The Pastor’s Wife Is Leaving — Bonus Chapter

The Last Night in the Rear Apartment
by Blair Lennox

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This bonus scene takes place between Chapter Twenty-Two and the Epilogue of The Pastor’s Wife Is Leaving. Read the novel first. It is explicit, graphic, and hotter than anything the retailers would let us print.

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The Last Night in the Rear Apartment

The lease ends Friday. Bethany has one night left in the iron bed where it started, a black slip she has owned for eleven years and never worn, and something she borrowed from Monica’s bottom drawer. Too hot for the retailers.

BETHANY

The last night of the lease was a Thursday, which meant acoustic music downstairs. From ten o’clock on, Bethany could hear a boy with a borrowed guitar working through every song her college roommate had cried to in 1999, a little flat and very sincere.

She packed to it.

There wasn’t much. She had come up the alley stairs five weeks ago with four navy suitcases, six banker’s boxes and a blue velvet chair. Most of it had already gone up front, a drawer at a time and then a shelf at a time, in a slow migration neither of them had named. The jeans had gone first. Then the teacups, because Monica’s mugs were a disgrace. Then the books, the winter coat, her good scissors, and somehow her toothbrush.

What was left fit in one box.

It said MINE on two sides in her own upright capitals. Her mother’s Bible. The legal pad with the life plan on it, folded twice. A gray cardigan worn thin at the elbows. And on top, in tissue paper gone yellow along the creases, the black slip.

She looked at it for a long time. Then she took it back out of the box.

There was one other thing on the white quilt, and it wasn’t hers. A velvet bag with its drawstring pulled tight. At four that afternoon she had let herself into the front apartment, opened the bottom drawer of Monica’s nightstand, and carried the bag back through the hallway door like a casserole.

She had left a note in the drawer. Borrowed. Rear apartment. Will return after last call. —B.

The bell went at ten to two. Three strokes, clear and bright through the floor. She felt each one low in her belly, where she always felt them. Five weeks of that bell, and her body still answered it.

She listened to the bar empty out. The boy with the guitar thanking what sounded like four people. Graham laughing. Chairs going up onto tables, one after another. She didn’t count them this time.

She stood in front of the mirror on the back of the bathroom door with her pearls out and her hair down, and she made herself look.

Five weeks ago she had held this slip up in this same mirror and seen a pastor’s wife in costume. She had folded it back into its tissue and worn her own clothes.

She looked now. Black, thin-strapped, something that wanted very much to be silk. The lace sat low across her breasts, and her nipples were already hard against it. The hem stopped at mid-thigh. Her hair was going silver at the part. She was forty-four years old, and she was not in costume.

She was a woman in a slip, waiting for her girlfriend to come up the stairs and fuck her.

She had nothing on underneath. That was not how she had waited the first night.

She sat down in the blue chair under the bedroom window, crossed her legs, and folded her hands in her lap.

Monica came up the alley stairs at twenty past two. Two raps on the door. She’d had a key to it for eleven years, and she had never once used it while Bethany lived here.

“It’s open.”

Boots through the sitting room. Keys on the oak table. “Felice says the soup’s in your—”

Then nothing.

Bethany didn’t turn her head. She looked at the white tip of the steeple over the rooftops and let Monica look at her. She felt it like a hand: down the back of her neck, over her bare shoulders, along the thigh where the slip had ridden up.

“That’s the slip,” Monica said finally.

“It is.”

“You said it looked like a costume.”

“It did. It was for somebody who didn’t exist yet.” Bethany turned her head. Monica stood in the doorway in black jeans and the dark green henley, sleeves shoved up, curls wrecked, a bar towel hanging from her back pocket. Her face had gone still, and red across the cheekbones. “It’s my last night in this apartment. I wanted to wear it here once, before I walk into yours.”

Monica’s eyes went to the bed. To the velvet bag on the quilt.

“You went in my nightstand.”

“I left a note.”

“You left a—” Monica pressed the heel of her hand to one eye. “Of course you left a note.”

“It’s a short-term loan. I’d like it used on me before I return it.”

The bar towel hit the floor.

“Jesus, Beth.”

“Rule five,” Bethany said. “And come here.”

Monica crossed the room and went down on her knees on the rag rug in front of the chair. Her hands closed around Bethany’s ankles, warm and rough and not quite steady.

“Uncross them,” she said.

Bethany uncrossed her legs.

