The Cheat: A Short Story
He’d never been aroused by a woman applying lipstick before, but he was now. Taylor was leaning back on the seat of his bed watching Emilia’s face in the mirror. It was a cheap rectangular mirror with black plastic trim leaning against the wall a few feet away from the foot of the bed where Taylor sat. Emilia was kneeling before it, her back to Taylor, applying dark plum colored lip stick. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and unnecessarily sensual. She pulled the lip stick slowly across her lower lip so that it was tugged gently to the side. She did this, and she did it too slowly and with too much intention to not be purposeful. Taylor was aware of a sudden and growing desire to kiss her.
Taylor wore a black-on-black suit, Emilia was in a black dress, and they were almost ready to leave for Taylor’s grandmother’s funeral. Emilia and Taylor had grown up together in the same neighborhood, and she accompanied him to enough family events that she had known his grandmother — Meemaw they called her — personally. In fact she and Meemaw were really fond of each other. Taylor’s family (Meemaw included) would occasionally bug Taylor, and Emilia, but always separately and in private, about when they were going to date and why they weren’t doing so already. But they wouldn’t date and didn’t want to. They loved each other, and only a fool would doubt it. They’d certainly had sex, and even a fool could see it. But they knew that they were incompatible in any conventional relationship with its traditional milestones and commitments. They knew they were safe with a little distance, that if they crossed a certain threshold and allowed their lives to become too dependent on the each other’s, their differences in personality and ambitions would lead to conflict and fighting.
They didn’t want to fuse the infrastructure of their lives; didn’t want to live together, get engaged, and then get married so they could have children. They certainly didn’t want to be restricted only to one another. Some people can’t fathom romantic love without a need to possess their partner exclusively, but such things are far less perplexing to those who’ve experienced them. They knew they would forever be complicated, unboxed and unlabeled, together and apart, moving in and out like the tides, and they accepted it. Nothing else could afford them the borderless proximity and separated autonomy they both required for and from one another. No, they never wanted to date. They only wanted each other.
Taylor sat watching his best friend as she knelt on the wood floor of his apartment. Imaginations of how her gentle lips would feel against his own swam kindly through Taylor’s mind like unhurried fish among coral and kelp. While Emilia’s lip stick tugged on her lip, Taylor unconsciously bit his own. Then Emilia’s hand slipped, and a line of plum streaked down past the corner of her mouth. She knew he was eyeing her but was too focused to actually see him and, in her embarrassment, she wheeled around in his direction. As she did, he instantly became aware of his own lip between his teeth and let it go just before she could notice. When she faced him she said playfully, “you didn’t see that!”
Neither did you, thought Taylor. But out loud he only laughed and shook his head.
While she began cleaning up the stain Taylor asked her a question. “Was Matt upset about you coming here alone?” Indeed he was. Emilia’s boyfriend and primary partner Matt had never trusted Taylor, or Emilia’s feelings for him. Of course Taylor and Emilia, after knowing each other their entire lives, were decidedly not dating for a reason. Still Matt felt utterly insecure in his position of priority, of privilege, in Emilia’s romantic life. They were non-monogamous, Matt and Emilia. But she assured him (and assured him again every time he jealously inquired), that she did not want to date Taylor and that her friendship with him would never threaten the romantic relationship she and Matt had. Matt never fully believed it, but she always meant it and she was always right.
“He actually tried to have me agree to let him take me to Meemaw’s funeral himself,” answered Emilia. “I told him no, that that was a boundary I would not let him cross. I told him I’d be home whenever the rest of the family went home and that was that.”
Taylor, his curiosity satiated, decided to change the subject. “Meemaw would’ve loved your dress ya know.”
“She’d tell me that it would have you looking at my ass like a pirate eyeing gold, and to smack you if you get handsy,” said Emilia with a smirk and a glance.
Taylor rose from the bed, stepped forward and knelt down behind Emilia, placed his hands on her shoulders, and began to massage them slowly. He channeled his admiration for her through every squeeze and every release. He wanted her to feel good, and he wanted to be the reason why. As he did this her eyes closed, her mouth slacked open, and a deep breath followed out of it. Taylor put his mouth next to her ear and said, “It looks to me like you wouldn’t listen.”
“Where would the fun in that be?” she asked with her eyes still closed and Taylor’s hands squeezing her shoulders.
“I could tell you’ve been waiting all afternoon for fun,” said Taylor deliberately but with kindness. “It’s time you got some. You deserve it.”
But Emilia wanted to know if he was okay; if he was sure he wanted to continue right before leaving for Meemaw’s funeral. She knew she wanted it, but had to be sure he felt the same. He assured her he did. Death had never bothered him and, in any case, Meemaw’s wasn’t unexpected. Under the circumstances Taylor didn’t feel volatile or vulnerable. He said as much to Emilia, and it was all she needed to hear. She dipped her head backward while he continued squeezing her shoulders, and then Taylor leaned forward with patience, letting his lips hover above her own for two moments, and then he kissed her.
