Tag Archives: wicked wednesday

Oscar liked Polly asleep in his arms. She was soft and smelled sweet of perfume: the one she wore and her natural scent. Her soft snoring let him know she was tired, so he lie there staring at her. Sometimes he almost dozed with the sweetness of her, her scent and her breath on his face and arms.
And then he would wake up. This time, his own drool like hers had been on him when she fell asleep that first time in the car, on the mattress.
And then he woke up, as if from a nightmare.
He got out of the bed softly so he did not wake up Polly. He reached for his jacket, and fished for his phone which was turned off.
On, it alerted him to a text from Eliza.

Where are you? I am in Shanghai…

Oscar felt heart palpitations. He had not even put on his shoes, as he walked into the hallway. He did not want to make the call in the room with Polly. He could still feel her breath on him.
Was it his guardian angel that got him out of the bed, and into the hallway where he saw Eliza?
“Eliza…”
She wrapped her arms about him quickly. He stared at her half from disbelief, half from the bit of happiness that would always be there when he saw her.
“Oscar,” she squeezed him again. “I wanted to surprise you, and I told them I was your wife and left a hefty tip…I was in the room. But you were not there…”
He looked in her eyes, and he knew that she knew even without saying anything. That she knew that there was something that she knew, that she did not want to know.
“I was out with a colleague.”
“A woman.”
Eliza answered her own question and looked at him.
He nodded.
“You were with this woman…”
Oscar nodded. He felt guilty at first, but then he realized that her was no need. He was not married or engaged to her. She was engaged to someone, before he ever fell in love with her.
The entire time he was with Polly this time in Shanghai, he realized that was what he was infatuated with as much as Polly. That there was nothing that he had to think about besides her. He liked that.
There were no dead skeletons that he had to think about, that he knew about at least.
“Eliza, I love you, but I walked out of the room and she was sleeping and I want to be there when she wakes up. This is the key to my room, the extra. Wait there.”
Eliza took the key and nodded. He was not sure if she was dazed by the shock, or if she was okay but she walked to his room which was further down the hall.
He looked after her, and went back into Polly’s room, got in the bed and lie there again.
Polly still slept and he stared at her now with less joy, and a bit more fear.
He wanted her, he wanted her so much. Her breath warm on his, her eyes when she woke up focused on him. Lulled by her softness, he fell asleep.
In his dreams, Eliza chased him.

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skeleton with a rose photo by f dot leonora

Polly swore she saw light when she looked at Oscar in the alley that they stumbled into after karaoke. His light lit the way to their driver, and her head secure on his shoulder as they drove back to their hotel.
It was late and dark, they went to her hotel room and she spun around the room in her qipao as if she had on a flared skirt. Oscar put his hand on her hip, and they danced around the room. When she looked at the moon, she thought to herself what if he wanted to? She had not been expecting anything to happen between them, so she did not have protection. She knew that there was something between them, but now what? Nothing has been said, and she honestly was old-fashioned. But what would he expect? She bought him to her room so late.
He paused to stare at the moon beside her.
Sex was never something she rushed into. Her mother named her after her friend, a flower child who she had pictures of with huge flowers and butterflies painted all over her.
Polly never could imagine that her mother had been friends with that Polly. That her mother had been so free. Because when she was growing up, AIDS new and fresh. People feared getting it, by looking at someone. She remembered sex ed classes, where they said you could not tell if someone had it by looking at them. No matter how healthy they looked.
Oscar looked beautiful to her now. More so than he ever had in the entire time that she knew him. He raised her face to his, the light of the moon eclipsed by his.
“Tell me,”
She blinked repeatedly from the moonlight and the intensity of his gaze.
“Oscar,” she started, and then she was quiet.
“What?” his voice was soft as he caressed her cheek.
“I just don’t want to move so fast? I asked you up here, and I just don’t want to…rush anything…”
Oscar looked at her. She tried not to cry because she was not sure what he was going to say, as he turned to face the moon.
“I did not come up here with expectations. We were both drinking, and I just wanted to make sure you got back here safe…” He caressed her chin and looked at her, his face close enough to kiss. “And for this.”
He kissed her, and the light that she saw when she closed her eyes was a combination of him and the moon.
She wrapped her arms about him and he pulled her closer, ran his fingers along her neck and further down like she was the treasured instrument of a musician. She wondered if he had ever played anything…
He stopped kissing her, and then he laughed.
“What?” she said looking and him and laughing a little, even though she did not know why.
He leaned on the window sill.
“Because I remember not even being able to be in the same room with you.”
“”Oscar–”
“No,” He said putting his finger on her mouth. “I just feel good that we got past all the barriers, because you are so beautiful inside and out.”
He kissed her again, and Polly felt like she had been painted with flowers and butterflies…

