by Amy Hatvany
I’d always scoffed at the idea of “sexting” with someone. Jake and I sent each other fun, flirty texts throughout the day, but it had never risen to the level that Andrew was taking it. It wasn’t just him, I reminded myself. He wouldn’t have anything to work with if I didn’t respond.
“I’m naked right now,” I told him. “Alone, in my bedroom. That picture made me wet.”
“I need to see you,” he responded. “All of you.”
I returned to my spot in front of the full length mirror, and held my phone so that I could take a picture for him. I ended up taking several, cropping it and adding a flattering filter before I liked one enough to send. I added the words, “Your cock is mine. Understand?” He wasn’t the only one who knew how to garner a reaction.
My phone rang almost immediately after that, his name showing up on the caller ID. I hesitated only a moment before answering.
“Your body is amazing,” Andrew said. His voice ached with lust. “Get on your bed.”
“Where are you?” I said, doing as he asked. I yearned for release; I needed what I suspected would happen next. I felt a little nervous, worried that Jake might finish with his dinner early, but not worried enough to hang up the phone. He normally texted when he was on his way home, so I figured I was safe. I’d hear the notification, even if I was on the phone.
“In my bedroom. Naked. My hand on my cock. I’m stroking, slowly, picturing your red lips slipping over the top of me, gently sucking and swirling your tongue around the tip.”
I settled back on my pillow and closed my eyes, my right hand skating downward, landing between my legs, while I used my left to keep my phone next to my ear. “My fingers are on my pussy,” I told him in a hoarse voice. “I’m already so fucking wet.”
“Mmm,” he murmured. “I remember how you taste. So perfectly tangy and sweet. I want to roll my tongue around your clit. I want to suck it while I use my fingers on your G-spot.”
“That makes me want to come,” I said, moving my fingers a little faster as my muscles began to tense.
“Not yet,” he instructed. “I want to see your pussy.”
I stopped moving my hand and opened my eyes. “I can’t.” Sending him the naked picture was different. What he had requested crossed a line. It was too intimate. Too much.
“Yes, you can,” he said. “Please, Jessica. Show me how wet you are.”
It was the “please” that did it, and the way my name rolled off his tongue. I positioned my phone between my spread legs and again, did as he asked. After I sent it, I put the phone next to my ear and waited, taking ragged breaths.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Such a perfect, beautiful pussy. My mouth is watering.”
“I need to fuck you again,” I said, strangely flattered by his compliment. No one, not even Jake, had said that to me. “It’s all I can think about.”
“Come over right now,” Andrew urged. “I’m so fucking hard. I would love to slip inside that tight little cunt of yours.”
Again, his choice of words shot delicious shivers across my skin. I put my fingers between my legs once more. “I can’t,” I said, quietly. “I have to be quick. Tell me what you’re doing. Make me come.”
He began to speak, his words painting a picture inside my head. I let myself get lost in what he described—lost in pure, erotic sensation—thinking only of what it felt like to fuck him, until the moment that he told me he was about to finish, and I couldn’t take another moment of my fingers rubbing my clit. “Oh, fuck,” I muttered as I lifted my hips and let pleasure take over, washing over me in all-encompassing waves, pretending that what had happened was completely normal, that it was all part of what Jake and I had agreed to.
That I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“HAVE you seen Tiffany’s latest post on the Neighbor’s app?” Jake asked me on Saturday, a couple of days later. It was July 4th, and we were in our bedroom. I had just gotten off the phone with clients who were ready to put in an offer on a one-acre property with a spacious, split-level home in Woodinville, and I wasn’t looking forward to sacrificing my lazy weekend morning in order to head into the office and get the paperwork started. Jake sat bare-chested, his back against our thickly padded headboard, his long legs still under the covers. Now that Justine had had a few more weeks of training, Jake had actually been able to take some time off on the weekends.
