Reluctant Cuckold (30 page)

Suddenly I thought back to Ashley. Badger would have no qualms about pulling the double-cock stunt on my wife if he sensed she was game. I doubted it would matter that I was Sean’s brother. He’d seize the opportunity to slut any wife out, including mine.

Had Ashley ever thought of the more-than-one guy thing? Was she trying it this weekend—seizing the “My husband is thousands of miles away” opportunity?

Could she have pulled out Jay’s card and called the prick? Was she riding up and down on Jay’s fucking pasta rocket? Could Jay have invited one of his biker friends over to join him in seducing her … just like Sean and Badger had done with Jessica? Could Ashley have been chugging cock, while Jay was pumping his big cock into her pussy?

Holy fuck, Ashley, I thought, why haven’t you fucking called me?

I pictured Jay and his biker friend switching positions as Ashley’s pussy and mouth were filled with cock. Jay’s the type of guy who would cum on a girl’s face, who’d top it off with that kind of cherry.

“Oh my God, Jay, please, not my fucking wife … oh God, he’s doing it, he’s fucking my wife, he’s doing the double Jim Murta on me, laughing at clueless me. Please Jay, no ...”

“Too bad, chump. I’m so going to do it, Dave. I’m going to cum right in your wife’s fucking face. Ashley’s about to take a hot messy facial. How do you like them fucking apples, boy
?”

Suddenly I came royally hard.

And then I felt royally empty and alone … thousands of miles from home.

I didn’t hear from Ashley until I’d joined the group by the pool.

“Sorry about being MIA,” she said. “I just got my phone back after leaving it in a cab last night.”

“Where are you now?”

“On a train back to the city. I had to ride up to Katonah to get it back from the guy who found it. He works in Manhattan, but I didn’t want to wait until Monday. I had to take a cab to his golf club—such a hassle.”

I heard the Metro-North station announcement in the background.

“So what are you up to?” she asked.

“Just hanging by the pool”

“Wow, rub it in, why don’t you.”

“It’s not that at all,” I said. “I’d rather be hanging by my parents’ pool with you right now.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. Me, too.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. I’ve really missed you, Ash.”

“I’m looking forward to it, too.”

I felt relieved. I jumped into the pool and floated on my back, thinking that by this time tomorrow, I’d be on my way home.

I felt like kissing the ground as I got off the plane.

There was a text from Ashley, telling me to join her at a bar. She was with Tamara and two other girlfriends I didn’t know. Tamara was the last person I wanted to see, but I really wanted to see my wife, and I was going to have to deal with Tamara sometime.

Ashley gave me a big hug and kiss when I showed up with my luggage in tow and summoned the waitress to get me a drink. Tamara stood up and gave me a hug. As I sat down I said “hi” to the other two friends.

“So how was Vegas?” Tamara asked.

“It was fun,” I replied. “It’s Vegas, right? How can you not have a good time? I lost a hundred bucks at blackjack, but who cares, right? It’s the price of having fun.”

“It was a bachelor party, right?” Tamara asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “for a friend of my brother’s.”

“Well,” she said, “did you behave yourself?”

“Oh, yeah. C’mon, of course.”

“I was just kidding,” Tamara replied. “I’m sure you did, Dave.”

There was an awkward silence.

“You know,” I said, “when a buddy is getting married, you do the obligatory strip club scene, which is so played and boring, but I’ll tell you this much, I didn’t lose a tooth or wake up with a tiger in the bathroom.”

Tamara smiled as I said, “You see, Ash? All my teeth, all still here.”

“Did you get some sleep on the plane?” Ashley asked.

“No, but I flew Virgin, so I had a TV. A CNBC documentary on the housing meltdown kept me distracted from Indiana to when I landed.”

“And that didn’t put you to sleep?” Tamara asked.

“Well, I also checked out HGTV,” I replied. “I got tips on how to remodel a kitchen, which I can back-pocket for when Ash and I buy a house.”

Finally, gratefully, one of the other girls talked about some old, batty woman she works with. The woman sent an email and clicked the “send to all” button. And where this old woman worked, that meant three hundred employees’ email in-boxes.

“She was warning us all,” the girl said, “about not drinking some soda out of a can and how the media wasn’t reporting it. But she wrote how rats had recently infested a plant, and how five people from various states in the last two weeks had died from rat feces’ poisoning. She bought into this obvious Internet hoax. She actually wrote the word ‘feces’ in a company-wide email.”

“Can I asked a practical question?” I said. “Why hasn’t this woman been shit-canned yet?”

Tamara laughed and gave me an unusually supportive glance.

This was my chance to leave on a good note. I didn’t want to alter the all-girl dynamic for long.

“Hey Dave,” Tamara said, “we’re having a work happy hour this Friday night. I know you had to work late that last time, but you should come out if you can. It’ll be fun.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” I said.

Ashley said she’d meet me back home in a bit and hugged me goodbye.

My stamina in bed with Ashley was only slightly improved that night.

After I came home from work the next day, I had laundry to do.

I take my shirts in, but we had a washer and dryer recently installed. On the second load, I went into Ashley’s hamper, just to fill the washer up and help her out. As I was throwing her clothes in, I found a t-shirt that startled me. It was plain white, with the word “Submissive” in black lettering on the front. Above it was some sort of calligraphy, vaguely Arabic, maybe the word ‘Submissive’ translated into another language.

