by Amy Hatvany
“Thanks,” I said. “Not too hooker-ish, with the heels?”
“Just the right amount of hooker-ish.”
I laughed, and then sat up. “I should probably get going.”
“Oh no,” Will said. “I’m not done with you, yet.”
“Is that so?” I glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was a little after eight. “I told Jake I’d be home by nine.”
“Then I’d better be quick,” Will said, wickedly. He grabbed my hips and pulled me down, into a prone position.
Fifteen minutes later, we were done, and I’d had two more orgasms, in quick succession. Five minutes after that, I walked to my car, headed home to my husband, the scent of another man still on my skin. I’d left Will’s place after a brief conversation, in which we decided that we would let some time pass before we saw each other again, something he told me he had learned was a good way to keep things casual. “Seeing each other too often can lead to emotional attachment, which I know neither of us wants.”
“Where the clitoris goes, the heart soon follows?” I said, lifting my eyebrows, and he laughed.
“Something like that.”
As I drove east, across the 520 bridge, I kept replaying what I’d just done. It felt surreal, trying to process it, even though my body still ached pleasantly from its recent exertion. I’d texted Jake before I left, letting him know that I was safe and on my way home to him.
“I’ll be ready,” was all his return text said, and the words caused a twinge of renewed excitement between my legs. When I pulled into our garage, the door shutting behind me, he was already standing at the bottom of the steps that led into the kitchen, waiting, clad only in a pair of black, silky pajama pants. His erection was evident. His blue eyes were dark; his gaze, unrelenting.
I climbed out of my car, my curls still a mess from being in Will’s bed, my cleavage practically popping out of the top of my dress. Jake strode over to meet me. He took me into his arms and set his mouth against my ear. “Tell me everything,” he said, huskily. “Don’t leave anything out.”
Three Years Later
Twelve
It was Friday night, after nine, and for the third time that week, and my husband was working late.
“I’m sorry, babe,” he said when he called me earlier that evening, after Ella and Tuck had already left for Peter’s house. Ella turned sixteen five months ago, back in January, but I was still getting used to her being able to drive on her own; I made her text me when she arrived safely at her destination, especially if it involved the freeway. “I know it sucks,” Jake continued, “but there are three candidates in Beijing who can’t interview any other time. Microsoft’s HR department has been breathing down my neck to get this position filled.”
“I thought you hired Justine so she could cover shit like this,” I said. It had been almost a year since Jake decided to expand his business by bringing on more recruiters, a change that necessitated an actual office for him and his employees to work out of. I’d expected this when he first brought up the idea; what I hadn’t expected was how the hours he spent at said-office—training his new hires, monitoring their work, taking care of benefits and payroll and other staffing issues that presented themselves—would almost double compared to when he worked solo, from home.
“I did,” he said, sharply. “But she’s only been working for me a few weeks, and I can’t risk her fucking up the interviews. I need to be here.”
“Parker or Trevor can’t do it?” Those were his other employees, two perky, hungry-for-success young men in their mid-twenties whom he’d hired within the first month of his decision to expand.
“Training her is my responsibility, not theirs.” I could picture him on the other end of our call, at his newly-installed, adjustable, standing desk, his strong jaw clenched in annoyance. He’d cut down shaving to twice a week, resulting in a rough, salt-and-peppered stubble I found sexy, and had grown out his previously buzz-cut hair a couple of inches, giving me something to grab onto with my fingers when we had sex. Not that that was happening very often.
“Fine,” I said before hanging up on him, not waiting for his reply. Unbeknownst to Jake, I had made reservations at the same Thai place we’d gone to the night we met Will almost exactly three years ago. I also went shopping for new lingerie, a sexy, low-cut little black dress, was freshly waxed, and even got a spray tan. I had planned for us to finish out the night at the Cove, dancing and remembering the fun we’d had there, hoping that reliving those moments might lead us to end our date with the two of us tearing off each other’s clothes. With how much Jake had been working, and how much more the kids’ had going on now that they were both in high school—as a junior, Ella was an officer on the dance team, as well as class president, and also worked part-time at Olive Garden; and Tucker, who was a sophomore, was such a talented pitcher, he’d been selected to play the position on the varsity team—our family was busier than ever. Tonight was supposed to be just about me and Jake. It was supposed to be special.
