Hooked

by Gina Messina

  While Charlie nervously waited for Sean to take a seat opposite her, she let her mind wander to the day they had found that very apartment and how they’d both commented on how quaint the little built-in table in the corner of the kitchen was. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat at that table with Sean because he never made it home in time for dinner. But, then it all came flooding back. It had been an early summer evening. She’d been interviewing babysitters for Layla, just after her first birthday. Sean came home early that night, which was highly unusual for him, and stepped into the kitchen just as she was asking the girl about her prior experience.

  “So, Lana, are you certified in CPR?” she’d inquired, trying to act and sound like a responsible parent.

  Sean, however, had no interest in hearing about her life-saving skills. Instead, he sidled up to the table and let his eyes rove slowly over the girl before sliding into the booth next to her. Even though she was sitting down, he’d been able to do a full body scan.

  “How old are you?” he questioned, before Lana could answer Charlie’s question about CPR.

  “Eighteen, but I’ve had loads of experience babysitting back in Iowa and I practically raised my two younger sisters,” she answered with confidence.

  Charlie knew right at that moment that Lana would never be working for them. There was no way she was going to hire an eighteen-year-old college freshman who looked like she’d just stepped out of a cornfield and was legally capable of consensual sex with her potential boss. Her face was sun-kissed and peppered with tiny freckles and her eyes were the color of silky corn flowers. Plus, there was no nanny-cam in the world that would stop Sean from making a move on Lana the minute Charlie left the apartment to go shopping.

  Charlie made up her mind the very second Sean asked her how old she was. She remembered a conversation she’d overheard when she was about twelve. It had been between her mother and a close neighborhood friend who was complaining about her husband and the fling he was having with their children’s nanny.

  “Trust me,” her mother’s friend had said, “Never hire a nanny unless she has a fat ass and a butter face. What man wants to shag the nanny if her ass is the size of the Lone Star State and her face looks like something out of Grimm’s Fairytales?” Charlie hadn’t understood what a ‘butter face’ was until many years later when she was in college and overheard a joke that put the phrase into perspective. She’d been standing in line in the cafeteria when she heard some guy talking to his friend about a date he’d gone on the night before.

  “She had a really hot body, too bad she had a butter face!” he cackled. “Get it? But-her-face...” They both broke out in laughter and then jumped in the air and did a full body slam before high-fiving one another. Charlie finally understood what her mother’s friend had been talking about. And Lana definitely didn’t have a butter face or a fat ass. In fact, her ass was so tight, one could arguably have bounced a quarter off it. Unlike her own which was wide and bore stretch marks that mapped out the birth of Layla like the Rocky Mountain state.

  Two days later, Charlie hired a fat Jamaican woman named Bertha who was old enough to be Sean’s mother. Even her name sounded obese when it rolled off Sean’s tongue. Although Bertha did, in fact, have a massive bosom, Charlie wasn’t worried because it sagged nearly to the ground. Layla took to her right away, laying her tiny head on the woman’s soft, ample chest and falling asleep against her comforting breasts. Sean never paid Bertha any mind except to tell her that Layla needed a diaper change when he caught a whiff of something funky going on.

  After Sean brought his last piece of luggage to the door, he walked into the kitchen and took a seat opposite her. “Charlotte, I think we should try to be civilized, at least for the sake of Layla. So what do you say? Can we do this the right way and just get on with it?” he questioned then folded his hands neatly in front of him.

  “I’ll tell you what Sean,” she calmly spoke, much to her surprise, especially after calling to mind the way he’d undressed that girl Lana with his eyes at the very table they were seated at now, “I think I’ve been more than civilized. During our entire marriage and before, too. You’re the one who has acted like an animal. You just uncontrollably pull your cock out on a whim! Do you go around thinking: Oh, there goes another hole? I don’t know whom it belongs to but I think I’ll just fuck it! You have no self-control or empathy. These are the things that make us human, Sean. The things that separate us from the animals. You’re like a dog in heat, for God’s sake! Mounting any bitch that roams the street! Why you’d probably mount poor little Coco here, if she was a tad bit bigger and didn’t have such god awful breath!” Charlie noticed Sean’s eyes dart involuntarily over to Coco, so she wrapped her arms protectively around the little dog just in case she’d given him any ideas that hadn’t crossed his mind before.

