The Store Room

Before I even process Lillian's words, Jack shoots me a worried glance. Still, he turns to Lillian in short order and answers with typical charm, "She's just a roommate. Lillian, you know I only have eyes for you. "

"If I were a few years younger, I'd hold you to that, you rogue!" Lillian gives Jack a playful wink and returns to her paperwork.

By now it's finally hit me that I've eavesdropped my way into learning Jack is hiding a live-in girlfriend from me. The construction project conjured for my benefit disintegrates before my eyes. I picture Jack posing seductively on Robert's side of the bed in his white boxer briefs, teasing me to join him, while a faceless woman lies naked on his own bed, awaiting his return. Vomit rises in my throat. I rise to leave the nurses' station but skirt past Lillian too brusquely, dislodging her paperwork. She and I fumble over the scattered pages together. I don't look at Jack.

Darting into the closest of my patients' rooms, I realize cursing the universe that she's at x-ray, her bed sheets neatly folded and awaiting her return. Her television still plays a morning talk show, set loud for failing ears. Jack is in the doorway now.

"Kat, Lillian's gotten the wrong idea. I have a new roommate, and I should have told you, but that's all."

My heart is pounding in my temples now. I long to be anywhere but here.

"Who is she?"

"Just a girl."

"How old is she?" I wait for the faceless naked figure to develop features.

"What the hell does that matter, Kat? She's 21 years old. She's my buddy's kid sister. There's nothing going on except I'm doing him a favor by giving her a place to stay since she lost her last apartment. I am not sleeping with my roommate, okay?"

My lips quiver. He's lying to me. I am not a fool.

"Jack, I'm not Lillian, so you can spare me your I-only-have-eyes-for-you bullshit and tell me the truth." Tears smart in my eyes. "You don't have to answer to me, okay? You're not my boyfriend. I guess I just expected a little more honesty."

Jack's jaw locks, and I see he's far from shame faced. "Jesus, Katrina!" He spits his words at me. "You have a fucking HUSBAND! I don't think you're in the position to be telling ME about honesty. And if you want to know the truth I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea to have the woman who still wears her wedding band when she comes over to play fuck buddy around the college kid I have staying with me. Is that honest enough for you, Kat? Or do I not get an opinion in the matter?"

My cheeks burn red with humiliation. I feel the heat pulsing off them. Indignant tears threaten to spill over my lashes, and I fight to hold them back. Only a few seconds later do I compose myself to rejoin,

"Well, Jack, I don't think YOU are in the position to say you didn't know I was married when we started this."

I evade Jack's eyes and exit the room before he has a chance to respond.

CHAPTER TEN

The night after the argument with Jack, Robert's home early. He never texted to forewarn me, and but for our fight, Jack might have been here stretched out on the bed in the master bedroom. I realize I've taken a lot of chances. I'm lucky to have gotten away with all I have. I've stopped in time. As Robert and I lie together in bed, I silently count my blessings and vow not to risk throwing them all away again.

"So you had an argument at work today?"

My heart stops. Robert is sitting up in bed now, my phone in his hand.

"Pardon?" I must have misheard.

"You just got a text about an argument. Your phone was lying under the bedspread."

I try hard to modulate the tone of my voice, but the words come out shrill. I feel my throat closing. "Um, what does it say?" My heart is pounding. I can hear my breathing whistling in my head. I look down at my fingers and see they are trembling.

"Sorry about argument today. Coffee tomorrow? J"

I breathe again. I thank God for that innocuous message, although I haven't prayed for years before. Tears of relief prickle in my eyes.

"You nurses being bitches to each other again? That's Jocelyn, right?" Robert grins, not a suspicion in the world apparent in his tone. I am saved.

"That's right, Robert. She's very difficult."

Exhausted from the near miss, I fall back onto the pillows. Robert extinguishes the light and lays his head inches from mine. I can feel his breath, warm and minty, blow toward me. He leans over and kisses me, his tongue inching forward tentatively. I lean closer still and feel his erection bulge against my leg through his pajama bottoms.

