Chapter 17: Dialed In
I know it's blasé to talk about phone addiction at this point, it's just a settled fact of life, but I generally considered myself less dependent on the symbiotic little gizmo than my focus group counterparts. That is until I reached towards my BMW's center console to find my phone missing and suddenly was panic stricken. It gave me pause to question just how bad my underlying addiction was. The troubling thing is—I knew it wasn't there, and yet I still reached for it and still panicked.
I had intentionally left it on Kaden's coffee table just five minutes before. He'd brought out a bottle of wine, I'd set down my phone to examine the bottle, we'd talked for maybe a minute, and then I'd gotten up to leave, trying my hardest to ignore my phone on the table. Even at the door, as I'd said my goodbye and he'd made sure I'd tell "the ice queen" the wine was thanks for helping with his back two weeks ago, I couldn't help glancing over his shoulder into the living room where my phone deliberately lay abandoned. I literally had separation anxiety, heart palpitations and all.
The bottle of wine resting in my leather passenger seat happened to be one of the nicer Pinot Noirs that he'd initially set aside to impress Jane. The single color printed label and lack of any substantial graphics spoke to its limited run. Its quality would find a home without the aid of graphic designers like me. This shit was way out of my league. I glanced at my center console again, just a lonely gum wrapper inside, and put a death grip on my leather steering wheel. All of this was out of my league.
Camille was upstairs coming out of the shower when I arrived home. I called up to her, telling her not to get dressed. She stood at the top of the stairs in nothing but a towel.
"He gave you that?" She asked, upon seeing the wine in my hands.
I held it up. "He gave
you
a two-thousand and five Pinot Noir Umbria."
"Well now I feel like a bitch. Are we really doing this?"
"He's also reverted to calling you ice queen."
"Just wow! He really is intentionally being an asshole, isn't he?"
"I told you. The more he falls for my perfect woman the harder he'll deny it. And don't feel bad—if someone were ever to fuck with me I pray it entails swiping through nude selfies of their wife."
"
Swiping through
?"
I laughed. "It's just the one. I promise."
I was having to promise her a lot lately. But we were in uncharted territory and traveling further every day. The only way out—deeper in. And on that night we were getting
real
deep in it.
"Well, are you bringing up my phone?"
I moved fast, putting the bottle down in the kitchen and collecting the phone out of her purse. I took two steps at a time up to our bedroom and found her sitting on the bed using a second smaller towel to squeeze moisture from sections of her hair. The big, white towel was tied around her bosom and draped down to her upper thigh.
She set the small towel beside her to accept her phone but didn't retract her hand after I'd set it in her palm. Instead, she stared at it in midair with a hint of disgust. "This doesn't feel right."
"I agree. It feels very
bad
," I said, as I took a seat beside her and pushed back her damp hair to clear a spot for a kiss on her cheek. "But don't you feel like being very bad?"
"But this... It's
lying
."
I caressed the side of her face. "It's deceptive at best. Don't tell me you're getting a soft spot for Kaden now."
"I just don't like lying."
"Look, he's a victim of his own nature. You're only putting up a red cape, he's the one who keeps charging with horns out in front."
"Have I told you my feelings on bullfighting?"
"Alright, bad analogy."
She dropped her hand into her lap and clutched the phone against her towel-covered thigh. I took it as a sign that she wouldn't be making the call and my heart plummeted so far there was sure to be an echo if it ever hit bottom.
"I gotta confess something. I don't give a shit about wounding Kaden's ego. It's satisfying to think about the asshole wanting what he can never have but that's not what's driving me to do all this. What is making me crazy about you getting on the phone right now is just him lusting over you... Fuck, the thought of you flirting back with him. I don't know what it is but I can't keep my hands off you after these incidents. You're the hottest woman I've ever met and you're even hotter to me in these moments. I.... Fuck, I don't even know what I'm trying to say."
Her hand went to my cheek and brushed back into my sideburns. "I know, Alex. I know and it's OK. If you really want me to I-"
"
No
," I interrupted. I turned her face towards me and kissed her. The kiss lingered as my passion for her heated up, and she reciprocated and moved her hand to my chest. We finally broke leaving our faces intimately close.
"It doesn't work unless it's real.
You
getting off..." I ran a hand down her thigh. "That's the critical part. It has to be
our
thing. If the thought of fucking Kaden, or even that stuntman asshole—if there isn't a big part of you that wants badly to be sexual with them—then don't do it. Don't do it for me. Just don't call."
