An adult stories – Honesty Above All by NoTalentHack,NoTalentHack I was ready for the week to be over. Long meetings, sleepless nights, too many connecting flights, and an oppressive amount of jetlag all added up to one thing: a very tired Kyle. Even when I was a young man, this kind of week would have been exhausting. But at forty-eight? It was making me regret some life choices. Thank God I only had to travel like this occasionally, unlike the bad old days.
When I opened the front door to my home, I’d been hoping to smell dinner all ready to go and maybe to receive a welcoming kiss from Samantha, my wife of nearly twenty-five years.The former was commonplace; the latter only slightly less so. But I found neither awaiting me. Instead, the house was mostly dark, with the only light being in the entryway, along with a dim glow coming from the kitchen doorway.
“Sam?” I called out her name as I hung my coat and arranged my luggage on the floor of the foyer.
“I’m in the kitchen.” Her voice sounded strained, as if she was angry or had been crying. When I entered the kitchen and found her sitting at our small breakfast nook, I could clearly see that it was both. My wife’s brown eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but also filled with a furious light. Her normally immaculate chestnut hair was disheveled; her ponytail and the strands that had escaped it put me in mind of a slowly fraying rope.
All of this was indicative of the type of conversation we were about to have, but the final detail cinched it: two manila envelopes on the table in front of her.
“Kyle, we need to talk.”
I was too tired to put up with any crap, but this would have to be handled sooner or later. Sliding into the chair opposite her, I wearily said, “Sure. What about?”
Samantha wordlessly pushed one of the envelopes over to me. Inside, I found a selection of photographs. Despite their poor quality, they told quite the story: me dining with a gorgeous blonde woman little more than half my age; the two of us holding hands as we walked down the street; she and I locked in a passionate embrace in front of an apartment door, my hand sliding up under a curve-hugging red minidress to cup her nearly bare ass.
The timestamps printed on the photos then jumped to the next morning, with us saying goodbye as I copped one last feel, squeezing her small, firm tit through the negligee she had worn to see me off. The last shot was of me looking a little regretful as I left, but it was clear that I was disappointed to be leaving, not guilty for what I had done inside.
With a level, almost pleasant voice I inquired, “Where did you get these?”
“What does that matter?” There was no reciprocity in her tone, nothing even approaching congeniality. She was outraged, and I was mildly curious as to which made her most upset: that I had cheated, that my first response was to ask the source of her intel, or that I didn’t seem at all perturbed.
With a flick of the wrist, I tossed the evidence of my affair back onto the table. “Well, mostly because they’re not very good. Jenna looks way hotter in person, and she likes to leave the blinds partway open when we make love; any decent PI could have–”
“What is wrong with you!?” There were tears mixed in with the rage now.
I shrugged. “I’m cost conscious. Sue me. Oh, wait; you were planning to, right? After all, I assume those are divorce papers in the other envelope.”
Sam was starting to sob. “What the fuck, Kyle? Is this a- a fucking joke to you?” I don’t think this was the way she intended it to go. It’s funny how people can have such different expectations, all based on what facts they do and don’t have available to them.
“Oh, no, not at all. I’m sure it’s tearing you up. It feels awful, I know.” Leaning forward, I favored her with a particularly unpleasant grimace. “It just about killed me back then.”
“What?” A small change in her tone; the wind hadn’t gone out of her sails yet, but it was starting to shift.
“You know. When you cheated on me. Or at least when I found out about it.”
Samantha’s face went slack for a moment, glistening streams of salt and water still dripping from it. A new hesitancy followed the sudden realization that what she knew– or even what she could prove– didn’t matter; it had always been about what I knew. And I knew damn near everything. Well, everything that really mattered, anyways.
My wife stuttered, “I- I- I- ”
“‘I’ what, Sam? ‘I didn’t cheat?’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about?’ ‘I didn’t mean anything by it?’ ‘I’m sorry?’ Which ‘I’ were you going for there? Oh, I know, ‘I should never have fucked Ronnie Perkins.’ Was that it?”
“You knew?” Her tone was strangled, and I couldn’t help but laugh. She sounded betrayed, even more than she had when I first sat down across from her. “Stop laughing at me! You knew!”
Wiping a tear from my eye, I managed to downshift from laughter to a chuckle. “Not at first. Not when you did it. Not for the four months you fucked him, not right after you stopped, not even for another year after that. I’d say you did a good job of hiding it, but you didn’t. I just wasn’t looking.”
Now it was my turn to sound betrayed, as my finger jabbed angrily at her. “Because I trusted you! Because we agreed, we had ALWAYS agreed that the most important thing in a marriage, above fidelity or trust or even love, was honesty. That you can’t have any of those unless you always tell each other the truth about the big things, no matter how painful it might be.” Sam looked away so quickly that my words might as well have been a slap.
Shaking my head, I continued. “But Matt was a freshman in high school when I found out, and Riley had just turned twelve. I didn’t want to ruin their lives.”
My laughter then went beyond self-deprecating straight into flat-out disgust. “No, that’s not quite right. God, it’s gotten so easy to lie to you. I hate that. I hate that I can lie to my wife, and I hate that I can only do it so easily because I know how long she’s lied to me.
“The truth is that I didn’t want to be a part-time dad, and so I put up with knowing what I knew. I desperately hoped that maybe you’d eventually remember how important honesty was supposed to be in a marriage. Did you even realize how blatantly, openly unhappy I was there for a few months? Or did you even give a shit about me by then?”
She croaked, “I did. I’ve always loved you–”
“Fuck right off.” It was said flatly and without affect. “You don’t do that to someone you love, or at least not someone you’re in love with.”
Her eyes snapped back to me. “I did! I really did! I made a mistake, okay? I was lonely, and he was charismatic and–”
“Yeah, yeah. ‘Oh, my husband is away all the time because he’s got to work!’ ‘Oh, I’m sooooo lonely!’ ‘Oh, it’s so boring now that the kids are at school!'”
