Second Love

"So surely is she mine," you say, and turn
Your quick and steady mind to harder things-
To bills and bonds and talk of what men earn-
And whistle up the stair, of evenings.
And do you see a dream behind my eyes,
Or ask a simple question twice of me-
"Thus women are," you say; for men are wise
And tolerant, in their security.

How shall I count the midnights I have known
When calm you turn to me, nor feel me start,
To find my easy lips upon your own
And know my breast beneath your rhythmic heart.
Your god defer the day I tell you this:
My lad, my lad, it is not you I kiss!

-- Dorothy Parker

They spend Sunday mornings at the kitchen table - she sips tea and sketches, he drinks coffee and complains about the bills. They've done this for as long as she can remember and it's the thing she likes most about their relationship. It's comfortable, like an old wool sweater that's lost most of the itchiness and its shape. But she can get restless. Her eyes flicker briefly to his form and she watches, half-interested, as he scribbles out numbers on a yellow legal pad she stole from work.

When she starts sketching a pair of hands, they're not his. They're the hands of her Monday through Friday man, that best friend who makes her feel comfortable and electrified at the same time. She's only really known the hands next to her, the ones that tug on the sheets and write the checks to the electric company... but she wonders what the hands on her sketchpad would feel like if they came to life, slid up her body and tangled in the mess of her hair. (She thinks that would be the only electric company she would really need.)

"Forget it," he says and drops the pen. "How about some breakfast?"

She's staring at her sketchpad and gently running her index finger over the drawn hands, wondering what it might be like to do this for real.

"Hello? Pam..."

She snaps out of it and looks up at him. "What? Sorry. I was just, uh... sorry. What did you say?"

"I said how about breakfast," he says. He cocks his head and looks at her as if she's a foreign language he's trying to learn. "You've been really weird lately. What's up?"

"Nothing," she answers. "Just thinking about the wedding a lot, I guess, since we set a date and everything."

She starts sketching a pair of lips near the hands. Even though she's never touched them or felt them on her own, she's memorized every curve of them and knows just that one spot that quirks up first before a smile.

She's working on the shading when she realizes that Roy is speaking to her again. Her eyes drift up to his face in an effort to make it seem as though she's been listening the whole time, but she can't force her gaze past his mouth. These are the lips she knows intimately, but they aren't the ones she's sketching.

She feels a bit of guilt rise in her stomach, so she closes her eyes and reaches across the table to give him a quick kiss. These are the lips she knows intimately, but they aren't the ones she's kissing.

She pulls away, then says quietly, "I'm sorry. I wasn't listening."

He shakes his head and mutters playfully, "Women."