by Sidney Wood
The man recoiled, pulling his hand back as if burned. Ulie took the opportunity to stand and put the bar stool between them.
Settling her tab with the hunky bartender, Ulie palmed her clutch and strode, as soberly as she could manage, to the elevators on the far side of the lobby. She relaxed when no one, including the handsy man in gray, joined her.
Upstairs, Ulie stood in the hall dumbfounded, trying to understand why the door to her room wouldn’t open. She pressed the key card to the sensor again. No luck. She flipped it over, yet the lights still flashed red. “What the hell? Stupid door,” she muttered.
Ulie glanced at the numbers on the door jamb one more time.
Chagrinned, she turned around. Without a word, she marched across the hall, accessing the correct door on the first swipe.
Opening her clutch, Ulie saw 4 new game and message notifications on her phone. Although the long-distance conversation with Noah seemed harmless, she already had too much excitement for one evening. The overstepping man downstairs made her skin crawl, and she had let the bartender fantasy get carried away.
Closing the door behind her, Ulie leaned against it and exhaled. “I’m so glad I didn’t have more to drink.” With a push off the door, she slogged toward the bed, spotting a half full bottle of wine on the way.
A very Amy thought spilled out. “Drinking in my room is safe, right? No chance of accidentally falling on a stranger’s penis in here.” A belly laugh exploded from her mouth and Ulie doubled over. Her phone slid out of her handbag, landing face up on the carpet. Noah’s unread message notifications displayed again.
Ulie stared at the screen. “I’m alone. What harm could it do to read his messages?” Hundreds of tiny goosebumps raised her skin.
Ulie suddenly craved her room’s pillow topped couch and a comforter. There’s nothing better than cozying up in a warm blanket when you’re happily nervous about reading something. Kicking off her shoes, Ulie shimmied out of the slim fitting, gold cocktail dress and hung it in the closet. Topless, she stripped the downy comforter from the bed, wrapping it around herself like a warm cocoon, and flopped back against the couch’s cushioned armrest.
She unlocked her phone.
The first notifications were a text and Facetime call from Chuck, which meant she missed a call from Miranda. The time difference put them past midnight back home. It was no use returning Miranda’s call, and she had zero desire to text Chuck.
Two other notifications were from the game she shared with Noah. Delighted, Ulie burrowed deeper into the comforter. He was so far away he might as well be a fantasy; totally safe. Buzzed, Ulie warmed to the idea of playing.
“Is that what I’m doing?” she said. “Am I going to flirt with him?”
“Yes,” she admitted aloud. “I’m going to flirt.” Ulie found the awkward statement liberating and terrifying. If only she had Amy there to steady her. “I need another drink!”
Hopping up from the couch, Ulie ran on her tiptoes to the nightstand, pouring a half-glass of wine. For some reason, tiptoes seemed appropriate when dashing across the room in only panties. They were especially appropriate when preparing to flirt with someone. The excitement raised more goose bumps on her delicate flesh, as if spelling out her exhilaration in braille. Ulie secretly longed for a lover to read her feelings through touch.
After a sip of her drink, Ulie hurried back to her cozy spot on the couch. Snuggling the fluffy comforter tightly around her, she picked up the phone and tapped the game icon.
She calculated that it was 6 pm in Alaska. Noah should be awake and off work. Hopefully, he had time to play before she fell asleep. Clicking on the unread message icon, she scanned his message.
“Assuming you won’t pull off a Hail Mary in the last few seconds, this makes two wins in a row for me! I may have to re-evaluate who I think is smarter…”
Ulie tried to control her automatic smile by twisting her lips to the side, and typed, “No Hail Mary this time, but don’t kid yourself. How does it feel to be a woman’s plaything?” Send.
Heat grew in Ulie’s stomach as the frisky message arced through space and time to find Noah on the other side of the country. The freedom of their made-up game world titillated her. As she waited for Noah’s response, she checked the game board.
“That dirty dog,” she muttered when she saw the score. With no more letters to draw or swap, she couldn’t catch up. Accepting her demise, Ulie decided to finish quickly and start a new game. She slid the few tiles she had into a line on the board and hit send. “TUBE, as in, down the,” she said.
