The sheets were desperately rumbled, scattered across the bed like liberally smeared icing atop a cake, in some places skating down the sides. Mingling limbs, pale and starchy spread out, adding infrequent splashes of pink and pale hues of red to the plain sheets and occasional splash of polka dot blankets. Dirty blonde hair, smothered by heat, curled into ringlets, spread out across the plump, goose feather cushions, mingling with the deep, fiery auburn that, attached to blemished skin peppered with freckles, led down to swollen, scarlet lips that had attached themselves to the long neck of the woman whose body was spread across the bed like a form of garnish to the strange metaphorical cake upon which they were laid; lazy, without any intention of moving, content to just be there.
“You’re beautiful like this,” the deep baritone rumbled against her neck, his breath tickling at her skin. She squirmed a little, her legs curling around his tighter, clawing him closer as she felt him smile into her, wry and deeply amused. He nudged at her jawline, skating his lips across her there, and reached up, curling a stray lock around his index finger as his pale hazel eyes drank in the sight of the woman before him. His hand curled around her cheek involuntarily and leaned forth, tugging her lips into a soft, languorous kiss with his own.
“I’m serious,” he mumbled against her, a chuckle erupting warmly from his chest. “Where’s the ill in speaking the truth, hmm?”
“There is no truth,” Millie returned, raking her fingers through the front of his hair, mussing at it. “There is only perception.”
In return, he placed a kiss in the hollow of her throat, “You don’t read Flaubert,” he accused.
It hadn’t quite meant to happen the way it had. The ‘it,’ if it needed clarification at all, being her taking a lover. In fact, when it happened it was barely on the periphery of her needs. The moment it began, it began as friendship. The moment it occurred, it did so because there was no one else. She had been alone. Alone with children brutally miserable, struck down with colic. The ringing of a doorbell, the taking of an order, the attempt to try and converse with another human being in a normal manner while her children screamed, it was the final straw that broke the back of the metaphorical camel. It was then that he was there, a delivery man bringing canvas, then suddenly also the one that was there for her, for the children, when no one else was and when she couldn’t find it within herself to be enough for them.
She was set with one in her arms, the other taken up into his loose embrace, one familiar with the slight weight of an infant. Then, with a teasing hand to the small of her back he nudged her up the stairs, logic finding the bathroom. A warm bath was run, the children divested of their clothes and they were set into the warmth on the sponges that were said to keep babies afloat but really just provided extra problems. Nevertheless, with the warmth of their back and a soothing hand on their stomachs, rubbing away the pain, they quietened enough for the adults to redress them and set them down to sleep. Any attempts to provide thanks were bottled, the tea spilt over the kitchen floor, her shaking hands and fractured nerves ruined, riddled with the faults of that day. But he stayed, rubbing at her back with the same soothing notions, a veritable stranger albeit familiar – an old friend of hers and Trent’s.
After mopping the floor free of water, his hands settled around hers and they slowly made a pot of tea before retreating to the living room with some mugs and a packet of biscuits. Then, bundled up under the blankets he coaxed her into talking. She spoke without deliberating over her words. She announced without fear of reproach and she cried out her pain, desperate to have him see. And he saw. With greater clarity than anyone before him, her left hand cradled loosely in his, his index finger and thumb idly playing with her rings. In the end she too fell to a fitful sleep against his chest, cuddled up under the blankets, their legs looped together, their feet moving slowly against each other, his sock-clad toes tickling at the base of her feet, causing her to intermittently wriggle or kick at him.
In a rather wretched, teenager-like manner, when he heard the jostling of the lock in the front door he slid out from under her, sending a sticking charm in the direction of the lock to delay whoever was there before settling her down against the pillows, tucking the covers around her before donning his shoes and jacket and stepping out through the back door. He didn’t return again until a week or so later when a paint order brought him back to her doorstep, the house silent, the babies cradled together in their Moses basket asleep, ignorant to the goings on around them. Just as before, he stayed for tea and they talked. Then after, he slid out through the back, taking half of the sandwich she’d made with him as well as a cupcake – time given to her by the new routine acquired by the twins allowing her to indulge in such things.
