Cliché #5
Written by Vandemonium1
Edited by the one and only CreativityTakesCourage
Another story where most of the words and concepts are entirely well-used-to-the-point-of-being-tiresome. Maybe the ending will break the mold; maybe it won't.
Ever read a story where the guy's condition for forgiving the wife for cheating is that she 'unfuck' her lover? What if she found a way to do just that?
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The first inkling I had that my wife didn't deserve the trust I'd always placed in her was after an invitation to our new neighbour's house. Sandy and John had bought the place a year ago but delayed moving in until they'd completed major renovations which included the building of a clay tennis court. Sarah and I were the first of the neighbours they invited over. We enjoyed a lovely barbecue lunch and some friendly drinks before being given the grand tour. Ours was an affluent neighbourhood and the tour of the gardens alone took some time and ended up at the magnificent tennis court. At John's invitation, Sarah and I went home, only next door, to change into clothes more suited to tennis.
Ten minutes later, I was the brand-new owner of a grave set of doubts about my wife's fidelity.
Why?
It was blatantly obvious that not only did she not know the rules of tennis but was lousy at it. Not a problem, you might think, but for me it raised a couple of questions. The first of which was, "What the hell has my wife actually been doing when she claimed to be at tennis lessons at the country club on Friday mornings?"
Sarah had been attending one-on-one tennis coaching lessons for almost a year and yet she was obviously still at beginner level. I muddled through the rest of the day, trying desperately to think of any reason, apart from the obvious one, as to why that was the case.
My emotional side of the brain would offer a solution, like maybe she wasn't athletic, then logic would step in with a counterargument, such as, she had a collection of trophies for soccer and netball.
The scary part of the whole deal was that Sarah seemed to be greatly enjoying herself, bending over and laughing every time she fluffed a shot or missed having the racket make contact with the ball. She seemed oblivious to the howling doubts now screaming through my head. Our hosts weren't though. I apologised to them before I left, telling them I had a huge distraction on my mind. Well, it was true now.
It didn't take thousands of dollars' worth of surveillance equipment or days of a PI's time to shatter my marriage, All I had to do was re-schedule my appointments for the following Friday and follow my wife in a rented car.
She went to the country club all right. Walked as bold as brass to the sports section, past the tennis court, and into the block of units that housed non-local staff. I was just in time to see her disappear into room 4B.
Being well-known at the club, I opted against waiting five minutes and kicking the door down. Instead, I went to the main admin block and spoke to the duty manager. He grabbed the security guard, and we all went back to room 4B.
I didn't request any sort of privacy when they unlocked the room quietly. If Sarah was doing what I thought she was in there, my marriage was over, and I didn't owe her any kind of defence from social ridicule. The duty manager also thought knocking was unnecessary, the tennis coach who lived in this room was supposed to be at work.
Thus, I was standing right behind the duty manager as he quietly slotted in the master key. I watched as his wrist turned. The action was almost silent, or maybe it just seemed that way because my heart was pounding so loudly it was like a drum in my ear. The door swung open and revealed the room. I had my phone on video record.
It was as bad as I'd imagined. Sarah was bent over the back of the sofa, her short tennis skirt rolled up around her waist, eyes screwed shut in apparent ecstasy as some young, muscled shithead ploughed into her from behind. I felt sick.
Shithead's heart-felt, "Oh fuck," and sudden cessation of thrusting alerted my wife. Her eyes shot open, taking in the sight of me and my entourage before rolling back in her head as she fainted. She looked absolutely ridiculous with her ass still up in the air over the back of the couch.
Shithead turned away and pulled his shorts back on. Not easy when you're still sporting an erection. Dumb shit that had more cum than brains didn't even go limp.
The duty manager fired his staff member while I pulled Sarah's wedding and engagement rings off her limp fingers. I did nothing to defend her modesty. Why bother? Seemed like she didn't have any for herself.
I then grabbed one of Shithead's shoulders and looked pointedly at the manager and security guard. With a barely perceptible nod from each, they turned and looked the other way. My fist broke the younger man's nose and possibly cheekbone, my ungentlemanly knee would at least help him go limp... for a week or two.
