The connection clicks on, and there they are. No greetings, no tentative hellos. They are both already naked, a silent, shared understanding passing between them through the pixels. Michael is so hard again, his hand resting possessively on his thigh, a hungry look in his eyes that makes Lizzie’s own body clench with anticipation.
"Are you sure you're forty-seven?" Lizzie laughs. "Yesterday twice, the day before that as well, and the day before... And look at you now! That beautiful cock of yours is again about to explode!"
"How can I not be turned on by such a divine appearance?" Michael replies with his usual lyricism.
"Sweet talker," Lizzie chuckles. Michael has a way with poetry and flattery but she knows that he means every single word of it. It's this which she almost finds too impossible to grasp after years of having been made to believe she's unattractive.
"God, I've been thinking about you all day," his voice comes through, rough with need. "I want you to ride me, Lizzie. Right now."
She doesn't hesitate. She kneels on the sofa, positioning herself over a cushion, her back to the camera. She places one hand flat on the sofa's backrest for balance and reaches behind her with the other, spreading the cheeks of her ass to give him a perfect view of her glistening, pink cunt. She sinks down slowly, her breath catching as she imagines the thick, curved length of him filling her completely. She begins to rock, her movements fluid and deep, grinding her hips against the cushion.
"Fuck, yes," Michael groans. "Just like that. Take all of me." His hand is a blur on his cock, his hips thrusting up to meet her imaginary descent.
"Your arse is so perfect, Lizzie. I love watching you stretch around me."
The words are fuel on an already raging fire.
"Oh, I'm so full of you!" She pants, her head thrown back. "You feel so fucking big!" She picks up the pace, bouncing on the cushion, the slap of her skin against the fabric a crude, beautiful rhythm. The room fills with their shared sounds, her breathy moans, his guttural curses, the harmony of their mutual masturbation.
"Bend over," he commands suddenly. "I want you on your knees. I want to fuck you from behind."
The command sends a jolt straight to her core.
"Hmmm... You're so delightfully bossy today," she rasps, "I like that!"
She complies instantly, scrambling to reposition herself. She kneels on the edge of the sofa, facing away from her laptop, and leans forward, resting her forearms on the backrest. She arches her back, presenting herself to him, her ass high in the air, her swollen pussy open and inviting. She reaches back with one hand, her fingers sliding easily into her drenched vagina, and begins to fuck herself in time with the frantic strokes she can hear him making.
He's mesmerised by the sight of her ass and with his other hand he pretends to grab it, his thumb caressing her little rosebud.
"Oh yes!" She screams. "Touch my ass like that! Touch me more!"
"Look at me," he grunts. "Look at the camera while I fuck you."
She cranes her neck to the side, her cheek pressed against the sofa, and stares into the lens of her laptop. Her eyes are wild, her mouth open. She sees her own reflection, a wanton, desperate woman she barely recognises, and it makes her even hotter. "Harder," she begs, her voice a ragged whisper. "Fuck me harder, Michael."
The pretense dissolves completely. There is no more Lizzie and Michael, only two bodies hurtling towards a shared oblivion. The sound of his hand slapping against his pubis becomes a primal drumbeat that she matches with the frantic plunging of her fingers. The pressure inside her is immense, a coiling spring ready to snap. She can feel her orgasm building, a tidal wave gathering force.
"I'm coming," she screams, the words torn from her throat. "Oh, fuck, Michael, I'm coming!"
Her body convulses, a powerful, shuddering climax that shivers through her like an earthquake. Her inner muscles clamp down on her fingers, and a gush of fluid erupts from her, soaking her hand and the cushion beneath her. At the same moment, she hears him roar her name, a raw, guttural sound of pure release, and she knows he is spilling himself over his hand and onto the floor.
"Oh fuck... oh Lizzie... ah..."
They collapse together in a heap of panting limbs, the silence that follows radient with satisfaction and exhaustion. Lizzie slowly pulls her fingers from herself, her body trembling with aftershocks. She turns over and curls up on the sofa, pulling a cushion to her chest, pretending it is Michael. She looks at the screen, at his face, flushed and beautiful in the aftermath. They have no words left. They have only the screaming, beautiful memory of what they've just done, and the promise that, some time today, they will do it all again. It is something that has stopped surprising her, which is itself a kind of surprise.