  “Charlie, I’m still waiting. When did Sean ask you to have sex with him?” Dr. Harrison eagerly asked.

  “Well, it was during a brief conversation at the kitchen table when I sensed he was getting turned on. I was complaining about his constant fucking around. All that talk about fucking and holes and maybe even animals, too! I really can’t remember exactly, but he kept eyeing Coco, our Bichon. It was creepy the way that he leered at her! Not in a million years would I have thought he was into bestiality, but who really knows what he’s capable of now?” she said despairingly. “I swear; I wasn’t imagining it! He was getting turned on by the dog!”

  Neither one of them knew what to think about that. Thankfully, Charlie had no experience with that taboo practice and she was fairly sure Dr. Harrison didn’t either. Unless, of course, she had a patient who got off on having sex with animals.

  “Anyway, right after our conversation, he leaned across the table and stared me right in the eyes.”

  Charlie relayed that entire conversation, verbatim, while Dr. Harrison listened intently.

  “Want to have sex?” he had pointedly asked. “You know, for old times’ sake?”

  Charlie stiffened. Then before she knew what was happening, Sean leapt over the table and planted a kiss smack on the center of her mouth. For the tiniest of moments, she let her lips linger on his, before she snapped back to reality and screamed out in disgust, “Absolutely not! What is WRONG with you? Are you fucking mental?”

  “It’s just sex. It doesn’t really mean anything,” he calmly stated back, as if he’d just asked her what the weather forecast was for the following week.

  “That’s the problem, Sean! It never means anything to you!” she shrieked, while wishing that it hadn’t meant anything to her either because he looked really handsome and vulnerable, sitting there; and, truth be told, she hadn’t had sex in ages. Charlie actually couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex!

  Was it the night of my thirtieth birthday when I fucked so many men that I eventually lost count? She mulled this thought over in her mind after realizing how long it had been and started counting on her fingers. But then Charlie had to count on her toes, too, because ten fingers were just not enough digits!

  “Listen, Sean. Let me make something perfectly clear. I will never have sex with you again. Not for all the money in the world,” she reiterated while ignoring her racing heart and making sure to keep her voice calm and steady. She wanted Sean to know she was serious, deadly serious. It felt exhilarating to speak so plainly and confidently and in doing so she experienced a momentary sense of control. She placed Coco on the kitchen floor and got up from the table, then made her way to the front door. “I need you to leave,” she asserted while reaching for the doorknob with her now-sweaty hand. As soon as he left, Charlie called Jane to tell her what happened.

  “Janie, I think Sean’s into bestiality,” she relayed with such a rush of emotion, Janie had to ask her to slow down. “I’m serious! I thought he was going to grab Coco and start dry humping her right in the kitchen! We both know how partial he is to having sex on the kitchen floor!” she said with extra disgust
in her voice before reminding her friend about the nasty incident with Lizbeth and the Sub-Zero.

  “Oh my God, Charlie!” Jane responded, “I knew he was fucked up the first time I laid eyes on him. You just can’t make this shit up! You better talk to your attorney and seek full custody of that poor little dog!”

  After hearing all of the specifics of that conversation, Dr. Harrison seemed relieved. “Well, I’m glad you did the right thing, Charlie. That would have been a real set back.”

  “When I refused, he glared at me in a new way. Almost as if I’d finally grown a backbone. I felt a rush of power when I noticed a hint of respect in his eyes, and that’s something that I’ve never seen before…at least not when it came to the opposite sex. I know he fully expected me to take him up on his offer. I may be desperate but I’m not that hard up!”

