by Shea Lynn
I shook my head. “It can’t.”
Aaron decided to listen to the smaller and more demanding of the two brains. He gave me a small smile before kissing my lips once more. “Listen, unless you’re going to tell me that you’re dying or that you’re cheating on me, I don’t think I need to hear it right now.”
My husband was still smiling when he pulled back and saw the pained expression in my eyes.
It didn’t take long for the smile to falter.
“So which is it? Are you…..are you dying?” he whispered.
My lips shook as water slid from my eyes. “No,” I whispered.
Aaron moved his hands from my hips to my forearms and held me there.
“So what…are you cheating on me?” he asked, his voice filled with incredulousness as if the very concept was not possible.
Now there were tears in his eyes. And I knew that he already knew the answer. “Sidney?” he pleaded, his weeping eyes filled with fear and trepidation.
I blinked and tears slid down my face. This was the moment of truth. The moment I’d dreaded for so long was finally upon me.
With my head lowered, I finally confessed to the second half of my double life.
“Yes.”
Chapter Sixty-Three: Aaron
I was only kidding about her cheating on me. I knew that the odds of her cheating on me were about the same as me winning the lottery for fifty million. It was a possibility, but a pretty damn small one.
Sidney?
It was like hearing that two plus two was really five or that up is really down and down is really up. I knew we had problems. I knew things weren’t the best between us, but Sidney cheating on me?
I was furious. Furious. Anger danced from my narrowed eyes down my neck. I was suddenly tense all over and my heart was pounding in my ears. My blood ran hot and my breaths came short, fast, and angry.
“Cheating?” I asked, my ears hoping for a negative response, my grip tightening on her arms.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Sorry?” I asked, my voice escalating as images I’d never seen began to dance in my brain. Images of her and a nameless, faceless man twisted my nerves and dumped even more fire-laced adrenaline into my veins
“What does sorry mean?” I yelled.
Sidney winced. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.
I could see her and feel her, but I was almost outside of myself. I needed to make sense of what she was telling me. How could this happen? We’d started the weekend off doing great. A few hours ago I was tasting her neck at the lake and now she was telling me she was out screwing some other mother fucker? How could she fuck around on me and then act like she was still in love with me? How could she ever give her body to someone other than me?
I needed to know who the hell she was fucking around with.
I asked his name. Though “ask” isn’t really the right word. Demanded is more like it.
She looked away, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed, her head hanging low.
“Who is it?!” I yelled.
Images of her coming home angry and irritable began to run around my thoughts. All the times I’d stuffed my pride in my back pocket to bend to her needs began to erupt from within me, spilling venom, infuriating me.
I tightened my grip even more without realizing it.
Nights I’d spent wracking my brain trying to match up with my inputs to get the right outputs began to whisper at me. Mornings walking around in a fog because we’d fought before going to bed joined in the chorus of whispers that clouded my thoughts.
I’d tried so hard to be the best husband.
The best friend.
The best father.
The best man.
And all the while there had been another man stealing my wife? My loving? My hugs? My kisses? My good night sleeps?
I had to know who he was because I was going to kill him.
“Who is it?” I yelled again.
Sidney finally looked at me; her eyes pleading. “It’s not what you think. It’s just….it’s not what you think.”
My eyes narrowed. “Did you cheat on me?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Did you?” I yelled
“Yes.” She finally answered.
“Then it is what I think. Who is it?” I demanded.
She kept sobbing, but I didn’t give a fuck about her tears. All I could think about what somebody else inside of her. Somebody else enjoying my wife. All these months of ups and downs.
I felt like a damn idiot. A fool.
I’d spent months fawning over her like she was some sort of sick and dying invalid. I’d gone out of my way to make her happy. Above and beyond every fucking day only to hear she had been fucking somebody else.
Anger graduated to rage.
I mean real rage. I’d never been so irate in my life.
There was a name in her mind that I needed to get out of there and I didn’t care if I had to shake her until it fell out. I had to know. The rage within me shook her and her head bobbed back and forth like one of those funny dolls.
“Who is it?” I yelled.
She sobbed again and whispered the name. I couldn’t make it out because of all the crying and shit. I could hear a “D” and an “N”.
My mind started flashing again.
It flashed back to the night we’d made love and she called me “D” right before she went to sleep.
It flashed back to her faded smile when I mentioned Darnell’s name.
It flashed back to Darnell’s recent distance from me; his evasiveness.
Something had been off with him, too. Something had been off between them.
There were tears in my eyes. “Darnell? You fucked Darnell?”
My wife shook her head and finally looked at me. Looked me dead in my eye and said, her voice strained and coated in tears, “No. It’s not Darnell. No.”
“Then who is it?”
She closed her eyes and said, “It’s Dayna.”
I stared at her then. That name didn’t make sense to me. I released my grip and stared at her.
“Dayna?” I asked.
“Dayna,” she repeated.
I only knew one person named Dayna and she had beautiful brown eyes, a fly ass figure, and a set of breasts.
