Jaime turned and followed her line of vision to see Jasper Wiggins and Kelly Ortiz talking across the white picket fence separating their homes. Their conversation looked innocent enough. “Something wrong, Mrs. K?” she asked.
“Humph. They do a lot of talking across that fence,” she said, her disapproval clear.
Jaime’s eyes shifted back to them. “They’re just talking.”
Mrs. Killinger sucked air between her teeth. “Humph,” was all that she said.
Jaime wondered if Jessa and her lover had been the talk of the neighborhood. Did an overly observant neighbor notice signs that Jaime, Aria, and Renee had all missed?
“Them two gone get enough of thinking their spouses are stupid. People dying these days behind these affairs and shit.”
Jaime was surprised by the older woman’s profanity. “So they’re messing around, Mrs. Killinger?”
Mrs. Killinger shot Jaime a hard stare. “They stay in one another’s pants, but you ain’t heard that from me,” she spat.
Jaime again was surprised, this time by the woman’s obvious anger.
“You okay, Mrs. K?” she asked.
“I just hate a liar and a cheat,” she said, removing her gloves to ram them in the back pocket of her jeans.
Jaime thought of Jessa and her unmasked lover and said, “Me too.”
But then she thought of her own explosive sexcapades and flushed with guilt and shame.
“They gone get enough of that Motel Six. That I know.”
Jaime started in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Humph. This old woman know a lot of shit,” Mrs. Killinger said, leveling her eyes on Jaime.
Her stomach fell so low she was sure she could shit it out with ease. Jaime’s brows lowered over her eyes a bit. “Is there something you know that I should know, Mrs. K?” she asked, hating to reveal even one glimmer of insecurity about her marriage.
“Oh, goodness no. Eric adores you,” Mrs. Killinger said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Jaime took that assurance with a grain of salt because Mrs. Killinger was wrong about what Eric felt toward her and she could also be wrong about Eric’s fidelity. Eric fronted like he adored her, but deep down Jaime was sure he hated her and wanted to punish her.
“I better get back to my garden,” Mrs. K said, shooting one more angry stare at Jasper and Kelly before she turned and walked toward her house.
“Mrs. Killinger,” Jaime called out behind her.
She stopped and turned. “Yes, Jaime?”
“What did you do about your husband?” Jaime asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Well, it wasn’t just about my husband. It’s about the marriage overall. You know what I mean?”
Jaime nodded in understanding.
“I had to weigh the good versus the bad and, baby, the bad was winning,” she said with a chuckle.
“So you left?” Jaime asked, not being able to even imagine leaving Eric.
“No, I put my foot down and told that whoring Negro that he had to shape up or ship out. Mind you, my knee was in his chest and a box cutter to his throat at the time—but he got the point.”
Jaime frowned a bit as Mrs. Killinger laughed as if that was the funniest thing she ever heard.
“Seriously, baby, I was in a rut with that fine man. I was spinning in one spot not knowing what to do. And I knew if I didn’t do something I’d keep spinning in that one spot like a fool-ass screw and run myself in the ground.” Mrs. Killinger winked at Jaime. “I got tired of getting screwed by him and being screwed by the situation. So I handled it.”
“You handled it, huh?” Jaime asked, imagining a younger and more vibrant Mrs. Killinger wielding a knife and a knee.
Mrs. Killinger just laughed.
She waved Jaime off as she walked over to one of the rocking chairs on her porch. She put her foot up on the chair and wrapped her arms around her leg.
For so long Jaime had gone along with Eric punishing her, but she had pulled one good piece of advice from her elderly neighbor with the bright smile. It wasn’t just about the affair. It was about the marriage. And long before today, Jaime’s marriage had lost its shine.
How much more of Eric’s cold and punishing treatment could she take? How much more could she pretend to the world that her husband didn’t treat her like shit on his shoes?
Tears filled her eyes. She was so tired of being so lonely in her marriage.
Only the sporadic clink of utensils on plates echoed in the dining room. Jaime looked across the table at Eric as he ate their meal of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and string beans in total silence…just like always.
“How was work, Eric?” she asked with hesitance, trying to stop the widening gap between them.
Silence.
She pressed on even as her hurt feelings nearly choked her.
“My mother came over today and helped me bake a red velvet cake,” she told him, knowing it was his favorite.
More silence.
“Ooh, how could I forget,” she said, forcing excitement into her voice. “Today the Martins had it out on their front lawn. She egged his new BMW and slashed the tires. It felt like watching a soap opera live.”
He looked up at her pointedly, tore a chunk from the garlic bread he held before he shoved it into his mouth. He eyed her with hostility as he chewed but he said nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Jaime was the first to look away and she knew he relished that he’d won yet another small and insignificant battle.
“Eric, this is ridiculous,” Jaime snapped, her emotions causing the outburst. “If you’re going to ignore me, why even come to the dinner table? If you’re going to ignore me, why do you even come home? If you are going to ignore me, why are we together?” she asked, hating the anguish she felt soaking her words.
She watched him with pain-filled eyes as he pushed his plate away and pushed his chair back to rise to his feet as he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Be in my room in an hour,” he said shortly, dropping his napkin atop his plate before turning to walk out of the dining room.
