Fault Lines

“It’s all my fault,” she says into her lap.

“No it isn’t!” he protests, instantly regretting his reaction, he lowers his voice and says more gently, “it’s not your fault. She did this. Not you.”

“It takes two, Archie,” she raises her head for a heartbeat and then lowers it back to her lap, her hands moving around each other in a display of her awkwardness in this situation. He looks at those hands and the nails that she has grown long and painted black. When did that happen and how did he not notice before, when it counted?

“I just wish that I had known,” says Archie, all too aware that it does take two, and they are sat here right now. That he shoulders some of the blame too, maybe more than her share.

Sarah looks up at him then. She doesn’t say anything, but there is recrimination in her look, yes, why did you not know?

Archie has been asking himself that same question for a while now, along with a whole host of other questions. Accursed retrospect sticking it’s oar in after the fact. Archie didn’t feel wise after he found out, quite the opposite, he felt sad and stupid. All of this happened right under his nose. He trusted Sarah and didn’t think she was capable of something like this, but that wasn’t enough. He knows that now. Somehow he stopped trying enough. He stopped caring as much as he should have done.

Of course she was capable of something like this. Was the way he thought of her a form of control? Did he expect her to conform to his expectations? Had he tried to wear her down over the years so she no longer felt desirable? He had to understand his part in this so he could do something about it.

His mind was all over the place, he was running barefoot along the wet tracks of a rollercoaster, slipping and sliding on terrain he had no business covering. What was he supposed to do? What should he have done? Could he even have averted this outcome? Where did this leave them?

Why?

This is the question screaming to be asked, but Archie isn’t quite that dumb and blunt. Besides, Sarah might actually tell him the truth of it and all that will do is hurt him all the more and widen the deep trench that even now separates them as they sit on the sofa they bought together once upon a time when things were so utterly different.

He knows he’s being a bit of a coward, but he’s been around long enough to understand that chasing the answer to a question like why is a fool’s errand. It won’t help him. All that quest is, is a distraction from what really needs to be done. 

They need to find a way forwards. They have to see whether there is a way to fix this. Plenty of people stay together and build something even stronger and better than what they once had. This isn’t a cop out, and it isn’t a one sided thing. Archie suspects that it’s harder for the transgressor to make good than it is for the aggrieved to forgive and let go. 

Starting afresh, but carrying the terrible knowledge that something significant went wrong and that it could happen again, and if something bad happens again then it will damn near break one or both of them. Archie consoles himself with the platitude that if it happened to them, then it could happen to anyone. They are a mere statistic. Life happens, so get over it and keep living.

As well as the why of it, Archie knows that he shouldn’t dig too far into the detail, he probably knows enough already. Some may think full disclosure is a good idea, after all, to speak your truth is right and it is empowering. The words spoken out into the world allow everyone to deal with the truth of the situation and that is a requirement for closure. However, Archie suspects and doesn’t trust his motives. He will inevitably draw comparisons and find that he is lacking. All the detail will amount to is another stick for him to beat himself with and gods know he has plenty of sticks already. 

Maybe that is part of the problem? Archie’s self-worth is sub-par. He does not rate himself highly enough and as a result, he tried to drag Sarah down with him. They were supposed to bring out the best in each other. Build each other up. How did he lose sight of that? How did he fail her?

How has it come to this?

Each question presented to Archie is like a poison arrow, and even though the questions remain unspoken, he thinks Sarah can feel them all the same, and that is part of the reason for her lowered head. She can see those recriminations in Archie’s eyes. He cannot hide them. He is too raw to even try.

“What now?” he asks her.

The words are out before he can stop them and he instantly regrets uttering them, wants to take them back. Those words are weak. He isn’t taking responsibility for the possibilities that they face, he has just put it all on Sarah. That isn’t a good start and it risks her pushing him away.

He wouldn’t blame her for that.

“What do you want, Archie?” she asks him, peering up at him, her head still bowed in what he thinks is a kind of submission.

“You,” he says earnestly.

“Even after…” she begins.

“Yes,” he says decisively.

“But I…” she begins.

“I know,” he says.

“No you don’t,” she says ominously, “there are things that you should know.”

“I don’t care,” he says firmly.

“Are you sure?” now she looks up at him and there is the ghost of a smile playing across her lips. 

Archie sees that shadow of a smile and in it he sees hope. If she has even a semblance of hope, then maybe things can be alright after all. He doesn’t stop to think that maybe what he sees is the mirror of his own hope.

He nods his affirmation.

“You want me to stay?” she asks. There is something tentative in those words and again, Archie senses hope in them and hope in the woman before him, “you would invite me back into your life?”

“Yes. Will you stay with me?” he asks, he needs her reassurance right now. He needs her.

She does not reply in the next instant, instead she studies him and thinks her reply through, “let’s take it one night at a time,” she says to him.

His face scrunches up as he tries to process what she has just said, “night?” he asks her.

“I want to spend the night with you,” her voice is different somehow. Husky, and full of promise.