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veruschka with butterfly via listal.com

Severine had travelled so many parts of the world, places that many people might never see in their lifetime. But as a flight attendant they were places that she would not just see once, but maybe even revisit many times over. Though at the end of the day, her world was Paris and New York. New York not so much because she had lived there, but the fact that Rafe was there.
Every time she was in New York she saw Rafe.
But it was Paris where she lived and where she was now, that she wished was not just hers but theirs.
The first thing that she loved about Paris over New York was that even when she was in a crowded part of the city, there was an isolated corner that you could end up on and have piece of mind…if that was what you wanted. While Rafe was not in Paris with her, he followed her down every street that she walked.
“Tell me what you see,” he questioned her now on the phone.
Rafe had been in Paris with her before, so when she told him stories about it she knew he could kind of imagine what she was telling him.
“Where are you Severine?”
Severine looked around sobered by Rafe’s voice. First she was just texting him, and now she was was talking to him on the phone. Recently he had been more accessible to her than ever, but at the same time he felt further away because she would always need more of him than he would or could give her. In ways she understood that, but it other ways she wanted more. Like for him to come to Paris for example. Ever since she was last in New York, she dreamt about him with Calaveras makeup because it was damn sexy to her to have been making love to him while he was so scary.
Maybe he was that scary to her even when he was not in makeup, and maybe that was what she liked about him.
But she could not over think it when she was with him, even if with him was only an international
phone call on a dark street.
“I am just outside of my apartment, it is a quiet, dark street.”
“What are you wearing?”
Severine smiled.
“Do you want me to be naked? Leaning from a balcony? I could tell you an erotic story if you want me too…”
“Don’t patronize me Severine, I want to know what you are wearing because I am going to tell you what to do.”
“A house dress, a simple one. Probably vintage. And perfume, the one that you told me that you like so much. I put a lot on even before I knew I was going to be talking to you. I put it behind my ears, around all of my curves.”
“Did you perfume every crevice of you?”
“Every secret crevice, so that only someone like you would be able to come close and catch all of my scent.”
Severine remembered earlier today, walking into the tiniest bookstore with wall to floor books. She could not see anything but piles of books, and then she saw the man who owned the store. She thought to herself it would be so easy to have Rafe slip into that store, and make love in erotica section.
“Is there anybody with you?” he asked her.
“Just you.”
She heard his soft laughter evaporate almost as soon as she heard it.
“Then I want you to act as you would if it was just me with you. What you do if it was just us?”
Severine took a deep breath.
“Where are your hands Sev?”
“On the phone obviously,” she said continuing her flirtation.
She wanted to make him say exactly what she wanted him to say, she wanted him to say exactly what he wanted her to do and she wanted him to use the filthiest language he could to instruct her.
“I told you not to play me, pull up your house dress and touch yourself with your other hand like I would touch you if I was there.”
“It is drizzling here.”
“Haven’t we fucked in the rain?”
“No,” Severine said clutching her crotch through her dress like she was a young boy wearing his jeans low over his his hips.
There was a pause and she was not sure if he was embarrassed that they had never fucked in the rain and he was confusing her with someone else, or if he was thinking that they should have because they had been in the rain together?
Then his words came as slowly, but pointedly as it they were drizzling about her.
“Then we will sext in the rain. Now pull up your dress and use your phone and video it for me.”
Severine looked around, the dampness around her was like a mist with the sound of Rafe’s voice was steadier. Her house dress moved up almost of its own volition, as she turned her phone on herself. On that dark Parisian street, she was on display like bread in a Parisian boulangerie. Her bright smile was shadowed in the dark, as she gave Rafe the show he asked her to produce.

