On Monday it happened again. He told me to bring him his morning coffee, and when I stepped into his office with the cup he closed the door and kissed me. The coffee spilled. He told me he had spent all weekend in torment, thinking about nothing but me and what we had done, drunk with love for me, how I had bewitched and seduced him, this was all my doing, all my fault. He kissed me again, and I kissed him back, because I thought I should feed this thing, this love he said he had for me, this power I thought I had over him. He unbuttoned my blouse and kissed my neck, my breasts, then turned me around and laid me over the top of his desk, so that the leather blotter pressed against my cheek. When he was finished he gave me a handkerchief and told me this was our secret, that if I said a word about this to my mother, to anybody, he would cut all ties with me and I would be disgraced as a whore in front of everybody. So I didn’t say a word. I hated what we did, hated myself for doing it, hated these physical stirrings that sometimes came with what we did, and yet I never refused him, God forgive me, never once said no to him, because despite all the shame and the revulsion I craved his love, or rather I wanted him not to stop loving me, because I thought his lust for me was a symptom of love, and if I stopped feeding that lust he would no longer love me. Nobody would love me!

Long story short, we carried on through July and August, and though I still sometimes went to the medicine cabinet in the middle of the night to stare at the aspirin bottle, I never worked up the nerve to swallow the pills. I figured if I killed myself, people might find out why, and his wife’s heart would be broken and his life ruined, and all of this would be my fault.