Chapter 8. Author's note - So Parogar pointed out that the song "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette would be a really awesome song for Aaron if it were from a male perspective, so I've linked a male cover of the song. Enjoy!

Aaron awoke on Tuesday morning. His first thought was to call in sick from work, as by the brightness of the sun it was evident he would be extremely late, and the second was of bizarre self-loathing.

It wasn't his usual self-loathing. It was much stronger than that. It was something even more ardent.

"Jesus," he said, sitting up. Looking over, he saw Marta curled up in bed next to him, her lovely eyes lowered to a book in her lap.

"Good morning," she said, smiling at him.

"Good afternoon, more like," Aaron muttered as he noticed that it was nearly noon. Aaron rumpled his hair with a free hand as, with a growing sense of foreboding that settled in his gut like ice, he pieced together what he remembered from the previous night with the fact that he was lying in Marta's bed, completely naked into the finished product that meant that-

"I'm so sorry," he said, turning to her.

She arched her eyebrows. "Why?" she asked, still smiling.

"I'm an awful person," he confessed, burying his head in his hands.

"No, you're not," she laughed, putting one hand on his shoulder. He shook it off and stared up at her with an agonized expression. "Okay, maybe you are, but you need to-"

"I used you," he said. "I didn't care before, but how couldn't I now? Jesus, Marta, I deserve to have my testicles removed with a rusty scalpel for the way I've used you!"

Marta threw back her head and laughed. It was a carefree, innocent sound. "You're starting to freak out the way Anne always used to," she said, her eyes sparkling, highlighting how pretty she was. "Calm down, Aaron, you're not-"

"I am!" he howled, jumping out the bed. Feeling uncomfortable with his own nudity, he covered himself awkwardly, which only caused Marta to laugh harder. "I'm a horrible person, Marta! I used you!"

Now Marta sobered up and glared at him. "You're right, you did," she said. After a moment's recollection, while Aaron tried to locate his briefs and found them somehow draped over a lamp, Marta stroked her chin. "I used you, too."

Aaron's thought his eyes were going to pop out of his skull with surprise. "What - you - I - not - what?" he spluttered, incapacitated with rage and shock.

She eyed him with a wide, doe-eyed disdain. "I used you, too, Aaron," she pointed out. "I took advantage of your grief over Anne to get closer to you. Anne told me to take care of you, but I really should have-"

"She did what?" he yelped. "Anne put you up to this?"

"No, Anne just gave me her blessing for it. It's really my fault. Actually, it's mostly your fault, but I do acknowledge that I fucked up, too," she said, shrugging.

Aaron's jaw dropped. "You mean...you're not angry with me?"

"No. I knew when I seduced you what I was setting myself up for. I knew you'd probably fuck me out of male libido only, but that was a chance I was willing to take," she said, and shrugged.

"So you're okay with it?" he asked, tentatively. "Because I'm not okay with what i-"

"Of course I'm not okay with it," she snarled. "But it's the best I'm going to get. Besides, I'm not some naive little woman you just had your way with. I'm independent, I made the decision to fuck you. You, as a gentleman, probably shouldn't have taken me up on the offer, but it was partly my fault for making it in the first place."

Aaron stood there in his underwear, gaping at Marta as she, that tiny, high-voiced little creature, crossed her arms and gazed at him imperiously.

"That's very mature of you," he managed to say after a moment.

"I've grown up in the past three years, Aaron," she returned. "I'm not a kid anymore."

As Aaron gazed at Marta, taking in the wave of her brown hair, the sparkle of her chocolate eyes, he believed her. When he had met her, though she was a year younger than him, she acted like a child. The most endearing of children, but she was still far more youthful than her years. And there she sat now, speaking with a magnanimous maturity that Aaron found staggering.

"Of course you're not," he said, and smiled at her.

She smiled back and though her expression was sunny, he could see the pain that lurked behind her eyes.

"Marta," he said uneasily, guilt twisting his stomach into a knot.

Good Lord, he thought, smiling acerbically to himself. This is what Anne must have felt like when she fucked Jack.

"Marta," he repeated, and this time she stared directly at him, some of that childish innocence coming back to her.

"What?" she snapped.

"Last night, I told you..."

"That you loved me? Don't worry, Aaron, I wasn't foolish enough to believe it," she snapped.

