“Well, look, there’s more than one way to self-medicate but I don’t know if it’s for you,” he said, glancing past Quinn to the bar. A striking blonde kept rubber-necking in their direction, and Ethan balanced his chin in the palm of his left hand as he rested his elbow on the table.
“It’s sure not for me. There’s no way she can’t see my wedding band and she still keeps looking over here.” Quinn followed his friend’s gaze back behind him to catch a glimpse of the young woman and who seemed to be her equally attractive friend perched on barstools about six meters away.
“Dude, no,” he sighed. “I can’t. No one else has what Imaani has. I’m going to compare everyone else to her and that’s not going to be fair t–”
“Are these seats free?” a melodic voice chimed behind him. Ethan smiled charmingly and looked over his friend’s head, while Quinn squeezed his eyes shut and felt his face get warm.
“Sure!” Ethan replied pushing out a chair. “Join us.”
“I’m Fiona,” the blonde introduced herself, “and this is my friend, Kate.” Kate brushed aside a lock of her long brown hair with her bejeweled left hand, and Ethan smiled thinking of the secret gestures married people used to indicate their lack of intentions.
Quinn spent the next 20 minutes barely saying two words as Ethan chatted up Fiona and Kate, telling them that he and Quinn were music teachers.
“What do you play?” Fiona asked Quinn, tossing her straight blonde locks over the shoulder of her little black dress. “I bet it’s something sexy like guitar or bass, huh?”
“The cello,” Quinn blandly responded. The women laughed merrily until Fiona noticed Quinn’s solemn expression.
“Oh, you’re serious.” She cleared her throat. “So you must play in an orchestra or something?” Ethan glowered at Quinn, begging him with his eyes to stop being rude.
“We used to,” Quinn conceded, not daring to look into Fiona’s ice blue eyes. “That’s actually how Ethan and I met a long time ago. Then we parted ways for a bit but when he got back into town we decided to settle down and run a music school together.”
Fiona then told them about how she and Kate were colleagues at work as well, and how they’d known each other from their MBA program about a decade ago. She seems nice enough, Quinn found himself thinking as she told funny stories about her banking job.
Maybe it’d be a good thing to try something with someone who has nothing to do with music whatsoever. And who’s actually available and into me.
He indistinctly recalled Kate saying something about having to get home, and then a few minutes afterwards Ethan looking at his phone and giving Quinn a little wave goodnight. Then there was just him and Fiona, her hand first covering his on the table, then sliding onto his knee, then higher up. What amount of time elapsed between those touches Quinn could not say.
Somewhere between her whispering in his ear and the numerous shot glasses that magically appeared on the table in the next while, Quinn realized in the back of his mind there was a chance there would a big hole in his recollection the next day.
***********
After Clayton silently left the house shortly before noon, Imaani kept herself busy for the rest of Saturday afternoon cleaning and tending to Natasha. Between taking her daughter to a birthday party after lunch and helping her with a social studies project that night, she had fleeting thoughts about how she and Clayton would patch things up.
When Natasha had gone to her room for the night and Imaani heard her laughing while talking on the phone, she went to the living room and picked up her own phone. Her heart fluttered with a bit of hope when she saw she’d missed two texts from her husband.
Remember I told you about Greg from college? he’d written. We were in the business program together at Western. He was at the store opening and back in town visiting his parents for a week. Going out for dinner with him and may spend the night at his folks’ place if I can’t drive.
Looking back, Imaani would find the amount of detail in the texts to be suspect. But in the moment, she found herself wondering why he couldn’t just take a cab home from the restaurant or whatever bar he and Greg ended up at.
That’s fine, she typed back instead. Have fun and be safe. She put her phone in her lap but then picked it up again. Let’s talk tomorrow. I miss you.
After some time went by with no response, Imaani switched on a movie and threw a blanket over herself, her mind never fully forgetting her phone. Eventually, she was rewarded.
I cannot wait to fuck you tonight, B. Wear that little pencil skirt I like, but no panties. Every time I see you in it, I want to throw you over my desk and hike that thing right up to your stomach.
Tremors overtook Imaani’s hands and she dropped her phone while starting to hyperventilate. In seconds she was doubled over on the carpet, then alternatively gasping and crying while her limbs shook. She wondered if she was having a heart attack but couldn’t even call out to Natasha to call 911.
Whatever happens, happens, she thought, resigning herself to the possibility she might lose consciousness right there. Somehow, the thought took the pressure off her mind and her breathing slowed down after several minutes of her lying on the floor, the blanket still twisted around her knees.
Imaani stared at the legs of the TV table with her head resting on the carpet for several minutes, then slowly tried to sit up. She leaned back against the couch caddy while observing her breathing. When she was confident the panic attack had passed, she lifted herself up to the couch, then stood up to see if she was steady on her feet.
After gulping down a big glass of water, it was as if all of her emotions, her longing, her will to strengthen her marriage–all of it had drained out of her while she was curled up shuddering on the floor. It suddenly made sense. Clayton’s long hours, his popping in and out of their lives in convenient snippets like picking Natasha up from school or dropping in on one of her band’s concerts–the pieces finally fit.
Oh god, all the times I was doing a show with the band, or at the music academy with Quinn and Ethan! she realized. How supportive he was when we left to play at schools up north for days. It dawned on her that he wasn’t proud his wife was a musician; he was thrilled she was giving him massive blocks of time to fuck his mistress.
B? she thought next, suddenly hyper-aware of the task at hand. She sped through a virtual catalogue in her brain of all the people she’d met from Clayton’s office. Did she know this woman? Britney… Brianna… Bryn, was it?
Then the picture became clear as she recalled meeting a busty blonde woman in her mid-20s at a charity ball some six months ago. Bree, she snapped her fingers. Bree Collier. She’s an aide in the constituency office.
She ran to Clayton’s home office upstairs and methodically trifled through the drawers, wondering why she didn’t feel more frantic. She felt as calm now as she’d felt terrified during her panic attack just minutes ago. She knew that Clayton never took to keeping things on his phone and preferred writing down information in an old-fashioned agenda book.