Girls like bad boys.
Shane was definitely a bad boy.
I stepped into the shower.
What had those two done together? Had he taken her all around town on his motorcycle, driving too fast, all of her pretty mocha skin hanging out of some skimpy outfit, while he drove recklessly and scared her half to death? Had he skidded to a stop in front of some meat-district loft, helped her off the bike, her heart pounding and her eyes black with fear and adrenaline. Don’t worry, baby, I’ll just wrap you up in these hard, muscled arms...
I looked down to confirm that, indeed, I had an erection. Thinking about Shane scaring the shit out of my wife and then “comforting” her was giving me a hard-on.
Was it because I never really saw Tennile that way? Tennile was always so in control of herself, so in control of life. Even when she had broken down and tearfully admitted to me that she had been a stripper, it had a calculated feel to it. I don’t mean to sound like it didn’t feel honest, or that her trepidation about it didn’t feel honest – Tennile genuinely wished it was a part of her life that hadn’t ever happened. But the tears and the misery she heaped on herself never had the feel of being outside of her control.
Because Tennile had known, however much she had cried about it, that there was no way I was going to cancel our wedding. Tennile knew that she had me wrapped around her finger. It’s not to say I was some kind of massive pushover, but let’s face it: Tennile was slightly out of my league in most departments, and I was a man who was very good at taking a practical look at facts.
But Shane... that might have been another story. When Tennile went riding around with him on his bike (I realized I was writing a prop into the story that I really couldn’t verify existed) did she dismount with big, dilated pupils and wet eyes? I imagined the look on her face, the look of things slipping out of her control: had Shane ignited something in her that I never got to see?
I’d bet he had.
I had my hand on my cock now, my imagination running wild. I pictured Tennile taking off a helmet, shaking her hair out -
Or no. There was no helmet. Shane wasn’t the kind of guy to wear a helmet, or to have one for a passenger. He was the kind of guy that a young version of Tennile – Tenny - would throw her safety-loving standards in the trash for. She would hop on the back of his bike and the thrill of danger would creep up from between her legs and squeeze her until she couldn’t breathe as she held on for dear life to Shane. Her hands sneaking under his shirt, feeling the ripped muscles of his abdomen, flirting with the idea of distracting him, making him too crazy to drive... her breasts against his back, her nipples getting hard with excitement, brushing through his t-shirt and electrifying his skin.
“Some ride,” she would say, pushing her long hair out of her face.
Or no.
No, she’d say nothing, just look at him with her flushed cheeks and wild eyes, relieved to have her feet back on the ground and all of her skin on her body, anxious to feel him against her again.
How would Shane and Tennile have fucked? Never missionary. Would she slink around in her stripper outfits for him, give him a strip tease?
No. No. He was the kind of guy to just get what he wanted. Up against the wall, panties pulled to the side.
Or maybe Tennile would fall on her knees, her hands on her slutty stripper shoes, her mouth open and Shane’s fingers snaking into her black hair...
I groaned as I came, a little surprised by the filthiness of my fantasy, how quickly it made me come. Blood surged to my head, and a dull pain throbbed in my left temple. I listened to the house as my blood pressure died down.
Still quiet.
I stayed in the shower, letting the water run over me and into my face, thinking about what a perverted man I was.
This thing hadn’t really started just because Tennile had confessed her past to me. It hadn’t even so much started with Tennile, though Tennile had exacerbated it. The fantasy that had lurked around in my mind with other girlfriends, but sort of like a prowler around the house, never coming in, just sneaking around.
I’d be at a party, watching some girl I was dating laugh at the jokes some other guy was making, and I’d have this thought: what if she went into the bathroom with him right now, and they fucked? What if I took her home and when I pulled off her panties I found them soaked, smelling of the briny scent of cum?
But the idea would wander through, titillate me a little, and wander out.
Sometimes I’d play with it a little, prompt a girl to say something in the hopes that I’d get some dose of pain from her.
“You really hit it off with that guy from London...” I’d say. Hoping maybe she’d seize on it, fantasizing that maybe her face would turn sort of mean and sexy at the same time. “Yeah,” she’d say. “I wanted to suck his cock while you watched.”
But that was it.
Tennile was the first woman I could say I really loved, and so it surprised the hell out of me when those fantasies did the opposite of what I’d expected: they didn’t go away. They intensified. They lengthened, they turned into full-blown fantasies that I would add detail to, try to feel and smell and see in excruciating detail.
So when she dropped that thing about stripping in my lap 16 hours before our wedding, it was more like throwing some seeds on a well-fertilized garden.
Tennile had never wanted to talk about it in detail. Who could blame her? She had done it to pay for law school, and that was just the sort of thing her half-Mennonite-ancestried inner accountant would do. In fact, she had made it sound so transactional and business-like, and that was so aligned with her personality, that she had kind of rained on my fantasy.
Don’t get me wrong, I could still spin up a good story. But until Shane had walked into our lives, my fantasies had seemed outside of reality. Far outside of reality. Tennile had probably been the most business-like stripper on earth.
