The best story ideas I ever get come to me when I’m writing a different story. I’ve seen other writers talk about ideas attempting to seduce you away from your current project. The struggle is real. But if a writer expects to finish a story, they can’t chase every new idea that comes along. Often, while writing, I can ignore the idea. But sometimes an idea gets stuck in my head and won’t leave. They are mildly irritating, and usually I can wait them out by continuing to work on a project. If an idea makes it to this stage, I’ll write it down. After this point, my mind can get back on track. But this time, an idea popped in my head and spent the weekend with me. I couldn’t stop thinking about this scene. On Monday, when I went to work, I kept pulling my focus back to work. This idea felt like a mental splinter. Even though I knew it wasn’t helping, I kept playing with it. Picking at it, scratching at it, trying to pluck it out. I could think of only one way of ridding myself of this annoying idea. I had to write it down.

What follows is a scene that played out in my mind one weekend. I like it and am glad to be rid of it. This has nothing to do with my current work in progress. It’s not in the same universe; these characters appeared as is. And once I wrote this down, I was done with it. I have no compulsion to continue on, to dig deeper into this world or these characters. All the questions that could be asked have been answered, which is odd. Usually, I like to dig into characters and the world. But here, now, this is a whole unique piece. Enjoy.

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I woke to the smell of bacon frying. Shit, I’d fallen asleep at Raynara’s. Shit, shit, shit. She’d folded my pants, shirt, and underwear, leaving them on the hope chest at the end of the bed. My shoes with socks stuck in sat below them. I hurriedly dressed, waiting until I left the bedroom to put my wedding ring back on. Ray stood behind the island stove top in an apron and nothing else. Maybe I had been too hasty in putting my clothes on.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

A smile rose and fell on her face. She pointed a spatula at the stool opposite her. Glasses of ice water and orange juice stood next to a plate with eggs and buttered toast. I paused, looking at Ray’s blank face before sitting down.

She took a deep breath, flipped a strip of bacon, and exhaled. “My anniversary is coming up.”

I sat back in my chair. “Is it August already?”

She nodded. “I’m not going to renew the marriage contract.”

My breath caught as I inhaled, then coughed up a bit of egg.

She smiled. “That’s a better reaction than I was expecting.”

I twisted my wedding band. “What brought this on?”

“I’m tired of sneaking around behind his back, and Fi’s made it clear that he won’t remove the monogamy clause from our contract.” She brushed a strand of purple and blue hair from her face. “And I feel bad about Anaiya.”

“Why? She knows about us. Our marriage contract has open relation clauses, and we’re honest with each other about our partners.”

Ray set all the bacon on my plate. Had she eaten already? Nowhere in the kitchen did I see dirty dishes. How many times had I been in this kitchen and not looked around? Really looked that is. It was immaculately clean, which surely was new. How long had I slept?

“Anthus, you don’t have any other partners. Unless you’re lying to me.” She picked a glass of amber liquid. Was she drinking scotch at noon?

“Ray, what’s going on? You know that I’m only romantic with you and Anaiya. Why the breakfast? Why are you drinking?”

“‘Cause I’m leaving.”

“Fi. You’re leaving Fi.” I pushed the plate away, suddenly not hungry.

She crossed her arms under breasts propping them up in the way she knew I liked, a distraction she’d been using for decades now. “Do you remember those poems that I wrote in high school?”

I shook my head. “You write poems?”

“Wrote,” she said. She slammed back the scotch and poured herself another. It was the bottle of eighteen year old finished in port barrels that I’d bought her for her fiftieth birthday. When she opened it, she promised to save it for a special occasion. Half the bottle was already gone.

“Who remembers high school?” I said with a forced laugh. The sinking feeling in my stomach caused my health monitor to release some antacids. In my enhanced vision, I called up a real time pulse and stress monitor. The latter was edging towards an automatic release of sedative. The stuff worked but made me feel too detached. I took two deep breaths and watched as the stress curve leveled.

