Noah took a drink, and said, ‘You could have been a little more reluctant to confirm the story.’
She laughed. ‘So your wife could be in blissful ignorance the rest of her life? Or were you gonna tell her everything?’
Now was his turn to shrug. Would he have told Adrienne everything? Maybe. Maybe not. An edited version of the truth perhaps, being a little more confident in his belief that he hadn’t actually fucked Virginia Lawson at all that night.
Surprising him with a tone that was suddenly almost forgiving, or at least softened in understanding, Virginia said, ‘Maybe you didn’t really have anything to tell her anyway.’
Noah put his glass down and turned his head to look at her, his jaw dropping. ‘I’m sorry… can I just say a huge ‘huh’?’
The blonde smiled like a femme fatale. ‘Maybe we did it that night, maybe we didn’t.’
He caught his breath. Was she serious? ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you went out there and told the whole of Facebook that you slept with me, and now you’re saying… maybe it didn’t actually happen?’
She shrugged, took another drink. ‘I’m not saying it didn’t happen… just… you know… I guess neither one of us remembers it.’
‘Jesus,’ Noah hissed. He leaned back a touch too much before realizing he was on a stool, not a chair with any kind of back support. Nearly made a fool out of himself. Thankfully the blonde wasn’t watching, she was gazing guiltily into her drink.
‘Well it could have happened, right? Probably did, let’s face it. Chances are…’
‘’Probably did’? That’s the best you got? And you go out there and try to wreck my marriage?’
The bartender was edging toward them now, a touch concerned at the rising volume of Noah’s voice. He gave an apologetic glance to the guy, along with the kind of expression that said he’d take care to keep it down from now on. The bartender, who looked like he could have picked up Noah bodily and flung him out of the place without his feet touching the ground, gave him a little nod in reply, his eyes saying: ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
Virginia Lawson looked at him and smiled somewhat seductively, flirtatiously twirling a strand of her golden hair as he noticed that a little more of her cleavage was on display to him now. She’d edged her dress a touch more apart.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘everyone thinks we slept together.’
‘And yet, somehow, I think we didn’t,’ Noah said, feeling himself more than a little vindicated.
‘But we could, don’t you think?’ the blonde said. ‘I mean… it wouldn’t change anything now, would it? Your wife thinks we fucked. So maybe we should just make sure…’
Noah laughed, but with disbelief instead of any real amusement. ‘You’re kidding, right? You think because neither of us is sure we slept together, we should just sleep together tonight… so we both know for certain?’
She shrugged again. Flushed slightly, like she wasn’t used to having a man say ‘no’ to her, wasn’t quite sure how to respond to it. Well, she was cute, that was for sure. Her basic offer to sleep with him did have Noah’s pulse quickening, even if the outrage he felt over everything and his loyalty to Adrienne kept his instinctive lust firmly in check.
‘I’m sorry…’ he said, voicing his disbelief as sharply as he could without raising the volume, ‘how can you not know whether a guy slept with you or not, anyway? There’s got to be evidence, right?’
‘Evidence?’
‘You know… of fucking someone. I woke up in the shower… I either didn’t sleep with you at all, or I made sure to wash myself pretty well before I collapsed.’
Now she was blushing fiercely. ‘There doesn’t have to be evidence…’
‘Even if we used a condom, there’d be some kind of signs that we really did it…’ Noah said. His expression darkened. ‘We really didn’t do it at all, did we?’
She looked into her drink again, or at least at the ice that was all that remained of it.
‘I think you should tell Adrienne,’ he said firmly. Then a thought struck him: ‘Can I ask… what did you think of her before, in high school? You were a freshman, she was a senior. You couldn’t have known her that well.’
Virginia took a breath. ‘She was… she was the Prom Queen, right? Everyone wanted to be her… or be with her.’
