Because she wanted Craig to see her in this dress. She wanted him to open a photo and see her big, bountiful breasts, barely covered by the black fabric of the same dress he so admired her in.
Billie was watching her.
Then her eyes lit up, dangerous and almost orange. “I’ve got an even better idea,” she whispered. She tapped the phone against her lower lip. “Pull the dress down a little, like this -”
And before she knew what was happening, Billie was pulling her dress down and her nipples nearly sprung loose from the fabric.
“Billie!” Leigh complained, and grabbed the material to pull it up.
“No way,” she said.
The uncertainty in her voice was almost embarrassing.
What was wrong with her?
She looked at the phone in Billie’s hand.
Billie was smiling.
Leigh pulled her arms more tightly across her chest.
“What if,” Billie suggested, “I take it with my phone, and I pretend it’s a sneaky photo?”
The appeal of this traveled right through Leigh’s spine. All the possibilities of this idea went through her mind at once, and she felt the dull ache between her legs throb to a new height. Her panties were getting wet.
She started to shake her head.
“Come on,” Billie said. “I can stand behind the thingy here, and you just start to take the dress off. Then I’ll get the photo and you can keep up your game.”
After a pause, Leigh stuttered: “My game?”
Billie smiled at her. “You know, your game, where you are like, ‘oh! I would never.’” Billie winked at her and pretended to fan herself off. “It’s very sexy.”
Leigh had nothing to say. For one, Billie had nailed “her game” - even if Leigh wasn’t 100% certain she was playing or not.
And for another, she had such a great way of saying something true, calling you out, and still being friendly, so Leigh wasn’t even annoyed or compelled to correct the “truth.”
But was she actually thinking about doing this?
“What about Jeremy?” Leigh said, flailing around for a way to get herself out of the mess she deeply wanted to be in.
Billie grinned. “What about Jeremy? He’ll love this. You can just tell him about it. Or...”
Billie seemed to have a devious thought.
“Or, what?” Leigh said nervously.
Billie stepped out of the compartment. She closed the curtain so that only a sliver of light came through, and Leigh saw her lining up the lens of the phone camera on the open space. “Or, maybe we think of something better, some better way for him to find out, you know? A surprise.” She popped an eye through the crack, over the phone. “Now just take your dress off, like you would anyway.”
Leigh flashed her a look.
She wasn’t actually going to do this?
“Only my breasts,” she said, her voice an echo of the same voice she’d used to tell Dmitry she wouldn’t lie down on the bed in his bedroom. Under any circumstances.
“Got it,” Billie said. “We take what we can get for now.”
Leigh glared at her.
“Got it,” Billie said, her voice smiling. “Only boobies.”
“You have to give me the phone after you take the picture.”
“Oh wait, this is your phone,” Billie said. She popped out to the couch where she had left her purse, and Leigh was alone for a moment in the changing room. Doubt began to spiral around her.
But she just watched, immobile, as Billie arranged herself and the phone in her hand again.
“Go any time,” Billie said, her voice low and terribly sexual.
And Leigh found herself actually doing it.
She turned to the wall, as though she had no idea that Billie was behind the curtain. She swung her hair around to one shoulder, though, so that her face would be visible. And then, staring at the yellow and gray wallpaper on the wall of changing room, she slowly pushed the dress down, as though she were taking it off.
Her plan had been to stop there, and demand the phone back from Billie. She glanced to her left and downward, seeing a reflection of herself in the mirror as she kept going, pushing the dress further and further down.
Suddenly, she was seized by the realization of what she was doing. She pulled the dress up quickly and turned to the curtain.
Billie handed it over and smiled, returning to the couch.
“Oh, please don’t delete them,” she said.
Leigh set the phone down on a small bench worked into the corner of the room. She stared at it for a moment. She really shouldn’t have done that. She really should delete them.
She dropped the dress to the floor and hurried to put on her own clothes. The svelte silver phone burned in the corner.
She picked it up.
It was locked.
“Do you want to go to that place that says it’s French and have mussels?” Billie asked, almost yawning. “I’m starving.”
Leigh looked at herself in the mirror, her hair down, her dress put on hastily, much the way it might look if she threw it on because she heard her husband come home…
“Okay,” she said quietly.
And then she straightened her dress, fixed her hair into a ponytail, and opened the curtain.
She handed the phone to Billie. “Let’s go,” she said.
“But you’re buying the dress,” Billie said, picking it up from the floor. “If you don’t, I will.”
Leigh gave an exasperated sigh.
Even if that was sort of what she had wanted to happen anyway.
*
They ate an early dinner, and Billie browsed her way out of the mall, so it was almost seven by the time they got home. At six-thirty, when they were in the car, Leigh was terrified by the buzz of her phone in her purse and the sight of Jeremy’s name on the notification bar.
The realization of what she had done – and the fact that it could have consequences, consequences like her husband being mad, hit her like a ton of bricks. Billie had kept the conversation at dinner light and unrelated to what had happened in the changing room, and she was so adept at it that Leigh had (almost) forgotten about what had happened.