“I sure didn’t.” She leaned against the sink, the sun backlit her head, causing a purplish halo and obscuring her face. “As I cleaned out the basement from that flood last month – fucking smart house, my ass – I found a box of stuff mom sent along after dad died. It contained a lot of my childhood, mostly ruined by the waters. But a folder on top remained relatively undamaged, and it held two of the old notebooks, the ones with actual paper, full of poems.” Her face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in years.

“And this means you’re leaving your marriage?”

She ignored the question. Eventually she’d answer it in her own way, when she was ready. In all our lives together, she’d never answered a question until she thought it through and found the right answer. I hated that quality about her. Impulsiveness caused so many problems in my life where patience had steered her clear of my issues. In my enhanced vision, I pulled up Fi’s logger to check that the man wouldn’t be home anytime soon. While impulsive, I did learn from some of my mistakes.

She poured herself another scotch. “I might be a little tipsy,” she said.

“Pour me one,” I said. Might as well, I didn’t have to work that day, and Anaiya was away with Topper and Jean for the week.

“I thought you’d never ask. After all, we’re celebrating.”

“We are?”

She nodded. “So, I found these poems, and I read through them. They were awful. Filled with all the usual teen angst and emo bullshit that I used to think was so deep. In fact, I was mildly embarrassed upon reading them, and I almost threw the whole thing out.”

I took a sip and winced as the burn took hold of me. “You have always been a literary snob.” I took another sip, and this time the warmth, the flavors, it was heaven. “But I didn’t know you read poetry.”

She nodded. “I haven’t. Not since those English classes with Ms. McGurk. Well, that’s not true, is it? My freshmen English class with An Wei had lots of poetry. Ze loaded zer course with post-social media era works. But I haven’t written any since high school.”

“Why not?” Because you’re not a writer, I thought. Other than essays for college, Ray hadn’t written anything since. Sure she helped her children with their homework, but she wasn’t penning articles, or typing up blog posts. She would have shared them with me. Wouldn’t she?

“I don’t know.” She set the glass down and placed her hands, fingers spread, on the counter. “Except that’s not true. I…” She hesitated. I leaned in and put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off, and I leaned back, stung. “I took a class on creative non-fiction last year. Around the time that Fi and I started fighting. You and Anaiya had just left for your Mars vacation. Eloise still lived here but didn’t have a job yet.”

It wasn’t a vacation, I wanted to say, but why bother? I knew she and Fi had been fighting, but what married couple didn’t fight? Their youngest had graduated college, though choosing to stay at home. Ray hadn’t told me about the class. We’d known each other since we were in diapers, and she’d never kept anything from me. Why this? Or…what else?

“It was a night class; so, it got me out of the house. At first, it was just a laugh, just a… No, that’s not true either. That was the public face that I put on. But inside, I yearned for it. Walking into that dingy classroom was the happiest moment of my life.” She looked at me with concern in her eyes, and it did sting. But I smiled and ignored the dull ache in my heart. “Sorry, I meant…” I waved it away. “My first essays were boring. Uneventful, the teacher called them. Ze used nicer words than that, but I can read between the lines. Midway through the term, ze called me into zer office. I was failing.”

“Failing? How do you fail an essay course? Did you not turn assignments in?”

She held up her hands. My impulse control, again, getting the better of me. She filled up my glass and hers. How long did this bottle last?

“Of course, I wasn’t failing, but the professor wanted to scare me, to kick me out of the safe place that I wrote from. So, I wrote about Fi.” She began pacing. “The essay was better but still lacking. My classmates’s feedback showed more enthusiasm, but it still was too safe.” In one gulp, she downed the contents of her glass. “My next essay was about you. About us.”

I choked on my scotch. All of my health monitors started flashing in my vision. I declined the offer of assistance, instead, taking a drink of water to clear my throat. Ray, in silence, watched me take several deep breaths, but she didn’t move from her spot.

“Fi didn’t read any of them. If that’s what you’re worried about. Do you think I’d have let him read them if I hadn’t let you?”

