Every Last Strip

"Nothing says 'I'm sorry for something I'll never tell you about' quite like cooking someone's favourite breakfast—and then eating it all yourself when they piss you off."

I woke to the sensation of a warm, wet tongue on my face and the immediate, crushing weight of what I'd done.

Duke's morning greeting—insistent, rhythmic, utterly oblivious to the wreckage of my conscience—dragged me from a sleep that had been more absence than rest. His small body wriggled against my chest, tail wagging with the unearned optimism that dogs carry like a birthright. He didn't know. Couldn't know. To Duke, this was just another morning, another chance to demand breakfast and belly rubs and the simple pleasures of a life uncomplicated by betrayal.

I envied him so fucking much.

"Come on then," I murmured, my voice scraped raw. Whether from sleep or from sounds I'd made in a bathroom cubicle less than twenty-four hours ago, I couldn't say. Probably both. I stroked his head, feeling the familiar silk of his fur beneath my fingers, and for a moment I let myself pretend this was normal. Just a man and his dog, starting another day.

The spare room was cold. Winter sunlight filtered through blinds I hadn't bothered to close properly, casting grey stripes across the rumpled sheets. The bed still felt foreign—too narrow, too empty, too much like punishment. Which, I supposed, it was. Self-imposed exile from the life I was destroying one lie at a time.

I sat up slowly, my body protesting in ways that had nothing to do with the uncomfortable mattress. My arse ached—a dull, persistent reminder that I couldn't outrun no matter how desperately I tried. Every movement brought fragments of yesterday flooding back. Ben's hands. Ben's mouth. The cold against my palms as I braced myself against the cubicle wall. Luke's voice in my ear, saying love you while another man's cock—

I squeezed my eyes shut. Forced the images down. Buried them in the same shallow grave where I'd been dumping everything else I couldn't face.

Duke whined, impatient, and dropped his stuffed horse on the bed beside me. The toy was ratty and worn, missing one eye, loved almost to disintegration. He stared at me with that particular canine intensity that meant breakfast was non-negotiable, guilt spiral or no guilt spiral.

Right. The world didn't stop because I'd fucked everything up. Dogs still needed feeding. Days still needed facing. Partners still needed lying to.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood, joints popping like bubble wrap. The house was quiet—that particular kind of early-morning silence that felt almost sacred. Luke would still be asleep in the master bedroom, oblivious to the fact that I'd spent the night in here rather than beside him. If he'd noticed my absence, he hadn't mentioned it. If he'd wondered why I'd come home so late, he hadn't asked.

Maybe he didn't care anymore. Maybe we'd drifted so far apart that my sleeping arrangements barely registered on his radar. The thought should have hurt more than it did. Instead, it just sat there—another piece of evidence in the case I was building against our relationship, the prosecution I'd been assembling in my head to justify what I'd done.

See? He doesn't even notice. He doesn't even care. Is it really cheating if the person you're cheating on has already left you in every way that matters?

Bullshit. I knew it was bullshit even as I thought it. The kind of mental gymnastics that let people sleep at night after doing unforgivable things. Luke still loved me. Luke had said so yesterday, on the phone, while I was—

I couldn't finish the thought.

Duke and Henri were both at my feet now, a furry welcoming committee of two. Henri, predictably, had appeared the moment he'd sensed movement in the direction of the kitchen. Where Duke was all enthusiasm and energy, Henri was pure appetite—a small, round creature whose primary relationship was with food and who tolerated humans mainly as a means of accessing it. He didn't bring toys or demand affection. He just materialised when meals were imminent, like a hairy little opportunist with impeccable timing.

I made my way to the kitchen, dogs orbiting my ankles. The tiles were cold beneath my bare feet, the house still holding onto the chill of a Tasmanian winter night. Through the window above the sink, the sky was the colour of wet cement—low clouds threatening rain that might or might not arrive. Tasmania in July. Perpetual grey. Perpetual waiting.

The dog food was in the fridge, same shelf it had occupied for years. I reached for the tin on autopilot, muscles moving through a routine so ingrained it required no conscious thought. Scoop. Drop. Set down bowls. Watch as Duke attacked his breakfast with joyful abandon while Henri circled his portion three times before settling in to eat with the measured dedication of a gourmand at a fine dining establishment.

