The Secret Lives of Emma: Distractions

by Walker, Natasha

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said finally, and a whole world of troubles slipped off her shoulders.

  ‘Truly, Em, we were just talking,’ said David. He leant forward to lift the wine from the bucket. ‘Get a glass and join us.’

  ‘You looked cosy enough without me,’ she said, not even knowing where the words were coming from. She certainly didn’t feel as bitter as she must be sounding. She did go to the kitchen to get a glass.

  Sally followed her a few steps, then faltered in her intention to give Emma a hug. She was unable to read Emma’s mood. Would she accept a hug? Emma returned, passing right by Sally without looking at her. Sally felt terrible. She wanted to do or say something to make amends but was completely at a loss.

  David poured wine into Emma’s glass and she sat down in the middle of the empty couch. She didn’t know what to say. The moment was very uncomfortable. David was the only one, other than comatose Mark, who seemed fairly at his ease. Had he been guilty of nothing more than flirting?

  Emma had broken into a moment shared by her friend and her husband. David and Sally hadn’t spoken about what they were doing, neither knew how far the other was willing or unwilling to go. They were stuck in that breathless excitement of a first touch, first kiss and the heady rush of blood that follows. Emma saw it all.

  Sally could not sit. She had nowhere to go. Her husband had used up one couch, Emma another and the third, the place she most wanted to sit, seemed to be smouldering with her shame. Her one hope was that Emma might do something to make all this go away. She had a knack, thought Sally, for fixing these difficulties.

  ‘I forgot to tell you about Jason,’ said David, happy to have found an uncontentious topic to discuss. Little did he know that the very mention of Jason’s name from his lips was enough to make Emma hot with shame. A fortunate reversal.

  ‘He tore up his mother’s study plan and told them both to go to hell. Simon was livid and said Anne was making excuses for him. That he was stressed and overworked. But Simon said Jason had changed overnight. He threatened to drop out of school if they didn’t let him do what he wanted. Nothing they could do would make him change his mind. Everyone thought it was drugs. But Simon reckoned it was Jess.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Emma. A new disappointment lurked. That Jason would take up with Jess! This would serve to underscore the inappropriateness of their liaison. He used what he learnt to seduce the girl he always wanted.

  Of course he would! What did you expect? You were a means to an end. You knew that. Are you jealous of Jess? Are you?

  ‘He had stayed out all night after pretending to go to bed then climbing out his window. They’d let it pass the first time it happened but it continued to happen. Night after night. Apparently Jason was surly when at home. Physical. Simon said he had become a handful. He was stubborn, aggressive and wilful. In a week! He’d been staying over at Jess’s place. Single mothers! Doesn’t anyone know how to lay down the law? Me adult – you child. Me right – you wrong. As Simon said, with his final exams looming what a time for him to go and lose his fucking virginity!’

  Sally was still standing. David motioned for her to sit but she was waiting for Emma’s permission.

  Emma was being intentionally mean. Though her heart beat wildly at Sally’s discomfiture she felt the need to punish her for her disloyalty, even though she knew this was unfair.

  The story David was telling confirmed Emma’s suspicions. But then she had deserted Jason. She’d uncorked him then removed her glass. No one likes to waste good champagne so it was only natural that he’d fill someone else’s glass, wasn’t it?

  She was so caught up in her jealousy she couldn’t see the damage she had done to the boy.

  Emma drank down the glass of wine in one gulp. Her head flooded with that first rush of inebriation then emptied out, leaving her slightly shaky. She held out her glass and David refilled it. He hadn’t had a thought for Emma until that moment. Now he looked at her and wondered at her strange behaviour.

  ‘Thirsty?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You can’t seriously think …?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, cutting him off. Quietly she stood up and sat in his lap.

  ‘Sit down, Sally. Don’t be silly,’ he said, motioning with his hand for her to sit beside them, which Sally gladly did. Emma felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge when Sally rested her hand on her knee. She kept herself calm for David. She was amazed at herself, at how violently she hated her friend in this moment. She felt weak, and despised Sally for being weaker still. She hugged David around his neck.

