“Your house is always a wreck. I gave you an excuse this time.”
“Double bitch,” she said and pulled back, grinning that gap-toothed grin that made her look fourteen. “Have you gone back to Doug?”
Fritha, the eternal romantic.
“No. I told you its permanent. There will be no wedding. You’ve gotta give it up, F.”
She manufactured a frown. “I’ll never be a bridesmaid.”
“Maybe you’ll be a bride.” I slanted a glance at the house with its cobwebbed windows and falling down guttering. “Is he home?” Not that I was looking forward to his company. Alec had always struck me as being lazy, not to mention a drain on Fritha’s meager finances.
“No, he’s gone.” She linked arms with me, pulling me with her as she set off. I only just managed to grab my handbag and shut the car door before I was wrenched away. “I found him sleeping with Bambi.”
“Pardon?”
Who or what was Bambi?
She pulled me up the stairs but I hauled her to a stop on the creaky veranda.
“His ex,” she said, laying some of my more lurid imaginings to rest. “Caught them reenacting a Star Wars episode where Leia gets humped by the wookie.”
She set off again and I followed her into the house, bemused. “Didn’t see that episode.”
“Anyway, I caught it on film. If he tries to claim half my house, I’ll put the bastard and his bitch girlfriend on YouTube. It wasn’t pretty.”
I liked her enterprise, but I couldn’t see how that would work as an injunction. I stopped her in the kitchen. “Would anyone recognize him with a furry head?”
She raised an eyebrow. “He wasn’t the wookie.”
“Oh!” That created a whole different mind-picture—one I wanted to scrub out of my brain.
“Coffee or whisky?” She pushed me onto one of her mismatched kitchen chairs.
It was 9 am.
“Whisky,” I said, and “So where did they do it?” Fritha’s cleaning skills weren’t spectacular. I didn’t want to sit on something that had been the site of an illicit cosplay coupling.
“I burned the lounge.” She nodded toward the next room while she was pulling down cracked teacups.
I leant out of my chair sideways to scope out her lounge room and my mouth fell open. The timber floor was completely burned out in one section, and the corresponding wall and ceiling blackened.
Fuck.
“You were angry.”
“He left with the clothes on his back and his slut in tow.”
I whistled. “Hope she was worth it.”
“Short-ass wookie.” Fritha sniffed.
“Shiny hair. Big brown eyes. Younger than you?”
She looked up from pouring whisky into the teacups and said, “Men. They always go younger.”
I nodded sagely, and when she was seated across from me, I raised my teacup. “To sluts, absent and present.”
Fritha shook her head, her long red hair in its careless coils sliding over the table. “I should have seen it coming.”
“No baby.” I put my hand over hers. “No one sees wookie sex coming. You’re not to blame for this.”
“I’m glad he’s gone. He was a ready, reliable fuck, but he cost too much to keep.” She slumped onto her elbows, and I suddenly noticed how tired she looked. “Now all I can think about is him trying to get half my stuff.” She waved a hand around her house. “The Turk cost me an arm and a leg to get rid of. If I have to take out another mortgage…”
My problems seemed suddenly inconsequential.
She shook her head and took another slug of the whisky. “Let’s stop talking about this. It’s too ugly. Tell me what’s happening with you?”
I had a moment of what could be worse than your partner dressed as Princess Leia being boned by a wookie Maybe I was melodramatizing the whole ‘keep it a secret’ thing. So long as I didn’t reveal Brittany’s secret, it was okay, and Fritha wouldn’t judge me. She’d been queen of the one night stand before she’d started settling down with losers.
Anyway, you can’t hide things from girlfriends forever. They find out eventually, and then you’re in deep shit for lying. So I sighed and said, “Well, I slept with a married man and his wife came back so he threw me out.” I glanced at my watch. “About five hours ago.”
Fritha smiled widely. “Fifty Hail Mary’s for you, my girl!”
“Sinner,” I agreed, then sketched out my husband sitting scheme, pretending I was saving for a house while having adventures.
