Sa’afia had got out of bed shortly after I’d gone soft. She showered and dressed as prosaically as I’d expected and gone home. She was flying to Samoa for the wedding in four weeks’ time. She wouldn’t be back after the wedding.

She spent three more nights with me, before she flew out.  

On the first two mights we fucked until we were exhausted, and then held each other till we fell asleep. The third time I’d smacked her bottom lightly, from force of habit and affection. Sa’afia had moaned appreciatively but squirmed away. “No. I can’t be like that any more,” she’d said.

Perhaps to stop me from asking her what that meant, or challenging whether it was possible for her, she’d bent down and rubbed her nipples on my chest while she sucked me off.

But when I’d come she stayed down and delicately spat my come onto my belly. She reached for a handful of tissues and wiped me clean. It had never occured to me to care, before, whether she swallowed or not. Once I’d come, why should I care where the fluid went?

She’d always swallowed before, and now I thought about it, every other lover who’d ever sucked me to orgasm had swallowed too. Sa’afia refusing my come was probably some kind of fidelity to Paul, in a way I vaguely understood. But tt felt like rejection. I was amazed to find that it hurt. But it was only a detail, like getting a bee sting while falling down a cliff.

Then, one day, Sa’afia was gone. I said goodbye to her in the morning, to avoid the crowd of her family at the airport. They’d be asking what the hell I was doing there, and that would be bad for Sa’afia’s reputation.

We became pen-pals. Email-pals. 

At some point I wrapped my belt round and round Sa’afia’s wrists and held them tight, high above her head. Sa’afia stared up at me, unblinking, while we fucked, crashing through for what might be our last time. I couldn’t look away.

Sometimes Sa’afia screamed, still staring at me, wrenched by another orgasm. We’d lost track of hers. I was delaying. When I came we’d have finished, and I feared whatever would happen when we were finished.

It’d be prosaic. Eventually Sa’afia would get up. Usually, she’d try to wear a towel to the shower and I’d keep tugging it off her, telling her to carry the towel. Then we’d help dry each other, and we’d pull clothes onto our still-wet bodies, joking and embracing while we moved back to ordinary time. We might have a cup of tea, or discuss something, but eventually we’d go our separate ways. But when we did that this time, I’d be alone.

But Sa’afia lifted her legs, clasping me with her feet touching my hips. The sensations changed, and sugar surged within me. I cried out incoherent noises as I came in her, so intensely that it almost hurt. Then I lay on her, letting her take my weight, and we puffed like long distance runners. 

She held me. I wanted to tell her, again, that I loved her and that she should stay with me. Anything else would just be silly. But I knew it would do no good and only spoil the memory. Sa’afia wasn’t my girl any more. She was the fiancée of some Samoan Minister, who offered her more than I did and who was possibly a better man and certainly a luckier one than I was. 

So I lay, still unwilling to move, while we sometimes kissed and my cock ticked slowly soft inside her. 

I siad, “You’re a good woman. I love you. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you. And yes, I will forgive you.”

Sa’afia closed her eyes, and mouthed the words, “thank you”. She snuggled into me as though we were going to go to sleep. I held her, still not happy, still not sure whether Ana or this Minister, Paul, had had more to do with her decision.

I shook my head, and put my arms around her, one on her waist, the other touching the back of her neck. I tried to look at her without her glow. It wouldn’t go away. Well, nor would love. There’s no guarantee that it’ll come at a convenient time, or make you happy.

Eventually Sa’afia opened her eyes again. She said, “hurt me, darling.”

“Er … now?”

“It’s not right, I suppose. And it’s a hard thing to ask of you. I mean for you, after what I’ve said. You can punish me if you like. But please, Jaime, hurt me. Any way you like. And then fuck me. Please?”

I could think of reasons why I shouldn’t comply. But if I refused her, it would be awkward, and she’d have to leave. I didn’t want her to leave. So I picked up the stick. After all that emotional work, I wasn’t really aroused, but even that can be helpful, if you look at it the right way.

