Madison was a virgin.

She wasn't particularly pretty though she was not un-pretty. She was not tall nor short, dark nor light, heavy nor slight, blonde nor brown. She was mired in middle-class suburban existence, and had attended neither the right nor the wrong school. She was as talented as the next girl. If average was an absolute instead of being right smack in the middle, she would be extravagantly, dizzily, exorbitantly average.

Zachary was a married man.

That covered it. Not happily or thoroughly or honestly or faithfully or any other simplistic modifier that would suddenly make it okay. He's married a woman whom he'd since likened to his sister, or perhaps to his mother; as a result Zachary and his wife seemed to be taking turns being the parent in their mutual halfway house, each half in adolescence, half in adult. After nine years and no kids together, it might be time for them to grow up and leave the safety of half a home behind them. Maybe that influenced what happened next.

Books in the “📔” bookshelf created by Kerrin Elizabeth