“Stop mocking me!”
I snorted, “Oh, I’m sorry, was that too contemptuous? How unkind of me. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t treat me with contempt for a decade, but–”
“I did not!” She was trying to build a head of steam back up. Fuck it; let her rant. I knew who’d already won: neither of us. But I’d have lost a lot less by the time all this was done. “I made a mistake! Yes, I was lonely, and I was bored, and I was unhappy! I shouldn’t have cheated, but it wasn’t done out of contempt!” Sam’s shoulders sagged, the energy animating her seeming to have left once more. “I was weak. I know that. I do, and I’m sorry.”
Seeing that she’d at least paused– and oh, how that disappointed me, how I wanted a fight after all these years and all her lies– I continued to lay out her failures, trying to draw my wife out of her worthlessly contrite self-pity. “Let’s put aside whether the cheating was contemptuous; I say it was, and I’m the wronged party–” With a broad smile, I waved my hand at the photos of my young lover. “–Well, I was then. Maybe not so much now.
“But what about hiding it from me? Not letting me decide what I wanted to do after you cheated on me? Are you saying that was treating me with respect? Really?”
Sam was breathing heavily, whether from fear or anger or panic, I wasn’t sure. “It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful or even dishonest. I loved you. Please, I did. It wasn’t– I had already fucked up. I didn’t want to make it worse and hurt you more. I was never going to do it again, and I did everything I could to make it up to you.”
“Except treat me like a fucking adult. Or even–” I laughed. “No, not even like an adult. Just like another person. Like a real human being, someone you respected enough to…” I drummed my fingers on the table. “Do you remember when Riley broke that vase? She was, what, six?”
“Five.” Sam rubbed her arm while looking away. She knew where this was going and didn’t like it.
“Right. Five. And then she tried to hide it from us. What did she get in the most trouble for? Hiding it, right? And you know what? She wailed and cried and said that wasn’t fair, but you told her– YOU told her– that good people admit to their mistakes, regardless of the consequences to themselves.”
“That’s not the same–”
Stepping right on top of my wife’s words, batting aside her defense, I continued, “And do you remember how proud we were of her after she got into that fender bender when she was sixteen? Riley had all sorts of outs on that one; it was dark, the streets had been slick, someone could have had their brights on. There were a hundred lies she could have told us and gotten away with it.
“But, no, our daughter remembered the lesson that we– that you– taught her and admitted that she’d gotten distracted by her phone. She took her punishment without complaint. I was so proud of her, that she had learned the lessons you taught her. That she did the right thing.”
I leaned forward over the table again, pointing accusingly. “But you. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t be even as responsible or as honest as a sixteen year old girl.”
“It was different! It wasn’t just– It wouldn’t have been just me facing the consequences! You would have been hurt, and then the kids could have gotten caught up in it if we couldn’t…” She sighed. “If you couldn’t forgive me.”
“I guess we’ll never know. But here are some things I do know.” I began to tick them off on my fingers. “One. You say you were bored. But you were the one that wanted to be a stay at home mom even after the kids were in school. That was on you.”
“You agreed to that!”
“Only because you wanted to! I would have been fine with– no, happy with you going back to work! We could have used the money, and I could have cut back at my job! I could have been home!
“Which leads to point two: you were lonely. Join the fucking club! You had the kids, and you had your friends. Hell, your family lived nearby! When I was on the road, I was alone all the damn time. I was so desperately lonely that I wanted to cry some nights. But I still didn’t fuck anyone else! I was loyal, and I was faithful. And, on top of that, I was only on the road because of point one: you didn’t want to work!”
“That’s not–”
“Shut up! I’m not done! I’ve waited eight fucking years to say my piece, you cheating whore, and you’re goddamned well going to listen!” Sam flinched; I’d never called her names before and rarely raised my voice to anyone.
“Point three. Unhappy. You were fucking unhappy? I was working backbreaking hours, my wife was pulling away from me, I barely got to see my kids, and none of that was my choice. I needed to support my family, because I was the only one that was going to! All of this– ALL of this!– Is on you wanting to be Suzy Fucking Homemaker. ALL OF IT!”
Samantha looked at the table. “I know that. I was selfish. I was. I didn’t– I should have realized it was hurting you as much as it was me. More, even. But I was… tunnel-visioned. Listening to the wrong people.”
“That worthless bitch Jeanie, right?” Sam’s idiot friend had been with her since high school. Thrice divorced. All of them somehow not her fault, even though she cheated on at least two of them. Always claimed she’d only ever cheated after everything had fallen apart; Sam never wanted to hear how unlikely that was, though, at least not until Jeanie disappeared from our life shortly after my wife’s affair.
Sam nodded unhappily. “She… I met Ronnie through her. She had been seeing him after her last divorce and said he was great. A good listener. That’s all she said I needed, another person to listen to me, a male opinion on things. I didn’t… I only planned to talk with him.”
“Clearly.”
“It’s true.” My wife’s voice was small. Weak. Like her. “I… All we did was talk at first. But he convinced me that…” She swallowed. “I don’t… you know what I did, it sounds like. I don’t want to go into it.”
I did know. Not all of the details, but enough that I felt no need to rehash it at that table. Not yet, at least. I’d had most of a decade to plan for some sort of confrontation, and while there were certain variables I couldn’t account for, I now knew the general direction we were headed.
“Yeah. I know what you did.” I looked away from her. “I just don’t know why.”
She quietly said, “I told you why.”
