The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5)

by Nicole Strycharz

  Lydia washed her hands and I put her rings in her palm.

  Giada left, knowing she ruined the moment.

  “Come, on,” I rushed Lydia while she put the rings back on. “Out. Go.”

  She went to the doors leading back out to the front and held the frame. “Goodbye,” she said, shouldering her purse.”

  “Addio.”

  RUBY

  As the afternoon rolled in, I stood on the front porch of my little house in the suburbs. I had removed my tight and strict courtroom attire and put on a long black dress.

  I missed Noah so much that I couldn’t think straight for days. I don’t have a right, but I’m jealous. Jealous of him taking time to be with her. He didn’t even text me while they were away.

  How can I feel cheated, when we are the ones breaking vows?

  When Noah’s taxi rolled up across the street, I bit my lower lip as a grin split my face. He came out smiling, sprinting to get to me and I met him in the yard, wrapping both arms around his neck after he’d bent to kiss me.

  His hands on me, melt my clothes, making me hot everywhere.

  “I missed you,” I said into his neck. His beard had grown back, not fully, but the scruff tickled my cheek.

  “Why does it feel like years?” he squeezed my ribs until I feared they would snap. “God, you smell good. You feel good,” he moved his hands over my sides, grabbing and feeling.

  “How long do you have?”

  “Two hours,” he turned me around so I would start walking to the door and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “It’s not enough.”

  I reached back and shut my eyes as his kisses pressed to my neck. “It’s never enough,” I laughed when his hand pinched my side. Running, I took off into the house, Noah on my heels.

  “Ruby,” he chased me into the kitchen. “Two hours, that’s— don’t run. I need to be inside you, like, yesterday.”

  I laughed, keeping the table between us. “You want me, catch me.”

  He looked at his watch. “One hour, and fifty-three minutes.”

  I tiptoed around the table and then took off through the sitting room and up the stairs.

  Noah’s long legs crossed the distance stealthily, cornering me on the stairs.

  I sat, facing him. “You’re slow, old man.”

  “Slow,” he walked up to where I was. “Slow?”

  I turned on all fours, to go up, but he caught my hips, turning me over and laid on me.

  “I’ll take you right here, I don’t need a bed,” he bragged. His attention moved to my legs since my dress had a long slit to the hip. It was peeled back, revealing my side, and the absence of underwear.

  “You’re ready for me?” his hands worshiped my leg, kissing up my thigh.

  “Maybe,” I made my body fit over the stairs, not noticing how uncomfortable it was.

  He dipped his head, licking my naked folds and planted his mouth over my clit.

  For a man that had never ventured into oral, I taught him well. I can’t compare him to Lorenzo. Lorenzo makes sex into an event. If Lorenzo lays you on a surface, he has plans, and he knows a woman’s body. He knows his woman’s body. He makes it his mission to leave you disoriented.

  Noah is almost new to it all. I don’t always get off, but his desire to please me, his sometimes-clumsy hands turn me on. But when he’s confident, like now, I feel helpless against the current his touch puts me under.

  We fucked on the stairs.

  I have bruises in weird places, but the memory is beautiful to me.

  As it ends, I hold the collar of his shirt and look up at him. “How was it?” I asked.

  He knew without asking, I meant his trip away with Lydia.

  “It was okay.”

  I finished panting. “Did you fuck her?”

  He came off me and sat beside me on the steps.

  I pushed my dress down and sat up too. “You didn’t call.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You said you would call,” I reminded.

  “I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

  “You can’t take a piss without her?”

  “We went to have time alone,” he won’t look at me. “She needed the quality time. How was I supposed to text you or be on my phone during that?”

  “Did you fuck her?” I asked for a second time.

  “What am I supposed to do, Ruby? She’s my wife and she wants a baby.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know,” he rubbed over his beard.

  “Did you think about me while you had her.”

  “We didn’t— she was sick.”

  “Oh,” I took small breaths.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing. I love her, and I see a future with her but… then there’s you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Sometimes…” he dragged it out. Making me wonder. “Sometimes I see a future with you too.”

  My heart leaped, an unrealistic flutter like a teen sitting beside her first crush. “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. Mainly, not having to rush off all the time, being with you more than one night in a row.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “What I want with you— conflicts with what I already have with Lydia. I can’t keep sneaking around like this. It’s eating at me and there’re moments when I feel that Lydia knows, or senses it.”

  “Then stop seeing me.”

  His head snapped around; eyes tortured by my suggestion. “Why? Are you done with this?”

  I wiped under my nose and stood. “Low blow.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re saying? Basically, telling me to stop coming here.”

  “I’m working off your statement. You can’t stand lying to Lydia, but you can’t stop seeing me,” I started up to my room. “You have to figure out what works for you, but don’t throw in my face that this is what I do.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” he jumped to his feet. “You sleep with men behind your husband’s back and then you dump them. Just because I’ve been here longer than most, doesn’t mean I’m special. Why would I leave my wife for something temporary?”