They took what time they could cleaning up. Emilia was again fixing herself before the mirror. Taylor lay back on the bed looking at the ceiling with his pants unbuttoned. The silence was comfortable but he broke it anyway. With pure, uninvested curiosity he asked, “How do you sleep next to Matt after this? Or after the last time we did this? How do you look at him?”
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” She asked.
No, Taylor told her. He was only curious because he was unsure he‘d be able to do so if their roles were reversed. So Emilia explained herself. Much of what she said was contextual information that Taylor already knew, like how she and Matt only became serious with the understanding that they’d be non-monogamous. That Matt didn’t want the romantic or sexual restrictions of monogamy and Emilia knew she could never abide by such restrictions if she tried. That was the agreement upon which their relationship rested, but for Matt non-monogamy was a somewhat new desire for which he had no experience. For Emilia it was a need, and she told him so from the beginning.
As Matt became increasingly attached to her — became increasingly convinced that he would be ruined without her — his intense fear of losing her led him to believe the likelihood of losing her was equally high. What if she found someone else who she fell in love with and left him for that new person? This irritated Emilia because that was a monogamous fear, and it revealed the distance developing between their needs. Still, she reassured him that she didn’t want to replace him, that she loved him. But no matter the frequency or sincerity of her reassurances, it brought him no solace.
Matt didn’t admit it plainly, but he believed he could only be secure in her her love for him if she loved no one else but him. And only if she saw no one else but him, less he risk her meeting someone better than himself.
This led to weekly and then almost daily discussions, each one nearly the same, where Emilia felt like she was being made responsible for Matt’s insecurity; like the presence of his fear meant that she was doing something wrong. Indeed he seemed to believe her need for romantic and sexual autonomy was the problem. The distress this caused her led Emilia to stop seeing other people entirely for his sake alone. But he saw the unhappiness this caused in her and that only increased his fear of her pulling away, and so the long, unsuccessful conversations continued on an almost daily basis.
Then one time, after months of this, Matt told her in all honesty that he wasn’t sure he could go on living without her because she was the only good thing in his life. And that was the beginning of the end of their relationship.
Because of what he said — because of the responsibility he put on her — she needed to leave him. Because of what he said, she wasn’t allowed to leave him. She felt trapped, and there is nothing caged animal wants more than to escape.
“If I am not yet able to leave the relationship,” Emilia said, “I am going to do what I want when I can; what I would be doing if I weren’t in this relationship. Or if I were in a healthy one. I don’t think he means harm. I don’t believe he consciously thinks this through or understands that its manipulation. I think he is a scared human, but his emotions have denied me my autonomy. You know, people say that if you are going to cheat on someone you should just break up with them. But they ignore the many times when someone cheats only because breaking up isn’t an option.”
Taylor knew Emilia still respected Matt as a person but, he asked, did she feel like she still respected their relationship?
“My relationship doesn’t demand I respect it, only that I stay in it. You and I both know we don’t need a sexual relationship,” Emilia continued while fixing her hair. “No matter how much we like having one. We went a long time without having sex and only did it again months after I was in this position. But I do want this sexual relationship, and my relationship with Matt stopped being one that’s worth denying myself of you.
“I’m in a shitty situation but it’s not shitty when you and I are together, and since we aren’t supposed to be together like this, every time we are feels like I am reclaiming my autonomy. This isn’t a revenge on Matt; I don’t want to hurt him. That’s why I’m not going to tell him. When we break up, it won’t be because of you and I. I was never wrong when I told him that my relationship to you would never threaten my relationship with him and that’s still true. So, whether he means to harm me or not, he is an adult who is responsible for his own actions. His actions leave me terrified with the feeling that I am responsible for his emotional wellbeing, and that’s not something you do if you want someone to be honest about their own feelings. There’s no room for me to express my desires, because that comes with a risk I’m not willing to take. So I don’t owe him the same honesty I would owe him otherwise. I care about him immensely. But our relationship is one I would tell you to end if you were in my position, even though I’d understand that you’d feel like you couldn’t. So I don’t feel bad, but I don’t feel good about cheating either. I’ve simply made my peace with it. His actions let him keep me close a while longer. Mine allow me to regain my freedom in the meantime.”
Taylor thought for a moment and offered his summary to be sure he understood her. “You’re looking at the big picture. And since the days are numbered anyway, and because having sex with me isn’t a source of your desire to break up with him, you’ve simply decided to have what your relationship denies you. What it was supposed to afford you. And when it’s over then, in a sense, cheating with me won’t even matter, precisely because you don’t feel anxiety about it, because only we know, and because the outcome for you and Matt would have been the same anyway.”
He was right and she told him so as she stood up from the floor and walked over to where he lay on the bed.
“Okay, I’m ready to go,” Emilia said. “How do I look?”
“Like gold to a pirate,” smirked Taylor as he sat up.
“Then you’d better not get handsy.”
“You can smack me if I do.”
