Aubrie knew Nick was speaking the truth. Why shouldn’t she be somewhat selfish. After all, she was the major breadwinner, one of the best-selling romance authors in the country. Why shouldn’t she demand some… extra consideration?
“We’ve been over this before. I need this…” she started.
“Yeah. Yeah. For your career,” he interjected. “But that’s part of it. You’ve put your career ahead of me, ahead of us, even if I could forgive the sex.
“Do you think Teresa Denys or Judith McNaught are stepping out on their husbands once or twice a week for ‘research?'”
“Ernest Hemingway did a lot of the stuff he wrote about,” Aubrie snipped sharply.
“First of all, that was a hundred years ago. Second, Hemingway’s reputation as a writer has taken a huge hit in recent years. In reality, he’s turned out to be as much of a social phenomenon as an actual literary star, so don’t with that guy.”
“I’m going to fight this, you know,” she rasped.
“I know you’re going to try, but it won’t matter,” Nick answered. “Even if you’d stop cheating right now, I wouldn’t stop the divorce. But you know you’re not going to stop now. You’re enjoying yourself way too much. I see it in your body language. I see it in the way you walk. I see it in your eyes.
“You’re convinced you are right. You’ve got some good stuff for your future books, and you want more. We’ve been together so long I know what’s going through your mind.”
Aubrie sighed. Nick was right, and both knew it.
Nick had spoken to both of the couple’s children and had them come home for the Labor Day weekend so he and Aubrie could tell them about the divorce. The divorce was filed on irreconcilable differences and both agreed to tell the kids it was because they had grown apart. Which was exactly what was said when the family sat down to eat their lunch meal on Saturday afternoon.
“Bullshit. We call bullshit on that. Let’s go to the replay booth,” the couple’s son, Ryan, cried out, using a popular sports metaphor at the end.
“You guys love each other so much there’s no way you’ve grown apart,” the couple’s daughter, Lindsay, agreed. “Sometimes you guys were so sickening in front of other people it was embarrassing for us.”
“Which one of you cheated?” Ryan asked pointedly.
Aubrie and Nick looked at each other. Nick swallowed hard. Aubrie wrinkled her nose and closed her eyes.
“She did,” Nick whispered.
“Nick!” Aubrie squealed.
“I’m not covering for you. I’m not the bad guy here, and I’m not taking the blame for this,” Nick said.
“So, Mom, what haven’t you been telling us?” Lindsay inquired angrily.
Aubrie did her best fish out of water gasping for air imitation. Again, Nick spoke up.
“You mother has been stepping out on me to have sex with other men as ‘research’ for upcoming books. She told me she felt she needed this. I told her I didn’t want her to do it, and I wasn’t sure I could cope with it if she felt she had to do it…”
“You didn’t even try to cope with it,” Aubrie interrupted.
“I warned you I probably couldn’t. I told you the choice was up to you: our marriage or your career. You didn’t even blink. It was your career,” Nick said.
“I’ve only been going out on Friday nights for the last several weeks,” Aubrie said.
“And the two times you brought home guys that you fucked in our bed!” Nick quickly followed up.
“Mom! You’re a slut! A despicable slut! How could you?” her daughter shrieked.
“Was that really necessary, Nick?” Aubrie yelled at her husband.
“You tell me, babe. Was any of that really necessary?” he replied.
Aubrie looked at the angry faces of her children and didn’t answer.
Aubrie’s attorney tried to get the judge in her case to agree to marriage counseling. That was denied when the judge asked Aubrie if she was going to stop having sex with other partners.
“Well… when I’ve finished my research…” she started.
“Not good enough,” the judge replied, denying the counseling.
Although Nick was willing to accept less than half of the marital assets, his attorney convinced him that on behalf of all divorced men, he needed to take his fair share, which amounted to almost $8 million. Aubrie almost had apoplexy when the judge ruled on the assets.
“You’re stealing my money, you bastard!” she screamed at him upon the announcement, causing the judge to hit her with contempt of court charges.
“Once upon a time, our marriage meant more than money,” Nick said quietly to his attorney. “I guess she no longer gets it. I know she did at one time.”
Aubrie never slowed down with her newfound sexual adventures, continuing them while the divorce was pending and after it was official, although perhaps with less discretion than while Nick was still in the house with her. Her adventures included multiple threesomes, a few older gentleman types, several gangbangs, another woman and she even took the virginities of two barely-legal college freshmen. She particularly enjoyed sex with younger men due to their ability to go several times in a night.
She called upon Todd Monick occasionally as well, particularly enjoying the young man’s forceful nature with her. While others tried it with her from time to time, only Todd was able to find that certain button that turned her into a raging sex monster. Almost every evening out with Todd included some type of risky and risqué sex, among which were more outings in the dark end of parking lots, blowjobs in the man’s car, his inserting fingers inside her dripping pussy in a crowded elevator and the two of them having sex in a stall in a men’s room.
“That kid turns me inside out,” she told her friend Mimi while the two were having coffee one day. “The minute he puts his hands on me, I can’t say no to him, even when he wants to go outside the box. He makes me feel like I’m a 22-year-old hottie… but I certainly don’t want to have to explain to my kids why their mom got arrested for public indecency.”
“But hasn’t he been great for Skye Avalon,” her friend said.
Both women laughed heartily.
With Nick out of the picture, Aubrie had no reason to hold back sexually. By day, Skye Avalon was churning out pages of copy. By night, Aubrie and her paramours were providing Skye with plenty of fodder for those pages.
Nick no longer followed Skye Avalon’s career nor read her books. She was his past. His future included his house in town and a nice beach house on a lake in northern Indiana, about 90 minutes away. He had a nice bank account, was still a nice guy and, thanks to now being single and able to spend more time at the gym, probably the most fit he had ever been in his life.
Aubrie’s sexual adventures continued hot and heavy until she started menopause at about 53. She suddenly had little interest in the debauchery of recent years and longed for the closeness and companionship that she had in her marriage to Nick. She still enjoyed sex, especially after her menopause ended, but she now longed for evenings out that were more than obvious preludes to sex, as well as talking and cuddling after the act, more along the lines of what she and Nick once had. Maybe it was time to settle down and find someone with whom to grow old.