She looked totally impressed with my business acumen, because that would be a surprise, considering my track record with money. “So has this Finn rung you?” she asked at the end of my elaborate tale.
“No. I dunno. I think it’s on silent.”
She held out her hand. “Gimme.”
I ratted in my handbag and found my phone. She leant across and snatched it from me. “Fifteen missed calls and four texts.”
“Wow.” A treacherous part of me wanted to think he really liked me, but he was probably just feeling guilty, making sure I was okay. Perhaps ever remembering, belatedly, that I’d been there in a professional capacity and he’d treated me shabbily.
Frith was already dialing my message bank and putting it on speakerphone.
“Myshka? This is your employer, Katinka. Firstly, thank you for keeping my Finnie amused for five days. But I pay you for thirty, so you need to refund me other twenty-five.”
My mouth fell open and Frith and I looked at each other wordlessly as my Russian ‘employer’ prattled on.
“I round it down. You owe me thirty-three thousand dollar. You keep seven thousand. Not bad for five days of lying by pool and drinking wine. Refund pronto and we have no problem, eh?”
I shook my head. “No fucking way.” I’d already spent that money. The thought that I might have to pay it back sent my stomach into a spiral.
“Petrol. Expenses,” Frith agreed. “Sounds like she doesn’t know you fucked him.”
The second message came on then. It was Finn.
“I just overheard Kat. Ignore that. I’ll put the money in her account. She won’t know it’s me. I’m—”
The call cut out. He’d been going to say something, and a stupid unprofessional part of me ached to know what it was.
There were a lot of hang-up messages after that. Then the next two recorded messages were only an hour old.
Finn. “I know you’re angry at me, Jill. Probably angry at Kat too. Just don’t be angry with yourself. You did everything that was asked of you. More. You were fabulous. I’m just…Okay. Goodbye.”
Fritha looked up from the phone. “He likes you.”
I shook my head. “He liked fucking me. Men like novelty. I was the new shiny thing. He’ll have forgotten me by next week.”
I hoped Katinka wouldn’t forget. I hoped she’d appreciate him more now that she’d had the chance to get jealous. He certainly deserved a better wife than she’d been to him. “It was probably for the best that things ended between us quickly.” But even as I said that, I felt an ache high up inside my rib cage as I wished vainly that it could have gone on. My stupid crush was back.
Another message started. Finn again. “I won’t bother you anymore. I just want to let you know that I’m here. Not for sex. I’ve never…I’m not good with infidelity. But as a friend. If you need one. If you’re ever stuck. I know I’m probably the last person on earth you’d call. But just remember. The offer is there. I won’t let you down.”
I could feel myself softening, just listening to the slightly-rough tone of his voice, the obvious regret. But I pushed past that to say, “I’m not sure his wife would approve.”
It was the end of the messages so Fritha disconnected the call and glanced up at me again. “I can tell you really like him. I’m not an idiot.”
This is why you go to a girlfriend. They know you.
I shrugged, embarrassed. “Okay. You’re right. It felt good, and I didn’t w
ant it to end.”
She smiled a sad smile. “Some novelty there for you too?”
I dredged up an answering smile. “After ten years with Mr. Twelve Minutes? Absolutely.”
She patted my hand. “You’ll get this restlessness out of your system and be looking for Mr. Reliable again one day. Don’t discount Doug. He’s a good guy.”
I wanted to sigh at her relentless matchmaking. “I’m never going back to Doug.”
“Well, someone nice.”
Finn had been nice. More than nice in fact. When I remembered his patience with my drunken bumbling and how thoughtful he’d been, from cooking dinners to sourcing movies I’d like, I knew I was going to miss him, a lot. Maybe forever. But I had to put that out of my head.
Luckily Fritha cut into my depressing train of thought. She was looking down at my phone in her hands, shaking her head. “Wow.”
“What?” I reached for it, but she held it away.