I tapped the rod against Sa’afia’s mouth for her to kiss, then brought it down, hard, diagonally down the crest of her right buttock to the upper curve of her left thigh. Sa’afia twitched, and already I was interested. So was Sa’afia. She watched my eyes, to see what I would do. I tapped her ass again. “Serve me, girl. Suck my cock.”

“Jaime, you’re a good man.” Sa’afia smiled. I wished she weren’t quite so beautiful.

Of course I’d let myself in for Sa’afia being painfully beautiful, when I’d decided to let myself love her. She’d become the new loved one, and our bodies and minds always perceive that person through a halo of radiant, buttery, luminosity. It’s one of the effects of something called “limerence”, which is what makes people so giddy at the start of new love relationships. I’d studied it in psychology lectures, after all. I just happened to be getting it at the end of a relationship instead of at the beginning.

I shook my head. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“No, you’re a good man. Don’t insult me by thinking I wouldn’t know. You deserve success. You deserve happiness. You do.”

I shook my head again. I didn’t know if I was a good man. I mostly doubted it. And while I liked hearing anything nice about me, mostly, in this moment it was anything but a consolation.

“You don’t believe me. But I know I’m losing a lot in losing you. A hell of a lot. It isn’t easy. But it’s the right thing. And I have to do the right thing even if it hurts like hell. I don’t know if this can be any consolation; I don’t think it will be. But that’s something I learned from you.”

That wasn’t much of a consolation, as she said. But it was a powerful compliment. I held on to it, and it meant more later, when I wasn’t hurting so much.

“And I know you’ll be ok. I know you will. And you look after Ana.”

I said, annoyed, “Oh, fuck Ana.”

Sa’afia looked at me, still glowing, brighter than the day and wiser than nature, with the most beautiful face in nature just centimetres from mine, and said, “No, don’t fuck Ana. I don’t know, not now, anyway. Jaime, I do love you. Will you forgive me?”

It’s an unfair question. There is only one answer, unless you want to regret what you said for most of your life. It’s the answer you eventually have to give, but you shouldn’t be made to give it straight away. But I thought of how much I loved Sa’afia, and I thought about how there might be a time when I remembered little of what it felt like to love her or to be hurt by her, but still had to live with myself. So I said what I had to say.

I said to Sa’afia that I wasn’t in love with Ana, and that I was in love with her, Sa’afia. She just watched me talk, disbelieving me. She was wrong. As far as I knew I was telling the truth. As far as I can judge it now, I was telling the truth. But she disbelieved me and watched me, and there was nothing I could say or do that would change her. 

But we were reluctant to let go. I held her and Sa’afia wanted me to hold her. Eventua;lly I said, “But why do you want to get married anyway?” 

Sa’afia shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s that he wants to help people, in the village where I grew up. There’s a lot has to be done, in housing, and the paths that people walk -“

“You mean that metaphorically, or are there literal paths that are a problem?”

“Literally the paths. They’re slippery. Old people get hurt, and sometimes kids. And they get worse as people walk on them. They need to be replaced with boardwalks, or actually a stone walkway would be best. It’s that sort of thing. Paul can do it as a Minister, but he can’t as just some guy. And I can help as a Minister’s wife. Not as someone who lives with him. Or is the girlfriend of a nice man in LA.” 

“Yeah. I can see that. It’s your life in a good cause. You’re a good woman. It’s a good cause. I can’t argue against it.” 

“Wouldn’t you wish me well?” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake! I’ve just told you I love you. I’m in love with you, whatever you think. And not with your cousin. Whatever you think. And the reply I get is you saying, thanks, but I’m off now? I’m not happy. How the hell can I be happy? Jesus, darling. So yes, in one sense I wish you well. No, in every sense. If you go, I wish you every success and happiness. Even with him, this … Paul. But I’d wish you every success and happiness beside me.”

Sa’afia touched my mouth. Months ago she’d touched my mouth like that, at a party. It was how we’d become lovers. 