Monica’s palms slid up her calves, over her knees, and along the tops of her thighs, pushing the black hem ahead of them. Bethany watched her face. She saw the exact moment Monica’s thumbs reached the crease of her hips and found nothing there but skin and heat.

Monica shut her eyes. “You’ve been sitting here bare.”

“Since the bell.”

“You’re wet.”

“Since about four this afternoon,” Bethany said. “It was a long walk back with that bag.”

Monica laughed, short and wrecked. She hooked Bethany’s left knee over the arm of the chair and spread her open. Then she just looked, close enough that Bethany could feel her breath. Five weeks ago Bethany would have covered herself with both hands. She put her hands on the arms of the chair instead and let herself be seen.

“Look at this pretty pussy,” Monica said, low. “All ready for me. You don’t even need me to ask nicely anymore.”

“I’d like you to ask anyway.”

“Can I put my mouth on you, Mrs. Price?”

“Ms. Price,” Bethany said. “Yes.”

Monica licked her, one long flat stroke from her entrance to her clit, and Bethany’s head went back against the velvet.

She took her time. She licked into her, slow and open-mouthed, groaning as if Bethany were the best thing she’d tasted all week. Her thumbs held her open. The building had gone quiet underneath them, and in the quiet Bethany could hear every wet sound Monica made, and every sound she made back. She didn’t try to be quiet. She had never once tried to be quiet in this apartment.

“Fingers,” she said. “Two. Please.”

“Listen to you.” Monica slid two fingers into her, thick and sure, and curled them. “Filing requests.”

“Harder than that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She fucked her with them, deep and steady, and closed her mouth over Bethany’s clit and sucked. Bethany got a fist in her curls and rode her face. She heard herself saying there, there, don’t you dare stop, in a voice that had chaired a great many committees. Her thigh shook against the arm of the chair. Monica looked up at her from between her legs, dark-eyed, chin shining, and didn’t stop.

Bethany came with her eyes open. It broke hard and fast, her hips lifting off the velvet, her cunt clenching around Monica’s fingers. Monica groaned and kept her mouth on her until Bethany pushed weakly at her forehead.

“One,” Monica said, and wiped her chin on the back of her wrist.

“You’re counting?”

“It’s the last night. I’m keeping minutes.” She stood and held out her hand. “Bed.”

Bethany stood at the foot of the iron bed on unreliable legs and told Monica to strip.

Boots first. The boots always went first. Then the henley, over her head in one motion, and the black sports bra after it. Bethany said “Slower” at the jeans, and Monica gave her a look of pure suffering and went slower.

The lamp was on. Bethany liked the lamp on. She liked the broad shoulders and the soft belly, and the heavy breasts with their dark nipples already tight. She liked the little key inked inside Monica’s left wrist, and the lantern on her shoulder blade when she turned. She liked the dark curls between her thighs, and how wet they were.

“Lie down.”

Monica lay down on the white quilt. The bed creaked. It had always creaked. Bethany had lain awake her first night here, hearing it every time she turned over, wondering whether the woman downstairs could hear it too.

She climbed over her and sat astride her hips, still in the slip.

“Leave it on,” Monica said.

“I intended to.”

“I want to fuck you in it. Then I want it in the top drawer of my dresser.”

“Our dresser.”

“Our dresser.” Monica’s hands slid up the silk and closed on her breasts. Her thumbs found Bethany’s nipples through the lace and rolled them, and Bethany’s breath caught. Monica dragged one strap down off her shoulder, sat up under her, and took the bared nipple into her mouth. She sucked hard. Bethany felt it all the way down.

She was rocking in Monica’s lap without meaning to, slick and aching again already. She could feel how wet Monica was against her own thigh.

“I want to try something,” she said.

“Say it.”

“I read about it. Twice. Neither book was clear on the geometry.” She pushed Monica flat and studied the place where their bodies almost met. “Hold still. I’m working it out.”

Monica put an arm over her eyes. She was shaking with laughter. “Beth. It’s not a floor plan.”

“Everything is a floor plan,” Bethany said. She swung one leg over Monica’s thigh and hooked the other beneath, and fitted herself down until her cunt pressed flush and wet against Monica’s.

The laughter stopped.

“Oh, fuck,” Monica said.

Bethany moved. It was clumsy for about four strokes. Then Monica’s hand came to her hip and tilted her, and it wasn’t clumsy at all. It was the hot slick slide of Monica against her, clit dragging over clit, both of them so wet she could hear it. She braced a hand on Monica’s raised knee and ground down. The slip slid to her waist. Her hair fell in her face.

