by Alexis Gold
Armando had his table folded and was edging along the wall past Roman toward the front door in record time. He vanished and Roman had a feeling the little green car would be gone when he got back to the front of the house.
He turned and looked at his wife. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" he repeated, yelling at her.
She shook her head and held her hands up to him. "Nothing! It was nothing, he was just massaging me and it got a little... uh... it just sort of happened, but it was just this once and nothing like that has ever happened with anyone else before, ever!" She nodded and stood there nude before him.
He was thoroughly disgusted, but he knew in his heart that he had no room at all to pass judgment on her. She didn't have a child outside of their marriage. Something that her friend Amanda had said to him at the party when she tried to seduce him, came back to him then.
Roman took a step toward her, his eyes sharp and piercing as he watched her face. "I heard from one of your friends that we have an open marriage. I heard that you sleep around quite a bit. Is that true? Are you seeing anyone outside of our marriage? Are you sleeping with other men?"
She paused for a long moment, looking as though she was carefully weighing her answer, but then she shook her red curls and said softly, "No, of course not. No. It's like I said, it was just this once. We didn't even really do much, it just happened right when you came in."
He looked at the floor where the massage table had been and then looked back up at her. There were three used condoms lying there, and none of them had been the one that Armando was wearing when Denise hopped off him.
"Just this once, huh?" he asked in disgust. "Don't ever do it again."
He turned and walked out of the pool house, leaving her standing there speechless, looking after him.
He got back into his car and drove to his office with a million thoughts and feelings rushing through him. She'd been screwing her masseur. It obviously wasn't her first time with him. No man goes around with four condoms in his wallet.
Armando had known he'd be busy with her for a while, and if Denise had provided them, that meant that she had a box of them there at the house. Condoms were something she didn't use with him because they never had sex anymore, and when they had been intimate during their early years of marriage, she'd been on the pill, so they didn't use condoms then, either.
There would have been no reason for her to have a box of them at the house, unless she regularly had lovers there. Whatever the truth of it was, it wasn't their first time together. Roman was thoroughly sickened by it, and more than anything, he wished that he could have found out some other way than by catching them in the act, because he knew he would never get that memory or scene out of his head, and it was one he wanted to forget as soon as he saw it.
He wondered if Amanda had been right, and if Denise had been screwing around with other men for a while. She wasn't going to tell him, so that only left him wondering, and angry with her.
He realized that he couldn't get angry with her or try to chastise her in any way, because of Cami and Emma, and it filled him with doubt and regret that he was in such a sham of a marriage.
It stayed on his mind all afternoon as he worked, and when he went home that night, she met him in the foyer and asked him to talk with her. At first, he didn't want to, but then he knew that if he was going to have to ask her to understand about Emma, he was going to have to take as much as he gave. He followed her into their library and closed the door behind them.
They sat across from each other on the chairs in the large room, and Denise started talking to him right away.
"Roman, I'm sure today was hard for you, but we need to work this out." She looked at him with wide eyes and some emotion that closely resembled fear and panic.
Roman wanted to yell at her. He wanted to be angry with her and shake her, he wanted to express his confusion, hurt, and anger at her, but all he could think of was how he was going to tell her about Emma, and he knew that he had no right at all to any of what he wanted to do.
"How long has this been going on, Denise?" he asked quietly, trying to keep his emotions in check.
She shook her red head adamantly. "Just this once!" She spoke in a rush.
He leveled his gaze at her. "Denise, I'm not stupid."
She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap. "Well, maybe one other time."
He turned his face from her and sighed loudly. "We aren't going to get anywhere with this conversation if you don't start telling me the truth,” he said in a monotone.
Denise rolled her eyes and slumped her shoulders.
Roman looked directly at her again. "How long have you been sleeping with the masseur?”
She bit her lip. "A couple of years," she answered quietly.
He was shocked. He stared at her in amazement. "Were you sleeping with him while you were still sleeping with me in my room?"
She paused and then shook her head. "No."
He felt almost certain that she was lying.
Roman leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "Are there others? Have there been others?"
She shook her head again. "No!" She said it too quickly.
He stared into her relentlessly.
She sighed. "Yes."
Roman didn't look away or flinch at all. "How many?"
Denise continued to chew on her lower lip. "Just... a few."
He shook his head slowly. "Anyone I know?"
She shook her head. "No one you know, really."
He leaned back into the sofa and sighed. "Why?" He eyes were steady on her.
"I don't know. It just kind of happened, I guess."
