I apologise, but there isn't a lot of sex in this chapter. It's mostly for story purposes. I understand if you'd like to skip it over.
Racing Into the Night
Chapter 5 - Racing Into the Night
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It took no more than a couple of seconds to sign all the necessary lines, and before the ink had dried, I slid the stack back to Rachael. She looked at the stack over her coffee mug, like it was a live cobra, and it had its eyes on her. "Thank you," she said perfunctorily.
"No problem," I offered lamely. "That's all you needed from me?"
"For now." Of course. "There'll still be the matter of our assets, alimony...whatever fuck else is out there...." And in that moment, for the first time since she'd sat down she actually looked tired. Her shoulders sagged a little, and she had the air of being drained. I felt a weight settle in my stomach.
"Yeah, we can tackle those as they come up," I said, without thinking.
She smiled a little bit. "It's funny. That's what you said about other hard stuff, back when we were married." Her stare was so faraway; past me, past the distant wall, to somewhere only she could see. I wanted to comfort her, but that was no longer up to me. "Where did it go wrong, Jon?" I looked up. She wasn't looking at me, she was just wringing her hands like she wanted to tear the ring off.
"Me, Rach," I murmured. "I was the one who kept it going."
"But I can't help but think I did something to push you in that direction!" I blinked back my surprise at her self-flagellation. "Things like this don't happen in a vacuum."
I sighed. I couldn't stand to see her blame herself for what I'd done. "Rachael," I said, inching closer to her; "it's truly not you."
"Oh what, I'm only worth the 'it's not you, it's me' line?"
"No! What I'm saying is, just...there are bad people out there. I just never knew I was capable of being that kind of a person until...I was there."
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Things came crashing down in December. Both Mr. Rodriguez and I had the clarity to cool it for a while after his daughter's birthday party in the summer. We barely saw the Rodriguez family as a unit--likely because they got enough of each other at work--but the times we did were tense. Nitya would watch our every move with her silent, piercing stare.
Thus, I didn't see Mr. Rodriguez again until the fall, and by then, I had gone three months without his touch. My sex life with Rachael came back from the dead, but plateaued. It never reached the same heights it used to before Mr. Rodriguez, a fact I became painfully aware of when I realised I no longer wanted to cum inside her, or with her. I was more than happy to bring her to hers, but that was where it stopped.
She wasn't stupid, she definitely noticed the change--but I think she was confused by the fact that she was still getting off. Maybe that made it work for her.
With Mr. Rodrgiuez, however, things were different. We had crescendoed into the fullest parts of our sex life, having discovered the vast majority of kinks the other had. He wanted to be choked, held down and crushed. I obliged. I discovered I loved sucking on his fingers, especially after he'd just fingered me. There was a weekend that Nitya had taken the girls to visit her family in New York. She had barely crossed the border when Mr. Rodriguez texted me. She's gone, he said. Come over.
The first night after our self-imposed drought was the most intense sex I'd had since marrying Rachael. There were no limits anymore, no pride to get in the way of Mr. Rodriguez fucking me. The positions we tried that night left the bedroom in his condo a complete mess. The bedroom he shared with his wife. I felt like an intruder while I held his ankles up and pistoned into his hole. The one that belonged to me.
The comedown from that long night of orgasms left me delirious, sweaty, and introspective. I had never cuddled him before, and yet, here we were. Mr. Rodriguez nestled into me, nuzzling into my side. A confusing boil of emotions bubbled up inside of me at his touch. My body eclipsed his and the two of us looked like a waxing moon, shuddering heavily in the black night sky.
I held him close to me, a numbing buzz choking all sounds out. Rational thoughts. All I knew was us. Him, the vial of poison elixir, and me, the idiot that drank it down completely. Did I hate us? Well...I didn't love us. I didn't love him. But still...I held him close to me as if I wanted to keep him from floating away.
"Mr. Rodriguez," I mumbled into the stagnant air. He didn't say anything; he clenched his hand into a fist against my chest. "Mr. Rodriguez?"
"Aaron," he muttered simply. He shifted, propped himself upright to look me right in the eye. In him I saw softness so insistent that it burned me. "Just call me Aaron."
I smiled at him. "Then...just call me Jonathan." But he didn't return my smile.
His expression continued to linger in the back of my mind until December. It was the 2nd, and it was the anniversary of Rachael starting to work in the office of the mayor. She had just recently come into a raise, and the mayor extended personal praise to her in front of everyone else at the office. Of course she was over the moon. She was buzzing with excitement that entire week.
