It was a beautiful dream that fizzled out almost immediately, a night of passion met by the harshness of morning light.

The person I thought I knew wasn't what they seemed.

Just as some things aren't meant to last, our relationship felt like a fragile thing - built on a past imposed on the present.

Charles Conder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It was becoming harder to maintain against the encroaching grit of reality. Her time was a borrowed commodity; she still lived with her husband, and there were only so many hours she could spend with Duroy.

It was a Sunday when she caught sight of him. He was heading to the beach with a stranger's hand looped tight in his arm.

They moved with that rhythm between shared jokes and comfortable silence - a shorthand for long term couple.

She kept to the shadows beneath a palm tree, watching them.

The woman reached up, her fingers tracing his features with a slow, sensual glide before leaning into him.

A picture of idle, genteel perfection - a man and his lover.

It was a slap in the face; he had told her he was working that morning.

Out of a sudden, his eyes darted in her direction, and she was certain that he saw her. But he looked through her as if she were made of nothing but air, his composure was perfectly intact.

He then turned and wandered down the shoreline with such casualness, surrounded by shrieking gulls and the beating tide - as if he were nothing more than a man in solitude.

A few days later, she saw him again, across the street while she was running errands.

He was arguing in a low, heated voice with the same woman. Their body language was sharp and tense -like a spat between lovers. It was nothing like the behavior of casual acquaintances or colleagues.

This was a long-running source of friction between them.

Oftimes, there were signs everywhere, not just seen; they were inhaled in his stuffy apartment. Her senses were assaulted in every sensorial aspect.

A lingering, humid heat crowded the room. It felt like an invisible backstage of a theater. Where a cast of women had been bustling around, changing roles and bowing out just before she arrived.

The room was a palimpsest of unmade beds, a primal, heavy musk, and some stranger's stale perfume.

They turned the air thick and salt-sweet in a nauseating way-one that made her want to throw open every window to let the ghost of whoever had been standing in that room moments ago.

His composure was frayed and dishevelled during one of her surprise visits.

When he tried to pull her in, there was no narcissus, nor violet. Only the scent of a stranger's skin.

His body was warm from the aftermath of something else. Something familiar that they were having - post coital.

But it wasn't her. She couldn't prove it, but her gut was telling her that he was just occupied by someone else. Perhaps that person was still in the room.

Breathing in strangers - that is what kissing him started to feel like.

The same sickening scent reeked from his car. Cloying and heavy. She was reaching for her jacket in the boot but caught on something that didn't belong. It was an overnight bag filled with a woman's belongings.

He just shrugged it off when she confronted him. The bag belonged to some colleagues, he claimed - the same excuse he always used.

The earring on the nightstand belonged to a colleague. The perfume on the vanity? Another colleague.

More breadcrumbs scattered around as if meant to mock and taunt.

One afternoon, she arrived to find a woman storming out, her face a mask of smeared mascara and fury.

The apartment was a wreck, inside - vases smashed, things thrown everywhere. He was standing in the middle of the room, chest heaving, surrounded by emotional tension and physical wreckage.

As usual, he clung to his script: it was business.

But as she tried to press him further, he began madly thrashing what was left of the room - a chair smashed against the wall - and she finally saw the dark and violent side of him.

It had always been left hanging like this; each time she tried to probe, he would react with a crushing tantrum or a sudden, desperate fever of urgency to steer away from the things he would not tell.

He didn't just want her heart; he wanted her surrender to him. Why bother with war when he could simply have them kneel?

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; she is a woman, therefore may be won; she is her, therefore must be conquered.

The issue of the revolving door of women around him was never actually a subject she was able to broach.

Charles Conder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

She bumped into them at the promenade - a tight group, their grating chatter just a little too loud. Three she had seen before - not the other two, though.

Five pairs of eyes zeroed in on her at once. Those narrowed glares, so sharp they felt like they would scratch the skin off her face.

Their expressions soured into judgmental smirks; through every exchange, their eyes never left her before they erupted into laughter. A draft of disapproval drifted from the towners.

The fivesome were breathtaking to look at, but so cankered that the crowd would usually part like water to let them pass.

They still carried themselves with that grotesque confidence, reveling in the attention as if it were a choir of admiration - misreading the room entirely.

It was as if the town knew, those women too; everybody knew something except her.

To ask them directly about Duroy would be to surrender the last of her dignity.

Concurso de Arte y Escritura #188 y Ganadores de la Edición #187/ Art and Writing Contest #188 y winners de la Edición #187

Inviting @dreeyor @corpsekaizen to write their story.

©Britt H.

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