“I love you,” Morgan would say breathlessly in the post-coital afterglow. A screen of gray masked the sun, but the clouds bore no rain and hazy light crept in through the blinds. Seth’s room overlooked a small marshy pond.
“Why didn’t this happen sooner?” Seth would respond, pulling her tight to his chest and kissing the top of her head.
This scene replayed ad infinitum.
Seth remembered vividly the first time he saw her. He was working as an editor for the student newspaper and she was exiting the office one fall afternoon as he was entering it. He smiled wordlessly at her, she mirrored his friendly gesture, and they went their separate ways. It was odd to see an attractive girl in the newspaper office, a haven for what seemed like every homely co-ed on campus, and he was thrilled when he found out she was joining the staff as a photographer.
It was nearly three months before they spoke directly. The opportunity never presented itself. They were only both in the office during the crowded weekly staff meetings and they were in different departments, sitting on opposite sides of the long oak table. Morgan was promoted to photography editor at the beginning of the spring semester and started attending the much more intimate editorial board meetings, spending interminable nights in the office with Seth and the other four department editors. Seth was shattered when he found out Morgan had a long-term boyfriend, but that didn’t stop either of them from shamelessly flirting, sometimes even in the middle of the all-staff gatherings.
“The photographs in Thursday’s paper were absolutely awful. They didn’t do the stories justice,” Seth would say, a mischievous grin etched on his face as he feigned a glare at Morgan.
“Do you want me to come over there and rough you up?”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
Morgan would leap to her feet, walk across the room and playfully punch Seth in the arm, an act that repeated itself every week. Only the dialogue changed. The staff would laugh and the meetings would continue, but the more perceptive observers started to realize the friendly banter might be of a more complicated nature.
They didn’t see each other off campus until near the end of the year. Morgan would often spend her weekends in Raleigh, two hours away, visiting her boyfriend. He was a little older and worked for a financial firm. He came to see her sometimes, too, but he never presented himself in the office and Seth never saw him. To Seth, except for a few pictures on Morgan’s Facebook profile, the boyfriend didn’t exist.
At the last editorial board meeting of the year, Seth brought in a bottle of cheap champagne for his five counterparts to share. They were all graduating except for Morgan, who had one more semester remaining, and the looming final exams were a mere formality. Seth had already accepted a job as a public relations assistant in New York City. The editors passed the bottle around in a brown paper bag and drained it in a quarter of an hour, reminiscing and taking turns telling stories.
“I think I’ll miss random road trips the most,” Seth began. “I drove down to West Palm Beach junior year with three of my fraternity brothers for spring break. West Palm is far from a spring break town; it’s like the richest area in the United States or something like that. My buddy’s grandma had a house there and we were all broke and just wanted to go somewhere warm. I think we were the only people under 30 there. Other spring breaks I went on a cruise, or Panama City, or the Bahamas, but I swear West Palm was my favorite. We just got hammered and acted like we owned the place. We went to a dog-racing track and drank $1 beers and hollered at those damn things until we were hoarse, we sang karaoke in front of 200 people, and my one friend even hooked up with this like 40-year-old woman. That’s why road trips are the best, man, you can do whatever the hell you want, with no consequences, and when it’s over it’s like it never happened.”
None of them had the slightest buzz but they all laughed and agreed. Morgan’s gaze had lingered on Seth’s face during the whole animated harangue, only breaking to blink, and she slapped his knee from her position to his immediate left. He turned his head and smiled secretly at her. One of the other editors suggested they go to a bar to celebrate the end of the end, and thus Seth and Morgan hung out for the first time in a social setting.
The occasion was innocent enough. They went to a popular dance club and slowly sipped cocktails, every editor taking a turn buying a round. They all danced together, except for Morgan and Seth, both unconsciously afraid of what might happen if they did. Seth danced for a while with a girl he knew from a few history courses and he didn’t notice when Morgan went to sit in a booth by herself, absorbed in typing a text message, a thin blue glow pulsing against her face. When he finally spotted her, Seth excused himself from the girl he was dancing with and joined Morgan in the booth. The other four editors were at the bar buying shots for a group of underage girls on the tennis team.
“Bored of us already?” Seth asked, smiling coyly.
“Yeah,” Morgan teased. “If I could afford a taxi I’d get out of here A-S-A-P. You guys suck.”
“Funny.”
“I was just texting Matt. He gets kind of worried whenever I go out.”
“Whenever you go out? This is like the first time I’ve seen you out, ever.”
“Shut up! I go out a lot,” Morgan paused. Her eyes were a little glassy and her small puckered mouth was stretched into the permanent smile people who don’t drink much get when they have a heavy buzz. “OK, maybe not that much. But when I do he worries—and I made the mistake of telling him you were here so he’s being even more difficult.”
“Why would it matter if I’m here?” Seth brought his elbows to rest on the table and leaned forward. He massaged his hands in front of his face.