I paced the kitchen, opened the fridge, and then slammed it closed, my resentment toward Jake’s absence mounting. I tried to remain rational as I made my way to into the family room and dropped down onto the couch. It wasn’t just Jake who was working more—the real estate market in the Pacific Northwest was booming—record numbers of people were moving to Seattle on a daily basis—so my hours spent at the office or out showing properties had increased, too, though not as much as my husband’s, making it difficult for our downtime to mesh. The truth was I wasn’t only angry at him; I was angry at us for letting our romantic life slip down on our list of priorities again.
My thoughts turned to the six months Will stayed in Seattle—the once-a-month, intensely hot encounters we’d had. Jake joined us again for one of those times, but the others I was with Will alone, and then went home to relive each experience with my husband. There were a few instances when Jake might be too busy for us to have sex immediately after I’d return from Will’s place, but the next morning, all it took was a few words from me to get things going.
“I love how Will’s cock feels inside me,” I’d murmur, after kissing my husband awake.
“Dirty girl,” he’d reply. His breathing changed and his body tensed. Nothing got him hard as quickly as hearing me whisper in his ear about how much I loved being fucked by another man.
After Will returned to San Diego, Jake and I decided to write a profile and put it up on AdultFun.com, the site Will had recommended. (I couldn’t bring myself to put it on Craigslist, alongside garage sales, and where I sometimes advertised the properties I was trying to sell.) But as soon as we posted it, we were overwhelmed by the emails that flooded our inbox, many from men immediately ruled out as a potential partner by their one sentence, poorly punctuated, and/or outright offensive responses. Some expressed their desire for incestuous, father/daughter roleplay—ugh—or they referred to me in a demeaning manner as their “cock slut” or “whore-hot-wife”—so we took our profile down and decided to live off the memory of the times we’d had with Will—and as a result, each other. The excitement stemming from those experiences lasted a few months, until the thrill of repeating the same story began to wear off, and I started hinting that it might be fun to find someone to create new memories with. We put the profile up again, determined to take our time before meeting anyone. Eventually, that led us to Tim, a single, attractive, and successful estate attorney who had never been with a couple or participated in a hot-wife dynamic, but was highly interested in the indulging this fantasy. When we met him for drinks, our comfort level and instant chemistry reminded us so much of how we’d felt with Will, we went to his house that night.
Over the next year, I met Tim on my own once a month, always on a weekend when the kids were with Peter and Kari, and always telling Jake every detail of what I’d done. Tim was smart, charismatic, and fun in bed, but when he told me that he’d met a woman, and it looked like it might get serious, I ended things, and we ami
cably parted ways. After another break—a shorter one, this time—we met Vincent, a divorced advertising executive who I ended up seeing every six weeks or so, as our schedules allowed, but again, he ended up meeting a woman he wanted to date, so our dalliance ceased.
That was a year ago, when Jake decided to expand his company. We had put our profile up a few more times since then, but were turned off by the majority of responses we received. Many of the men were more interested in a cuckold dynamic, wanting to come in to our relationship as a “bull”—which we learned was a man who thought he had more sexual prowess or larger cock than the husband of the woman he’s fucking, who gets off on humiliation; or, they wanted a one-time encounter, which wasn’t something Jake or I were comfortable with doing. We suspected that those men were likely married or otherwise attached, looking to get away with something once—while their wife was out of town, perhaps—but unable to meet on a regular basis. We preferred something ongoing, where trust, and the resultant eroticism, could grow. It was discouraging when we couldn’t find another match, and, coupled with our increasingly busy schedule, it had been several months since we’d even discussed the possibility of finding someone new.
