Off Limits

by Vivian Ward

  As sweet as my wife is, she is the one and only person on this planet that I do not want to piss off or have her hold a grudge against me with because she can be very vengeful.

  Chapter 2

  Madison

  “Any plans tonight?” my co-worker April asks as we clock out together.

  I shake my head no. It’s been ages since Drew has taken me anywhere so I’d imagine it’s another night of me hanging out all alone with Dublin.

  That little green teddy bear has meant more to me in the last year or so than it did the day that Drew gave him to me. It’s also filled a void as Drew’s placeholder. Even though we don’t hang out, I at least feel like part of him is with me while I have Dublin nearby.

  When he picked me up to take me out on our very first date, he’d given me Dublin as a surprise. I’ll never forget it because it’s the sweetest thing any guy has ever done for me. To be fair, I’ve dated my fair share of losers.

  “No, I’m probably going to read a book tonight. I just bought a new one on my Kindle that I’ve been dying to read,” I tell April.

  She tips her head back, her long, red curls bouncing with each movement of her head as we walk out to our cars.

  “You read too much. My eyes would cross if I ever stared at words for as long as you do,” she says to me.

  “Are you crazy? I love reading. It’s my escape. It pulls me into someone else’s world who has problems that aren’t mine and theirs always get solved no matter what—unlike mine.”

  “Honestly,” she puts her hand on my shoulder. “I don’t even know the first thing about buying books or what to look for.”

  “Okay, now who’s the crazy one?” I mock her. “Read what you like; just search for books that look interesting.”

  “That’s the thing,” she says, opening her car door. “I don’t know what I like because I never read.”

  I toss my purse onto the passenger seat of my little Ford Focus. Drew hates my car but I love it. It gets great gas mileage and takes me from point A to B.

  His main complaint is that it breaks down all the time, and it does, but it’s always a small repair. It’s nothing he can’t fix; it’s just that he hates spending his free time working my car. I can’t really say that I blame him, though. But I love it when he gets all dirty and sweaty.

  It’s so masculine.

  It is not, however, attractive when he complains, so I usually wait until my car is making horrid sounds and is on its last leg before I mention anything to him. Then I get to listen to him cursing under his breath as he fixes stuff while I watch from the screen door.

  The two of us met online while we were playing games on a website. After chatting for almost a year, we discovered that we only lived about 90 minutes from each other. That’s when he asked me to go on my very first blind date with him.

  We agreed to meet up for lunch one day, and if things worked out, we could go to Dave and Buster's for an afternoon of games.

  I was really fucking nervous about meeting him. Who does that? Who meets a stranger from an online gaming site and says, ‘Sure, I’ll have lunch with you. You’re a totally normal guy whom I play computer games with and I’m sure you’re completely safe.’?

  But I did go, and I’m so glad I did. Drew and I might have our problems now but things weren’t always like this. Despite our issues, I love him to death.

  It wasn’t what I’d call an ordinary first date, either. The two of us had built quite a relationship chatting back and forth for what seemed like months on end, and we’d gotten to know each other pretty well.

  When he picked me up, there was a little green teddy bear buckled in the passenger seat.

  “Real cute,” I said, giggling as he scrambled to pull my car door open and I saw the little bear waiting for me.

  “Me or the bear?” he asked.

  I plucked the bear out of the front seat and studied him. He was green and furry with a lime-colored bow, big black, glassy eyes and a clover stitched to his chest; it reminds me of St. Patrick’s Day.

  “Is it for me?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  He nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “Why did you buy me a green bear?”

  It just seemed….off. I know I’d told him countless times that my favorite color is purple and my birthstone is purple, so why did he get me a green bear? It was the middle of April so St. Patty’s Day had come and went. It didn’t make sense.

  He sighed as his shoulders slumped forward while he leaned against the car door for support.

  “Actually, if you must know,” he gleamed at me. “I found a store in the mall called Primarily Purple where everything was purple. I wanted to buy you something; a token of our first date.”

  Right. Like I’m believing any of this, but he was handsome, so I kept listening.

  “But I didn’t know what to get you. And while I was in Primarily Purple, I saw this green teddy bear, and I thought it was so ironic that in Primarily Purple, there would be something….not purple, so I had to buy it.”

  Cupping my hand over my eye to prevent the orange-streaked sunset from blinding my view of him, I cocked my lips to the side because I wasn’t buying this bullshit for one minute.

  But I did love his story.

  “Mhmm, I see,” I said. “So, do you buy all of your blind dates or first dates gifts?”

  His smile spread across his face like wildfire as he towered over me. I’d later learn that he has a one-foot height advantage since I’m only 5’2—on a good day when I’m standing perfectly straight and tall.

  Those coffee-colored eyes of his were milking me for everything I had, making my knees weak and wobbly like cups of Jello.

  The sun poked through his spiked hair as he grinned down at me.

  “No, just the special ones; the ones I like, anyway. Get in,” he cocked his head, nodding toward the car.

  Smiling at this handsome, thoughtful man, I slipped inside the car still holding the bear tight as he walked around the front of the car and joined me.

