Bittersweet Surrender

by Q. B. Tyler

  “Fuck, Will. Oh. My. God,” I whimper as I claw at his back, each word leaving me on its own beat. He fills me fully and my only wish is to feel him skin to skin with no barriers between us.

  I slide my pumps onto my feet in silence. My eyes find the large clock that hangs in his office, and I fixate on the second hand as it ticks, creating the only noise that can be heard in the quiet room. For the past month or so, I’m quiet whenever this time comes. The party is over and it’s time to go back to my real life. The real life that includes a husband that can’t stand me. On top of that is the guilt that plagues my mind for the moments just after our secret meeting comes to an end.

  “Are you ready?” Will asks, his words interrupting my thoughts.

  “I guess,” I pout as I pull my hair back in a ponytail to hide the post-coital mess it turned into.

  “I’ll see you on Wednesday?” He lifts my chin so I’ll meet his gaze. He rubs his mouth over mine, sliding his tongue through my lips. I nod against him. “Call me later?”

  I nod again. “Yes. Maybe around seven?”

  “Hey,” he shoots me the smile that renders me speechless every time, “chin up.” His smile fades as he pulls me into a hug. “Everything is going to be okay, Charley.” His lips drag along my forehead as my head bobs up and down. He presses one final kiss to my lips before guiding me to the door.

  As always, once I leave his office, the walls come up and I become a completely different person. I sit in the chair and wait for my husband to arrive, his secretary eyeing me the same way she does every time I arrive “early” for my sessions.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Matthew Wells enters the room, his face buried in his phone just as it always is as he holds an arm to me. I stand and he wraps an arm around me in a half hug, all without taking his eyes from his phone. “Traffic was a nightmare.” He finally looks up and I can see the familiar look in his eyes. Annoyance.

  My husband is tall with a muscular build after spending the better part of his early twenties in the gym. He still goes pretty frequently, since he discovered an affinity for cheeseburgers after one too many late nights in the office. His dark blond hair is always perfectly styled, parted to the side, giving him a sleek look that belongs on the front of a magazine. It should, he spends more time in the bathroom in the morning than I do. He has sparkling green eyes, that I used to get lost in, that were the perfect contrast to his tanned skin. He was a perfect visual representation of the all-American boy.

  The all-American boy and the girl next door. We should have been the perfect couple.

  “No worries,” I say, forcing a smile onto my lips.

  “Shall we?” he asks as he points toward Will’s office.

  “Go right in, he’s expecting you,” his secretary offers, giving me a look.

  I feel the judgment coming out of her eyes but I know she wouldn’t dare. Will pays her a small fortune.

  For her talents?

  For her silence?

  Probably both.

  “Thank you, Vanessa,” I say, and hope she gets the double meaning.

  We walk into the office, where I came no less than twenty minutes ago and I see Will sitting at his desk. Immediately, my body reacts. Like Pavlov’s dog, I begin to salivate. Well, my body does. My sex is literally drooling at the sight of him.

  “Ms. Pierce, Mr. Wells. Have a seat. How are you?” he asks as he looks between us, careful not to focus on me for too long.

  “Good. Better,” Matthew says immediately. “That exercise you gave us last Friday was pretty insightful. Gave me some clarity.” I resist the snort that threatens to escape.

  Will had given us an assignment where we had to make a list of all of the things we liked about each other when we first met. We were told to see if those things that made us fall in love in the beginning had changed.

  They had.

  “What did you find?” William asks.

  “That Charlotte doesn’t look at me the way she used to.”

  My eyes narrow as I think about the ludicrousness of his statement. “Oh, and you do?”

  He rubs his finger over his forehead and I know from years of marriage that he’s growing agitated already. “He asked what I found.”

  “You don’t even want to know what I found,” I mumble to myself.

  “Oh, and what is that?” Matthew asks, taunting me.

  “One at a time. Mr. Wells, the rest of your list,” Will interjects.

  “I also think she’s sleeping with someone else.”

  “What!” I say, both for show and because I want to know what the hell I’ve done to make him think I’m having an affair.

