Sitting on the edge of the bed naked, I let my swollen eyes scan the room, not knowing what to look at yet desperate for something to hold on to, to give me answers. My gaze wanders over the trail of clothes I have discarded on the straightest way from the apartment door to my bed. I just wanted to get rid of them as if by shedding them, I’d be able to shake off the crippling guilt and pain.

Finally, my eyes come to linger on the black notebook that, if opened, would soberly state names of, chiefly, deviant men of high ranks and importance. Sometimes also women of equal status. Under the names, one would find phone numbers, some crossed out and replaced, and addresses—mostly safehouses.

Caution and discretion are crucial in my line of work, hence the old-fashioned physical address book since burner phones and sim cards had to be changed whenever an angered spouse called and let their heart out about how my profession was a disgrace to society. The years taught me the drill: deny, act surprised and with a naïve tone, agree that, should the truth get out, those men and their families would fill the tabloids helter-skelter until a new scandalous cow presented herself for milking, yadda, et cetera... Until they’d be confused and suspect they’d just dialed a wrong number.

My feeble attempt at swallowing the growing lump in my throat gets stuck as a renewed surge of sobs threatens to burst my chest. Just knowing that your name and address are noted in there too twists the knife in my bleeding heart.

Whimpering, I repeatedly hit myself on my thighs and curse my useless feelings and all the experienced voices who’ve warned me of that situation before filling the next Kleenex with my snot. It falls on the growing unsavory pile of crumpled soaked tissues. A pathetic attempt at consoling myself with the fact that I can’t even remember when I last put any of them to their intended use makes me chuckle sadly and mutter a self-deprecatory remark.

“And I didn’t even charge him for using—screwing—me without protection!” I yell when rerunning the memory of my own negligence over you turning my world upside down. “Bastard! Asshole!” I add, tears running down my face anew, unsure of whom my anger is directed against.

I cover my reddened eyes with the heels of my hands and clench my fingers into my forehead, digging my nails into my skin as agony and rage alike trickle down my cheeks in uncontrolled sobs.

“Why did I let this idiot kiss me?!” I yell, enraged at my own lapse, allowing you to break the iron rule. “Fuuuck!” as the memory so vividly etched into my brain, molded onto my lips flashes in my mind and lets my mouth tingle just like when you broke the fleeting connection and my nerves fired the needy afterglow of a kiss of true love.

My pre-paid phone lights up and vibrates, yet in my anger, I smash it against the wall, shattering the display that dies out with a flicker. The loss is insignificant as I’d have to get a new one anyway after this afternoon’s incidents.

You came, as always, at half-past four, after your Thursday afternoon meeting, eyes weary from the tiring fruitless ruminations with your colleagues but a warm smile on your lips, radiating from the tasteful five o’clock shadow. Your demeanor upon seeing me changed instantly from the unscrupulous businessman into the role of the gentle and tender lover you played...

“Played!” I shout angrily with a sob-laden voice. “Just as he played with my feelings,” I barely manage before a renewed surge of tears overcomes me. “Asshole,” I weakly mumble.

I let myself fall into the soothing surrogate embrace of my blanket before wrapping it around me in phœtal position. I also cover my head, well-aware that the oxygen is limited in such a confined space; maybe secretly hoping it will make me fall into an endless slumber but instead, my thoughts insist on painfully revisiting the afternoon.

As always, I was waiting for you in your preferred hotel room. Stockings and suspenders, you had requested—forest green. You loved the contrast on my pale skin. I was sitting on the bed, legs crossed, upper body covered in just a far-too-large checkered flannel shirt—your garden work shirt. “The slut in her boyfriend’s work shirt,” had been your instructions added to the registered delivery containing the chosen attire. No shoes, hair tastefully messy; an every man’s fantasy to come home to after a long workday.

It made me chuckle at the specific requests you kept coming up with. Just like my heart melted over the sheer sweetness of the moment every time you called your wife after ‘done business’ how you sugarcoated our transactions... of body fluids, mostly. How I loved running my fingers over your stubbles and kissing your neck and teasing your earlobe while you were exchanging sweet nothings with her, like the forbidden slut I was.

The first time, you explained to me how you had arranged with her. I had demanded you to. While I do offer my clients pleasures they would not be able to get otherwise—because they’re single, ashamed to ask their spouses or their kinks are unusual—I’d hate to be the one destroying a relationship. It is crucial that clients visiting me sign a formal agreement that my services will not interfere with possibly existing relationships. An angered partner calling is a good enough cause to break any ties to a client. In the off-chance a client gets clingy, all that’s needed is a firm reminder that our contracts foresee no such level of intimacy and that a lawsuit might direct unfavorable attention to their careers that are not seldom of high public interest.