“No, you told me… You told me what you did, or at least enough of it. You told me how you felt, what led you to that point. But I don’t understand…” I hadn’t cried over her affair in a long time, but I suddenly felt a lump in my throat. “I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me. Talk to me. If you had been honest, if you had…”
Even though the weight of the secret I’d borne had finally been lifted, my shoulders slumped. “Such a goddamned waste. I loved you so much; I would have… I don’t know. Tried to figure it out. Gone to counseling with you. And after…” A sidelong glance told me Sam was watching me intently. “If you had told me, I can’t promise I would have been able to… to forgive. To get through it. But I would have tried. I still loved you then.”
The tears fell from her eyes once more. “‘Then.’ Not now?”
I nodded.
She hissed, “Fuck you.”
“Excuse me?”
There was so much pain in her features, so much rage and anguish in the look she gave me. “You cheated, too! You lied, too!”
The fatigue was pressing down on me, but the fight wasn’t over. With a quick crack of my neck, I pulled myself back up straight. I could go a few more rounds; I owed us both that much. “Not until after you did.”
Sam came out swinging. “And that excuses it?! You could have come to me, too! You knew I’d done it, but you didn’t say anything, just went off and banged that blonde bitch–”
A quick verbal counterpunch halted her flurry. “She wasn’t the first.”
“What?”
“She wasn’t the first. Not even the tenth.” Sam didn’t speak, just stared at me, mouth uselessly flapping; I hadn’t landed a knockout, but she was staggering.
I stood and moved to the fridge, then looked over at her. “Beer?” No response. The caps came off of two bottles, and I put one down in front of her, then took a long pull off the other. “I found out a little over a year after you cheated. Well, after you ended the affair, anyways; so I guess about a year and a half after you broke your vows to me.
“Do you remember when we wanted to give your old iPad to Riley?” A small nod, finally, one that belied the sickening realization that must have been creeping up on her. “You hadn’t used it in a while, so it was a good ‘starter’ tablet for her. But it needed to be cleaned off first.” I chuckled as understanding bloomed on her face, followed quickly by horror. “Thank God I did that, for all our sakes. I didn’t need her learning sex ed from your emails.
“That’s when I found out. I had taken the tablet with me when I traveled. It made sense for me to deal with it; you’ve never been very tech savvy, have you? You didn’t know that the emails and the messages would stay on the tablet even after you’d erased them from your phone unless you put the tablet back online after you did it. I had bought you a new one for our anniversary, remember?” She dully nodded once more.
“So, yeah, there were all your emails to him and to Jeanie, and…” I shook my head. “I had at least the outline of the affair. When it started, when it ended, why it ended, all of that. And, once I synced the tablet with your account again– after I saved all of those incriminating messages off someplace safe– ” Sam winced. “I saw that you’d deleted the evidence of your affair.
“Didn’t see any new ones, either, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. You could have just gotten smarter. You’d cheated once; why wouldn’t you cheat again? Or maybe you had done it before. Maybe Ronnie wasn’t the first one to cuckold me?”
“It was the only time.” Her voice was muted; was it pain for herself or for me? For knowing how long I’d lived with the knowledge of what she’d done? I wanted to think it was more the latter, but the most recent evidence told me it was more the former. Or maybe it was a mix of both. I didn’t think Sam was truly evil, just weak, spoiled, and dishonest.
“I know that now. By the time…” I sighed. “By the time I found out, we were doing better financially. Not so good that I could hire a detective then, but enough that I could be home a bit more often if I chose; I was going to surprise you with that after the trip where I found out.” I looked away. “But once I learned what you’d done, that was the last thing I wanted. I’d gotten used to not being around the kids by then; I hated that, but I had. And I knew that I wanted as little to do with you as possible, so I was able to prioritize them when I was home.”
I pursed my lips, trying to fight the lump forming in my throat again. “I was a mess pretty much that whole trip. Any time I wasn’t working, I was either crying or drinking. Or drinking and crying. It’s a miracle I didn’t lose those clients.” A sneer appeared. “But, hell, I traveled more than just about anyone else on my team. I was the best fucking salesman there. And all it cost me was my marriage. Didn’t have to, but that’s what you wanted.”
“I didn’t want it!” She angrily sobbed, “I wanted you home! I wanted you with us, with me!”
“But not enough to do anything productive about it. Not enough to tell me how unhappy you were, that you were so miserable you were willing to spread your legs for the first sympathetic ear with a dick attached to it. Not enough to get a job yourself.”
She started to speak, but I waved her words away. “It doesn’t matter. What happened happened. You can’t fix it, and I don’t want to hear your excuses. This is about me now, Sam. What I did. What I did, because of what you did.
“You fucked another man. Not once, not as a drunken mistake. No from what I can tell, you fucked him at least thirty times in four months. Wait, no. That was the number of times you were with him; I have no idea how many times you two actually fucked. Fifty? A hundred? More?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. You did it, you did it willingly, and you did it repeatedly. I knew I couldn’t be around you any more than I had to. That’s why there was a sudden flurry of trips there for a bit, when I had been trying to get out of them before. Remember that?
“‘Oh, just a little bit more, and then I’ll be able to be home more often.’ It was true, in its way. Not because it was going to secure my position; I’d already done that. It was so that I could have time to plan and then, for a while, to stomach being around you.”
The condensation from my beer was making a ring on the table; I probably should have used a coaster, but I couldn’t give a fuck what happened to it. Not like it was going to be mine anymore. “First, I tried to figure out if there was some way I could stay with you, some way I could approach you with the evidence, but I couldn’t see a way to. You had lied to me all that time, and getting you to confess wasn’t the same thing as you confessing on your own.
“So then I thought about divorce.” I gestured at the unopened envelope. “Just like you did. I think it took me longer than you, though. I wonder why that is?” Shaking my head again, I continued, “Regardless, I looked into it, and the best case scenario was me living in a shitty little apartment, seeing the kids every other weekend, and giving you money to go fuck whoever you wanted.”