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paris at night by f dot leonora

Severine felt happy as soon as she was in Paris. She actually loved that people did not think Montparnasse was hip anymore. All the tourist guides that she ended up inevitably reading, said Montparnasse was dead and that it only had a hideous tower.
Montparnasse was her home, she loved it. She walked with her carry-on down the slick streets, basking in the happiness of being home. She turned back toward Port Royal station.
Looking back, she should have known that there was something with Rafe. R, as she called him affectionately with a lovely and very French roll of her ‘r’.’ Eleanora wanted to know his actual name, but what woman did not love having their very own Mr. Big?
Rafe was big from the time she met him. And everything that happened ever since was even bigger. When he called her the last time from New York, and said that he loved her, she felt finally. Because if he did not love her, then what exactly had she been doing all this time with him?
He said he wanted to see her soon, and she was flying into New York for the Day of the Dead. So she joined him for a Day of the Dead party. When he saw her, her face was in complete Calaveras makeup, with extra black shadow to make her look thin as the bones painted on her. He touched her waist, pulled her close to him. They canoodled, and she filled with warmth.
He buried his face in her hair, and whispered.
“You’re so beautiful, so very beautiful.”
She looked up at him.
“Even with a death mask?”
He grinned, looking down at her looking the Grim Reaper himself, and wolfish. Rafe meant wolf after all, and he was her wolf. She had read a novel once translated into French called Le Loup et la Colombe by a popular American romance author. It was a very passionate and sexual romance…she wanted Rafe to be her loup, and to be his colombe forever.
They circled each other the entire night, she never said a word to him about him saying that he loved her. She knew he would not, but after she went on and on about his declaration with Eleanora, she wanted the romantic element to be romantic, to be drummed up.
And it was, even at a party that celebrated death. Because after all human beings created death. If they created life, they also created death inadvertently.
They ended up later, much later making love in the house where the party was being held, where there were ofrendas all over the house and things inviting dead in such a loving matter, making love. Making love in a room where in the mirror, she could see Rafe taking her in his arms. Kissing her and entering her in Calaveras makeup, so it looked like death was taking her like on the cover of an old pulp fiction novel.
She had a flight the next day, and she was happy to have some time to look at Rafe without a mask of death in the morning. Even though their rendezvous was dying slowly.
Asleep, and still, he was more than beautiful. His breath was even, as he slept untroubled sleep. She cherished this because it was rare that she spent time alone with him, his scent warm. When he woke up, his wolfish grin threatened to eat her alive and she wanted to be devoured.
It was not perfect, it was never going to be perfect between them, she thought hours later when he was kissing her like the way that soldier kissed that nurse in iconic style in Times Square after the war. That was the thing. She was inaccessible to him, in a different way than he was inaccessible to her. But there was something there and looking back on it, she would rather have a part of him than nothing at all.
And with that thought, she sat down at her favorite cafe, with her carry-on and her favorite waiter bought her a grande cafe because he knew that was what she wanted. She smiled at him, and he pushed a chocolate into her hand like he always did. He was so kind to her after her long journeys, and she appreciated that as she sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette.
Paris was the most beautiful place to reflect and dream.

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parisian cafe by f dot leonora

