The Double Life: A Novel By Shea Lynn

by Shea Lynn

  I watched his eyes grow large as I slid down the sheets and my mouth met his sex.

  I’d done this countless times with Sidney, but never with him.

  Resolving to reconnect with my husband and prove to myself that this was where I belonged, I eased him into my mouth as a guttural moan escaped his lips.

  My stomach began to turn.

  ‘Oh my God. What am I doing? How am I going to do this?’ I wondered to myself.

  In my mind, I wasn’t sucking his penis. In my mind I was watching someone else give my husband head. I was watching someone else pleasure him.

  Thinking of her helped me complete the task.

  I thought of her as I ran my tongue along his hardened shaft and throbbing head. I thought of her as his hands slipped into my hair and his hips rocked. I thought of her as Cameron began to moan and suddenly my husband let me know to move out of the way and he came against the skin of my thigh.

  Again he was breathless. Contented. Amazed at my sudden desire to desire him.

  And all the while I felt as though I was watching someone who wasn’t me.

  I kissed his chest. Kissed around the defined pectorals and up the strong neck. Down the long, muscular arms, inhaling the scent of him. Trying to find the magical spot on him that would make me understand him. Make me want him. Make me need him and not her.

  Cameron slowly recovered and reached down, his hands on my butt. Some men were breast men. Cameron was an ass-man. He gazed at me, watching my eyes for signs of approval. I didn’t know what he wanted me to approve, but I gave him a gentle smile.

  I was bent at the knee, leaning over him and he suckled on my breasts that hung down, his hands still roaming over my cheeks. He finally whispered, “One more time?”

  I swallowed deeply and nodded. Nervous once again. Not sure what he meant.

  He reached down to feel my wetness and there was not much to feel. His eyes frowned slightly and he asked, “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I think we still have some gel….I think it’s in the cabinet.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if he was asking if I wanted to continue or if I was sure there was lube in the bathroom.

  I nodded and got up, grabbing the blue tube from the bathroom cabinet and making my way back to the bed. We’d used it before. A long, long time ago. When we’d first moved into the house, I’d been trying really hard to make sure his needs were met. And after a few experiences where I wasn’t as wet as I’d needed to be, he’d suggested the lube. We’d only had a few uses before we separated.

  Cameron took the tube from my hand and smiled. He took pleasure in sliding it into my folds with his thick fingers. The sensation of warmed gel was a little odd, but I gave him another soft smile and before long, I was lying on my back and he was easing himself inside of me.

  I wrapped my legs around him as he pumped himself up and down. I closed my eyes tightly, hunting for the magical embers of passion that would send me reeling into a universe of a million colors.

  He found the universe.

  I never did.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Sidney

  On the evening of my phone conversation with Dayna, I found myself absently chewing baked chicken and staring into space at dinner that evening. My seat at our wooden, round table for four was directly across from Aaron. And because he was directly across from me it looked like I was staring at him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. I was still in my suit from work. Aaron had come home early, baked the dry chicken we were eating and steamed some broccoli. He was doing his best to carry his share of the workload in our home and I was trying hard to show I appreciated his efforts.

  “Thanks for cooking, Aaron. It’s nice to come home to a meal,” I said.

  My husband smiled shyly at me.

  I looked to my right, and Aiden was trying to scoot his broccoli to edge of the plate. From past experience, I knew the next step for that broccoli would be to sit, hidden, under the right lip of his plate.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  My three year old son shook his head and looked at me, guilt dancing in his hazel eyes. “Nothing.”

  “Eat your broccoli,” I said sternly.

  He pouted and folded his arms. “I don’t like bock-lee! It’s nasty. I won’t eat it.”

  I put my fork down and the good natured attitude I’d tried to don for the evening meal began to dissipate. “You will eat it. You need your vitamins.”

  Aiden continued to pout, his arms seemed to clasp even tighter across his little body. “No!”

  “No? Who are you telling ‘no’?” My “mom-eyebrow” was now arched, my tone indicative of my position in this power struggle at the wooden, round table in the kitchen.

  That eyebrow was his clue to submit.

  But he was my son. He didn’t know how to submit.

  Aiden looked me right in the eyes; his little eyes squinted in three-year old anger. “You!”

  I stood up and threw my napkin down. “That’s it. Time out.”

  Aaron, forever the pacifier, reached his hand out. He looked like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Everybody, let’s calm down. Aiden, can you eat a little piece of broccoli for Daddy?”

  My eyes threw daggers at Aaron. “We’re past asking. We’re on to being rude. And rude little boys sit in time out.”

  My husband sighed and gave me an exasperated look. “Honey, he’s tired. Let’s just get him fed so he can get some sleep. It’s after 7’oclock.”

  It could very well have been my imagination. But something in his tone seemed aimed at me taking responsibility for the late hour of our meal. I was the one who had to commute in from the city. I was the one who’d held up the family and kept everyone waiting and hungry.

  “So now it’s my fault he’s being rude?” I asked as I took a resemblance to Aiden, my arms folded across my chest.

