The waitress was with them next, placing a huge great steak sandwich in front of Lucy, a classic burger for Hugo.
“Could you… uh… just bring me a strawberry milkshake as well?” he asked their server. As good as the burger looked, he wasn’t sure he could stomach it right now.
Left to themselves again, Lucy said, “The way her version of the fantasy has developed, it’s been different than the way yours has.”
“Of course. I wasn’t assuming she’d just suddenly latch on to this fantasy I was having,” Hugo said, pausing as the waitress laid his milkshake before him. “She started flirting with the guys around her in the bookstore, and she started imagining herself with that Connor guy from across the street way before I ever mentioned wanting to see her sleep with someone else.”
Lucy was having no problems with her appetite—her steak sandwich had no chance. Hugo wondered where she put all the food—her frame seemed too slender to absorb that much volume.
Once her mouth was empty again, she said, “She thought you weren’t interested in her—sexually, I mean. She never doubted your love for her, after everything you did for her. But you saw her at such a low point in her life, it was really demeaning for you both when you were her caregiver—”
“No, it was just the—”
Lucy shook her head. “She made the assumption that after that, you’d never see her in the same way as before. As your loving wife, sure, but not as an attractive female.”
“I just didn’t know how to regain what we had, you know, sexually. It seemed awkward after what we went through. I was never sure she was in the mood—and then when I was certain she was in the mood, she seemed to take care of herself. She didn’t seem to want me.”
“Communication problems,” Lucy said, tearing off another hunk of steak. “Oh, once she knew you’d been secretly watching her, totally absorbed in her while you did—she was seriously happy. But before that, she did start dreaming of infidelity.”
Hugo said, “It was only a fantasy, though. She wouldn’t have acted on it.”
“Yeah—I mean, when that guy Fabian kissed her, she was totally horrified. I don’t think I ever saw her so terrified after that, before you guys talked it out. Only, now you’ve talked about her seeing other guys… her fantasy’s still there.”
Hugo wasn’t sure milkshake was compatible with beer. Maybe he just needed something a little stronger.
He sipped the sweet sugary drink, thinking about Madeleine’s conversation with Lucy when they had spoken about a “dark secret”. Was it something to do with this fantasy of hers?
As he put his glass down, he saw a startled look on Lucy’s face. He realized that he’d actually just blurted out the question now spinning around and around his mind.
“What did you say?” she asked him.
He knew he had to step carefully—he didn’t want her to know he’d overheard her private conversation with Madeleine. It wasn’t exactly ethical, though it hadn’t been his fault they’d made the assumption he’d been asleep.
As the professional spin-doctor he now was, he spun his reply to her, hushing up the part about overhearing the conversation, inferring he’d known about something for a while. “I’ve just had this feeling that something happened once, something Madeleine’s never felt able to talk to me about,” he said. “I wondered if it was some kind of fling or affair.”
Lucy’s eyes widened for just a brief moment before she concealed it, and Hugo felt as though someone had dropped a heavy hot stone in his stomach. There for the tiniest glimpse was some kind of admission that there was something in what he was suggesting.
Had Madeleine had an affair?
He felt the cold fingers of jealousy and fear now circling his heart—and yet he was almost more fearful that whatever knowledge Lucy had would reveal that he could not handle the reality of Madeleine being with another, even if he so wanted it to happen in theory.
“Seriously,” he said. “We’re sitting here waiting while she’s out dating another guy, and you’re worried about hurting my feelings telling me about some fling she’s already had?”
He could see in Lucy’s face that she wanted to tell him. It was Lucy—for God’s sake, the woman didn’t know the meaning of the word confidential. She was the biggest gossip on the East Coast.
“Something did happen, didn’t it?”
But she shook her head once. Refusal.
“Come on,” Hugo said, “It’s past history, isn’t it? Nothing will make me change my mind about her, you know, or this, or anything.”
Lucy looked regretfully up to the waitress, silently requesting the bill, and Hugo felt frustrated by her silence.
Then she said, “It’s for her to tell you.”
He said, “She did have an affair?”
“It wasn’t so much an affair as… an indiscretion.”
“When? Recently? A year ago? While we’ve been married?”
Lucy sighed. “Look, it was nothing, really. Nothing important.”
“Before we got married?”
He could see her breaking down in front of him—felt a little bad for her, in a way. Yet if she wanted to be his great supporter in all this, she couldn’t keep secrets from him like this.
She said, “Okay, something might have happened at her bachelorette party. But you really, really, have to get it from her. I didn’t even hint at anything.”
Hugo nodded. “Did she meet someone?”
Lucy tilted her head. “Maybe.”
“Did they go home together?”
“Well, we all kind of crashed back at Marie’s place.”
Hugo actually felt relieved. Things were supposed to happen on bachelorette parties. Madeleine had come back from hers glowing, and he remembered her telling him what a great time she’d had, what a wild night it had been—but they both had an unsaid understanding that she wasn’t going to fill him in on the details, and he wasn’t going to demand them. He’d been okay about that, since it had allowed him to keep quiet about his own lame bachelor party.