Polly looked incongruous in a top hat and a qipao, but still elegant belting out Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at karaoke.
Oscar could not keep his eyes off of her. They had been to several parties in Shanghai because they were there for an art fair which meant a lot of work, but just as much partying. He was surprised to see her like this, he had been in Shanghai with her before but she was not so light of heart like she was now.
He had dared her to go up there since she was sitting with him, saying she liked Sinatra so much.
“Here,” he said taking off his hat and handing it to her. “Go on up there.”
Polly shrugged her slender shoulders.
“Come on ba-Polly,” He lost himself for a moment, wanted to call her terms of endearment that he had not earned yet. “Don’t be chicken.”
Polly stared at him, with a revisit of the former dark fire she used to greet him with in her eyes.
“I am not a chicken. I once took the subway in New York dressed as a Little Bo-Keep, and it was not Halloween.”
“Why?”
She smiled at him.
“Give me your hat,” she purred, and he did relishing the soft expression on her face again.
Now he sat watching her and no one could keep their eyes off of her, because she was so lovely and ultra-feminine even with his hat.
“And did it my way!” she sang with her arms extended, and pulling the top hat over her eye.
She sashayed over to the table, and put his hat back on top of his head. Oscar was silent, his hands reached up to adjust it on his head. Before he knew it, he pulled her onto his lap and hugged her.
She had dangled her flowery fruit scent over him long enough. He enjoyed the softness of her body, which was not resisting him holding her so close.
It was like when she fell asleep on him in the car to the airport. There was a degree of closeness that they now experienced simply from that.
But tonight, pulling her onto his lap was not as innocent as it been other nights. He was semi-hard, and growing harder by the minute. Anxious what Polly would think, he tried to shift her on his lap, but she settled on him.
“You never told me, you never told me…” she whispered, caressing his face.
Oscar looked in her eyes and when she turned her her head, he kissed her neck. She pushed her glossy hair to the side to let him kiss on her neck all the more.
She pressed more into the nook of him beneath her bottom, which he began to caress and she shifted on his lap. He knew if he touched her she would be wet, but he was not going to do that.
Here.
“I always wanted you Polly, I always did but you did not like me until we came to Shanghai this time. Even the last time we were here, you never went anywhere with me.”
Placing her hands firm on his thighs, she leaned back. Without looking at him, she replied,
“I always wanted you, but I am always afraid of what I want.”
“I feel like I do not even know you. And you never told me why you were dressed as Little Bo Peep?
“Like in the O. Henry story “But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.” But I do have a picture.
She slid alongside him, his body moved with hers.
She scrolled on her cell phone, and showed him the picture of her lovely legs all in white.
He looked at her, and thought he never knew a purer innocence than Polly and this moment with her.

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photo by f dot leonora

Eleanora was not sure why it weighed so heavily on her mind now. It was not usually her style to be so concerned with the lives of others, even her friends. Well to be honest, she did not have a lot of friends, but she included Severine among them since she had moved to Paris with her ex. That fairy tale was over before it began, but she was lucky. She was always lucky.
But right now she was thinking about Severine who she had had brunch with before her friend Sherilyn had moved to Paris. Severine was so much happier than she had ever been holding her smartphone.
Her happiness was on the large screen of the phone. The words that she had wanted to hear, like the Beatles’ song lyrics, “Say the words you want to hear, I’m in love with you.”
The man that she had been on and off with for years, had finally texted her that he loved her. Severine was filled with joy as she turned the face of her smartphone to Eleanora and showed her. She flashed the phone almost like it was a diamond.
“R texted this to me the other day. He was drinking, but that is when people really tell the truth in my experience. When they are drunk and their defenses are down. But,”
She looked down at the grande café in front of her. They were sitting on the sidewalk in front of Severine’s favorite cafe in Paris, which honestly was not as nice as some that Eleanora had been to. It had its charms though, and she had spent a lot of time with her there dreaming away the afternoon.
She had heard a lot of stories about R–R for Rhett, for Roger? Robert? Rufus? Severine kept mum about it, because even though he was not married he was involved with another woman.
“I know it is wrong, but I did not know and we had been together in the way we were for a long time. I thought that we could have been something, but I know it is hard to have a relationship with me. I am always going away on a flight. But I loved him, I fell in love with him. Honestly, I fell in love with him more after he told me that he was with someone else. There were no more secrets.”
“Well, because he was being honest with you finally.”
Severine looked away from her coffee and onto the sidewalk where there was an elegant older woman pulling a suitcase into an apartment. There was an equally elegant and debonair older man who was following her to the door, before he kissed her. He twirled her, and kissed her like their lives depended on it. She abandoned the suitcase to completely embrace him, her arms cradling his head. They pressed their faces together when their lips parted, their eyes fixed on each other. Eleanora could see the longing in Severine’s face, or more the longing for the fairy tale to come true.The her and R happily ever after…
“I have a flight tomorrow heading to New York, and I told him and he says that he wants me. That…well you can imagine the things he said to me…” She took a slow sip of her coffee.
Eleanora could absolutely imagine every word he had said to Severine. Fairy tales were rarely told with new words. The same words with some variations in their twists, but ultimately ending the same way with the happily ever after. The happily ever after in her experience, had lost her her job as a flight attendant alongside Severine.
But she had been so in love with Carter, and that was her first mistake because she had always avoided love because it usually did not amount to much. She knew he was a bit of a player, and she knew he was married so she figured that she would not get that connected because she knew she could not.
But she did, the first time he kissed her she was in love. All the stereotypical love things happened to her, and surrounded her like ghosts that she was able to coexist with. His love was like a ghost, that she called Carter.
She saw the ghosts gather around Severine, standing amidst all the Venetian masks in her apartment where she had been so generous with them for Halloween.
Eleanora looked down at a text that she was sent from Severine who was now in New York. Her face was painted with Calaveras makeup for Day of the Dead celebrations. She texted she was with R, who was also painted with Calaveras but was not quite as pretty as Severine. Severine, who even with bones on her face albeit with roses, she looked more beautiful and elegant than most women who painted their faces regularly.
That beauty and elegance was love, which was the most important makeup for any woman. In the photo she texted, their mutual skeletal smiles were lovely, and maybe indicative of the fairy tale coming true at last.
Love and all of its fixings eluded her now as she looked down at her grande cafe. When Eleanora looked up, she saw that same elegant, older woman pulling her suitcase out of the apartment building. Again abandoning it, and kissing her man like he was the only thing in the world, and in their world he was her only thing. They kissed for the longest time, and then pressed their faces together after. She got into a Parisian taxi, and she looked at him for the longest time her face pressed to the window before she headed off with the driver to her destination. Eleanora picked up her cup, and inhaled the lovely coffee aroma.
She got a text then from Severine, that started:
About fairy tales they…
She picked up her phone, and saw the quick spiral that meant her phone had died.
As hardened as Eleanora was, she hoped that R had made Severine’s fairy tale come true. Even though she sensed in her heart that he was a dark knight…

