Facebook was the next stop on my journey through Harry’s life. Again, there were photos to confirm that I had the right guy. He didn’t post much, although a man like that didn’t seem like the type to report out the minutiae of his life. He did post photos, though, and was tagged in plenty—most of them with other women. I held my breath, looking—hoping?—to find Courtney in one of them, but never did.
What did show up, fairly consistently, was a bar—June’s. I knew the one. Sports bar, built on the ground floor of a mixed use building in one of the trendier neighborhoods of the city. Judging from the photos, he was a regular.
I had a place, at least, and a general time, based on his job. Now all it took was patience and, more importantly, courage. My first trip to June’s, leaving just after work, was short-lived. I went in, ordered a Miller Light, took in the ambiance—the place was wide and open with exposed brick columns and televisions everywhere—and then left. Quickly. This was not a good idea, and my plan was half-baked at best.
When I went back there on Friday, my plan was still half-baked, but I’d had more time to convince myself that it was the right thing to do. I sat down on a stool—a little earlier than the usual knock-off time—and stationed myself at a spot at the bar with a good view of the doors. Again, I ordered a beer, and again, I considered running.
This time, however, Harry came through the doors before I could. He wore a golf shirt tucked into a pair of pressed khakis—his form of casual Friday, apparently—and a pair of aviators that robbed me of the chance to see if he recognized me. We’d met once, months ago, after a happy hour, and while his face was etched into my mind, I couldn’t count on the same being said for mine.
He took his sunglasses off and strolled up to a free spot at the bar. Apparently he didn’t recognize me after all. I let him order his beer—apparently he was alone tonight, at least for now—before scooping up my own pint and sliding into the seat beside him. I was happy to have the head start, because the half-pint of beer helped calm my spiking nerves.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, one stranger to another, doing a double take when he saw me. He still couldn’t place me, but I could see him trying. That uncertainty gave me the nerve to plunge forward.
“I’m Courtney’s husband, John. We met a while ago, at Urbana?”
I watched his face very carefully, watched his body language. The way he reacted to my revelation was extremely important—one of the main reasons that I was even here. When his eyes went wide and he swallowed a short, nervous gasp, I went queasy, my stomach swimming with nerves. Had something been going on, after all?
The reaction was gone in a flash, replaced by grit and bravado. “Hey, John. Sorry, didn’t recognize you. You’re out of your way, aren’t you?”
He pressed the offense, just a little. I wasn’t exactly expecting it, but should have been, considering the kind of guy I knew him to be. “Actually, I’m here because I wanted to talk to you.”
I made sure that my smile was laced with just enough threat to wipe away his facade of confidence. That it did helped fuel my own.
“Yeah?” he said uncertainly.
“Yes.”
Here’s where my half-baked plan came in. I’d come here to try and learn more about Courtney and her past—about her relationship with this man, and vaguely, maybe convince him to make a play for her now. If she wasn’t going to go through with it, then maybe I could give her a little encouragement.
But reading the moment, I decided to take a big risk. “I know, Harry. I know about you and Court.”
Again, I saw Harry flinch. Again, the confirmation hit me in the gut. He licked his lips. “She told you, did she?” He chuckled sardonically to himself. “And here I thought she really had changed.” Again, I got the impression that that was for him.
I had no clue what he was talking about, and my heart was racing because of that. What had she supposedly told me—which actually meant what hadn’t she told me?
I let him sweat, staying silent until he cracked. He took a heavy pull on his beer, then grimaced, like it tasted bad, drawing his lips back to bare his clenched teeth.
“Look, I told her that meeting in a hotel room was probably a bad idea, given her... you know... her tendencies.” He glanced at me, as if to confirm that I knew about those.
I nodded, because acknowledging that was the easiest thing to do. Because nodding helped me keep my composure as I tried to keep up with what he was telling me. She’d been in a hotel room with this man and done something with him that he’d hoped she wouldn’t tell me. Only I couldn’t just come out and ask him what because he thought that I knew.
That said, I did need to say something. He was looking at me, expecting it. Panic spiraled around me as I floundered for something to say, feeling myself lose my edge. I put myself in Harry’s shoes and went back on the offensive again. “Not just her tendencies. You two have history.”
Harry grimaced, but nodded—one more thing confirmed. “Hey, you know the score. When someone as hot as Court comes knocking, it’s hard to turn that away.”
I shifted on the stool, wishing I could adjust the direction of my cock, where it pressed down the leg of my pants. He went on, “Courtney was always down to fuck. I figured that that’s really why she’d set up the hotel room appointments, so I just went for it.”
I licked my lips, nodding. Went for it? I really, really wanted to ask what he meant by “it” in this case. Instead, I just stared.
“Judging from the fact that you haven’t punched me in the face, I’m guessing you’re like all of her other guys.”
“Other guys?” The question just slipped out, admitting my ignorance for the first time. Harry didn’t seem to process it.
“I never understood that. What makes you tick? How can you have someone like Courtney and be cool sharing her?”
