The events that forever altered my marriage to Kim, my wife of 15 years, started a few weeks ago, but it wasn't until this morning that I started to put the pieces together and I realized things between us were about to change. Kim and I met in college. She was 18 and I was 23. We married four years later after a dating exclusively.
I was on a business trip in San Francisco (my wife and I live in Los Angeles). I was in my hotel getting ready on a Friday morning -- the second day of what was to be a two-day trip. I had a set of meetings to attend, followed by a dinner. After that, some work friends and I were going to go out for drinks to blow off some steam. So I was going to fly home first thing in the morning.
I was just brushing my hair before grabbing my things when my text alert sounded. I left the bathroom to go retrieve my phone and picked it up off of the chest of drawers thinking it might be a co-worker with some news about the morning's events. Instead, I saw it was from my wife. So I opened the text and was surprised to find it was a photo attachment. More surprising was the photo itself. My wife was standing in front of our bedroom mirror dressed in black lingerie -- quite fancy lingerie at that. She had on black thigh-highs attached to a garter belt. She was wearing sheer black panties and a very skimpy bra. I could she her dark bush through the thin material. This was surprising because while my wife occasionally wears some sexy underwear for special occasions for us, she never takes pictures of herself and texts them to me. Kim is somewhat reserved when it comes such things. I was also surprised that through the sheer material I could see she had shaved her pubic hair into a landing strip and that area around her pussy was clean-shaven. I had suggested this in this past, but she had always resisted the idea.
"Getting ready . . ." was the text that accompanied the picture.
I was about to write back to say, "Looking great, but what's the occasion?" when another text showed up in reply to hers from her best friend Sue saying, "You look so sexy! Does this mean you are going to go through with it?"
Confused, I tried to figure out why Sue was responding. As I looked at the message thread, I realized that Kim had sent the message in the thread of a group message Kim had sent to Sue and I about a week ago saying she'd be late to meet us at dinner -- Kim and I meeting with Sue and her husband Mark at restaurant and we were all coming from different places. Had she meant to text me and accidentally included Sue? And if so, what was Sue's comment all about?
As I contemplated this, Kim sent a reply to Sue, "Yes. At least I think so. Going to ask Dave for drinks when we finish work. Hopefully after some liquid courage I can get the nerve to ask him back to my place for some fun. ☺"
"He's going to totally jump you when he sees you in that. I know from experience LOL. I was so glad you chose that outfit when we went 'shopping'". Sue wrote back.
"Ahhhh yes. The infamous 'shopping trip' ;) " Kim texted.
"Best customer service EVER!" Sue replied.
They were texting so quickly it took me a moment to process what I was reading. Clearly it was I who was the unintended recipient, though it didn't appear that Kim or Sue had caught on to that. I didn't know what to make about the cryptic references to the shopping trip, but the part about asking some guy named Dave back to our house to have sex was pretty clear. My head was spinning. My wife was planning to cheat on me and Sue was in on it. I tried to sort out what the hell was going on and what to do about it. I wanted to run home right away and confront Kim, but obviously that wasn't possible at the moment. I wanted to stand in front of her and have her tell me it was just some kind of weird misunderstanding and everything was fine. My mind was racing, had she done this before? I never even remotely had any suspicions that it was something she'd do. We had a very happy marriage and still enjoyed each other's company and sex life very much -- or at least I thought so.
"Make sure to let me know how it goes. I'm excited for you . . . and when I saw excited, I mean the wet, sticky kind. ;)" Sue texted.
"Me too. I had a little 'playtime' this morning " Kim replied.
'Jesus. My wife is 'sexting' with her best friend' I thought, stunned -- and a bit turned on. This was like a weird dream. I stood there confused and stunned, staring at the words on my screen and the sexy picture of my wife. My cock twitched a bit, which struck me as odd given the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was lost in thought when my text alert went off again. I quickly looked back at the screen expecting to see the conversation continue between my wife and Sue. Instead it was a text from my colleague Jim saying he and some others were in the lobby ready to go. I tried to shake the shock and uneasiness so I could meet up with the others. I took one more look at my wife, closed the message app and texted Jim.
"Be right down".
I grabbed my messenger bag and headed out of the hotel room, hoping that the brief elevator ride would bring some color to my skin and slow down the racing that was going on in my mind. I met up with Jim and the others and headed for coffee and a bite to eat at a café in the hotel. While they all chatted, I tried not to appear too distracted or disturbed. I kept hoping that I would get that feeling you sometimes get in the morning that something you thought that you had experienced was actually a very vivid dream. I tried to engage in the small talk just to try and calm the swirling emotions I was experiencing.
We finished up and headed to the meeting room. I checked my phone to see if there were further texts, but there weren't. I sensed a bit of relief mixed with a hint of disappointment. After the morning's session, I was going to have to come up with something to do to address the situation, but I wasn't sure what it could be from 400 miles away. As we sat down to start the meetings I set my phone to vibrate so that I could keep an eye on it without interrupting the anything. As the meeting progressed, I was pleased to be forced to concentrate on things other than the texts I had read, but it wasn't easy.
When we broke for lunch I checked my phone and saw that I had somehow missed a call from my wife and that she had left a voice message. As I pushed the button to play it back. I had butterflies in my stomach -- afraid of what I might hear, or not hear.
"Hi Baby. Just wanted to check in. I'm going to be tied up this afternoon, and it turns out I have a work dinner tonight so I just wanted so say I'm going to miss you tonight. I can't wait to see you in the morning, so travel safely . . . oh and I will have a surprise for you when you get home. I hope you'll like it." Now I was quite confused and a little scared. Surprise? She said it like it was a good thing, but given the circumstances I worried it would be a bad thing.
The sickening feeling in my stomach had grown. I was angry, confused, worried and still weirdly turned on by the text exchange Kim had with Sue. I thought about calling my wife back, and really wouldn't that be the normal thing to do? But I wasn't sure I would know what to say, or that Kim might catch on to my concern and get curious as to why I sounded strange.
"Come on Nick. You gonna eat or what?" Jim's voice snapped me back to reality.
"Uh yeah, yeah," I stammered heading to follow him and the others to the restaurant for lunch. I tried again to hide my confusion and angst as we lunched. I tried to engage in the discussions as I could. A couple of the others were having wine and cocktails, so I ordered a gin and tonic in hopes it would calm my nerves a bit. One became two and three. I hoped that my indulgence had gone unnoticed, and if anyone was wondering about my trio of cocktails, they didn't mention it. As we settled up the bill and headed back for the afternoon session of meetings I called my wife back, not sure if I hoped she would answer or not. It went to voicemail and I left her a message.
"Hi hon. Sorry I missed you're call. I'm going to miss you too. I can't wait for my surprise tomorrow. See you then. Love you." I said trying to sound as relaxed as possible.
I didn't bother to keep my phone handy during the first afternoon session. It was pretty clear I wasn't going to be hearing from her, and it was almost a relief to know that for now I wasn't going to have any further messages to cloud my thoughts. I tried to focus in on the meeting, and again it was nice to have something distracting me (well, a tiny bit) from the situation with Kim. As the first session wound down to the break, my mind returned to the issue at hand and I realized I had to head home -- to do what, I wasn't sure. But I knew I had to get back to LA. I could figure out what I would do on my arrival on the flight home. So I used the break time to reschedule my flight for early that evening.