The smell of the food—wet and meaty and vaguely repulsive—usually made me wrinkle my nose. This morning, I barely noticed. My senses were too occupied with other things. The phantom taste of Ben's skin. The ghost-pressure of his hands on my hips. The ache that pulsed with each step, reminding me of exactly how thoroughly I'd betrayed the man sleeping down the hall.

Stop it.

I gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening. The kitchen was too quiet, too still, too much space for my thoughts to echo. I needed noise. Activity. Something to do with my hands that wasn't wringing them.

Breakfast. I could make breakfast.

The idea arrived with the force of desperation. Luke's favourite—bacon, eggs, the works. The expensive thick-cut stuff we usually saved for weekends, the eggs from the farmer's market that cost twice what supermarket ones did. I could stand here and cook, focus on the sizzle of fat and the precision of timing, let the sensory details crowd out everything else.

And maybe—some pathetic, grasping part of me whispered—maybe it would mean something. Maybe cooking for him would be a kind of penance. A wordless apology. A way to bridge the gap I'd torn wider without having to actually explain what I'd done.

I pulled the bacon from the fridge before I could talk myself out of it.

The ritual of cooking was usually soothing. Gathering ingredients, heating pans, watching transformation happen through the application of fire and patience. This morning, it felt different. Each action carried weight it shouldn't have. Laying strips of bacon in the pan became an offering. Cracking eggs became confession. The smell filling the kitchen—rich and savoury and painfully domestic—became a smoke signal of guilt I hoped Luke couldn't read.

What are you doing, Jamie? You think a fry-up is going to fix this? You think bacon and eggs can undo what happened in that bathroom?

No. Of course not. Nothing could undo it. The line I'd crossed couldn't be uncrossed, the trust I'd broken couldn't be unbroken, and no amount of breakfast was going to change the fact that I'd let another man fuck me while my partner told me he loved me.

But I kept cooking anyway. Because what else was there to do? Confess? Watch Luke's face crumble as I explained exactly what had happened, where, how? Tell him that I'd said yes when I should have said no, that I'd chosen the momentary relief of being wanted over the decade we'd built together?

I couldn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The bacon crisped. The eggs cooked to exactly the consistency Luke preferred—yolks still slightly runny, whites fully set.

Henri had finished his breakfast and retreated to his bed in the corner. Duke had followed him, already dozing in the way that dogs could—instant sleep, no guilt, no replaying of past mistakes on endless loop. I watched them for a moment, these two creatures who'd been with us for years, who'd witnessed the slow decline of our relationship without understanding any of it.

Luke usually surfaced at the crack of dawn, drawn by either his alarm or the smell of coffee or whatever internal mechanism regulated his sleep patterns. I had maybe several minutes of solitude left. Several minutes to get my face under control, to bury the guilt deep enough that it didn't show, to transform back into the Jamie who was mildly annoyed about work and mildly concerned about our relationship rather than the Jamie who had committed an unforgivable act and was barely holding himself together.

I poured myself a glass of water and drank it too fast, the cold liquid hitting my empty stomach like a small shock. Then I stood at the stove, watching the steam rise from the pan, waiting for the sound of footsteps that would signal the beginning of another day of pretending.

You could tell him.

The thought surfaced again, persistent as a splinter. You could just... say it. Right now, before he comes in. "Luke, I need to tell you something." Rip the bandage off. Let whatever happens, happen.

But I couldn't. The words lodged in my throat like stones, impossible to dislodge. I was a coward. I'd established that last night, driving in circles around the eastern shore, killing time because I couldn't face coming home. I'd confirmed it again when I crept past our bedroom and chose the spare room instead. And I was proving it now, standing in our kitchen with a peace offering I had no right to make, preparing to look Luke in the eye and lie to him all over again.

"Smells delicious!"

Luke's voice hit me like a defibrillator—sudden, electric, jolting me back into the performance of normalcy. I turned to find him in the kitchen doorway, still rumpled from sleep, his eyes carrying that soft, unfocused quality of someone not quite awake yet. He looked... happy. Pleased. Like the smell of bacon was all it took to make his morning.

