Turn 10 of 19

At work a silver-haired customer asked for help. I smiled and felt a low, predatory interest rise. I shut it down hard, hid in the stockroom, and pressed the bag to my chest. “Stop,” I whispered to it. The bag only felt warmer. That night I kissed my boyfriend harder than usual and pulled away shaki

The silver-haired man comes in at two. He's different from the others — not browsing, not killing time. He walks to the literature section with purpose, running a finger along the spines, and when he turns to ask where the Münch is, his eyes catch on me and stay. He's older than the man from last week. Late fifties, maybe. A silver beard trimmed close, reading glasses on a chain, a navy peacoat that fits like it was made for him. He smells like sandalwood.

"The Münch?" I repeat, and my voice comes out warm, interested, several degrees warmer than the question requires. I lead him to the shelf and feel him walk behind me, feel his attention on the swing of my hips like a hand hovering just above my lower back. I turn to gesture at the shelf and he's closer than I expected, and I look up at him, and the hunger rises — low, sudden, a flash of heat that starts behind my navel and climbs my ribs. I imagine pressing him against the shelf. I imagine his hand on my waist. I imagine it vividly, in full detail, and the image is so clear and so unwanted that my stomach turns.

I shut it down. Hard. I take a step back and say something about the stockroom and leave him standing there with the book in his hands. In the narrow aisle between the shipping boxes I press the bag to my chest and feel its warmth through my shirt.

"Stop," I whisper. "Stop it. Stop doing this to me." The bag doesn't answer. It only grows warmer against my sternum, and I feel my own heartbeat slowing to match its rhythm, and I realize with a sickening clarity that I'm cradling it the way you'd cradle something you love.

That night Marcus is on the couch when I get home. He's been quiet all week — that silence I thought was surrender, but now I see it's something else. He's watching. Cataloging. Building a case. I sit next to him and he puts his arm around me and I turn into him and kiss him harder than usual, harder than I mean to, and the kiss tastes like apology and desperation and something else I can't name. He pulls back first. His eyes are wide and careful.

"Where is this coming from?" he asks.

I shake my head and pull away and my hands are trembling. I can feel the bag on the kitchen counter from across the room, its warmth like a candle flame against my side. Marcus is looking at me with an expression I've never seen on his face — not hurt, not anger. Fear. He's afraid of me. The realization drops through me like a stone in still water, and the worst part, the unforgivable part, is that some small voice inside me — a voice with Vivian's cadence, Vivian's boredom — whispers: *He should be.*