He meets her on vacation in Paris. She's older and beautiful and she watches him from across the café, big blue eyes beneath thick, dark lashes.
He tries not to look at her, feels her gaze on him. It becomes like a game for those ten minutes they're in the café together, for one to look at the other without getting caught.
She's much better at the game with her secretive smiles and the casual way she moves her hair off of her shoulders, tugs her full bottom lip between her teeth.
She keeps her gaze on her book in front of her most of the time; he studies the cover, Paul Eluard etched across the spine.
He looks up at her again and she catches him. Her eyes meet his dark ones. She smiles; he looks away.
When he looks back up at her again she's already gone.
He sees her back in the same café two days later. She's relaxed in her chair, one long pale crossed over the other, her book held in one hand again, long fingers holding onto the printed words as though they were some type of treasure.
He watches her as he waits for his order, smiles at the barista, makes his way towards an empty table.
"Assieds-toi.." Her voice startles him, makes him turn to look back at the blue-eyed brunette, his dark eyebrows furrowed at her. But her gaze is back on her book.
"Excuse me?"
The edge of her mouth curls up into a smile. "Sit."
He hesitates for just a moment and then slowly sits down across from her.
He watches her as he sips from his cup, knows she knows he's doing it even if she doesn't look up. Not yet at least.
Although eventually she does, shifts her eyes up over the top of her book. "What is your name?" she asks him and her voice is lovely.
She smiles, closes up her book and stands to leave. He watches her as she slips around the table, as she passes by his side. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Arthur."
He doesn't think he's ever liked the way his name was said this much before.
They run into each other three more times in the café and sit together in silence before she invites him back to her flat.
They sit in her living room and sip coffee. She watches him from beneath her bangs, under her hair. He looks around her room as though it's the most interesting place in the world.
There are pictures all along the wall, her in frilly little dresses as a little girl sitting on her father's lap; pictures of her walking along a river, on a bench, with friends when she was younger.
There are pictures of her with men, with women. Pictures of her laughing, smiling; pictures of her in black and white where her eyes are haunting, her lips painted pale gray.
"Are you a smart man, Arthur?" she asks him, her voice breaking the silence like a gong going off.
"I like to think so."
She simply smiles.
The first time they're together he makes the first move.
They're sitting in her flat on her couch and she's watching him, one arm resting on the back of it. She moves over, kisses his mouth and his head swims.
They find themselves wrapped up naked on her ornate rug, her breath warm against his face, her skin like spun silk beneath his fingers.
She breathes out in short bursts, her eyes closed, her head tilted back, her long pale neck exposed.
He holds her head to her breast when they're gone; he listens to her heart beating like a butterfly trying to break out free of the hands holding onto it.
She asks him is he likes Paris; he tells her it's beautiful and so is she.
She lets out this laugh he doesn't quite understand.
When he tells her that he's heading home she just smiles at him, tells him that the flat in Paris isn't her actual home anyway, tells him where he can meet her in America if he wants to.
When he goes to see her she answers the door and smiles like she knew he'd be there, invites him in, introduces the blonde man that lives there as her husband- he looks at her like she's suddenly grown an extra head.
And when her husband leaves the room she leans forward and puts her hand on his knee. "I knew you would come see me."
"You didn't tell me you were married."
"I didn't see the need." Her hand squeezes down on his knee, moves up towards his thigh. "I've missed you," she tells him.
When her husband comes back in she's sitting back as though nothing happened at all.
He spends more time with her than he probably should, gets to know her husband, finds out he likes him, feels bad about what happened in Paris, feels guilty. But the guilt doesn't stop him from coming over.
And the guilt doesn't stop him from tangling up with her in bed, his hands running through her dark hair; doesn't stop him from putting his mouth on her- on her lips, her neck, to the part between her thighs. Doesn't stop him from savoring her breathy moans or the way his name rolls off of her tongue.
"Doesn't your husband wonder where you go," he asks her one day in the dim moonlight with her head resting against his chest.
"He trusts me," she tells him, presses a kiss to his chest. "And he trusts you."
"That makes it worse."
"Perhaps," she agrees easily, rolls her gaze up to his face. "He's a good man," she tells him. "And I love him."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"I am here because I love you as well."
She says it as though it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"We want you to work with us."
She says it to him when they're naked in his bed again and she's sitting in his lap, her naked chest pressed up against his, their sweat covered bodies cooling in the night air.
"Work with you? Doing what?"
She smiles at him. "Do you like to dream, Arthur?"
It's surprisingly easy to work with them and keep the secret of what they're doing from her husband. Over time he becomes to care for Dom, considers him a friend which makes the deception hurt worse.
They work well together, a well-oiled machine, almost three parts of a whole; they work well together and can sit in a group and talk and laugh.
He finds that he can pretend that he doesn't feel Mal's hand rubbing his thigh beneath the table as Dom talks to him about their newest job.
"I'm pregnant."
She's standing in his kitchen in nothing but a robe, her hair tousled while he makes coffee.
He pauses and looks over at her, watches her face.
"It's Dom's," she tells him and she says it like she's positive of it and maybe she is though he's not sure how she can be sure.
"Then I guess this is the end of this, isn't it?"
"Of course not, Arthur," she replies with a click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "This doesn't end because love does not end."
She sits down on the counter, opens up her robe, lets it slide down off of her shoulders and pulls him to her naked body, rests one leg on either side of him, pushes her body up against his.
He lets himself forget for a moment that things are much more complicated now.
Two kids and dozens of jobs later and Dom still doesn't know about them and yet they meet as often as they can, share glances when he's not looking, grope blindly in the dark, her fingers closing around him, his sliding inside of her. (He knows that he should give this up but finds that he can't.)
She vanishes from time to time with her family and so he doesn't notice when he doesn't hear from her for a while until Dom calls him, asks him to come over.
"She's not here," he tells the younger man though Mal is sitting in the next room.
Arthur furrows his eyebrows at him, cocks his head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"She left herself in limbo," he tells him. "Whoever Mal was is gone now. I don't know when she'll come back."
Arthur looks towards the kitchen, watches her run her finger back and forth over the blade of a knife.
She's different when she comes back from limbo. She's more aggressive, wilder. She's careless and vivid. She's living in a world she sees as fake, a world she doesn't feel the need to be cautious in.
She takes the lead more often than not in bed now, presses her hands against his chest and rides him with wild abandon, something akin to desperation in her eyes though he can't tell what she's desperate about.
And each and every time when they're done and her breathing is erratic she whispers out, "I wish I could have the real you back. I wish I could go home."
And he whispers back to her every single time, "But you are home."
She calls him on her and Dom's anniversary. Her voice is hollow and distant like it has been since she and her husband got back from limbo.
"I'm going home," she tells him in a soft voice.
"But you are home," he reminds her.
"Of course you'd tell me that," he replies. "You're part of my mind. You want me to stay here. But I need to go home. My children need me."
"But your children are here."
"Goodbye Arthur." She pauses as though hesitating. "I love you. I'll see you soon."
Later on he would realize that he should have heard the finality in her voice.
Dom sees her in the dreams they work in all the time. He tells Arthur constantly that Mal is haunting him.
Its over six months after Dom first tells him that when he first sees her for themselves.
Dom and he are in separate locations and she appears looking elegant in a fancy dark green dress. She smiles at him like she did so many times in life, her eyes shining. "Hello, Arthur."
Never has seeing a smile hurt so much.
And never has the last words someone ever said to him cut so badly.
And now that he sees her again in the dream her last words play in his head, a record of pain.
I love you. I'll see you soon.