Except now... now, look at Shane. She hadn’t been as all-business as she had seemed. Now, maybe some of those fantasies were closer to the truth than I had thought. He was living, breathing proof that there had been touching, spit, cum, writhing and fucking in her past as a stripper. That maybe there was something to my wild fantasies.
And now...
Now, what, Rich? Now your wife, a lawyer, is home late, and you’re envisioning her... what? Having an affair? Running back into the arms of a scuzzy, tattooed, bouncer who’s done time because... what?
I stepped out of the shower and toweled off hastily. I went back to the kitchen counter for the phone, letting my paranoia drive me. Enjoying it a little, hating it a little. Having fun, not having fun.
Sure, I wonder if I should see a shrink.
I was half naked in my kitchen, the windows yawning out into the back yard, the neighbors with a clear view. I toweled my cock off and actually hoped someone was watching.
I stared at the screen.
Nothing. No response from Tennile.
I called. The ringtone blared, once, two, three, four, on and on. The stoic voice of the answering service. Tennile’s professional tone: “Tennile Mathews.”
I hung up without leaving a message.
Taking the phone with me, I went back to the master bedroom. The rest of the house was dark, only the kitchen and the bedroom spilled light into the blackness. It gave me the feeling of being a burglar in my own house. My breath was loud in my ears, and I could feel my heart pounding away, but distantly.
I knew, at the time, that I was going overboard. Imagining things, enjoying imagining things, spinning up a little game of paranoia that was... it wasn’t real. I knew that, deep inside. But blood was going to all the wrong places, and I was having fun indulging in the fantasy that I kept under wraps all the time.
I held the phone up. Still no response from my wife.
8:37pm.
I called the office. This is what you do, I thought, to try to look like you’re not a psychopath. It’s late. You sent a message and you called. Now you
are starting to worry.
Not that your wife is fucking a bouncer from her past, not that. No. Worry. Wo-rry, in a suburban, professional kind of way. That she had a break-down or an accident.
You call the office.
The answering service took the call. I found these people really annoying, but I suppose they were there to sort the wheat from the chaff. They couldn’t confirm if the office was closed or anyone was there, because they were actually a service based out of Tallahassee.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, viciously, and hung up.
Call back and apologize?
Nah.
8:43.
I called her phone again. No answer.
“Hey. Hi. It’s... me. I’m just... you aren’t answering and you didn’t say anything about working late so I’m just getting worried. Give me a call when you get this.”
And then I settled in for the wait, staring into my beer, thinking the worst possible thoughts I could.
And then, like magic, the phone rang and the screen lit up with the magic words:
Nila calling
“Hey,” Tennile said, as I mumbled a hello..
She sounded out of breath.
In the background I heard her heels on cement. The distinctive feminine clapping of a woman in a hurry.
“I’m so sorry I forgot to call you. Sam called a last-minute meeting with the guys from a big client and I thought it would be like an hour. That was...”
A pause. A proper pause, a jingle of keys as she shifted something in her hands, slipped her watch around so she could read it. All very believable. “Four hours ago. Jesus. Anyway,”
Here the sound of a door handle, she was getting into her car.
“I’m on my way home now, no need to think I’ve been kidnapped. Did you eat already?”
Car sounds. Her voice sounded... normal. Usual, cheerful Tennile. Quick, efficient, looking at her watch, one of the last people on earth to wear a watch, a slender silver one that she had to slide around or shake to look at because her wrists were so slender that all watches were loose on them.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no... yeah, I’m hungry.”
Tennile snort-laughed. “Okay... I’ll get Jiang’s again? I think they’re all that’s open.”
“Sounds great.”
“Okay. Sorry. Sorry to make you worry.”
She made a kiss sound. She ended the call, because she was probably already turning around to back her car out. Tennile, in a hurry to make it to Jiang’s.
She was at the office. She should make it home, then, in about half an hour, if you accounted for Jiang’s.
Four hours ago. She said it with such surprise, like she hadn’t looked at a clock or her watch at all.
Was she lying? Was that a lie? Who doesn’t know that four hours went by? Could the contracts of “whatever” client be so fascinating that four hours went by without anyone’s notice? Did these people take breaks?
I rubbed my forehead. I opened the fridge. I was being crazy, and I regretted it. Because if I had any more MSG because we ate at Jiang’s, my head was going to explode.
The phone rumbled in my hand.
Tennile.
“You know, I’m pretty sick of Jiang’s,” she said. “I’m going to run by Tom’s and get something at the deli. That okay? You said you’re getting a headache from them, anyway.”
“I was just thinking that,” I said.
This is why I’m a sucker. I picture my wife, her windows down and strands of her black hair in the breeze, trying to free themselves from her lawyerly up-do, breaking her strictly imposed rules of no phones while driving to change the plan because she remembered I was getting a headache from MSG.
Why did I picture this woman sucking another man’s cock?
Or better yet, why did I enjoy picturing this woman sucking another man’s cock?
“I know,” Tennile said, and her voice was laughing. I could see her smiling at the phone as she hung it up, shaking her head, turning around to go to the deli.
