Game Changer

by Max Sebastian

  “You going to get pizza?” She asked me, as though she needed further confirmation that I would be staying home that evening.

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  ‘Okay, remember we have that coupon.’

  I guess she was feeling confident that I was just collapsed on the sofa watching TV, my back to the bedroom. But I could see her reflected on the TV screen—especially if I put a really dark movie on. She wasn’t just getting ready for a night out with old work friends. She was trying on different sets of lingerie to see what worked best with her dress. I saw her choose the kind of high-cut thong panties that weren’t comfortable and definitely weren’t designed for a casual night out catching up with friends.

  ‘You should watch the new Blade Runner movie. The sequel with Ryan Gosling? It’s supposed to be good.’

  ‘I’ll take a look.’

  Her dress was black and ridiculously short and sexy. She put a big coat on over the top to hide it.

  Then she was out the door without so much as a goodbye kiss. Just a quick shout out to warn me not to wait up, that she’d probably be late. Was that where our relationship had gotten? And it was Saturday, when we were supposed to have sex under our usual pathetic schedule. Hanna was out on a date with my best friend, and she’d hardly done very much to conceal it.

  For God’s sake, I could pick up my iPad and go to Facebook to check out her old work friends—they were the prolific social media types, so they were naturally posting away about what they were up to every moment of the day. Visiting the theater. Romantic dinner with hubby. Not going out for drinks with Hanna.

  I sat and waited. Even called out for pizza. I wasn’t able to concentrate on a movie, though, even the long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner. My mind was all over the place—were they even going to stay long at Nelson’s? Why wouldn’t they just go straight back to his place and fuck like rabbits? They’d been desperate for it for so long. Were they going to rekindle feelings that would lead to her deciding to leave me? Or did her veil of secrecy mean she did want to maintain her marriage, even while she had an affair on the side?

  It didn’t take me long to go a little nuts. I’d almost say it was similar to the kind of cabin fever we all experienced back in that chalet in Slovakia.

  Nelson’s.

  I knew where they were, so why didn’t I go down there and see if I could check on how they were getting on?

  For a while, I couldn’t decide on what to do. Then my libido won out—even if nothing major happened, it would be hot to see her with him. It would probably fuel my masturbatory fantasies for months. And if I wasn’t going to get to sleep with Hanna that night anyway...

  Once I’d made the decision, I raced down to the bar. Hardly dressed up much, either. Jeans, sweatshirt, jacket. I didn’t need to impress anybody, I needed to blend in to the background. I knew Nelson’s well enough to know how to do that. The place was two steps up from a dive bar, dark, full of pokey corners. It was an odd sort of place for Hanna to choose for a date with Jake—but I supposed that she imagined there might be a shady corner there where the two of them could hide away while they caught up and prepared to make the next step toward actual adultery.

  When I got there, it was getting dark. But I had to be instantly on my guard—as soon as I went in, I saw Hanna sitting at the bar, and only by sheer luck did I seem to avoid her spotting me as I entered. I edged toward the back of the place, my eyes on her constantly. She didn’t seem to have noticed me, I was certain of it.

  Although at that time in the evening the place was beginning to fill up, I found a table from which I could watch her. Hanna was perched on a barstool, and there was no sign of her bulky coat. She was showing a lot of leg in that short dress—quite breathtaking. She was easily the most glamorous person in the place. What if somebody mistook her for some kind of high-class escort?

  There was no sign of Jake. What had happened to him? I saw Hanna glance at the clock on her mobile phone, which lay out there on the bar beside her and a large cosmopolitan.

  A guy came up to her—a stranger. Thirtyish, tall, dark-haired, he wore a smart suit, which like Hanna herself, didn’t quite fit in with the low-key surroundings. She looked up at him, smiled. Nodded. Said something. Smiled again. Ran her fingers through her hair. Jesus—was she flirting with him?

  She was.

