Imagination

She’d known him for ages, through work, as it was with all the men that she knew. They’d always got on, talked shop and joked, and ignored any frisson they might have felt. Then they lost touch, at least for a while.

“I’m coming for work,” she said on the phone.
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Take me to my hotel?”

She stood at the counter while he held her case. “Just one night,” she said to the man at reception.
“A double room, Ma’am?” the clerk said with what she felt was the slightest of smirks.
“Single,” she said.
“Then twin beds,” the clerk answered in statement of fact.
She shrugged.

She poured him a drink as he sat on one bed. She reached him his glass and sat down on the other. He raised it and smiled. She hesitated. She thought she’d imagined the back of his hand fleet over her breast as she sat down. She shook her head slowly. “Cheers,” she said.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “My wife …”
“You didn’t tell her?”
He shook his head.
“Never shop talk?”
He nodded.
She thought he looked sad, just for an instant. Or maybe she was imagining that, too.
“How long are you staying?”
“Just the night,” she said.
“Will you ring me before you leave?”
She nodded.
“I’d better go now,” he said and drained his glass. “Have a good meeting. It was good seeing you.”
Good seeing you, too, she thought.
She watched him walk down the hall, saw him turn, give a wave. She raised her hand limply, and the door shut behind him.

The next day at checkout she phoned as promised. “It was good,” she said.
There was a silence at his end. She waited.
“You didn’t imagine it,” he said.