“I don’t know, he’s not really jealous often but I guess I talk about you a lot or something. I was telling him about one of our editorial meetings a few weeks ago and he kept on saying stuff like, ‘Oh was Seth there? I bet he was just soooo funny.’”
Their eyes met and they shared a solemn moment before falling into giggling inebriated laughter. Seth removed his elbows from the table and slumped back into the booth. Brandon, the sports editor, sauntered over from the bar with two shots of whiskey. The rest of their colleagues were back on the dance floor with the tennis girls.
“Ya’ll looked thirsty,” Brant said as he slammed the shot glasses emphatically on the table. Whiskey sloshed out of one of the glasses, depleting it by about one quarter.
“That one’ll be mine,” Morgan said. They did the shots and joined their friends on the dance floor. Seth and Morgan still politely kept their distance, even aided by additional alcohol and the fleeting moment they’d shared.
They didn’t see each other again for almost a week. Final exams and other end of the year stresses absorbed them both. Neither one thought very long or very hard about the other; what was to come hadn’t entered either of their minds yet. To Seth, Morgan was just another pretty girl on campus he’d shared a few drinks and a few laughs with. To Morgan, Seth wasn’t her boyfriend. It was completely on a whim when Seth, bored and alone on a Thursday night because his roommates had exams the next morning, called Morgan and invited her out again. It wasn’t a calculated move. He just knew she was moving home for the summer soon and wanted to see her, as friends, one last time.
He picked her up and they went to The Sandbox, a bar with a big outdoor patio complete with sand and umbrella-covered tables. It was a perfect early summer night, dry and clear, and they both kicked off their flip-flops as soon as they reached the sand. They sat down and ordered a pair of margaritas.
“Any big plans for the summer? Going to Raleigh right?”
“Yep, going to work as an instructor at a lacrosse camp. Same thing as the last two years. It’s fun, but a lot of work,” she said. She was mumbling and her gaze was stagnant on the table.
“What’s wrong? You don’t seem too excited.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh come on. Out with it,” Seth said, assuming his accustomed sarcastic tone.
“It’s just…my sisters are all going to be at home too. And my dad just turned one of our old rooms into a gym.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. You could stand to work out every now and again,” he said teasingly. She didn’t take the bait.
“It’s not, not really, but there isn’t really room for all of us at the house. I tried to find a cheap apartment and had no luck. Matt offered to let me move in with him and I said yes.” She exhaled slowly, her eyes still bent downward.
“You guys have been together for like two years though, right? Seems logical.”
“Yeah, about. I just—it’s just a big step, you know? I’m moving to Raleigh after I graduate next semester for grad school and if I’ve already lived with him once, he’ll expect me to again. I just don’t know if I’m ready to be practically married yet.”
“You could always change your mind.”
“Thanks, Sherlock. Where would the world be without your valuable intellect?” Morgan finally raised her eyes to meet his, a hint of a smile playing on her compressed lips. Seth seized the opportunity to change the subject, and with it, the tone of the night.
“Well, you might as well have a good time before you have to go become a housewife, huh?”
He summoned the waitress and ordered a round of vodka shots. One round turned to two, two to three, three to four. They decided to walk to another bar, the fog of inebriation settling triumphantly over them, and a few hours later their memories started to skip like a pebble on a still lake. Seth remembered dancing at a sparsely populated dive bar, the only people on the slightly elevated stage. He remembered toying with her, grinding closely then pushing her off and pulling her back. She was playing the same game, wrapping her arms seductively around his neck and then spinning away, both of them flashing wanting, inviting grins.
In Seth’s mind, the cab ride home lasted no more than a few seconds, though he knew it must have taken at least 10 minutes. He remembered getting in, then arriving at Morgan’s apartment complex, and nothing in the middle. Between the two of them they barely had enough cash to cover the ride, let alone the additional $15 it would have taken to get Seth back to his own place. Morgan offered him her couch and promised to take him to his car in the morning, and the matter was settled. They paid the cab driver and merrily skipped up the stairs to her apartment. At the door she pressed a finger to his lips, giggling.
“Shhhhhh…we don’t want to wake my roommate.”
Seth hadn’t planned for anything to happen. Neither had Morgan. They just hadn’t thought the logistics completely through. The roommate was the issue; she was a social recluse and wouldn’t take kindly to waking up with a strange man on her couch. Morgan made Seth a pallet of blankets and pillows on the floor of her room and closed the door. After incessant giggling, talking, joking, flirting, she turned off the lights and they climbed into their respective beds. Seth’s memory had become a slideshow, a series of still pictures with obscure continuity. He remembered closing his eyes. He remembered hearing a thump. Morgan had rolled off her bed and she had buried her head in some of Seth’s blankets to muffle her giggling. Before he could join her in laughing she rolled on top of him and pressed her lips firmly against his.
