by Vivian Ward
“No, Wally. No, nothing like that. Just a couple of guys hanging out. I’ve got a bottle of Jack and Coke. Hopefully, those can take my mind off of things. If nothing else, we can at least hang out, and you can get a shower, some clean clothes and a decent sleep for the night.”
He takes the last drag from his cigarette and flicks the butt across the parking lot, nodding his head.
“All right, but no gay shit. I’m not into that.”
“You’ve got it,” I say.
Half a bottle of Jack and Coke later, I’m a babbling mess. Madison has been the topic of conversation for the last two hours, and she still hasn’t bothered to text or call me. She probably hates my guts, and I don’t blame her.
Right now, I hate myself for starting any of this. I never meant for any of this to jeopardize my marriage. It was supposed to bring us closer together and strengthen us.
I probably should’ve called the whole thing off before we were supposed to meet but I couldn’t. I was curious, and I wanted to know what would happen; find out what she’d like to have done to her and what she’d be willing to let a stranger do. There was also something very erotic about all of it.
If I said that things didn’t turn me on that night, I’d be lying. My cock was rock hard, and I got a rush from doing the things that I did to her. The blood rushed from one head to the other, and I’d love the opportunity to do those things again—under different circumstances, of course.
“You know what you have to do, right?” Wally says to me as he smokes outside of the door to the hotel room.
“No. What?” I ask.
“You’ve got to go after her. You’ve got to let her know that she matters,” he says.
I consider it for a moment, but then I remember the look of hatred and hurt in her eyes. She doesn’t want me anywhere near her. She’d probably gouge my eyes out of I tried.
It doesn’t take too long for Wally to pass out for the night after drinking the rest of the bottle of straight Jack all by himself. I don’t mind that he finished off the booze, though. As much as he’s helped me by talking to me and listening to my fucked up, pathetic sob story, I need some time to think.
I just keep replaying the scene over and over in my mind when I told her that I was Robbie and the look on her face. I could practically see every thought flashing across her face as they came to mind.
First, it was confusion, the realization, then sadness, then anger and finally, hate.
The last one is what kills me the most. I expected her to be somewhat sad or angry that Robbie never existed but I don’t want her to hate me for it. I’ve got to find a way to get her back.
If I wasn’t going to lose her to a stranger, I’ll be damned if I lose her to my own stupid mistakes. I’m not letting go of her that easily.
Chapter 22
Madison
For the last week, all I’ve done is moped around at work and at home.
I’ve been pouring over all of the text messages between Robbie and me. At first, I was going to delete them because I was so pissed off but then I got to thinking about some of the things that Drew said to me when he confessed and told me that they were him.
He didn’t start off talking to me about sexual things. No, not at all. We talked about plenty of things. There were lots of messages where we talked about nothing at all, and he showed a real interest in me. Of course, things took a turn that neither of us was expecting but I can honestly say that I believe him when he said he was only trying to make things between us better; stronger.
It’s obvious that his original intentions weren’t to get me to just confess to things that I’d never say, but that’s what ended up happening.
I’ve been examining our messages and trying to figure out why I opened up to him and look at what made me open up to him. When it all comes down to it, I think I wanted him to know, but I was never able to tell him because the communication between us died somewhere along the line.
Lying in his spot on the bed in one of his oversized t-shirts, I cuddle Dublin, the only thing that seemingly connects us anymore. Half of his clothes are gone out of the closet; the half he wears, anyway. All of his personal items are gone from the bathroom and have been for almost two weeks now.
The house is so lonely without him here.
Even though we spent our time apart with him down in the basement and me in our bedroom, I always knew he was here. He was just feet away.
And that’s what kills me the most. We were always so close, yet so far away. We were both within reach but completely out of grasp. Our marriage had started falling apart long before he sent the first message.
I can see now that sending me the anonymous message was an attempt to reconnect with me, to get to know me better—in a different way. It sickens me to know that my own husband didn’t think that he could come and talk to me but I guess I’m just as much to blame in all of this.
Maybe some wives would’ve gone down to the basement to hang out with her husband, some might have invited him upstairs to watch TV next to her. But me? I didn’t do either of those things.
I let our marriage drift apart.
The only difference between us is that he at least tried to make an attempt to fix things—or figure out how to fix them. I’m not saying that the way he went about it was right. There are a million different approaches that he could’ve taken.
There are always the “what if’s” or the “other scenario” but things happened how they happened, and there’s no going back to change them.
I want to talk to him and find out where we stand and where we go from here, what happens next, but I’m afraid to. I don’t want to be the first one to call or text. I don’t want to be the weak one.
But that’s been my problem all along.
I’ve just pretended and ignored. Pretend there’s not a problem and ignore that one exists. There is something very wrong when married people hardly speak to each other and don’t spend any time together, but I was too big to admit that we were in that situation. It was easier for me to get lost in my stories and see that my marriage was going down the tubes.