Jaime closed her eyes as a wave of revulsion caused her to shiver. She didn’t think there was any woman who detested her marital bed. Their sex had been lackluster before, and she had wished for some inventiveness. She would give both her legs to go back to the ho-hum sex of the past.
After she washed the dishes and took a quick shower, Jaime locked up the house and then made her way to Eric’s room naked as the day she was born. The door was open—yet another sign that she could enter only to satisfy his perverse sexual appetites. With every step she wondered why she allowed him to treat her this way, and with every step she knew her answer. Guilt and shame.
He was standing nude beside the bed removing his spectacles. The room was brightly lit—another variation from their sex life pre-affair. Her eyes shifted to his penis. It was slender and not very long, resting above his nuts. Even when it hardened, he only picked up another inch—maybe two.
She recalled Pleasure’s long, curving, thick dick heavily hanging away from his body like a muscled arm and she shivered, knowing she was wrong to think of him. Wrong to compare him to her husband.
Wrong to still desire him.
“Put it on,” he ordered, pointing to a red patent leather contraption on the foot of the bed.
She stepped forward and picked up the teddy, releasing a heavy breath as she stepped into it and pulled the studded straps onto her shoulders. Her breasts were pushed through two studded holes and the crotchless plastic stuck to her pussy lips. The g-string was way too far up her ass.
“This is what a no-good whore like you should wear,” he said.
So it begins, she thought. “Eric, stop this,” she begged. “When are you going to forgive me?”
His eyes raked her from head to toe as he reached into his drawer and pulled out a small whip. Her eyes widened. She held out her hand. “No, Eric!” she said forcefully as she pointed her fin
ger at him.
He slapped the whip softly against his own thigh as he circled her. “Every time I listen to that voice mail, it sounds like your stripper lover is whipping something on you, and since my dick can’t be enough for you I decided to buy a little help.”
She felt his hand at the back of her neck and he pushed down until she was bent over.
Whap.
She gasped at the first feel of the whip against her fleshy buttocks. It wasn’t painful but it stung—just the way he wanted it to.
Whap.
He walked around her with his dick in one hand and the whip in another. “Did you suck his dick?” he asked as he tapped the slender tip of his dick against her lips.
Same questions. Same humiliation.
“Did you, slut?” he asked again, angry.
Whap.
Jaime raised her hands and pushed him, one of her hands landing against his testicles, and she rose and stepped back. “That’s enough, Eric,” she shouted at him, tears streaming from her eyes as he hollered out and grabbed his nuts. “I don’t deserve this shit!”
He limped over to her and pushed her shoulders roughly until her body was pressed against the wall. “You deserve this and much more. I have always taken care of you and loved you and respected you. And now I know that you never did the same for me, up in some motherfucking strip-club fucking a stripper. You lucky I don’t kill you, Jaime, because that’s what your ass deserves.”
Jaime was frozen with fear at the look of rage in Eric’s eyes.
“So unless you want me to throw your cheating ass out on the street to see if you can fuck your way back into the beautiful home, nice car, and nice clothes that I gave you, then you will do what the fuck I tell you to do or get the fuck out.”
Jaime vaguely noted that the plastic of the teddy was sticking to the wall as she felt the fire of Eric’s anger. “I am sorry. I made a mistake. One mistake, but I love you, Eric, and I want you back. I want my marriage, I want to be happy again,” she confessed to him softly, barely able to hear herself over the hard pounding of her heart.
“I said all I have to say to you, Jaime,” he told her roughly, pushing her against the wall before he stepped back. “You made our marriage this way.”
“But I love you,” she whispered.
“Love this dick,” Eric told her coldly with a cruel twist to his lips as he pointed the whip at it.
As she dropped to her knees, closing her eyes and taking Eric’s limp and short dick in her mouth, the tears flowed but Jaime knew she couldn’t—wouldn’t—admit that her marriage was over. She refused to believe that this would be the footnote of the years they’d shared.
His dick hardened against her tongue and he roughly grabbed her hair and thrust his hips forward as her lips cupped him. “Suck it, you no-good bitch. Suck it, slut.”
And she absolutely refused to admit to her inner circle that her marriage was over, especially since she was the one who had the affair. She couldn’t chance that getting out. The whispers behind her back and to her face? The scorn of the church and her sorors?
She still thought those things were far worse to face than the constant humiliation that Eric put her through.
Jaime was pulled from her memories, sure that Eric was more than angry at her. He hated her. He had to. What else could fuel the way he demeaned her?
And who knew that such rage existed in him? Such a mean streak? Such vindictiveness? Perhaps he was truly enjoying it and just was looking for a reason to break loose with his unreasonable ways.
Seriously, Jaime was starting to think—in her best Aria imitation—that motherfucker was straight crazy.
She dropped her head in her hands but not before she saw Mrs. Wiggins drive by in her white Volvo station wagon. She glanced up the street and all of the chitchat at the fence was done. One of them must have spotted her car as well.
“You see that?” Mrs. Killinger called over.