You told me how your wife had been involved in a tragic car accident that had left her paralyzed from the waist down and how she was physically unable to give you pleasure anymore. Whether that was true or not had not mattered to me at first—I’d heard all those stories before only to find out the better part of them were all lies. In some way, it made keeping the professional distance and cutting all ties, should the situation demand it, easier.

You, however... You sold me your story so convincingly. You’d feed me little snippets of your daily lives and little episodes, tears swelling in your eyes, about how you were proud of your wife and her unshakable will to carry on with her life. How you were grateful for her supporting you spending ridiculous amounts of money on your personal whore because she couldn’t give you what you needed but understood you had, despite your unconditional love for her, needs that she was physically unable to meet anymore.

How could I ever be so gullible?

Those perfect little episodes of her rehabilitation progress and how she would not give up valiantly struggling through her daily setbacks or the poor prognosis just to prove all the doctors wrong...

Still, despite all the love you kept telling me you have for her—you even cried her name every time you glazed my face with your spunk—I couldn’t stop you from kissing me.

It all happened so fast: your soft, pouted lips pressing on mine while you unbuttoned the shirt to unwrap your prized possession with just one hand while the other lifted my chin... Oh, how my cheeks flushed in the anticipation, how my heart pounded in an excitement I hadn’t felt since the days of bittersweet unreciprocated juvenile fondness. How I gave up my resolve in your strong arms as you claimed me.

I curse the moment you chose to kiss me. That brief moment of inattention. Although I saw it coming, instead of retorting to my routined index finger on your lips to remind you of the rules with a well-rehearsed understanding yet playful smile on my face, I let my guard down. I allowed you, willingly, to touch my very soul, to caress my very heart with your lips... to make me swoon from your touch.

You kissed me like I had not been kissed ever before. With passion, ardor... with the love I had long given up on, sparking this long-extinguished flame. Against my better judgment, I let you strip me of my hardened shell I had grown over the years; and you made it look so easy. I let you touch my innermost places. I allowed you to see my true, vulnerable naked self; this fragile being I truly am underneath the thin veil of my profession.

With every thrust as you sunk into my depths, again and again, I fell for you deeper and harder than I ever had for anyone. I was losing myself in the bliss of your touch, body weakening as you held me in your strong, manly arms and made me yours, molding my flesh to yours.

The moment you flooded my insides with the essence of your lust was the first time you didn’t call your wife’s name but mine—not my street name. I was far too overwhelmed by the intensity of the battle that was raging inside me and the aching I felt for your closeness to question how you had found out so much personal detail. No, it released a renewed burst of warmth in my chest.

The perplexity that weakly resonated in the back of my head got quickly silenced as another kiss from you broke the connection of our loins while a far more intimate connection between us made my heart blossom. For a brief instant, my doubts and melancholic longing were washed away by a light breeze that filled my belly with butterflies.

And yet, when I saw the glistening in your eyes as you broke the renewed kiss that I would have preferred to last forever, my heart began to sink again. With a painful routine, you stood up, penis half-flaccidly hanging from your crotch, and stepped to the crumpled pile of your pants. From their pocket, you produced your phone and dialed the habitual number.

With long-forgotten wounds tearing open in my heart, I followed each movement of your lips I would have rather felt on mine again as you spoke, smiled, chuckled and recited your rehearsed text.

After you left—unceremoniously, any trace of your former affection just... gone—the growing pain in my chest over remembering our purely professional relationship made it nearly impossible for me to breathe, let alone get dressed again. Feeling too weak to wear them, I chose to carry my high-heels by hand. Normally, the obscene wolf-whistles and cat-calls on the streets would spur me on, confirm that I was as hot a piece of meat as I intended to, and make me smile proudly. Today, however, they felt dirty, degrading and all they did was amplify the shame in my walk.

Desperately, I tried to hide my face in the collar of your shirt and walk faster. Home was the only thought that filled my mind. Had I been more alert, I might have noticed that I was being followed and have taken another way, a detour through the maze of the intricate alleys and street kitchen backdoors to shake off my stalker. In my line of work, having little acquaintances here and there that were well-lubricated with small amounts of money helped avoid complications.

Even when entering the apartment complex where I live, I didn’t notice the figure that hurried past the glass main door before the lock snapped. I had climbed up the stairs to the second floor, to my sacred retreat as I heard the old wood creak threateningly with sharp footsteps behind me.

Even then, the only destination in my mind was my warm bed and a good night’s sleep to forget all that had happened, to wash away the raging storm inside me with a cleansing slumber. Right in front of my apartment door, just as I was about to unlock it, heart rejoicing in the impending rest that would deliver release from the emotions haunting me, I got yanked backward by my hair and violently slapped across my face. In shock, I let go of the key that landed a few feet across the hallway.

“You!” she yelled. “Bitch! Whore! Cheap floozy slut!” came her tirades.