All in my fucking head.
The thing is, Tennile got home at 9:15.
“Uh.. wow. You’re home early,” I said.
Tennile set some brown bags on the kitchen table. Tom’s Foodporium, they read. She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I said I’m sorry.”
No, Tennile, home early.
I was adding it all up. Her call ended at 8:51. The only Tom’s that was anywhere near our place required her to backtrack a little, take a different route home, and out of the way, at that.
Twenty-four minutes. That’s about how far it was from her office on the complete opposite side of town, in perfect traffic, to here. Just door-to-door (I’d check it later, I’d Google it and put all these pieces together). But wouldn’t going into the store, buying the food, putting it back in the car... wouldn’t that take up at least ten minutes?
I stuck my hand into a bag and pulled out a container.
My mind was racing ahead of my mouth, but only by a little.
The food was warm. Was it warm enough, or not warm enough?
“Which Tom’s did you go to?” I said.
What was I doing? I had this electric excitement going on in my chest, this sickness moving around in my stomach, a cold, first-date, high-octane excitement. I had a buzz in my head from it, but when I thought about why – that I actually thought I was on the trail of finding my wife lying to me – it seemed utterly ridiculous.
Tennile laughed and dipped into the bag. It was a dismissive laugh. Which one would she go to? it said.
I looked at her as she set the container on the counter and opened it. “Some of this stuff looked kind of shitty,” she said. “Sorry. They were closing in like five minutes.”
That added up. Did that add up?
But it didn’t.
“This is Tom's by your office?”
Tennile gave me another look. Then she turned and got some forks from the drawer behind her. “Here,” she said.
I would look into all of this later. I had this uneasy feeling – tempered by the fact that I knew I was being crazy – that Tennile was lying. That she couldn’t have possibly gone to Tom’s by her office, bought this food, and made it here, using only about 15 minutes for driving.
But what was the alternative?
“So what client was this meeting about?” I said.
Tennile had some noodles halfway to her mouth. She glared at me. “You know I can’t tell you that,” she said.
I shrugged.
“What?” She said, setting the noodles down.
I looked at her innocently. I shrugged again.
“Don’t give me that. Something’s on your mind. So spit it out.”
Her eyes were burning into mine. She was fired up. Was she fired up to be on the offensive? Or was she fired up because I was acting like an ass?
“It’s just...”
Just what, Rich?
You’re home late and you didn’t call me, and you have a valid excuse, but it seems to me you got home 5 minutes earlier than you should have been able to, and because I saw you with an ex-boyfriend and I’m hugely perverted, I think you’re cheating on me. And that’s why the Tom’s containers are the incorrect amount of warm.
“I just got worried about you,” I said.
Tennile’s face softened. She waved her hands. “I will not let that happen again. Sorry.”
She dove into the paper bag. “I got you some mac and cheese?” she said, offering me a container.
I took it, and we set them out and ate. Tennile became chatty, talking about a mayoral race in Fort Myers that was going to affect something-something at her job.
I stared at her, watching her mouth move, watching the way she moved her food around but never ate it, searching her attire and her hair for something out of place. For a moment or two, she didn’t even look like my wife.
I’d like to be able to say I was a better man. That when Tennile handed me the mac and cheese, I took
it and didn’t obsess over the temperature, trying to gauge if it seemed like something that had been taken from a deli 15 minutes earlier.
I’d like to be able to say that I didn’t google her supposed route, office to Tom’s to home, at its shortest iteration, with all green lights, twenty-six minutes.
I’d like to say that I didn’t check my phone, ponder the times of her calls, check to see that the kitchen clock and the phone were synchronized, calculate how long it might have taken if she had driven faster.
I’d like to say that I didn’t conclude, over and over again, and re-check, over and over again, the conclusion: she could not have had time to buy deli food if events had unfolded the way she had described.
I’d like to say that I’m not that much of a dork, a pervert and a crazy man, that I was getting my jollies while I did low-level math calculations about my wife’s route home that night and every time finding that she had accomplished the physically impossible... or she had lied to me.
That I didn’t go over her lies in my mind. And they had to be lies, didn’t they? Somewhere in there there had to have been a lie because she simply could not have arrived at home in time unless she had bought the food within five minutes and driven 70 miles an hour all the way home with no red lights.
Such great lies. Such great acting.
It would be a lie to say that I didn’t like it, just a little bit, even if it also made me despair.
But it was clear she had lied. Something did not add up.
So from there: if she had lied, where had she come from?
I’d like to say that I wasn’t two hours late to the job site, because I was finding all the Tom’s in the city from which she could have driven and arrived at home at the time she stated.
Or had she been leaving the Tom’s right when she called? And if so, why the story about Jiang’s? Why the story about the meeting?
I plotted – and I did this because I’m an engineer and I can – endless passages through the city.
I went a little nuts.
And then, once I had time to simmer with the idea that she had lied to me about the meeting, or the food, or the deli, or all three... then I felt free to speculate about anything I wanted to.
Nila's Long Con: A Hotwife Adventure Page 4