The sight of him—innocent, unsuspecting, trusting—made something twist in my chest.

"Your favourite," I replied, forcing a smile that felt both genuine and fraudulent at once. It was his favourite. I had made it for him. Both of those things were true. Everything underneath them was lies.

He crossed to the kettle, moving with the unhurried ease of familiar routine. I watched him reach for the instant coffee—Luke had never developed a taste for the fancy stuff, preferring the convenience of granules over the ritual of grinding and brewing—and tip a heaped spoonful into his mug. Normal. Domestic. The kind of morning we'd had hundreds of times before.

Except I could still feel Ben inside me. Except the guilt was a living thing coiled in my gut. Except everything was different and Luke didn't know and I was going to keep it that way because I was too afraid to do anything else.

"Oh, so I spoke to Paul yesterday afternoon," Luke mentioned, his tone casual, as if this were small talk rather than the opening salvo of what I already knew would be a difficult conversation.

My internal alarm system, honed by years of dealing with Luke's family obligations, immediately went on high alert. Conversations that started with Paul rarely ended well. Paul was Luke's older brother, the perpetual crisis, the black hole into which time and money and emotional energy disappeared without ever seeming to make a lasting difference. I loved Luke. I did not love Paul. I tolerated Paul. Barely.

"And?" I prodded, unable to keep the wariness from my voice. The kitchen suddenly felt smaller, the pleasant smell of breakfast souring in my nostrils. Whatever was coming, I wasn't going to like it. I never liked it when Paul was involved.

"And…" Luke trailed off, the word hanging in the air between us. I found myself holding my breath, a reflex born of too many similar conversations that had ended with requests I couldn't refuse and resentments I couldn't express. Luke's pauses were never good. They were the conversational equivalent of a deep breath before diving into cold water.

"And he is having some family issues and is flying to Hobart from Adelaide on the first flight this morning. I need you to pick him up, please."

The emphasis on please—that deliberate addition, acknowledging the imposition while still making the request—landed with the weight of inevitability. Of course. Of course Paul was coming. Of course there was a crisis. Of course I was being asked to drop everything and play chauffeur while Luke stayed home doing whatever Luke did in that study of his.

Family issues. That was a broad fucking category, wasn't it? Paul's family issues ranged from the genuinely serious to the manufactured drama, and there was never any way to tell which you were getting until you were already knee-deep in it. His marriage to Claire had been rocky for years—on again, off again, punctuated by loud fights and tearful reconciliations and the occasional late-night phone call that required Luke's immediate attention. I'd lost count of how many times we'd been summoned to deal with Paul's latest catastrophe.

But I was already nodding, already accepting, because what choice did I have? Luke was asking. Luke needed this. Luke's family, however frustrating, was still family, and I hadn't yet reached the point where I could refuse him outright.

Even if every fibre of my being was screaming that this was exactly the wrong morning for Paul's bullshit. Even if I was barely holding myself together and the last thing I needed was to spend an hour in a car with Luke's brother while pretending everything was fine. Even if—

"Is he paying for it himself this time?"

The question escaped before I could stop it, sharper than I'd intended. I watched Luke's reaction—the way his gaze slid away from mine, unable to hold contact, the slight tightening around his mouth that signalled discomfort. It was all the answer I needed, really. We'd been here before. We'd be here again.

The memory of that last trip—the "family holiday" we'd funded entirely, the thousands of dollars we'd never see again, the promise Luke had made afterwards that we wouldn't do this anymore—rose in my throat like bile. I'd extracted that promise like a tooth, painful and necessary, and I'd believed it. I'd believed that we'd finally drawn a line.

"You're paying again, aren't you?" The words came out flat. Statement, not question. "I thought we agreed after last time that we weren't going to pay for him again."

Luke's discomfort was palpable now, a third presence in the kitchen between us. He still wouldn't meet my eyes. Still stirred his coffee with far more attention than the task required. The silence stretched, pregnant with all the things neither of us was saying.