I had never seen the shirt before and had a sinking feeling. Why and where would she be wearing a shirt proclaiming such a thing? How could the connotation be anything but sexual?

I left the t-shirt, washed and folded, sitting atop her clothes on a chair.

“So I see you were going through my hamper,” Ashley said when she arrived back from the gym.

“I had a light load,” I explained, “so I thought I’d help you out.”

“So are you asking for me to explain it?” she said.

“What?”

“The t-shirt—you didn’t just randomly leave it on the top of my clothes.”

“I hadn’t seen it before,” I replied, “so I was curious. What’s it from? I didn’t see any tour dates on the back, so I figure it’s not some new rock band.”

“It’s nothing, Dave, we got it as a goof.”

“We? How do you mean?”

“Me and Tamara—for a party last weekend. The theme was to be provocative. Well, that was our last minute, lame effort.”

“How do you mean?”

“We bought matching t-shirts, only I picked out hers and she picked out mine. The dare was to wear whatever the other selected.”

“Oh, so Tamara wore one as well?”

“Yeah.”

“You both wore matching shirts?”

“No, I chose ‘slut’ for her and she chose ‘submissive’ for me—it was all a goof.”

“Oh, OK,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. How did it go over? I mean, at the party?”

“We didn’t win any prizes,” she replied, “but at least we had something.”

“OK,” I said.

“Are you upset?”

“No, I was simply asking, Ashley. You explained it, no big deal. Let’s forget it, babe.”

But after she went to bed, I couldn’t forget it.

I went online. Mike messaged when he saw me.

“Hey bro, how was Vegas?”

“Not great. It was my brother and his friends pushing the debauchery.”

“Did you join them in the debauchery?” Mike wrote.

“No, I felt like the odd man out. I sat on the sidelines.”

“And you didn’t open up to them about what’s going on with Ashley, right?”

“I didn’t say shit, man.”

“Good job.”

“But here’s the thing, Mike,” I typed. “Tonight I found a t-shirt in Ashley’s hamper that said ‘submissive’ on it. She explained that Tamara picked it out for her, and she picked one for Tamara, to wear as a goof, as a dare.”

“Dare for what?”

“They wore it to some party where the theme was to dress provocatively.”

“Does Ashley have submissive tendencies?”

“No, not that I know of, anyway.”

“What did Ashley pick out for Tamara?”

“A t-shirt that said, ‘slut’.”

“Well, that fits Tamara, doesn’t it? Why do you think Tamara would give Ashley the ‘submissive’ label?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Do you think maybe that’s how she was with the guy at the party? Submissive?”

“Can’t say I haven’t wondered that.”

“I’m thinking there was a reason behind it, Dave. I mean, she could have given her a shirt like ‘married but available’ or ‘easy,’ but she chose ‘submissive’ for Ashley.”

“Yeah, it’s more disturbing the more I think about it.”

“Did Ashley tell you about the party?”

“No, I didn’t ask. I know it was this weekend. I called, but she didn’t return my call until the following afternoon.”

“That doesn’t sound good, bro.”

“Well she had a logical-sounding excuse, and Ashley doesn’t make things up.”

“OK, but she still went out to some party wearing a t-shirt that said ‘submissive’ on it, right?”

“Yes” I typed.

“While her husband was out of town.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I don’t know about this Tamara girl.”

“I know. Me, too,” I said. “I had to see her at a bar when I got back.”

“How did that go?”

“She asked if I behaved myself in Vegas and when I said that I had, she said rather condescendingly, ‘Of course you did,’ like, ‘I’m sure you were a good little boy.’”

“OK, Dave, so Tamara sounds like a conniving enabler, but what about the talk you were going to have with Ashley?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“You feel confident about what you’re going to say, my man? You’ve thought it out?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ll be taking your advice about bringing it up when she talks about work.”

“Just wait for an opening, my friend,” he wrote. “Don’t rush it, find the natural opening.”

“Right.”

“But Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t blow it off tomorrow. It’s important—there’s an urgency. You need to figure out where Ashley’s head is at—like right now. You know what I’m saying?”

“Mike I totally do.”

“Good man.”

It was raining hard the next morning.

I couldn’t find any of the five-dollar junk umbrellas I’d bought off the street. I had an important meeting and was wearing a thousand dollar suit. I looked for one of Ashley’s large umbrellas in her bedroom closet.

“What are you doing, snooping?” Ashley asked, suddenly coming out of the bathroom.

“What?” I asked.

“What are you doing in my closet?”

“It’s pouring outside. I just need an umbrella.”

“Upper shelf to the left.”

I was frantic with work meetings but on my walk home, I refocused on the conversation I would be having.

I had focused objectives.

I’d open communication by simply talking about it again. I wanted to get a better sense of where her head was at. Was it a fluke thing or did the experience still resonate? I still wanted to know more about that night, like what was going on when I knocked, but I’d feel awkward asking for details and they wouldn’t be useful going forward, anyway. But sitting in the bathroom at home, I thought about her potential answer to that question.

“Yes of course I knew it was you knocking, Dave—we all knew it was you, when you said ‘hello.’ What was I doing when you knocked? Do you really want to know?”