“No,” I said. I was perched on the edge of our bed, trying to convince myself to get up and take a shower. “I turned the notification option off.” It was getting ridiculous, how often people spouted off publicly about HOA lawn-cutting violations—“No more than two inches of growth allowed, people!” one chastised—or how many people had been caught speeding on Main Street in a given week. If I hadn’t been referred so many new clients via the app, I would have deleted it from my phone altogether.
Jake held his phone in one hand and began to read. “’Fellow Queen’s Ridge residents, we have a thief in our midst!!!’” Here, he looked at me and raised his dark eyebrows. “‘I am missing three of my eight garden gnomes from my flower beds. I will not rest until the culprits are named.’”
“That could be difficult,” I said. “The thief might go by a gnome-de-plume.”
Jake snorted and dropped his phone into his lap. “Funny girl.”
I shook my head. “How does she have time for that kind of shit with her mother to take care of, and deal with Lizzy?” Lacy had called a team-wide meeting a few days after I’d informed her about the inappropriate Instagram accounts, confronting the group of girls as a whole, asking that the guilty parties to come forward and confess to her, privately. “I have screen shots of everyone who’s done it,” Lacy had said, according to Ella. “If you don’t fess up, you’re off the team. Period.” (Ella was relieved that her coach had done as promised, saying that she’d found out about the issue via an anonymous tip.) By the end of the day, Lacy had received tearful confessions by not only the girls she knew for certain had an account, but also four others. According to Ella, Lacy had meetings with all of the girls’ parents, individually, and told them that if the accounts weren’t deleted, or if Lacy discovered that they simply put up another one under a different name, they’d be kicked off the team. No exceptions. So I had to wonder how Tiffany, who clearly knew what Lizzy had been up to, possessed any extra bandwidth to post to all of Queens Ridge about missing lawn ornaments.
“I don’t know,” Jake said. “Maybe it’s a good distraction. I imagine she doesn’t get much of a break. Ben doesn’t strike me as a guy who spends a ton of time at home.”
I sighed. “That’s a good point. You’re a much kinder person than me.” I paused, thinking for a moment. “I should take her a casserole or something. Or offer to help with her mom, so she can have some one-on-one time with Lizzy.”
“See, now?” Jake said, smiling. “You’re kind, too. That thought wouldn’t even cross your mind if you weren’t.”
Andrew’s face popped into my head, then, reminding me how unkind it was to keep things from my husband. I shook my head, as though to erase the thought. “You’ll be okay with my mom this morning?”
“Of course,” Jake said. “You won’t be gone too long, right?”
“I hope not.” When I realized that I’d have to go into the office, I had toyed with the idea of texting Andrew and asking if I could come over after I’d finished working, but I managed to fight off the urge. I absolutely could not make a habit of seeing him without Jake knowing about it. The one time I had weighed heavily on my heart.
“What time are Charlotte and Richard coming over tonight?”
“Around six, I think.” We celebrated Independence Day with them almost every year, unless Charlotte had an event planned that she couldn’t miss. This year, she was relying on her staff to handle the three parties she’d been hired to organize, and we were going to have dinner, then head to Gasworks Park in Seattle to watch the fireworks with the kids, as was our tradition.
The
re was a sudden, sharp rap on our bedroom door that startled us both. “My iPad stopped working,” my mother’s voice said. “The screen went black. Is Jake up, yet?” For a smart woman, my mom was hopeless when it came to technology.
Jake and I held each other’s gaze and I sighed. “Sorry,” I whispered, with a shrug, before heading into the bathroom.
“I’m up, Sheila,” Jake called out. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a few, okay?”
“Okay!” my mom said. “Thank you!”
I stood in front of the sink and reached for my toothbrush. But before I could, Jake came through the threshold and grabbed me. He spun me around and lifted me up onto the long counter, his hands squeezing the flesh of my hips.
“Well, hello there,” I said, smiling. “You know I have to get ready, right? My clients are going to be at the office in an hour.”
“I know,” he said. He leaned down and nuzzled my neck with his lips. “Mmm. You feel so good.” He pressed his hips between my legs. He was already hard. Instantly, I flashed on how Andrew had felt inside me. I tried to push the memory down. I wanted to focus on Jake.
