized that she had never disassociated herself at all, that she had been using her words to distract him from her trembling inside.

He looked up and saw she was crying. He shifted position; the tiles felt cold against his buttocks, but the warm water helped with that, and at least now his knees didn't hurt. He pulled her onto his lap; she lay her head across his chest. "Maybe we should separate." she said. "Maybe." he said, stroking her hair.

The air was full of possibilities. In a few moments, the water would rise, and one of them would have to get up to turn off the shower. But for now, they were content to hold each other just a little while longer.