"Hey, so about last night..." Riley began, standing on John's front porch, the mid morning Saturday sun pouring into his house exacerbating John's hangover. She was wearing sunglasses large and dark enough to obscure much of her expression, which John took to be as much her goal in wearing them as protecting her eyes from that harsh summer sun had been. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail, exposing the lightly tanned skin of her shoulders, which went uncovered by the light top she was wearing. It all came together with a short skirt and open toed shoes in a lovely little ensemble. He wanted to slam the door in her face.
"What about it?" he said. The sun was unbearable for him and he could see she had started to sweat as well.
"Look, I know. Can I come in for a second? You can kick me out on my ass once I say what I want to. Just," she sighed with exasperation, "it's really fucking hot out here, can you let me in for a minute?"
"Yeah, why not," he said. He left her in the open doorway and walked back to the kitchen. He heard rather than saw her follow him in as he focused on downing three glasses of water, one after the other.
"John?" Riley was now standing at the edge of the kitchen, watching him from behind the now unnecessary sunglasses.
"You know the real hangover cure?" he asked. She said nothing in response. "Time. That's it. The trick is that there isn't really a cure. Oh, lots of people say that it's this or it's that, heavy food or bread or even the hair of the dog. But there isn't one, not really. You drink your water, you wait, you deal with it. That's it. It sucks but that's what happens when you have too much fun. Just bites you in the ass and you have to just wait till it gets better."
"That's very poetic, John," Riley said. "Look, obviously I have some explaining to do."
"No, you really don't," John cut her off. "It's fine. Pretty sure I got the gist of it last night, I don't really need any further explication, and frankly my fucking head fucking hurts and sound makes it worse."
"I'm sorry about that," she said.
"I appreciate the sympathy," he said, brushing by her to get to the couch in the living room, which he promptly lay down on. He could feel her approach the couch.
"Look, John," she said, "you have every right to be mad at me. I realize you probably don't care if I'm sorry or not or why I did what I did..."
"You mean why you hid the fact that you have a boyfriend from me? Or why you sucked him off while I hid, naked in a closet?"
"I mean..."
"Actually it doesn't matter. I get it, you don't have to explain. You did it for the reasons most people do shit like that. Hell, I know why I've done the exact same thing in the past, aside from the stuffing a partner in a closet bit. That's new, that's really, just..." he stopped while the words were still unformed in his mind "...just, mmm, chef's kiss, amazing, no notes."
"I mean..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, like I said, I've done the same thing myself. You're with somebody, you see somebody else you want to fuck, and you just do it, you think, 'what's the harm, right? It's just this once, they'll never know.' I get it, I really do. I'll let you in on a secret, since you were kind enough to let me in on the secret of how big your boyfriend's cock is, which, by the way, nice, not bad, I can see why you want to stay with him."
She had evidently given up on trying to get a word in so John just continued.
"My secret is I've cheated on multiple girlfriends in the past, same thing. So I get it. I even did the thing where you go back to them and pretend nothing happened."
"Yeah, I remember you telling me about that. And how did that work out for you?"
"It works. It works just fine if you want it to. You have to have the right psychology for it, though, the right make up. You have to just be able to forget about it. I'm guessing right now you are feeling bad about it, but you're still trying to decide why you feel bad, like, is it because you regret having fucked me, or you regret having continued to fuck me, which lead to actual, honest-to-god feelings, or you are thinking maybe you shouldn't be with this Nick guy, but you're torn. Here's the thing, if you're like me, and I think you are, you'll just be able to forget about it, write it off."
"Forget about you, you mean?" she asked.
"Yeah, me, the next guy, the guy after that. It gets easier each time, by the way. Eventually you realize you're built for that type of thing. You still love him, of course, Nick, I mean, not me. You love him in a way that other people don't get. They will say you don't, that you wouldn't go around fucking other guys if you did, that you'd feel bad about it. But people, people who aren't like you and me, Riley, they don't get it. They don't get what it's like to just want to fuck and how nobody else can match that desire you have, nobody, no one person, can be adequate. But society doesn't get that, doesn't understand how you can't be happy with just the one person even though you love him, and you do. But I do, I get it. That's me, that's you, that's how we're built. So you don't need to explain shit. You just need to leave me here in the dark so I can get over this fucking hangover and go back to my fucking job on Monday and then hopefully maybe find some other girl who wants my dick half as much as I want to give it to her."
"It sounds like you understand it all, then," Riley said. "So I don't need to explain anything, after all." She knelt down beside the couch.
"Yeah, probably, under the I think safe assumption that you are operating like me, like I have, anyway. You love him, but you're unsatisfied somehow. Not enough sex, not varied enough sex, I don't know because I've only seen you two fuck this one time. Probably you're just like me, just like I said, and so it doesn't really matter how much of it there is or how good it is, because there could always be more, always be better." He shifted his weight so that his face was less visible. "But you still love him, so you're going to go back to him and forget all about it, and you know what, that's good. I mean, if you love him then be with him and if you fuck up every now and then and hook up with another guy like me then that is just what happens. People take monogamy too seriously. We're not built for it, you or me, probably not anyone, really, but especially folks like you and me. So you just live with it."
"Monogamy and hangovers, same thing, right?" Riley said.
"Ding ding ding. You just do it. You just drink your water and grit your teeth and vomit sometimes. And every time you tell yourself "not doing that again" but you probably will. But like I said, that's fine. It happens, you get drunk, you fuck around."
"Yeah, but you don't get on a dating app. Your analogy falls apart there, John boy. You don't go looking to get drunk, it just happens when one drink turns into two turns into a binge session. Only a psycho, only a fucking heartless bitch carefully creates a dating app profile for one night, messages a guy who she'll never see again, fucks him, and deletes the account like it never happened."
He rolled back over. She had taken her sunglasses off to reveal tear-filled eyes that glinted in the dark.
"Yeah," he said. "Or no, I don't know. There's no reason to worry about that shit. 'Am I a psycho?' 'Am I a bitch?' Who gives a fuck, really? You didn't get caught, not yet. So go back to him and finish the plan. That's why you're here, right? You can't be here to beg me to keep quiet. If I were going to say anything, that closet would have been the optimal time and place. So you must be here because you caught some residual feelings and now you need to, for your own sake, let me down easy or seek forgiveness or closure or whatever. Well don't worry about that shit, either. You're forgiven." He made a half-assed sign of the cross in the air above him.
"I don't know," she said, her voice wavering. "I just, I wanted to talk to you. I wasn't even sure what I was going to say when I got here. I've been sick to my stomach since last night. I couldn't sleep, I just...I don't know."
"Like I said, you don't have to explain. You don't have to tell me anything. If you want to stay with him stay with him. If you don't want to, don't. But like, it seems like you probably do. And since you're not here to suck my fucking dick, it seems like you just want absolution, so take it."
"I don't know," she wiped away tears. "I actually wouldn't mind sucking your dick." She let out a little laugh. "It would be a lot easier than explaining."
"Now I know for sure you and I are built alike. Get out of here before I get the wrong idea and shove my dick in your mouth."
"I'm not stopping you," she said.
"I know, but I am," he responded. "You'd regret it, like you regret all the shit we did."
"That's not fair," she said. "You make it sound like...well, I don't know. But that's not what I would say."
He sat up. "Let me ask you something," he said, looking into her eyes. The tears had started overflowing her eyelids despite her best attempts. "Is this the first time you cheated on him?"
She sat silently for a few moments. "No," she said finally.
