"I think I know what this is about," Lucas remarked over the phone, a clatter of a key ring came through the speaker, "I'll be right over."
Olivia thought about his response in the time it took for him to arrive at her door. She thought of all the previous text messages exchanged, nothing crass, nothing blatantly sexual, it could easily have all been excused in the event that she was found out by her husband. She always texted, never called.
A phone call might make her weak, impulsive. She was deeply aware of her lack of will power when she was presented with such easy access to terrible situations. So she always texted, usually. Today she woke up and something had felt different. Perhaps it was in the particular way the left side of the bed was still practically made up, not a stir in the sheets where her husband should have slept the night before.
Perhaps it was because of the dirty clothes left thrown across the floor and not in the hamper she specifically asked her husband to put his things in. Olivia was feeling vengeful. It was the same vengefulness she had felt the day she had met Lucas.
A few weeks before, at a decidedly impromptu party Olivia's husband had thrown (in celebration of, himself as far as Olivia was concerned,) she met Lucas. The small bar they were in filled up quickly with people she knew, people she barely knew, and a few people she had never met before.
Olivia had noticed Lucas when he walked in. She noticed that, not unlike herself, he wanted very much to not be noticed. He slouched away from the center of the room with a practiced skill. She thought to herself about all the boisterous and proud men she knew in her life, and immediately felt a deep desire to know someone different, this stranger in particular. There was nothing overly special about him, averagely tall, dark features, brown eyes.
She thought of her husband's eyes, which were blue, and remembered an article she had read once about how blue eyes were the least loving.
Olivia excused herself from a particularly boring conversation about her husband's many achievements, ordered another drink, and moved quietly in the direction of the man who caught her interest. She was unsure of her intentions, but she felt a wickedness about it and pushed her way through her nerves.
Olivia glanced around the room and found her husband completely preoccupied, telling herself she was just going to get to know the guy, no harm, no foul. Her husband neither knew nor cared where she was in the room, and for a minute her heart dropped and she felt a familiar dread. She felt trapped and useless, cast off.
She shook the feeling, straightened herself and found what she hoped was a friendly smile as she approached the man she intended on flirting with. He was in a quiet conversation with a man she vaguely knew, and mentally calculated if the man would know enough to run off and tell her husband that his wife was off flirting with another man, but then she noticed that he was maybe two too many drinks into the evening, and was swaying slightly, slurring a bit about some woman he knew a long time ago. Exaggeration. Olivia grazed the stranger's arm and startled him, "oh hi, am I in your way?"
Olivia shrugged, "no, no, I was actually heading directly your way," she had hoped it sounded flirty, and quickly realized that she had been long out of practice. She cringed inwardly, but held her smile until he responded, "oh?" with a surprised look.
He turned to face her, abruptly leaving the drunk in the middle of his tale about the tiny brunette he had once dated. "So, who forced you to come here?" She was acutely aware of her strained posture- Her body language read that of a toddler being forced to do something she absolutely did not want to do.
She relaxed a bit, and glanced behind her at, what she could only describe as, grotesque masculinity; her husband stood statuesque in the middle of a crowd of sycophants, telling a billowy account of his many trials and how he overcame them just by being awesome. Exaggeration. She rolled her eyes and returned to Lucas, pointing slyly over her shoulder at the scene behind her.
He breathed a laugh, a took a long gulp out of his drink, something dark and smokey. He leaned in a bit closer to Olivia, and introduced himself "Lucas, nice to meet you" he jutted his left hand out to shake hers, and she immediately froze and thought to hide her wedding ring, at the risk of ruining whatever she thought she was doing.
She could feel the weight of the guilt already and shook his hand anyway, she could excuse the flirting if she told herself that he knew she was married. "Olivia,"
Lucas trailed off into conversation and Olivia was enthralled. She watched his mouth move and his teeth glitter in the bar light. She watched his neck move and his shoulders jerk when he laughed, and she watched his hands, tracing circles in condensation on his glass. She thought to grab one and thrust his fingers in her mouth, a momentary fantasy that made her blush.
