A Good Whiff

She watched him with the focus of a woman who had everything to lose. His morning routine had always been a kind of devotion, these days they seemed a little more. A little more of what? She didn’t know. It was both sensual and critical. Yesterday he said the tie she picked out for him didn’t do anything for his eyes- no matter that he had worn the same tie for 3 years. One year, for his birthday she permitted him to restrain her with the same tie as he tortured a euphoric orgasm out of her. That was the memory she was hoping to illicit when she draped it over his shoulder. She watched him snap his cufflinks in place and look at himself in the mirror, unsure of every item he had carefully selected that morning. In the evening he was back at the same time as always. When she stepped into his embrace she caught a whiff of a perfume neither of them owned and she knew as she had always known… who the fragrance belonged to and why it clung to him like second skin. Later as he licked his fingers savouring the dinner she slaved over, she sat across from him and somehow she found the courage to look him in the eye, “Should I pack your bags, because I can, because between you and that secretary, you smell like you want to be alone?”