What she had done.
But her heart started pounding as soon as she saw Jeremy’s name.
The text message was neutral: he was only wondering where she was.
The remainder of the drive, and the conversation with Billie, turned into a blur.
Leigh’s mind was miles away.
She was going to have to confess what she had done to Jeremy.
And what if he didn’t think it was great, as Billie had promised?
Her stomach twisted.
She felt the same way she had felt when she had left Dmitry’s loft after taking the photos: not dirty, per se. Just a little filmy.
Dmitry had never hit on her, not at all. She had skated very close to temptation, and she had been there, willing if he only asked her, willing to give in and go over the line, but he never had.
Now she had really done something over the line.
But not that far over the line.
What was a photo, after all?
And after all, she could always say she hadn’t known about it.
“You okay?” Billie said, turning to her briefly. “You look worried.”
“Should I tell Jeremy?” Leigh said. “About the photo?”
Billie had her hand in her short hair, and she tucked it uselessly behind her ear. The wind was whipping it behind her, and she looked like she was twenty with her big sunglasses and her cute cut.
She shrugged. “It’s up to you,” she said. “It’s your game.”
Leigh turned to the windshield. “I just don’t want to be dishonest,” she said, as quietly as she could so that Billie could still hear her.
“Then don’t be,” she said, turning the steering wheel onto the wide parkways that led into their development. “It’s a good policy.”
They
drove for a bit, turning through the winding streets of the idyllic suburban neighborhood.
“But,” Billie said. “Sometimes there is just keeping things a secret for a while. SO they’re more fun.”
Leigh had just been beginning to feel better, and Billie’s words sent her sailing off a cliff again.
Billie turned into their driveway. “Okay, I have to go quickly so I’ll leave you here.”
She leaned over and kissed Leigh on the cheek. “Ciao ciao.”
Leigh stepped out of the car in a daze.
Billie lifted her fingers from the steering wheel as she let the car roll down into the street.
Another wave of mild panic rolled over her.
She had, essentially, stage a photo of her tits for her neighbor.
The neighbor. Craig.
Craig of the tattooed arms and the hard body and the huge package.
“What am I doing?” she whispered aloud.
There was still a way, she reminded herself, to proclaim her innocence. After all, Billie was the one who had take the picture. It looked like a candid photo.
But it wasn’t.
Leigh felt as though another wave of panic was going to roll over her, but just as it began, it turned into something else.
She thought about Craig, opening the message, looking at the photo.
She had done such a bad, bad thing.
She turned toward the house.
Jeremy was home; the lights were on.
Leigh trudged up the steps and into the foyer.
She was still turning over her decision in her mind.
*
There was something up with Leigh from the moment she walked through the door, late, shopping bags in hand.
Jeremy was in the kitchen, and looked up and out the window to see Billie drive by in her silver convertible. It was very clearly Billie (as opposed to Craig), and so he could dispense with some of the thoughts he’d been savoring, bitterly, in the kitchen while waiting for Leigh to come home.
Leigh wasn’t a shopper. And she wasn’t a note-leaver: she sent text messages to say where she was going or that she’d be home late. Today, though, she’d chosen to write:
Shopping. Be home soon.
PS- Billie drove
on a sticky note. The “PS” looked as though it had been added hastily, as she was leaving and realized that her car would still be in the garage.
Jeremy had picked up the note.
Why a note? Why not text?
The thing about a note, he thought, is that it can always be thrown in the trash, supposing the person who left it gets home before the other person.
Sure, maybe he was just reading things into it, but it really was out of character for Leigh. Leigh who hardly ever did things out of character.
And why? Why would Leigh not want Jeremy to know that she had gone shopping with Billie? Why leave the door open like this, to not telling him?
From there, with the help of a few beers, he’d spun up an incredible number of stories and possibilities. Almost all of them had to do with Leigh sneaking off to Woods-Gunthry, or the hotel next to Woods-Gunthry, or maybe even just walking down the street and knocking on the door, where Jeremy was “working from home.”
But that was definitely Billie who had just driven by.
He rounded the corner by the dining area, and stopped when he saw Leigh.
And there she was. Looking…
Looking, what?
Out of sorts.
Her hair looked as if it had been let down, and then put back up. Hastily. It was not in its usual tidy pony-tail, or carefully-crafted bun.
Leigh never would have done her hair like that.
And then there was her dress. It had a long wrinkle on it, across the lap, and it was sitting on top of her perfect body as though it had been thrown on hastily as well. Leigh didn’t put dresses on hastily. She spent several minutes lifting the material by the shoulders and the hip, placing it on her body in exactly the right way.
She had a shopping bag – a white and black, heavy duty one with a box inside of it, in one hand. She dropped it on the floor.
Jeremy’s eyes went to it. “That looks expensive,” he said, lacking anything else intelligent to say.
Leigh pushed her hand against her hair and blew out.
