[Muhammad Hasan]

Chapter - 17

The night call came later than the others.
I had already decided not to reach out first. After the afternoon conversation—the interrupted kiss, the refusal to answer who was in the room, the sudden need for “one or two more nights”—I told myself I would wait. Let her call. Let the silence stretch until she felt it.
At 10:48 the phone lit up with her name.
I answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost floating. “I didn’t want to go to sleep without talking to you.”
In the background there was a low, steady rhythm—something soft and repetitive, like hands moving over skin.
“You’re up late.”
“I couldn’t sleep. My shoulders and legs were killing me from the drive and helping Mom with the boxes the other day. One of my old college friends lives nearby. She’s a massage therapist now. She offered to come over and work on me. She’s really good.”
I sat up straighter on the couch. “A massage. At almost eleven at night.”
“I know it sounds weird. But she had a cancellation and I was hurting. She’s been working on my lower back and thighs for the last half hour. It feels amazing.”
The soft rhythmic sound continued under her words. Then, clear and sharp, a solid slap of skin on skin.
Sarah’s moan tore through the speaker—loud, involuntary, the kind that used to come out of her only when Jake was buried deep and she had stopped caring who might hear.
“What was that?” I asked immediately.
She recovered fast, but not fast enough. “Ah—sorry. She hit a really tight spot in my leg. It hurt for a second. These knots are brutal. I’m okay. Keep talking to me.”
Another softer slap. Another caught breath she tried to turn into a normal exhale.
“Sarah. That didn’t sound like a massage.”
“It is. I promise. She’s using some deep-tissue technique and sometimes it stings. I’m just sensitive tonight.” Her voice stayed carefully light even as the background rhythm picked up speed. “How was your evening? Did you eat something decent?”
I let her change the subject for a few minutes. We talked about nothing—work, the weather, whether the neighbor’s dog was still barking at night. Every thirty seconds the soft thump or slap returned, and every time her breathing hitched she covered it with a quick laugh or a shift of the phone.
Finally I said, “Finish the massage. Call me when she’s gone.”
“Okay. I will. Love you.”
She hung up before I could answer.
I sat in the dark living room and stared at the blank television screen. The slap still echoed in my ears. The moan. The careful, practiced way she had explained both.
I waited twenty minutes. Then thirty. At 11:31 I called her back.
No answer.
I called again. Voicemail.
Third time. Fourth time. The phone rang and rang until her recorded voice asked me to leave a message.
At 11:47 my phone finally rang. Her name on the screen.
I answered without greeting.
“Why were you calling so many times?” she asked. Her voice was tighter now, breathless in a different way. Underneath it I heard a new sound—clear, wet, rhythmic clapping of skin against skin. Steady. Hard. The exact cadence of someone being fucked from behind with force.
“I was checking on you. The last call ended strangely.”
The clapping continued without pause. Sarah’s next words came in short, controlled bursts timed between the impacts.
“I’m fine. She finished the massage and left. I was just… getting ready for bed. Stretching a little more on my own. That’s the sound you’re hearing. The bed frame. It’s old.”
“It doesn’t sound like a bed frame.”
“It is. I promise. These old guest beds creak like crazy when you move around on them.” A longer, wetter slap. Her breath caught hard. “I’m alone now. Everything’s fine.”
“Who was in the room with you this afternoon when you told someone to stop because you were on the phone?”
“I already told you. It was nothing. A friend of Mom’s being silly.”
“And the massage at eleven o’clock at night?”
“She’s a professional and she had time. That’s all.”
“And the slap and the moan?”
“A tight muscle. I already said.”
Every answer was smooth. Every excuse sat just inside the boundary of plausible. The sounds beneath them did not.
I listened for another full minute while the rhythmic clapping continued and Sarah kept offering calm, careful sentences that never quite matched the wet, forceful reality coming through the speaker.
Finally I said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Sleep well. I love you.”
She hung up while the sound was still going.
I set the phone down on the coffee table and sat in the quiet house with the last of her clever explanations still hanging in the air. The missing had not gone to her mother’s house to rest. The ending I had declared had not held. Somewhere a hundred miles away the same body I had held and questioned and tried to keep was being used again, and the only thing standing between me and the full truth was a series of practiced answers delivered between thrusts.
Some things, I thought as the clock moved past midnight, simply refuse to go the way they should.
And this was one of them.