  On our way to the restaurant, he stopped to get gas, and while he was inside paying for the fuel, I snooped around his car and a receipt from, “Primarily Purple.” It was for a stuffed animal for $19.99, dated from the day before.

  Our lunch was great and afterward, we had an evening of fun playing games at Dave and Buster’s before we sat down for dinner at a nearby steakhouse.

  I’m not sure what it was—I can’t pin point it—but I knew that night that I was going to marry him. That premonition came true in the following year. Neither one of us could wait any longer to get married so the next summer that we were together—our second summer—we tied the knot in my grandma’s backyard next to the oak tree that I used to swing on every day when I was a little girl.

  I still remember looking over at the swing as the justice of the peace recited the wedding vows and seeing it rock in the light summer breeze. I wondered if it wasn’t my grandpa’s way of saying that he was there with us, watching my wedding.

  But now, things aren’t so bright and sunny.

  Things are—and have been—slipping between Drew and I. I want things to get better, but I don’t know how. We hardly communicate anymore, and it’s almost like we live separate lives. He hangs out in the basement, and I stay curled up with Dublin while I read my books.

  We might talk occasionally while we have dinner or if we just happen to cross paths. The thing is, I want to talk to him but I don’t know how. I just know that I need to talk to someone. I just don’t know who because I don’t want to tell my friends my problems and I sure as hell can’t talk to him about our problems, so that leaves no one.

  I’ve considered seeing a trained professional, like a therapist or something, but I think it would be strange to go see one all by myself for our marriage problems. There’s no way that I’d ask Drew to go with me because he’d probably say no.

  Dublin is a great listener, but he doesn’t give much advice.

  Aside from m
y friends at Culliver’s, where I work, I don’t have anyone else to talk to. It’s just too embarrassing to tell anyone that my husband and I are walking a fine line and it won’t be long until one of us falls off.

  “Do you want me to grab your plate?” I ask on my way to the dishwasher.

  He’s hardly touched a thing I’ve cooked; he’s been too busy on his phone.

  Scrolling and reading.

  Scrolling and reading.

  It’s all he ever does.

  It drives me nuts. I know that I do a lot of things on my phone like play games, pay bills, and get online but he practically lives on his phone.

  Maybe it’s a good thing that we’ve never tried to start a family. If we had kids, he’d probably stare at his phone while I fed the baby as my dinner got cold or listened to how his or her day at school went, or what recent troubles they were having.

  “Drew?!” I ask again, emphasizing the D on his name to get his attention.

  “Huh?” he looks up from his screen.

  “Your plate? Do you want me to take it?”

  He glances down at his half-eaten food.

  “Oh, no. I’m going to finish the rest of this up later, I think. Thanks,” he says.

  He won’t even let me do little things for him anymore. When we first got together, I did everything for him, and he adored it. It’s just one more thing that separates us.

  Rinsing my plate in the sink, I slide it into the dishwasher and dry my hands.

  “I’m going to go read now, I guess,” I mutter into the air as though he’s not there.

  Walking past him, he hardly notices me as he scrolls through his phone.

  A quarter of the way through my book, my phone vibrates on the nightstand beside my bed. It’s a text message from a strange number that I’ve never seen before.

  I tell myself that after this chapter, I’ll check it out and maybe respond to it but for now, they can wait.

  Chapter 3

  Drew

  I’ve spent the last few hours debating whether or not I wanted to play this game with her. Like the post said, she could ignore the message or say go away, or she could respond to the ‘stranger.'

  To be honest, I’m not sure how she might respond. I could see her saying any one of those things so if I do this, I’ve got to play it to my advantage so she’ll talk and I can learn how to get through to her.

  I know I’m not the best husband by any means, but I bust my ass every day at SMS Masonry building libraries, schools, city halls, and other government and federal buildings. I come home completely filthy, covered in dirt, dust, and sweat. Most of the time, there’s enough crud on my clothes that they could hold their shape for a week after I take them off.

  Maddy can always count on me to fix her car and do handiwork around the house. It might take me a week or two to get around to it, but my job is physically demanding, so I mostly like to come home and kick back.

  My phone is often my escape from reality. Madison has her books, I have my phone. I play fantasy football and a couple of games that I’m addicted to, but I rarely go out, I hardly ever spend money, and I’m always at home.

  So the fact that I’m already on my phone quite a bit works perfectly for my intentions because she’ll never suspect it’s me. She always assumes that I’m too busy for her, but the fact is, she always has her eyes glued on her tablet to read whatever it is she reads, which is why I get on my phone.

  It’s almost like she uses her books to shut me out and push me away. I don’t see her taking a break from her tablet to say, “Hey babe, do you want to watch a movie together?”

  Her obsessive reading habit is what got me playing games on my phone. I was bored and didn’t have anything to do. There’s never anything good on TV anymore, so I started looking for other ways to pass the time and that’s when I found Bubble Pop and Lost Jewels—the two biggest time sucks in the history of time sucks.