I slide my nightgown straps off my shoulders. My breasts dangle freely as I climb up the bed to lean over Robert and lower each nipple into his mouth. He sucks each in a stimulating yet intensely familiar pattern. I feel my underwear grow wet with arousal. I slide down the bed and slip my fingers through the fly of Robert's pajama bottoms. I mean to stroke his cock, but my hand gets awkwardly caught. "Kat, just pull them off!" Robert barks, but he's smiling, and he grabs the waistband and pulls them off himself.

I swing my leg to straddle Robert and lower myself onto his skyward pointing penis. The bed sheets caress my back as I grind rhythmically and watch Robert grin with satisfaction as he lies back on the pillow. Feeling a wave of familiar pleasure, I am sure I won't risk throwing this away again, for Jack or for anyone. I won't be so reckless again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The day after Jack's near disastrous text message, he catches me in a patient room. The transport crew has just wheeled my patient away for his CT scan, and his sheets lie disheveled on the unoccupied bed. Jack takes several steps into the room, enough to block my exit through the narrow passage adjacent to the bathroom.

"Kat, did you get my text?"

"ROBERT got your text."

"Oh shit. Well, it didn't say anything, right?" Jack brushes off the news with a shocking nonchalance. Apparently he's a lot less concerned about the potential destruction of my marriage than I am.

"No, it was fine. I said it was from Jocelyn."

"Good. " He takes a few more steps towards me and reaches for my hands. "Because I don't want anything to stop me from getting to see you. I'm so sorry I lied to you about my roommate, Kat. I'm sorry I got jealous of Robert and fought with you."

His hands are warm and soft, inviting. I feel him drawing me in, same as always.

"Will I see you tonight after work? Please, Kat? "

I close my eyes and summon the strength to resist.

"Okay."

Jack smiles and puts his hand on my shoulders. With shuffling steps, he backs me against the wall. Before I know what's happening, he has pinned both my wrists and is kissing me so hard I can barely come up for air. I am wet with excitement.

He releases my wrists and wraps his hands around my waist. Suddenly, his right hand disappears into my waist band. He raises his left index finger to his lips in a gesture to stay quiet, as his right hand fiddles with the elastic of my thong. Suddenly his right index finger begins swiftly caressing my clitoris and his middle finger enters my vagina. I whimper and lean my head against the wall as he fingers my clit and G spot. I taste blood I bite my lip so hard to stay quiet.

Then, as quickly as he started, Jack stops, extricates his fingers and backs away from me with a squeeze of my arm. He licks the fingertips he just used to touch me as he departs, before applying wall mounted hand sanitizer with long sensual strokes. I am so disoriented with excitement I step forward to lean on the patient's bed and accidentally activate the call light.

"Katrina, is that you? Are you okay?" inquires Lillian from the nurses' station. I explain that I'm okay, and accidentally hit the call button.

"God, Kat, you're so uncoordinated! I might ask Jack to teach you some balance lessons along with your patients!" She laughs like it's the funniest thing she's heard all day.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Later that day, Jocelyn -- the real Jocelyn this time -- catches me as I am updating patient charts.

"Kat, did you hear about the store room?" My eyes dart up.

"The store room?" I try to feign ignorance, but I'm transparent. Lying to Robert for months has apparently not yet made me an expert in the practice. Still, Jocelyn looks unsuspicious.

"Donna has some concerns about staff members hooking up in there. She's going to discuss it with the other nurse managers. I know -- gross, right?" She lowers her voice. "I guess a housekeeper found an opened condom wrapper." I wrack my brain to remember if Jack and I might have been so careless.

"So just be careful if you go up there, okay?" Jocelyn continues. "I mean, I'm sure it's nothing dangerous. Probably just Jack up there making out with Marion, but you never know who it could be."