Three days ago she had never even considered doing anything like this. Three days ago she would have said, with complete confidence, that she was not the kind of person who could.
She is revising her understanding of what kind of person she is.
The shame comes back, as it always does, creeping in at the edges now that the warmth has settled, but it is quieter today, less authoritative, more like a voice in another room than one directly in her ear. She doesn't reach for the throw. She doesn't angle the camera away or cross her arms or perform the habitual geometries of self-concealment. She simply notices the shame, and leaves it where it is, and stays, the cushion pressed to her chest but her legs proudly parted.
"You're very quiet," Michael says.
"I'm thinking."
"Good thoughts or complicated ones?"
"Complicated good ones," she says, "if that's a category."
"It's the best category." He looks at her in the particular way he has, the looking that never feels like assessment. "How are you?"
"I'm..." She considers. "I'm amazed at myself, actually." She glances at the camera. "I keep waiting for the part where it feels wrong. Really wrong. And it... doesn't. It feels like the wrongness is somewhere in another life and here it just feels..."
"Meant to be?" He offers.
"Don't put words in my mouth," she says, smiling. "But yes. Something like that. And I can't decide if that's liberation or just very convincing self-deception."
"Maybe it doesn't have to be either of those things."
"What else is there?"
"Maybe it's just true," he says. "Maybe some things are true without needing a verdict."
She looks at him for a moment. Outside, February is doing its grey, committed best, and the radiator is ticking, and the flat is quiet, and she thinks: I am lying on my own sofa in the middle of a Thursday morning and I am naked and unashamed and showing my pussy to a man in Melbourne and it is the most at home I have felt in years.
"I've given myself to you," she says quietly, "today... this morning... like I haven't... I don't think I've ever..." She shakes her head. "Even early on with Don, there was always a part of me that was watching from somewhere. Guarding. Making sure I wasn't revealing too much." She looks at the camera directly. "I wasn't watching this morning. I was just... there. And I've shown myself in ways that I've never done before. And I've had... sex... like I've never had before. No boundaries, no fears."
"I felt that," he says softly, "I could tell by how freely you were giving yourself to me. It was extraordinary."
"Maybe it's because this is on cam and you're not really here and I can pretend that I'm just here all alone, playing with myself in my private little bubble."
"You know that that's not really true," he argues, "though in a sense you've invited me into your bubble. And that in itself is the most beautiful act of love that you could ever give me."
"Do you think that that's it? That this is love?" The thought of it lies heavily on her heart. Yes, she did say that she loved Michael yesterday in the heat of passion, but how can you truly love someone you've only known from a couple of hours of video chats?
"What else can it be?" He replies, calm as ever, and it strikes Lizzie deep.
"It is true, I feel free," she says, and the simplicity of it surprises her as she says it, the way the plainest sentences sometimes contain the most. "I feel free, Michael. I can't remember when I last said that. For the first time I feel that I am loved not because of how I perform, but because of who I am."
"Then stay here, with me," he says. "Stay for as long as you can and I will continue to give you all of me."
They talk the way they always talk, without an agenda, following the conversation wherever it decides to go. And it goes, as it increasingly does, into the territory of this: what they are, what it means, what it would mean to make it real.
"You said that you have relatives in Sheffield," she asks, "how often do you visit them?"
He smiles, because he knows exactly what she's doing.
"Every year or two. Most of my family lives there actually."
"Sheffield is three hours from me," she says.
"Are you thinking the same thing as I am?"
"If only once..." Lizzie sighs.
"I've looked it up," he admits, and something in her chest turns over.
"You've looked it up?"
"Yes." A pause.
She stares at the camera.
"Michael..."
"I know."
"That's..."
"I know," he says again. "I'm not suggesting it. I'm just telling you that I've thought about it, because I think you should know that I've thought about it." He looks at her steadily. "Because I don't think I have ever loved anyone the way I love you."