  What has he noticed? I thought I was covering my tracks. Okay, Charley, stay calm. If you fly off the handle and panic, that is a giant red flag.

  “You’re…different.”

  “How so?”

  “Charlotte, I’ve known you for the better part of a decade. I know you.”

  “What makes you think this, Mr. Wells?” Will asks and I have to resist the urge to give him a look that says fix this! Talk him out of it. Do something!

  The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m hoping that the man I’m having an affair with can somehow convince my husband that I’m not having an affair.

  “Little things. It’s hard to explain. Things don’t bother her. She’s been agreeable and she’s not initiating sex.”

  “I got tired of being turned down!” I argue.

  “Ms. Pierce,” Will says, using his therapist tone, “let him finish.”

  “You hang out with Lauren and come back home walking like you just got off a horse. I went to Yale, Charlotte. I wasn’t born yesterday. And to add insult to injury, you turned me down for sex last week.”

  “I had a migraine.”

  “Bullshit,” he pauses. “I saw it in the shower,” he says casually and I wonder what he’s talking about. Matthew and I haven’t been in the shower together in forever.

  “What?” I try my best to feign innocence even though I know for a fact, my inner thighs are often riddled with Will’s hickeys. I just want to know how he saw one.

  “Last week, when I tried to join you in the shower and you all but pushed me out. I saw the purple on your inner thigh. A hickey. Just a glimpse, but enough to know that I didn’t give it to you.”

  I’m silent. I let Will mark me there because Matthew never goes there. Even if I were to sleep with my husband he never has his face down there where it would be visible. I wonder how I’m going to talk myself out of this hole when Will speaks. “Is this the first you’re hearing of this, Ms. Pierce? Your husband’s hypothesis?”

  The tears flood my eyes as I nod. “Yes.”

  I see the tissue box in front of me and reach for it, pulling one out and putting it over my eyes to hide from the two men staring at me. Think, Charley. “I’m not cheating on you, Matt,” I say after a moment. “I don’t know what you saw, but it wasn’t a hickey.”

  He eyes me for a moment before looking back to Will. “Fine.”

  “I think everyone should just take a deep breath. Maybe we need a minute. Ms. Pierce, would you like some water?”

  “Yes, please,” I say softly. My eyes follow him as he moves through the room and then toward me with a glass of water. “Thank you.” I take the water from him, trying to avoid his fingers, knowing that his touch would send a spark through me that I couldn’t ignore.

  “Mr. Wells,” Will begins, “how did you feel when you first suspected that Ms. Pierce had been unfaithful?” I wince at that word. Unfaithful.

  “I wanted to kill the man who touched her. I’m the only man she’s ever been with and to know someone else did…” I can see his jaw tick, and his fist clenches into a ball. “…it drove me crazy. The idea makes me furious. I’ve never been a jealous person, maybe because she’s never given me a reason to be, but I was filled with this jealous rage.” He turns to me. “I wanted to fuck you into next week so you remembered who you belonged to but you won’t fu
cking touch me.”

  Um, it’s you that wouldn’t touch me!

  “And I feel like an asshole having to coerce my wife to sleep with me.” He shakes his head and my body tenses. “Then I hated you for letting another man touch you.”

  Deny it, Charlotte. Maybe at some point I have to tell Matt what I’ve done, what I’ve been doing. But today is not that day.

  “I would never want to do anything to jeopardize things between us.” I swallow hard trying to get down the bitter pill of lies and betrayal.

  “I know, Charlotte, and I know things have been shitty lately. I kept telling myself it would be different once I got promoted, but it’s been months and nothing has changed. Our relationship has taken a back seat and I hate myself for it. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if you had been unfaithful. I haven’t exactly been the perfect husband. I’ve neglected you. Ignored you. God, when was the last time I’ve even made you come?” He runs a hand through his hair. His leg is bouncing, and he pulls at his tie, loosening it slightly.

  I can’t look him in the eye. My brain has re-associated the word “come” with the man in front of me, instead of the man to my side. I let out a deep breath, my eyes finding Will’s as Matt continues.