My ears perk up. Does she think Jack's with Marion, not me? But who's Marion?

"Excuse me? What's going on with Jack?" I aim for nonchalant detachment, but my voice sounds edgy.

"I guess he's hooking up with Marion, the new nurse on the orthopedics floor. Somebody saw them on the fourth floor by the store room, and apparently he had his hands all over her ass. Doesn't surprise me since she lives in the same apartment building. Hopefully he doesn't take her over to his place with his friend's kid sister crashing with him!"

I feel my cheeks flushing pink. "Wow, how convenient!"

"Well, it was going to happen one way or another. We all know Jack gets around." She furrows her brow and adds, as though afraid to seem unreasonably prudish, "I mean, that's fine with me, obviously. He can do what he wants. I just wouldn't want to touch him myself, knowing he's fucked half the department. Kind of incestuous in the hospital family, you know?"

I nod my head in assent.

"Oh, Kat, you're blushing! I'm sorry to embarrass you with all this sex talk. You're so cute. I'll have to tell Robert to work harder to corrupt you!" Jocelyn laughs to herself and pats my arm as she turns to walk away.

I march zombie-like to my patient's room. The blood has drained from my just flushed cheeks and I look grey as I pass by her bathroom mirror. My phone buzzes in my pocket.

ROOMMATE HOME AT MY PLACE. OK TO MEET @ YOURS TONITE? CAN'T WAIT TO SEE U. J

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was two rows from my car when Jack caught me in the parking garage after work.

"Did you get my text? Shall I just meet you at your place?"

I look him up and down. As usual, he looks perfect after a long shift, standing tall and confident and charming. Despite everything I know, I still want him. I feel an involuntary shudder in my groin, but Jocelyn's voice echoes in my head on replay.

"Well, it was going to happen one way or another. We all know Jack gets around." "I just wouldn't want to touch him myself, knowing he's fucked half the department."

I don't answer his question.

"What's wrong?"

"You've been having sex with Marion in the storage closet. You kept me from your apartment because you were scared she'd come over and catch us together. Someone saw you on the fourth floor with your hand on her ass. She lay naked waiting in your bedroom while you fucked me on the sheets I share with my husband."

But that's not what I really say, because Jack never told me he wasn't fucking other women, except the roommate. I had assumed I was the only one, just as I believed no one else in the hospital knew about the store room encounters. Jack is a man of carefully chosen words, I finally realize; omissions and half truths are his standard verbal fare. How else would he have half the nursing staff thinking they are his favorites while hooking up with the other half? It isn't through blunt honesty.

"Kat, seriously, what's wrong? Is it that rumor about your manager and the storage room? Bunch of BS. She hasn't found anything: she just suspects." His mouth moves quickly. His response sounds memorized, but hurried, like an understudy in a play blurting out lines he has only barely learned. "Half the hospital hooks up in storage rooms and break rooms. The residents are here for 36 hour shifts, where the fuck do you think they go to have sex? When they're home, they're too exhausted."

He grabs my shoulders with both hands and looks me square in the eye.

"Relax, Kat, I don't get caught. We didn't get caught. You've got nothing to worry about."

I bend my knees and slide my shoulders under Jack's hands, liberating myself from his grasp. He looks confused, his charm suddenly impotent.

"You know, Jack, EVERYBODY gets caught eventually." I can't suppress a sardonic smile. "Some people just quit when they're ahead."

I walk toward my car, finally free. My phone buzzes.

KAT, CAN I COME OVER? CAN WE TALK?!

As I pass by Jack, I shake my head "no" through the car window. He looks confused and for once, I note, has slumped into poor posture. It makes him just a little less sexy. Marion can have him.

I pick up the girls from the sitter, and we head for home. On the right, a McDonald's sign glows yellow. I look in the rearview mirror.

"Girls, do you want McDonalds? Don't tell Daddy, though, okay? And enjoy it. Mommy's staying home to cook from now on. We're not going to do these secret outings anymore."