At First Sight: Voyeur - Chapter 3
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Chapter 3 – Aaron
I did not sleep so much as drift. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her by the window in Ann’s office. Silk catching the light, pulse at her throat, that look she had when she forgot she was trying to be careful.
I used to be the only one who saw her like that.
The house was quiet. The clock in the hallway ticked through hours that did not feel like mine. At some point after midnight, I gave up on pretending and reached for the sketchbook on my nightstand.
I had not opened it in months. The spine gave a tired little crack when I pulled it apart. There were old drawings inside. Hands. Classroom chairs. Abstract studies I had told myself were experiments, when really, they were avoidance.
I turned to a blank page and let the pencil find her.
At first it was just outlines. The curve of her throat. The angle of her shoulder as she turned. Then the way the dress hugged and then fell away, the suggestion of a waist, the tilt of her chin. I tried to remember the exact line of light on her collarbone and the way the shadow settled under it. I had forgotten the way drawing her felt like prayer.
Shading pulled depth out of the flat page. The more I drew, the more my chest hurt. Guilt sat inside it, familiar and sour. I had been the first one to look away years ago, when things got busy, when praise came from places that were not my own kitchen table, when I let myself believe that attention was something you earned outside and not something you nurtured at home.
I had told myself there had been no affair because there had been no sex. But there had been long conversations about nothing, and long looks that meant too much, and it had been enough to make Jessica fold into herself.
Looking at the sketch now, my wife caught in graphite, I knew I had earned every restless minute of this night.
