Tormentum

She held him close. The feeling of his bareback against her naked body was so magnificent. Her fingers and palms traced his lightly chiseled muscles, skimming his chest, abdomen, barely wandering to the crease at the thighs.

He took a puff from his cigarette, feeling her breasts press against his back has he inhaled. Her arms tightened slightly around him as he blew out a cloud of smoke, concealing them in a shroud in the dimly lit room. He felt his skin tingle at every point where her body touched his skin, especially where her cold wedding ring pressed momentarily on his chest, but it was a confusing feeling – a feeling of satisfaction, and detachment.

It’d been a month since they’d seen each other – his work often brought him to places, always for months at a time. He’d been able to come back early this time, but his mind was still lingering in that city of foreign lights and people…

He put out the cigarette with a sigh.

He felt her raise her cheek from his body, her arms tensing slightly, as if sensing something wrong.

He assured her he was just tired from all the work and travelling. She seemed sceptical, but gave him a soft kiss at the base of his neck anyway, and pressed her cheek slightly left to where she had it previously.

She was so blissful he was back that she ignored the nagging feeling that something changed in him. Perhaps he was affected by the culture? Perhaps he was really just tired from the travelling? All that didn’t matter – he was back with her, with an intricate gift from that foreign country, and he’d loved her as passionately as he did.

Somewhere in the corner of the room, his phone lit up. She noticed it too, but he made no movement to reach for it as he usually did. She noted this oddity, but pushed it to the back of her mind.

She whispered his name before a light kiss on his back. She was pregnant with their child, and she exclaimed how blessed she felt, to be finally bestowed this gift of love.

He responded in a way that every married man would when he was about to become a father – he embraced her, muttering words of gratefulness, giving her loving kisses. In his mind was a war of conflicting feelings.

He rose to take the ashtray and his cigarettes out of the room and open the windows a little, and went back to embracing her.

As they lay down to sleep, his arms around her body and his nose in her hair, he told himself she didn’t need to know. She didn’t need to have her heartbroken knowing that he found the woman of his dreams in the foreign land. She didn’t need to know that the text was her asking if he’d told her that he wanted a divorce.

No one needed to know, and life would continue the way it had before he went away.