Noah chuckled at this. He hadn’t known this of Adrienne. He knew little of her backstory, though, other than the kind of tame details a husband was permitted since they’d met. Nothing of her social reputation, at least. It was like talking about her exes, it was simply never done. Noah had never been interested, just like Adrienne wasn’t interested in hearing about his exes… and yet now… maybe he was interested.
‘You wanted to be her…’ he said, laying out his deduction, ‘…and here, all these years later… you had an opportunity to make it seem like you’d slept with her husband.’
‘I… it wasn’t like that…’ she insisted. Her acting skills weren’t particularly good.
The bartender drifted over to refill their drinks again. Noah wondered how late this bar stayed open.
He told the blonde, ‘I don’t know how you got me in your room, but you made up the whole story about me sleeping with you, didn’t you?’
She said, ‘I swear, I didn’t know, one way or another. For all I knew… for a guy to be alone with me in my room at night… he’s only there for one reason.’
Noah felt a little funny—to be vindicated, entirely, in his eyes. But the fact he was supposed to have cheated on Adrienne had led to the whole Hall Pass thing.
‘Not if he’s married,’ he argued. ‘We were both drunk enough that it affected our memories. So maybe I walked you back to your room at the end of the evening so you’d be safe.’
‘You woke up in my shower.’
‘Where, apparently, I fell asleep. Perhaps I went into the bathroom to throw up. If I had a lot to drink…’
‘Well…’ she said, brushing her hair back with both hands, as though she was thinking about putting it up in a ponytail, though the effect it had was to thrust out her pert breasts toward him, inviting his gaze. ‘Doesn’t change the fact that your wife thinks we slept together… and you’re obviously still with her, so what’s the problem?’
Now as her breasts threatened to escape her dress, she really did slip a hair band over her gathered locks, to leave her hair up in a ponytail. It somehow took away all the sophistication of her new haircut, made her seem like a college girl at most.
‘The problem…’ he said under his breath, ‘…is that my wife thinks I cheated on her…’
‘But you’re still together, right? She forgave you…’
‘Doesn’t matter… I lost her trust,’ he explained. He didn’t seem to be making much sense to the blonde. ‘If I slept with you now, and she somehow found out that I did… you know, after we’d already nearly split up because she thought I was cheating on her…’
‘What?’ the blonde said. ‘We’d only have slept together once. Just like she thinks.’
Her logic was attractive, but deeply flawed.
The bartender came over to tell them the place was about to close. Noah looked around them, and it seemed like they were the last remaining in there.
‘You’re going to find her,’ he said quietly but with intense insistence, ‘and you’re going to tell my wife the truth. If it’s tomorrow morning, or at the next wedding we go to… or Facebook, or email, or whatever. You’re going to say sorry, but you were mistaken. You never slept with me that night, I only escorted you home and then passed out in your shower.’
‘I…’ she said, but it seemed like she’d just plain run out of arguments. Then, rather contrite, she said, ‘You want me to go talk to her now? Is she in your room right now?’
Noah felt himself flush, entirely unconsciously. ‘Uh… no…’ he said, his heart quickening and his manhood thickening considerably all of a sudden as the picture materialized in his head of Adrienne being fucked by th
at her large African American lover, the two of them sprawled all over that bed, glistening with sweat and reeking of sex. Maybe he was even fucking her in the ass this very moment.
‘She’s not in your room?’ the blonde’s question was pointed.
‘Uh… no… she is… she’s just asleep…’ he said. He didn’t seem convincing even to himself.
Virginia had noticed his blush, the uncomfortable expression on his face, the way he purposefully glanced away from her inquiring eyes. She was just a fraction more intelligent than he’d assumed.
‘That guy I saw her dancing with tonight…’ she said, and Noah could see in her big, blue eyes that she was piecing everything together in a way he really didn’t want her to.
Shit.
If only he’d walked away from her earlier.
Shit, shit, shit.
