Rouge Under Work Boots

“Can I?”

“Yes.”

He drew it down slowly. Simone stepped out of the dress and stood before him in black lingerie, her confidence making his chest ache in the best way.

“Can I touch you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

They moved carefully, asking and answering, stopping whenever either of them needed a breath or a laugh. Simone kept the jumpsuit on him until he chose otherwise. She treated each answer like something precious, never hurried, never assumed.

Gordon told her where he wanted her hands: at his waist, beneath the satin bralette, along his throat. When he wanted more, he said so. When Simone wanted something, she asked, and he gave her his answer plainly.

The night narrowed to kisses, red sequins, soft sheets, and the enormous relief of being wanted without having to disappear first.

Later, rumpled and flushed, Gordon lay against the pillows with one glove still on. Simone returned from the kitchen with two glasses of water.

“Drink,” she said.

“You’re bossy.”

“It is one of my better qualities.”

He drank half the glass. She sat beside him and inspected the red marks the heels had left near his ankles.

“Anything hurt?”

“No. I’m good.”

“Anything you want different next time?”

He thought about it. “More of this.”

Simone kissed his cheek. “That is a very useful answer.”

She brought a damp cloth and asked before cleaning the smeared lipstick from the corner of his mouth. He let her remove only a little.

“Leave the rest,” he said.

“Absolutely.”

When they were settled again, Simone found Bellamy’s scorecard in her clutch. She spread it across the comforter and uncapped a red pen.

“Dare Four,” she read. “Each spouse chooses the other’s costume.”

“We bent that one.”

“We improved it.”

She crossed out the point value and wrote beneath it: HONESTY: TWENTY POINTS.

Gordon took the pen.

“Ask for what you want,” he wrote. “Twenty points.”

Simone added, “Say pause and be believed. Fifty.”

“That makes it impossible to lose.”

“Exactly.”

He carried the revised scorecard to the open wardrobe and placed it beside his notebook. He did not lock the door afterward.

Simone joined him, slipping her hand into his bare one.

For tonight, that was enough.

Morning arrived with pale sunlight across the kitchen table and the smell of coffee. Gordon wore the plum satin robe from the wardrobe, its sash knotted over a black T-shirt and yesterday’s briefs. Across from him, Simone sat barefoot in an old concert shirt, her makeup kit arranged beside Bellamy’s scorecard.

“Chin up,” she said.

He tipped his face toward her. “You realize I am having coffee before nine in the morning while wearing a robe I hid from my wife for three years.”

“I realize you are having coffee before nine in the morning while choosing blush.” She held out two small compacts. “Brick red or apricot?”

“Brick red.”

Her smile came easy. “Excellent answer.”

The brush skimmed his cheeks. Simone worked with the same steady focus she brought to paying clients, except every few seconds she paused.

“More color?”

“Yes.”

“Eyeliner?”

“Yes.”

“Lipstick, or is that enough?”

He considered the tiny red tube in her hand. At the party, red had felt borrowed from a rack and then claimed by his own reflection. This morning, it felt quieter. No chandeliers. No strangers. Just their chipped table, the refrigerator buzzing, and Simone waiting for him to choose.

“Lipstick,” he said. “Please.”

She applied it with a slim brush, then gave him a small mirror. “How’s that?”

Gordon studied the red on his mouth, the rouge in his cheeks, the person looking back. He remembered their first apartment, when he had kept every private purchase buried under winter coats. Simone had come home late from a makeup job and kissed his forehead while he pretended to be asleep. He had believed hiding was the same as keeping peace.

Now he set the mirror down. “I like it.”

“Good,” Simone said. “Because I like it too.”

She turned the scorecard around and tapped it with the red pen. “Final audit?”

“You are impossible.”

“You married impossible on purpose.”

“Fair.”

She read from the marked boxes. “Seven dares completed. Nine kisses paid out and received. One argument avoided by telling the truth before it got dressed up as something else.”

Gordon laughed, then went quiet.

“I don’t want last night to be a costume memory,” he said. “I don’t want this”—he touched the robe collar—“to be something I only let myself have when there’s a party and a scorecard giving me an excuse. I want it to be part of my real life. Maybe not every day. I’m still figuring out what I want. But I want to figure it out with you.”

Simone put down the pen. “Okay.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s a lot, Gordon. It deserves a real answer, not fireworks.” She folded one hand over his. “We make dates around whatever expression makes you feel most yourself. A dress and dinner. Makeup at home. Jeans and lipstick. A party where you choose everything before we leave. You tell me what sounds good. I’ll ask before I help. And I will tell you what sounds good to me, too.”

He squeezed her hand. “Private doesn’t have to mean hidden.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

She wrote beneath the final score: CHOOSE YOURSELF: UNLIMITED POINTS.

Gordon carried his mug to the spare room. The wardrobe door stood open. He did not need a key.

He returned with the green velvet dress over one arm and his black work boots in the other. The boots were scuffed at the toes from boiler rooms and loading docks. Against the velvet, they looked exactly right.

“For the next party,” he said. “This. With the red lipstick.”

Simone looked him over as if he had handed her a gift. “That is a damned good outfit.”

“It’s mine.”

She made one final mark on the scorecard, then placed it beside his notebook in the open wardrobe.

Gordon set the dress on the chair and placed the work boots beneath it. In the dark glass of the coffee maker, rouge bright on his face, he saw Gordon Hale looking back.

He looked ready.