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In my mind, she’s awake. She’s looking up at me with those dark eyes, her lips parted, her hand guiding mine to her breast. Touch me, she says. I want you to touch me. And I do. I push her shirt up and take her breast in my hand, and she arches into my touch, and then my mouth is on hers and she’s kissing me back, hungry and eager, and her hand finds my cock and⁠—

Oh fuck, I’m coming.

It hits me like a seizure—my whole body locking up, my cock pulsing in my fist, hot cum spurting over my fingers and against the fabric of my pants. My hand tightens over Sophie’s breast, and although I try to control it, I’m afraid I’ll wake her. But she doesn’t stir. She sleeps through it all, peaceful and unaware, while I spurt out my release beside her.

The orgasm goes on and on, wave after wave. When it finally ebbs, I’m left panting, sweat cooling on my skin, my heart racing so fast I’m lightheaded.

For a long moment, I don’t move. I can’t. My hand is wet and sticky inside my pants, and the shame is already flooding in, icy cold, washing away the last of the whiskey warmth and leaving nothing but the stark reality of what I’ve just done.

I ease my hand away from her breast. She makes a small, discontented noise in her sleep but doesn’t wake. Carefully, so carefully, I extract my other hand from my pants, wiping it on my skin as I go. I adjust the blanket over her shoulders as I slide out from under her as gently as I can, supporting her head with my hand until it settles against the couch cushion. She murmurs something indistinct but doesn’t wake. The movie is ending—George is surrounded by friends and family, the bell on the Christmas tree ringing, everyone singing—but I’m already walking away, leaving the living room behind me, taking the stairs two at a time like a man fleeing a crime scene.

In my bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the floor.

This morning, I looked Sophie in the eye and told her how ashamed I was of what happened last night. I apologized. I promised myself I’d get a grip, that I’d never put either of us in that position again.

And here I am.

Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Two nights in a row. Two lines crossed that I can never uncross. I keep telling myself I’m going to put an end to this, but my actions are telling a very different story.

And the worst part is, I have absolutely no reason to believe tomorrow will be any better.

Nine

DECEMBER 24

Sophie

I’ve been masturbating every day since I got home. Three, four times a day sometimes. My fingers finding my clit under the covers, thinking about him, coming with my hips bucking against my own hand, imagining his fingers sliding inside me. God, how badly I want to feel him, just once, just to know what it’s like.

It’s like a sickness. The thing is, I’m not confused anymore. It’s not going away. It’s getting worse. Every time he walks into a room, every time he rolls up his sleeves and his forearms catch the light, every time he looks at me with that quiet intensity, I want him. It’s so fucking simple and so fucking complicated at the same time.

I’m tired of pretending I don’t feel anything, that everything is normal, that I don’t lie awake at night aching for him. But I have to. What I want . . . can never be mine.

It’s Christmas Eve day and everything looks perfect. Vince has turned on the Christmas lights, and the presents are stacked beneath the tree, shimmering in green and gold and red. There’s Christmas music playing and the stockings are hung on the mantel. We’ve done everything except the actual holiday.

“You know what we should do?” I say to Vince, rinsing my plate at the sink.

Vince looks up from his phone. “What?”

“Skating. At the rink in the woods, remember? We went last year.”

He sets his phone down. For a second, I think he’s going to say no—that he’s too busy, or it’s too cold, or he has work to do—but he smiles.

“Yeah,” he says. “That sounds good.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.” He stands up and carries his mug to the sink. “It’s Christmas Eve. Let’s go.”

I make a thermos of hot chocolate and we bundle up in the mudroom. Vince pulls on a heavy parka and a wool hat and suddenly transforms into a lumberjack. I wear my puffer coat with the fur-trimmed hood, and wrap a scarf around my face, and outside, the air is still so cold it feels like it’s pinching my cheeks.

We turn onto the path that leads to the homemade ice rink in the woods that one of the neighbors creates every year, our boots crunching through the fresh snow. When we arrive, the scene appears through the trees like something out of a movie—a perfect oval of ice set into a clearing, surrounded by snow-covered evergreens. Strings of white Christmas lights loop from tree to tree, glowing against the gray afternoon sky. A few families are skating and the sound of blades cutting ice carries through the cold air—a soft, rhythmic scraping that’s one of the most Christmasy sounds I know.

“It looks better than last year,” Vince says, standing beside me at the edge of the clearing. His breath clouds in front of his face.

We sit on the wooden bench at the edge of the rink to put on our skates. Mine are old white figure skates with yellowed laces that I’ve had since I was fourteen. Vince’s are hockey skates, black and serious-looking. I pour us each a cup of hot chocolate from the thermos, and we drink it on the bench to warm ourselves up.