He hadn’t really needed to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that he hadn’t actually cheated on Adrienne. Virginia had been right, she’d forgiven him by now.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
He should have gone, found somewhere to sleep. Gotten another room at the hotel. Driven to a motel somewhere.
‘She was being really friendly with him,’ Virginia said, suggestively.
‘No, she… I…’ Noah stammered.
‘At one point I think I just assumed there was someone else at the wedding in a similar dress to your wife, because… you know… she was all over him…’ the blonde was grinning now, and it seemed somehow victorious. ‘But it wasn’t some other girl in the same dress, was it?’
Noah was silent. The bartender was coming over toward them again, and they both knew he needed them out.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I think you should walk me back to my room. I mean… you wouldn’t want me to be unsafe, right?’
Noah felt he had no choice. He went with her out of the bar into the lavish hotel lobby, and didn’t even object when she linked her arm in his like they were some kind of couple.
‘So what were the terms of your forgiveness?’ the blonde said as they walked toward the elevators together, and with the eyes of the night manager behind the reception desk on them as they passed by, Noah felt at severe risk of Virginia blurting something out that could be completely humiliating.
‘Nothing,’ he insisted at first, and squeezed her arm in his in an attempt to get them walking a little more quickly toward the elevators.
‘I wouldn’t call dancing with that guy ‘nothing’. You knew she was, didn’t you?’
He sighed. The elevator was taking forever to arrive. ‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘A little dancing.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ she laughed. ‘If that was her in that dress, and I think we both know now that it was… they were getting very close on that dance floor, weren’t they?’
Noah stood in stunned silence.
‘In fact,’ she laughed, ‘I think I might have even seen them… making out a little…’
Noah felt terrified and angry all at the same time. Virginia had known this about Adrienne all night, why had she kept the information to herself until just now? She’d been looking to make use of it at the optimum moment.
Why did a cute blonde like her feel the need to blackmail him into bed? Surely she could have slept with virtually anybody she wanted? There had been single men at the wedding, plenty of single men. Adrienne had found a few of them.
‘It was just a silly little game,’ he said, as at last—and far too late, it seemed—the elevator turned up.
‘’Silly little game’,’ Virginia mulled over the words as they stepped into the elevator. ‘So you let her dance with some guy… and make out with him… what, some kind of payback because she thinks you cheated on her with me?’
Virginia was giggling.
‘It was nothing,’ Noah insisted.
‘Maybe… you know… it’s a little late me telling her… you know… that we think maybe you didn’t sleep with me after all. Don’t you think?’
Dammit, Noah thought. She had him completely on the back foot now. Now, she had enough against him to probably avoid his demand to come clean with Adrienne about what actually happened that night.
‘Wait…’ Virginia said, and Noah felt his stomach sink into his feet as he saw her eyes just the way they’d been when she’d been making her previous deductions. ‘And where is she right now?’ she asked again.
‘I told you—she’s asleep in our room.’
The blonde gave a dry smile, nodding her head knowingly. ‘Seriously…’ she said, apparently in awe of the conclusion she’d jumped to. ‘You gave her a Hall Pass, didn’t you?’
The elevator opened on the fourth floor. It really hit Noah that this was Virginia’s floor, not his own. Where was this going?
‘I told you, it was just a little game, that’s all.’
She shook her head. ‘It was payback. She got so angry at you… you told her she could have a free pass one night. Maybe the next wedding…’
‘No… look…’ he said, but he’d always been a bad liar. A lousy poker player, too.
Virginia led the way toward her room, and there was nothing Noah could do but follow. ‘God…’ she said, sounding almost breathless. ‘You guys are so… kinky. I love it.’
‘No, look, it’s nothing…’ Noah insisted. ‘Really… it’s just a little playing around… a little game…’
Virginia laughed again as they rounded a corner to find another long hallway with countless doors running down both walls. ‘You sound as though it’s still happening,’ she said—then stopped and whirled round to face him, mock astonishment on her face.
