She hasn't been touched like this in years. Her husband's hands have forgotten her completely, and she's stopped bothering to remind him. The neighbor sees everything through his kitchen window. The way she lingers too long in her garden, how her thin robe slips when she bends to retrieve the morning paper, the deliberate patience of a woman who knows she's being watched. When their eyes finally meet across the fence, she doesn't look away. She lets him look. The arrangement starts tidy enough. Wives for an evening, borrowed like cups of sugar, returned by morning with new appetites. But the neighbor's mouth finds places her husband stopped searching, and the sounds she makes in his bed carry back to her own empty sheets. She starts leaving the window cracked. She starts forgetting to come home. Then he has photos. He has her gasping his name on video, her wedding ring catching the light while his fingers work underneath. The blackmail isn't cruel, not exactly. He just wants more of her. More time, more positions, more public risks where they might get caught. She pretends to resist, but her body arrives before he finishes making his demands. Her husband notices the glow in her skin, the new lace, the way she flinches when he finally tries to touch her shoulder. He doesn't ask. She doesn't explain. They're both pretending now, playing at a marriage while she spends her real hours spread across the neighbor's counter, his hand pressed over her mouth because his wife is due home any minute. The wager that started this has rules, timelines, supposed endings. Neither of them mentions them anymore. She's borrowed, technically. But she's stopped wanting to be returned.