“D-D-D-Dayna Wilkins?” I asked.
Sidney nodded and wiped at her face. “Yes.”
“Dayna Wilkins? Up the street Dayna Wilkins? A female?” I asked.
She looked down again. “Yes.”
That did it. That set something off inside of me. I shook my head. Trying to process all the shit coming at me. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t make sense of it.
“What the fuck? Are you….are you….how the hell...?”
Sidney looked at me, her eyes wide and sad “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, Aaron. I never meant to hurt you.”
To be honest, I didn’t know what to think.
I was expecting a “John” or “David” or “Pierre” or “Franklin”. Maybe a “DeAndre” or “Marquis” or “Deshawn.”
But “Dayna?”
What the hell was I to do with a “Dayna”?
Could I go and beat a woman down? Was that what I was supposed to do? What was the protocol?
If it was a “Dayna”, did that mean it didn’t count?
Did that mean she still really wanted to be with me?
Did it mean it was a one-time “get my freak on” sex thing?
I leaned back against the tub, across from my wife, rubbing my forehead with my fingertips, my thoughts trying to swim amidst a flood of confusion. “I don’t understand, Sidney. Help me understand this shit,” I said.
She started stuttering then. In 8 years of marriage, I’d never seen her stutter. “I – I – I , she….”, Sidney began.
Her hesitation made me furious. What lies was her hesitation hiding from me?
I lunged toward her, water slos
hing from the tub and spilling it onto the floor. I grabbed her arms again. “Make me understand.”
She pulled at my arms. “Please, it hurts.”
“Make me understand what the fuck is going on!" I yelled.
The longer we talked and the longer she evaded answering me, the more the rage controlled me.
"What do you want me to say?" she yelled, still pulling at my arms, trying to get away from my death grip.
"I don’t know! Tell me it’s over. Tell me it was just a one-time thing. Tell me something Sidney!"
My wife sobbed again, her head hanging down. "I can't tell you that."
"Why?"
"Because I can’t do that. I can’t lie to you. I can’t lie anymore. I love her," she finally stuttered.
What the fuck? What did she just say to me? I shook my head in disbelief, feeling angry and sad and crazy all at the same damn time.
"You what?"
My wife swallowed and tried to compose herself. She took a deep breath and quietly answered me. "I am in love with her."
How the fuck could two women be in love? And how the hell could one of them be my wife?
This wasn’t my life. This was not the stable and normal life we’d worked so hard to build. I chuckled bitterly, still holding her arms tightly. I can’t quite recall the next sequence of events, but I know that at some point, I stepped outside of myself. I slapped her across the face with my right hand. She moved back and hit her head on the back of the tub.
Sidney screamed.
That just about killed me. The sound of her voice kind of woke me up. Damn. Aaron King is not a wife-beater. I had never raised my hand to any female. Something in me snapped. Like a fucking rubber band. Just snapped.
I pulled away from her then, shaking my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. I was still angry, my chest heaving, my breaths ragged. What scared me most was that I knew I was so angry I could very well hit her again.
My next words seemed to come right from my heart, but not from my lips. "How could you do this to me?" I asked, my voice heavy with emotion.
"You hit me," she whispered.
My heart was racing. My nostrils were flared. My chest was still heaving. I heard her. And a part of me knew that I owed her an apology. Part of me wanted turn back the clock so I could erase the memory of striking her. But no part of me was as demanding as the mixture of hurt and rage.
"How could you do this?" I asked again.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed, holding a hand to her face.
“How long?” I asked, my tone soft but anger still lacing my words.
When she didn’t answer me quickly enough I moved to strike her again, demanding to know “How long?!”
Sidney scooted away from me and yelled, "I don't know!"
"A month? Two months?" I asked.
"I - I - I don't know. Maybe eight. Eight months."
I jumped out of the tub then. Water sloshing as I went. "Eight months?" I asked as I hurried around, drying myself. It felt like I was seeing stars. Like someone had hit me in the head.
“I’m sorry,” Sidney whispered.
I stared at her then, my body still pulsing with rage. “Sorry? What the fuck does that mean? Eight months, Sid? All this time?”
I was sick to my stomach. Disgusted. This wasn’t the woman I’d married. This was some shady ass scandalous freak. I didn’t know this woman.
I finally found my shirt and stepped closer to her in the tub.
Sidney flinched and scooted away.
And I was afraid of myself. Afraid of what I was capable of doing. I knew I had to get some space.
“I gotta get the fuck out of here,” I kept repeating over and over again.
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. I just had to go. I found my keys, reached for the door and turned back one last time to look at my wife. There were no words left to say, I shook my head before leaving her there and shutting the door behind me as hard as I could.
Chapter Sixty-Four: Sidney
Is there ever a right time to tell your husband you’ve been cheating on him? I couldn’t lie to him anymore. I couldn’t smile in his face, knowing that I was betraying him in my heart. And the other part of me felt like I was betraying her.