  I hadn’t really seen it before. Or at least, I hadn’t seen it before discovering my little penchant for an adulterous wife. The butterflies fluttered inside my stomach, my heart rate started skipping daintily. My manhood thickened up somewhat in my pants.

  Hanna smiled and covered her drink, as though to indicate that she didn’t want or need another. The guy gave a little mock semi-bow as though to formally accede to her wishes, and then stepped away. Hanna glanced around again, and I have to say that for a moment I was probably a little too exposed, craning my head to get a good view of her.

  Another guy came up to her— there wasn’t much time for her to catch her breath. I saw her glance at her phone again, and smiled wryly at the thought that Jake was letting her down. Perhaps his flight was delayed, although it should have landed hours before.

  This time the interested newcomer was dressed a little more casually, but seemed nevertheless as confident as the first man I’d seen trying to hit on my wife. Blonde, he looked like an off-duty military man or a cop or something like that. Wide shoulders, athletic bearing. He was a little bolder than the last guy, pulling up a bar stool of his own next to Hanna, and ordering another drink for her before she could refuse it.

  She was smiling, even if she wasn’t interested in him. Talking to him easily enough.

  Where was Jake?

  I wondered what I would do if Jake failed to turn up, and Hanna needed someone to stick up for her if a guy like this military man went a little too far for her liking. I could tell her I’d gotten sick of being on my own in the apartment, that I needed a beer. Nelson’s wasn’t exactly the most local bar for our apartment, though. Not the place I’d go to if I was on my own and just needed a stiff drink.

  But Hanna was okay. Seemed to be having fun with the guy trying to hit on her. She giggled, she flashed her eyes at him, she toyed with the ends of her hair.

  It was such a turn-on. I was surprised. I sat there silently hoping that the guy would have success with her. That she would go with him to a table, or perhaps even to another bar where they could find more privacy. I swear, she was pushing out her chest as she spoke to him, and he needed no encouragement to stare down at her cleavage.

  I watched Hanna excuse herself to go to the bathroom, and glanced at my watch—Jake was really late by now. Stupidly late. I waited. Blond guy at the bar gave a shifty look around, and then quietly finished his drink and left. Perhaps Hanna had sneaked away from him, and had also left the bar. What if she was on her way home, and when she got there she found I wasn’t there?

  ‘Hey! And what are you doing here?’

  I nearly jumped out of my skin as Hanna’s voice cut through the low rumble of conversations around me. And there she was, standing right there in front of my table. I was well and truly busted.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘I... needed a drink,’ I stammered weakly.

  ‘You followed me.’

  She had one hand on a hip, which was never a good sign. I felt a little light-headed. What now? Had my blundering around in the background further shredded my marriage into some irreconcilable mess?

  ‘I just... wondered... where you were going,’ I said, wincing a touch as though the roof was about to fall in.

  ‘You were spying on me,’ she said, folding her arms.

  A few people around us were turning to watch. I guess the men might not have been as interested in the conversation as in the fact that Hanna looked so easy on the eye.

  ‘I...’ I was flustered. Okay, so I shouldn’t have been spying on her—but I couldn’t quite get why I was suddenly the bad guy in this. I felt annoyed. ‘You were coming h
ere to meet Jake,’ I hissed, uncomfortable at airing our dirty laundry in public like this.

  She sighed, and her tough body language seemed to soften a little. ‘I was never here to meet Jake,’ she said. It didn’t sound like a straight denial—it sounded as though she’d taken me for a ride, and now she was owning up to it.

  ‘You told him last night—’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘I made it sound as though I did,’ she revealed. Then: ‘I never talked to Jake last night. He was on the way to the airport, I never got the chance.’

  ‘I... but...’

  I scratched my head. She’d fooled me. It had all been a tease because she’d discovered me watching her with Jake the night before, or the night before that, or whatever.

  ‘You’ve been spying on me every night since... God knows when,’ she said, sharply.

  I laughed. ‘You were having secret... I don’t know... online sex sessions with another guy, behind my back.’