  I stood in my spot at the table, wearing a black, men’s cut pantsuit with a red collared shirt underneath the jacket. I didn’t feel at home. I felt like I was preparing to give an opening argument in a court hearing.

  “I didn’t say that,” Aaron replied.

  “You might as well have said it.”

  “I’m saying the boy is tired. He’s three years old and he doesn’t want to eat the damn broccoli. Let’s not fight about it.”

  I was only dimly aware that Aiden had grown quiet and both his and Devann’s eyes were following us as we exchanged verbal volleys.

  “I’m not fighting. But my son will not disrespect me. He doesn’t tell me ‘no’.”

  Aaron huffed and eyed me, his nostrils flaring. “Fine. Aiden, apologize to Mommy.”

  “No!” he said.

  “Apologize,” Aaron repeated.

  “No!”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” I asked again.

  My son had his father’s eyes and my temperament. He looked right at me and said, “No! No! No! No apogize”

  Before I knew it, he was in my arms and I was heading upstairs for my belt. He was kicking against me, but it was no use. We were almost at the top of the stairs when I felt his little sneaker hit the base on my ribcage. That only served to anger me even more. I couldn’t wait for my belt.

  I sat Aiden down, grabbed him by his arm, and swatted his butt and legs as he struggled to get away from me. He hollered and cried out for his father and I yelled at him to go to his room.

  There were no more objections from the three year old. He ran into his room and flung himself onto his bed, hollering for “Daddy” at the top of his lungs.

  I stood in my son’s doorway and yelled, “Hush your mouth, Aiden!”

  That only made him wail louder.

  I was moving to swat him into silence when Aaron’s arm grabbed mine. “Don’t.”

  “What? What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You’re angry right now. Just calm down. This is all about some broccoli. He’s making you craz
y.”

  I threw up my hands and said, “This is fucking ridiculous.”

  I walked away towards the master bedroom and began taking off my clothes. I flung every article of clothing away from my body and onto the bed before I found my gray lounging sweats, folded neatly in the second drawer of my dresser. I could hear Aaron down the hall, consoling our son.

  As I shut the drawer, I caught a glimpse of myself in the oval mirror. I looked crazed, standing there in my black bra and panties, my hair mussed and my eyes wide with anger. I couldn’t stop staring at myself. I looked like a crazy person.

  ‘Who the fuck am I?’ I wondered.

  I felt like I was losing my mind. And the image in the oval mirror was my confirmation.

  Why had I gotten so upset about broccoli? Why was I acting so strangely?

  I sat the edge of my bed, still staring at myself in the mirror. Trying to put together the fragments of the last few moments. Trying to understand what had happened to me.

  I heard Aaron’s heavy steps and I could tell by their resonance that my husband was upset. But seeing me sitting there at the edge of the bed in my bra and panties, with the gray sweats still in my hand, must have been mood-tempering.

  “Sidney?” he asked me softly, moving slowly towards the bed.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Sid?” he asked.

  I finally broke contact with the crazed image of myself and I stared down, the carpet now wavy behind the tears that had sprung to my eyes.

  My husband bent down in front of me, his hands on my exposed thighs. This was different. It was me who’d always taken care of him. I’d always been the strong one in our relationship. He tried his best to see past his own confusion and figure out how to be supportive of me. “Sweetie, are you okay?” he asked.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw my baby girl appear in the doorway.

  “Mommy? Are you okay?” she asked.

  Tears slipped down my face and dripped from chin. I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t meet my husband’s concerned hazel eyes. I couldn’t look at anyone.

  “I don’t want her to see me like this,” I whispered.

  Aaron nodded, his logical mind pleased and content to know the answer to some part of this broken process. “Okay, okay.”

  My husband stood, stretching his long slender jean-clad legs. He walked toward our eldest child. “Hey Dev. Mommy’s just a little tired. Let’s get you ready for bed, okay?”

  I didn’t hear my daughter respond, but in my peripheral vision, I could see her head still turned towards me, even as her father walked her away from us and down to her room.

  When they were gone, I sighed deeply and took my near-naked body into the master bathroom for a shower. I turned on the water and let it run to get hot and again found myself standing before the mirror. I studied my teary eyes and finger combed my wild tresses. I was looking more and more like my mother with patches of my face now growing fuller than they’d always been. My neck was still lean and my eyes drifted down to the C-cup breasts that had nourished my children.

  I was supposed to protect them and love them.

  My mind flashed back Aiden and the spanking I’d given him at the top of the stairs.

  “My baby,” I whispered, a fresh set of tears now in my eyes.

  I slid my hands around the abdomen that had once held my baby boy. The skin now softer than it used to be with a small pouch that seemed to grow with each passing year.

  I’d always been thin. In my teens and early twenties I’d been a size 4 and now, post children and post middle-American suburbanism, I was a size 6. I felt my thighs. My fingers slipped over dimpled brown flesh and I wondered what it was like to be the me I was before the changes. And I wondered what life would have been like if I’d have followed my heart years ago and been honest with myself about my sexuality.

  I sighed.

  That was then.

  This was now.