I reached for him and jerked down his boxers. His skin was hot, and his cock twitched at my touch. I’d come with Andrew on the phone the other night, but Jake and I hadn’t had sex after that. The orgasm I’d had while Andrew whispered in my ear had been good, but I still craved the ever-so-satisfying sensation of being filled up and fucked.
“I want you to fuck Andrew again,” Jake murmured as he moved his fingers between my legs. “Jesus, you’re already wet.”
I grabbed his hand and brought his fingers to my mouth, staring into his blue eyes as I sucked them clean. “You do that to me,” I said, when I was done. You, and not Andrew, I thought. My husband. I didn’t want to talk about Andrew. I didn’t want to think about him.
And then, as though to prove this to myself, I shifted so that Jake could enter me. I wrapped my legs around his waist. “Fuck me,” I said, linking my fingers behind his strong neck. “Make me come.” I tried to ignore the fact that I’d said those last words to Andrew a couple of days ago. I tried to ignore the feeling that I wished Jake didn’t allow me to always tell him what to do. I wanted him to defy me—to take what he wanted without asking. Like Andrew had.
Jake lifted my hips and held them, moving me up and down on top of him.
“Fuck, yes, just like that,” I hissed, and only a few moments later I closed my eyes and shuddered, and then we both lost control.
Jake set me back onto the countertop, his face buried in my neck. “Way better pick me up than coffee,” he mumbled through his ragged breath.
“Blasphemy,” I said, running my fingernails gently up and down his naked back. He smelled of sweat and sleep; when I kissed his chest, I tasted salt. I pushed him away, but with a smile. “Now, get out of here. I need to get ready.”
Jake stepped back, and then over to the sink next to mine. “Have you heard from him at all?” he asked as he turned on the faucet and began to clean himself up, and I knew he was referring to Andrew.
“I haven’t checked our email,” I said, simply. It was true, I hadn’t. But I didn’t mention the texts. He was aware that I occasionally communicated with the other men we’d been with via text, but only to set up a time to meet.
“Maybe you should reach out to him,” Jake suggested as he grabbed his toothbrush. “Let him know your mom is here, so you can’t see him, but you want to again soon.”
“I’m not worried about it,” I said, as lightly as I could. But I was worried about Andrew. I was worried about how much I thought about him. How many times a day I imagined fucking him.
Jake hesitated, looking at me in the mirror, searching my face. “I thought you had fun.”
“I did.” I looked away from his observant gaze. “I think I’m just distracted by having my mom here. I’m not really in the mood.”
He lifted a single eyebrow. “You certainly seemed in the mood a few minutes ago.” His blue eyes sparkled, and I smiled.
“Only for you,” I told him, and the sharp squeeze of remorse that I felt inside my chest quelled any lingering doubts. That was it. I couldn’t keep hiding the truth from my husband. There was no way I could keep seeing Andrew. I needed to do what I’d meant to when I went to his office. I needed to end it. And soon.
Twenty-Two
I managed to fend off Andrew’s texts over the holiday weekend, claiming that work and family kept me too busy to talk with him.
“When can I see you again?” he kept asking, often enough that I began to feel a little annoyed. This was exactly why I couldn’t continue anything with him—he wanted something that I couldn’t give.
“Friday afternoon,” I finally told him. “Three-thirty. At your office.” I had to meet clients at four-fifteen; I wasn’t going to give him enough time to try and talk me out of my decision. And I definitely wasn’t going to wear a skirt.
“You want to fuck in my office again,” he texted back. “I knew that you would.”
I didn’t respond. Now that I’d made up my mind to end things, his bordering-on-cocky speech had become more of an irritant, like he was trying too hard. He was a bit of an ass, really. He didn’t seem to possess an ounce of the kindness Jake had shown me over the years. I deleted the most recent string of texts between us—the last thing I needed was for Jake to pick up my phone when the screen was still open and read them.