Aaron felt both relieved and sad. Relieved because he hoped he hadn't hurt Marta too much and sad...well, he didn't quite know why he was sad. He shook it off quickly, though the feelings - feelings other than sorrow over Anne and hatred for Jack, that slimy, two-timing, old-enough-to-be-Anne's-father jerk - were reassuring.

"Oh," he floundered in response.

Marta sighed. "Come on," she said, and got out of bed. Aaron gaped at her as she stood there, naked as she day she was born and utterly stunning. "Let's go see Anne."

As Marta stepped forward, turned her back, and began to rummage through the chest of drawers on one side of the small bedroom, Aaron found if difficult to focus on his question - though it was about Anne - as he stared at Marta's curved bottom.

"Um, why?" he asked. "And aren't you supposed to be going to work?"

Marta shrugged. "I can take a day off. The kids will be ecstatic. They love it when I'm away. Now come on! Get dressed, because you're not going out of my apartment like that, as much as I'd - and every straight female and gay male in the area - would like you to."

As Marta sauntered off, Aaron grinned. It was true, after all. He was damn fine. He hadn't landed Anne by being middle-of-the-road.

"Wait for me!" he called, jumping out of the bedroom, already pulling on his clothes.

"Always eager to see her," he heard Marta remark bitterly. Then, in a tone so quiet he wondered if he was meant to hear, she added, "And never so eager to see me."

Shaking his head, Aaron followed the sound of her voice into the kitchen.

"So, we're going to see Anne?" he said, sitting down at the kitchen table and blearily wiping his eyes.

"Yes," replied Marta. She was eyeing him angrily, as though he were committing some punishable offence by sitting there completely innocently. How strange. He could have meaningless sex with her, but the moment he sat down at her table, there would be a reckoning.

"Why?" asked Aaron, ignoring her expression. He ignored Marta a lot, it was something he was good at, ashamed as he was to admit it. Though her unhappiness was beginning to affect him for the first time in three years.

"I've got something to tell her, and I think you should be there," said Marta. She still looked angry, and Aaron wondered why.

Aaron raised his eyebrows. "What?" he asked.

"None of your business," replied Marta, turning her chin up in a delightfully adorable way but continuing to glare.

"Then why do I-" began Aaron but Marta cut him off.

"Because I say so!" she snapped.

Aaron burst out laughing and Marta glared at him, her scowl going from angry to thunderous in a moment. The contrast between her angelic face and the fury of her expression made him chortle. Aaron remembered how anger had fit Anne's lovely, expressive face, lending her a startlingly terrifying air, and laughed to see the contrast between Anne and Marta.

"What's so funny?" she demanded, looking even angrier than before.

"You are," he replied, still chuckling. He enjoyed the feeling. He hadn't laughed like that since he'd been married to Anne. "You've been standing there glaring at me for ages now!"

"Because you've been sitting at the table like you expect me to make breakfast," she retorted, with her hands on her hips. "I'm not Anne, Aaron! She might have been okay with being your little maid, and making you breakfast and cleaning your fucking house, but I won't do that for you!"

Aaron immediately sobered, now regarding Marta with some worry - a new feeling in the context of Marta - whose entire frame was quivering with what looked sadness or anger.

"I don't want you to be Anne," he said softly, though he knew it was a lie. If he could make Marta like Anne, he would.

"Fucking liar," snapped Marta. Then she looked at him and Aaron knew that his face must have been riddled with the grief her words had caused him, for the lines about her eyes softened and she looked more compassionate.

Aaron's mouth opened as he gaped at Marta's pretty face. The moment the anger left her features and they smoothed into a wide-eyed, open-faced look of compassion, her beauty came back to her and she nearly rivalled Anne's.

"Come on," sighed Marta. "Let's go see Anne. That will make your day, won't it?"

Aaron didn't respond, but simply got his coat and followed Marta out to her car. Obligingly, he got into the passenger seat.

"Where are we going, exactly?" he asked.

Marta waited for a moment before answering. "To her house," she said, and looked over at him nervously.

"What?" yelped Aaron. He slammed his fist into the side of the car, wishing to jump out of it at that second, to escape, to not have to visit the place where Anne and the man who had replaced him had now made their nest like the happiest of fucking lovebirds. Unfortunately, Marta seemed to have anticipated this, as she had waited to answer his question until they were speeding along a main street, going too fast for Aaron to jump out.

"Aaron, calm down," said Marta. "Ja - he won't be there."

As much as it touched him in an odd, detached way that she avoided Jack's name, Aaron began to panic.

