Impulse Purchases – Risa Fajkowski

May 3, 2026

She never came inside.
        She never brought it up. Her husband questioned everything. She made excuses to meet me. She never talked about her marriage. She never showed me what she wanted. Then one afternoon at her swim club, she leaned across the picnic table and whispered that she didn’t love her husband anymore. She looked at me like she was about to undress.
        She grabbed my hands, pleaded with me to let her explain. She’d gone to a conference for work and a man had invited her for a drink. They sat at the hotel bar. She said it made her feel dangerous. He was married. His wife was a traveling nurse. They took a shower together. She said it was the first time anyone had really seen her.
        Her husband always put her in the dark. He’d turn out the lights or they’d go under the covers and he’d close his eyes when he touched her. She thought that was the way it was done.
        She leaned in and asked if I knew how to pleasure myself, if I’d figured it out on my own.
        I told her I hadn’t, that someone else had shown me.
        So I told her the story of my first orgasm, how I met a man at an art museum. I’d been standing in front of a painting of a woman in an empty farm when he walked over and asked if I liked it. I told him yes. He smiled and asked what exactly I liked. He was the same in bed. He had me flip over, then turn on my side, his fingers moving in and out. I started laughing and crying at the same time. Afterwards, when he got up to go to the bathroom, I just lay there, quiet, satisfied for maybe the first time in my life.
        I looked at her, her face flushed, her eyes wide.
        She wanted to know if I’d loved him.
        I said I loved what he showed me.
        Claire’s eyes filled with tears. She said she thought she had to love someone to have that. Now she wasn’t sure. “My uncle used to say you don’t really know what you like at first. You just learn to recognize it.”
        She looked at me. “I think that’s what happened,” she said. “I missed my window.”

She wanted to know how many people I’d slept with, why I hadn’t had children. On her wedding night, her mother took her into the bedroom and showed her what to do. She lay on the ground, brought her knees back to her ears, and closed her eyes. Her mother told her to take deep breaths, that it would be over quickly. She even drew a diagram for her to keep under her pillow, just in case.
        I asked if the diagram was still there.
        She said she threw it away. She was afraid her husband would find it and consider it cheating, like having the answers on a test.

Her stories didn’t stay where she left them.
        I’d be driving and find myself in his hotel room, watching him peel her robe back. I’d tap his shoulder, take his place, touch her for the first time, enough to make me grip the steering wheel.
        But it was his wife–the traveling nurse–who stayed with me, lying in the arms of a stranger she’d met at the airport, a torn packet of airplane peanuts beside the bed.

I became a regular.
        She gave me a key.
        In her fridge were three jars of the same mustard. All opened. All barely used.
        I held one up and asked if she wanted me to throw them out.
        “No,” she said quickly. “I might need them.”
        “You already have one.”
        She paused, like she hadn’t seen that. Then: “Just leave them.”
        I used things without asking. The good pan.
        I moved things around so they looked like mine.
        Even their wedding photo—I looked at it first, his hand on her waist, then put it in a drawer.
        When she went upstairs to shower, I crept up to her bedroom and lay down. I turned onto my side, the way I imagined she would. For a moment, I didn’t move. I thought of the art museum and let my fingers move in and out.

Her husband started asking more questions.
        He said she was hiding things, that I manipulated her, hoarded her. That I’d turned her into a lesbian.
        She told me these things when she snuck out to meet me.
        “You like that,” she said once, watching me.
        I laughed. She didn’t.

She began leaving things at my front door: A plastic statue of Jesus. A bracelet made of fair-trade coffee beans. I kept them in a cardboard box under the kitchen sink.
        Her husband showed up at my house. He wanted to know where the gifts were.
        I went inside and fetched the box from under the sink. He looked at the bracelet, at the Jesus, and started to cry.
        “I gave her that bracelet,” he said. “I bought it for her at a street fair.”
        “She picked it out.”
        He turned it over in his hands.
        “Did she tell you?”
        I told him she hadn’t.
        “You can keep whatever she gave you,” he said, “but I want the bracelet back.”
        I handed it to him.
        “You don’t know her,” he said, walking back to his car.
        He got in and sat idling before pulling away.