  She shook her head again. ‘We just chatted occasionally,’ she said. She didn’t seem to be lying, didn’t seem to be embarrassed or anything. ‘He was lonely out there. Weeks in some foreign place where he couldn’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘You still hid it from me,’ I pointed out. ‘You could have just told me—oh, I talked to Jake. He’s lonely, he needs a little company from time to time.’

  ‘You would never have believed it was just innocent chatting.’

  ‘It wasn’t just innocent chatting,’ I said.

  Hanna glanced around, and felt it wiser to sit at the table opposite me, to lower her profile.

  ‘It was always innocent chatting,’ she declared. ‘Ever since that argument you and I had back at the chalet, we decided not to pursue anymore... you know... romance stuff.’

  ‘But—’ I couldn’t quite get my head around what she was saying.

  ‘I was annoyed at you, when I saw you checking up on us,’ she explained. ‘The next time... I thought I’d tease you a bit. You know... making it look as though talking to him made me all... horny...’

  I remembered how it had begun, with Hanna chatting with Jake before closing her laptop, abandoning it so that she could lie back and touch herself.

  ‘You knew I was watching?’

  ‘I knew you were watching.’

  My swollen manhood twitched in my pants. She knew I was watching her, night after night, and she continued to give me a show. Kind of a hot thought.

  ‘Why didn’t you just say something?’ I asked her. ‘You could have just told me you knew I was watching you, that I didn’t need to be suspicious of you.’

  She shrugged. ‘You didn’t say anything,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see how far I could go before you would react.’

  ‘You were doing it... in front of your laptop... the last week or so,’ I said, though I could see the pattern by now, I could almost tell how she would respond.

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘It was always after I ended the call with him.’

  ‘You faked it.’

  She nodded, but then smiled. ‘You didn’t say anything. Even when I made it seem like I was meeting him for some... I don’t know... secret date.’

  Now it was my turn to shrug. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You wanted me to see him. To meet him. To... what, cheat on you?’

  ‘I guess I did.’

  She just stared at me for a moment. I didn’t really know what to say to her—the enormity of what I was feeling seemed too much for the words I had to describe it. I was disappointed that she wasn’t meeting Jake tonight, that she wasn’t planning on some liaison with him. I wanted her to have an affair—even if I was troubled by having things done behind my back, deeply troubled.

  I felt our marriage, our love, had become tired, and that I could not reinvigorate it, re-energize it, on my own.

  ‘So... what are you thinking?’ she said. ‘You want me to sleep with him so you can... what, see other women? Divorce me? So you get to keep the apartment...’

  A quick frown at that. ‘You think I want a divorce?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know...’

  ‘Do you want a divorce?’

  So, divorce had come up.

  I felt the ground begin to shake under me. I felt as though some gaping hole was opening up under our table, threatening to suck me and my whole established life into some great black void. Had we really gotten to the point where we were considering the possibility of divorce?

  ‘Of course not,’ she said quickly. The relief I felt was like how I imagine an addict might feel getting another shot of heroine. ‘I love you.’

  I hesitated, and really it was because I didn’t know what to say. But she took it as some kind of doubt, and insisted, ‘I do love you, Thad. I swear.’

  ‘All this... deception...’ I said, the words just tumbling out of my mouth—I was just letting my thoughts come out, unfiltered. I was too messed up, too tired to filter anything anymore.

  She sighed. ‘Look, I don’t know what happened over in Europe. It was just... crazy. When you and Hayden went off hiking up the mountain... Jake and I figured we had to hit the reset button, you know? Like, we were going to ruin our friendship if we didn’t. So everything... you know... sexual... stopped.’

  ‘But you were talking with him at night... behind my back.’

  She tilted her head. ‘He was in Japan. He was so... lonely. And I guess I was the one he was comfortable turning to.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘He was embarrassed,’ she said. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you tell your guy friends, is it? I’m lonely. I’m scared. I’m thousands of miles away from anybody I know, and if my employers don’t take me out to dinner I might not know how to even feed myself in this town.’