Taking a drink, she exited the game and checked her other messages.
“Miranda is going to bed in 20 minutes.” That entailed the entire message from Chuck. The warmth fled, leaving Ulie with a chill.
Chuck and Ulie hadn’t spoken in the last couple of days, not even about Miranda. She regretted missing the call with her daughter, but she didn’t initiate a call earlier for fear that Chuck might answer. It would get easier when Miranda had her own phone, but she agreed with Chuck that their daughter had to be older. Desperate to get her mind off Chuck and onto something less depressing, she opened Facebook.
After a few seconds of scrolling, a thought occurred to Ulie. She tapped on the Friends icon and typed, “Noah McCormick” into the search bar. She recognized his profile picture in the first result. The man in the photo had the same smile as the teen she remembered; but his body, that was another story. Ulie took another sip of wine as her eyes soaked him in. Athletic and tall, his physique re-kindled warmth in her core, urging her to dig deeper. She opened Noah’s profile. Most of his pictures were of a curly haired little boy with brown eyes and dimples. “What a cutie!” she said. She didn’t know why an adorable son made Noah more attractive, but it did. She huddled closer to her phone. “Is he married?” she wondered. After some probing, her question remained unanswered. The boy’s mom didn’t appear in any of the photos. Ignoring her conscience, Ulie flipped through Noah’s photos, trying to learn more. She sipped more wine, enjoying the fuzzy heat radiating thought her body.
There were a few pictures of Noah from his military days, and some old hunting photos with a stocky man who might be his brother. Only one current photo had Noah in it, his profile picture. She approved of his choice. The photo showcased Noah’s charming smile framed with sexy scruff. Ulie burned hotter.
She tapped, “Add Friend,” rousing a moist response down below. Ulie squeezed her legs together under the comforter, savoring the blazing heat emanating from the center of her body. Preparing to look through more of Noah’s pictures, she scooted her bottom toward the far end of the couch and shifted to a more reclined position.
A notification at the top of her screen brought another smile. She opened the app to see that the game had ended, and Noah had started a new one. A red number one glowed over the message icon. Biting her lip timidly, she tapped it.
“Is that what I’m to you, a plaything? Not saying I’m opposed…lol”
Her cheeks flushed pink. Ulie sat motionless, pondering her reply for a few moments. Finally, she threw caution to the wind and typed her thoughts. “You should know that I have been drinking a little. This never happens, I swear!” Send.
She wanted to say more. She suddenly NEEDED to say it. Licking her lips, she took a deep breath and typed, “But as playthings go, you seem like you could be a lot of fun.” Send. She held her breath.
Rubbing her legs together beneath the blanket, Ulie imagined what Noah might think as he read her message. Would he feel the excitement she did? What would he say in return?
His words fanned the flames burning inside her and her breath quickened. The act of spelling it out, putting her forbidden thoughts into print, added more fuel to the inferno. Ulie’s heart pounded in her chest. Beneath the comforter, her knees spread apart. Taking one last sip of wine, Ulie set the glass on the coffee table and slid her hand under the blanket. With hungry eyes, she re-read his words, licking and biting her lip
boldly, not in her usual way. The nervous uncertainty dogging her evaporated. She didn’t know Noah, not as an adult anyway, yet she wanted to taste his lips on hers. She needed to feel his desire for her, to be wanted by him.
Her fingers traced down the smooth skin of her stomach, below her belly button, sliding over the lacy edge of her panties. Down the curve of her groin, Ulie’s slender fingertips lead her hand to rest on the source of the blaze as it consumed her. She exhaled then sucked in breath as she pressed upward with her pelvis against downward pressure from her fingers.
She let the phone fall to the side, trapped safely within folds of the comforter and cupped her bare breast with the newly freed hand.
A muted vibration told Ulie she had a new message. On any other day, she’d ignore it until she had finished pleasing herself. Not today. A living, breathing, human being wanted to interact with her right now! Scrambling to find the phone, she sorted through the folds of blanket until her coveted device rested securely in both hands. She opened Noah’s message.