  I didn’t know how to start my text to Maddy, so I sent the guy a message on his post from the message board that I joined and asked him what type of things he typically says to get women to respond. Unfortunately, he responded while we were having dinner so I spent most of our meal responding to his message to ask follow-up questions to see what he’d say.

  She’s been in our room for almost an hour while I’ve been pacing around in the basement, trying to come up with the perfect wording for what I want to say. I just hope that she doesn’t shoot me down right away because I want to know what’s going on in that pretty little head of hers.

  Part of me feels sick thinking that she might talk to a stranger and tell him her thoughts, desires, and darkest secrets; but a much bigger part of me wants to know what they are. Either way, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

  Twisting the top off my bottle of beer, I sit on the bar stool that’s always behind the bar—my private bar that faces the big screen TV that I love to watch sports on—and take a swig.

  Liquid courage—to text my wife.

  Downloading a phone app, I think about how she’s going to respond once I send her a message. I’m not even sure how I want her to answer. I’d like to think that my wife wouldn’t respond to a stranger, but deep down, I’m hoping that she does. It’s all fucked up and twisted.

  After no less than a dozen attempts to construct the perfect message, I decide this is it. This is the message I’m going to send her and hope she responds. Maybe if she does, I’ll know how to try to fix things between the two of us instead of only fixing things around the house.

  Unknown Number: Doesn’t it suck when you have no one to talk to? I wish I had someone who could understand me and be there for me like I am for everyone else.

  Maddy is a social butterfly, a people-person, and she has a heart of gold. She never meets a stranger and cares about everyone. I think she’ll respond to that message. I hope she does.

  She has to.

  I don’t know what else to do. It’s a sad day in this world when married couples can’t even talk to one another but thank God for technology and creeps on the Internet because if this works, that creep who posted the message that I saved might end up being the guy that saves my marriage.

  At least with me being the ‘stranger,' I know she’s safe and that some weirdo isn’t going to dupe her into some abandoned warehouse and do unspeakable things to her and leave her for dead.

  After a few minutes, I’ve downed my bottle of beer and twist the top off of another as I stare at my phone, waiting for her to reply.

  Taking a drink of my beer as I watch wrestling, I anxiously wait for her to respond.

  I hadn’t noticed it before but my fists are tensed up, and I have sweat lining my brow. My stomach is churning, and my guts are twisting in knots.

  There’s no reason why I should be so nervous. She either responds or she doesn’t.

  But it’s been almost three minutes.

  What could she possibly be doing? What if she doesn’t respond?

  She could—and might—be ignoring it.

  The Divas are about to come out and I can’t wait to see the Bella twins. Those are the hottest, most talented set of twins I’ve ever seen in my life. The day they walked into Vince’s office has got to be one of the best days in the world of WWE wrestling—at least for me, anyway. I recheck the phone, hoping that Maddy has responded but there’s nothing there.

  Nursing my last beer for the night, I watch the title match and hope that Roman Reigns wins the belt as I continuously glance down at the phone to see if she’s ever going to reply.

  After downing half of a six pack, I clean up the basement before heading back upstairs to crawl in bed beside her when all of a sudden my phone pings.

  The text app that I messaged her from has a new message. Hopeful that it’s her, I rip the phone out of my pocket and punch in my passcode.

  Ironically, it’s an unusual number with a different area code texting me to ask for my ASL (age, sex, location). Rolling my eyes, I figure it must be so
me pedo looking for an unsuspecting young, teen girl. I delete the message and lock my phone screen before jamming it back in my pocket.

  Upstairs is very quiet, but it usually is. How much noise can one person make while quietly reading on a bed?

  Walking through the living room, I note that it’s just after 11 PM and that all of the lights are off.

  She must be asleep so careful not to wake her, I shower in the guest bathroom which is the bath off the main hallway before slipping under the covers.

  Watching her sleep has to be the most peaceful thing on earth. Her shallow breaths cause her breasts to rise and fall while her mouth forms the perfect O.

  Maddy always wakes up with a bit of drool running down her cheek because she sleeps with her mouth open. I’ve always teased her that every fly, spider or bug could crawl into her mouth but she still sleeps that way.

  Staring at her through the darkness with only the faint street lights peeking through the blinds to illuminate the room, I notice her phone on the nightstand next to her side of the bed.

  Curious as to whether or not she even bothered to read the message, I debate getting out of bed to check her phone and see if her text messages are read or unread.

  Sliding out of bed, I tiptoe at the foot of the bed until I reached her side and lifted her phone off of the stand.

  Right as I begin keying in her code, she stirs in her sleep and turns to face me. Holding my breath, I pray that she doesn’t open her eyes and see me trying to go through her phone.

  A few seconds pass before she starts making chewing sounds with her mouth and begins to snore.

  Exhaling, I go back to entering her passcode to unlock her phone and see that she didn’t open the message but you can easily see that it’s from a strange number with a different area code and the first few words of the text.

  Setting her phone back down beside her, I inch my way across the room and slip under the covers—this time to settle in for the night permanently.