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“Good night, darling,” Thom said.
Wendy rolled over and looked at her clock. It had ticked over to midnight. “Merry Christmas,” she said, curling herself into a ball, wind now rattling the bedroom window.
ii
They’d each had two beers at lunch—that was the first mistake—and now they were on Ariel’s threadbare couch in her studio apartment in Somerville, and Thom was pulling off her jeans. It was something he’d been dreaming of doing for a while, during this whole anxious spring, and now that it was happening, he was filled with equal parts joy and an unspecified dread that everything was about to change. He supposed it already had. He was an adulterer now, and always would be.
Naked, they arranged themselves awkwardly on the couch, the double bed just four feet away, but Thom had intuited somehow that the bed was off-limits. Maybe that had something to do with Ariel’s boyfriend, a mysterious figure with the unlikely name of Alun with au.
“You sure?” Thom said, holding his body above hers, although it seemed abundantly clear that both of them were quite sure.
“I am.”
Afterward, both partially re-dressed, Ariel had made a pot of coffee and they sat together on the same couch, rain tapping on the window, mugs in hand. The day had turned dark since they’d walked back from lunch in Union Square to her apartment up a steep hillthat overlooked city hall and Somerville High School. It was Thom’s first time in her apartment and now that he could focus on its interior and not just its owner, he found himself looking around for signs of Ariel’s calling. All he could see was what looked like a Bible on the bedside table next to her reading lamp.
“What are you thinking about?” Ariel said.
“I thought there might be a giant cross on your wall or something. Above the bed.”
Ariel laughed. “I have my master’s of divinity degree framed in the bathroom.”
“I saw that.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“In what?”
“That my apartment doesn’t match my job.”
“No, no. I was just curious. I mean, I’m curious about seeing where you live.”
“What does your place look like?”
“Besides having a wife in it?”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, that was a weird thing to say. It’s nice. We have our cat, Malchy, but you know about that. We have lots and lots of books.”
“When I picture your apartment, I picture a grown-up place, like something from a Woody Allen movie. I feel like I still live in a dorm room, basically.”
“Are you happy here?”
“I’m happy right now. I’m happy you’re here with me.” Ariel put her coffee down on the glass-topped coffee table and slid in close to Thom. He slipped his arm around her, pulling her in tighter, her head against his chest, trying to stave off the sudden feeling that he needed to flee this apartment as soon as possible. It had been a mistake, but he’d known that even before it happened. It had all been a mistake, really. Ariel was the assistant minister at the UnitarianChurch in Cambridge, close to where Thom and Wendy lived. He’d met her on Christmas Eve, then re-met her two days later at a wine-and-cheese shop he went to frequently.
“You’re so familiar,” he’d said to her as she was studying a label.
“You came to my Christmas Eve service. You and your wife. Her name was Wendy, but I’m sorry. You’re...?”
“I’m Thom Graves,” he said. “You have a good memory.”
“It’s part of the job.”
“Right. All those Bible verses.”
She laughed, the first of so many times that he was going to see her do that, and he fell a little bit in love with her right then and there. What had Wendy called her after the service? Something like a hot pixie? He couldn’t remember exactly, but she was quite small, and also quite pretty. Short, dark hair and big, brown eyes. And her laugh was almost awkwardly explosive.
“Well, yes, Bible verses,” she said. “But mostly I need to remember the names of parishioners.”