  Now I was a wife. And a mother. And a tired, crazy looking black lady openly weeping in her middle-class master bathroom in Wilmette, Illinois. I shook my head at my own absurdity and slipped under the warm stream of running water.

  And amid all the chaos of the evening, I wondered to myself, ‘Does she miss me?’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Dayna

  Was I making a mistake?

  I kept asking myself that question long after Cameron drifted off into a post-coital slumber. He even smiled in his sleep as his chest rose and fell. While he dreamed, an overwhelming need to cleanse my body of our lovemaking residue drove me into the shower that night. I slipped from beneath his strong arm and as I got out of the bed, he whispered, “Where you goin’, babe?”

  “Be right back,” I replied.

  He nodded and closed his eyes.

  After my third soap and rinse, I exhaled long and deep and leaned against the tiled shower wall. Now I could relax. Now that my skin was fresh and clean, I could finally exhale. As I stood there, the warm drops pelting my flushed skin, I wondered why I never rushed to cleanse my skin of Sidney’s scent. I wondered why my desire had always been to prolong her essence, rather than rid myself of it.

  The night was a jumble in my mind. It had been perfectly planned and perfectly executed.

  The only thing I’d failed to consider was my own lack of desire. I’d thought I could simply turn it on by wishing it into action.

  Why hadn’t I needed to turn Sidney on? Why was my body so receptive to her touch?

  She seemed to know me so intimately. Like every pore of my being carried a secret message that only she understood. Her kisses unlocked me. Revealed hidden paths to secret treasures I hadn’t known existed. Her kisses ignited a passion in me that burned and burned and couldn’t be extinguished.

  Even then, as I stood under the near-scalding water of the shower head, the very thought of her kisses made my center swell and my hand found its way to my neck, imagining the feel of her lips on my skin.

  I shook my head, trying to erase the flashes of time with Sidney that began to flood my mind.

  This was absurd. I’d just made love to Cameron and now I was standing in the shower, fantasizing about her.

  What did that mean?

  Why couldn’t I let her go?

  Eventually, the warm water began to cool and I was forced to leave my safe haven. As I dried my skin and tried to mentally prepare myself to return to my husband’s embrace, I wondered what she was doing.

  And if she was thinking of me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Sidney

  When I got out of the shower that evening, Aaron was sitting on our bed, waiting for me. His hazel eyes were heavy with worry and I could barely look at him. I looked past him to the suit I’d worn that day. When I’d gone into the bathroom, it had been flung angrily across the bed. Now it sat folded in a neat little pile, waiting patiently for me to put it away.

  He’d folded my clothes. My gray sweats had disappeared. He must have put them away.

  And now he sat, eyeing me cautiously. His nervous energy filled the room and though the television was on before him, I knew he hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was watching.

  I was only wearing my bath towel. My skin had long been dried as I’d stood in the bathroom, rubbing the pink cloth against my skin, thinking of a myriad of ways to delay my arrival into our bedroom. To delay the sight of my husband’s weary gaze.

  I’d hoped he’d fallen asleep.

  But he wasn’t asleep.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my eyes shifting nervously away from his.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  And though I didn’t see it, I knew the wrinkle in his forehead must have appeared. I knew him very well.

  I shrugged. I knew exactly what was going on. I was in love with my beautiful best friend and the stress of ending our relationship had me bugged out. But I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell anybody that.

  So I did the most logical thing.

  I shrugged my sho
ulders and feigned ignorance. “I don’t know. I’m just not myself.”

  “I know. I know you’re not. I’m just a little worried here. Did I do something? Did I say something?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, Aaron. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sorry for snapping at you. I’m sorry for the way I behaved.”

  He nodded and I wondered what he really thought of me. Wondered if I had permanently displaced my position on the pedestal he’d built for me.

  I sighed and headed to the dresser, pulling out a comfortable pair of light blue stretch pajama pants and a matching long-sleeved, mid-thigh length top. Holding the pajamas in my hand and the towel around my body, I met his gaze in the oval mirror.

  “I’m sorry, Aaron.”

  My husband was quiet, he was still studying me. Still trying to figure out the flaw in my system. Still debugging my erratic behavior with his logical mind.

  I felt very self-conscious about dressing in front of him. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. What should have seemed so normal suddenly had me feeling naked and exposed. I dropped the towel and put on my pajamas as fast I could before heading back into the bathroom to hang the towel.

  I ran a hand through my hair as I walked back into the bedroom and said, “I’m going to go check on the kids. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Aaron nodded and I walked down the hallway to Aiden’s room.

  My son had fallen asleep on top of his covers. He was flat on his back with his head leaning towards me, his mouth slightly agape. He seemed so small and helpless in his sleep. I sat down on his twin-sized bed and blue comforter and placed a motherly hand on his chest, feeling his little breaths rise and fall.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered.

  I kissed his forehead and placed him and all of his askew limbs under the covers. I kissed him three more times before I left the room, watching him as I departed.

  I walked into Devann’s room and as I sat down beside her, her little eyes opened and she said, “Hi Mom.”