She sees the words and her heart flutters. She makes up an excuse to the roomful of brunettes and the two blonds. She drives to the chain restaurant, listening to music. She looks at her face in the rearview mirror.
She wonders, in the car, what he is doing while he waits for her. Has he been texting Marie? Looking up sports scores? What did he say to Krinke about how he was getting home? She wonders if he wonders as much about her as she does about him. Now that they have been physical, she feels they will never not be physical.
She texts when she gets there and waits in the lot. The car is her mother’s red Taurus. He comes to the door and gets in. At first there’s fearquick but once he’s in and she’s driving, lovecrush explodes all around them, filling the Taurus like a warm gas.
When he kisses her, she tastes the alcohol on his breath. She isn’t sure what kind it is but knows it’s not beer. He speaks more lovingly than usual. He isn’t slurring his words but he is less coherent and also less careful. They drive down Thirteenth Avenue, which is one of the main arteries. Maggie can smell her mom’s scent in the car and hopes Aaron cannot.
Suddenly, he starts. He thinks someone in the next car has recognized him. She says, Who?
I don’t know, he says, but I think the person goes to West Fargo.
Huh?
Just get off this road, he says.
She feels, again, that she’s done something wrong. They get to a residential area and he calms down. They drive around for a while, talking about their relationship.
Soon he gets his hands down her pants and she begins to hoist her rear off the driver’s seat to give him more access. She nearly clips a parked car. At first she’s worried he’ll freak out but he doesn’t. He laughs and leans into her, kissing her neck. She feels so happy. The near-crash feels like a testament to their passion.
But eventually the liquor begins to wear off him and she can tell she’s going to lose him. Fuck, she thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He’d parked his car at a friend’s house, and now he tells her how to get there. She says, But you’ve been drinking. He tells her it’s just residential roads back to his house. He says he never drives on highways after a few drinks. He never takes chances. He takes his hand out of her pants as she pulls up. He’s nervous about doing anything substantial outside the friend’s house but he does kiss her for several minutes.
Fearquick is back, pouring out of the vents. She hates it. She wants to follow him home because he’s drunk, to make sure he gets there safely. He’s her whole life now. He says it’s a bad idea. He’ll be fine. He winks and gets out of the car without saying I love you one last time.
Over the next month he makes it clear he wants to leave his wife. Not yet, but soon.
Would you wait five years for me? he texts her very late one night. The idea is that if his kids are a little older, it will be easier for him to leave. Maggie is peeing when she receives the text and wants to whip the phone at the wall. It feels so cruel. They are in love, but everything is on his schedule. Everything is by his mandate. That she can’t call or text him first. That she is to immediately delete all texts. There were thousands by this time. That’s a lot of times she hit the Delete key. She is given Marie’s number and told to program it into her phone so that she would know never, ever to answer if that number showed up on her screen.
There are also the other rules, not really rules but things you do so that the married teacher you’re having an affair with doesn’t get spooked and remains turned on and into you. Like wearing sweatpants and no perfume.
He tells her he’s sleeping in the basement. He calls her from down there and she thinks of him like a reverse Rapunzel, harboring his love in secret defiance.
On Valentine’s Day Maggie gets to school early, as he’d instructed, and he gives her a bag of Peanut Butter M&M’s, which are her favorite candies, and a typed love letter. It