“He’s your husband. I’m just a lover.”

Her mouth twisted down. She knew I was being petty. A lifetime of friendship and whatever it was we had made a person easy to read. At least, I had thought that until this revelation.

“That was small,” she said. Anger tinged her voice. She set her scotch down. “Maybe it’s time for coffee.”

As she brewed a pot, I tried to make sense of the situation. Yesterday, life had been dull but predictable. My wife, my heart, Anaiya and I had enjoyed the benefits of modern marriage contracts. My lover, Ray, had been warm and comfortable. If you’d ask me which person would reveal secrets to me, I’d have chosen Anaiya. Hell, I’d expected Anaiya to opt out of marriage renewal before Ray, but life cared little for my expectations. When the pot brewed, a request for cream or sugar popped up in my enhanced vision. I declined both. Since today was filled with strong emotions, strong coffee seemed appropriate.

“I’m not going to apologize,” she said.

I didn’t expect her to, and she knew it.

“The first essay was about losing our virginity together.”

So long ago, but I remembered it well. That night ranked high among my favorite memories. Our parents lived next door to each other, and we’d grown up as best friends. We’d tried dating, but our feelings weren’t romantic. Despite all the vids and songs and pressure from our friends, we just didn’t have that kind of relationship. But she’d been there for me that night after prom. I’d walked in on my date Ghan with Tom and Xuli giving each other handjobs in the bathroom. He’d broken my heart, and I left. Ray found me under the bridge, a favorite spot of mine to vape and be angsty. She didn’t say a word, just hugged me as I wiped manly tears from my face. On the way home, she told me about her prom date, getting sick from his father’s schnapps, and we laughed. Along the way, she pulled in behind an abandoned gas station. The only light coming from the moon and the dashboard.

She’d wanted to sleep with whatever his name was after prom, but his inability to hold his liquor had killed that option. So, she asked me while being very clear it was just about sex. I wasn’t in the mood to talk feelings, but as a teen boy, I had an erection before she finished the word sex. For a purely transactional fuck, it was surprisingly tender. It felt right in a way that our dating never had. In my memory, I performed okay. But as a man ages and hopefully gets better, he realizes that his first time was probably clumsy, probably bad for the woman, and would be embarrassing by current standards. I knew all this, but I didn’t challenge the memory. Never have I had the courage to ask her how I did, and never had she ever commented, thankfully.

I wasn’t sure how anyone could get an essay out of that, and did I want to read it? Would her interpretation ruin the memory that I had? Clearly, it hadn’t been that bad for her because we’d continued having a purely physical affair for almost forty years at this point. Off and on as distance allowed, but never finished. I thought she’d enjoyed it, too. Why else do it? But what if…what if she didn’t?

“The class and the prof loved it. Not since that night have I felt such a new and excited rush of emotions. Relief at having succeeded, and joy that it’d been passable.”

Heat crept up into my cheeks.

She put a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean –”

“Move on,” I said.

“It’s just –”

“Move. On.”

She looked down and bobbed her head. “I had one more essay to write before the end of the class; so, I…”

I knew what would come next but wanted her to say it. She’d wrote about me, about us. Confusion, fear, disgust, and betrayal cycled. I wanted to leave but didn’t move.

She sighed. “I wrote about us. About thirty years of sex and friendship and…and love.” She looked at him over her coffee mug. “We do love each other, don’t we, Anthus?”

I felt her gaze on me like a weight pushing me down. Her need for my approval felt fresh, something new in a relationship that had lasted so long. Before she’d never needed it, and that had been something I’d appreciated about her. She’d been her own woman and let me be my own man. During my first marriage to the Appleton twins, she’d been right there as witness to the contract. Ray and Fi had given me a home after the twins’ accident. I’d been in the hospital with her when her third child came early. But all through our lives, there’d been no reason to wonder about approval. “We do, Ray. In our own way, we do love each other.”

Her brow smoothed as if a weight had dropped off.