“Text message. He says, and I quote, My only regret is that I never got to go down on you.”
Something even more treacherous melted inside me but I shook my head, wanting to block that out, to push Finn from my mind. Unfortunately my body was waking up, remembering his hands on my breasts, my clit, while he’d pounded into me from behind. Remembering that once-in-a-lifetime orgasm. Wondering if his mouth would have made me scream.
Fritha looked up. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s not romance. It’s smut.” But I was impressed. And turned on. “He’s a married man, remember?”
Frith grinned. “You want him to lust after you. That makes you the one that got away. No wonder he wants you to keep in touch.”
“I’m not fucking him again,” I said categorically.
“Because he’d spoil you for anyone else?”
“He already has.” I tossed down the last of my whisky and held out my teacup for a refill, fighting that damned ache that was back in my chest.
Frith obliged, then went back to pressing buttons on my phone. “You probably don’t want to see the rest of his messages.”
“Absolutely not.” The last thing I wanted was to be mooning over him, re-reading his words and imagining some pathetic romance with a man who was cheating on his wife. Ew.
“Good idea,” she said and pressed buttons for a couple of seconds before she looked up. “I left the one about going down on you. That’s a nice memory.”
“So the others weren’t nice?”
Damn. I should have just taken the phone off her. I could have deleted them after I’d read them. I reached out and she handed it over. Yep, only one message left from Finn. Well, they were gone now, and that was probably for the best, so I said, “I’m not sure I should even keep this one.”
”Consider it a testimonial. You are a businesswoman after all.”
That made me smirk as I dropped the phone into my handbag.
“And don’t delete his number,” Fritha added. “You never know when you’ll need some muscle, especially in your line of work.”
I looked up at her skeptically. “Maybe I’m not doing that anymore,” I lied. The last thing I wanted was Fritha checking up on me.
“You are.” As if she was psychic. “The best way to get over one man is to fuck another. You know that.”
I did.
It was something Frith and I had learned as teenagers, hanging together with Missy Lou and Angela—a pack of four glamazons. Well, in our own fantasies. In reality, we were four teenagers who’d partied and kept in touch, helping each other laugh about the crap life dealt out, and drying tears in the bad times. There were good memories there, but thinking about Missy Lou and Ange made me suddenly anxious.
“Don’t tell the girls about this.” I waited until Fritha caught my eye to give her the I’m serious look.
“Why not? I’m going to tell them about the wookie thing. They’ll probably laugh about that, humiliating though it is for me.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the perpetrator. You’re…” I’d been about to say the victim, until I remembered who I was talking to. Fritha would burn a hole in her house rather than be a victim. I let the sentence drop. “I’m the bad guy in my story,” I rushed on. “I’m breaking moral laws. Can you imagine what Sister Carmel would do to me if she knew I’d enticed a man into committing adultery?”
Fritha surprised me then by smiling a very sexy smile. “You seductress. And you want to waste those skills when they can earn you good money?”
A couple of seconds later my angst faded as the whisky kicked in. I smiled back. “Forty grand for five days work,” I bragged. “Not too shabby.”
“And you’re blowing away the cobwebs of ten years of monogamy.” She topped up our teacups. When we’d raised them, she said, “To sound financial management and the acquisition of valuable assets.”
We chinked cups and I took another hot swallow of whisky. It was warming me up inside now, relaxing me. “To assets…” She had an eyebrow raised, and I suddenly remembered my cover story. “To buying a house!”
“Two houses if you want,” she said blithely, as though she was an expert. “Keep heading south. Sydney is full of society wives who’d happily let someone else fuck their husbands if they could arrange it. You’ll have a deposit in no time.”
“Sydney, you say?” I looked at her over my teacup. I had received a couple of emails from Sydney wives, but I’d ruled that out because Angela and Missy Lou lived in Sydney and I didn’t want to run into them while I was working. But how likely was that when Sydney was a town of four million people? I could tell them I was house sitting, and then stay with one or the other of them between jobs if I needed to.