Fiction is always better than real life, isn’t it?
Swallowing my pride, I decide that maybe—just for once—I can be the bigger person and do things the right way. We’ve both got a lot of explaining to do because neither of us is innocent in this situation. I grab my phone from the nightstand and open my text messages.
M: I’m ready to talk if you are.
There, I’ve sent it. Now the ball is in his court. If he messages me back, then maybe we can work on things. If not, I guess it was never meant to be, but I do know that we can’t go on like this forever. I’m sure everything is probably eating at him, too.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand with a reply.
D: Can I come home?
My watery vision makes it hard to reply. I’m so happy that he asked, but I’m so scared of what will be said when we’re finally facing each other.
M: Yes.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear his truck pull into the driveway and glance out the window. The first thing I notice is that he’s not bringing any of this clothes inside. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
The kitchen door swings open and I hear his boots on the kitchen floor. One heavy footstep at a time until he reaches the bedroom.
Knock. Knock. Knock .
“You can come in,” I say.
Scrambling to sit up, I grab my friend Dublin and pull him to my chest as I sit Indian style on the bed. Dragging the covers over the top of my legs, I wear them like a coat of armor.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
Neither of us talks for a few moments, and the silence is more awkward than anything either of us could possibly say, so I decide to go first.
“I have a question for you. What made you decide to do this? I mean, I know why you did it, but why this way? Why didn’t you just come talk to me?”
Leaning against the door frame, he sighs and rubs his brows.
“Because I’m stupid? I don’t know, Maddy. I just felt like we’d grown so far apart and that we were drifting further and further apart each day. I know you’re pissed at me, but the truth is that I love you and I don’t want to lose you, and that’s what I thought I was doing. I thought I was losing you.”
I’ve got to admit, that’s the sweetest answer that he could possibly have for doing this, but it doesn’t excuse his behavior or actions in the least bit.
It’s hard because this is the reason why I married this man and as much as I want to ignore the little voice in my head that keeps reminding me of that, I can’t. I fell in love with him because he’s so sweet, caring, and thoughtful.
Honestly, I want to keep a level head so we can talk this out. Before he came in, I promised myself that I was going to give him a fair chance to explain everything so that I could understand his point of view.
“You could’ve come and talked to me, you know? I am your wife after all, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t do that.”
Shifting on his feet to the other side of the door frame, he stares out the bedroom window.
“I know, and that’s what I should’ve done, but I didn’t. I knew something was wrong with our marriage; I just didn’t know what.”
“Yeah,” I agree with him.
“You said some pretty hurtful things about me in those messages,” he says, his glance shifts toward the floor. “Like when you said you’d like the complete opposite of me. That was fucking rough.”
His raspy voice catches in his throat as he says that last part, making me wince. I can feel his pain, but I can also feel mine, too.
“I’m sorry. Had I known it was you, I wouldn’t have said what I said. I would’ve approached it differently.”
“But you didn’t,” he shrugs.
Truly, I feel sorry for some of the things that I said, but in a way, I’m glad that I said what I did. It’s how I really feel, and it’s best that he knows that anyway.
“You know,” I say, clearing my throat. “It really hurt me too when you confessed that it was you who had been sending those messages. That wasn’t right to lead me to believe that I was talking to someone else. Why, at any point in time, didn’t you say it was you?”
I want to be angry and yell at him, the anger and resentment are still there, but I keep reminding myself the promise that I made to myself before he got here.
“I feel so fucking stupid,” I finally say.
Watching him swallow his Adam’s apple, he licks the corner of his mouth and stands up straight.
“My intention was never to make you feel stupid, Maddy. Things went so bad so fast that I didn’t know how to backtrack.”
“Then why did you come meet me? Huh? Why didn’t you make an excuse not to come? Why did you lie to me about going to Arkansas? Were you even in Arkansas? Where were you? Where have you been?”
Now I’m starting to get mad. As all of these questions come to me and we start talking about all of his lies, all of the ways that he deceived me, my anger is starting to rise and my blood is beginning to boil.
I’m starting to feel just like I did the night that it all happened. I’m so pissed off that I’m stuck in that moment. Actually, I’m trapped in two moments: the night that I waited half naked like a fool and let him fuck me with a blindfold, and the night that he told me what he did.
It all boils down to two nights.
Two nights that fucked up everything, and I want answers.
I’ve had lots of questions about our marriage, but I’ve never been so deviant to text him from fake phone numbers and get him to admit embarrassing things about himself. I’ve also never tried to fix things like he did which is what makes this so incredibly hard.
Chapter 23
Drew
Lying to her was the wrong way to go about things, but I’ve got to make her see things from my perspective.
“No, Maddy, I didn’t go to Arkansas. I went—,” she stops me mid-sentence by waving her fist in the air.