He shook his head, wondering again why they were still married. "Perhaps we should think about just ending this marriage. You don't love me, you don't want to be with me, and you're obviously interested in other men. I can't imagine there's any reason at all why we should stay together." Roman rubbed his hands over his forehead and closed his eyes for a minute as a headache began to form at the front of his head.
She almost jumped off the sofa toward him, stretching her hands out in front of her, waving them at him. "No! No, Roman, I don't want to do that! I want to stay here with you and be your wife. We need to try to work on things! We need to try to save our marriage! I just made a mistake!" She got off her sofa and rushed over to him to sit beside him.
It had been ages since she was so close to him and he turned his head sideways and looked at her a little awkwardly. "Why should we save it?" he asked with a wary sigh. "It doesn't seem like it's worth saving."
She leaned close to him and wrapped one arm around his shoulders, laying her head on his arm. "We had a good marriage, when we first got married. We could have that again, baby, we could work it out! I don't want a divorce. I don't want to leave this house, or leave you." She set her hand on his knee and began to rub it gently.
He looked sidelong at her again and wondered what she was up to. It made him feel a little guilty that she was talking about fixing their marriage and all he could think of was what purpose she had behind it.
He looked down at her hand massaging his knee and his thigh and almost wanted to pull her hand off him.
"Remember when we were first married?" she asked, looking up and him and smiling. "It was so good. We were in love, we were constantly with each other. You couldn't get enough of me!" She grinned at him.
He did remember. He remembered quite clearly, and he knew that things hadn't been that way in a very long time. He sighed. "I don't think we could ever get that back again."
She reached her hand further up his thigh to his groin and was about to start massaging him there when he grasped her wrist and pushed her hand away from him.
"Don't do that. You were with another man a few hours ago. The sight of you screwing him in my pool house is still fresh in my mind." He stood up and ran his hand through his hair, as his headache continued building steadily.
She stood up and went to him, placi
ng her hand on his back. "Roman, please, let's just try to give this another chance. Let's work on it. Our marriage is worth working on!" She pleaded with him.
He turned and stared at her. "Our marriage wasn't worth anything a few hours ago when you were romping with your masseur. Why do you suddenly want to save it?"
"Because I love you and I love being your wife and I don't want to lose what we have! I just made a mistake, that's all!" She clutched both her hands at his arm, trying to get his full attention, but he turned away, his head distracting him and his heart heavy.
"A mistake? For a couple of years? With who knows how many men?" He turned his head and looked over his shoulder at her.
"What is it that you want to save? We don't even share a room anymore. I don't even feel like we're friends anymore." He walked away from her. "It just seems like it's a lost cause. Like we're a lost cause. I don't feel like there's anything between us worth saving."
Denise rushed to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him from the back. "Please! Please, please give it some thought. Let us have another chance! I'm sorry, I just slipped up, but I don't want a divorce. Let's work it out, please!" She hugged him tight.
It had been so long since she had hugged him or given him any affection that it just felt surreal to him, not warm or meaningful to him at all. He pulled away from her and shook his pounding head.
"I don't know what we're going to do. I can't see a reason for us to be together and you apparently don't want to see us apart." He sighed deeply again. "I've got to get out of here. I've got a lot to think about."
He pulled her arms from around him and walked out the door, picking his keys up along the way. She called out to him as he left, but he didn't turn to look at her. He got into his car and drove without thinking about where he was going or what he was doing.
He was no saint, he knew that; having a child outside of marriage made him no better than her, but he couldn't imagine what reason she may have for wanting to stay with him. She didn't love him, and if she did, he certainly hadn't felt it from her at all in any recent memory.
Cami and Emma crossed his mind as they frequently did. He didn't know how he was going to explain Emma to Denise, or how he was going to keep things platonic with Cami. They'd said they would work on it together, and he felt like maybe they could, but being with her the way he was when he kissed her, it was overwhelming for him.
It was powerful and passionate, and it was nothing like his marriage at all. He didn't want to have an affair and a mistress. He didn't want to have a little secret family on the side. He wanted an honest and straightforward life that he could be proud of and grow into his old years with.
He just didn't see that happening with Denise. What would he do, be the ignorant fool for the rest of his life? Play second fiddle to a long string of lovers and secret affairs? How would he ever be able to trust her again? Then again, how could he ever ask her to trust him as well? It was a two way street. Maybe they were both broken. Maybe they both needed to find a way, either completely apart, or find a way back to one another again.
Her hand on his thigh had reminded him of how things used to be when they were first married. They were so hot for each other. They almost never kept their hands off each other. They were always together, they always had fun and loved being around one another, and then the years had tapered their love to a standstill, and now here they were.