He started sleeping on the couch. He stopped asking about her schedule. Started making dinner anyway.
        She was scared. What if he knew, she asked me one evening.
        I said there was nothing to know. We hadn’t done anything.
        She said what matters is if he thinks we did.
        I said maybe it was a good thing. She didn’t love him anymore anyway.
        She looked at me with alarm. “When did I say that?” Her eyes narrowed. “I never said that.” She stood up and grabbed her purse.
        “That’s not what I meant,” I said.
        But she was already racing back to her car. She didn’t stop when I called her name. She just drove off, her tail lights fading in the distance.

The gifts stopped. Days passed without seeing her. Then weeks. She didn’t return my calls. She showed up in my dreams. One time on her wedding night, lying on her back, her knees by her ears. Another, she leaned over me. A stethoscope pressed to my chest.
        I woke up in a sweat. Made excuses to drive by her house. Sometimes I circled grocery store parking lots, looking for her car.
        I almost turn in, then keep going.

***
I spot her in aisle three next to the cheese curls.
        I hear myself call her name.
        Claire startles, then recovers.
        “I’ve been obsessed with these,” she says, lifting the bag.
        I push my cart up beside hers. “How are you?”
        “I left him.”
        She smooths her grocery list between her fingers.
        “I think I knew I would. Even before… before you.”
        I pull back.
        She presses the bag of cheese curls into her cart.
        I turn the corner. She follows.

At the checkout, she finishes first and waits.
        I come out. She walks me to my car.
        I start loading groceries.
        The passenger door opens.
        She slides in.
        “Can we sit for a minute?” she says. “I need to tell you something.”
        She starts with her husband.
        He’d been going through her drawers.
        “He took pictures of me sleeping,” she says quietly. “He said he wanted proof I was still there.”
        She looks at the dashboard.
        “I knew that was it. After you, I couldn’t go back.”
        I frown. “Nothing happened between us.”
        “Everything happened,” she says. “He knew.”
        “Then why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
        She looks down. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
        “You didn’t call.”
        She opens her mouth.
        I shake my head before she can speak.
        “I wanted to protect you,” she says.
        I cross my arms.
        She flinches.
        “No. I—” She stops. “I wanted more. I wanted you.”
        She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say something back.
        I sit there, the keys dangling in the ignition.
        She laughs once, sharp. “I still buy things for him. I don’t even realize until I’m home. Soap. Food. Those stupid cheese curls.” She wipes at her face. “He used to crumble them into his chili. He’s gone, but I’m still living like he’s here.”
        She asks me to come over, just for a little while. Her eyes are wide, pleading.
        My hand turns the key before I can stop it.
        She jumps out, loads her groceries into her trunk.

I follow her. We carry our groceries upstairs. She tells me I can put mine in her fridge so they don’t spoil.
        I begin to unpack, noticing she has the same condiments, the same yogurt, expired by a few days.
        She asks what it’s like for me, living alone all these years. Her friends make fun of women who live alone.
        “Do you?” I ask.
        “I don’t say anything.”
        “What would happen if you did?”
        She shrugs. “I can’t lose them. I just–I can’t.”
        “You have me.”
        She laughs. “No one does.”
        I tell her that isn’t true.
        She looks down at her hands.
        “No one’s ever needed me. Not really,” she says. “Not even him.”
        She reaches for a napkin and dabs her eyes.
        “He cleaned me out,” she says. “He went through all of our things.” I told him, “those were mine too. He can’t just take them.” Her voice lowers. “He accused me of never loving him. Of loving you more.”
        “And what did you say?” I ask.
        She shrugs. “He was right.”
        She asks me to stay for dinner, says she’ll cook us something.
        I picture my house, the plants wilting in the early darkness and nod.
        She goes to the kitchen.
        I sit on her terrace, looking out at a laundromat beside a patch of abandoned grass. Nothing like the yard at her old house.
        She comes back with two bowls of chili and the bag of cheese curls.
        I taste the chili.
        “It’s good right?” she asks.
        She crumbles some cheese curls into her bowl.
        “I don’t know what to do when there’s no one else here,” she says.