  Mark started to snore.

  ‘Sweetheart, wake up,’ said Sally.

  ‘No. Don’t,’ said Emma.

  Sally stood up and shook her husband, reaching across the coffee table to do so. Emma saw that Sally was naked beneath the sarong. The lust she had felt only hours before was not lost. Mark stirred and looked at her with sleepy, drunk eyes.

  ‘Go up to bed, sweetheart,’ she said in a gentle voice. ‘I’ll follow you up.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She tugged at his shorts. ‘Go on,’ she said, walking around the table and shaking him. He stood up, reluctantly, swayed unsteadily, glanced around the room, hardly even taking in David and Emma, then went obediently off to bed. Sally followed him up.

  SIXTEEN

  When she came back David and Emma were kissing passionately. Emma had straddled him and he held her butt in both hands. Sally stood awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t want to leave. She was sure, absolutely sure, she’d have David tonight … Come what may.

  But how long could she stand there? What had transpired between her and David, really? How sure was she that he would risk Emma’s wrath for a taste of her? As minutes ticked by and the lovers were growing more and more heated, Sally began to feel more and more foolish. She had time to examine her behaviour over the last week and her behaviour that day. What did she want with David? Did she want to hurt Emma?

  They both looked so sexy. The heavy breathing and the grinding of Emma’s hips against David’s was exciting her. She couldn’t move. She so wanted to stay, but had far more reasons to go.

  She wanted to be Emma.

  Emma broke from her kiss with David and looked around.

  Sally felt so embarrassed under that gaze.

  Emma slid off David and sat on the floor at his feet. She said nothing to Sally. David stared at her coolly as Emma reached up and undid David’s board shorts. She had been thinking filthy thoughts while kissing him. She had shaken her jealousy off. It had been lightly attached anyway. She’d been thinking about the week, about Jason, Paul, Sally and David. She’d been thinking of her life and the way she lived. She’d been thinking of marriage and the way she had fallen under the yoke and of David, his need for a child, and what that meant for her. The woman she would be expected to become. Well, fuck that! David should have Sally and Sally should have David and Emma should have everyone she damn well wanted to have.

  How she hated jealousy! How she hated the bondage of love! Why should she distrust Sally? What had she to fear from that quarter? Kissing David, losing herself in his arms, with these thoughts flitting across her consciousness, she stripped herself naked again. How ashamed she was for being so angry and jealous. Emma was playful again. All could go to hell, she’d play her fiddle while Rome burned.

  David’s long thick shaft felt hot in her hand. She saw David’s look of surprise and saw him glance towards Sally. But Emma wouldn’t be warned off. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. That was her motto – wasn’t it? You married a slut, David Benson, didn’t you know?

  Emma lifted herself onto her knees and brought her mouth to his cock. She swallowed him. David moaned as Sally watched, helpless. Emma wanted him to come immediately, against his will. She wanted him to be paralysed. There was no time for delicacy, there was little time
for art. She stroked his cock with her tight grip. She sucked him deep and sucked him hard.

  He was helpless under this determined attack. He looked at Sally, then at his wife’s furious work, then at Sally and bucked roughly, coming into Emma’s mouth. A harsh, powerful orgasm, sharp and short, rocked his body.

  Emma sucked him, slowly, now that he was done. He shuddered at each new pressure brought by her lips. Emma was on fire herself. She stood up and stepped lightly to Sally and kissed her mouth.

  Sally was shocked to find her mouth filling with David’s come. They kissed. Sally was amazed. She pulled Emma to her, and grabbed her butt. But Emma disentangled herself and fled up the stairs.

  David packed himself away with clumsy haste. Both of them were extraordinarily and unaccountably embarrassed. Sally couldn’t look in his direction even though her bottom lip was covered with his come. David stared at the floor.

  Emma was heard bounding down the steps. She grabbed Sally’s hand and threw her onto the couch beside her husband. They moved apart immediately, so they weren’t touching.