With him conscious but on the floor--unconscious people don't cry like that--and with Sarah in no danger of swallowing her tongue in that position, we left the room. If Sarah and her hunk wanted to run off together, I personally didn't give a rat's ass. As a couple, we were finished.
Or so I thought.
I admit, I found it hard to turn off the love I'd felt deeply for over twenty years. Sarah used that to her advantage and hit me with everything from the cheater's handbook, Chapters 1 through 14. She was feeling old and unwanted when a younger man seduced her, blah, blah, blah, fucking blah. At first, she begged me to not tell our children, there would be no coming back from that. I agreed for the moment.
She assured me she'd never cheated before and if I was any judge of character, a judgement that had taken a huge hit recently, I thought she was telling the truth.
I told her that as she was 100% responsible for breaking the marriage, she was also 100% responsible for fixing it. She accepted that challenge and, I have to say, I was secretly hoping she would convince me to forgive what she assured me was her first stray from fidelity. Yeah, that bloody love tap that was reluctant to switch off.
Besides, with everything she was spouting there was a nagging feeling in my hindbrain. Would I have been strong enough to resist if a beautiful girl, twenty years my junior, tried to seduce me? I hoped the answer would have been yes but who knows?
After a think, she asked me what it would take to get me to forgive her. I set her an impossible goal. She would have to unfuck shithead. Erase all my knowledge of her affair. Wipe the tape of her bent over his couch, face scrunched in ecstasy, which was playing on a perpetual loop in my head.
In other words, I gave her what I thought was no chance at all.
With me ousting her from our marital bed and packing, things were very frosty around the house until the following weekend. Sarah's actions made it obvious my openly looking for somewhere else to live ratcheted up her level of desperation.
On Friday night she told me she was going to see her bestie, Julia. She gave me Julia's home phone number and invited me to ring it whenever I liked to prove she was where she said she was. I could even ask to talk to Julia's husband, Jake, who, of course, I knew well. I didn't bother. She might have pulled some dumb crap of late, but she wasn't moronic.
It was after eleven o'clock that night when Sarah burst into the marital bedroom practically vibrating with excitement. She and Julia had brainstormed a fantastic idea. An idea that fit all my demands totally and utterly. Quickly, I shook myself to full alertness and listened with a heart that unconsciously but desperately wanted to find an excuse to forgive her.
She suggested that part one was that I would be allowed to have sex with another woman once a week for a year. It would kill her that I was doing it, but I could be assured that the pain would ensure she'd never stray again. She shushed me when I interrupted, telling her that two wrongs don't make a right and I wasn't that kind of guy, but she begged that I listen to the complete package.
Julia had a friend who had been to a hypnotherapist in our smallish town to deal with her terror of spiders. She had, apparently, been totally cured. Sarah and Julia had hit Dr Google and researched to see if memories could be erased and the answer was a definite YES, if the patient wanted them exorcised. She begged me, tears rolling down her cheeks, to think about it and, if I agreed, she'd contact the hypnotherapist for the earliest appointment possible. I did promise to think about it if she left me alone.
Well, as you can imagine, not much sleep happened that night. The idea did seem to give me the excuse I longed for. I was sure the whole experience had terrified Sarah enough that she would never again stray from her vows of fidelity. Her plan also fitted the criteria I set her, and welching on a deal went against my nature. I'd given her a challenge and she appeared to have risen to it. Undergoing the therapy she suggested would effectively allow her to unfuck the guy, at least in my head. It would certainly wipe the memories I just couldn't forget otherwise.
In the morning, I sat down with my quietly confident wife. I explained that under no circumstances would I sleep with another woman. Sarah seemed a little worried about that until I said the rest of my piece; that I would fully co-operate with a hypnotherapist erasing my knowledge of her affair.
On one condition.
She had to further reassure me that she wouldn't use my freshly erased mind to cheat in the future, merely using her recent experiences to be more careful not to be caught the next time.
She cried at this further evidence of my distrust in her but recovered enough to convince me that wasn't a possibility. This whole episode had terrified her to the core and there was absolutely no chance she'd jeopardise a relationship pulled back from the brink of disaster. She'd never hurt me again. She loved me.
