What she said made sense. We did need to tell the others. But the knowledge that we were in a place that there was no urgent reason to leave was starting to become too hard to ignore.
“We should go,” Eve whispered again, the same way she had at the very beginning, the day our affair started.
“We should,” I said.
But neither of us moved, at first.
And then finally we did.
But it wasn’t toward the door. It was toward each other.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she said. Her face was buried in my neck. “This has to be the last time.”
“Yes,” I agreed, in between breaths as we kissed. “This is closure.”
“Closure,” she repeated. “For good.”
Really, it was selfish, but that’s the excuse we gave ourselves. The last time we’d cheated together, we hadn’t known it was the last time, that it would be too difficult to hide after that and so we’d simply have to cut it off without warning and hope it would stick. I told myself that was why it had been so hard—because we hadn’t known it was the end until it was already past us. That if we did it only once more, promising it was the last, it would work this time.
I had just ripped off Eve’s dress and pressed her to me, her skin hot against mine, when the door opened again.
We were doomed from the start. The question was never if, but when.
“Hurry,” I begged her as she raced to get dressed again, cursing, but her dress was tangled with her bra, the sleeves and straps all twisted up, and she couldn’t put it on without pulling them apart first. She scrambled frantically with the fabric, and I ran around the corner toward the door, to stall whoever was entering.
Please don’t let it be Romi, I prayed. Please let it be Daniel. He was my best friend and would never believe I could do what I was doing. He wouldn’t even know to suspect it. Maybe I could stall him long enough or convince him that he wasn’t seeing what he was seeing . . .
But it wasn’t either of them.
“Francis!”
I scrambled to a halt in front of Wally.
He gasped. “What are you doing here?” He looked like a puppy who’d been caught pooping on the rug, his eyes huge and terrified. He would have realized I probably looked the same, if he’d been any less surprised. “What’s wrong with your shirt?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, tugging on the hem, hoping I’d yanked my top more into place. “You said you were going to be on the road all day. How did you even get into Agloe by yourself?” Even through the haze of my adrenaline, I managed to notice what he was carrying. Car keys and papers, and another copy of our Agloe map. “Is that . . . ”
I shouldn’t have said it. I was trying to keep Wally distracted, but the words had the opposite effect. They replaced his confusion at finding me there with panic. He jerked his belongings to his chest guiltily. “It’s not what you think.” He pushed past me, desperate to escape.
Right toward where Eve was still struggling to cover herself.
“Wait,” I begged, giving chase.
“Leave it, Francis,” he said, running faster now. “You don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t understand,” I cried. “Wally, stop!”
Then Eve screamed.
I came around the corner to find her still huddled there. Mostly dressed, but not completely. Not enough to hide what we’d been doing.
Wally stared at us in openmouthed shock, unable to believe what he was seeing. His shoulders slumped, and his hands went loose, almost spilling everything he was holding across the floor.