She knew she shouldn't be feeling this way, that the touch of her bare hand on his bare shoulder as she cleaned him up shouldn't be something she was so aware of. She was providing what little comfort she could to a man who'd just watched a friend and coworker be injured by a bad bomb that her girls had built. She shouldn't be viscerally aware that he was a man, and an attractive one at that. He was Italian. He might be collaborating with the enemy. He might have even been involved in sabotaging the bad bomb.
She knew it was wrong. She'd known it was wrong the first time he kissed her in the middle of the Sandy Shores Pavilion. She'd pulled away as if she'd been burned and tried to be offended but dignified about it. He'd promised to get Edith her job back as Lorna fled, and she hadn't been sure whether he meant it or whether he was speaking out of guilt. For herself, she knew it was the first time a man had kissed her just because he wanted to in years.
She knew she was married. How could she forget that? How could she not remember the last twenty years of a marriage that was, in nearly every way, as frozen as her husband's joints? The silences, the quiet rejections, the loud rejections, the clink of a bottle against a glass as he drank himself into a stupor. She knew them all. And she knew she wasn't blameless in their marriage, but sometimes she was tired of fighting.
She knew she wanted this. She craved someone who actually seemed to care about her, seemed to find her attractive for her strength and her weaknesses. She craved his hands on her skin, his lips on hers, his whispers of how beautiful she was (in English first, perhaps, and then maybe Italian). She'd told him she'd walk herself home after that second kiss, and she knew he knew how much she had been affected by it, just as she knew how affected he had been.
She knew he wasn't going to let it go after that, although if she'd said no, he wouldn't have forced her. Marco Moretti didn't need to force any woman, and wouldn't have anyway. She'd met his mother now, and she knew how much you could know about a person once you met their mother. What did that say about her? How did Sheila's friends judge Sheila once they met Lorna? She hoped she never embarrassed her daughter.
So when he came in with a beer for them both while she mimeographed her pamphlets, she knew it wasn't going to end there. He argued with her, but it didn't turn angry and hurtful like nearly all her arguments with Bob did. She thought Marco liked seeing her fired up about things, maybe even liked provoking her. And when he put his hand on her face so delicately, she knew she was going to turn into his touch, his offer. The third kiss turned into a fourth and a fifth, and then she stopped counting individual kisses.
She didn't know she'd have relations with Marco Moretti for the first time in the office at VicMu, and maybe she should be ashamed that it had happened like this, on top of being ashamed that it had happened at all. She'd never stepped out on Bob, not ever. But at the same time, maybe there was nowhere else it could have happened. They couldn't go to his house, with his family, or hers, with her family, and she wouldn't go to a hotel. She wouldn't be that cheap.
When it was over, when he'd spent as long as they both dared caressing her skin, whispering words of wonder and attraction and caring into her ears (in English first, and then Italian, just as she thought), they resettled themselves and their clothing. She thought it might be awkward, after, but it wasn't. He kissed her gently one more time, reminded her that she was beautiful, then left the office with a suggestion that she should leave a few minutes later - and to not forget her pamphlets.
When the door shut behind him, she knew. She knew she was in deep. She knew just once with Marco Moretti wasn't going to be enough. And at the same time, she knew it had to be.
She knew.