  “I want to try and make things right. I mean really try, Charlotte. I love you and I’m sorry…for everything. And maybe you’ve made a mistake in the past. I don’t care. I just want to start fresh. Start new. You and me…like it used to be in the beginning before we got married. Please.”

  I’ve heard all of this before. Last year when I asked for a divorce he’d gotten on his knees and begged me not to leave him. He’d told me things would get better, that he loved me and couldn’t be without me. He had promised he would do better, then he recommended counseling, and alas, here we are. I don’t buy whatever Matt is selling—the phrase “too little, too late” blaring in my head like a flashing neon sign, but how do I answer this in front of my lover?

  The rest of the hour is tense. I’m a bundle of nerves ready to snap as I actively avoid Will’s gaze. Before I know it, the hour is up and Matthew and I are heading toward the door.

  “Well, Mr. Wells, Ms. Pierce, you certainly have some things to discuss.”

  I clear my throat before nodding as I try to push out the nervous energy flowing through me. “Right. Well thank you, Dr. Montgomery,” I say, wanting to get out of the room as fast as possible. I know Will well enough to know there was a quick shift in his demeanor the second Matt told me he loved me and wanted to give it a more valiant effort. He became clinical and cold, a vast difference to his usual self.

  I’m following Matthew out of the room, when I feel a hand resting on my ass and a gentle squeeze. I gasp quietly so as not to alert the man walking a step ahead of me, and I don’t dare look at the one behind me.

  “So, I’ll see you both on Wednesday?” Will says and I nod, having lost all ability to speak after having my lover grope me literally behind my husband’s back. “See you then,” he says before heading to his office without another word. Matt reaches for my hand, interlacing our fingers, and in that moment, I know I’m fucked. I’m in a relationship with two men and neither of them are giving me up.

  * * *

  I CAN ONLY VAGUELY HEAR the sound of my Manolo Blahniks hitting the pavement in the garage over the roaring thoughts in my head. My mind is completely scattered and I worry I won’t be able to complete a sentence if Matt addresses me. When I reach my new Audi Q3—an “I’m sorry” gift from last month after a particularly terrible argument—he opens the car door for me and I look up at him warily, wondering if that whole “I love you, I want to work it out” thing was just a show for our therapist.

  “I was going to go to the store. What do you want for dinner?” I ask, thanking my stars that they aligned and allowed us to drive separate cars. It will provide the perfect ruse to go back and talk to Will—and I’m desperate to talk to him, see him, hold him, kiss him. Just that simple squeeze of my butt still has my heart racing.

  “How about we go out? We can go to The Grille,” Matt counters. The Grille is one of the most well-known restaurants in town, owned by two of our closest friends, Nathan and Bree Cunningham. It was one of those restaurants that required that you know someone to get a table or suffer the month-long waiting list. A place where people went to be seen and Matt always wanted to be seen. We were what some would consider VIP; the restaurant had even named a drink after us. The Wells Manhattan, which is essentially the “Perfect Manhattan” because we’re the perfect couple.

  At least we were three years ago.

  “Are we meeting someone there?” I ask, wracking my brain to recall if Matt had mentioned dinner plans for that evening.

  “I know we haven’t done much lately, just the two of us, but can’t a guy take his wife out just to feed her?” His hand still rests on my door. I blink a few times and he must sense my skepticism because he sighs. “There were things we didn’t get to in therapy… I thought we could discuss them.”

  “In public?”

  “Our booth is hardly public, Charlotte.” He doesn’t emphasize the “our” but I can’t escape the way the word stands out in my head, and he’s right, our usual table is tucked into the corner with no one in close proximity.

  I sigh, knowing that I have no real reason as to why I can’t share a meal with my husband. “Fine.”

  He presses a light kiss to my lips before I slide into my car. “I’ll see you soon.” He smiles at me before he disappears from my sight. I turn around, craning my neck to see if Matthew is still within view of my car. When I’ve established that he’s far enough away I reach for my iPhone. I toss it to the side and reach for my makeup bag to pull out a Blackberry. The cell phone that never leaves my side and if it does it’s switched off and safely hidden at the bottom of my purse.