He was fairly certain that the passion they had once shared could not be regained or recovered. He didn't want her as he used to want her, once upon a time. He was sure that she didn't want him the way that she used to want him.
What nagged at him the most was the curiosity of her wanting to stay married to him. Why? What good purpose could their continued marriage possibly serve? He wondered about it, turning the thoughts over and over in his mind as he parked the car. He looked up and realized he had driven to the marina without even thinking about where he was going. He climbed out of his car and looked at all of the boats floating serenely before him.
He might not have meant to go to the marina, or perhaps he had meant to subconsciously, but however it had happened, he knew the best thing for him to do right then was to get out away from all of his worries and lose himself in the billowed sails of a boat.
He locked his car and headed down the dock to one of his smaller boats. In a matter of minutes, he had the boat ready to go and was maneuvering it out into the bay. The rush of the wind in his hair and the salt on his lips seemed to steal away all of the confusion and pain of the day. Each passing moment gave him more peace and serenity. He sailed out over the deep blue waters, past the glistening city, and smiled in wonder that the city could seem so serene from a distance.
Roman guided his boat further out from the city and beneath the beautiful towering red pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge. He made a wish for himself as he crossed beneath it from the bay into the ocean. He wished that everything in his life would find a way to the best possible outcome. The wind whipped around him and he pushed the little boat further out into the beginning of the Pacific where it washed up on California's golden shoreline.
His boat was a sturdy little vessel and it slipped through the waves as he sailed along, and the land behind him grew smaller and smaller. He saw porpoises arcing out of the waves and playing at the front of the boat, racing each other and splashing sea spray over the hull. He laughed at them and breathed in relief. It was good to laugh. It was good to feel so free and released from the stress that had been binding him so tightly.
Roman watched the porpoises and played with them, and then he watched incredulously as a pair of whales slapped their tails down in the water and breached lightly near him. He was so drawn in by them and enraptured with his encounter that he didn't see the wall of fog that closed in around him until it was too late to get out of it. He pulled on a life vest and with his navigation instruments, began to sail the boat back toward the coastline.
He sailed slowly and carefully, but as he was going along, completely shrouded in fog, he felt anxiety building up. His navigation instruments seemed to falter, and he felt his stomach twist in a knot. Roman was trying to get them to work again when a loud bang sounded and the boat jolted sharply. He lost his balance and fell to the floor as the boat rocked and swayed in the growing waves. He'd hit something, but the fog was so thick that he couldn't see what it was.
He was going to check the boat for damage when he heard a noise that made his stomach fall to his feet. It was the sound of rushing water. He opened the cabin door and was panicked immediately. A geyser of seawater was rushing into the cabin from a hole in the hull of the boat. There was no way to stop it from sinking. He closed the door and radioed immediately for help.
There were two boats that responded and he prayed that one of them would get to him before it was too late. He zipped his keys, wallet, and phone into a waterproof pocket on his jacket and tried to keep the boat as much afloat as possible as it tossed and wrestled in the waves.
The front of the boat began to dip into the water and fear raced through his every vein. His muscles tightened and his heart felt as though it would pound out of his chest. His stomach twisted at the sight of his little boat as it gave way to the mighty sea, but there was nothing at all that could be done about it. He radioed again and both boats responded that they were en route and trying to locate him.
The fog was like a blanket, covering him so thickly that he could barely see the front of the boat anymore, and then suddenly there was no front of the boat, there were only cold waves of steely gray that washed up to the wheel he was holding tightly to, and suddenly he had to make a decision.
He had to let go of the boat or go down with it. Roman clambered to the topmost part of the railing at the back of the boat and dove from it into the waves that crashed around him.
The water was like a solid wall of ice knocking the wind out of him and cutting at his skin and muscles. It thrust him back and forth in the current and
all he could see were shades of light and dark green as the ocean swallowed him. He saw a glimpse of his boat as it sank beneath him and vanished into the black void of the sea. He struggled to keep near the surface of the water, gasping for air when he could get it and trying to stay afloat without using too much energy. Waves washed over his face and salt water filled his eyes, nose and mouth, time and again.
His body grew stiff and cold and he began to feel heavier and heavier, and it became too difficult to try to stay afloat. His life jacket kept him near the surface, but not always immediately above water. He thought he saw a light in the distance and he called out, yelling as loudly as he could and moving his arms, but his muscles were so cold and so tight that he wasn't able to move them much at all, and his voice seemed lost in the wind and waves.
Light began to fade around him, and he felt as though the easiest thing to do would be to close his eyes and slip away from it all, and a few moments later, that's just what he did.