Naturally, she planned a party. According to her, it had been Nitya's suggestion to do so, and she ran with it. She invited much of the office over to our house. Earlier, I'd brought Bailey to a sleepover with her cousin at my Ate Aleena's, so the whole affair could be an adults-only thing, with drinking and work talk.
To my shock, the Rodriguezes arrived late. The house filled up with strangers I had very little desire to interact with. I kept my eye on the front door, paying a minimal level of attention to the conversations any of Rachael's coworkers tried to engage me in. She, meanwhile, was whirling about our space with a glass of chilled icewine in her hand, excited words pouring out of her as she went. Rachael was unstoppable. I had a feeling that'd work to my advantage.
Aaron and Nitya arrived a half hour later than everyone else, and I couldn't shake the feeling that they'd been arguing on the way here. Her look was dark, stormy, and she was not hiding it well at all, even if she slipped easily into conversation with her coworkers. Aaron hid it better, his smile flashing into the crowd. But what he couldn't hide was the fact that he was looking for me. Once he caught my eye, he began drifting towards me, meandering through the throng of coworkers.
"Heeeyyyy, Jon!" he said, his smile light. "Nice party. Thanks for inviting us."
"Of course," I replied. "Rachael couldn't have done it without her team, right?" His absent nodding told me that he wasn't paying much attention. I recognised this side of him. This was his impatience shining through. The nights he wanted to fuck before talking, he became inattentive. Uninterested in everything else. But here? At another party?
That was when I caught the smell of whisky drifting off of him. He came close to stinking of it, the stench mixing with his usual cologne.
I turned as if to head back to the kitchen for another drink. "You need to keep it cool," I whispered sidelong to him. "People are going to notice." And he shot me back a look that I'd never seen on him before: petulance. He looked like a surly child being chastised. I frowned back at him, wondering where the attitude was coming from. Nonetheless, I handed him a glass of wine I had poured out for the both of us.
Rachael's favourite soft rock playlist filled the living room and filtered out into the cool December night. Despite all expectations, snow had already started to fall this early in the month, and the deep orange sky was dotted with flecks of blue-white. It melted the moment it hit the ground. "Come on," I told Aaron; "let me show you the garden."
He shrugged his acquiescence, and followed me outside to the backyard. Fleeting snowflakes fell to their immediate demise all around us. Wine in hand, and the party music drifting to us in distant waves, the moment seemed to stretch on forever. Aaron stared away from, at the setting sun, not saying a single thing. But from this angle, I could see his mouth twisting as if he wanted to.
Sipping my wine, I led Aaron silently through the course I had worked on over the last seven years of living here. The stepping stones, which had become overgrown; the flowers, some in need of a trim, and some dying back in preparation for winter. Only the cedars with their rusting leaves remained, and their smell matched Aaron's. I should know, at this point. It was my favourite of his scents he wore.
At a certain point, we paused, finding the bench I'd put next to the expansive shed of my gardening equipment. It was shaded by a pergola, and hidden by a wall of cedars, and the quiet it offered in the middle of the suburban evening turned it into an island. Aaron and me, on that island together.
I became quickly aware of the wine warming in my hand, and I drank. Aaron, meanwhile, had already polished his off. When had he done that? And yet, instead of chattering my ear off like I knew drunk Aaron was apt to do, he said and did nothing. He turned the glass over and over in his hand, staring at it with his hard green eyes.
"Aaron...?" I said to him quietly, afraid to shatter the serenity of the moment. "What's wrong?" He turned to me slowly. The sunset lit his face up, and I could see them then. His tears. They welled up in the corners of his sleepy eyes, sparkling with the colours of the evening. "Aaron...!" I went to wipe one of his eyes clear. He sank into the touch, shuddering.
When he sighed, the wave of whisky stench rolled off of his tongue. "I'm sorry, Jon, I didn't mean to...." He scrubbed his other eye clear of tears. "I look stupid."
"No, you don't...tell me what's wrong." I knew everyone experienced sadness, but I'd just never seen it before from him. He put a hand on mine, sighing and pressing a kiss into my palm. My stomach lurched at the sensation.
"Jon," he mumbled; "I need you to tell me I'm not a bad man. That I'm not doing everything wrong." He continued kissing my palm, slowly, his tattered breaths rising out of his chest. This explained the drinking, at least. "Nitya, she...fuck."
My blood chilled, and I became keenly aware of how cold it was out here. "What about her?" But he just shook his head, pressing his eyes shut against all sensation. "What about her?" Again, he didn't say anything, just leaned further into me like I was stopping him from breaking.
