The spot where we always met smelled nothing like her: of salt, of cement, of fish. Then she would come to me: of vanilla, of well-read books, of Pantene.
Every Tuesday, at 6:00 p.m.:
“Hi.”
A smile.
A kiss up against the wall.
Our weekly “faculty meetings,” we’d tell our husbands.
It was at a faculty meeting, a real faculty meeting, where the idea came to her, from the Hartford Courant, page D4. A local graffiti artist who hoped to preserve the art on a seaside wall on an abandoned beach in Groton. Our colleague, eighty-five, tenured, crinkled the paper in his hands and lectured us about the power of words in a public space.
And she smiled to herself from across the table, and she caught the corner of my eyes the way that she did when we passed in the stairwell.
So it was there, that we came. Tuesday nights. We would make love against the wall, and in the sand, and when it warm enough, the waves.
Sometimes, she’d drive her husband’s Ford onto the beach and we’d do it there. And we’d lay in the bed after, breasts to the sky and legs intertwined, and she’d say, “I’m going to leave him.”
And I’d say “You can’t. Whose truck bed would we lie naked in?”
My favorite part wasn’t when we were making love, but after. When I could bury my nose in her hair, at the nape of the neck, and smell her.
Then we would go back home, turn our backs to our husbands, and wake up at 7 a.m. I would pass by her office and I would say “BELIEVE” and she would pass by mine and say “FUNK” because those were our words. The ones scrawled on the seaside wall that we’d read so many times.
And then it would all repeat.
Except... it’s Tuesday, 6:30.
And there’s no vanilla, no well-read books, no Pantene.
Just salt.
Cement.
Fish.
And now, spray paint.
I turn to the wall with the words that her curves always pinned me against. There, a new addition:
“ITSOVER.”
Jenna Gomes's home is in the undergrad classroom, where she attempts to inspire social change all while teaching freshmen and sophomore composition. When she's not teaching, she's writing. It's her greatest belief that the best stories come from the most forbidden fantasies, so keep daydreaming. You can find her on Twitter at @OhOhThunderRoad as well as @MWFStories for a taste of her microfiction.