Emily - Memories - Little Black Dress
It was like her second time visiting Evan, a weekend trip away from me to go visit the man she used to date; a second weekend trip to tease me, to test the boundaries of her relationship with me, with him.
"You know he has feelings for you, right?" I asked her.
"No he doesn't," she said, "I told you it was never going to work with him."
"Like he doesn't want to sleep with you?"
She laughed. "That's entirely different," she said.
I let her go, part of our game, part of our tease.
She called me in the afternoon on Saturday, before they went out for drinks, dinner. "How's my sweetie?" she asked.
"Lonely," I said.
"Lonely like sad or lonely like you can't stop thinking about me?"
"Lonely like I'm can't stop thinking about you," I said. "Lonely like all I can think about is you in that blue dress having dinner with him."
"I'm not wearing the blue one," she said.
"You're not? Why?"
"I don't know...not enough wow, I guess. I brought a black one."
"Which one?"
"You haven't seen it yet," she said.
"I...I was going to picture you in it all night," I said.
"I assumed; I'll send you a picture later, okay?"
She did, around eight. A picture of her in a short, low cut black dress with lace sleeves, black nylons, heels, her hair cascading over her shoulders. "Wow," I responded.
"LOL. Told you!"
"Emily, he's going to...think...you know..."
"I know exactly what he's going to think about, love, the same thing you're thinking about."
"And what if he...does..."
"Does what?"
"You know...when he...tucks you in...what if he...tries..."
":) Guess I'll have to see what happens," she replied. "Think about that the rest of the night. Think about your pretty girlfriend in a sexy, little black dress, on the arm of a strong, handsome man, and what he wants to do to her."
"You're not going to let him, are you?"
"Only if..."
The bubbles stayed there, stopped.
"Emily..."
"Emily?"
"Sorry, he's back. Talk to you later, love. If I call, it will be late..."
❤️
ReplyDeleteShe called just after nine. I was already awake. Had been for hours.
ReplyDelete“Morning, love,” she said. Her voice was a little rough. Sleep or something else. I couldn’t tell.
“How was your night?” I asked.
A small laugh. “Long. Late. Interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“Mmm. You know how nights like that go. Drinks. Dinner. Walking back. The dress did what I thought it would.”
“And what did it do?”
“Made him look. A lot. Made him… attentive.” She let the word hang. “He kept finding reasons to touch my back. My waist. When we sat down he put his hand on my thigh under the table like it was nothing. Like he still had the right.”
I waited.
“Did he?” I asked.
“Did he what?”
“Have the right.”
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Silence on the line. I could hear her shifting in bed. Sheets.
“You’re being cruel,” I said.
“I’m being honest. I don’t know what you want me to say. You sent me here. You wanted me in that dress. You wanted me to tell you what he was thinking. So now you want the rest?”
“I want to know if anything happened.”
“Define happened.”
“Emily.”
“He walked me to my hotel room. He didn’t leave right away. We talked in the corridor for a while. It got quiet. The kind of quiet where someone has to decide.” She paused.
“I let him decide a few things. Not everything. Not nothing.”
My throat was tight. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting this morning. I’m still deciding how much of it belongs to you and how much stays mine.” Another pause. Softer now. “Besides… I’m more interested in what you wanted to happen.”
I didn’t answer immediately.
“Tell me,” she said. “When I sent you that picture. When I said ‘guess I’ll have to see what happens.’ What did you picture? What did you want?”
“I wanted you to come home,” I said.
ReplyDelete“Liar. That’s the safe answer. Try again.”
I exhaled. “I wanted him to want you so badly it showed. I wanted you to know I was sitting here imagining his hands on that dress. I wanted… I wanted you to almost let him. Or let him a little. Enough that you’d come back different. Enough that you’d look at me differently.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“That’s closer,” she said. “You wanted the tease to have teeth.”
“And you?” I asked. “What did you want last night?”
“I wanted to feel chosen. I wanted to feel the difference between the two of you in the same night. I wanted to know how far I could go and still be yours in the morning.” Her voice dropped. “I wanted to see if you’d still want me if I came back smelling like someone else. Or looking like I’d been… handled.”
“Were you?”
“Handled?” She laughed under her breath. “Parts of me were. Carefully. Not all of me. He knows how to wait. He also knows how not to.”
“Emily....”
“I’m coming home this afternoon,” she said. “I’ll wear something that doesn’t hide much. You can look for evidence yourself. Or you can ask better questions when I’m standing in front of you.”
“And until then?”
“Until then you can think about what you actually hoped I’d do in that little black dress. Because I thought about it too. The whole time his hand was on my thigh I was wondering whether you’d be disappointed if I stopped him… or disappointed if I didn’t.”
She let that sit.
“I have to get in the shower,” she said. “He left coffee. Thoughtful of him.”
“He stayed?”
“He was here this morning. That’s all I’m saying. For now.”
The line went quiet again, just her breathing.
“Sara?”
“Yeah.”
“When I get home… I want you to tell me exactly what you imagined. No safe version. I want the version that made you stay up all night. Because last night I kept asking myself the same thing you are: what does she actually want me to be when I walk back through that door?”
She hung up before I could answer.
I sat with the phone in my hand, the picture of the black dress still on the screen from the night before, and tried to decide which version of the truth I was going to give her when she walked in.