“I’m not a slut! I made a mistake!” Samantha finally found her voice. She needn’t have bothered; I was going to tell my story now. I’d already known hers for longer than I’d liked. She’d finally get to hear mine.
“I don’t care.” That shut her up again. “Whether you were a slut or not, as soon as you were single, you’d have needed to get a job to supplement your income, and within, what, six months? A year, tops, you would have found a new guy, probably where you worked. You’re still attractive now, but you were beautiful then. So I’d pay a bunch of money to not see my kids, finance you fucking another guy, and be miserable by myself. That was a no-go.
“We’ve already established you don’t know shit about electronics. I took a look at the cloud backups for your devices; I’d set them up for you, and I doubt you even knew they existed. I didn’t find any evidence of an earlier or later affair. Then, it was trivial to get keyloggers and trackers on all of your shit. Hell, I don’t think you even know how to turn off Find My Phone. And, as far as I could tell, you never cheated on me again.”
“Of course I didn’t! I felt so guilty about it!”
I rolled my eyes. “And how would I know that? For fuck’s sake, Sam, I even had the kids tested to see if they were even mine! They look so much like you that I couldn’t even be sure of that, once I knew you’d cheated!”
The mother of my children looked appalled and outraged; that made me feel good. Not so much because I wanted her to feel bad– although, in the moment, that certainly was a nice benefit– but because her reaction seemed genuine. That look told me that she’d loved me once. That kind of pain, the understanding that someone you love could think such horrible things about you, is hard to fake.
“Do you get it now? Do you get how badly you hurt me? I know that you think you understand how badly it hurts, with your fistful of pictures, but you don’t have the first fucking clue.
“I was stuck with a woman who had cheated on me, who lied to me, who I no longer trusted. My life was tied to hers, at least if I wanted to live a good one. And I was going to have to hide my anger and my outrage and my sorrow. I was boxed in. I had to lie to everyone because of what you did.
“And the worst part? I still loved you. If I didn’t, it would have been easy. I could have treated you like that one manager I detested or some other irritant that I needed to put up with. But I had to choke down my anger and find a way to go on knowing the woman I loved more than anyone else in the world had stabbed me in the back. So that’s what I did: I found a way to cope.”
She sneered, “By fucking other women? You goddamned hypocrite.”
“Not at first, no.” My bottle was empty. I considered getting another beer, but I knew I’d probably be driving soon and settled for a soda instead. Sam hadn’t touched hers. “At first, I tried to find ways to channel my rage into productive things. My sales went up; I thought of every extra dollar I earned as a chance at freedom from you. But at night, I was still alone with my thoughts. Drinking wasn’t a long-term solution. But you know what nearly every hotel has? A gym.”
Sam’s eyebrows knit together. “Is that why you got in shape? I thought you wanted to–”
“Yeah, I know what you thought. I told you a lot of bullshit.” I sighed. “Okay, not all of it was. I did want to be in better shape so I could keep up with the kids. But mostly I needed something to do with my anger. And I had a lot of anger.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I’d known that…” Samantha reached for my hand, her expression compassionate. I recoiled from my wife’s touch as if it were a snake. The time for loving reconciliation was past. She’d made sure of that.
“Don’t.” Sam’s hand hovered over the tabletop, weighing whether she should press on. Something in my eyes or my body language told her what a bad idea that would be. I’d never have hurt her, but I sure as hell would have gotten up and walked out.
As my wife folded her arms around herself in a hug, I continued my story. “No, I didn’t set out to cheat on you. It didn’t even occur to me until maybe five, six months later. I wasn’t traveling as much then, you remember? But I was still so unhappy. It was on one of those later trips I spent the first night with another woman since you and I married.”
“You cheated. Call it what it is.”
“I didn’t cheat. Cheating would indicate that I’d broken the rules of our marriage.” I tipped the neck of my soda bottle at her. “You’d already done that. You’d cheated. You’d lied to me. You’d hidden things. As far as I was concerned– am concerned– that meant they were no longer rules I had to obey, either.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t care what you think. I did what I had to stay sane, to stay with my kids, and to try to claw back some small measure of self-respect that you and that fuckboy stole from me.” A deep breath in and out through my nose. “But, hell, this is probably the last real conversation we’re going to have, so I’ll play along.
“If our roles were reversed, if I had cheated, if I had lied, if I had hidden things, and– key here– if you knew, but revealing that you knew meant that you’d have to live in poverty without the kids, what would you have done? Would you have felt even slightly guilty if you got a chance to turn the tables?” She opened her mouth to speak.
“Don’t even try to fucking lie to me any more. You didn’t even feel guilty enough to confess what you did. Shit, you didn’t even try to make my life easier by offering to get a job after you cheated; half the emails between you and Jeanie before you cut her off were about how to make sure you didn’t get divorced so you didn’t lose the cushy life with me.”
“No! How I didn’t lose you! Not the life we had, not the house, but you and the kids!”
I regarded her coolly. Even now, she couldn’t be honest. Whether with me or herself or both, I’d never know. “Whatever you need to tell yourself to get through the day.”
Another sip to marshal my thoughts. “Anyways. The first woman. I’m not going to mention names if I don’t have to; you know Jenna, but I don’t want you going off on some misguided attempt to fuck up other peoples’ lives.
“The first one– we’ll call her Anna– was someone I worked with at another office. She had been cheated on by her husband, so I confided in her. And on one trip, I did more than confide in her; she suggested I needed a sportfuck to get my masculine mojo back. Or, you know, whatever. She was right, too.
“After that first time, I felt guilty, but not as much as maybe I should have. Was that what it was like for you, too? Never mind. Rhetorical question.
“Anna and I spent a few more nights together that week, but neither of us wanted it to turn into something serious; she was newly divorced, and the whole point of it for me was to deal with things well enough to stay with you until the kids were grown. We parted ways, occasionally hooked up again later when the mood struck, but mostly just stayed friends.