  ‘I guess...’ I began to understand Jake’s POV, Hanna’s POV.

  ‘If he wasn’t working, he was marooned at his hotel, and it was nice enough, but not exactly a five-star place. Not like the one in Lost In Translation.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And you know what? He was feeling like we all did back in that chalet in Slovakia. You remember how bad that was? Only, this time, he didn’t have any friends around him to help keep him sane.’

  Okay, I could understand how that might feel. I could understand why he might want to talk to somebody like Hanna, rather than one of his male friends or even a member of his family—Jake’s family were tough nuts, from what I remembered.

  Okay, so now I felt like a bit of an idiot.

  Hanna said, ‘I saw you watching me talking with him, and I guess I was a little annoyed—because I knew you’d jump to the conclusion that I was cheating or something.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should have just asked what you were doing.’

  ‘You should have trusted me.’

  I nodded. Boy did I feel stupid. Where had I gone wrong? I had been certain her secret chatting with Jake had been more than just friendly. And the fact that she’d started masturbating after her calls had ended.

  ‘And I shouldn’t have... done what I did...’ Hanna said now that it was the season for apologies. ‘I guess I just wanted to... provoke you, or something. I was so annoyed at you for... you know, invading my privacy...’

  ‘You kind of persuaded me that something sexual was going on between you and Jake.’

  ‘I see that now. At the time... I don’t know, I thought you’d step in, say something. I was going to yell at you for spying on me, and you know... you didn’t say anything... you just watched...’

  ‘Can you blame me?’ I said, and actually raised a half-smile from her. ‘The hottest woman I’ve ever met was lying on a couch... touching herself.’

  Now, a full smile. My God, it was worth a million dollars.

  ‘And then every night, you talked with Jake... and afterward, you did that again,’ I pointed out.

  She said quietly, ‘I wanted to see if you’d do anything. If you said anything. If you got jeal
ous at all. You never did.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you stopped... watching me. After a while. You just left me to talk with Jake... and you didn’t even get up.’

  ‘I needed my sleep after a while,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you managed.’

  She shrugged. ‘It made me feel good, you know... helping Jake to cope.’

  I nodded. And was that why she’d always been in a good mood after her nocturnal conversations with Jake? Purely because she’d been doing a good deed?

  I said, ‘But then later... I woke up and you were talking with Jake and playing with... you know... sex toys.’

  She nodded, blushed. ‘Jake got a bit funny... I don’t know... he was suddenly, like... he didn’t want to talk so much. He said it might not be a good idea... did you talk with him? Did you tell him you knew I was talking with him at night?’

  Suddenly, her tone sounded sharp, accusatory. So, she had figured out that I’d talked with Jake. But he hadn’t told her what we’d talked about.

  ‘I was annoyed again... I was kind of trying to wake you up, trying to ruffle your feathers. I thought you might get angry at me, and then I’d turn my laptop around and show you that, actually, I wasn’t talking with Jake at all.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ she gave me an eye-roll. ‘You just watched.’

  ‘I’ve told you... it was hot.’

  ‘Hot. And you thought I was doing it with Jake?’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t you remember anything about what we talked about in Slovakia?’

  ‘I... I kind of... put all that behind me.’

  ‘You don’t remember how we got into that whole strip poker thing in the first place?’ I asked her. Was it really that long ago?

  ‘We were bored. I thought of some desperate way to kill the boredom for a while... and since you didn’t seem to object...’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about my fantasy. In fact, I didn’t believe she had: I think, honestly, she had mentally come to terms with the strangeness of a man wanting his wife to sleep with other men by wrongly attributing it all to my need to end our serious boredom in that chalet. In her mind, I had simply come up with a strange reason for supporting the idea that Hanna should sleep with my friends in order to keep everybody from going crazy that week so far from home.