There was an implied judgment there, an insult wrapped up in the question. He might as well have asked, Are you too enthralled by her that you’ll let her walk all over you?
I found my grit again. It rose on a swell of adrenaline so powerful I felt my body begin to quake. “At the end of the day, she will always come back to me.”
I was ready for him to get into my face, for this to come to blows. I wasn’t the kind of guy who got into fist fights, but with all the testosterone surging through my blood, I could pretend to be. Instead, I was surprised when Harry sighed and sank into his beer. Without looking at me, he said, “We done here?”
The taste of victory turned to ash. The adrenaline faded. I returned to the man that I was when I’d walked in here, uncertain and confused and yet ready for something crazy. “I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“You’re sorry?” He snorted. “I’m the one who should be sorry, right? I’m the one who tried to fuck your wife.”
“Tried” and “fuck” and “wife” assaulted me, throwing things sideways for a moment once again. In that dizzy, reeling state, I failed to keep quiet, hearing myself talk more than actually processing the words. “I didn’t come here looking for an apology, Harry. I just wanted to hear your side of it.”
He crawled out of whatever funk he’d descended into. “You wanted to double check with me that this wasn’t another Jason situation,” he said, slowly putting the pieces of a puzzle together that I didn’t even know about. “You wanted to check that it really was me making the moves, not Courtney.”
“Jason?” I asked, once again forgetting myself, once again showing my ignorant hand. Jason, who’d driven me to seek out Charlie. Jason, who had practically ended my relationship with Courtney in its infancy. Jason, who was probably the root of my wife-sharing fantasy. What did he have to do with it?
“Oh, you didn’t know, did you?” Harry seemed to feed off my confusion, drinking in the confidence that bled away from me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Tell me.” I felt bloodless. My gut churned.
“Sorry, man, but I can�
�t do that. You’re going to need to talk to your wife about that one.” He pulled out some cash, tossing it onto the bar. “I’ll cover your beer. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” He put his hand on my shoulder, although when I met his eyes, there was more compassion than I’d been expecting. “Or maybe this is good news, eh?”
He left, leaving me alone to unpack some complicated emotions. She’d cheated—way back when I thought that she hadn’t cheated. And she hadn’t cheated in the present, when I briefly thought that she had. I swung between relieved and betrayed, devastated and weirdly reassured.
When I finally got out of there, I still had no idea what to make of the night, other than that I needed to get home and fuck the hell out of my wife.
Chapter 13
On my way home, I was so very tempted to call up Charlie and tell him “I told you so!”. But to be honest, I was so confused, so angry and disappointed and excited and oh-so-god-damn turned on, I didn’t know how it would have come out. I’d probably have ended up ruining our friendship.
So it was just me, on my own, stuck in the back of a taxi thinking about how I could have been so dumb—to let Courtney lead me on at the time, to feel like there had been something desperately wrong with me when she’d denied having an affair. To fall for the evidence she’d ultimately provided to prove there had been no affair.
My head was whirling round and round by the time I got back to our apartment building, tore through the lobby and into the elevator.
When I got inside the door, Courtney was waiting for me by the windows, wearing nothing but seriously sexy underwear—black garters and stockings, black bra, tiny little black g-string. As though she could distract me from my anger, as though she could seduce me out of my disappointment. As though she could persuade my prick that there was nothing to worry about.
“I just had a drink with Harry Richards,” I said, a trifle breathless after my great rush up here.
“Seriously?”
“He told me... a few interesting things.”
“Like?” she put her hands on her hips, a touch surprised that I wasn’t just coming into the apartment and sweeping her up in my arms, I guess.
“Like... that you really did cheat on me with Jason.”
“Jason...” she wrinkled her brow. “Back when we were still dating? Jesus, John, I thought we were past that. I thought we were way past that...”
I felt my stomach crushed at what she said. It wasn’t a denial. It was a plea for a statute of limitations.
“You lied to me.”
She walked toward me, leaned up against the kitchen island. “I didn’t lie to you. I never did anything with Jason. He was a friend. He was a work colleague. He had a few personal problems, he needed a shoulder to cry on. That’s it.”
“He needed a beautiful woman to fuck after his wife left him.”
She heaved a huge melodramatic sigh, glanced down at the floor for a moment. “Look. I don’t know what to say... and here we are, and I thought you actually wanted me to cheat on you right now.”
“I don’t want you to lie about it.”
“I haven’t lied! I swear!”
“You can tell me the truth, Court. I’m not going to be angry...”
“You seem pretty angry...” she pouted.
“I’m... I just... I don’t know what to think any more.”
“You want me to cheat on you. So what does it matter to you whether I cheat on you now, or I cheated on you then?”
“So you did cheat on me.”
She sighed. “No, I was just giving you a hypothetical.”
“Look. I just want you to be honest with me.”
“I am being honest with you. I never slept with Jason. Harry Richards is just filling your head with... with shit...”