“And then I was able to come home to you. Really come home. I still detested what you’d done, but now I had my own secrets and my own lies.” A wry grin for my also-duplicitous spouse. “It’s exhilarating, isn’t it? Knowing something your ‘better half’ doesn’t?”
“I NEVER looked at it like that! It was always–”
I started to quote a particularly memorable email. “‘Ronnie, I feel so dirty keeping it from Kyle. It makes me so hot. I love him, but–‘”
“Stop it! I didn’t– I already said it was a mistake! I…” She sighed. “I didn’t feel that way afterwards. I felt… just dirty. Actually dirty. Not hot. Guilty.”
“But not guilty enough, yeah? Not enough to actually come clean. You had your affair, and it was great and hot and the only reason you ended it was not because you felt guilty, but because he got too demanding.
“And even now, you’re trying to trickle truth me.” I chuckled. “But that’s you all over, isn’t it? I’ve slept with a dozen women, I’ve kept an affair going for two years, and I still, STILL treated you and our family with more respect than you treated me.”
Her mouth hung open, then she croaked, “Two years?” Man, her PI sucked.
“Until recently, I did everything I could to keep them hidden from you; they were all out of town, all short term. Always used a condom, unlike you and that asshole. Never took time away from you or our family. You can’t claim that, can you?
“You postponed our anniversary dinner. One time, you were so late to pick the kids up from their afterschool program that they called me while I was out of town. And later, I found out in each case, it was so you could fuck your boyfriend.
“And then I looked at our finances from back then and found out you were pulling out cash occasionally. Why was that, Sam? Why were you doing that when I was killing myself to provide for us?” She was silent. Sullen. “That’s what I thought.”
I snatched up the other envelope; Sam tried to stop me but was too slow. “Don’t–!”
She looked away as I leafed through the pages, hiding her head in the sand once again, hoping the issue would go away if she just didn’t acknowledge it. “Jesus, Sam. You must have really hated me. This is… Wow, 70/30? You get the house? That much alimony? Shoot for the stars, I guess.”
“You’ve been cheating on me with that bitch for two years!”
I shrugged. “You didn’t know that.” The thick sheaf landed on the table with a thud. “You’re not going to get anything like this much. I have evidence of your affair, too. Better evidence than you have, for that matter. What have you really got? Some pictures that imply sex without confirming it? And this is a no-fault state anyways.”
“I just… it hurt so bad when I found out about her. What you did. I wanted to hurt you, too.”
“Yeah, I get that.” She bowed her head. “I wanted to do the same at first. I did lash out here and there over the years. I told Ronnie’s wife what he and you had done, for example. He was a serial cheater. Abuser, too.” God, I hadn’t smoked in years, but I wished I had a cigarette for this. “That’s why he’s dead now.”
“What?” Sam’s eyes went wide, and her expression was tinged with fear.
“Relax. I didn’t kill him; you’re not worth going to jail for. He had a heart attack, according to his wife, while fucking yet another married woman. Strange that someone so young would die like that, especially since his wife was a nurse.
“But then, maybe that’s precisely why he did die so young. Drug contraindications are a bitch. I didn’t ask the former Mrs. Jenkins, though; we were too busy engaging in other activities.” She looked at me with horror once more, but I merely smiled sweetly and took a drink.
“Anyways. Eventually, all I wanted was for you to tell me the truth. I wanted to believe that you were still the same person that had taught our daughter about honesty. I wanted you to be the woman that I’d fallen in love with.
“I did my best to be loving to you. To be warm. Do you remember? I was still hurting, but I tried to put it aside. Tried to understand from your emails why you did what you did. And, once I was… able to deal with the hurt in my own way, I tried to find a way back to us. I gave you so many opportunities to confess, so many chances to come clean.
“Do you remember when we were in bed that one night after… what were their names? That one celeb couple that broke up because one of them cheated. And I told you that if you ever cheated on me, that I’d prefer to find out from you than any other way. I could see you mulling it over, and then you told me–”
Her voice was hollow. “– ‘I’d never cheat on you, because I love you too much.'”
“Yeah.” I looked away. “When I traveled next, that was the second time I cheated.”
She didn’t retort. Didn’t scream, ‘so you’re saying it’s my fault?!’ It was clear: that was exactly what I was saying. She cheated, and she lied, and she betrayed not just me, but the core value we both had claimed was the most important in a marriage.
Every time I’d given her a chance to, prompted her to, all but begged her to, she just dug herself in deeper. And I’d go and cheat afterwards. It was a stupid, self-destructive coping mechanism, but it was the one I had.
I tapped the envelope that contained the pictures. “This was your last chance. I didn’t suddenly turn stupid; Jenna and I could have hidden this from you indefinitely. I wanted you to find out. I hoped…” A tear slid down my cheek; I guess I wasn’t entirely done crying about the destruction of our marriage. “I hoped that you’d find out, and you’d confront me, but that you’d confess what you’d done. Try to find a way back with me.”
Then I tapped the other envelope. “But when I saw this? I knew we were over. I tried so hard to stay in love with you, right until I saw this envelope. I knew then that either you never were the woman I thought I’d married, or you’d changed somewhere along the way. Either way, that woman was gone, and she was never coming back.”
Her mouth opened, then closed again. Samantha didn’t say anything. She couldn’t deny it; she’d not only gotten documents drawn up, but they would have been ruinous if any judge wouldn’t have simply laughed them out of court. And when she was confronted, she still lied.
Lying had become second nature to her; to me, too, I suppose. I lied to myself about who my wife was right until the end.
Sam watched me as I stood. “I’ll be back to get some more of my stuff later. My lawyer will be in touch; the settlement will be fair. I don’t want to put you in the poorhouse, Sam. You were a good wife for fifteen years, and you’re still a great mom. I don’t hate you anymore; I did for a while, but…” I sighed. “Now, I’m just sad.”
