"Maybe you should come inside," Kate replied calmly. Almost too calmly. She motioned to the door. "We just finished packing a bunch of old family heirlooms to ship off to my cousin in Colorado and are about to order some pizzas. Would you care to join us?"
She tried not to notice Savvy and Jerry exchanging worried glances. The revelation of a husband's secret girlfriend usually led to a lot of screaming and perhaps a violent fight. At least in most relationships it did. Katie's relationship with her husband did not hold any slack in those rules as far as they knew. Their own ongoing secret relationship with Katie bore that out. That was, in a nutshell, their problem.
"Uuummm...sure? I guess that would be alright." Obviously not the reception Ricki prepared for either.
Kate led them all inside, placed the order for the food, then handed out drinks to everyone. In the living room, she suggested Jerry sit in Brian's favorite chair, helped Savvy scoot the footstool next to her husband and then sat on one end of the couch, indicating Ricki should take the other end.
"Are yew shure yew..." Savvy began, trying to make herself comfortable in the soft armchair to start getting comfortable in the awkwardness of the situation. She pulled out her phone and opened the app that allowed her to do voice recordings. She'd made several recordings with Katie and Jerry in the past, mostly for her OnlyFans account and the pervs who loved hearing her getting off, but this one might turn out to be a bit more that hot moans and groans and orgasmic screams. Jerry fidgeted in his spot too, trying to figure out if he should relax back, or stay on the edge in case he needed to physically intervene. Chicks fighting for fun in mud, pudding or Jello made a great evening's entertainment but sticking himself into a raging cat-fight over another dude, especially one he didn't like all that much, held as much appeal as voluntarily dropping his dick in a blender.
"Yes," Kate assured her, sipping her bottle of beer. "I'm sure having witnesses will be helpful."
"I don't know how far 'impartial' we can be considered though," Jerry muttered, also sipping his own bottle. "'Accomplices' maybe?"
"Hush yew."
"How was your flight back to LAX?" Kate asked, taking over the conversation as though the awkward elephant in the room didn't exist. She kept up a steady stream of small talk- asking about the generalities of the trips Ricki and Brian took for the company, general gossip, sharing basic information about Savvy and Jerry, how her own job at the lab went, etc.. Any time one of Ricki's answers started to steer towards the purpose of her visit, Kate immediately interrupted to ask another light question. Only after the pizzas arrived and everyone took slices did she choose to 'get down to business'.
"So you said you've worked for Brian's company for four years now?" She asked, taking a bite from her first slice. Ricki nodded rather than speak with a mouthful of her own.
"And when did you start fucking my husband?"
The only one who didn't start choking immediately, she calmly kept eating, tilting her head curiously, calming waiting for an answer.
"We...ahh... we started flirting a little bit when we still worked in different departments," Ricki confessed, wiping sauce from her chin with a paper towel. Her brown eyes wide with surprise and a little bit of fear. "I haven't had a boyfriend since before joining the company and it felt good to find someone even semi-interested in me. About two years ago or so?"
"Not worried about that," Kate said, patting her knee reassuringly. "Every woman in a corporate environment probably has a 'work boyfriend-slash-husband' who helps keep the real wolves at bay. Sad that it usually comes to that, but effective. Mine is Phil Levy. Older guy, father-type. I help him pick out Hanukkah presents every year for his grandkids. I mean 'When did you get naked and fuck him'?"
"Feels weird talking about it like this," Ricki responded, obviously out of sorts and expecting more of a fight. Not direct, very blunt questions.
"I first fucked Brian in his dorm room the night we met at a party. We were both super drunk and barely made it to the room." Katie smiled a bit wistfully, then took a bite from her slice and talked around it, chewing. "He fell out of me AND the bed at the same time. Absolutely HILARIOUS to a couple of drunk college kids. We didn't start seriously dating until about a month later."
"I helped Savvy and her roommate move into an apartment in the building I lived in," Jerry offered, tossing back the remains of his beer. "They jumped on me like a pair of wolves on a moose. First threesome I ever had."
"An' not tha last," Savvy added, clinking bottles with her husband in toast. Ricki stared at them, turned to Katie and arched a questioning eyebrow. Kate stared back with a Mona Lisa smile, so she gave up and sat back.
"It's such a cliche, I'm kinda embarrassed to say it," she confessed, throwing up her hands in resignation. "Last year. At the company Christmas party."
Kate mulled it over for only a moment, then nodded.
"We fought that afternoon while I got ready. Gave me such a headache I decided not to go. We yelled about it for about an hour. Didn't do my head any good." Kate paused, collecting herself. "He said he stayed late. Until the end. I was already asleep when he got in."
"We left around ten. Went back to my place and had sex. He finally sobered up enough to head hom...come back here around two in the morning."