She is quiet for a moment. Overwhelmed by this sudden confession.
"But how can you say that when you've never even met me in real life?" She asks with an uncertainty in her voice that betrays that she's been feeling the same thing. "I mean... you know nothing about me. If you really got to know me you'd surely be disappointed."
"Lizzie,..." Michael says with fierce determination, "I don't need to see you in real life to know what an amazing woman you are."
Lizzie blushes and shies away from the camera for a second. Time and time again Michael is saying things that nobody has ever said to her, not even Don in all these years they've been together.
"You're exaggerating," she sighs, hoping that he'll immediately contradict her, and so he does.
"I'm not. I know that I've already used a lot of expensive words to describe you, but believe me, none of those are an exaggeration. It's just that you refuse to see how incredible you are because probably no-one's ever encouraged you to see it."
She nods. Tears are about to roll down her cheeks.
"You're the first," she confesses. "But even so, there's nothing special about me. I'm just an ordinary woman, not even particularly beautiful, who failed at university and who's now mindlessly entering data in a spreadsheet. I don't have any real talents. I don't have..."
"Have you already tried to find out if you have any talents?" Michael interrupts her.
"Well..."
"Lizzie, I don't know much about your life. Not yet anyway. But what I've already sussed is that, for all of your life, you have sacrificed your entire self for the benefit of others without ever thinking about your own needs."
Now the tears start rolling for real, dripping from her cheeks onto the cushion she's pressed to her chest.
"I just... I just want to be there..."
"Yes, and that makes you the noblest person I've ever met. But you shouldn't forget that you are entitled to some love, affection and encouragement as well."
A silence falls between them. Lizzie wipes the tears from her face but more keep coming.
"I love you," Michael repeats and he means it, "and I will make it my mission to help you think more of yourself. I want to be there... for you."
"You are such a kind man," Lizzie replies, raising her gaze to the camera again, tears and all, "and I love you too. So very much..."
Michael reaches out with his hand towards the screen, pretending he wants to grab her hand and she does the same.
"But even if you came to Sheffield," she says with a painful tremor in her voice, "I'd have to tell Don I'm... what? Visiting a friend? He'd want to know which friend. He'd probably check."
She turns this over. It all collapses at the same point. Don.
"Yes," Michael says, with bitterness, "I understand. It would be impossible."
"I hate that," she says quietly. "I hate that he's the wall around everything."
They sit with that for a moment, the harsh reality of it, the injustice of an obstacle that has a person's name and face and a key to her front door.
"What would it be like, do you think?" she says eventually. "If it were real. If we could..."
He considers it properly, the way he considers everything, and she loves him for that too, she realises, for taking her hypotheticals seriously and not brushing them off as wishful thinking.
"I think," he says, "it would feel exactly like this because it would just be an extension of a language we're already speaking. Only warmer."
She exhales a small laugh.
"I think," he says, "that I'd want to take about three hours just to look at you. With actual light. Just to take you in, the perfect imperfection of who you are." He pauses. "And then I'd want to hold you and not say anything in particular for a while."
"That sounds..." She swallows. "That sounds like everything, actually."
They pretend to give each other another embrace.
"Michael..." She looks at him. "Do you have anyone? At home?"
He is quiet for a beat.
"No," he says. "Not for a while now."
He shifts slightly in his chair, the movement one makes when they're about to say something true that they haven't said aloud before.
"I was married. Nine years. It ended... not badly, in the end. We sort of... arrived at the conclusion together that we'd become very good friends who'd forgotten to keep becoming something more than that."
He pauses.
"We're still friends. She's well. I wish her well." Another pause. "But it's been... the intimacy. Not just the physical part. The being known by someone. That's been..." He looks for the word. "Absent. For a long time."
"How long?"
"Longer than you'd think was possible without it becoming an emergency." He says it with a slight wryness that doesn't quite cover the thing underneath. "I joined that site because I was... I think the word is desperate, and I'm not embarrassed to say it because I think it's the honest word. I was desperate for... something. Contact. The sense of another person." He shakes his head. "It was awful, Lizzie. I don't know what I was thinking."