Archie finds himself responding to her. They need to try again, it has become stale in the bedroom department. His biggest concerns, worries and misgivings centred around the physicality of their relationship. He was terrified that they had become friends and nothing more. That the spark had gone out and would never be relit. Now though he feels a wave of desire for this woman. There is something different about the way he is feeling, but he doesn’t question this. Why would he? After everything that has happened, of course it will be different. What matters is that it is there, the spark is alive after all.

Sarah smiles at him. The smile is a confirmation. She feels desire for him too. 

There is something so inviting about her lips. They are an impossibly vibrant red and his eyes are drawn to them even before she brings one of those black painted nails to them. His heart flutters and he feels the way he did when he was a teenager, full of lust and energy and promise.

She lowers her hand to her skirt and smooths it out, she strokes her hand with those dark, painted nails along her thigh, her hand moves slowly and deliberately and Archie is inflamed by the woman before him and this supposedly unselfconscious act. The air is electric with his desire and he cannot keep his eyes off her. She is his entire focus and he wants her more in this moment than he ever has before.

“Can I have a hug?” she asks this so quietly and unexpectedly that he almost misses the words and their meaning, there is a maddening delay and then he understands. 

He closes the gap between them and takes her in his arms, there on the sofa. She seems to mould into him and she feels good. She feels good, but cold somehow. Cold. And there is an out of kilter hardness to her. 

Archie is worrying about Sarah’s rigidity and lack of warmth, reading it as a barrier that may yet bring an end to what they once had, but then Sarah speaks, “this is so good,” she says softly.

Her head is on his shoulder and as she speaks she nuzzles into him and her lips brush his neck sending a thrill through him, and any worries he has are dispelled. She moves against him, her mouth near his ear now, “it is good, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says, struggling to get that one word out, because it is good and it is more than he had expected. He had thought that he had lost her, and now here she is in his arms and he wants this more than he could ever have known.

“Do you want me?” she asks, as though she knows his very thoughts. Her lips brush his ear and then she nuzzles his neck again.

“Yes,” he says once more, and he is rewarded with those lips against his neck. Kissing him and sending thrills through him.

“You want this?” she says as her kisses become more insistent.

“Yes,” he says, pulling her even closer.

“Come what may? You want this?” she asks. 

Her kisses inflaming him and leaving him with no other option than to tell her yes yet again. He wants this and he wants her. All that matters is those kisses and their embrace. He loses himself in her and suddenly the chaos that was between them and threatened to undo them forever is gone, replaced with another form of chaos inside which they are both caught. 

Somehow, between them, they find some semblance of control and, clawing and tearing at each other’s clothes as they are, they make their way to the bedroom. They pause several times to kiss and remove another item of clothing, leaving a trail of discarded garments in the hallway, on the stairs and on the landing. 

They fall onto the bed and lose themselves in the moment and in each other. That night is like nothing Archie has ever experienced. He never knew he was capable of such elemental actions. He is an animal intent on one and only one thing. If anything, Sarah is even more passionate and all of Archie’s self-consciousness and worries about whether he will ever fulfil her again are banished.

Eventually, Archie rolls panting onto his back and gasps, “no more!” He is exhausted and sated and soon afterwards he is asleep, a contended smile on his sleeping lips.

Sarah is propped on one elbow, gazing down upon him. She is also smiling, but the smile on her lips is cold and predatory. She is not yet sated. She is waiting. She is waiting to ensure that he really is asleep.

After a while, she gets on her hands and knees and crouches over Archie’s sleeping form. The tableau this presents is hunter over helpless prey. This isn’t quite how it started for her, but this is the start of this chapter for Archie. She knows it, eventually he will too. Archie will be her first, but not her last. This is not how it works for her now.

She considers him for a while and shifts her position, gently stroking and kissing his right arm, watching him intently to ensure that he does not stir. She has him exactly where she wants him now. She did try to warn him. She did try to tell him. But he would not listen. 

She had worried about how she would go about this. How she would get to this point. But in the end, it was all too easy. It came naturally to her. She saw the desire in him and she drew it out. He was a puppet on a string and she intuitively knew how to make him do what she wanted him to do. She wanted it too. She wanted him, but not in the same way that he wanted her. That is the dynamic between two people. They both come at it with what they want and they make it work come what may. All she has to do is to tap into that, amplify it and then exploit it.

Tonight she has discovered that she’s good at making things work to meet her own ends. She will have fun with this. Bending people to her will. Using them, using them against themselves. Some will come willingly, some will struggle against the inevitable. She does not think that she will ever tire of this game, there is much fun to be had.

Her kisses become more insistent at the crook of his arm and she continues to watch him intently as she laps at that spot and then grazes his skin with her teeth. She takes her time until the grazing is a little more than grazing and she tastes him at last.

Archie lets out a low moan as Sarah’s teeth pierce his flesh. His eyes roll under the lids and he shudders. Sarah finds something deeply rewarding with this. The seduction and the pleasure and then the end game.

She feeds. 

Yes, she thinks as she tastes her very first victim, they will take it one night at a time. She’ll like that. She’ll like that very much.