  My mouth fell open. “When did I ever ask you to leave your wife? And how dare you compare yourself to other men that you don’t even know! You mean ten times more to me than all of them!”

  “But not Lorenzo, right? I don’t mean ten times more to you than him? Because that wedding ring you got, never comes off. You’ve repeatedly hurt him, but you won’t leave him. He won’t leave you. What is that?”

  “Lorenzo is my husband, he’s not one of the meaningless fucks I’ve been with.”

  “But I am? I’m a meaningless fuck?”

  My heart broke even hearing him say it. “That’s not true,” I fought tears. “Don’t say that to me.”

  “Why are you asking me if I slept with my wife, if I think about you when I do? If you can’t give up Lorenzo, I shouldn’t have to give up Lydia!”

  “Then don’t!” I screamed back. My throat turned hot as though a fire poker was being swallowed. “Go back to your little innocent, perfect, Goddamn wife and her little pure in Christ shit, and tell her how to a ride a dick!”

  “I risk everything being with you!” he shouted. “I’m the one that stands to lose the most. I was a man trying to start a family, that is part of a congregation that would tear me apart for this. Life was simple and made sense before I met you.”

  “Then go back to that,” I held myself, a defiant brow raised. “Go back to being simple, Noah. You’re good at simple.”

  “I can’t go back to simple because I’m in fucking love with you!” he raged.

  The room plunged into an unbearable quiet. Nine months of sneaking around. Nine. I knew him almost as well as I know Lorenzo. He knows me… knows about me. He’s soothed me in my distress, held me through attacks, and given me a slice of freedom with his body. But I never let myself say that word. Love.

  He looked shocked the words had come from his mou
th.

  “I’ve told myself…” I brushed my tears away. “All the times that I’ve cheated on Lorenzo, I’ve told myself that so long as I didn’t love them, it wasn’t cheating…”

  Noah stood there, panting still from his rage.

  “This is the first time it felt like cheating,” I confessed. “With you. Since you.”

  He softened.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “It means we need to figure out what we want.”

  “And what do you want?” I asked.

  He came to me and held my face, moving his thumbs over my cheekbones. “I want to love you and not hurt anyone.” He thought in his own head a while. “I think I need to stop trying for a kid with Lydia, and that you and I need more time together to decide what this is. Because if this is real for us, then we can’t keep lying to the people we care about.”

  I was terrified of his suggestion but also elated, because I’ve been falling in love with him since he carried me out of the bathroom nine months ago.

  I leaned forward, my head to his chest and let him hold me. None of the ones I used before knew of my demons. Half of them didn’t know my name, or only saw me a handful of times.

  Noah had seen me, on our first night, with no mask.

  It’s been hard getting the mask back on since.

  Chapter Eleven

  LORENZO

  When I got a text from Lydia telling me to come over, I almost declined.

  Ruby really was at the office, and if she was at the office, then Noah was either out or working also.

  Either way, this would soon come to an end because she was going to confront Noah and be free of this mess. That’s why I almost declined. I know there’s a timer on our queer friendship, and I feel like distance should happen.

  I delayed answering her, but then I found myself on my motorcycle and headed for her place. When she answered, she was dressed in a large button-down top with a long skirt. Her typical overly appropriate attire.

  “Hello,” she stood on her toes, seeming to bust with energy.

  I looked at her warily. “What’s going on?”

  “Noah is with the Youth for a kind of field trip. It’s a real one because half the church is going. Come in,” she waved me inside and I stepped in. Then she just grinned at me.

  “Why am I here?”

  “Because you are my closest friend now, and I have to try something on you.”

  I frowned.

  “I made you something special…” she went on. “It’s in the oven.”

  My gaze swung to her oven but then back to her.

  “Go look,” she insisted.

  Frown still in place, I went to the oven and opened the door. It was a bread roll. One single roll on the middle rack. I looked back at her, finding her giddy as hell. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t notice the cliché?” her excitement gave to frustration. “Oh, come on! Think about it.”

  Taking too long, she answered my curiosity.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said in a rush of smiles.

  My reaction blended from two separate ones; happiness for her, knowing how badly she seemed to want this; sadness because she just decided this marriage would not work. “Congratulazioni, that is good for you.”

  “I tested myself this morning. Lorenzo! That’s why I’ve been throwing up all the time, why didn’t I notice that? My period is late and— too much information,” she blushed, and I smiled genuinely. “I won’t tell you all the other things. But I’m pregnant! Due around the same time as Giada!”

  I applauded her. “This is good news.”

  “It is!” She looks the happiest I’ve ever seen her. “I wanted to practice how I plan to tell Noah, on you… but you didn’t get it, I doubt Noah will.”

  “And what does this mean for you?”

  She became more serious. “Well, I can’t just quit on my marriage with a baby on the way.” She put her hands over her stomach, looking small and naïve. “I have to try and make it work.”

  “Without trust?”

  “He won’t keep seeing Ruby when he finds out he’s going to be a father,” she said with certainty. “We’ve wanted this for years. He loves children. He works with them at church and for a living.”