He had actually assumed her bachelorette night had mostly likely been little more than a normal girls’ night out, perhaps with a little more drinking than usual. He was intrigued that something more than that had actually happened.
“Tell me about him.”
“I can’t.”
“Please. Just a couple of details?”
Another sigh. It was getting to the point where she’d tell him something just to stop this line of conversation. “Not a word to her that I said anything,” she said.
“Promise.”
A small nod. “Dark hair, cute. About her age. That’s all I’m telling you.”
Hugo felt himself tingling as he sat in the booth—Madeleine had a dark secret, some kind of drunken fumble while she’d crashed overnight with her friend Marie following the bachelorette night. Well, he couldn’t be angry at that, it was even before they’d uttered their wedding vows. Sexy to think she’d kept that dirty secret so long.
“Everyone was drunk, very drunk, Hugo,” Lucy said as though in damage limitation mode.
“But she did sleep with someone else.”
“It was a mistake, that’s all. Heat of the moment.”
He could see Lucy trying to assess him as she was telling him this, examining the signs on his face about how he was really taking this, looking for the suggestions for how he would take the idea of Madeleine actually doing something with her date that evening.
Would Madeleine tell him more?
Lucy was looking awkward for the first time since he’d met her. She really did think she was getting her best friend into trouble, possibly even threatening her marriage by revealing all this stuff. Hugo gave her a break.
He said, calmly, “So now you know I’m not going to freak out about that bachelorette party all those moons ago, you can be straight with me, Luce. Madeleine’s fantasy is to actually commit adultery, right? She wants to sleep with guys and not tell me about it?”
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Lucy took a huge gulp of her cocktail. “I wouldn’t say it’s as simple as that,” she said. “I mean she does have a big urge to fulfill your fantasy, so that would mean telling you all the details, or letting you watch. She does love playing with you—teasing you, keeping you in suspense, surprising you, even shocking you, I guess.”
“But?” he assumed there was a but coming.
She nodded. “When she went out on that first date, from the website, she said it wasn’t exactly what she wanted.”
“The guy wasn’t great—I know that. But she’s found someone else now.”
Lucy shook her head. She looked straight at Hugo, her eyes so very dark. She said, “Don’t freak out that I’m telling you this, Hugo...”
“I won’t.”
His heart was thumping in his chest so hard it was a wonder it didn’t rattle the dishes.
“That first date was the only time she ever met anyone from that website.”
Hugo felt his stomach tighten. So Madeleine had been lying to him?
“So who did she go out with on Saturday? Who is she going to the symphony with right now?”
“Connor. She’s kind of been dating him a while now.”
Eleven
She saw how it hit him right in the solar plexus. She settled up the bill and escorted him to a nearby bar, pronto. He felt sick, but a shot of vodka actually helped him.
“So what, she’s already been sleeping with him, behind my back?”
“No,” Lucy shook her head. “No, they haven’t done anything yet. Really—it’s been very slow, and it’s been very casual. Just a few lunch dates, really.”
“She made it seem as though she was having lunch with guys from the website.”
“She wasn’t. It wasn’t just those dates she told you about, you know how long he’s been after her—and she’s been interested. She’s been helping him with his writing, you know, with her Small Press project.”
“She told me she didn’t want to date him. She was worried she felt too strongly about him.”
Lucy ordered a fresh round of shots. She said, “That night when she had her Internet date—you know, she walked away from that guy after the entrees?”
Hugo scratched his head. There was too much information about Madeleine’s secret side coming at him at once, hard to process. “But she was out until late that night.”
“She came ‘round to mine,” Lucy said. “Kind of upset, really. The whole Internet dating thing was not happening—she said she liked the guy, he was very friendly. But there was no chemistry whatsoever.”
“Okay, she said that afterwards.”
“But it wasn’t just that—she felt it was all kind of cheap, somehow. Meaningless. It was about her just going out and having sex with some random guy—even if she’d picked him from a line-up on a website. She knew it wasn’t going to thrill her in the way you wanted it to,” Lucy explained.
Somehow, Hugo completely understood. And he understood why she might decide to go after Connor instead—and he approved. He’d always wanted her to pursue her crush, the way the guy turned her on. But why had she felt the need to hide it?
“It was all just so flat,” Lucy said. “She didn’t want to be just a piece of meat her husband sent out to bang random guys before coming back for him to reclaim her. If she was going to be allowed to experience the joys of a new relationship, it had to be a relationship that made her feel that joy.”
“I get it,” Hugo said. “But why lie about it? I told her I’d love it if she dated Connor. We even pictured it sometimes when we made love.”
Lucy said, “It started out that night when she came over after that Internet date went so badly wrong. She was late back to you because we stayed up talking so long. She felt any date she had with a guy off that website was going to turn out the same way. It was obvious she had to date someone who actually meant something to her—but she knew your big fear was of this thing becoming more than just sex.”
“You knew she was going to start dating Connor? And that she was going to tell me she was still looking for guys on that website?”