Now, I shot a quick text to Charlotte. “What time will you be done?” She had told me earlier in the day that she had a thirty-person anniversary dinner that night for a couple celebrating fifty years together. “Fifty years,” she’d exclaimed. “Can you believe that shit? Who stays with someone that long?”
“I’m just wrapping up,” she responded, now, almost immediately. “Apparently the happy couple is itching to get home and celebrate in a way that doesn’t involve canapes and champagne.”.
“Jake bailed on date night,” I said. “Drinks at the Sailor?”
“Hell, yes!” she said. “Wait. Drinks, or DRAAANKS???”
I laughed as I typed. “I think we’d better stick with drinks.” The distinction was one made not long after we first met, when the two of us ended up knocking back four martinis each on what was supposed to be a casual, “Let’s-sip-a-single-cocktail-and-get-to-know-each-other-better” girls’ night out. When Jake showed up at last call to drive us home—Richard was out of town for work, Bentley was at a sleepover, and my kids were with Peter and Kari—he practically had to drag me and Charlotte out of the bar.
I didn’t remember much from that night, but I did recall my best friend yelling, “I want another DRAAANK!” as we stumbled across the small dance floor toward the door, and then me, chiming in, “DRAAANKS! We want DRAAANKS!”
It became our inside joke; “DRAAANKS,” loosely translated, meant we weren’t just looking to take the edge off. We were going to get wasted. It wasn’t something we actually did very often—quite rarely, in fact—but it still made us laugh.
I ran upstairs, quickly, fussed with my hair, and was about to head out the door in my jeans and T-shirt when instead, decided to wear the same dress I’d bought for my night out with Jake. I changed, briefly glancing at myself in the full length mirror we had on the back of our closet door. The dress was sleeveless, had a deep V-neck, accentuating my cleavage, and otherwise fit me perfectly, skimming the hourglass of my figure before it ended right above my knees. The black fabric set off the lightly bronzed, fake glow of my skin, and I swiped on a slash of blackberry lipstick and a second coat of mascara to complete the look. Just because Jake and I didn’t get to have date night, didn’t mean my prep work for it had to go to waste.
I entered the Tipsy Sailor ten minutes later, and Charlotte waved at me from a table by the front window, looking like a springtime Pippy Longstocking with her red hair pulled into two ponytails on either side of her neck. She wore a boat-necked, bright lime green sheath, a color only a toddler or someone with her porcelain complexion and auburn locks could successfully pull off.
I scanned the room as I made my way over to her, pleased to notice a few men giving me an appreciative once-over look as I walked by. Maybe I’d tell Jake about that. Maybe knowing that I’d thought about picking up a stranger at a bar—or at least, realizing that I felt confident enough that I could—would turn him on and end our sexual dry spell.
“Hey,” I said, dropped down in the chair across from my friend. Our server arrived and we both ordered margaritas, with a side shot of Patron.
“So, how mad are we at Jake?” Charlotte asked, pointedly.
I sighed. “Not very. I’m just frustrated.”
“Here,” she said, picking up her phone from the table. She unlocked the screen, and shoved it toward me. “This will cheer you up.”
I looked down to see the Neighbors app open to the Queens Ridge page. Tiffany was still the moderator for the discussions that went on there, and I’d finally signed up after Nancy told all of the agents at Kendal Properties that they should be using the app to advertise properties and our services. There was a spot for general commentary about what was going on in our community, a classified section, crime and safety, along with a few other categories, including a recommendation list, where I was happy to know that over the past two years, I was the most-mentioned real estate professional in Queens Ridge. There were at least ten new posts a day, ranging from event announcements to people reporting when their cars had been broken into, so others could be on the lookout. Charlotte had the app open to the general commentary area, to one of Tiffany’s posts.
