The first time I met Helen, she was laughing — not politely, not rehearsed — but deep and sharp, like she’d just remembered something too wicked to keep to herself. It poured out of her like light through a crack. I was halfway through a sentence I can’t recall, my glass tilted just enough to spill, and suddenly nothing in the room was in focus except her.
Her husband, Caleb, introduced us. He said, “This is my wife, Helen,” like he was giving me coordinates to a planet he already owned.
She shook my hand. Warm, brief, efficient. Her eyes lingered maybe a second longer than necessary. That second undid me.
I told myself it would pass. That she was just magnetic in that way some women are — all sparkle and untouchable weight. I’d been around women like her before. Women who seemed too deliberate to be real. But Helen was real in a way that made me ache. There was no irony in her. No armor. Just grace with teeth.
The crush bloomed like mold — quietly, in places I didn’t expect. I started showing up to things I would’ve otherwise skipped. Game nights, dinner parties, birthdays for people I barely knew. If Helen was there, I found a reason to be.
And she always smiled when she saw me. That smile — not flirtatious, not cold — just genuine. The kind of smile you fall into, then blame yourself for drowning in.
Caleb thought I was flirting with him.
Of course he did. It was easy. I wore tight dresses and leaned in when I laughed. I said yes to drinks when I should’ve gone home. I let him think I was interested because he was one degree from her — and when obsession is soft and elegant like Helen, you’ll convince yourself that proximity is better than nothing.
It started in the guest room of their house during a storm. Everyone else was drunk and asleep. Helen had gone to bed early — said she had a migraine, kissed Caleb’s cheek, disappeared down the hall. Caleb stayed. So did I.
There was tension, but not the good kind — not electric, just inevitable. He looked at me like he already knew the ending and was willing to play along.
“You’re not like other women,” he said, and I almost laughed.
I kissed him because he’d kissed her. I slept with him because his skin still smelled faintly of her shampoo.
The affair lasted three months. Long enough to feel like hell, short enough to pretend it wasn’t.
He thought I was wild. He thought I was in love with him. He told me things she never heard, things he said she wouldn’t understand — and I nodded, played therapist, lover, mirror. I let him project fantasies onto me while I conjured hers over him.
Every time I closed my eyes, it was Helen I imagined. Not naked — not even necessarily mine. Just close. Just turning toward me. Just asking.
One night, he found me standing in their master bathroom, running my fingers over the smudged lipstick on the mirror. Hers. Crimson. Slightly off-center. I hadn’t realized I was tracing it until I saw him watching me in the glass.
“You’re obsessed with her,” he said.
I didn’t deny it.
“She doesn’t know you exist that way.”
“I know.”
He stepped forward, tried to touch my shoulder. I pulled away like his fingers were static.
“I don’t want her to know,” I said. “I just want…”
But I didn’t finish. Because what I wanted wasn’t fair. What I wanted didn’t exist. What I wanted was for Helen to look at me the way I looked at her when she wasn’t watching.
The last time Caleb and I slept together, I cried.
Not during — after. Quietly. Faced away from him. He asked if I was okay and I told him yes.
He kissed my back and said, “We could be something, you know.”
And I whispered, “I already am.”
Helen never found out. Or if she did, she never said. She still invites me to parties. Still smiles when she sees me, still brushes her hand against my arm in passing. I haven’t touched Caleb in over a year, but I still see her sometimes — in the street, in bookstores, in dreams I wake up from aching.
She doesn’t know. She never will.
But when I close my eyes, it’s her laugh I remember. Her scent. Her lipstick, off-center on the mirror.
One degree away from heaven still burns like hell.
And some nights… I still settle.
MADD FICTIONAL 