The Best Friend

Every other scene involves letting someone in. This one is about somebody who has been inside for a decade.

He was at the wedding. He is in the photographs on your stairs, slightly younger, arm around your shoulder, holding a glass. He has a key to your place for when you are away. He knows which mug is his.

That history is the whole charge. There is no seduction to describe, no introduction to arrange, no bar. There is just an ordinary Friday that goes on longer than usual, and a point in the evening where the joking stops being joking and nobody present pretends to be confused about it.

He did not take anything from you. You handed it to him, over ten years, one invitation at a time.

Betrayal fantasies usually need a villain. This one refuses to supply you with one, and that is why it stays. He is not a stranger who took advantage; he is the person you would call if your car broke down at 2am. She is not being deceived by anybody. Everyone in the room is someone you love, which means there is nobody to be angry at and nowhere for the feeling to go except straight into arousal.

The intimacy is domestic, and specific. He knows how she takes her coffee. He knows the story behind the scar on her knee. He does not have to ask her anything, and watching someone need no instructions with your wife is a particular kind of vertigo.

And the camera is in your hands again, because of course it is. Ten years of group photos, holidays, birthdays, and tonight another set, in a room where the first set never went.

In the app: the long friendship, the ordinary evening, the room it moves to. She uploads her photos and signs off on the scene; you stay behind the camera where this fantasy always puts you.