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calaveras via google images

Fernande pressed her lips together. She had just sucked on the neck of a soda bottle, and Rafe could not keep his eyes off of her.
“Is my lipstick still smudged?”
Pressing her lips together and not even looking at him, Rafe looked at her glorious naked body which he had just been inside of. Her sugar plum lips looked amazing to him, as did her ass which stuck out as she bent in front if the full-length mirror.
Fernande sighed, and turned around to look at him. Seeing her full breasts almost made him hard again.
“You little pervert!” she laughed and pulled her halter dress over her head. “You can stay here if you like, nobody is here.”
Rafe stood up and kissed her, his hands on her breasts. He was not as shy as he had been when they were first together. It was his first time and he was nervous, but he knew he did not want it to go as quickly as some of his friends said it had went for them.
He caressed Fernande slowly and even though he did not think she was expecting much, he thought he pleased her a great deal more than she expected. He caressed her, and told her she was beautiful over and over. It was Fernande that grabbed him and caressed first his head, and then his shaft until he thought he would spontaneously combust. The first seconds inside of her, it was nothing like his hand or anything that he could have imagined.
He’d buried his face in her hair after, buried himself in her because he was in love. He’d been so in love with Fernande.
Fernande was his first love. Sandrine was his first real love. Maybe it was the lessons of free love that he learned from Fernande, that made him feel that he did not need to be tied down to anyone. Maybe because he had loved, and been kept at a distance.
He could still see Sandrine walking away from him in the bar hours earlier, now he was sitting at the bar and waiting for Eliza.
Eliza walked in, he could smell her sweet scent even before she was close to him, he had memorized her scent, sweet and floral.
She walked over to the bar, kissed him after cradling his face in both of her hands.
“Hey you,” she said caressing his cheek, and looking in his eyes.
Eliza was his first mature love, she had gotten the best of him. The best he could ever be, he had been with Eliza. And even that was not perfect.
He had just been texting Severine. Drunk texting, and he probably told her he loved her which was not a lie because he did love her. He did love her in a sort of way…
He kissed Eliza, her lips tasted of cigarettes and perfume. It was an odd mix, but he accepted it on her.
“I love you,” he said putting his phone down. He caressed her cheek and kissed her. Juicy fruit and scotch invaded their kiss, Rafe opened his eyes. On his phone was a picture of Severine’s lips, round as a cloud which made him think about them moving up and down his shaft. He closed his eyes again, and Eliza’s softness and eagerness made him forget about everything else around him.
For the moment.

