[M4F] We Shouldn’t (Cheating, Hate-Sex, Public)

The first glance was an accident. The second was curiosity. By the third, we had both stopped pretending otherwise.

You were across the room near the bar’s far edge, half-turned toward someone whose name or face I could not quite remember. Was that Tommy? One of the band kids, if my memory serves. He had always been decent to me, kind even, in the way that costs a person nothing and means everything to the one receiving it.

But I caught you in my peripheral vision the way you catch something bright moving at the corner of your eye, nearly involuntarily, then completely. I looked away before you could notice. Took a slow pull of my rye and let the room absorb me back into itself.

I looked again.

I couldn’t help it, and that bothered me more than the looking itself. Because I knew exactly who you were. I knew who you had been. I knew the particular history of your cruelty. How it was never loud, never obvious enough for a teacher to intercept, just precise. The kind of torment that teaches you early that some people treat others as rehearsal space for their own insecurities. You had made four years feel like a sentence I hadn’t committed any crime to earn.

And yet you didn’t look the same. The grunge phase, those oversized flannels, the studied indifference, the hair that always appeared one day past unwashed. It had been shed entirely. What replaced it was beautifully composed. I hated to admit it, but you were probably the best-dressed person in that room. Something about the way that fabric followed your figure. God, it was wrong of me to think it. 

You held yourself differently, too. Less sprawl, less of that adolescent affectation of taking up space carelessly. Whatever the years had asked of you, they had at least answered back with this.

I hated that I noticed. I noticed anyway.

The venue moved around us the way crowded rooms do; in currents with a cluster of people surging toward the bar while another dispersed toward the tables where someone had laid out a slideshow of old photographs, several others gathering around it with the uneasy enthusiasm of individuals checking whether evidence of their worst years still exists. The speakers were playing something bass-heavy and rhythmic, a beat that belonged more to a nightclub than a high school reunion, but nobody seemed to object. The chandeliers threw their gold in slow arcs across upturned faces and half-empty glasses and the particular expressions people wear when they are calculating, quietly, how their lives measure against the room.

I was at a table with three people I barely remembered, and the conversation moved without me for stretches because I kept losing the thread of it. Something would shift at the periphery. A figure. A color. And I would find you once more.

By the fourth or fifth time, I’d lost the honest count, but you were already looking back.

We held it a second too long, then retreated in the same instant, as if by agreement, as if we’d been caught doing something that hadn’t yet been decided. I turned back to my table. You turned back to whoever was beside you.

Was this really the same loser you had enjoyed tormenting? The one with the thick glasses and the breathlessness, perpetually one step behind his own ass? It couldn’t be. Because what sat across that room was a different man entirely. Well-dressed, still carrying some quiet nervousness in the way he held himself, but sharp with it rather than diminished by it. Auburn hair kept well, catching the warm light. A broad, wiry build that announced itself through the elegant navy sweater. Sleeves pushed to the forearm, the kind of casual that isn’t careless, striations suggesting a life that had grown physical somewhere between then and now. Prominent cheekbones. Freckles scattered across skin that had absorbed the sun and kept it.

You stared a moment longer than was decent. It must have been him.

And yet the way we kept finding each other across that room said everything neither of us was willing to speak aloud. The ring on my finger knew it. Yours did too, catching the light at intervals like a quiet indictment. Lord knows my reasons for staying had complicated themselves considerably.

Revenge had become the last thing on my mind. What happened, happened, all of it. No reason to have grudges, right?

*Though as my hand now traces slowly down the back of your dress, the very same one your husband had clipped carefully into place hours before, I fulfill a different sort of reprisal. You turn a vicious glare at me. One that said you hadn’t forgotten a single thing. That same fire, that same contempt, except here, pressed close; it read entirely different.*

I hope you enjoyed the read.

I’m seeking a **female (18+)** writing partner who can help bring this concept to life. **Please write in literary prose** and have some **playful bite.** If you're compelled enough to PM me, include one of your favourite kinks so I'm aware you've read this through.