Noah and Gwendolyn Mitchell have been married for five years, and have a four-year-old daughter, Emma, whom they adore. When Gwen, newly pregnant, discovers that her husband has been having a torrid affair, she has to grapple with decisions: to stay...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SIMONE
Before
I remember the first time I saw him.
It was a hot day, the hottest day of the summer. It had been a bank holiday the day before, and bags of garbage lay uncollected on the streets and in the alleys, next to overfilling garbage bins. Everything smelled foul and rancid. The fetid, putrefying smell of decay and rot was in the air; it clung to clothes and skins and seeped into nostrils, and there was no escaping it, just like there was no escaping the blistering, suffocating summer heat.
I didn't see the car come speeding toward me, nor the driver --- likely a teenager behind the wheels of a powerful car, probably high on something, oblivious to the red traffic lights at the intersection.
I stepped right into the street on my brand new high heels.
I felt him first. I felt the grip of his hand clamp on my wrist, an iron vice locking into place.
His hand was warm, solid, protective. His fingers were long and narrow; his hands big with clean, short nails.
His grip anchored me. It was powerful, swift. For an instant, I was teetering on my heels; the next he had hauled me flush against his body. I felt him: every inch of his hard, muscled chest; the thrum of his heart; the heat; his masculine scent. A second later, the car --- a huge, black beast --- roared past, a mere six inches from my feet. I felt the rush of wind --- a pulling and a pushing; it tugged ferociously at my hair, my clothes, it rippled and whipped against my face and my body. I saw a flash of black, the car shot past, and sped off down the street.
If he hadn't pulled me back, I would be lying there on the street in a pool of blood. Injured. Or quite possibly, dead.
He had saved my life.
I looked up.
His eyes were wide, his brow furrowed with concern. He was worried about me. No one ever worried about me. I was too self-possessed, too self-sufficient to elicit anxiety. People assumed that I was always in control. And I had been.
Until now. Until him.
The light turned green, but we didn't move. We didn't speak.
People surged forward, side-stepped us while we stood on the pavement. A minute went by. Two. Still, he didn't let go of my wrist. His hand was warm and dry, not slick or slippery, the way some men's were on hot humid days like this one, oozing oil and sweat from their grimy, greedy paws --- and I've touched a lot of male hands, so trust me, I know.
But he --- the stranger, my saviour --- looked effortlessly cool in his open-necked white collared dress shirt, tucked into a pair of blue jeans.
When we finally spoke, we spoke at the same time. That was close.