She reaches out, puts her hand on mine.
        I lean toward her. For a second, I don’t. Then kiss her.
        She leads me to the bed. I get in next to her and take off her shirt and bra.
        “Wait,” she whispers, pushing me back, “maybe we should close the blinds.”
        “Why?” I ask, pointing to the window. “We’re on the second floor. No one can see in.”
        She says she’d feel more comfortable.
        I get up and close the blinds. When I come back, her face looks tense. I ask her what’s wrong.
        “Nothing,” she says.
        I ask if it’s me, if she’s ashamed of me.
        She says it isn’t me, that anything she wants makes her afraid.
        “We don’t have to do this,” I say.
        “No,” she insists, “I want to, I just, it’s been so long.”
        She takes my hand and places it back on her thigh. She says to do what I was doing before.
        She closes her eyes and lays back on her pillow.
        My hand moves up and down her leg, then across her chest and back down the other leg.
        I slow my hand, then stop.
        She opens her eyes.
        I start again.
        Her body arches. My fingers move in and out, slow at first, then shift.
        She clenches, then shudders. A flush rises along her neck and chest.
        She lets out a small laugh, presses her hand to her mouth.
        “That’s never happened before,” she whispers.
        She smooths the flat sheet between us.
        “Do you think that counts?” she asks.
        She pulls me towards her. Her skin is damp.
        I rest my head on her chest.
        For a moment, it stays. The weight of her arm. A house with a yard.
        She shifts beside me.
        “My uncle always took me to street fairs,” she says.
        She sits up on her elbows.
        “He took me on the roller coaster.”
        She smiles.
        I get up to go to the bathroom, leaving her there.
        When I get back, she asks if we can do this again, if we can schedule it.
        She’ll give me a key.

I don’t want another key.
        I get out of bed, throw my shirt and pants on, and go to collect my groceries from the refrigerator.
        She follows me, a blanket around her waist, watching as I grab my butter, my cheese, my peppers.
        “You can keep them here,” she says, “for when you come back.”
        She waits until my bags are repacked, then offers to help carry them to my car.
        I put them down. “Where the hell were you all these months?”
        “I told you,” she says. “My husband and I were having problems.”
        I don’t say anything.
        She steps closer.
        “Stay,” she says.
        “I’ll make us something. I have gin in the freezer.”
        “Just one drink,” she says.
        I take my bags into the kitchen, put the groceries into the fridge.
        I reach to shift a jar, then leave it.
        She hands me a gin and tonic, leaves the bottle on the nightstand.
        “I’m going to take a shower,” she says.

I sit on her bed, sip my drink.
        The hotel. His wife.
        I pour a second.
        The rides. Her hand on his.
        She comes back from the shower and cups my face.
        “You look different,” she says, a towel wrapped around her head. “Different from before.”
        I stand.
        “What if we hadn’t run into each other at the store? What if I kept walking like I hadn’t seen you?”
        She frowns. “But you didn’t.”
        I ask her about her uncle, what happened to him.
        She pauses. Says she doesn’t know.
        The last time they talked, he was headed cross country.
        “He rented an RV,” she says, “and sent me pictures of the Grand Canyon.”
        She moves to one of the boxes, pulls it open.
        “I’m sure I have them somewhere,” she says, flipping through the papers.
        She opens one box, then another. Not really looking.
        “Claire,” I say. “Do you have an uncle?”
        She looks up at me. “Of course I do.” She laughs. “Why would you ask me that?”
        I don’t answer.
        She sets the papers back into the box, not bothering to straighten them.
        She sits down on the bed.
        I sit beside her.
        “Am I one of them?” I ask.
        She turns to me. “Of course not. This is real.”
        She takes my hands. “This is different.”
        “It’s already happening,” she says.
        Her fingers tighten around mine.

I go to the kitchen and repack my groceries.
        I put them into my trunk.
        I slam the door. Look up.
        She is standing in the upstairs window.
        The blinds are half closed behind her.
        I sit there, gripping the wheel.
        For a second, I think about going back up.
        I put the car in gear.