"Katie Kitty, yer awfully calm 'bout all this." Savvy rubbed her hands together, still expecting some sort of explosion of temper from her girlfriend.
"Yes, I suppose I am," Kate admitted, returning Savvy's nervousness with affectionate calm. Turning to Ricki, she shrugged. "I suppose I should be pissed off, but there's no point any more, is there? Have you slept together regularly since then?"
"Not at first, no." Ricki stood up, smoothing her pants before sitting back down to finish her beer. "At first we agreed that it was a one-off brought on by alcohol and work-familiarity. I figured he'd spend time with you and apologize. I half expected you to arrive at my door punching my lights out before New Years. Obviously, he never told you."
"Obviously not," Jerry interjected, returning from the kitchen with a fresh bottle for everyone. After giving them out, he took a fresh slice of the pineapple and sat down. "Still not sure why this turned into a conversation and not a screaming match. I was all set to grab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the catfight."
"We'll get to the 'Why', Captain Impatience." Kate pushed the pineapple box over to him. "Until then, hush up and eat your nasty ass pizza. So what changed?"
"We sorta broke the ice I guess," Ricki said with a shrug of her own. "Made it a few weeks through the holidays and then 'Bam' he's back at my door and we're screwing all over the apartment. We got it on for two weeks or so, then he gets this call that changes everything."
"The day of my accident and hysterectomy." Kate sat back, appearing upset for the first time since Ricki's arrival. He wasn't 'screwing around with friends' like he'd told her, he was just screwing around. And not for the first time.
"In my defense, he didn't tell me at the time," Ricki responded, a dark flush to her sharp cheeks. "He told me you'd gone home, back East, and would be gone for awhile. I only found out later that he'd leave work to go visit you in the hospital, grab some clothes here, then meet me at my place where he would spend the night."
"Asshole," Jerry growled from his place in Brian's chair, furrowing his brow and staring darkly at the floor. When he'd been told about Katie's accident and surgery on arriving home from Vegas, he vowed to start a long conversation with Brian about a great deal. His hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly, the wood creaking.
"Jerry hunny, calm down now," Savvy extracted herself from her spot, moving over to sit in his lap. She turned to Katie, who suspected Jerry could release a great rage, given the energy and power on display during one particularly intense night of animalistic sex. Even Ricki, who barely knew his name, could sense the potential storm rolling off him.
"Yeah, he is." Kate agreed, resting one hand on Ricki's knee. She couldn't throw stones now, not after months of sleeping sandwiched between her lovers while Brian and Ricki banged in hotel rooms around the country. "And you need to keep in mind he's a bit of an ass too. After the hospital, I couldn't have sex for a while. How did it work out for you?"
"That's when he started changing." Ricki licked her cranberry-colored lips. "He started talking about trying to control his orgasms and edging and stuff. He really got into it, showing me clips and training games and stuff. Kinky ass shit I started getting into myself. Especially when he gave me control."
"I caught him watching one of those recently. Then I started in on him too."
"He told me about that!" Ricki gushed, tapping Kate's knee. "He was so happy you saw that one because it's us- him and I. You don't see much of him of course but, I mean, seen one dick you've seen them all, right? But I was under the table right there on camera getting dripped on. And you dove right into the spirit of it, which turned him on even more. Between the two of us edging and denying him, he keeps telling me how much his balls ache and shit. Begging to be allowed to get off for me before the terminal case of blue balls kills him."
"I thought you looked familiar but didn't put two and two together until now. But that happened later, didn't it?" Kate took hold of Ricki's hand, marveling at the contrast between her paler sun-kissed skin and the dark tone of her husband's mistress. Or his other 'Mistress'? Depended on how one looked at it she supposed. "You transferred him into your department for the Demo Team?"
"That one's all me," agreed Ricki, hanging her head. "I travel a lot for the company, and lots of guys hit on me at the conferences and trade shows. Sometimes it just doesn't feel safe saying 'no' without a good reason for going back to my hotel room alone."
"A Secret Fuck Buddy." Kate offered.
"I guess you could say it like that," Ricki nodded. "And I should tell you right now- I thought you knew. Brian told me you'd wanted an open marriage for a long time but didn't need to talk to 'the other woman' until you'd found your own fuck buddy. For an MBA, I do stupid shit sometimes."
"'The heart wants what the heart wants'. I get it. The loneliness of single life gets to you, especially when you're trying to MAKE things work and failing. I can't imagine what it's like trying to find someone when you're constantly travelling. You take what you find and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Do you love him?"
Before Ricki could respond, Brian burst in through the front door carrying his computer bag and suitcase. He started to speak but a glance at the people in the room made his voice catch.
