DITW 10-6 Overmatch

A listless journey of thousands of miles ended out front of his apartment, parking his Qashgqai in the lot and stopping to look up at the window of the apartment he shared with his wife, glowing a pale yellowy light in the bluish evening. Tight unease ruined what should be a golden moment of return, coming home to Kimmy, who he loved. But looking up at that familiar glowing rectangle that represented so much—hearth, home, and what should have been a family—inspired nothing inside him he would expect, only a pervasive dread that grew in closer proximity to his wife. Distance had saved him until she’d followed. Her departure had healed it. Now walking through the doors and heading to the elevator, his stomach tightened in anticipation. He would soon have to face what he’d worked so hard to avoid.

After landing, he’d texted Kimmy to say he’d arrived. Then the tiring mechanics of airport navigation, driving back with Greg and Sloane from Swanson. Then he sat in his car at the Swanson lot for fifteen minutes, not even starting it. Putting off what? Coming home. Seeing Kimmy. Leaving the fairytale land of avoidance to face the medusa of his nightmares.

He paused at the apartment door, face twisted in agony with no more excuses to stay away, no more reasons to divert his attention. There were no more distractions. He knew she would stay up to welcome him home, knew she would greet him on the other side of this threshold.

He opened the door and stepped in, wheeling his suitcase behind him, closing the door, going as quiet as he could in case by some act of the great lord above Kimmy had fallen asleep waiting for him. Perhaps his quarter hour of purgatory in the Swanson lot could pay off.

But it hadn’t. He was aware of her now, sitting in the family room, waiting for him, standing and coming into the foyer to greet him. She stood leaning a shoulder on the corner of the kitchen wall, arms folded, hands tucked at her sides, one bare foot over the other. Any other day in the thousands of days he’d shared with her, the sight of his wife this way would have melted him. Yoga pants, oversized comfy cotton sweater, shaggy hair, and that goddamned beautiful face he loved so much.

With no smile, only a soft sibilant voice, she said, “I missed you so much, Josh.”

He nodded, tucking the corner of his mouth back and sucking his cheek, staring at the floor. He tossed his keys to the table.

She said, “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Yeah,” he said, standing still, looking at her pretty feet, long and graceful, her sweet tawny skin, the bright pearly polish on her tiny toenails.

“Come in,” she said, and left him, probably realizing how she crowded him at the door, retreating into the apartment’s interior. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it up, then wheeled his suitcase into the apartment, coming around the kitchen to the family room. Kimmy sat on the couch with the television on but muted, occupying such a safe space in his life, a space where he’d spent so much matrimonial companionship. He told her he would unpack tomorrow, bringing his suitcase into the bedroom and storing it in the closet, changing out of his travel clothes, considering then that another perfect escape would be the shower. He’d been in cabs, a plane, Sloane’s Subaru, for the last eleven hours. He locked the bathroom door when he showered, the water scorching hot.

Kimmy lay on the bed when he emerged, lying on her side on the covers, facing away toward the apartment window. “I know you’re punishing me,” she said.

He dried his hair, dressed in a T-shirt and pajama pants, then tossed the towel into the laundry hamper in the closet. “I don’t think I am,” he said.

She lay unmoving on the bed, two hands under her cheek, eyes looking out the window at the night sky. “I’m not saying I blame you. I wish I knew how to make you love me again.”

“I do love you,” he said, standing at the foot of the bed, protecting himself with folded arms.

“I made a mistake. I took the game too far. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it would hurt you.”

He sighed, then sat at the foot of the bed with his back to her, putting his travel-heavy chin in a palm and staring into the steamy bathroom. Sure. The game went too far. That’s all it was. That’s what he wanted it to be, and of course, that’s what Kimmy wanted it to be. He listened to the sounds of her sitting up, swishing her legs around, probably staring at his back. He looked over his shoulder and caught her doing that, hating the unwarranted sympathy he felt for her, seeing the sullen and hurting look on her face, the pouting lips, the furrowed brow, the teary eyes. He held out his hand backward to her. While it changed nothing about how he felt, he hoped it might offer her some reprieve from whatever pain she might feel right now, the same way her offered hand helped him in that restaurant in Rome.

Kimmy took more than he offered, holding his hand and scooting right to his back. The closeness of her brought warmth and pleasure and the feel of her lean body against him swelled tears in his eyes. Her cheek pressed his back, the light weight of her head resting on his shoulder. It mimicked a hug, and with the promise of glorious freedom from the torment that consumed him, he turned and embraced her. With that, Kimmy’s arms went around him, her face buried in his neck. He lowered to the bed, holding her. Kimmy clung to him, crying and snuffling, her face hidden in his collar. Her cries, her tears, her hugging arms, all worked to bring a release on the clutch that held his heart. Whatever grasped him, whatever constricted his emotions, released at least for a moment. He smiled at the ceiling, holding the woman he married in his arms as she let out her own pain, her own torment, her own suffering.

After a long while of that, a repeat of what happened when she’d followed him to Rome, she eased out of his clutch, hiding her face, sniffling still, then loping into the closet, taking his bath towel and using it to clear her face.