  Charlie remembered how she felt herself exhaling when he walked out the front door. It was almost as if she’d been holding her breath under water.

  “When was the last time you had sex with Sean?”

  Charlie didn’t want to answer that question so she just ignored it. For some reason, it seemed overly personal. Some things were better left unsaid.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “How can you live the high life if you don’t wear high heels?”

  Sonia Rykiel

  “Let’s try to get through this without the crutch of a chemical substance,” Dr. Harrison perceptively noted when she eyed Charlie digging into her bag for her pills and reaching for her water bottle. Charlie was sure that if her doctor knew it was half-full of vodka she would have committed her right away, or, at the very least, stop renewing her monthly Xanax prescriptions.

  “Sometimes I just need to dull the ache,” she pled. She took a tiny sip from the bottle and hoped the smell of alcohol would be masked by the perfume she’d put on that morning.

  “Let me ask you a question before we begin,” Dr. Harrison thoughtfully said.

  “Go right ahead! It’s not like anything I’ve ever done has stopped you from asking,” she cried, feeling the fiery warmth of the vodka beginning to make its way down to her belly. “Fire away!”

  “How do you think Sean views you today?”

  “Needy and broken and fat,” she replied without a second of hesitation.

  “And how do you believe he saw you on that night?”

  “Needy and broken and skinny,” she snorted out without a moment of uncertainty. “Sean likes me needy and skinny,” she announced, pulling her shirt down to cover the roll of doughy flesh that encircled her waist and then mentally prepared herself for the nosedive she was about to take into the deep end of her life.

  “Tell me about Lexie.”

  “Lexie?” Charlie echoed with a sour grimace.

  “Yes, Lexie,” Dr. Harrison repeated, flipping through the many pages in her notebook. So she has been keeping diligent records? Charlie concluded when her doctor took close to five minutes to find the notation she was looking for.

  “You mentioned once before that she was a turning point.”

  “I did?” Charlie remarked, feigning ignorance. She knew exactly what she had said and why she had said it, but for some reason, she wanted Dr. Harrison to work hard for an answer. It was a game she suddenly wanted to play with her shrink, similar to the mind games Sean liked to play with her.

  “Yes…you mentioned Lexie played an instrumental part in your marriage,” she explained before adding, “Your words, not mine,” and pointing to an underlined passage in her notebook.

  Charlie shrugged her shoulders, pretending to be unaffected by the mention of Lexie’s name, when in reality, every time she heard it, tiny ripples of pleasure still coursed through her body.

  “We were celebrating the one-year anniversary of the night we met. A workmate of Sean’s had invited us to go to the trendy Marquee nightclub on 10th Avenue. I was so excited to be meeting one of his friends and more than ready for a night out on the town after holing up in my bed for nights on end with Sean. I mean really! How much fucking can you do before it gets boring? There are only so many positions and all the toys started to look alike. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t complaining about the sex, it’s just…I wanted to interact with people. It felt lonely sometimes with only Sean and a vibrator for company.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  “I spent hours sifting through my closet for the perfect outfit to wear. It was the first time I’d been asked to meet a friend of his and it made me anxious. I wanted Sean to be proud of me.”

  Charlie recalled the vintage Pucci mini-dress she decided to wear. It hugged her body in all the right places and was sexy without being trampy. The Jimmy Choo stilettos she paired with it were out of this world. Hot pink strappy peep toes with a two-inch platform and a six-inch heel that was encrusted with hundreds of tiny white beads.

  She had felt like a million bucks when she stood on the corner with her hand in his while they hailed down a cab. Sean had looked as good as she had, with a navy blazer and white buttoned down shirt that was slightly open at the neck. His black jeans fit him perfectly, too, making his legs and ass look toned and muscular.