But Jaime didn’t answer. She didn’t even look in Mrs. Killinger’s direction and she made herself focus her eyes away from that white picket fence down the street. She had drama of her own to deal with. Maybe she had swept around so many other doors that she missed the dirty drama going on in her own house.
Jaime smiled a bit as she thought of their wedding day. Her parents had made it the fairy tale she always dreamed of, all the way down to her arriving to the church in a white horse-drawn carriage. When she walked down the aisle she honestly thought her prince was waiting for her at the altar.
But now?
Now her life, day in and day out, was a nightmare. The dream had long since faded. The only bright spots in her day was her friends and her family, but even that was growing on her because in truth she was tiring of the facade.
Tired of the humiliation.
The punishment.
The degradation.
She wanted to hear “I love you.”
I forgive you.
I need you.
Jaime released a heavy breath as she rose to her feet and walked back inside the home she cherished. This was her showplace. Her domain. She’d imagined many happy years here. Years filled with love and family.
Not pain and torture.
She held herself close because they’d plotted out their lives, but all of their plans were fading into nothing with time. Next year they were going to start a family. And Jaime was ready to be a mother, but how would she get pregnant if her own husband wouldn’t fuck her without a condom anymore?
Truth be told? It was all too much.
Stay with Eric and risk living this lonely and phony life that was beginning to look bleaker without children to love.
Leave Eric and risk the shame and ridicule from her parents and friends for sleeping with a stripper and cheating on her husband. Plus start over. Plus leave her dream home and give up her status and financially comfortable life.
Face the humiliation of her husband leaving her for one of her best friends.
All of it came flooding into her like a series of emotional body blows.
Shame.
Humiliation.
Fear.
The pressure of a rock and a hard place nearly squeezed the life from her.
It was too much.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said softly, clutching at her chest as she began to hyperventilate.
Jaime raced up the stairs to her bedroom suite, shivering as she struggled to calm herself. She made her way to the bathroom and tightly grasped the edges of the sink and stared at her reflection. Searching for herself. Looking for a sign of some happiness. Needing some peace.
It was all too much.
As one tear raced down her cheek, Jaime screamed from the pit of her tortured soul and raised her fists to slam against the mirror.
It shattered.
She gasped as shards cut her hands, piercing her flesh, slashing her hands and arms. Her blood flowed in tiny streams, dropping into the sink.
She didn’t care because even then, with the pain of her injuries, she looked at the hundred different reflections and the pain in her eyes—the pain reflected from her soul—was far worse.
Jaime slid to the floor and cried gut-wrenching tears that echoed in the bathroom. The tears of a broken spirit.
I wish the glass had slit my wrists, she thought.
And that thought scared her.
“I’d rather die than face my marriage and fix my life?” she asked herself aloud in a haunted whisper as blood continued to stream from her hands and arms onto the floor and her clothes.
Jaime closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to find the calm. Forced herself to fight through the darkness that had been her private hell for months. Forced herself to look beyond the facade she presented that she had begun to fool herself with. Forced herself to get to the real.
Her marriage couldn’t continue like this.
Jessa Bell or not.
“Lord, I plead with You, Heavenly Father, to forgive my
sins. Forgive my lies. Cleanse me, Father. Make me whole again. Lead me down the right path. I’m afraid of living in truth, but I am more afraid of taking my own life. And I know that I need You now more than ever. I am calling on You to strengthen me and help me fight to live a better life. I am calling on You to help me strengthen myself.”
Jaime left bloody handprints on the plush carpeting as she worked her way to her feet to try and stand on solid ground—physically and emotionally.
She cried silently, and with each passing second she prayed for the strength not to give up or give in.
She picked up the shards of glass and prayed for the will to pick up the pieces of herself.
As she made her way over to the phone, she prayed for the power to change her life step by step, one day at a time.
She dialed her parents.
“Hello.”
Jaime opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself as she looked at the blood drying on her hands.
“Jaime? Are you there?”
Jaime balled up her fist and banged it against the wall. “Hey…hey, Mama,” she said finally, her heart pounding terribly as she fought back the tears.
“Is something wrong, Jaime?”
“Mama, I…Eric…we…we are having some serious problems…and I don’t know what to do,” she admitted in a soft voice filled with her emotions. The pain. The anger. The regret. The confusion. The fear.
The line went quiet and the silence shook Jaime because she realized in that moment that she had no idea what her mother would say or which way her mother would go.
“What’s going on, Jaime?” she asked.
“I’m not happy,” was all that she said, not at all prepared to reveal her affair. Not yet. “Mama, sometimes I sit in the house all day and I cry, Mama, I ache, I hurt and I don’t tell a soul but, Mama, I’m tired.”
“Why are you unhappy? You have a beautiful home, a good husband, a good life. Some women would kill to be in your shoes.”
Jaime laughed bitterly through her tears as she thought of Eric and his whip. “No, they wouldn’t, Mama,” she insisted softly as she slumped down on the edge of her perfectly made bed.
“Did he have an affair? The Bible speaks of forgiveness and a woman standing by her husband until death. You knew that when you went to that altar.”
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