I felt myself shaking. I'd said a mouthful. Her hand slid from my chest. I was scared of what she might be thinking. If the script were flipped I don't know how I'd handle it.
She then raised her iPhone in its turquoise jeweled casing and pushed the dial button. She put it to her ear and stared out into space waiting for him to pick up.
I fell backward on the bed, the disappointment in me rushing freely away. The bed seemed to roll under me as if I were a leaf floating down a river. If she were being honest, then she not only admitted my kinky desires didn't repulse her, she was down with fucking another man. Or at least the fantasy of it.
Almost as quickly as the disappointment left my body, my nerves frantically responded to the anticipation of Kaden picking up.
I stared at her seated on the edge of the bed with only a view of her backside. Her hair hung damp and straight almost to her mid back. I rarely saw it out of her ponytail and always forgot how long it was. There's something sexy about a woman who can transform her look so easily. The only part of her body exposed to me were her shoulders, and just based on their tonality and moderate width, I could correctly predict the rest of my wife's body—not too thin, not too thick and absolutely perfect, slightly-petite proportions. Her skin was smooth and creamy white and so elegantly contrasted with her chestnut hair and its russet streaks.
After a few seconds of waiting she hit the call button again. On the second ring Kaden must've located the source of the Chimes ringtone and found my phone on his living room table. Camille carefully put him on speaker so I could listen in.
"Hello,
Camille
?" He sounded confused.
"Hi.... Um, is this Kaden?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, can I talk to Alex?"
"No. He took off. He must've left his phone here. At least I hope it's his phone."
We both knew why he hoped it was my phone, and it confirmed to Camille and me that our setup had worked. We knew at that moment, as he spoke to us from the living room of his empty house, he stared at the screen, illuminated by a picture of Camille. That morning I'd gone into my phone's address book and selected an image to be displayed as a backdrop whenever Camille's number came in. The image would then remain up for the duration of the call. I'm sure the feature was intended for portraits but I'd chosen one of Camille's body—a nude.
The photo was taken yesterday, being our first dalliance with a camera since I'd recorded us having sex two weeks prior. I'd posed her laying across the bed so the light from the south facing window spilled up the length of her body. I framed her body in the dimensions of a phone screen, cropping out everything below her knees. The camera angle was similar to the angle of light from the window, capturing a foreshortened view from her thighs up to her chest. Her head hung off the north side of the bed, essentially making her headless. The top quarter of the image was filled with nothing but the dark, lavender wall behind her. The empty space actually created room for the name "Camille" to be displayed during a phone call, almost like the title on a movie card. The borders of the image cut in on the outer sides of her hips and most of her thighs, so that only her inner thighs were in frame. Due to the foreshortening the bottom half of the picture featured the white flesh of her inner thighs, which were slightly spread, and her pussy, visible from top to bottom. Her hand covered her neatly trimmed pubic hair and her middle finger bent downwards and lay across the slit of her vagina. Technically her finger covered her opening, but the labia on either side were visible, and so it was either a shot of her pussy or teasing at one depending on the viewer's actual definition of "pussy".
So as Kaden spoke to my wife he also stared at a very explicit shot of her touching herself. There was an excited, masculine energy culminating in his voice. Our thirst trap had indeed produced a thirst.
"Well, he left a while ago so he should be there soon."
"Hmmm," Camille pondered thoughtfully, as she reclined back onto the bed. "Alright, well if he shows up again to collect his phone please have him call me."
"Hey, when are you gonna make it to the gym?" This question was meant to keep her on her phone and her picture displayed on mine.
"I wouldn't want to show you up," Camille flirted back.
"Ha!" he laughed. "Is that right? Have you even climbed before?"
"Well, no."
"You're the wrong body type."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
At this point Kaden went quiet, surely gauging how far over the line he should go in his response. I sat up and unfastened her towel and flapped it to the side. I then took in the sight of her stunning naked body beside me as she engaged my friend on the phone.
"Your body's well built for yoga, and perfect for your standard striper's pole—but climbing, you have to have more than a nice ass."
Her hand had started to move towards her vagina, but she stopped just above her pussy when Kaden got hung up on her ass. She took a deep breath and tried again. "Are you saying my ass is too fat to climb?"
"Don't play that game with me. You know your ass isn't fat. And I know how proud of that ass you are."