  There’s only one person that has this number and at this moment I’m desperate to hear his voice. I put the phone to my ear as it rings, my head resting against the steering wheel. I can’t fight the tears building in my eyes as I hear the beginning of his voicemail. “You’ve reached Dr. William Montgomery—” I hang up immediately, knowing I wouldn’t be able to get through a message without bursting into tears.

  Get ahold of yourself, Charley.

  I type out a text message, in hopes he will see it before I get to the restaurant.

  Me: Matt wants to go to dinner. I might not be able to call you until after 7. Can you talk now?

  I’m pulling out of my parking space when my Blackberry beeps and I almost hit the car next to me as I reach for it. I have my foot on the break, halfway out of the spot when I see his message.

  Will: On a call. Can’t talk now.

  Me: Call me when you can.

  Will: Call you? Won’t your phone be off soon?

  Me: I’ll leave it on, I just need to hear your voice. Please.

  Will: Ok.

  I know it’s reckless to leave the Blackberry on with the possibility of Matt hearing it, but I also know I need to talk to Will. I need to hear his voice. I need to hear him say that today’s session didn’t change anything.

  That he still wants me.

  That this isn’t over.

  The thought of ending things with Will leaves me short of breath, and I find myself struggling to catch it. He’s angry right now, his simple “ok” proves that, but I can only hope that he doesn’t take it out on me.

  Forty minutes later, Matthew and I are at The Grille, uncorking a bottle of Merlot that we had discovered on a trip to Napa Valley last year. The blend is drier than I like, and yet he insisted on ordering it whenever the opportunity presented itself. You really need to expand your palate, Charlotte, he’d told me in front of a group of our friends. I had rolled my eyes to the heavens as I sipped my usual “unrefined” Cabernet Sauvignon. He pours my glass first and slides it across the table toward me.

  “Thank you,” I say with a small smile. I take a small sip and scrunch my nose.

  Yep,
still hate it.

  He pours his before he takes a sip, eyeing me over the top of his glass. “Do you think therapy is working?” he asks finally.

  I cinch my brows together wondering where this conversation is going. I take a long sip of my wine, despite the bitter taste, hoping it will calm my nerves that are still going haywire from therapy. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are we any better off than we were seven months ago?” He crosses his arms over his chest.

  “I think Dr. Montgomery has provided some real insight regarding the problems in our marriage.”

  Like we shouldn’t be married in the first place.

  He rolls his eyes. “Has he?”

  No. “I think so?”

  I can sense his frustration over the fact that we aren’t in agreement. “Nothing has changed in seven months, Charlotte.”

  “We are communicating more.”

  He snorts, before taking another sip. “Right.”

  “I’m certainly happier than I was seven months ago, when I was convinced you’d grown to hate me, and you were only keeping me around as a pawn in your quest for the American Dream.”

  He frowns. “It doesn’t piss me off any less to hear you say that than it did the first time you said it in therapy. I never hated you, Charlotte. I love you more than anything.”

  I begin to chew on my bottom lip, mirroring the guilt that’s currently chewing away at me. “Today is the first day you’ve expressed any type of feelings toward me in months. You think you would have if Dr. Montgomery hadn’t given us that exercise?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe?”

  “Maybe? Matt, there are so many problems in our marriage. Problems that we clearly can’t work out ourselves. We need help getting to the root of those problems.”

  I’m not sure that I’m even buying what I’m trying to sell here, but I don’t want to entertain the idea of ending therapy altogether—the idea of ending my time with Will altogether.

  “I can tell you what our problems are. I don’t need to keep paying some overly expensive charlatan to tell me that.” He holds up his hand, ticking the reasons off his fingers. “You want kids, I’m not ready.” He ticks off a finger. “I don’t give you enough attention.” Another finger. “I don’t fuck you enough.” Another finger. “Which by the way, nowadays is more on you than it is on me, but I mean, maybe you’re getting it somewhere else now,” he sneers, and my eyes narrow.