I’d never expected him to hurt me. I sat in that tub until the water was stone cold, watching the bedroom door, waiting for him to return. I wondered what would happen when he came back.
Would he be calmer? Would he want to talk to me or hurt me?
When my teeth started chattering, I rose from the frigid water and cleaned out the tub. I dressed myself in the warmest pajamas I could find and crawled into bed, both exhausted and afraid. My tears were gone but the sobs kept coming. Somehow I finally fell asleep and when I woke the next morning, I was surprised to find that Aaron hadn’t returned.
A trip to the bathroom confirmed another one of my fears. My face looked like a swollen brown ball, my eyes red and puffy, my hair wild. The path of my husband's slap was a little red and a little tender, but I was okay.
I had to get home. I started worrying about the kids. Worried that maybe my husband would get crazy enough to hurt them. I was a stranger to him now and he was a stranger to me. No assumptions based on past behaviors were valid.
I called my parent’s house and tried to clear my throat when my mother answered the phone. “Good morning,” she answered.
“Hey Ma.”
“Sidney? Are you okay?” she asked.
Damn. I just couldn’t escape my mother’s intuition.
I nodded like she could see me. “I’m okay. Just calling to check on the kids.”
“They’re good. I’m getting ready to wake them up now so we can head on over to church. You don’t sound quite right. You sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m fine, Ma. I’ll call you a little later, okay? Tell the kids I love them.”
“Alright. Love you, Sidney.”
“Love you too, Ma.”
We ended our call and I walked around the cabin to the front windows to look out for my husband’s SUV. Of course it wasn’t there.
I sighed. How was I going to get home? I didn’t want to call my parents back. I didn’t want to worry them. Didn’t want to unveil the second half of my double life this way. I didn’t know if Aaron had intentions to return or not, but I knew I couldn’t wait. And I had no intentions of calling him to find out. I had to get home.
I went back to the bedroom and called the only person I could.
“Hello?” answered Dayna.
“Hey, it’s Sidney.” I replied.
I could hear the cobwebs in her sleepy voice suddenly disappear. “Hey. What’s going on?”
I tried to clear my voice and when I spoke my words trembled. “I…I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
I sniffled. Tears sliding down my cheeks. “I told him.”
“You told him?” she asked.
“I told him.”
”I thought we were going to wait? What happened to waiting?” she asked.
I sighed and wiped at my tears. It surprised me that I had more of them. I thought I was all cried out. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now. But I really need you to come and get me. Please.”
“Okay. Where are you?” she asked.
I sniffled and wiped at my dripping nose. "I'm still at the lodge. He left last night and hasn't come back. I need to get home, Dane. Please come get me."
"Baby, I'm on my way. I'm getting up right now." The concern in her voice was soothing. It let me know I’d done the right thing by calling her.
"You think you'll be able to find it?" I asked.
"I will. I looked it up when you told me about it. I'll find it. I promise."
"Thank you."
"I love you. I'll call you when I get in the car.
“Love you, too.”
I showered. Ran the water hot until it singed my flesh and steamed up the room. I soaped and rinsed and rin
sed and soaped for what felt like an hour. Until the water began to cool down and my fingers were wrinkled.
Standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, I could see the bruised rings on my arms. The rings caused by Aaron’s angry, post-revelation grip. I sighed and touched them gingerly and wondered “What else would he have done had he stayed? How much of his pain did I deserve?”
The shower had helped ease some of the strain on my swollen face and what the hot water hadn’t erased, I covered with makeup. I primped until I felt comfortable facing the world and then I waited for Dayna to arrive.
Chapter Sixty-Five: Dayna
I didn’t know what to say. It was one of those crucial moments in time that forever changes your reality. I knew that all of our skeletons were out of the closet. No more secrets. No more double lives. Both halves had been exposed. My mind was reeling. It was one thing to make your peace with God. And quite another to have all your business out in the street for the world to see. If Aaron knew, did that mean Cameron knew?
How long would it take for the knowledge train to circle around our friends and family, our church, our community? How long would it take before the unconventional bond we shared would stand naked before the judgment of all those we knew and didn’t know?
After she called me, I jumped hurriedly out of bed, dressed myself, and dropped Nina off with Cameron. I had pulled directions to the Grand Meadows off of the internet and jumped on the highway headed toward the resort.
I called her as soon as I’d merged onto the interstate.
Sidney didn’t tell me then that Aaron’s hand had connected with her face. She didn’t tell me she had been afraid of him all night long. She told me later. And as I nearly rear-ended the vehicle in front of me when she said “physical”, I think it was probably better that she waited until later to divulge the gory details.
I made her stay on the phone with me until I reached the lodge. My entire body must have been clinched throughout the duration of the ride because everything seemed to unclench the moment I saw her standing outside of the cabin.
I licked my lips and fought against the rapidly growing race of my pulse. Seeing her calmed me. I knew she was okay. The tension that had ridden shotgun beside me from Wilmette finally took its leave.