She said it loud enough for everyone to hear at the book club—”I’m done with men.”
They laughed, nodded, raised their glasses of red wine in solidarity. And maybe she meant it in that moment. Maybe she even believed it.
But Fridays tell a different story.
It starts around 6 PM. She dims the lights. Music—not soft jazz or classical—but slow, rhythmic blues—begins to play. She lights a candle that smells faintly of sandalwood and something warmer… muskier. She pours a single glass of wine and sits by the window in her silk robe, legs crossed, watching nothing in particular.
Then she disappears into her bedroom.
There’s always that subtle flicker of light, that silhouette passing in front of drawn curtains. A man doesn’t knock—but someone does arrive. No one sees his face. Maybe he’s a memory. Maybe he’s new each time. But by morning, the same line returns: “I’m focusing on myself now.”
Of course she is.
What she doesn’t say, what she doesn’t need to say, is that being “done with men” doesn’t mean being done with pleasure, or closeness, or control.
Friday nights are her secret treaty with the parts of herself she pretends no longer matter.
But her body remembers. And it whispers the truth in candlelight, silk sheets, and the way her lips curl when asked if she’s ever lonely.