“Hot?” Jeremy said. “I have cold beer.”
Leigh’s eyes looked a little vacant.
Didn’t they? Like she was thinking about something else?
He felt a shudder go through him.
Why did it turn him on so much, thinking like this?
“Too many calories,” Leigh said, though her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She seemed to snap suddenly back into the room. “I… because I had, I had a dinner with Billie and some white wine.”
That explained it, didn’t it?
“Why is your dress so… wrinkled?” Jeremy asked.
If he had been hoping to catch Leigh off-guard, he certainly got his money’s worth. A look of near-panic crossed her face, and her eyes went, curiously, to the bag before sweeping around the room, as if the answer would be there.
This all took only about three seconds, but it was a second too long.
“Huh? Oh.” She looked down at her dress.
Another moment passed, also too long, given the circumstances. “It must have been… the car.”
Of course, Jeremy thought, semi-relieved. The car. The car had wrinkled her dress and blown her hair around.
“That’s why your hair is such a mess,” Jeremy joked.
Leigh looked alarmed again and brought a hand to her head. “What? Oh. Yeah.”
Jeremy was snapping in and out of “suspicion” mode so fast it was making his head spin.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Leigh looked at him for a moment, and it was the kind of look you’d expect someone to give you right before a lengthy confession, one that starts with, “I’ve done something really bad.”
He was so ready for this that he took a step forward, to be closer to her when she spilled her secret.
She surprised him by shaking her head quickly. “No, no. NO, I’m… nothing. Just the heat. Maybe I need something… maybe I just have low blood sugar.”
Jeremy stared at her.
“I thought you said you just ate.”
Leigh looked at him, and he was certain a look of horror was creeping across her face.
He wasn’t proud of it, but the look of guilt washing over Leigh had the effect of driving him wild more than anything.
“I… I did. I just, I was explaining that because of the wine. It was actually just mussels, so… yeah, I’m still hungry.”
There was a moment while they stared at each other.
“Okay,” Jeremy said. “Well… let’s get something to eat.”
Leigh picked up the bag and started for the hallway.
Suspicion again gnawed at Jeremy. He stepped out to block her path, putting his arm on hers. “Oh, just leave that,” he said. “Come on, I’ll make you a nice cold lemonade or something.”
Now she definitely looked nervous.
God. Had Leigh actually done something bad? After all that hullabaloo about Craig touching her?
And what was it? What was in the bag that she wanted to hide away so much? Why was she being so weird?
Jeremy took a calming breath as he gently moved Leigh in front of him and prodded her into the kitchen. Now was not the time to ask these questions.
All in good time.
He poured Leigh a glass of wine anyway, suspecting – and rightly – that whatever was going on in her mind was giving her the jitters and that she would decline the drink at first and then drink it anyway.
Which is exactly what she did while he put together a chef salad.
“So, when did you decide to go shopping with Billie?” he ventured.
Leigh looked at the clock. “Oh… like, ten o’clock or so.” Then she quickly added: “She called me.”
/> “I see.”
He cut some cheese into cubes, surprised by two things: that Leigh didn’t add any more to the conversation, and that she said nothing about the cheese and how much he was adding, even though she was staring right at it as he chopped.
He finished the salad, and then sat down next to her at the counter. Leigh seemed to not even notice that he had slid the salad bowl and utensils toward her.
“Soup’s on,” he joked.
Any minute now, he could feel, she was going to turn to him and suck in a deep breath of air. Jeremy, she would say, breathlessly, I’ve done a terrible thing.
Just thinking about it was giving him chills. All the way down his spine and right into his balls.
Why? Why did he want to see that look on her face so much? Why did he want to hear those words and then whatever came after? Why did it delight him so much to think of Leigh having to confess that she’d had more than just mussels in her mouth this afternoon?
But Leigh didn’t do any of that, not as she ate, and not when he offered to clear away the dishes.
Okay.
“So,” he said. “What’s in the bag?”
Leigh looked as though she had been struck by lightning for a moment. Her eyes went to the bag on the floor.
It was impossible for her to say “nothing.”
“That? Oh, that.” She was falling all over herself. “It’s just a… you know, I’ll probably take it back, just Billie’s so… you know how she is.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. He certainly did know how Billie was, but he’d rather make Leigh cough it up.
Leigh stared at him helplessly. “She’s so… pushy. Anyway. So, I think, yeah, I’ll definitely return it.”
She swallowed a large gulp of wine.
“Can I see it first?” Jeremy said. His curiosity was piqued.
Leigh looked terror-stricken again.
“I’m returning it,” she repeated.
Jeremy shrugged. “We won’t take the tags off.”
Leigh’s mouth fell open slightly. “Um… well, this is a pretty… strict store, about returns. I don’t want to… you know. Cause a problem.”
Now there was definitely no way she was getting through the night without showing him the dress.
“Let’s take our chances,” Jeremy suggested. “Come on. It could be fun.”
Leigh Uncovered: A Wife Sharing Novel Page 11
