She’d begun with a deep but calm breath of finality. “Look Mark, let me be very clear about something. And I apologise if I seem callous or insensitive, but as you’ve ignored all of my attempts to distance myself from you both physically and professionally, I’m afraid you leave me with very little choice other than to be aggressively blunt. I have absolutely zero interest in socialising with you outside of work. I’d like to think it would be obvious at this point but your behaviour forces me to say out loud that I harbour no emotions towards you as a person nor feel even the slightest physical attraction towards you.”
At this point, Mark started to hold his hands up and began some plea about her getting the wrong idea. Something about the way he’d jumped into it told her he was well rehearsed at immediately backtracking.
“No, no,” she went on, “let me finish for the sake of being clear and removing any unambiguity so that we can put this to rest once and for all.” The volume of her voice was raised (a rare occurrence) but the pace remained steady, the tone resolute. Mark put his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes like a teenager caught coming home late by his parents. “I find your behaviour towards me to be completely inappropriate. You are aware that I am recently married. I do not hide this ring on my finger and I speak regularly office wide about my husband and our domestic life. I can only presume then, that you take the failure of my previous marriage to mean that I hold no value over the commitment that my marriage to Morgan represents; a presumption I find to be both deeply offensive and remarkably creepy.” She turned to face him and stared him in the eyes properly as she made her next point. “Morgan is my husband. He is the man I love and my physical attraction to him is whole and consuming. He is the only man who satisfies me both physically and emotionally and there is nothing a person like you could ever give me that would compare with even his flaws, which are few. So please refrain from standing behind me in that vulgar way that you do. In fact, don’t ever fucking stand near me ever again as it makes my skin crawl. Have I made my point?”
Mark left the room muttering something about her overreacting all the way. It took all of sixty seconds for him to leave with what she presumed he felt was his dignity intact.
Later that night she arrived home to find Jeanie asleep beside Morgan on the sofa in front of a quiet TV.
“Hey,” he whispered, followed by a shushing signal as his eyes gestured the sleeping child beside him.
Lisa responded by leaning up against the doorway that she stood in and unbuttoning the top she was wearing as she held his gaze with her eyes until a streak of pale skin was exposed all the way from her neck down to her belly button. Without saying a word she held his gaze a few moments longer and then left the room, making her way upstairs. Morgan manoeuvred himself off the sofa without disturbing the child and followed a trail of discarded clothes all the way upstairs. When he’d arrived in the bedroom he’d been greeted by the sight of Lisa kneeling on the bed facing away from him, naked but for her panties which she pulled down as she fell forward, landing on her palms so that she was on all fours. She lowered her head to push her ass outwards and expose the pink peach of her pussy lips.
“Don’t keep a girl waiting,” she’d said.
What had followed had not lasted long but had created a memory that had been engraved on both their minds for eternity. She enjoyed remembering this as she sat in front of her dresser mirror brushing her hair. She loved this dresser. She’d found it in an Oxfam shop when they’d moved in a couple of years ago. Almost all the furniture that she’d shared with John had remained in his possession. She’d felt no emotional attachment to any of it. Besides, she had wanted her and Morgan’s home life to be a completely fresh page and this home had become exactly that; and, though the new furniture and appliances had helped, it was Morgan himself who curated the homely feel that welcomed her and cared for Jeanie.
Downstairs, Morgan had removed the sauce from the heat and set the oven to turn off after 30 minutes, in case they were gone by then. Despite the record playing, he could hear Lisa’s occasional footfalls from upstairs as she made her way around the bedroom and in and out of the bathroom. He took the last of his glass of wine into the living room where the record spun. On his way through the hallway he took note of her coat hanging near the front door and her shoes abandoned messily next to his.
“If you ever change your mind, you shouldn’t worry about telling me. I’ll just be glad for what we’ve had this far.”
This he had said to her the day before their wedding. She scolded him for his words, annoyed at his defeatist attitude. But Morgan was realistic. He knew that relationships were, in the main, finite. And it took a more resourceful man than himself to maintain them. For now they were happy the way things were. Certainly he was. He’d never had any great career to speak of and was happy to give up work to stay home and take care of Jeanie and the flat. Lisa was a big earner and could cover their lifestyle easily, whereas he’d never reached any particularly impressive income. He knew that her friends and family silently held this against him. They’d had a few mutual friends before it all went down a couple of years ago, and he was fairly certain that they all shared the feeling that Lisa had traded in her reasonably well to do husband with a good inheritance for… well, nobody in particular. They were all perfectly welcoming and polite to him, whilst never being in any way pleased to see him.
It must have baffled them no end that both Lisa and Jeanie were so besotted with him. At every family event they attended, Jeanie hung off him, desperate to play and laughing hysterically. The three of them always seemed out of place around the rest of her strait-laced and decidedly proper family. He smiled as he thought of this and made a plan to tickle Jeanie at the next family meeting until she screamed that very happy scream that she did.
Morgan finished his wine as he heard Lisa descend the staircase. She wore a black and white jumpsuit that he’d enjoyed removing once before. A small faux fur, camel coloured cardigan covered her shoulders and stopped at her bicep. Her makeup was as normal: modest and radiating a perfect complexion but this time with a glamorous streak of Ferrari Red across her lips. The girl was an artist. He’d never been happier to set his eyes on anyone. He watched as she slipped her delicate feet into some high-heeled Jimmy Choos which showed off well painted toes and adorned her ankles in a pretty way. A small chain of an ankle bracelet rested above the highest strap on her right ankle. It made a good match with the charm hanging in the centre of her chest from a long chain. The look was completed by her usual nose ring, some jangly bracelets on both wrists and a clutch which matched her cardigan.