She nodded, unspeaking. Leaning over, I kissed the top of her head one last time. “Goodbye, beautiful. I wish things could have been different.” And then I was gone, with the sound of sobs trailing behind me as I closed the door to what had once been my home.
After that, I just drove for a while. I knew where I was going, but I needed to be by myself for a little while first. I needed to grieve by myself. Eventually, though, I rung the woman who I’d always been able to rely on.
It was funny; our relationship had started out so innocently, with me mentoring Jenna four years before. She was just barely out of college, with an MBA so new the ink was still wet and ambition that would put the captains of industry to shame. We met at a networking event, and I could easily see she was going places.
I didn’t view her in a sexual way at first; well, no more than I would any other young, beautiful woman. Less, perhaps; I liked our friendship as just that: friendship. Jenna was grateful for my guidance, and I was proud of her accomplishments.
We eventually became close enough that I confided in her one night when we were having dinner; she had wanted to talk to me about a new contract she was looking at, but I was distracted. Sam had once again failed to confess when given an easy out, and I was brooding. When I told Jenna my story, she listened and consoled me. It felt good to have someone I could share the secret with. The secret, and more.
I had never had an emotional affair before; the closest had been the first one– the one I’d called Anna when speaking about her to Sam– but even that fell short. She offered a friendly shoulder to cry on sometimes and a very willing sexual partner at others; there was no serious emotional involvement there.
Jenna was different. We had been friends for a while, for one. Lived in the same town as me, too. She and I could and did meet up more frequently, but I only ever meant to be friends with her, never sexual partners.
That changed after her fiancé left her. We didn’t become intimate then, but after she’d healed for a few months, Jenna and I shared a few drinks and then a bed. We turned out to be compatible in just about every way.
Regardless, I still had one child living at home then, and I hadn’t entirely given up hope that Sam might confess after it was just the two of us living in an empty nest. Beyond that, Jenna was young enough that leaving my wife for her would certainly cause tongues to wag. So we just kept it casual; we were something more than friends, something less than full-time lovers.
I obviously wasn’t exclusive with her, and I didn’t expect her to be with me. We simply agreed that she would let me know if she was otherwise occupied. No details were necessary. I was certain that she would find a young man to marry before too long.
But Jenna never did. Instead, we continued our arrangement, and when it became clear that there was only one chance of Samantha confessing– by making my infidelities so blatant that a blind woman could see them– Jenna was entirely on board with her role in my scheme. Hell, she did just about everything she could to make it clear that we were engaged in an affair short of pinning her soiled panties to Sam’s pillow with a note saying “I’m fucking your husband.”
Remembering her threat to do just that brought a smile to my face. Hell, Jenna brought a smile to my face in general. I doubted that our affair would end simply because it had ceased to be adulterous, but eventually some guy her age was going to snap her up. She deserved that kind of happiness, but in the meantime I was going to enjoy her company as much as I could.
She picked up on the third ring. “Jenna’s apartment, homewrecking tramp speaking.”
I snorted. “Mission accomplished there. She found out.”
“Really? Fucking amazing. Only took her six months.”
Quietly, I said, “She was waiting for me with divorce papers.”
Her tone had changed from playful to sympathetic. “Oh, Kyle, babe. How are you?”
“Ah, kind of shit, actually. Are you busy tonight?”
“No, not at all. Come over?”
“Thanks.”
When I showed up at her front door, suitcases in hand, Jenna pulled me into a big hug, then led me inside and held my hands while I told her everything that transpired. When I was finished, she said, “I’m so sorry, babe. I mean–” She sighed. “I’m sorry that she hurt you, and that she couldn’t just tell you the truth. But… Look, I’m going to be honest, okay? I’m glad you’re divorcing her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Jenna kissed me, a gentle, sweet kiss. “I’m glad it’s settled. Now you know. And…” She bit her lip. “Now you’re free to, you know, move on.” Her hand stroked my cheek. “Maybe… maybe with me?”
“What? Seriously? Jenna, I’m almost twice your age and–”
Another kiss, a more forceful one. “But you’re not twice my age. Not quite. Older? Yeah. But I’m a grown woman, Kyle. And I know what I want and who I want.”
I scoffed, “Jenna, come on. I know you’ve got young guys queueing up to–”
“I haven’t seen anyone besides you in almost a year, Kyle. I haven’t needed anyone else, or wanted them, for that matter.” She straddled me suddenly, her firm body pressed against mine. “I’m not asking you to decide tonight, babe. Take whatever time you need. I’ve been waiting for you for a year; I’ll wait longer if I have to.”
Looking up into those gorgeous blue eyes, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why didn’t you say something?”
Her lips brushed against mine. “Because I didn’t want to make you decide between me and her. You’d been trying to get her to admit the truth for years; I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to, so I decided to wait. If she did miraculously confess, I didn’t want you to feel guilty about me. And if she didn’t…” She kissed my neck, and I felt myself begin to stir. With a chuckle, she said, “Well, I figured I’d get first crack at you.”
“Jenna…”
“Shh, baby. I’m in no hurry. I’m happy with how we are now. I want more, but we can move as fast or as slow as you want; I’ll be here, okay?” She pulled back to gaze into my eyes once more. “I’ll be yours when you’re ready. As long as you’ll be mine, too.”
I opened my mouth to object again. But then I thought, ‘Why am I fighting this?’ Jenna was great. Yeah, there was the age difference, but she wasn’t some kid straight out of college; she was closer to thirty than twenty-five. And she and I were more in sync, in terms of personality, goals, and attitudes than Sam and I ever had been.