“Hey, I think I owe you an apology. I have no business flirting with a married woman. I meant no disrespect and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I think we should just keep it to the game.”
Ulie stared at the screen wide-eyed, mouth open. With a groan, she fell back against the arm of the couch. “Noooo,” she whispered, turning to bury her face in the comforter.
The chill returned. Not even the thick blanket could stave off the cooling effect of Noah’s responsible words.
Chapter Five (June)
Ulie’s phone buzzed, breaking her concentration. Pressing her lips together, she slapped her pencil down and shoved the phone farther away.
Since Noah rejected her flirtation, Ulie couldn’t play the game without recalling the embarrassment. She had lost control while he acted like a responsible adult. That infuriated her. To top it off, he kept winning! “Maybe I should quit and forget about him. Ugh.”
Ulie picked up her pencil and scanned the evolving image, giving her attention to her artwork instead of her nemesis. Sketching lightly on a large pad, Ulie plotted a point-of-view cityscape. Perfectly vertical lines connected a jagged skyline to angular streets and futuristic automobiles. Organic shapes, such as trees and a few human beings, interrupted the strict rigidity of Ulie’s architecture, yielding relief to the observer. As a student, Ulie sketched like this daily. She loved letting her imagination run wild, experimenting with new ideas and fine tuning her understanding of shapes, light, and space. She still had an impressive portfolio of relief and perspective drawings she intended to frame one day.
With the vacation behind her, Ulie had settled into a new routine, making the most of her time at home. As a first step, she set up an art studio in the guest room and used it every day she didn’t have to work. She pursued her love of art and design and explored her identity; the younger self she rediscovered in Florida.
Checking her watch in the mid-afternoon, Ulie began to clean up. She had less than an hour before Miranda’s school bus arrived.
Downstairs, sunlight bathed long granite countertops and white cupboards in a soft, golden glow. The imagery helped Ulie let go of the latent tension she shouldered. She loved their house, and especially her kitchen. As a newlywed, she refused to settle for less than exactly what she wanted, and Chuck caved big time, ultimately letting her choose the house they purchased.
“Chuck,” Ulie muttered. He expected dinner when he came home. Setting Miranda’s favorite snack mix on the counter, Ulie opened the refrigerator to peruse her options. “Dang,” Aside from eggs, milk, and some questionable cheese, the fridge didn’t contain any meal-ready ingredients. She checked the pantry.
Ulie sighed. “Why didn’t I go grocery shopping during the school day?” The pantry, full of boxed dry goods and a few cans of evaporated milk, contained nothing to make into a family sized meal. She could bake four cakes and a bunch of cookies, but not dinner. Swinging the pantry door closed, Ulie opened the freezer drawer and pulled out a pan of frozen lasagna.
“Thank God, he doesn’t use the oven,” she said.
Chuck distanced himself from any form of cooking that didn’t involve a barbecue or a microwave.
Setting the oven to 350, Ulie tore the lasagna box open and re-set the foil cover per the instructions on the packaging. “Just like Grandma used to make,” she said.
Snack for Miranda, check.
Dinner prepped for Chuck, check.
Ulie spun in a slow circle, taking pride in the fact that everything looked to be in order. With a few minutes of personal time remaining, she decided to get it over with.
Ulie collapsed on the living room sofa, hoping to end the game quickly. She’d simply ignore his next game request. Opening the app, she raised an eyebrow. Noah had passed without playing any tiles. That surprised her. The game remained close, and his forfeiture allowed her to take the lead.
Ulie connected all seven tiles to the last letter of her previous word, earning fifty bonus points. She also crossed a triple word tile and two triple letter tiles to score a whopping 115 points. “ADULTERY” put her firmly in the lead, but as she stared at the screen, she couldn’t press the button. That stupid word…
“Why is this so hard?” She groaned. The words they chose and played shouldn’t matter, but they did. Ulie often wondered what meaning lurked behind his words, and she fretted over what he might see behind hers. The worry exhausted her.
Reluctantly, she submitted the word and deflated, trying to dissolve into the couch. A glowing red number one appeared over the message icon.