  ‘I wrote a story for you, honey,’ she said. Neither Sally nor David knew to whom she was referring. ‘I want to read it to you.’

  ‘OK,’ proffered David, even though he had been sucked dry of feeling. He was observing the world, in particular the two women nearest him, with a cold-blooded post-orgasm mind. Still in the emancipated moment, David looked at Sally, he looked at Emma, and wondered, truly wondered, at the circumstances which brought him to this pass. A wife who would do such a thing, for fun, in front of a friend was a wife who might just offer the friend her husband, a wife who might do anything. She was a wife who did not recognise what it meant to be a wife at all. She was nothing like the wife his mother had made, nor the wife his neighbour had secured. She was no wife at all. Who had he married?

  Emma was very excited by all of the confusion she’d created. Her husband was more stranger than lover to her, he had on his public face. He was attempting, still, to keep things above board. Sally sat beside him mute. Both were very capable of pretending what just happened hadn’t happened. Neither would use the incident as an excuse. For different reasons, of course. David held his position on the moral high ground. Sally was in open rebellion. She wanted to take David not be handed him by his wife. She had no desire to be the squeaky third wheel. She wanted to involve herself fully, one on one, with this large beast of a man.

  Emma held in her hand a few loose fools-cap pages. During the week, while Sally had sunbathed, Emma had scribbled down a rude short story. Bit by bit, as inspiration came and went. She hadn’t tidied it up but she wanted to share it with them both, to tease and to please. She had no real inkling of how out of tune she was. She’d always dominated and had never faced rebellion. So she prepared herself for the telling without questioning the audience’s willingness to listen.

  ‘I wrote this the other day,’ she said. ‘It’s a little bit rude.’

  ‘A little bit?’ asked David. (Public voice.)

  ‘You weren’t here to look after me. I had to write about it.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He was feeling very tired now. The moment of clarity had passed and the slide towards sleep had begun. ‘A bedtime story.’

  ‘Yes, you’re my children. This is a lullaby.’

  ‘Oh, Emma, how you go on,’ said Sally, evidently annoyed. ‘Do we have to do this now? Can’t you see David’s tired?’

  ‘He’ll perk up, don’t fret,’ said Emma. Sally was being a bitch. She may not have had her hand physically on David’s shoulder, but in spirit the finely manicured fingers gripped him tightly. Emma understood now that Sally would not go willingly into a ménage à trois. If not willingly then I shall insist! was Emma’s irrational response. They had all Sunday night to play! When would such an opportunity come again? David would follow her, of this she was certain. Why would any man deny himself the pleasure? It was madness!

  ‘It’s fiction, though I named the girl after you, Sal,’ she said, in an unmistakably icy tone. ‘She’s naughty too.’

  ‘Are you going to read it? Or just talk about reading it?’ asked Sally.

  David lifted his head and looked at her. He was startled by the vehemence of her tone. He was made more alert by the tension he hadn’t noticed before. He smiled a grim smile. They were fighting over him. He almost stood and ended everything. Had he more energy, he might have. Though he despised the man, Mark was to be respected in his role as husband. David would just have to tell Sally that nothing further would come of their exciting little dalliance. He also wouldn’t be a party to the breaking of such a long friendship. Sally and Emma should not fall out over him. He had been irresponsible, but he would make amends.

  ‘We should hear it tomorrow. I don’t think it fair that Mark should miss out,’ said David.

  At the sound of that name both women cringed. Sally thought Mark was the only word that couldn’t sound sexy dropping from David’s lips, and Emma would not have David use Mark as a wedge to prop open the door to suburban drudgery.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘I want to hear it now,’ said Sally, her tone changing so dramatically that David glanced over at her again. ‘Something nice and sexy to send me off to sleep will be a perfect end to a wonderful day,’ she added. Sally leant towards him, she didn’t want the little party to break up. Her bottom shifted. She’d have to head to her bedroom alone while Emma took David to bed. After all that had transpired that afternoon, it just wasn’t fair. She thought of I Dream of Jeannie and fantasised about magically transporting Emma to Timbuktu. If she were not with them, Sally felt sure she could seduce David. There had been no resistance thus far, she noted.