As I studied Jenna’s face, I found myself looking at her anew; not as my mentee, or my friend, or my lover, but as all those things and more. She hadn’t explicitly said the “L” word, but in all of her actions, in all of the long conversations and rushed lunches and evenings spent with her both in bed and out, love was there. I thought of all of the times we’d spent together and of all the time I wished I hadn’t wasted trying to save a dead marriage.
This was the beginning of my second act, and Jenna would be my leading lady.
“I want that, too.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?!” A kiss answered her query, a long, slow kiss between two lovers that might become something more permanent. That would, when the time was right, after all the wreckage was cleared.
But then the kiss morphed into something more familiar, a passionate embrace between two people who knew each other’s bodies intimately but never tired of exploring them. Jenna disengaged long enough to stand and take my hand, eagerly leading me to her bedroom. Our bedroom? We’d have to talk about that eventually.
I hadn’t been with her in weeks, and we both keenly felt our shared, pent-up desire. More than that, though, we needed to reaffirm everything that we’d just said, and nothing would slow us down in doing so. By the time we were done undressing each other, our clothes were absolutely demolished, with buttons popped off and seams torn; neither of us cared.
My beautiful young lover knelt before me, taking my cock in her mouth as she’d done so many times before, kissing and licking and sucking at it insistently. My hand snaked into her hair, directing her, but not controlling her; sometimes she preferred the latter, but not right then. She wanted to be in control, at least for a little while. As her head bobbed up and down, I found no reason to argue.
After only a very short time, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. “Jenna, wait, I’m gonna cum if you don’t–” With a wicked chuckle, she suddenly took me all the way into her mouth, into her throat, as her hands clutched at my ass to keep me exactly where she wanted me. “Oh! Oh fuck!” My balls tightened, and I dumped what felt like gallons of cum into my gorgeous lover’s stomach; when it was over, she pulled back and licked her lips seductively.
“I’m sorry, lover. Was I supposed to stop?” Her hand was stroking my half-hard dick, and the way she purred her faux apology made it twitch.
“Get on the bed. Now.” My voice was stern, but we both knew it was all part of the game we played, one which she reveled in.
Jenna climbed on, crawling on hands and knees, ass raised in the air as she looked over her shoulder with a pout. “Was I a bad girl? Am I going to be punished?” She yelped as my hand smacked a round, firm cheek, then giggled, “Oh no! I’m sooooo sorry, Kyle.” Another slap brought another yelp, chased by a little happy noise. More smacks followed, until her pretty little ass was red with handprints, and she was panting with need. “Oh– Oh god, babe, please!”
I kissed each of her lovely bright red cheeks in turn, then took a brief moment to taste her dripping snatch. Jenna gasped at that, driving herself back into my face, then whimpering when I pulled away. Gently rolling her onto her back, I teased, “Are you going to be my good girl from now on?” An enthusiastic nod from my lover put a smile on my face.
I was fully hard again, but I wanted to give Jenna as much pleasure as she’d given me before; more, actually. I considered going down on her, but I hadn’t shaved since early in the morning, and stubble burn is no fun. Instead, I laid next to her and traced my fingers down her body, from neck to breasts to stomach, until I paused at her mound.
She shivered as I traced little shapes, not quite reaching her labia. And then, when my good girl started to whine in frustration, my hand moved just a hair lower, and she was shivering and whining for an entirely different reason. Jenna’s hand gripped mine as its digits penetrated her. My beautiful blonde lover moaned and begged, “Please, oh god, please Kyle, I’m your good girl, please, baby, make me cum, please!” She was gorgeous. Desperate. Mine.
Jenna’s whines and moans made a slow transition to a low, keening wail. Her eyes locked on mine; yes, there was unquestionably love in them. How long had it been there? How long had I not noticed, not returned that desperate yearning to voice the connection we both shared? Too long.
No longer.
“I love you, Jenna. Cum for me, good girl.”
A sudden paralysis came over Jenna. All motion ceased. Her eyes grew moist, her breath caught, and then my love came as hard as I’d ever seen her. Both her hands clutched mine, holding me to her, inside her, as climax took control of her body. “Ah- ah- ah- Ah, god! I love you, Kyle! I love you so much!”
She trembled and gasped as I held her close, once again watching her as she watched me. Her head turned towards me, and tears trickled onto the pillow. “D- did you mean it? Really?”
“Yes, Jenna. Yes, I did. I don’t know–” I sighed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, with me, my life, my kids, hell, even where I’m going to be living–”
“Here. I vote here.”
” — But whatever does happen, I want you by my side. You’ve already been there, and I want– no, I need to… To honor that. To be honest about what it’s meant to me, what it means to me. What you mean to me.” I kissed her softly. “I love you, Jenna. That’s the honest truth.”
We lay together for a while, comfortable in the warmth of each other’s embrace. In other circumstances, perhaps we would have stayed that way. But I was still hard, and Jenna wanted more than just my fingers. Stroking my face with one hand, she softly asked, “Make love to me?” I reached for the bedside drawer but heard, “No condoms, please. Not anymore. I want to feel you, all of you.” Jenna was on the pill, and I knew I was clean; if she had told the truth– and I was certain she had– she would be, too.
When I entered her, it was both familiar and new. The tightness, the heat, the way she held me close as we made love, all of these things I knew. But to feel her completely, the velvet texture and the wetness, to have my skin on hers, to hold nothing back from each other? It took us to a whole new level.
As our motions grew more urgent, more frenzied, as they shifted from gentle lovemaking to the headlong rush of need and desire, we found ourselves changed as well. No longer did Jenna need to fear marking me, and when she came with another of her loud, low wails, she claimed her territory with scratches on my back and love bites on my neck. I was hers now, hers and hers alone, and she would leave no doubt of that.