“So there was no job? You lied to me about work? Did you even work at all that week?”
“No, there was no job. We were finishing up with the job we were on, and I told Kirk that I needed some time off. I went to Extended Stay America and got a room for the week—two weeks now, actually.”
“What?! You were staying at some cheesy hotel so that you could lie to me? What the hell did you do there, huh?”
She’s pissed. I can see her face turning a shade darker with each passing second.
“Nothing! I did absolutely nothing. I promise.”
“So you want me to believe that you didn’t do anything but sit in a hotel room for a week—two weeks now as you say—doing absolutely nothing but staring at walls? Come on, Drew!”
“No, not like that. I mean that I didn’t go anywhere or do anything. I spoke to no one. All I did was jack around on the computer.”
“Doing what? What could you possibly spend a week doing on the computer? You don’t play games, you don’t do social media. So, what were you doing?”
I’m too embarrassed to admit it, so I hesitate. She’s going to think I’m so stupid. Even I think I’m stupid, but I did it for her.
“I, um,” I can feel the sweat beginning to bead up on my forehead. “I spent the week researching stuff.”
She crosses her arms and rolls her eyes.
“Right. What were you researching, Drew? How to dupe your spouse some more?”
“No! I was looking up bondage stuff because you were so into it and we’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve never done it with anyone before you, and I didn’t want to come in here not knowing anything about it because—as I found out—it turns you on.”
Somebody better call an ambulance because I’ve rendered her speechless for the first time ever since we’ve been married. I can tell that she’s thinking about this for a minute, so I use it as an opportunity to elaborate.
“I promise you, Maddy, that I only had you in mind when I did this. It wasn’t to ‘catch you’ or ‘trick you.' I thought that maybe I could befriend you, as a stranger, and get you to open up to me about our marriage. My plan was to see if I could get you to tell me what some of your personal problems were and get you to talk about us so I could know what I could improve between us. Please know that I never did any of this with the intention of hurting you.”
“Ugh,” she sighs.
Pulling the covers up her body a little more she begins to burrow herself under the blankets as she flops back onto the pillows.
“Then tell me why you came. Why did you leave and then come here and pretend to be a stranger? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
She’s not giving up on this at all; completely holding my feet to the fire on this one.
“Geez, Maddy. Don’t you get it?”
Shaking her head, she says, “No.”
“When things finally progressed to that, I wanted to show you that I could be the man you want, the man you need. I wanted to show myself that I could do it, too. You have no idea how badly it hurt me when you said that I was the complete opposite of what you want in the bedroom. When you were telling ‘Robbie’ all of the things that you wanted to be done to you, I was intrigued and, honestly, embarrassed.”
Her mouth pops open for a minute as she processes things.
“You know I didn’t say any of that stuff to hurt you,” she says.
“I know. You were just being honest, and I think that’s what hurt the most.”
Biting her lip, she grabs the blankets and pulls them up to her chest.
“So, what did you think about….that night?” she hesitates.
I knew she would ask and I’ve asked myself the same question.
“Honestly? I really enjoyed it, and let me tell you something. I spent a lot of time practicing tying those ropes and doing those knots. I wanted everything to be perfect for you.”
She smiles and hugs me.
For the first time in such a long time, I feel like we’re actually connecting. It feels good to have her arms around me. Not that it doesn’t any other time, but this is a new connection with her that I haven’t felt since that night and in what feels like an eternity.
Right now, I don’t care why she did it; why she had ‘Robbie’ over or how she could have done it. Our hearts are speaking the same language, and that’s all that matters to me. As long as I have another day with her, we can work through this together.
Wrapping my arms around her, I squeeze her tightly against me and hold her there. I never want to let her go. I just want to live in this moment forever. This is where she belongs, and this is how it should be.
After a few minutes, she pulls away from me and uses the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“Hey,” I say, lowering my voice. “Why are you crying, babe?”
She laughs, sniffing back her tears.
“I don’t know. I have so many emotions right now. You know? Like, I want to be mad at you, but I totally get why you did everything. You really love me, don’t you?”
Smiling, I flop back against the pillows with her, banging my head against the wall and we both burst into laughter.
“Of course, babe. I hope you know that I’d do anything for you. You’re my girl.”
“Oh, Drew!” she says, snuggling against my chest. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I am so lucky to have you. You know, when I was trying to understand why you did the things you did, I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t be so cruel into tricking you, but I can see that wasn’t your intention.”
Squeezing her against my chest, I inhale the scent of her lavender and vanilla shampoo and love being back at home again. As much as she belongs in my arms, I belong in our home. We belong here together.
“Babe, I love you so fucking much. I was afraid that I was losing you long before I sent that first message and I really thought I’d fucked things up when I finally told you that it was me. Do you know that I had a homeless guy stay with me for a few days after you kicked me out?”