‘Is it still happening?’ she asked.
‘No… look…’
She gasped melodramatically. ‘If we walked up to your room right now,’ she said, ‘to tell Adrienne that I never slept with you, even though I did… she wouldn’t be sleeping, would she?’
‘Look…’
‘Or at least, not on her own…’ flames danced in Virginia’s eyes.
Jesus. How had it come to this? How had their dirty little secret come to be ascertained by the most gossipy tattletale on social media? It was like Fate objected to their abuse of marital monogamy.
‘She’s with him, isn’t she?’
‘Look, it’s nothing…’ Noah said, but the cat was out of the bag.
‘And you’re just letting him sleep with her?’ she asked, her voice inordinately loud. Dozens of people were going to hear her at this wake. She’d wake the dead.
‘Look, can we just go somewhere… a little more private?’ he demanded, exasperated.
Virginia grinned impishly, and stopped in the hallway, to slide a keycard into one of the doors. It opened first time.
‘How lucky!’ she laughed. ‘Come inside, sweet thang…’
Chapter Nine
‘Hey, never mind about you cheating on your wife… if people on Facebook hear about this shit, they are never gonna believe it!’
Virginia was beside herself with glee as the door closed behind them, sealing the two of them into a hotel room together for the second time.
Jesus.
Hadn’t he learned? This one was manipulative. And here he was, back in her room. And she wanted sex, he was fairly certain of it.
‘You are not whispering a word of this on Facebook or anywhere else,’ he growled.
He felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. Had Adrienne sent him a message? He didn’t feel like pulling out his phone in case Virginia suddenly decided to take it from him to search for evidence for the Hall Pass.
‘And if you do, I’ll go on there and say you’re a serial liar,’ he said, scratching a little at what he could use against her. ‘I’ll tell everybody you made up the stuff about me sleeping with you, and you’ve made all this shit up, too. And you’re so desperate to sleep with me that you’ve turned into some mad bunny boiler.’
‘Hey…’ Virginia reached out to grab his hand, brought it up to her face to kiss it softl
y. ‘We don’t have to fight…’
‘No…’ Noah snatched his hand away.
‘Come on,’ she smiled, and put her hand up to stroke his cheek now. ‘Your wife is upstairs fucking some other guy… it’s just you and me here… nobody else needs to know…’
‘I’ve told you…’ he stepped back from her, but in the close confines of the room, in the space outside the en-suite bathroom, there wasn’t far for him to go.
‘Where were you going to spend the night?’ she asked him, stepping toward him again. ‘In the lobby on a bench? Were you gonna get another room? Go to a motel?’
‘I was…’
‘At least here you have a room, a bed.’
She kissed him, and for a moment, he was badly tempted. She was pretty, she was blonde, she smelled of candy, she was quite plainly as horny as horny could be. And he was already in her room, for the second time. If he escaped, she’d probably go on Facebook to tell the world that she was sleeping with him again, the cheating cheater.
He broke apart from her, and his half-step backward took him across the threshold of the bathroom. He had a sudden thought, and much to Virginia’s surprise, took a sudden full step back into the bathroom, and quickly closed the door behind him—locking her out.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he called out, as though he simply needed to use the facilities.
‘I’ll be waiting…’ he heard her reply.
Now he sat on the toilet, lid down, just breathing as he gave his head time to stop spinning. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The message from Adrienne was burning a hole in the screen.
[Adrienne]: Hey honey! Sorry it’s taken me a while to update you! I guess you’ve probably figured out by now… it’s happened. We did it. Just like you wanted. A few times actually! He’s so good… are you okay? Maybe you’re sleeping…
If he wasn’t quite fully hard before, with Virginia trying to blackmail him out there, he was now. Even though he’d seen it with his own two eyes, it was hot to see her confirming it all herself. His wife had cheated on him, if he could use that word. She’d become unfaithful—faithfully unfaithful. He was in on it all.
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