"I know," he finally admitted, his voice soft, weighted with guilt that did nothing to ease my frustration. "But this time is different. He really needs me."

He really needs me.

How many times had I heard that? How many crises had been prefaced with those exact words? Paul always needed Luke. Paul was permanently needy, an almost forty-year-old man who still relied on his younger brother to bail him out of whatever mess he'd made this time. And Luke always obliged, always opened his wallet and his schedule and his heart, because that's who Luke was. Devoted to family. Loyal to a fault. Incapable of saying no to the people he loved, even when saying no would have been kinder to everyone involved.

Including me.

Including us.

"Do I still have time to eat?" I asked, my focus shifting abruptly. I couldn't have this conversation right now. Couldn't wade into the familiar territory of Luke's family obligations and my resentment of them, not when I was already drowning in guilt about my own actions. The hypocrisy of being angry at Luke for anything, given what I'd done yesterday, wasn't lost on me. But feelings weren't rational, and right now I was feeling too many things to sort through any of them.

The breakfast sat on the stovetop, cooling rapidly. Luke's favourite, prepared with love and guilt in equal measure. I looked at it—the careful arrangement, the expensive ingredients, the physical manifestation of my desperate need to make amends—and something shifted.

If this morning was going to be about Paul, then fuck it. Fuck the gesture. Fuck the penance. Fuck trying to bridge gaps that only kept getting wider.

I reached for the plates and, in a motion that surprised even me with its pettiness, piled every piece of bacon onto my toast. All of it. Every crispy, perfectly cooked strip. The eggs followed, scooped onto the bread with aggressive efficiency. I took a large, defiant bite, chewing with more theatricality than was strictly necessary.

It was childish. I knew it was childish. But in that moment, childishness felt like the only weapon I had left.

Luke turned, plate in hand, expectation on his face, only to find the pan empty. The confusion that flickered across his features was almost comical—brows furrowing, eyes moving from empty pan to my overloaded plate and back again, the pieces clicking together with visible delay.

"Where's mine?"

The innocence of the question, the genuine bewilderment, might have made me feel guilty under other circumstances. Today, it just felt like one more thing on a pile of things I couldn't deal with.

"You don't get any now," I retorted, the words harsher than intended but not harsh enough to take back. I took another bite of bacon, savouring it with pointed deliberateness. Petty revenge, served cold. Or rather, served warm, with a side of eggs and a garnish of accumulated resentment.

"Whatever," Luke muttered, and the resignation in his voice—the lack of fight, the absence of pushback—only made everything worse. We didn't argue anymore. We didn't have the energy for it. We just... deflated around each other, letting slights slide because confronting them would require a level of engagement we'd both stopped being capable of.

I finished eating and put my plate in the sink, appetite suddenly gone despite the meal I'd just claimed so aggressively. The bacon tasted like ash now. The victory, such as it was, felt hollow.

"I'm leaving," I announced, grabbing my keys from the counter. A statement of escape more than intent.

"Okay," Luke replied. No protest. No question about when I'd be back. Just acceptance of my departure, the same way he'd been accepting everything lately—my distance, my silences, my sleeping in the spare room.

I paused at the doorway, something in me screaming to say more. To acknowledge the fracture. To stop this slow-motion collapse we were both pretending wasn't happening.

Instead, I crossed back to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Soft. Brief. A contradiction to everything harsh I'd just done and said. It was an apology, I supposed. A confession of love. A plea for understanding wrapped in the inadequate language of physical touch.

He didn't respond. Didn't lean into it or pull away. Just stood there, spatula in hand, accepting my gesture the same way he accepted everything else.

I left without another word.

The morning air hit my face as I stepped outside—cold, sharp, carrying the bite of a Tasmanian winter. The sky remained that relentless grey, clouds hanging low enough to feel oppressive. I walked to the car with the weight of my actions pressing on my shoulders like a physical burden. The day ahead stretched before me: the drive to the airport, the hours of forced pleasantry with Paul, the eventual return to this house and this relationship and this life I was systematically destroying.

I got in the car, started the engine, and pulled out of the driveway.

The cold of the morning seeped through the windows. I didn't turn on the heater.

Some part of me thought I deserved to feel it.