To Matter

by Heather Heyns

I kissed his lips and tasted her, like heat and fire and anger. He smelled like her too, some fancy perfume with a French name I couldn't pronounce. I bet she paid a bundle for the stuff, and dabbed it on each day, just before he got home.

          Our clothes fell, discarded nuisances piled by the bed. His shirt had creases ironed in, always neat and straight. She never burned the shirts, even when I knew she saw my lipstick on the collar. I shoved my tongue further into his mouth.

          "I've got an hour," he said.

          My nails gouged his shoulders. An hour and he'd head home, with my smell on him. I wondered if she tasted me the way I tasted her. I sprayed myself with cheap pomegranate body spray, the type called “Sexy Intrigue,” or “Romantic Tryst.” I doused myself in it until I knew it would cling to him and follow him home.

          "God, baby, you're good." His breath sawed in and out, blowing in my face as he climbed on top.

          He whispered those words like a prayer every time. The words bloomed from his lips and grew into mine, filling me up just like he did. He kept it up, all the praise, all the admiration. They moved between us, just another bit of foreplay. They went faster and faster until he shuddered his love for me.

          He didn't love me. He loved the chase, the capture, and the adrenaline. He loved the oxytocin that poured into him each time we fucked. He loved having me, and then going home and having her.

          I didn't feel bad, and if he did, it went away before he showed back up. I should have, thinking about the poor, pretty wife who paced her hallways waiting for him. I should have felt bad thinking about her smelling my body spray, seeing my lipstick, tending to the gouges I left behind. A good person would feel bad. Hell, a good person wouldn't have fucked him in the first place.

          I couldn't manage to feel an ounce of guilt though, because I mattered in those moments. I mattered when he thrust and grunted his declarations of love. I mattered when she scrubbed his collar of my residue. I mattered when they both thought about me while they made love.

Heather Heyns is a freelancer writer living in Southern California. Her previous work can be found in Howl Literary Magazine and in upcoming issues of Literary Orphans and Thick Jam.