IN THE PRESENT:
"Soooo...are we gonna talk about what happened in that hotel room?" Phil finally asked me. We'd been driving for about 2 hours at that point. Two hours of mindlessly listening to the radio. Two hours of watching the road pass by. Two hours of having small conversations to cover for the big conversation
not
had.
I didn't answer right away. I kept my eyes looking out the passenger window, hiding them so he wouldn't see the chaos churning inside of me.
"Yeah. I guess we should." I finally said with a sigh.
Silence hung in the air once again. Both of us knew that there was so much to say, but neither of us knew
what
to say. This past weekend, especially last night, was an explosion to our little safe existence. It was completely unexpected, but at the same time, it was totally inevitable.
After more moments of quiet, Phil asked, "Did you...enjoy what happened?"
I hesitated to answer once again. Why were his questions so hard? I wanted to lie, to tell him that I didn't know what was happening. I wanted to blame the alcohol, but I loved him too much to continue lying about who I really was on the inside.
In a soft voice, I gave my confession in a single word. "Yes."
He nodded as if confirming what he already knew. "I could tell. You were different. The way you moaned and gave yourself to them. I've never seen you that way." There was a pause, a catch in his throat before adding, "Not with me, anyway."
My eyes ripped away from the safety of the passenger window and shot to his face. He was expressionless, but the tone of his voice had me worried. "Phil..."
He shook his head. "I'm not angry." He said calmly, though there was a little reticence in his voice. "I'm just...making an observation."
I wanted to comfort him by telling him that he was the best lover I ever had, and that no other man could compare to him. But that would be a lie and he'd know it. He deserved better than lies of pity to save his ego, and he'd be offended if I even tried to feed him one.
"I love you. So much. You're the best thing to ever happen to me." I said to him, giving him the only honest words I could in that situation. He took his eyes off the road to quickly shoot me a rueful smile. With a nod, he said, "I know."
One of his hands was loosely gripping the steering wheel, the other was lying on the arm rest between us. I gently laid my small, dainty hand atop his resting one and laced my fingers lovingly between his. I was half afraid he was going to recoil from my touch. He didn't.
We drove like that for a bit, my thumb tenderly tracing lines along his skin. My gaze was caught on the sight of our hands. His was so different than mine. His skin was tough, while mine was soft.
There were so many differences between us. I wondered if he would've married me if he met me back then. If he'd seen the real me, would he still have fallen in love with me, or would he have used me like all the other dicks that came before?
Silence fell between us again. My mind raced. This time, it was me who broke the stillness by raising the question that I'd been dying to ask since we left Vegas.
"Why did you let it happen?"
He looked a bit stunned by my question. Maybe I should've retracted it. I wasn't his property. It wasn't his job to secure my pussy and keep it from being penetrated by another guy, let alone two. Still, I couldn't fathom sitting across the room, not even 10 feet away, while he moaned beneath two other women. I would blow a fucking gasket if he laid there and let them take turns on him, use his mouth for their pleasure, flip his body this way and that while they did what they wanted with him.
But that's what he watched his friends do to me. He watched them spit roast me. He watched them take turns alternating between sticking their cocks into my pussy and into my mouth. He watched as Dan came on my face. He even watched as Mark roared loudly before enjoying the all-encompassing feeling of exploding inside of a wet, warm pussy.
My
wet, warm pussy.
He watched all this while sitting comfortably in a chair, like he was enjoying a show. Only...there was a strange look on his face. And his hands were...down his pants.
I turned to Phil, really looking at him for the first time. Now that I'd asked that question, others swarmed me. I realized that I knew as little about my husband as he knew about me.
"You could've stopped it at any time. But you didn't." I said to him, also talking to myself as I was seeing that night a little clearer. "When Dan was dancing with me, rubbing his hands all on me, you were right there. When Mark had his hands on my knee at dinner, you saw it. You looked right at me when he slid up my thigh. You even saw me flinch when he touched me...up there. You had to know what they were doing."
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. His face was a mixture of both embarrassment and guilt. It was then that everything made sense to me. Since it happened, my conscience painted Phil as the guy who was helpless in watching his wife's slut side reemerge with a vengeance. He'd always been a passive guy. Dan and Mark were more outgoing and assertive than he was. The dynamic between the trio, as far as I've observed, has had Dan as the leader, Mark as the instigator, and Phil as the guy who always got talked into doing shit.
That's why I'd been feeling so guilty. I let myself get caught up in the lust. I allowed my slut side to reemerge, and never once did I think about how it would affect my husband. I just felt what I felt, and I liked it. Only afterwards, when I assessed the damage of my nuclear pussy, did I think about Phil.
All that self-debasing guilt was like a heavy weight on my chest. Now, as I looked back over the night, a disturbing question was raised.
"Wait a minute. Did
you
set that up?" I asked accusingly.
"What?"
"Did you plan on letting your friends fuck me?"
He snapped his head in my direction, his horrified eyes meeting the burning anger in mine. His face was protesting his innocence before he even spoke.
"No! No, Peyton. I would never do anything like that to you!"
I believed him. Phil had never once given me reason to distrust him. Then again, what did we really know about each other?
My expression must've softened because his eyes were able to return to the road. I waited a few more beats before I asked my next question, which was actually the one he asked me.
"Did
you
enjoy what happened? Did you like watching me do that?"
There it was. That look on his face. Embarrassment, and guilt. He looked like a trapped animal, caught between capture and gnawing his own arm off for escape. That very look on his face was a window to a part of my husband that I didn't' know existed.
I didn't want him to feel that way. For once, I wanted him to open up to me. Even after almost 10 years of marriage, we did so little communicating, especially about sex. Sure, we talked about the important stuff. Bills. Our kids. Our families. Our jobs.
But not sex. Sex was just...that secret thing we did when the kids were asleep. It was a ritual we performed for anniversaries and birthdays.
Maybe that's why this weekend happened. Our marriage, as good as it was, would never be real unless we got real. I'd been hiding myself to be a person worthy of marriage, and it never occurred to me that he might be doing the same thing.
I gently rubbed his hand in that way that I do when I want to comfort him. "You can tell me, honey. I'm not judging. I'm just curious., that's all."