“Look at you,” Monica said hoarsely. Her head was back on the pillow, and she was gripping Bethany’s thigh hard enough to mark it. “Look at you riding my cunt in that. You have no idea what you look like.”

Bethany had some idea. She could see it in Monica’s face. She had watched that face across a street for nine years, and she knew every way it closed. Until this month she had never seen it open.

“Don’t shut your eyes,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“I want you watching when I make you come.”

“I’ve been watching you,” Monica said, almost angry, her hips coming up to meet her, “for nine years—”

“I know.” Bethany leaned down over her. The angle sent a bolt through them both, and Monica swore and grabbed her ass with both hands and pulled her in harder. “I was there. I was watching back.”

“You stood in that window like you wanted me arrested—”

“I wanted you,” Bethany said, “to come up the stairs.”

Monica came. She came with a raw, startled cry, her body arching off the quilt, her hands clamping Bethany down against her. The hot pulse of her tipped Bethany over a second later, harder than in the chair, and loud. There was nobody in the building to hear it. She wouldn’t have cared if there had been.

She came down onto Monica’s chest. Monica’s heart was hammering under her ear.

“Two,” Monica said, when she could. “And you never told me that. About watching back.”

“I found it out about ten seconds ago. You can’t hold me to things I learn during sex. It’s in the definitions section.”

Monica laughed so hard the bed creaked.

It was Monica who reached for the velvet bag.

She did it without a word, her eyes on Bethany’s. Black leather, brass buckles, the deep purple cock. She stood beside the bed and stepped into the harness, and Bethany lay on her side with her head propped on her hand and watched her buckle it. It still did something to her. The blunt competence of Monica’s hands on the brass. The cock jutting from her hips, shameless, while she slicked it in her fist with long slow strokes.

“Color,” Monica said.

“Green.” Bethany’s mouth had gone dry. “Very green.”

“How do you want it?”

Bethany had been thinking about that since four o’clock.

“On my knees,” she said. “Facing the window. And not gently. I’d like this bed to remember me.”

Monica breathed out through her nose. “Hands and knees, then. Hold the rail.”

Bethany got onto her hands and knees on the white quilt and wrapped her fingers around the cold iron rail at the foot of the bed. The window was right there, small and deep under the slant of the roof. Wet black alley roofs. And off to the left, floodlit, the white point of the steeple.

The mattress dipped behind her. Monica’s hands slid up the backs of her thighs and pushed the slip over her hips. For a moment nothing happened. Bethany knew she was looking.

“You’re dripping,” Monica said softly. “Down your thigh. All that from waiting for my cock?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I’m wet,” Bethany said to the window, in her clearest voice, “because I want your cock in me. I’ve wanted it all day. I’d like it now.”

“Fuck.” The head of it nudged against her, thick and blunt. “Push back. Take it yourself.”

Bethany pushed back.

It opened her slowly, inch by inch, and she groaned from the bottom of her chest. She was swollen and tender from coming twice, and it felt enormous. She kept pushing until her ass met Monica’s hips and the leather pressed warm against her. She was full. She was so full she could feel her own pulse around it.

“Good girl,” Monica said, and her voice shook. “All of it. Look at you taking all of it.”

She drew back and thrust in. Bethany’s knuckles went white on the rail.

“Harder,” she said.

“Beth—”

“I said not gently.”

Monica’s hands locked on her hips. She pulled almost all the way out and drove back in, hard, and the headboard cracked against the wall.

“Yes,” Bethany said. “That. Again.”

Monica fucked her. Deep, heavy strokes that shoved the breath out of her, hips slapping against her ass, the whole iron bed banging the plaster in rhythm. The slip swung against her belly. Her breasts swung free of the lace. She could hear how wet she was, and Monica’s grunt at the end of each thrust, and her own voice climbing. She pushed back to meet every one. Monica gathered her hair in one fist and drew her head up, firm and careful.

“Look where you are,” she said in Bethany’s ear. “Five weeks ago you sat in that chair and looked at that steeple like it was coming to get you.”

“I know.”

“Look at it now. Look at it while I fuck you.”

Bethany looked. It was only a steeple. White paint that needed doing. A building where she had spent twenty-one years of Sundays, and where she would spend a few more, in the back pew with Alma, for the hymns. It wasn’t looking at her. It never had been. She had been the one in the window.

“Whose bed is this?” Monica said.

“Mine. Till—oh—till Friday.”

“And whose cunt is this?”