"I can't," he said. "I can't see where she-"

"Calm down, Aaron. It will just be Anne there," retorted Marta. And though her voice was hard with insistence, he could hear the pity and comfort in it.

"I know, but I can't," he whimpered.

As they stopped at a red light, Marta took Aaron's hand. "Yes, you can," she said to him, her voice firm and comforting. "I know you can."

And somehow, miraculously, that helped. It didn't do much to dull his pain, but it at least blunted it a little.

But nothing could prepare Aaron for the feeling of anguish as they pulled up to a charming, victorian-era brick house that sat snugly between two oak trees. He'd been here before - once before. They day he, mad with grief, had sought Anne out at Jack's house to beg with her to return.

"Annette Street," he said, looking at one of the street signs. "I guess everything is perfect about Anne and Jack, isn't it?"

Marta looked at him sadly. "Come on," she said brusquely, and beckoned to him.

"You've been here before," he guessed as Marta elegantly leaped up the few front steps to the door.

"Of course I have. Anne and I are very good friends, and I adore Jack. He's a very nice man, you know," she said.

Aaron grumbled as Marta frowned at the door. Attached to the oak door was a small note, which, in Anne's eloquent handwriting, bore a message that was not eloquent in the slightest:

Unless you're Jack, I'm writing, so fuck off.

"Polite," laughed Aaron.

"That's Anne. She gets like that when she's writing," chuckled Marta. However, Marta knocked anyway.

"Writing what? She couldn't have been to a show yesterday," said Aaron.

"Oh, didn't she tell you? She writes for a magazine as well, now. She's a theatre columnist. Her column is very well-read," said Marta.

"No," muttered Aaron. "She didn't tell me that."

They were interrupted by the door swinging open. Anne's very irked face appeared before them. Before she gazed in mute horror at Aaron, he noticed that, as he had observed before, anger sat well on her face, lending her a ferocity that was utterly charming.

"What the fuck do you - oh," she said.

"Hi, Anne!" chirped Marta.

Anne ignored her. "Aaron, what are you doing here?" she asked.

"Marta dragged me," he said breathlessly, his anguish and everything else melting away at being so close to Anne.

"Marta," growled Anne. "What if Jack had been here, and seen him?"

Marta stuck out her tongue. "He isn't, so what's the problem?"

Anne heaved a sigh. "Come in, you two," she said, and stood aside.

Marta bounded in, obviously comfortable with her surroundings, but Aaron crept in, shying away from the walls and furniture as though worried that they would snap at him like wild animals. As he followed the two women into a tasteful living room, he noticed one of the photos hanging on the wall. It was of four people. Jack, who looked just the same as he had when he'd been Dr. Graeme to Aaron, was standing between two women, one of whom was Anne and one of whom looked a lot like him. Standing before the three adults was a boy, who looked to be about seven.

"My sister-in-law and her son," said Anne. She had joined him silently in the hall.

Aaron felt her arm brush against his and it took his breath away. "I see," he said gruffly, and pushed past her.

As he made his way into the living room, he noticed that the placement of the furniture was exactly the same as he remembered it. Taking a seat on a long sofa, he looked up at Anne, who went to sit next across from Marta.

"So, what do you want?" she snapped. "I'm busy."

"What, you don't have time for us?" teased Marta. "You're a bitch, Anne."

"I know. I was just in the middle of writing. Besides, I can see that Aaron's very uncomfortable," she added, tossing Aaron a winsome smile.

"I just wanted to tell you that Aaron fucked me last night," said Marta.

"Marta!" cried Aaron, shocked.

He watched as Anne flinched a touch - which did his ego good - but then smiled. "Good," she said.

"It was, actually, but that's not my point," said Marta. She turned to Aaron. "See? She's fine with it. Why can't you be okay with it?"

Aaron realized in a flash what Marta had done. She, that poor girl, knew that Aaron wouldn't do anything without Anne's blessing and so she thought that if she got Anne to command Aaron to sleep with her, then he would.

"Because I still love her," he said quietly.

Marta's eyes flashed with unhappiness and she bowed her head.

Anne jumped up quickly. "This discussion is doing nobody any good, and what goes on between the two of you is none of my business. Sort it out yourselves," she ordered. Then she shook her head, her hair shimmering as it caught the light. "Now, who wants tea?"

And so they passed the rest of the afternoon together, trying to act like good friends. And Aaron had to say that it worked.