"Tell me," she says.
"There were almost no women. The ones who connected..." He almost laughs. "The first one opened the conversation with: 'show me your dick'!"
Lizzie breaks out in a laugh. She's had her share of similar adventures on that site. Michael continues.
"Then the second one turned the camera on and was very clearly not the woman she'd described in the chat." He raises his eyebrows. "In fact, she had a five-inch cock!" Michael breaks out in laughter, the kind that expresses genuine amusement with a bitter aftertaste. "I was about thirty seconds from closing the site entirely."
"So was I," she says. "I had my hand on the trackpad. Literally. And then your window opened."
"And then your window opened," he echoes. He looks at her for a long moment. "What are the odds, Lizzie. Honestly. What are the fucking odds."
"Astronomical," she says softly.
"And yet."
"And yet."
They look at each other across twelve thousand miles and the mathematics of improbability, and she thinks about the randomness of it... the algorithm, the thirty seconds, the hand on the trackpad... and she thinks that she does not believe in fate, has never believed in fate, and yet she cannot find another word for this that feels accurate.
"You were right, it was meant to be," she says, a little shyly, because it is the kind of sentence she would normally distrust.
"It was," he says, without any shyness at all.
The afternoon comes in quietly and finds them still talking, still circling the same warmth from different angles. And then the talking shifts again. It is always a shift and never a rupture, always the same conversation becoming more of itself, and they start making love to each other again, slower this time, the way the sea comes in on a calm day, without drama, just the long unhurried rise of it.
"I love you," she says at some point while they're masturbating, and it is only when she hears it aloud that she understands she means it completely.
"I love you, Lizzie," he says, and his voice breaks very slightly on her name, and she sees that his eyes are bright, and she feels her own throat close with it... the immensity of it, the grief of it, the joy of it, all of it arriving at once.
"I wish..." She starts.
"I know," he says, "I know. Come here."
She leans towards the screen and he opens his arms and they do their absurd, sincere, heartbroken pantomime of holding each other, and she closes her eyes and she is not in the flat, not in the grey February afternoon, not in any of it. She is held, she is warm, she is loved, and the screen between them is nothing, it is nothing, it is a technicality.
"I've never loved anyone the way I love you," she says, eyes still closed, and she means it in the way you mean the truest things: without planning to, without knowing you were going to, with the faint shock of recognising something you didn't know you'd been waiting to say.
She hears him breathe.
"Neither have I," he says.
They say goodbye with difficulty, the way they always do, and she watches his face for the last few seconds before the screen goes dark, memorising it for the hours until tomorrow, and then the flat comes back and she dresses and tidies with the quiet efficiency she has developed over the past three days and she is in the kitchen with the kettle on when she hears the outer door.
Earlier than usual.
She turns. Don appears in the kitchen doorway, and she reads him in the first half-second the way you learn to read people you have lived with for years, the entire weather forecast of a person available in their posture and their eyes and the set of their mouth.
He is smiling.
She blinks.
Not the performance-of-patience smile, not the smile that precedes a lesson. A real one, slightly loose, the smile of a man who has had a good day and is not yet ready to put it down.
"Something smells good," he says, for the second time in a week, and this time he means it.
"Just potatoes in the oven," she says, carefully. "You're early."
"Left at four. Felt like it." He shrugs off his jacket , hangs it up, which he doesn't always do, and comes into the kitchen and she watches him, trying to calibrate. "How was your day?"
She stares at him.
He asks this so rarely that it takes her a moment to process that he has asked it, to locate the question in her understanding of how their evenings work.
"Fine," she says. "Quiet. The usual."
"Good." He leans against the counter. He's not blocking her, he's just near her, which is different, which is something. She can see him now, fully: the ease in his shoulders, the absence of the particular tension he carries home most evenings like a bag he won't set down. He looks younger. He looks, she thinks with a slow, complicated feeling beginning somewhere in her sternum, like the man she met ten years ago at a school party in a bar in Lewes, who had made her laugh twice in the first ten minutes and who had looked at her... had really looked, at the beginning, he had looked... and said I feel like I've been waiting to meet you.