I made it through the rest of the week, keeping myself occupied with work, and ferrying Tucker around to the various places he wanted to go. He would start driver’s ed in the fall, and I couldn’t wait for him to have the same ability that Ella did, now, to get herself where she needed to be on her own. So far, this summer, that had included working at Olive Garden at night, sleeping in, and then spending most of the day at the Queen’s Ridge community pool with Bentley to “work on their tans,” a.k.a., check out and flirt with cute boys. (Bentley’s relationship with Riley had been short-lived, as high school romances usually are, so she and Ella were both single.)
“When’s Grandma going home?” Tuck asked me on Friday around two, as I drove him to one of Peter’s job sites in Maple Valley, where he was getting paid to pick up scrap lumber and sheetrock. Jake, Peter and I had all agreed that Tuck, like Ella, would need to pay a thousand dollars toward his first car, so he was spending the summer working for his dad, making as much money as possible so he could afford the older, but sporty, two-door Acura he had his eye on.
“I’m not sure, kiddo,” I said. “Don’t you like having her around?”
“I guess,” Tuck said. “I mean, I love her and everything, but she’s never stayed with us so long.”
“She’s going through a hard time,” I said. “It’s not always easy being a grown up.”
Tuck made a non-committal noise and was silent for the rest of the ride, staring out the window at the lush, green birch trees that lined the winding road we drove upon. We rounded a sharp, hairpin corner, and I pulled into the driveway that led to the massive residential development Peter was in charge of building. My eyes darted around, searching for signs posted by the realtor responsible for listing the properties, but saw none. Tuck and I got out of the car and headed toward Peter’s truck, where he was standing alone, looking over a set of blueprints.
“Hey,” he said when he saw us approach. He wore Carhartt overalls and a white hard hat, the latter that he took off and set on the open tailgate. “Ready to work, son?” he asked Tuck, who nodded. Peter pointed at a man standing in front of a half-built house about a hundred feet from us. “Go talk to Mateo. He’ll get you started.”
Tuck nodded again and took off down the street.
“Bye, honey!” I called out, and he gave me a half-assed wave, but kept going. I smiled at Peter. “He’s such a respectful boy. So kind and considerate of his mother.”
Peter let loose a laugh, almost choking as he took a sip of water from a two-liter bottle. When we were together, and he had to work
long days for someone else during the hot summer, I used to fill those bottles for him at night and put them in the freezer, so the water would slowly melt, staying cool throughout the day for him to drink. I felt a twinge of nostalgia for how innocent we’d been back then. How little we’d known about each other, or ourselves.
I made a visor out of my hand and looked around the development. The houses were in various stages of completion, their wooden skeletons illuminated by the midday sun. “Who’s the listing agent?”
“I was actually going to talk to you about that,” Peter said, wiping away the sweat from his forehead. It was unusually warm for early July in Seattle, already over eighty degrees. I was happy Tuck had dressed appropriately in shorts and a tank top, even if I couldn’t convince him to wear sunscreen. “The developer dumped the guy he was working with,” Peter continued. “I gave him your name yesterday.”
“Wow,” I said. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”
He shrugged. “You sell a lot of houses. And it’s good for me if he ends up being happy.”
I cringed, internally, at his reasoning, but managed to keep smiling. “I hope it works out. This is going to be a huge neighborhood.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Kari feeling?” It was always a little awkward making small talk with my ex, but I felt like it was important for our kids for us to be able to converse. And if I remembered right, Kari had suffered from some pretty intense morning sickness when she was pregnant with Ruby.
“Puking a lot,” Peter said, frowning. “Cranky as hell.”
“Sorry to hear it.” I paused. “Are you sure it’s okay for Tuck to be there this weekend?”
“He helps her with Ruby,” Peter said. “It’s a good thing.” He glanced over to where Tuck now stood. Our son looked like he was in the middle of telling Mateo an animated story, waving his hands and acting out some kind of dance. “I’d better go make sure he gets to work.”
