Act 1
We were standing in the entryway of my townhouse.
"Don't you have anything to say Tom?"
What was the right thing to say to the married woman that I had been carrying on an affair with for the last 4 years as she was breaking it off. Don't go back to your wife and kids?
"I guess not Em."
Emily sighed and looked down at the small roll-aboard suitcase that held her few things she had kept at my place. Toiletries, a nightgown, a pair of jeans, a few t-shirts, underwear, socks and a pair of running shoes. I had sat on the bed and watched her pack it.
"I'm sorry. For what I said earlier. It was mean and unfair to you." she said in an uncharacteristically small voice.
"Me too. For everything."
She looked up at me, a question on her face. "What do you have to be sorry for?"
I scrubbed my hands over my face. "Shit Em, I don't know. What am I supposed to say? 'Gee Em, I sure wish we could go on fucking you when you're in town'? Or how about 'Hey, thanks for all the blowjobs. Hope you have a nice life.'?"
The hurt look that flashed across her normally stoic face broke my heart, but I was hurt, angry and confused myself.
She shook her head. "I guess I had that coming." She reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out my house key, holding it out to me. It had a greater sense of finality than anything else that had happened that day. I took it without a word.
She pulled up the handle of the suitcase, turned and opened the door. She stepped out onto the landing, paused, looked back over her shoulder and said "For what it's worth, I do still care for you."
I pushed the door closed; my face expressionless.
Act 2
I didn't ever intend to have an affair or be a homewrecker. When Emily and I had met 6 years ago our relationship was friendly and professional. We both worked for a mid-sized telecom firm specializing in corporate accounts. She was in outside sales handling the southwest region, based out of Phoenix, and I was in program management at the corporate office in Los Angeles. We communicated almost daily via Zoom, phone, email and text and met face-to-face at quarterly reviews and the occasional customer meeting.
I was five years out of college, single, my career prospects at the company were very bright and I made more than a decent living. Emily was about 10 years my senior but looked much younger than her late-30s. Her 5'8" frame was fit and lithe, which she attributed to good genes, her military training and a vegetarian diet. Her angular face with its high cheekbones, strong brow and sharp but feminine jawline was softened by waves of light brown hair that she wore shoulder length when not pulled into a severe bun for work.
Emily was married to Cara, who by all accounts was a wonderful woman. She and Emily had adopted their first child, Sierra. They had a second child, Devon, a couple of years later. Emily had given birth to Devon. I didn't learn of the circumstances around Devon's conception until after Emily and I had begun our affair.
Despite all the tropes and cliches, I'm not sure any affair starts off "innocently", and Emily and I were no exception. It started in Albuquerque.
It was late in the evening, and I was at home in my townhouse in the San Fernando Valley when my company cell phone started vibrating on the sofa table behind my couch. I craned my neck around and saw it was Emily. I muted the sound on Monday Night Football and answered "Hey Em. How's Albuquerque?"
For the few years I had been working with Emily I had never seen or heard her sound anything but confident and self-possessed. She was everything you could want in someone in outside sales. She was always poised and personable and had an encyclopedic knowledge of all of her clients and our products. So, the slight note of anxiety in her voice was surprising.
"It's a mess out here Tom. The customer is demanding that we accelerate deliveries on the first three lots. They're threatening to second source us on the next contract if we don't deliver."
I shot up off the sofa "WHAT?!?! They can't .... Jesus .... This is bullshit."
"I know it is, you know it is, and they probably do too. But Tom, going after this customer was my idea. Shit ... we spent most of this year's selling budget on capturing this contract and we bought in for barely above cost. If this goes Tango Uniform, it's my ass."
Tango uniform ... military code for "Tits Up"... meaning dead. Emily had served two tours in the Army and was still a reservist, which is where she met Cara.
"Okay ... okay. What do you need me to do?"
"How fast can you get to Albuquerque?"
I looked at my watch. No chance of a flight tonight. "I can catch the first flight I can get out in the morning. I'll need to clear it with the old man."
"Already got it. I'll forward the email."
I laughed, "You knew I'd say yes."
"What can I say? I'm good. Tom?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. I owe you. Text me your flight info as soon as you have it. I'll pick you up at the airport."