She returned to the bed, her cheeks red, eyes puffy, her lips swollen. New tears filled her eyes. She fell to the bed next to him, turning to him. She cupped a warm hand to his cheek. “Now that you’re home, everything’s going to be different, Josh. I swear. No more games, no more of that... whatever it was we were doing. We’re going to be serious now. I’m going to be serious about you. You’re my life...” The tears spilled at last, and she wiped them with her sweater sleeve. “You’re my life, Josh. I don’t want to play any games that would jeopardize that.”

For a flickering moment while he looked in her eyes, shame bloomed in his heart. Had he done this to her? She suffered for his own perversions. He’d pushed her into his dark kinks, his most sinful desires. But if it were his fault, he’d have to illuminate the “it.” What was it? What was the it that happened? How did her panties end up in Devlin’s apartment?

He didn’t want to fucking know. He didn’t want to ever, ever find out why. They were never there. It was some trick, some black magic cast by Devlin Stone.

He cupped her cheek, too, the both of them on their sides, face to face, holding the other. “You’re my life, too.”

Her eyebrows bowed, her mouth condensed to a blushed dollop. “Am I?”

“Of course you are,” he whispered, thumbing over her flawless cheek, looking into her eyes.

“I’m only going to be good to you. I won’t be bad to you. I swear it, Josh.”

“You were never bad.”

He watched her face contort and flutter through fluctuating emotions. She tried to say something, but more tears came. He thumbed them away. She said, “Can I kiss you?”

He nodded in rapid jabs and his wife planted her hot mouth on his, her ragged, happy breaths snorting through her nostrils, relieved, redeemed, loved. He hugged her again, ignoring all his suspicion and blooming with what he needed right now: peace and thrumming ardor, a loving glow lighting up his darkest places.

Kimmy’s kiss broke away, her hand still on his cheek, her head bowing. He kissed her forehead as she seemed to be brought to tears again. His eyes roamed the room, at peace again and yet a terrible dread still threatening. He looked at their bed, their bedside table, the room, the window, the curtains. And wondered if Devlin had ever been in here. Had he fingered Kimmy on their bed? Had he done more? Where did he get Kimmy’s panties?

Kimmy whispered, “Can we get into bed?”

He agreed, and they separated. He got off the bed, pulled back the sheets. Kimmy sat on the bed still, pulling off her sweater and tossing it to the floor. She was naked underneath. Just her lean beautiful torso, her teacups with their small chocolate nipples; her tight stomach bunched in the thinnest of rolls, her ribs showing. She stood, came around to her side of the bed and puled back the covers, too. He got into bed, watching her still. She peeled the yoga pants off, no underwear underneath. The long muscles of her thighs flexed. She sat, showing him her graceful back, the shoulder blades pressing out her thin skin. He placed the whole of his outstretched hand on her naked back, and she paused, looking to the side, showing him her profile and letting him touch her. He imagined he could hear her heartbeat. Then let his hand fall and gathered it to his chest. Kimmy slipped in bed next to him, totally naked, shimmying to back herself into him. He folded an arm around her, felt her thin, delicate body in his clutch. She was a thing of great value. Tall, thin, beautiful, striking, her intelligence fierce. When she wore her stark uniform of corporate law, she would steal any man’s breath. Maybe even strike fear in his heart. Yet here she was in meek Josh Waters’s bed. Devlin had told him she was too much woman.

But would too much woman fly to Rome for meek Josh Waters just so she could tell him she loved him, just so she could cry in his arms?

For the first time in two weeks, he smiled. It was timid at first, almost guilty of its own existence. Maybe he could move on from this debacle. Maybe there was hope. Nothing had happened. Nothing he would ever know about.

He kissed the back of her neck, whispering, “I love you very much, Kimmy.”

She squirreled around to face him, her eyes darting over his. Now his hand was on her warm narrow waist, moving lower, sliding over her feline haunch.

She said, “It’s been two weeks.”

Since what? Since they’d been intimate. But the first thing he thought was to blame her, to assault her with it. To think of her as a horny, insatiable woman who was getting it from two men. One of them went away, and she was getting it half as much.

It fucking aroused him.

He grew hard. Her touch, his renewed fantasy, her hot, smooth skin under his hand. Her nakedness.

She’d used her nakedness as a weapon. Flicked his blade out of his hand with her own, his sword of doubt and lost faith clattering to the castle floor. He was disarmed, helpless.

Maybe Devlin was right and Kimmy Chang was too much woman. She could make him do anything. Suffer anything.

“I just want to feel your body, Josh,” she said, guiding him to take off his shirt. “I want to feel your skin on mine. We don’t have to do anything, we can—”

She stopped when she found his erection. He shouldn’t feel ashamed by his arousal in his wife’s presence, but now he worried she thought maybe he’d been thinking dirty thoughts of her again, dark fantasies of her betrayal with his high school bully.

She pulled out the front of his pajamas and her long hand snuck in and cupped the belly of his throbbing hardness. He shuddered, powerless under her magic touch.