“So, what does this mean?”

She leaned back against the sink, the afternoon sun had shifted just enough that she no longer had the halo. “The professor asked me to revise and send to hir again after class ended. I did, and it got me thinking about us, about all the years together.”

Ice filled my veins. I had to focus on breathing because a lifetime together hinged on the words that came next. I cannot give her anything more than we already have. We tried that forty years ago. When we were kids. My shoulders relaxed. When we were kids. Young, impulsive, stupid kids. But we weren’t those people anymore. We weren’t young and impulsive anymore, and a lifetime of friendship and love between us… Maybe we had more between us.

I looked at her. The crows feet and laugh lines, her belly loose from three kids, her hands scarred from years of being a clumsy chef, all part of the woman that I truly loved. She was beautiful. As a young man, I’d never believed I could find an aging woman sexy. But the years hadn’t been kind to me, and I now saw what that shallow young man couldn’t. I patted my belly, larger than it was a year ago. I ran a hand through my hair, just salt, no longer any pepper. My back became more of a rug every year. But when you love someone, you see the body as part of the whole. Sex became less about physical gratification than in being close to another person, in making that person happy. Or persons, depending on preferences?

“I have a few essays about us written, and the professor edited a few for me, even encouraged me to submit them for publication.”

Publication? I looked up at her, and she smiled from ear to ear. Dear god, she’d published our affair.

“I got more rejections than you’d care to know. But last week…” She took a deep breath savoring the moment. “Last week, I got an acceptance letter.”

Oh dear god, she was going to do it. Their affair would be public. Would Fi take up legal action against me?

“Well, it’s not an acceptance letter, so much as a congratulations. I won a contest, you see.”

His heart rate began to ease. “So, it’s not getting published?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. This contest, well, it’s an all-expenses paid trip to a writer’s retreat.” She waved her arms frantically in excitement.

“But no publication?”

Her arms dropped. “No. No publication.” She sighed and started cleaning the dishes.

“Hey! I’m happy for you. What does that mean? What’s a writer’s retreat?”

The smile crept back on her face. “It’s a chance to go away and write. To a place with other artists and just work on your manuscript.”

“It’s a manuscript now?”

“Well, it’s the start of one,” she said. “And maybe with this win, it’ll be the start of something…new. For me.”

“So, where is this retreat?” I asked. And when can I visit?

“Io.”

I laughed. “Io.”

“Yes.”

“Jupiter’s moon?”

“Yes.”

I waited for the joke. But she crossed her arms in front of her, and that killed any thought of a joke. “You’re going to that landscape of hell to write?”

She nodded.

Io, a volcanically active planet bathed in Jupiter’s radiation, seemed like the worst place in the solar system to go to be a writer. As partner of my engineering firm, I’d gone there virtually. We upgraded the radiation shields for the science station there, but the moon had no draw other than that. Contracts had imaged the entire complex to reconstruct in virtual on Earth because the radiation surrounding Jupiter wouldn’t allow a high quality signal.

“And that’s why you’re leaving Fi?”

She sighed. “No, I’m leaving Fi because the marriage is over.” She began pacing again. “Io is why I’m leaving you.”

I stared at her. It didn’t seem real. She was leaving me? Me? That wasn’t possible, was it? Nearly forty years together, and this was it?

She took my hand and kissed it. I saw the resolve in her eyes. She’d made her mind up, and nothing could change it. My heart broke. Wrapping me in her warm arms, she held me. I just focused on breathing. My vitals all rose beyond acceptable norms, and the autodoc released the appropriate medicines to settle me down. A strong dose of anti-depressant hit me, and I began to detach from the situation.

Ray whispered I’m sorry into my ear. She led me into the bedroom, pushed me onto the bed. I’m not sure what she thought would happen, but my body wasn’t responding to her kisses. A request for Viagra popped up in my EV, but I declined. I reached down, pulled her off of me, and cuddled with her. Neither of us said anything. This was a first for us and, apparently, a last.