There was a faint taste of cherry balm on her lips and the inside of her mouth was an acerbic combination of toothpaste and tequila. None of that slowed him. Once the embrace started there was no turning back. The only option was to climb a precipitous slope that took them from groping on the floor, up to her bed, her on top and then him, their fastened mouths never parting for an instant. They were too drunk and the sex was awful, but it was sex nonetheless, and when Seth woke up two hours later at daybreak he wasn’t sure what hit him first: the guilt or the hangover. He looked at the sleeping girl next to him, the girl that had never partied and never drank to excess and had never cheated on her boyfriend. Corrupted—willingly. He stared at the ceiling for a long time, the early morning light peering in through the window and exposing their sin.
What was done, though, was done. They had acted on their carnal lust and they couldn’t ever take it back. Not that either of them really wanted to. That night had been a long time coming, as many of their coworkers would later remark, and the first thing she did when she awoke was kiss his cheek. She was already cuddling with him but she pulled tighter, closer, until every inch of their flesh from toe to cheek was sticking together. Seth marveled at how warm she was and kissed the top of her head.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“We had sex,” she said. He rolled his eyes down so he could see her face without moving and she was smiling. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
They stayed in bed until almost noon, Seth’s throbbing headache amplified then gradually abated. He fell asleep and woke up often, and every time he looked at the clock an hour had passed, though he couldn’t recall dozing off. He stayed in bed while she took a shower and then they snuck out, avoiding a potentially disastrous encounter with the roommate.
“Want to get breakfast somewhere?” Seth asked.
“Definitely,” Morgan said, reaching over while she was driving and squeezing Seth’s hand.
Neither of them had plans for the day and Seth invited her to come to his apartment after breakfast. Both of his roommates had skipped town after their exams and the new lovers could be together, cloaked in secrecy. They were watching a movie in the early afternoon, glued together in Seth’s bed, when Morgan’s phone burst into song. She rolled over to look at it on the nightstand and glanced worriedly at Seth.
“It’s Matt. I kinda have to take it. He always calls on his lunch break and I always answer.”
“OK, no problem. I need to take a shower anyway.”
He wasn’t jealous of Matt at all. Matt had always been more of an apparition than an actual person to Seth, and Seth wasn’t the one being duped. Seth felt a sense of entitlement, a sense of power over Matt; even if he did exist, if he was real, he had already been defeated. Seth was about to put the second wave of shampoo in his hair when he heard the bathroom door open and close. He pulled back the shower curtain to expose the intruder and saw Morgan standing unabashedly naked. She wore a cunning smile and stepped in to join him.
After the shower, they didn’t move from the bed all day or night. They watched movie after movie, mostly romance flicks that made them feel more intimate than they really were. They felt just like the couples in Jerry McGuire, or The Notebook, or Spiderman, star-crossed lovers chosen by fate itself to spend eternity entwined. In this way they spent three whole revolutions of the earth, emerging from Seth’s room only to pick up carryout. Matt would call and Morgan would answer, her hands caressing Seth’s thigh during entire conversations.
“I love you,” Morgan said during the post-coital afterglow on Sunday. A screen of gray masked the sun, but the clouds bore no rain and hazy light crept in through the blinds. Seth’s room overlooked a small marshy pond.
“Why didn’t this happen sooner?” Seth responded, pulling her tight to his chest and kissing the top of her head.
The trouble didn’t start until Tuesday. Morgan was moving in with Matt that weekend and the reality of the situation finally overtook her. Matt had told her how excited he was, how he’d cleaned the whole house and bought a new leather couch for the occasion. The guilt hit her like a weighted boxing glove, but she revealed none of her shame to Seth. She retreated home, withdrawn, sullen, her eyes downcast and her voice meek.
“I have to pack,” she said.
Her dad came on Thursday to help her load her car. She claimed to be too busy to see Seth, though she told him on the phone she’d dumped Matt and was moving in with her parents after all. She’d share a room with her sister. Seth’s guilt washed away and was replaced with an anvil falling forever in the eternity of his stomach. He was moving to New York in June. They could never be together. They were at the part three quarters of the way through every romantic comedy ever filmed, where the girl disappears and the guy wallows in his own sorrow until he makes a rash and improbable move to win back her affection. But Seth didn’t have a rash and improbable move. He just wrote terrible poetry and drank himself comatose every night so he could fall asleep.
She came to say goodbye briefly before she left. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her cheek and whispered “No, Seth. No.” Her skin tasted like vanilla lotion, and Seth inhaled as much of the scent as he could as they hugged and then she was gone.
Two weeks passed before Morgan and Matt got back together. Seth learned this by browsing Facebook, and though it hurt, his passion had already congealed. The plummeting anvil sensation was in the ancient past and when he found out she was back with Matt the only bodily reaction it evoked was a shrug. She never told Matt about her infidelity and likely never would. He thought about her as he drove through Raleigh on his way north to New York and considered calling her to see if she wanted to meet for lunch. He decided against it and drove on through, only thinking of her again thereafter when a sad country song played on the radio, and those made him smile.