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red lips via wiki commons

Her name was Fernande, and she was as elusive as the painting or sculpture that Picasso created. Equally as beautiful, if not more so. Rafe was a junior when he first saw her, and he was obsessed with her immeadiately. The pretty senior was popular, and most of the boys in the school wanted her. He was never under the illusion that he could be with her, but he could not stop thinking about her. Her milk chocolate hair and eyes were as seductive as the real thing.
His parents were driving him to study hard in school, and he did. Harder, hoping that he would stop thinking about Fernande.
Fernande was dating someone anyway, so all of their teenage fantasies were very unlikely to come true. She was practically married…or so everyone thought. Her breakup from her boyfriend was bigger news than the senior prom. Everybody was talking about it, and boys hoped that they would be the one that she replaced her ex with. Rafe was in the library as usual–with his glasses, this was before his contacts–and she walked in. She walked past him, her scent a rosy juicy fruit, a combination of her perfume and the gum she chewed.
Rafe was hard almost as soon as she sat down, and he hated his teenage body so much right then. He could not get up and when she sat closer to him and looked at him, he really knew he could not get up.
“Your name is Rafe, right?”
He nodded.
“Are you mute?”
Rafe adjusted his glasses and looked at her.
“No.”
“Rafe, then? Well you know who I am? My ex hated guys like you, but I have to say, you are kind of cute for a geek with glasses. Take them off?”
Rafe took off his glasses. What was more startling: that she was talking to him, staring at him or that she was even more pretty up close?
Fernande was kissing close to him, he was not sure he could breathe.
“You are kind of a stud without your glasses. Want to go to the prom with me?”
Everything in his life from that moment on was like being inside of a dream. He had to buy a tuxedo with his dad, and a corsage for Fernande.
Fernande looked like something out of a Botticelli, her body as lovely as an Ingres. He feared that something would happen to him at the prom, that he was being used but to be used by Fernande was fine with him. Other girls eyed him because Fernande was with him, but he only had eyes for her.
At the end of the night, Fernande let him kiss her and more. She was easy, and he could not believe his luck. Could not believe that it was this easy with her. He spent the entire summer fawning over her, the more he was with her and the more she let him do with her the more he was smitten.
“I can come up to your school to see you on weekends,” he said to her on the beach.
Fernande looked at him with that smile that made him soft inside.
“But I will have a real boyfriend by then!”
Rafe stared at her, mouth agape. Fernande kissed him, roses and juicy fruit filled his nose.
“I was your first Rafe, but I won’t be your last…”
That was the truth Rafe thought to himself, coming back to reality. But every time he smelled juicy fruit gum he thought of Fernande. His first but most certainly not his last, he thought as he pondered the drunk man beside him who smelled of juicy fruit and scotch…

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photo of picasso’s fernande by f dot leonora