  “But while you’ve both been trying; he’s been sleeping with my wife…”

  Lydia’s denial from when we first met, surfaced once again. “I wanted to walk away from all this after last weekend. I was ready to see it all through, but I can’t now. I owe it to this baby to try.”

  “Then you will at least confront him with what you know?”

  “I will give him a second chance by letting us move past it.”

  “You aren’t going to tell him you know?” I wasn’t going to allow her to lie to herself or mix words.

  Lydia’s hair was undone around her shoulders, the first time I’ve ever seen it not restricted by a tight braid. She went to the oven and took out the roll. “Noah loves me, and when he finds this out, he won’t need me to be the one judging him and making him feel small. We’ll just grow from all this…”

  “Babies do not fix relationships.”

  “How would you know? You don’t have children, maybe that’s what’s missing with you and Ruby.”

  I went to the fridge and leaned on it, watching her. “I would never have children with Ruby.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do not trust her. Children can easily become pawns between broken hearts. I don’t want that. I would rather not experience fatherhood than have it used against me.”

  She tilted her head. “Babies are a new beginning. You can’t focus on bad stuff with something so precious on the way. Babies are the right kind of motivation.”

  “I thought that too, at one point.” I saw how intent she was to listen, so I explained. “Ruby was pregnant once. It was the second year we were married. But then, she told me she didn’t know whose it was…”

  Lydia paled.

  “I told her it didn’t matter to me,” I could still remember it. “I loved her; I would love the baby, but she felt too guilty to go through with it. She aborted the baby one afternoon without even telling me.”

  Lydia’s lips parted in awe.

  “It could have been mine,” I said. “Then again, it could have been the guy’s she was with at the time. I don’t know, but I didn’t care.” I crossed my arms. “Yet, if she’d had the baby, it would have been held over my head, the way she and her father like to hold things over my head. Having children with someone you don’t trust is a risk,” I finished.

  “But I would never do that. Play games or use a baby.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. It’s not in you. But would Noah?”

  “He’ll give her up,” she stubbornly repeated.

  “Will he?” I dropped my gaze to her stomach. “Because there was a time you never would have thought there was a her.”

  LYDIA

  After Lorenzo left, I set everything up as it was, for when Noah arrives. I can’t let Lorenzo’s doubt get to me. I have to offer Noah this chance at our future. We are not Lorenzo and Ruby, this is not the same as that.

  With a new bun placed in the oven, I watched Noah get out of the car and walk to the house. I primped and prepared and then smiled wide when he came inside.

  “I think teenagers should be how we fight terrorism,” he said, tossing his duffle.

  “How was the Youth trip?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I spent most of it on the phone with my kids from work,” he steamed. He looked beat, meaning he wasn’t lying. He had the war-torn look he used to wear when he first got the probation job. “I have a teenage girl I’m working with, are you ready? She stole an eight-hundred-dollar bracelet because…” he held up his finger, saving the best for last. “In her exact words… It was like, cool and stuff.”

  I laughed at his impression of a teenage girl. “Sounds fun.”

  “There was that and the fi
fteen-year-old boy that sells coke.”

  I winced. “Tough day.”

  “Very,” he hugged me and then stopped. “Oh, wait. More awesome. Ready?”

  I waited.

  He turned around.

  “Oh, no!” I checked out the giant pink stain on the back of his khaki pants. “What—” I didn’t want to laugh but it was bright bubble-gum pink.

  “One of the kids on the trip thought it would make a good prank. Go ahead. Laugh. Half the Youth leaders did. Only upside is that Stan got it too. His butt was purple.”

  I only let out one giggle. “Sorry.”

  “Could be worse,” he held me in a bear hug.

  “Hey, I have a surprise for you in the—”

  His phone went off and I went perfectly still. He moved back, fishing the cell out of his pocket and then looked at the caller I.D. I held his shirt front, desperate not to lose this moment.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Uh, just the office. No big deal,” he put it away after silencing it.

  I breathed deeper.

  But then he got a text.

  “Ugh, hold on.” He pulled it and read.

  “What is it?”

  “I might have to go in… some stupid computer issue, saying I won’t get paid this week. It didn’t log my hours right.”

  My stomach dropped, knowing deep inside that it was a lie. “Can it wait?”

  “Not if we want a paycheck,” he kissed my forehead and tried to walk away, but I clutched his shirt, making him wait.

  “I need you to stay home tonight.”

  “Honey, I need to change out of these,” he pointed to his pranked pants. “And I need to get to the center.”

  “No,” I held him tight. “I want you to stay.”

  He bent his knees to see me. “What’s up?”

  I had so much planned. The surprise in the oven, a dinner, candles in our room. I only showed Lorenzo part of it all. Under my clothes was the lingerie I was supposed to wear on our weekend trip. I’m trying so hard, but now there’s no time.

  “I really need to go change—”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  After bombing him with that news, I saw the slightest flash of disappointment. It was gone so fast, but it was there, I saw it. Then he buried it with animated excitement.