Act 3
The meetings the next four days with the customer were brutal. People think government contracting is easy. It's not. We had to get most of the program team out to Albuquerque, but in the end, we negotiated a reasonable delivery acceleration and the customer agreed to pay for most of our costs to expedite. But not the travel costs for the team. So Emily and I sent the rest of the team home on Friday, but she and I had to stay the weekend to finalize everything on Monday morning.
"Emily, you handled that brilliantly." I said over dinner in the hotel restaurant that night. "I don't think I've ever seen the Major smile."
Emily and I clinked our glasses, hers a house chardonnay and mine just tonic water with a couple of limes. We were staying at a moderately priced hotel chain, which is all the old man would approve for us for the weekend and the following Monday.
She smiled. Emily had a great smile but only from the nose down. Her lips weren't overly generous, but her mouth was wide, and her teeth were sparklingly white. However, her smile rarely reached her eyes which always seemed guarded and observant.
"The bastard should have smiled. Even with the consideration they agreed to, this is still going to cut into what little margin we have."
I shrugged. "We knew this contract was going to have thin margins. But there's a lot of promise for a long-term payoff on future contracts. You let me worry about the margin on this contract."
She looked at me for a long time, studying me. Finally, she said "How are you so poised and confident at your age?"
I laughed and took another drink. "I guess I put on a good show if I fooled you. I almost wet myself when the Colonel walked in and started yelling and accusing us of not wanting to support the warfighter."
"Harker? The guy is a fucking blowhard. Warfighters my ass. That pencil pushing REMF hasn't seen a day of combat in his life."
"REMF?" Sometimes Emily's military slang got past me. She had done two combat tours and sounded like it.
"R ... E ... M ... F. Stands for Rear Echelon Mother Fucker."
I laughed again. Emily swore like the soldier she had been, and in many ways still was.
"Seriously Tom. You're ... what ... late 20's? And a program manager already? There are people at the company twice your age but only half as accomplished."
Emily's frank assessment of my situation was a little embarrassing, but she wasn't wrong. I lost my dad to a drunk driver at a fairly young age, which is one reason I don't drink, and my mom was never the same after that. I had to grow up fast and balanced school, part time jobs and high school athletics so that I had a chance at getting into a decent college and affording it. Which I did. Not a prestigious one, but a good enough engineering program to get me on with our company. So, I guess I am pretty disciplined.
"I just do what I have to do." I said.
She nodded. "Well, all I can say is that if you were an officer, I wouldn't have any problem serving under you."
Her turn of phrase exploded in my head. "Serving under you." I had a flash vision of Emily naked underneath me, her legs wrapped around my hips, looking up at me from between my arms which were pillared on either side of her head.
Full disclosure here. I found Emily unbelievably attractive from the day we first met. It went way past her physical attractiveness. Her mind was incredible. She absorbed facts like a sponge, to be retrieved instantaneously on demand. Her tactical and strategic comprehension of almost any situation was very well respected not only at our company but in our market. She was well read, had a dry rapier-like wit and used it effectively.
But Emily was older than me and married with a couple of kids. And despite my attraction to her, I had to admit she was also a little intimidating. She was a decorated combat veteran and didn't suffer fools gladly. So, it wasn't impossible to set my feelings aside. Difficult, but not impossible.
Emily snapped her fingers in front of my eyes "Earth to Tom."
"Huh?"
"Where did you go for a minute there?"
"Oh." I hadn't realized I had retreated so far into my erotic thoughts. "Nowhere, just thinking about Monday and what's waiting for me next week back home."
She rolled her eyes. "Sufficient unto the day buddy. I am going to try to forget all that shit tonight, at least for a couple of hours. Speaking of which, do you mind if I ... " she gestured at her empty wine glass.
"No, not at all. We aren't on expense tonight, so what we spend is up to us."
Emily had three more fairly large glasses of wine, bringing her total on the night up to five. I had traveled with her enough to know she had a fairly high tolerance for alcohol, so I didn't think anything of it. We sat in the restaurant talking shop, small talk and sports. Eventually I noticed that we were the last ones in the restaurant, and I could see the waitress and a busboy were giving us looks and looking at their watches.
I nodded towards them and said to Emily "I think the staff would like us to leave."
Emily glanced at her watch. "Shit, this early? It's Friday night and I'm not ready to call it." She looked thoughtful and said "The bars are still open. You want to go get a drink?"
"Uhm, sure. Why not? Nothing waiting for me in my hotel room except bad TV."
Emily gave me a sly look. "Still no girlfriend or main squeeze to call?"