“What reason would he have to lie to me?” I said, but part of me could already answer my own question. The way he’d seemed so disappointed at the bar, so dejected, by trying and failing to bed my wife.
“He has every reason to lie to you,” she said. “He wants to end our marriage. Before you came along... he had me whenever he wanted—"
“But now he sees you pretty frequently, doesn’t he? At the clinic... in various hotels...”
“Have you been... keeping tabs on me? After what happened last time?”
“After I saw you with him that night... I wondered about you.”
“So you get all creepy about it again? I’m not sure I get you, John. You get turned on by all this. You say you even want me to cheat on you. But you sound like you’ve been... stalking me...”
“I just wanted to know why you’d do everything possible to make me jealous—but you never once mentioned one of your exes was back in town. That you’ve been seeing him regularly.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s one of my patients. I’ve been treating him confidentially for a shoulder injury, that’s all.”
I said angrily, “Doctors don’t make appointments in hotels to treat their patients confidentially.”
She huffed. “You don’t understand.”
I shook my head, replied sharply: “You don’t understand. I’m saying I like the idea of you seeing other guys—with only one condition. You tell me the truth. You hide nothing.”
“I. Am. Telling. The. Truth,” she said.
“Okay,” I nodded. “But sometimes you tell me things, and it turns out you were playing a game, right? I discover a dildo you used to fake sex with another man...”
She sighed again. “I was making absolutely sure you would be okay with it...”
“You could have told me immediately afterward that you were faking it.”
“So what you’re saying now is that you believe the word of Harry Richards—a stranger—rather than your own wife.”
I sighed. “I’m not saying that... I just... He wouldn’t have any reason to lie to me.”
“I’ve told you, haven’t I? He wants to fuck me!”
I said, “And if he just came out and told me that, I’d probably say it would be okay. So why does he need to lie?”
Courtney looked at me with pure venom in her eyes. Kind of terrifying. I think if I wasn’t jacked up on adrenaline, and the raw heat of anger, I might have been seriously afraid I was in the process of losing her. But anger isn’t rational, it clouds your judgment.
She said to me: “Maybe I should go fuck him, then. Get it over with. Then you know once and for all what it’s like to have a cheating wife—and he’ll finally have no reason to lie to you. You’ll find out I’ve been telling you the truth all along.”
There was a slight pause. Oh so slight. And yet it felt as though a huge chasm had opened up between us. Courtney was being pulled back away from me by some unseen force. My heart was so loud, I wondered if she could hear it. My stomach was so queasy, I could barely hold myself still. My cock was so hard it was straining against my pants.
I said quietly: “Maybe you should.”
She breathed out, then gave a very small nod. She wheeled on the balls of her feet and walked away from me, directly to the door. Grabbed her keys and her little coat on the way out.
And she was gone.
Headed for Harry Richards, wearing nothing but sexy underwear under a coat that only just covered the tops of her thighs.
*
I stood there in the silent apartment for a moment or two, stunned.
Then I felt my stomach drop to my shoes, as though I was in some high-speed elevator soaring up a seriously tall building very, very fast.
Jesus, she’d been right. She had to be. Why would she lie to me when I’d already basically given the green light for her to experiment with adultery again?
If everything Courtney had said was true—and she was right, of course, I should have trusted my wife over a stranger any day, particularly if said stranger did have an agenda—then she was still whiter than white. She had given up her adulterous ways before meeting me, she had remained true throughout our relationship. Even if the temptation
had been immense.
But I had now pushed her into the arms of the lying bastard who had just set me up in order to steal my beautiful wife from me.
Harry Richards had connived to undermine my trust in Courtney, and it had totally worked. Now she was angry and going to him, to actually sleep with him.
God, the mere thought of that man now brought a white-hot rage to my heart, made me want to punch walls and shout until I was hoarse.
And yet I did not lift my phone, did not tap in her number, did not apologize profusely and admit she’d been right and I’d been wrong. I did not stop her. I did not beg her not to go through with her threat to cheat on me with him.
I waited. I felt the excitement fluttering in my chest, the warm, hard presence between my legs, pressing to be released from my pants.
I wanted her to cheat on me. I wanted her to do it with him, even if I couldn’t stand him.
There in a silent apartment, I waited, but I really did not know what to do with myself while I did. I paced around. I stared out of our floor-to-ceiling windows over the majestic view of the city.
I guess a large part of me still doubted that she would go through with it. She’d fooled me before. And though she knew following her other tests that the thought of her adultery did actually turn me on, she had no guarantee how I’d respond to her being unfaithful with him. An ex who had attempted to destroy our marriage.
Maybe I was expecting her to come right back in through that front door and tell me I had one more chance—trust her or lose her. Maybe I was expecting her to phone and say I’d been right, she had done something more with Jason than simply help him over the loss of his marriage.
Maybe I thought she’d just spend the night alone in a hotel somewhere, teaching me a lesson. Return in the morning with fake signs of infidelity. One more final test of my handling things.
Out of His League: A Hotwife Novel Page 11