"How were the races?" she asks, before she can stop herself.
He grins. Actually grins. "Decent. Not spectacular, but decent. Enough."
"Good," she says.
"I thought maybe we could watch something tonight. Together. If you wanted." He says this with a very slight awkwardness, as though the offer is a muscle he hasn't used recently and isn't entirely sure still works. "That thing you mentioned. That series."
She looks at him.
"Yes," she says. "All right. Yes."
She turns back to the potatoes, puts them in a bowl and she breathes.
Afterwards he helps with the washing up.
This is the thing that undoes her, more than the smile or the early return or the offer of the television. He simply appears at the sink while she's still clearing the table and picks up the tea towel, and he dries the plates in the uncomplicated way of someone who has decided to do a thing and is doing it, and he doesn't mention it, doesn't frame it as a favour or a generosity, just does it, and the very ordinariness of it... the simple fact of him standing next to her at the sink, doing the washing up... breaks something open in her chest.
She hands him a bowl.
He dries it.
She thinks: I told a man in Melbourne that I have never loved anyone the way I love him.
She hands Don a glass.
He dries it.
She thinks: This is my husband. This is the man I stood in a church and made promises to and believed them and meant them.
She thinks: I have been unfaithful to him every day for the past four days.
She thinks: It was just a screen. It wasn't real. It was just...
She stops that thought, because she knows where it goes, and she knows it is a lie, and she has been trying, with Michael's voice still in her ear, to stop lying to herself about maps.
It was real. It was the realest thing she has felt in years. She'd said I love you and she'd meant it and she cannot put that back in the box any more than she could put anything else back in the box. And that is precisely what makes it what it is... not nothing, not almost-nothing, not the victimless grey area she has been constructing in her head at 3 a.m. But the real thing. The worst kind. The kind that isn't just bodies but the whole of you, the kind where you hand someone the most private rooms of yourself and let them sit in them, the kind where you say I have never loved anyone the way I love you and mean every word.
That is not a one-night stand. A one-night stand is nothing. It's a body and an evening and a door closing, containable, finite. What she and Michael have built in four days is its absolute opposite: infinite, expanding, with roots already grown too deep to pull up cleanly.
She has cheated on Don with her heart. She understands this now, standing at the sink, handing him the bowl, watching him dry it with the tea towel that needs replacing, which she has been meaning to mention for a month.
He is being kind this evening. He is being... not the man he has been, not the man of the Sainsbury's receipt and the stove and the map and the surgery suggestion... but the man underneath that man, the one she caught a glimpse of at a party when she was eighteen and he made her laugh twice in ten minutes. That man. He comes back sometimes, briefly, the way the sun comes back in February. Not reliable, not warm enough to count on, but present, undeniably present, and she had forgotten how much she had once loved his presence.
The guilt arrives in full.
Not creeping, not at the edges this time. Full and direct and unambiguous, settling over her like weather.
What have I done, she thinks, and this time it is not the frightened exhilaration of four days ago but something heavier, something that has her name on it.
Maybe it was the stress, she thinks. Work. The pressure of the money worries. Maybe this is the beginning of something better. Maybe if he could just... if we could just...
She hands him the last glass.
He dries it and sets it on the shelf and hangs the tea towel on the oven handle and says: "Right, shall we then," with the warmth of a man who has decided, for this evening at least, to be easy to live with.
"Yes," she says. "Let me just get the... yes."
She follows him to the sofa and she sits close enough to feel the warmth of him and he turns the television on and the series begins, and he laughs at something in the first five minutes and she hears the laugh, his real laugh, the one she has not heard in months, and she thinks:
I love him.
And then, like a stone dropped in still water:
I love Michael.
And both of these things are true simultaneously and she has no framework for that, no way of mapping it, no left turn or right turn, just the crossroads itself, and herself standing in the middle of it, and the knowledge that whatever road she takes from here, something will be left behind on this one.
She watches the television without seeing it.
Beside her, Don laughs again.
She will not sleep tonight. She already knows.
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