“Fellow Queens Ridge residents,” she had written, “I need your help in identifying the person whose dog is constantly pooping on our front lawn. I have gone to every effort I can think of to catch this inconsiderate pet owner, including posting a polite sign requesting that the person cease and desist their animal’s rude behavior, and sitting outside on my porch for hours at a time in an attempt to catch them in the act, to no avail. I cannot believe the size of the excrement this animal leaves on our grass. Does someone have a PET HORSE in the neighborhood that I don’t know about? And what kind of person thinks it’s appropriate to allow their animal to desecrate my property on almost a daily basis? I am INFURIATED!!
If you are the offender, know if someone doesn’t turn you in, I’m having security cameras installed. I WILL find you.”
I glanced at the picture included in the post—an exceptionally large pile of excrement—and then shoved Charlotte’s phone back over to her. “Gross.”
“She’s out of control,” Charlotte said. “She actually used the word ‘desecrate,’ like her yard is some kind of holy land this dog is taking a shit on.” She paused, as our server delivered our drinks. “‘I will find you,’” she said, in a mock, deep voice, and then rolled her eyes. “Who does she think she is, the Liam Neeson of Queens Ridge?”
I gave a short laugh, but then felt a little guilty for being amused. It turned out that Tiffany’s mother’s forgetfulness after breaking her wrist wasn’t due to the pain pills she was taking—she actually had been in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, and soon after, moved in with Tiffany and her family. Dealing with all of that, plus the fact that according to Ella, Lizzy had continued to be the girl who offered up blow jobs and whatever else boys wanted from her, I had a hard time understanding how Tiffany had time to worry about whose dog was crapping on her lawn, let alone post about it to the entire community.
“People deal with stress in different ways, I guess,” I said to Charlotte, now. “I feel bad for her, though, with her mom being sick, and the way Lizzy is acting up.”
“You’re right,” Charlotte said as she picked up her margarita and took a hefty swallow. She puckered her lips, and then frowned. “Wow. Sorry. I’m an asshole.”
I laughed. “A real asshole would never admit it.” That was what I loved about Charlotte—she could sometimes cross the line with her sharp wit, but she also owned up to it and apologized when she went too far.
“Do you think she knows? About Lizzy?”
“I’m not sure.” I took a swallow of my drink, too. “I’d like to think that if it were Ella, I’d sense something was going on.” At least, I hoped
this were true. But then I thought about the fact that I’d managed to hide what Jake and I had been doing in our sex life from Charlotte—and everyone else we knew—for the last three years, and it struck me that you could never really know for sure what the people in your life—even the ones you were closest to—were doing behind closed doors.
“Bentley has been giving me the play-by-play about her shenanigans with Riley.” Charlotte rolled her eyes. Riley was Bentley’s first real boyfriend; Ella had told me about him a few weeks ago. “Sometimes I regret raising her to be able to tell me anything.” She shuddered. “I did not need to hear that her panties were soaked after they were kissing at the movies last week.”
“What?” I sputtered, spraying the table with the bit of margarita I’d had in my mouth. I looked at Charlotte, aghast. “She did not say that to you.”
“She sure did,” Charlotte said, cheerfully. She grabbed the shot glass next to her drink and bobbed her head toward mine, indicating that I should do the same. We clinked them together over the center of our small table, and then both knocked back the Patron in one swallow.
“Ugh!” I said, as the alcohol burned my throat and warmed my stomach. “Why do we do that to ourselves?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done a shot of straight anything, let alone tequila.
“Because it makes the bullshit misery in life more bearable,” Charlotte said, and her brown eyes clouded.
I frowned, intuiting what she meant. “What’s going on with Richard?” A few months after I joked that Charlotte should sneak Viagra into her husband’s coffee, she confided that Richard had problems getting an erection.
She shook her head. “I keep trying to get him to go to the doctor, in case there’s something physical going on—it could be something like an enlarged prostate—but he won’t. It’s been nine months since we even tried having sex. He won’t even talk about it anymore. He’s totally shut down.”