Sa’afia hesitated. “We were together for two years. Paul and I. He’s a really good man. He went back to Samoa to help people. I know you don’t think much of … churches. Nor do I, I guess, but it’s what you have to belong to if you want to help people in Samoa. Well, I didn’t go with him. I didn’t want to, not back to Samoa. I’ve got my degree to finish. But I can do that as a distance student. Sorry, anyway, he … asked me to come back. And I’ve thought about it. And.”

I knew what she was going to say, and that she was going to be unable to say it because she’d go back to sobbing. I reached for her to comfort her before she started, and held her shaking body in my arms. Her grief was real. Although she was hurting me, my sympathy for her was real too. But I felt, in the back of my mind, that we were performing. 

Eventually she said, “I’ve said yes.” Though I knew it was coming it still felt like being hit by a hammer.

I once – in a good cause – kicked open a door that an angry landlord was trying to nail shut. Weirdly, I hadn’t expected him to use the hammer on me. My point is that I know what being hit with a hammer is like. It’s like a woman you love telling you she’s going off to live with another man. 

I said, “Ump.” She looked at my face, worried at whatever she saw. Then I said, “But I love you. I’m in love with you. I need you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“What? I love you.”

“Oh, Jaime, I’m sorry. But I meant, you don’t need me.”

“Of course I need you!”

“No, you don’t, Jaime. You love me, I know that. But you’re in love with Ana. And she’s in love with you.”

“No! That’s just not true. Anyway I’m her parole officer.”

“But that’s nearly finished. Not in three months, you won’t be.” 

Finally, I said, “What’s going on? I didn’t know you wanted to get married?”

“Well, did you want to marry me?”

“Well, it never occurred to me. But if you’d raised it with me, I could have thought about. It’s not something that you just decide to do.”

“Jaime, you’d have just put if off as long as you could. It’s not something you want to do. I’m not sure you’ll ever want to do it.”

“Well. There are feminist objections…”

“Look, Jaime, you’re sort of feminist, most of the time, especially when it suits you. But that’s not the reason you’re not ready to get married. You don’t want to settle down, with one job, or one woman, or anything. Which is ok. Paul’s different. He’s a -” She stopped suddenly.

“He’s a man?”

“Darling, you’re a man. But you’re at a different stage in your life. He wants me, just me. You don’t want ‘just’ anything.”

“Hang on. Is this something to do with Ana?”

I wasn’t sure if I could survive being this unhappy. I wanted time to stop. It doesn’t, of course.

I shook my head. I spoke in my gentlest voice. If she could hear how much I loved her, she wouldn’t be telling me about some marriage. “What? Darling, my love, what?”

Sa’afia spilled more tears, and then they ran continuously. She whispered, “Oh, my love,” and shook her head. So I realised that word would do no good here.  

“What’s happened?” I’d seen how much calling her ‘darling, my love’ had hurt her. So I swallowed it. Anyway, she would see my nobility and this would go away. 

“You must have seen that I’ve been distant from you, this past week.” 

“Yes.” 

“I’m so sorry. Jaime, I so don’t want to hurt you.” 

I took a breath. In a second I’d thought of lots of things that I could say to that, but all of them were bitter. And fairly contemptible. I’d be sorry later. A couple of seconds too late I smiled at her. It must have looked strange. But I’d decided to let myself be in love with her. So her beauty hurt, but it was still luminous. “Well, what can you do? If you tell the truth it’s going to hurt. But it’s best to tell me. Who is this guy?”

“His name’s Paul. Well, Puleleiite. But Paul. To everyone, even Samoans. He’s a Minister. Anglican, not First Church, but no-one cares. We were going out. I mean for years. It was serious. Then he went to Samoa, to work for the church. I don’t know. I met you.” 

“And he’s come back? No. He’s said to come to Samoa?” Now there was some bitterness in my voice. 

“Ah huh.” Sa’afia broke down into sobs. 

It seemed odd that I should comfort her, who had broken my heart, but that’s how it is. And we were still neked together, and my cock was still coated with her fluids and foams. So I reached her and held her while she sobbed. I’d been dry-eyed to that moment. Then I wasn’t.