"I slept with Andi."
"I don't care."
His mouth was on yours before you had a chance to breathe.
Tongue hot, parting your lips and reeling you in.
He used to do this.
His hands warm as his fingers fumbled with your blouse and his beard scratching at your collarbone, soft kisses on your neck.
There was something sweet about the way he'd mumble almost incoherently into your ear when he pushed into you.
And how he would come with your name on his lips; a gasp and a drawl, guttural and low.
He never stopped loving you.
He'll only tell you so when you're not fucking, because he's trying to be sincere and separate it from whatever it is you do now.
Resorting to comfort through the sweat glistening on your bodies and the alcohol in your veins when you scream out his name in the dark.
You can't figure out why he does what he does, flits from Andi to you and back again.
You never will.
"Andi's pregnant."
"Fuck off."
The look on his face made you want to slap him and scold him.
You very almost did.
He tried to touch you, cup your face with his hand and kiss your lips delicately.
You couldn't do it, feel his fingers on your skin and then his cock inside you when his body still breathed Andi.
It would be claustrophobic and wrong to let him use you like that.
His healing could wait, yours would never cease.
He left you alone, defeated and exhausted from the yelling and screaming because he couldn't face much more.
Neither could you.
You cried on the couch and in your bed, tears streaming down your cheeks and body trembling with the ache of his loss.
Things would never be the same now, even though you had endured so much through your years.
It was never like this.
And it never would be again.
"She won't marry me."
"Should I be surprised?"
You smell of sex and you can't remember if you took off your make-up.
You've been working for hours to forget.
To forget the words than danced off his tongue and into your apartment. barbaric by his standards yet eloquent by yours.
You feel cheap somewhat because you didn't think you were this person.
The person who fucks her best friend because he's angry that his ex-wife won't remarry him.
Because you were both thought he was in love with you.
You know you love him but it's not enough now and it never really was so you sleep with him anyway.
Even though he's proposing to Andi and he's going to be a father and accept it as a new condition of your complicated relationship.
Then work as usual, no-one suspects a thing, they never did.
You'll get home at an ungodly hour.
You'll fuck yourself in the shower because you want to get rid of his scent on your skin which still manages to linger a day later.
"Am I too sad?"
"Andi said... she said she won't marry me because I'm too sad."
It was soft this time.
It's never soft, not anymore.
Just hard and fast and demanding like you always are with each other.
Every time in the past few months was uncivilised - up a wall, on a desk, against a door.
He caresses your body with his hands and those fingers, light like a feather and fleeting touches across you.
You meet his lips and allow yourself to mould into them.
You could never let go, not because of this.
It doesn't feel forced anymore because the equilibrium has settled.
He's a father now and you're still a bystander: it's a role you're used to, can flex into and work to your own.
It's always around him that you'll weave your web, allowing his life to slot into yours.
The way your fingers entwine around his waist, the way your limbs entangle in your sheets, the way you rest in the crook of his neck.
His hot whisper in your ear and a shiver down your spine.
A love that maybe will never cease to smoulder, endlessly dancing between you both because it's never learnt another way.