Before long, I marked my claim on her as well. My thrusts became staccato, shorter and harder as I approached the edge. Jenna whispered wickedly into my ear, “More baby, yes, faster, harder, I want it, I want to feel all of it, cum, Kyle, please, cum!.” Her urging drove me over the edge. I was lost in my love and my lust for the incredible woman beneath me, happily giving her everything she begged for. “Yes, baby, cum inside me. I’m your good girl, yours, fill me up, fill– Ah! Yes! Yes! So– God, it’s so hot, Kyle! I love it! I love you!”
I was breathing hard. We both were. Every bit of our lovemaking had been exhilarating, both the physical and the emotional. But now, with the more intense sensations fading, I felt the mild sting of Jenna’s markings on my back. “I think you drew blood.”
“Oh, no!” She pouted. “Was I a bad girl? Are you going to have to punish me again?” I narrowed my eyes, but there was a smile on my lips. Yes. Yes, I was. But not until a bit later; I wasn’t a young man anymore, even if she made me feel like one.
Her bedroom did become our bedroom, at least for a few weeks. Eventually, we both agreed that it made more sense for us to live separately until things were sorted. Jenna and I were still in each other’s beds almost every night, but having separate addresses until the messiest parts of the divorce were done was the smartest choice. And, my oh my, were there a lot of messy parts.
First, the kids. They were not thrilled, at all, with either Sam or myself. Their mom had talked to them first, and while she didn’t completely blame me for the split, she was… let’s say “selective” with the information she provided. I got an earful from both Matt and Riley. But my kids calmed down a bit– towards me, at least– when I gave them all the necessary context, albeit each for different reasons.
Matt had a kid on the way, and he understood why I stayed as long as I did, especially once I explained what the fallout would have been. When he learned that divorce would have meant almost never seeing him or Riley, along with how close we were to poverty even without trying to keep up two households, he started to understand. And when I explained to him the impotent rage and crushing sadness my grudging acceptance had engendered, he became even more sympathetic. Matt still wasn’t happy, but he was accepting.
Riley was flat out pissed once she learned the truth. She had really taken the lessons about honesty and accountability that we’d try to impart to heart, and finding out everything her mom had done turned her against Samantha in a big way. That wasn’t what I intended– I didn’t want their relationships with either of us harmed, if only for the kids’ benefit– but it sure beat having her mad at me. She still was, to an extent, but my daughter placed the bulk of the blame for our divorce squarely on my wife’s shoulders.
Next was the divorce itself. When the division of assets started, it seemed like things would be amicable, but that didn’t last long. Sam fought to keep the house; I offered to have her buy me out, but she couldn’t afford that. After she let that go, Samantha argued for more alimony. And then the disputes were about division of property. Retirement. On and on it went. She wasted so much money on our lawyers and still got basically the same split that I had originally offered. Now, though, her cut was going to be smaller, because the whole pie was smaller.
Jenna’s place in my life proved to be less of an issue than I had expected. Neither Matt nor Riley were happy that I was with someone not much older than them, but that wasn’t the main bone of contention. Their mom had tried to convince them early on that Jenna stole me from my wife. Even after I convinced them that wasn’t true, it stuck around on a subconscious level. It wasn’t until our wedding– and especially the fact that we had an ironclad pre-nup, at Jenna’s insistence– that they finally accepted her as my partner.
Yes, our wedding. Once the division of assets was done– almost a fucking year later, thanks to my ex-wife’s desperate attempts to keep a lifestyle she’d grown accustomed to– I bought a smaller house, and Jenna moved in with me. It was bliss. It honestly never really stopped being bliss, and within a year we were married.
Oh, like any couple, we had our issues. Some of them were the standard ones, like division of chores between two hardworking people that were very tired at the end of the day. Some were unique to a relationship with a significant age gap. But, when it came down to it, we were committed to each other and to our future. And to our kids.
Jenna was originally the one that wanted kids. My wife could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be; she was in her early thirties, and I was in my early fifties, but she argued that I was as healthy as a horse. I had to admit, after playing with my grandchildren I found myself missing the pitter patter of little feet around the house. Jenna went off the pill a few years after we were married; I got the snip after Dylan and Zoe were born. Twins. Yeah, we didn’t sleep much for a while.
It was kind of surreal to see my grandchildren and my two youngest children grow up together. I did wish I was able to be just a little bit more active for them. Healthy is one thing; young is another. But we were a happy family, and that’s what mattered most.
Samantha was surprisingly sanguine the first time we found ourselves together at an event after I married Jenna. It was Riley’s wedding; our daughter was marrying a great guy, and we were both pleased as punch with her fiancé. Sam had finally accepted her role in the failure of our marriage, and with the passage of time, our feelings towards each other were mostly fondness for the people we’d been when we were younger and appreciation for each other as parents. We even danced together while Jenna chatted with my ex-wife’s date.
Sam smiled up at me. “You seem really happy, Kyle.”
“I am. Very much so.”
A hint of sadness made its way into her eyes. “Happier than you were with me.” It wasn’t a question.
A sympathetic smile was all I had to cushion the blow. “By the end, yeah.”
“I really messed everything up, didn’t I?”
“We both made mistakes, Sam. I could have handled things better, too. I was so stuck on you confessing on your own. Maybe if… ” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.”
“No, I suppose not. But still…” She wiped away a solitary tear. “I’m glad we had the time together that we did. I’ll always cherish it.”
“I will, too. And we have some great kids, too.”
Samantha’s grin was broad and brilliant. For just a moment, I saw a glimpse of the woman I’d loved so much. That woman, the young wife and mother that I’d adored, would always have a little piece of my heart. “Yeah, we do. We really do.”
The music ended. My first real love stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek, then walked arm in arm with me back to my greatest love. As I took Jenna’s hand to lead her to the dancefloor, my ex-wife said, “I’m very happy for you both.”
She might have been telling the truth; she might not. It didn’t matter, because as my wife and I danced a slow dance, staring into each other’s eyes, I could honestly say that I had never been happier.