When he came back, it was to a young woman whose babies were beginning to sit up and had developed a sublime interest into gloopy foods in an array of colours. He sat with the youngest in his lap, watching as she busied herself over revision. He tested her, flying her through all of the things she needed to remember before electing that they should go out for the day, a rarity that she should enjoy more. And she did. They did. And thereafter, Alfie Kingston slowly began to integrate into their lives, the days spent with him, the nights spent in a cold stalemate with Keiran, neither party really addressing what was wrong. Indeed, she lived for those days, lived for him, and the ease that he brought, the feeling he instilled within her that she could do it. She could be a proper person. A proper mother. She wasn’t a failure. Then suddenly, he was always there. Always. The bright part of her day.
“You’re a fallacy,” she accused as she laid herself against his chest one day.
“I’m not being misleading in any way, shape or form.” He played idly with the ends of her hair, his lips curling up into a small smile. “I love being here with you.”
“Why?” She asked, folding her arms underneath her chin. Her eyes blinked at him expressively and he couldn’t help but smile at her. Couldn’t help but drink her in like sweet, addictive nectar.
“Why?” He echoed briefly, turning his fingers across her arm. “Why, because we have the strangest, most wonderful discussions. Because you can’t make tea to save your life but bizarrely make excellent scones. Because your children are the most beautiful, special little people and because when I’m here with you I get to see you glow and I feel as though here, like this, you’re happy. I’d like to think that. Are you?”
Millie nodded once. “Happy,” she mumbled with a small unfurl of her lips.
“But,” he prodded, sensing a slight unrest within her. “But, I’m married, Alfie. I can’t go down this road.” She buried her gaze in her arms and he sighed heavily, his hands drawing up and down her sides. “It shouldn’t happen.”
“Shouldn’t?” He queried.
But it did. It did. It did. It happened all at once, like a whirlwind or a hurricane blowing off of the projected course. It was a moment in time, one that stretched out exponentially and dragged them from themselves. They were together for the barest of moments when he snatched her lips to his. Then, just like that, it was over. She thrust him away, sent him away and for weeks he was not seen or heard of, a mere whisper on her mind while she nursed her unhappiness. Then, she came to him, this time on his doorstep, a woman who threw herself into his arms, submitted herself to his love. Submitted herself to happiness. For the briefest of periods.
Thereafter, it was as though they were a little family. They would go and have lunch, wander through parks, take turns pushing the buggy. But then slowly, guilt began to corrupt her heart. The weariness of her husband, the man she was supposed to love without compromise was a stranger to her yet his fatigue arose compassion within her. He was still a man she loved without compromise for Alfie she did not love, he merely filled the boots Keiran could not. He was no one, yet desperately still someone. He was someone she needed, infinitely less than she supposed he must have needed her. Whether it ended with the return to Keiran or not, both men would be hurt – she the selfish one.
It ended the way it began, a whirlwind and a hurricane, for he wanted far more than she could dare hope to offer. He wanted a home, to begin as a proper family, to take the role he’d played for so long properly, to be called ‘dad’ rather than known merely as a strange extra party to the lives of the children and their mother. No, he wanted that right. But she wouldn’t give it. The loyalty she placed so highly in the arms of her husband left him incensed, furious but not at her – desperate to love her in the full capacity of the word, as a husband, as a man, as a lover. Fair kisses was all she allowed for him though in the casual manner she recalled with Trent their bodies would mingle plainly against each other, never overstepping the boundaries set by the band about her finger. Eventually it had to come to an end. Eventually, there was no place for it.
“Could you have done it?” He asked, setting Kelly down on the sofa, turning his gaze upon Millie. “If something had been different, somehow.”
“No,” she whispered, her breath catching. “I can’t leave him.”
“Why Millie?” He burst. “Why? When there isn’t enough life left in him to care for you, let alone those children. I could. I can. You’ve seen.”
“I know,” she closed her eyes. “But I just can’t. I just can’t.”
by 