“Mine,” Bethany gasped. Then, because rule two still applied, “And I’m giving it to you. Every night. On purpose.”

Monica made a sound like she’d been hit. Her rhythm broke and came back harder. She let go of Bethany’s hair, reached around her hip, and found her clit with two wet fingers.

“Then come on my cock, Beth. Come on. Let the whole alley hear you.”

Bethany came screaming. It tore up through her from where Monica was buried in her, her cunt clamping down around the cock, her arms giving out so that she went down onto her elbows with her face in the quilt. Monica held her hips and fucked her straight through it. One wave, and another right behind it, wringing her out, until she was sobbing Monica’s name into the bedclothes and laughing at the same time.

Monica stayed deep inside her and folded over her back, breathing like a runner, her forehead between Bethany’s shoulder blades.

“Three,” she said.

“Four,” Bethany said into the quilt. “That was two. I’d like the minutes corrected.”

When she could move, Bethany turned over. She unbuckled the harness with fingers that knew the brass by now, and pulled it down Monica’s thighs.

“You don’t have to,” Monica said. “Tonight’s—”

“Don’t you dare tell me tonight is mine.” Bethany pushed her onto her back. “You said that the first night, in this bed, and I let you. I knew nothing then. I know a great deal now.”

She kissed her way down. The soft belly. The pink line the leather had left across her hips. Monica was soaked and swollen, and Bethany put her mouth on her with no hesitation at all. She licked her slow and flat, then quick and light, just left of her clit, the way she’d learned. Two fingers inside, curled. Monica’s thighs fell open, and her hand came down on Bethany’s head.

“Beth. Fuck. Just like that. Your mouth—”

“Mm,” Bethany said against her, which was cheating. She had learned that from Monica too.

It took less than a minute. Monica had been on the edge since the rail. She came with her thighs locked around Bethany’s ears and both hands in her hair, hips jerking, saying Beth, Beth, Beth to the slanted ceiling. Bethany kept her mouth on her until she went limp.

Then she climbed up, wiped her chin on the back of her wrist the way she’d seen it done, and lay down on Monica’s chest.

“Four for me,” she said. “Two for you. The minutes should reflect that.”

“So moved,” Monica said faintly.

Later there was a warm washcloth, and a glass of water, and Monica’s careful hands. That part still made Bethany’s eyes sting sometimes. Monica drew the slip off over her head and folded it, badly, and Bethany let her.

At a quarter to four Bethany got up in Monica’s henley and opened the cabinet door by the stove.

The calendar was still taped there. The covered bridge in Vermont. Eleven small precise X’s, then a long row of empty squares where she had stopped counting. Tell them on a Sunday. VOTE, boxed. And after that, white squares she had never written in at all. The Night Market. The staff lanyard from the Grange hall. All of it had happened anyway.

Monica leaned in the kitchen doorway in her underwear with her arms folded. It was exactly how Bethany used to stand in a window.

“You want to X the rest of them? Make it official?”

Bethany took the pencil out of the jar. She found tomorrow’s square. Friday, the last day of the lease. She didn’t put an X in it. She wrote two words in small upright letters.

Walk in.

She peeled the tape off carefully, folded the calendar in quarters, and put it in the box marked MINE. She laid the black slip on top in its tissue.

“Top drawer,” she said. “Tomorrow. You asked.”

“Our top drawer.”

“Ours,” Bethany agreed, and came back to bed.

In the morning she carried the box herself.

Felice had offered. Graham had offered, in a sweatshirt that said SYRACUSE GAY MEN’S CHORUS — SOPRANO SECTION. Monica had offered three times. Bethany said no to all of them. At nine o’clock on Friday she locked the rear apartment with the brass key tagged REAR, went down the alley stairs, and let herself in through the green door of The Lantern with the key tagged FRONT. She walked through the empty bar with the chairs still up on the tables. She passed Felice in the kitchen, who said “Mm-hm” and did not look up from her onions. She climbed the inside stair.

Monica was at the top, holding the door.

Bethany stopped one step below her, with the box in her arms and the velvet bag sitting on top of it, and held out the REAR key on her palm.

Monica didn’t take it.

“Keep it. In February that’s your office door.” She closed Bethany’s fingers around the key, one at a time. “It’s not symbolic.”

“Monica.”

“Fine. It’s entirely symbolic.” Her eyes were wet, and she was pretending they weren’t. “Is that my harness on your box?”

“I’m returning it. As per the note.”

“Get in here.”

Bethany walked in.

On purpose.

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