“Great,” she murmured.
The tumblers in her head spun and clunked, trying to unlock the secret of his text without opening the message; an impossible task. She grimaced and tapped the icon.
“She’s back! Great move!”
Rolling her eyes, Ulie closed the screen, but a tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she sauntered to the kitchen for a cool drink of water. By the time she returned to the couch, Noah finished his turn. The game zoomed by without any more surprises, and Ulie came out ahead by one hundred points! Winning gave her ego a boost and softened her resolve to quit.
Ulie smiled.
Noah still embodied her best opportunity to have safe fun with an adult. Now that her losing streak had ended, she planned to kick some serious butt. A tingling excitement tickled her insides. Ulie selected a smiley face emoji, but hesitated. She chewed on her lip and tapped a finger on the protective phone case. Deleting the emoji, Ulie initiated a new game instead.
Putting the game away, she walked outside to wait on Miranda’s bus. When the collapsible door swung open, Miranda hopped down the steps and raced up the driveway for a hug.
“I’m hungry!” she said.
Giggling, Ulie guided her rambunctious daughter into the house.
Miranda dropped her backpack by the door. “What smells so good?”
“Take it to your room.” Ulie pointed the way.
“But I’m hungry!”
“There are snacks on the counter, but not until you put your backpack away.”
Miranda scrunched her face in an exaggerated frown and tromped back to the door. Flashing an equally embellished grin, she scooped up the bag and charged toward her room.
Ulie chuckled at Miranda’s delightful energy.
The afternoon zipped by. When Chuck finally arrived home, Ulie had the lasagna out of the oven and the table set. The house smelled incredible! Ulie braced herself for rejection and greeted Chuck dutifully with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Perfect timing,” she said.
His hands were full, so Ulie didn’t take it personally when he didn’t return either of her gestures. He smiled instead.
“A smile is a good sign. Maybe things are changing for the better,” she thought. To Chuck she said, “Take your coat off and come to the table. Dinner is ready.”
Suddenly appearing sheepish, Chuck replied, “Oh, sorry. I got a bite on the way ho
me.” Still hauling his duffel and duty belt, Chuck kicked off his shoes and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to put my gear away, and then I’m going to the gym. I’ll see you guys around seven or eight.”
Ulie nearly choked on the lump rising in her throat. With some effort she swallowed it down, but not before the taste of bile violated her mouth.
Maintaining a cheerful face for Miranda, Ulie joined her at the table and served dinner. “More for us,” she said with a wink.
Inside, Ulie’s mind was in chaos, drifting. She used her fork to push red sauce layered with white cheese and noodles around her plate, stewing at the unfairness of her situation.
She didn’t care about the lasagna going to waste, not really. Heating up a frozen dinner is not a big deal. The knots winding in her gut were from something far worse.
On the nights Chuck went to the gym, he wanted Ulie’s help to unwind afterward, and that meant sex. When they were younger, Ulie loved it. He came home hard and sweaty, and they had fantastic shower sex, often carrying over to the bedroom. But over the years, Chuck’s habits shifted. As he became cold and distant, their love making altered.
In the beginning, the sex was a mutually gratifying experience. Chuck wasn’t exactly the most attentive lover, but he didn’t put limits on Ulie. He let her tease and explore his body, and he enjoyed hers. She liked it slow and sensual most of the time, but when the mood struck her, she relished a little rough play.
As the divide grew between them, sex became uncomfortable for Ulie. Chuck lost interest in making love, gravitating toward fucking her instead. With increased frequency, he wanted it that way, leaving less room for her wishes and little care for her needs. Maybe she could have insisted, but she wanted to please him, so Ulie gave in. After the gym, Chuck wanted sex to come first. It seemed he had to get it out of his system right away. He couldn’t wait. He wanted her to bend over and take it while he pounded away from behind. Sweaty and gross, he grunted and thrusted quietly until he finished. He didn’t kiss her, didn’t look at her face, and strangely, he wanted her to stay completely silent. If she moaned or spoke, he shushed her. Ulie shuddered with disgust.