Lucas noticed, "ah," he mused "maybe you need something to drink, you look a bit flushed," Olivia looked down at her glass and realized that it was bone dry. She glanced over her shoulder again, and her husband, still clueless, had moved on to another version of the same tale with a new audience. Lucas took her glass from her hand, "maybe you need something different," Olivia blushed again, and Lucas immediately corrected the innuendo, "to drink, I mean," he briskly laughed and Olivia laughed, "you have no idea," Lucas left to get more drinks and Olivia moved to a booth in a corner behind the bar completely out of view from her husband.
She had figured the guilt would come later, and she was okay with that, she could atone for the flirting later when she was home, less tipsy, and alone. For now she was determined to enjoy herself, no matter what that took. She watched Lucas round the corner with two drinks in his hands, both clearly whisky. He sat them down on the table in front of Olivia, and gestured toward the booth, "is this seat taken?" Olivia thought about how defiant she was being when she told him he could sit. Across from her, away from the crowd she noticed how brilliant he looked, wild and genuinely friendly.
She felt a warmth off of him that was foreign. She liked him, and how at ease he made her feel. She gripped her glass with both hands in an effort to control the impulse to touch him, to run her hands along his and feel his physical warmth.
"So," he sighed, after taking a drink, "tell me about this," He tapped her wedding ring with his finger. He was intuitive, she sensed that much, but she was shocked at how forthcoming he was. She assumed this was to be the end of the conversation, and braced herself when she said, "it's kind of complicated, but to sum it up, we fell apart, and he refuses to let me leave," He leaned back in his seat, and took a breath.
He quickly glanced around the bar, and muttered something about pride that Olivia didn't quite catch. He returned his gaze to her, and it felt a little softer. He placed one of his hands over hers, completely engulfing it, and with his free hand he gestured in the general direction of Olivia's husband, "you can't force love, and you can't force happiness." Olivia, exasperated and a little tipsy, giggled, "you sound a tad like a fortune cookie, Lucas." He laughed wholeheartedly and the two of them sat trading snickers, and conversation that ranged from the philosophy of marriage and how out outdated it was , to favorite films.
In a comfortable lull in conversation, Lucas sighed and asked if Olivia wanted to take this (he motioned with a quick flick of his wrist pointing first at himself then to Olivia) any further than the night. Olivia was shocked. She had not thought about taking things further, she had no idea what "further" even meant. She only knew for certain that she was feeling more like herself that night than she had in years.
She sat for a moment thinking about what to do. Lucas waited patiently and drank a bit more of his drink. She noticed his hands on the glass again, actually she noticed every bit of exposed skin he had to offer and she felt the urge to see more, to know him, to touch him, to taste him. She felt a quick chill run up her spine and she said "of course, yes, I want this to be more than just tonight." Lucas' eyes lit up slightly, and he kept his voice secretive.
He spoke low and quick as if he was masterminding a great heist, "listen, I'll give you my number, we can talk, text, whatever you want, I'm usually free, but you better move quick because the party is winding down and he'll probably be looking for you soon."
Olivia noticed that conversations had grown few and far between. It was getting late, and her husband would be running out of stories soon, it was true. She grabbed her phone from her back pocket, unlocked it, quickly found her contacts list and slid the phone to Lucas. He typed his name and number in succinctly. He handed Olivia's phone back, and grabbed his drink as he got up to leave, he turned and winked at her. She slumped back in the booth and watched as he moved his way through the crowd.
Her husband came drunkenly around the corner of the bar, and motioned for her to hurry along, he had no audience left, it was time to leave. She gathered her things and followed him out the door. Riding a wave of confidence and a slight buzz she had gained from her conversation with the stranger, she thought about asking her husband to bed with her when they returned home, but she knew the answer would be a hard "no," so she squelched the idea and climbed in to the back of the cab taking her and her husband home.
Her husband had his head leaned against the window with his mouth hanging open and his eyes closed, drunk. She loathed him, but she wanted to continue feeling the bubbly way she felt, ignoring him, Olivia opened her phone, saw on the screen "Lucas Sutter" his phone number, and in the email portion of the contact page he had typed "you don't always have to be lonely ;)." She felt a deepening pull in her belly, and forced a wicked smile off her face until she was safely home and in bed, alone.