Still not processing her words, I felt the buttons of your shirt tear, leaving my smooth flat chest, nearly straight waistline and bulging panties exposed.

Only as she backpedaled and looked at me, eyes widened in confusion, taking a closer look at my face, I got a clear view of her.

“And... I... thought...” The words were stuck in her throat that constricted more and more in the realization of who was standing in front of her. “So that’s who this fucker’s been screwing? A call...” she couldn’t pronounce the last syllable out loud until it burst out of her with her tears, “...boy?”

She fell to her knees as one sobbing mess.

I was stricken by the intensity of the moment; I was experiencing the greatest breach of privacy imaginable in my profession: my safe place had been discovered. Possibly never again would I find sanctuary in this place, unless a wife scorned could be reasoned with, the black notebook being my primary negotiation asset. I knew I should have paid more attention and not let myself get carried away by this fleeting lapse. And all of this because of a simple kiss.

Judgment clouded by my inner conflict, my mind went on autopilot and before I realized it, I was kneeling beside her, wrapping my arms around her, pulling her close and about to invite her inside to offer a coffee. My upbringing taught me this was the decent thing to do. Still, my mind was racing through images of possible consequences while unable to sort the fight-or-flight distress.

“Oh my god, fuck!” came another voice that made me prick my ears from the bottom of the stairs—yours.

I stared down at you, mind suddenly blank, all unanswered questions replaced by sheer panic as you rushed up the stairs, face riddled with confusion and a lack of excuses, for there simply was none. I saw your facial features derail with the realization of what had occurred right before the door to my sanctuary.

Your unsteady glance that oozed distress, changing between the crying heap of flesh your wife had turned into and me insecurely standing up, made me unable to run. I was paralyzed, awaiting your next move, trembling internally, mind screaming to get away, but legs unresponsive.

Although I expected it, your slap across my face hurt nonetheless. Not on my cheek but deep in my heart as I saw those lips that had, less than an hour before, seduced me into trusting you, tremble in panic. I was only just beginning to feel the weight of your crumbling house of lies on my heart as, in your desperate confusion, you grabbed me by my hair and hauled off with your free hand, clenched to a fist to unload your frustration on your boy-mistress’ face.

It took all but this brief instant of hesitation to distort your face in an agonizing cry of defeat as you realized your betrayal had been seen through. The slap that came, after all, was your wife’s hand connecting with your cheek. In surprise, you stumbled backward, incredulous gaze fixed on your wife’s furious eyes.

“Asshole!” she screamed, tears of pure hatred rolling down her cheeks as she reached to slap you again. You dodged, missing the top step of the stairs and fell backward. A thump, a throaty wheeze, another thump, a painful crack that ended your vocal exhalation and a final thud that left you in a motionless pile, eyes wide open, lifelessly staring into empty space, head weirdly angled, hand twitching, then dying off.

Oppressing blankness empied my mind as I gazed upon what took me a few moments to realize was your dead body.

It was your wife’s cold, trembling voice that, from the distant horizon of my hearing, dragged me back to reality. “Serves him right, pig!” she snarled and slowly walked down the stairs, eyes still full of spite for you.

As she reached you, she spat on your face. Without as much as one glimpse more, she took her phone and used the selfie camera to fix her tear-stained make-up.

She glared at me through reddened eyes. “And you, boy-whore, better get yourself ready. I have some arrangements to make before we’re leaving. Wait in your room. We’re accomplices now so you better help me out here,” she said, voice sharp as a razor.

The door flinging open snaps me out of the umpteenth rerun of my memories. Your wife stands there, wearing rubber boots and a rain poncho, another set of those in one hand, carrying two shovels on her opposite shoulder.

“Here, sissy boy,” she orders, the same edge still dominating her tone. “You better put this on. We’ve got some digging to do.”

Wordlessly, I change into the garments as she coldly states, “We’re lucky. The past days’ rain has made the soil soft. It will be easy to dispose of him.”

My heart churns once more at her loveless choice of words. Well, I can’t blame her after this betrayal but still, I keep sobbing uncontrollably.

***

The night has already fallen. It’s pouring and I’m cold, shivering. Most of the blisters on my hand have torn open and my face is messed up by streaks of my kohl.

She and I are standing on the overlook by the edge of the woods, gazing upon the night-lit city skyline.

Her hand finds mine and clenches it. Although her touch burns on my injuries, I wouldn’t want her to let go.

With a low, unsteady voice, she offers, “Wanna get a new beginning?”

We turn towards each other. Naturally, our free hands entwine and we step closer together.

“Wanna get,” she begins, our faces only inches apart, “a second chance,” her voice barely a whisper as our lips nearly touch.

I give her my affirmation in a kiss that washes away the guilt a sparks a new hope as two doors to old lives are sealed with a first fleeting kiss to fling open the door to a new path.