  When they got to the Club, she could feel the excitement brewing among the crowd in line. The air was buzzing with electricity, humming with anticipation. Sean grabbed her hand and muscled his way to the front of the line, then nodded to one of the bouncers as if they were old friends. He looked Charlie over approvingly and nodded, then lifted up the red velvet rope and let them through. It had made her feel special-someone deemed worthy of entering and she was certain it had been her Jimmy Choo’s that tipped the scales in their favor. When they got inside, there was a concrete bar that wrapped its way around both sides of the room and an elevated catwalk where professional go-go dancers were strutting their stuff.

  “We were meeting his friend at Marquee. I’d never been there before, but Sean would go often with clients and he always claimed it was the best nightclub in the city. Anyway, when we went inside, there were girls wearing G-strings and crystal pasties that were dancing on a platform high above the bar. The music was blasting and there were hundreds of strobes flashing that created prisms of light that bounced off the dancer’s bodies. When Sean pulled me closer to the bar, I could tell he was watching me while I was watching them. What a cocky grin he had on his face.”

  Charlie looked up at Dr. Harrison and saw that she had her undivided attention.

  “We ordered a drink and then I asked him when his friend was coming. He just shrugged his shoulders. He never took his eyes off one of the blonde dancers. She was so tiny, she looked like a waif and she kept gyrating her hips suggestively at him. I could tell he was attracted to her, even though I never would have guessed she was his type. Not in a million years.”

  “And, what type would that be?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I always figured he was attracted to women who were …well, more like me. Classy and sophisticated with a great sense of style. I mean, she was wearing pasties, for Christ sake, and had spiky cropped blonde hair that looked like it had been over processed. I do have to admit she had great legs, though. The way he was looking at them made me uncomfortable.”

  Charlie could hear Sean’s voice in her head.

  “I knew you’d enjoy seeing the girls dance,” he had murmured into her ear and then let his fingers briefly graze her ass. “I bet you're getting excited.”

  Charlie started to feel apprehensive, even though he hadn't been far off the mark. She had been getting turned on. She stood next to him and studied the way the girls seductively moved their hips and shimmied up against one another and knew she would never be able to dance like that, no matter how much she practiced in front of the mirror. The later it got, she kept wondering where Sean’s friend was, after all, he was the one who had invited them out. But Sean didn’t seem concerned or even worried. In fact, his eyes were glued to the tiny blonde dancer’s long legs and not the door. At one point, Charl
ie squinted her eyes and was certain that she saw them share a meaningful look.

  Charlie proceeded to tell Dr. Harrison every juicy detail she could remember about that night, which took up the whole hour and then some! Her doctor was so engrossed, she only interrupted her once or twice to ask a question or make a comment and didn’t even warn her when their time was almost up.

  Charlie had been grateful when the dancers took a break. At least, Sean would focus his attention on her again! But, just as she was about to ask him about his friend, for the third time, and suggest that he give him a call, the waif-like blonde made her way to their side. Charlie was speechless when he leaned into the girl and gave her a big hug followed by an intimate kiss on her mouth. Is this the friend Sean wanted me to meet? And if so, since when do friends kiss each other on the lips?

  “Charlotte, this is Lexie,” he had introduced. Charlie quickly recovered from the shock and extended her hand. But, Lexie just let out a short laugh, waving her hand away and hugged her instead. Charlie knew there was something she should have uttered, like, “Who the fuck are you and why are you kissing my boyfriend?” but just offered a barely audible “Hi,” instead.

  “So Lexie was the friend Sean wanted you to meet?” Charlie nodded and then admitted to her that when Lexie had hugged her, she had smelled all warm and fragrant and deeply of sex.

  “I’ve heard so much about you, Charlotte,” Lexie purred into her ear, then took Charlies’ hand in her own and gave it a soft squeeze.

  “Happy anniversary,” Sean crooned, giving her a contrite smile. He then put an arm around each of their shoulders and guided them through the sea of sweaty bodies and toward the nearest exit.

  “Your anniversary gift was a threesome?” Dr. Harrison interrupted, a disbelieving look covered her face.

  I don't get why she’s surprised. After everything I’ve told her about Sean, this shouldn’t come as a shock.