Lucy held up her hands to protest her innocence. “We thought she could keep looking for someone on the website, just in case. But in the mean time, she could quietly explore the possibility of Connor—and whether dating him would start to make her feel more than just physical attraction to him.”
“But you’re saying nothing’s happened?”
“Not yet, not really. What happened on Saturday—that was the first time she really went with him for more than just a coffee, a lunch or a couple of drinks after work. And you know she kissed him.”
“I didn’t know it was Connor she kissed.”
“You’re angry?” Lucy asked him.
Hugo sat there staring at another shot glass full of clear liquid. He was feeling all light-headed, dizzy, but it was nothing to do with the alcohol blazing around his system. He also realized that things were all tingly between his thighs—and he was semi-erect.
He felt no hint of anger toward Madeleine.
“No. Not really. She wanted to see if dating Connor would actually be something that could damage us,” he reasoned. “So what did she find out?”
Lucy smiled, seeing that Hugo was quietly warming to the idea of his wife dating her crush. She said, “Well, she found out that Connor’s a lovely guy, but not interested in settling with one woman, let alone a married one.”
Hugo was silent a while, just drinking and contemplating.
Lucy said, “It’s not just sleeping with a guy that’s not her husband that forms the center of her fantasy, you see? It’s the sense that it’s forbidden, that she’s being bad in doing it. And that Internet date of hers offered her none of those feelings.”
“So she invents this ‘Will’ character, and she’s telling me that she might sleep with him, and then in actual fact she’ll sleep with Connor, is that it?”
Lucy said, “She wanted to make sure you were experiencing the fact of her having sex with another man for the first time—having your fantasy made real. She just didn’t feel ready to open up about doing it with Connor.”
Hugo sighed. “I guess I see the attraction to the idea that it’s forbidden, it’s not exactly what I wanted, but I can see she’s not actively trying to hurt me.”
“No,” Lucy said. “She’s definitely not trying to do that.”
“But why bother to invent the whole Will thing? She could just have kept the whole thing quiet, told me she was going out with you whenever she wanted to see him.”
“It was a possibility,” Lucy said. “But you have to see she’s conflicted—she wants the whole forbidden fruit thing, but then she also wants you to know about her, because she knows it’s your fantasy. So her idea was to pursue Connor, and have you imagine she was just going on random Internet dates.”
“But now you’re telling me all this. Does Madeleine know you’re telling me?”
Lucy took a sip of her drink, then shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
Hugo chuckled. “So explain—we’ve got time, haven’t we?”
It was past eleven o’clock by now. Hugo was acutely aware of the time, having watched the hands circulating the dial on the clock back in the diner, and now the one tucked away behind the bar, wondering every minute what Madeleine was doing, how their date was going.
Lucy said, “When we were talking after that appalling first date of hers, we kind of figured it would be nice if Madeleine could date Connor in secret, but that you would approve of it. Then she’d reveal all when she was ready.”
Hugo couldn’t help but smile. Madeleine wanted to have her cake and eat it, that was clear enough.
“So how would you engineer that?” he asked.
He felt that familiar tingle of arousal between his legs, a warm glow building inside his chest. It was actually quite hot to think about Madeleine pursuing an affair, with him finding out about it.
“You like the idea, don’t you?” Lucy said. “I can tell. You don’t have much of a poker face.”
Hugo took a huge sip of his vodka tonic. He said, “Okay, so Madeleine would have her affair—then what? She’d have you tell me about it?”
“We didn’t really come up with any kind of plan,” Lucy said. “We just left it at that—wouldn’t it be nice if she had her affair, and you had your little insights into a straying wife, albeit some time later.”
“But you’re not doing it that way?”
Lucy sipped her drink, and he could see her trying to find the words to explain herself. Finally, she said, “Okay, right now, all she knows is that I’m here helping you pass some time until her date is over. As far as she is concerned, I’m not supposed to tell you anything about the date.”
“Oh.”
Lucy continued, “But what I was supposed to do was to talk to you about hypothetical things, and make sure that you could understand her version of the fantasy—you know, in purely theoretical terms—and approve of it.”
“You were going to make me approve of her having an actual affair, thinking she wasn’t having one yet?”
“Something like that. Then if I wasn’t able to persuade you, if you really hated the idea, I’d just text her and she’d break it off with Connor until we figure out something else, something you’d be happy with.”
“But you are telling me about her actual affair.”
Lucy shrugged. “It’s not your fantasy to have it as a secret. Your fantasy is to know all about her tryst with someone else. So what if you know? The important thing is that she doesn’t know that you know.”
Hugo scratched his head. “This is in danger of turning into some kind of an SNL skit. So wait… you are going to tell me what’s happening on this date?”
Lucy laughed. “I’ll drop a few details if you want me to. I mean, that way, she gets to have her little fantasy, and you get to have yours, right?”
“Right. That does sound fair. So what’s she planning to do tonight? They’re going to the Met for a concert—I know that, she told me straight after her last date. Are they going to sleep together after that?”
Madeleine Strays: A Wife-Watching Romance Page 8