Rafe hated that Eliza remained friends with Sandrine. He knew he could trust Sandrine with his life, but he was not as sure that he could trust that Eliza would not figure out one day that he had had many transgressions before Severine…including with Sandrine herself in the beginning of their relationship.
He had tried very hard to be only with Eliza, but it was just not natural to him. At first he thought he would be okay, but in an argument with Sandrine he fell apart.
“I told your new girlfriend as I am telling you, that you are not ever going to be faithful to her or anyone else. I did not even want it with you, and I could not keep you.”
The way she conceded, her eyes were wide but not moist. She just stared at him after she stated her truth.
He touched her face, and she put her hand over his. Being that close to her after she had been so honest, her soft scent that perfumed his thoughts even now. He remembered meeting her, being with her and he forgot everything in that moment. He wanted her. Sandrine was not yet friends with Eliza, so she had no problem letting him have her.
Even if he touched her now after all these years, it was like touching a live wire. But Sandrine did not want him now that she was friends with Eliza. She also did not think that what had happened that one time was anything to ruin her friendship with Eliza.
He lit a cigar in a bar where you could get away with that in New York City. Sandrine walked in, and he looked down at the table. They had made a conscious decision not to meet alone a long time ago, so when she summoned him he knew it was something serious.
The sound of her stilettos was the only sound he heard as she walked to the table, dulling out all the conversations and laughter about them. Dulling the sound of heavy glasses from hard drinks, there were not any elderflower or hibiscus cocktails here. Cigar in one hand, rye whiskey in the other was how he was armed as she sat down.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek, felt the warmth flood where his lips touched her.
“Good to see you S,” he said.
“You sent Lizzie to me like a spy in the house of polyamorous love. You know Marcus has wanted to fuck her, if she wants a foursome are you prepared to handle that? What are you drinking?”
She picked up his whiskey and drained it, the heavy glass hitting the oak table with a thud.
Rafe set his cigar on the ashtray.
“I don’t make Eliza do anything. What I made her fuck this Oscar character? Marcus will have to get in line.”
“What did you do to her? She only wanted you, she was so in love with you and now she feels like she needs someone else? Of course you are fine with that, you probably waited to wear her down.”
Rafe ran his hand through his hair, then grabbed her wrist. Twisted her wedding band.
“Don’t you come in here preaching to me! What you think because you are married that you are some authority? Your marriage is open. If I came over to you and put my fingers in you, you’d lick your come off my fingers and be the same as you were when I was with you…and you know it.”
Sandrine laughed in his face, he let go of her hand.
“That’s all you have anymore isn’t it? You think you can hypnotize everyone with your dick, but that is all you are. A dick.”
She stood up, he stood up with her.
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m done.”
“You came all the way here to tell me I’m a dick?”
Sandrine put her hands to her chest as if for prayer.
“I am came here to meet a friend, but I do not know who you are anymore.”
The sound of her stilettos walking away from him was all he heard in the cigar bar.
He wasn’t sure who he was anymore either. What he wanted, what he was doing and he hated that Sandrine always called him out…
Correctly.

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whiskey via wikipedia

Eliza made her way up the winding path,nto the literally white picket fence that led to Sandrine’s house. She always teased her friend about it, because behind the fence literally was the cliché.
Her friendship with Sandrine was not immediate, but it did come after she had been with Rafe for awhile and Sandrine met Marcus who would end up being her husband. At that point, it was possible and they were able to be very good friends.
“Bienvenue,” Sandrine hugged her in the beautiful way that she did, when she opened the door. She walked slowly away in her colorful kimono, two children had done nothing but enhance her curves. The way Marcus leered at her whenever they were in public, showed that he saw his wife as a very gorgeous and desirable woman. Even when Rafe was around her, it was clear that there had been a deep connection.
But Eliza was not that concerned about that, she just really needed to see her friend. Looking at her on the sofa, semi-sprawled looking like she was a model for a Matisse, she noticed how much she looked like Severine. Not exactly the same, but similar and not just because both of them were French. Eliza watched the blooming bud in her teacup turn into a little flower, and took a small sip to savor as the petals tickled her lips.
“So this is what you want now, after all?” Sandrine raised her eyebrow at her friend. “I mean I was even surprised about Oscar when you told me. Not so much about the other woman, I was never sure that Rafe was going to be able to be a one-woman man. When I told you that when we were broken up, it was not to be mean. I knew him, I knew what he was like.
“I think I knew deep down too, but I wanted to believe he could. When we had the accident, we were both so angry at each other. Ever since, every time I try to imagine life without him…I can’t.”
“You love him.”
Nodding into her cup, Eliza agreed silently. She had never stopped loving Rafe, she was not sure she would ever stop loving him. But at the same time, she knew she was not ever going to be able to forget Oscar or let him go. She had been in touch with him constantly since he had left New York. He was in Shanghai again, and that always made her feel wistful since that was where she realized that she loved him.
“So what do you want me to tell you?” Sandrine put her cup of tea down, and searched her face. “More about Rafe and me? How it works with Marcus and I? How can I help?”
“Using my name in vain again sweet wifey?”
Marcus walked into the living room, and Eliza drank her tea like shots.
Sandrine had particularly good taste in men, and her started-out-waiter-cum-actor husband was magnetic. Especially when he looked at Eliza the way he did, with the focus that he gave to everything. Eliza looked away from him, before licking her lips and smiling at him. When he swooped down to kiss her, she was afraid she was going to have an accident on their couch.
But now, now that she was opening up her relationship, was it so terrible that she had always been super attracted to her friend’s husband? Studying the two of them together, Eliza sipped at her empty teacup hoping for some moisture from the cool teabag…

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white picket fence via wikipedia