Picture This by Jacqueline Sheehan Page A

bag. Rocky desperately did not want to let on that her heart had smashed into the windshield as she sat in pulverized awareness in her car, watching Hill and Julie in the house. She hugged him, hands on his shoulders, keeping one iota of control.
    â€œI brought a loaf of French bread from the bakery near the Casco Bay Line. I know you like their stuff. Can I tell you how great it is that school is out and I don’t have a mountain of papers to grade?” His summer job was teaching English as a second language to recently immigrated Somalis, and there was absolutely no grading. He pulled the baguette out of the white plastic bag, which also held his selection of fish. How did he keep that strange rosiness to his cheeks? A mere thirty-two years old, he was younger than her by seven years. If she was trying to accumulate reasons to hate him, being younger didn’t count. Was this the last time she’d ever see him? She took the bread and the plastic bag and tossed them on the counter.
    â€œCome and sit,” she said. All nine hundred square feet of the cottage pressed in on her as if she was out of alignment. She sat on the couch. If she had had an idea of how the night would go, it vanished when Hill arrived. Why wasn’t she using every blasted communication skill that she promoted? Tell the man what she saw, ask for clarification, use “I,” and tell him how she felt. Settle in for an adult conversation. Rocky grabbed the bottom edge of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head.
    â€œRocky?”
    Good. She had startled him, and as if she watched from a distance, she had startled herself. Her sense of equilibrium had come unhinged. She reached in back and unhooked her bra, shrugging it off in front of her. She slipped next to him on the couch and closed her eyes when his hands found her breasts. The air around them softened her throat and the connective tissues that held her together. This was how her house would smell forever with Hill tucked into it: feral, fresh, full of want. She wanted to grab one morsel of how her life with him might be.
    Rocky had not counted on loving a hunter, a man trained to mute his intentions as he waited for the inattentive moment with a deer or a pheasant. She had been inattentive, and he had deceived her. This was the last time she’d touch him, and the secret knowledge gave her a drunken edge.
    â€œAre you sure?” he asked, sliding his hands over her ribs, articulating each one.
    Her back arched like a sea serpent cresting. “Are you sure?” she asked. This was where he would tell her, his essential honesty coming through.
    Hill’s hand cupped her breast, and a sweet gust of breath escaped from his lips. “I have been sure since the first day I met you,” he breathed into her ear.
    An unclear and avoidant answer. Rocky slipped out of his arms and curled away from him, wishing that he would be the one to say it, to tell her about Julie. If he would do that, they might have the one-second window of opportunity to save themselves. But she had ambushed both of them with her preemptive strike.
    â€œWeren’t you going to tell me? I saw you with Julie,” she said, her voice still thick and liquid. “You’re going back, aren’t you?” she asked, pushing damp hair from her face. She made a feeble attempt to claw her way out of the pit of vengeful blaming that now threatened to trap her indefinitely. The night air surrounded her, and she felt suddenly naked and unprotected. Foolish.
    Hill, far from the land of words, his lips already full and languid, tried to surface with a strong swimmer’s kick. His dark eyes remained dilated, and he froze in the assault of her accusation.
    â€œNo. Wait, how did you see Julie? Where? Jesus, what just happened? Rocky, this is not a black-and-white situation. We’re neck deep into divorcing each other, but . . .” He paused, his entire body pulling toward her. He