It could work…
“Oh, and get a lawyer to look over your contract,” Fritha added. “You don’t want the wives screwing you over like Svetlana there tried to.” She pointed north to where I’d come from.
I suddenly realized, again, why you went to a girlfriend. They were smart.
“I love you, F,” I said, full of whisky warmth and the goodwill of confidence-sharing.
“I love you back, J,” she said, smiling wistfully, all tangled red hair and ginger freckles. “And I promise not to tell Ange or Missy Lou, for now. But you have to tell them by Christmas or I will. Secrets are bad.”
“Condemnation is better?”
She shook her head. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. This is gainful employment. If they don’t like it, that’s their issue.”
“They won’t like it.” I knew that for a fact. “But what’s worse, they won’t trust me around their husbands anymore.” I should have considered that before I blabbed to Fritha. Damn it.
She was frowning, and I knew she wanted to say something placating like Those wives are paying you to do it, but in the end, she didn’t, because I was right. The mere fact that I was fucking married men would set off our friends’ radars. I’d be transformed into ‘the other woman’, and drunken sleepovers would be a thing of the past.
“Okay,” Frith said. “I get it. But I’m not judging you.”
“You’re not married.” I smiled to take the sting away. “But I won’t do this forever. So let’s not worry them for nothing.”
“One day you’ll find Mr. Right.” She smiled her lopsided smile.
I knew she was trying to cheer me up, but I had to shake my head. “What does that even mean? Mr. Right.”
Last night I’d felt so good with Finn inside me. He was everything I’d imagined I might want: kind, intelligent, funny, great at sex. Well, cunnilingus had a question mark over it, but for a straight-out fuck, he was certainly top of my scorecard.
Only, he wasn’t available. Not now. Probably not ever. And he’d stayed with Katinka knowing she was a cheat. He was clearly a devil you know kind of guy, who was happy to settle.
I, on the other hand, was a seeker. I wouldn’t be happy until I’d found perfect, and my version of perfect was probably extinct—died out along with jou
sting and moat building.
“You’re pissed,” Frith said.
Pot calling kettle.
“And?”
“Sleep over.”
“On my way to Sydney? To find these mythical North Shore wives who want their husbands fucked?”
“Exactamundo.” She tried to wink, but it was an uncoordinated effort. She’d always been a two pot screamer, and two teacups of straight whisky were way over her limit. “I’d give you the couch.” She waved airily toward the destroyed corner of her lounge room. “But it’s gone.”
“We can snuggle up,” I said, and she nodded. We used to have sleepovers as teenagers, so I knew she didn’t snore.
“The morning…” She stopped and frowned, as if she’d lost her point. “Things always look brighter. In that.”
Her head was wobbling, like some hippy version of Yoda. She’d clearly forgotten it was 10 am.
“You’re so cool.” I grinned at her.
“I need to…pee.”
“By all means.” I waved her off, and she stumbled out of the room. Sometime later—I might have dozed—I realized she hadn’t come back.
After bumbling around, I found her flaked-out on her bed in a tangle of colorful mandala patterned quilt. I rolled her around and straightened her up, then went back and locked the front door—although, Lord knew there wasn’t anything worth stealing in her house—then I lay on the bed beside her and listened to her breathing noisily through her mouth.
It was the most comforting sound in the world.
“I wish I could stay here with you, F,” I whispered.
But I couldn’t. Brittany. Money. Responsibility.
So maybe I just had to accept that my life was fucked at the moment, and that I had to make the best of that, instead of constantly expecting things to be right. The situation with Finn hadn’t been right, but if I could think of it as an adventure, instead of a failure, I might not feel so damned terrible about it.
A flicker of relief relaxed my shoulders, and for some stupid reason, instead of feeling independent and strong, I pulled my phone out of my bag to look at the text message Finn had sent me, as if I couldn’t validate myself. As if I could only see myself as desirable through someone else’s eyes.
Husband Sit (Husband #1) Page 8