  David was at a great disadvantage being the least informed of the trio. Sally and Emma had their own pact, as it were, based on years of shared experience. The tension between the two women was electric. David was trying to stay rational, but as each second passed his desires were gaining more and more ground. Strangely, the fact that he felt powerless in this situation excited him even though power had always been his preferred aphrodisiac. He was prey. Though poisonous.

  David was aware Sally found him attractive. He was aware she was willing to transgress certain accepted codes of good behaviour in order to have him. What he was unwilling to admit was that so was he. He wouldn’t posit the ‘What if Emma hadn’t come down?’ scenario for that would require an answer. He wasn’t big on answers that might place him outside conventional morality.

  What was worse for him, and what made the whole thing more hopeless, was that his wife was actively encouraging the union.

  Of course, the idea had been thrown around by David and his friends many a time. It was a great joke, a fantasy of many men – two women. A wife willing to share. None of his friends had married such wives. Worse luck! was the cry. But not really. Who’d want a slut for a wife?

  He’d always been a little worried with Emma around his friends. She was so liberal and they, well, they were private school boys and bankers. Wankers. But Emma never did reveal any of her more outrageous thoughts before them. These men were so blind to Emma’s charms, beyond the obvious, none had sniffed out her lascivious nature, none had come close.

  David wasn’t up to the moment. His brain froze. His cock had become rigid, again. Sally’s proximity and Emma’s cavalier attitude made him moral, though. He was a rock and neither woman knew it.

  ‘It’s called The Teacher,’ said Emma.

  ‘What?’ asked David. He’d been distracted, Sally had moved even closer.

  ‘The Teacher,’ Emma repeated. Sally was staring at her, their eyes locked uneasily. Emma’s love for her friend rose and fell like a ship on a rough sea. She was suffering motion sickness. Have him, she thought. She imagined Sally’s reply, No!

  ‘What?’ asked David again.

  ‘The story is called The Teacher, dummy,’ said Sally, leaning against him. ‘Now shush! Let your wife tell us a story.’

  The word ‘wife�
�� was an interesting choice, thought Emma.

  ‘Is there any more wine?’ asked David. He was unsure about this story.

  Sally was up and at the fridge and in a flash all their glasses were filled. Emma gulped hers down again. She felt it now. She let Sally re-fill her glass but she sat it on the floor beside her. Her thoughts slowed. She could feel how aroused she was. David held his glass out. Sally filled it and then sat back down, her feet under her, cuddling up to him.

  Emma found this exciting. She felt Sally was with her now. Sally had been chattering again but Emma heard none of it. She watched her friend’s mouth move and David’s face acknowledge what was said. Emma looked down on the page and the words were blurry. She stood up before she really decided she would stand. There seemed to be a little time delay with her thoughts. She stepped to David and kissed him. David held her arm and kissed her back. Then she was seated again. Seated again. Seated again.

  ‘I’m drunk!’ she said. ‘No, really. The room is spinning!’

  ‘I’m drunk too, Em,’ said Sally, though she wasn’t nearly as drunk as she had been that afternoon. ‘Shall I read the story?’

  ‘No!’ said Emma, reacting as though Sally had tried to snatch the pages from her.

  ‘You are drunk!’ said David. ‘Where’s your glass?’ He picked it up off the floor. ‘Have some more!’

  ‘Nooooo!’ said Emma, rolling back over the whole couch.

  David put the glass down on the coffee table and knelt on the floor, resting his elbows on the couch beside his wife. Emma let her legs fall open right before his eyes.

  ‘Oh! I can see your undies, Em,’ said Sally, who had moved to David’s seat.

  ‘At least I’m wearing undies! She’s got no undies, David. What do you think of her now?’

  ‘She’s a wicked tart,’ said David, turning his head and smiling at her.