It was raining heavily when Mark got home. He'd walked in from the train station. His collapsible umbrella kept his head dry, but his jacket and especially his trousers were soaking - and worst of all, there was water in his shoes.
It really hadn't been a good day. He'd had to shave in a hurry in the morning, nicking his skin a couple of times, and only realised after he'd left the house that he hadn't properly cleaned the sink afterwards. His wife, Becca, had been complaining about the hairs he kept leaving in the sink, and he could understand her frustration, so he'd been carrying around a pang of guilt. He'd had a long, hard day at the office, with a couple of difficult clients, and he was looking forward to getting back home to Becca, changing into some dry clothes, and sitting down with a nice hot meal.
"Hi honey," he called out as he stepped into the house. He shook down his umbrella, and hung it up with his jacket on the coatstand. There was no response - but then, Becca often struggled to hear him over the extractor fan when she was cooking. He went through to the kitchen, where Becca was cooking a stir-fry.
"Hi," he said again. Becca jumped slightly - she'd always been twitchy. He walked up to her and they kissed on the lips. "Smells good. How was your day?"
"Oh, you know." Becca had quit her job a few years ago and now worked from home on a small handmade jewellery business. Mark was proud of his wife's entrepreneurship, and while it meant they'd had to sacrifice some income, it meant the world to him that his wife was doing what she loved. "You've timed this well. Dinner will just be another couple of minutes."
"Great, I'll get changed quickly," Mark said. "I'm soaked."
Mark popped upstairs. He noticed that Becca had forgotten to make the bed - although, in fairness, that meant he had as well. He took off his trousers and hung them up to dry on the radiator, knowing they would be nice and toasty the next morning. He undid his shirt and slipped into some casualwear. He was just finishing getting dressed when Becca called him down for dinner.
They sat down opposite each other and ate together. Becca made an excellent stir-fry - seitan, black beans, spinach, sesame, and a whole lot of soy sauce. Mark loved the umami taste of MSG.
"Thanks, Becca, this is delicious," he said, finishing up his finale few mouthfuls.
"Mark... I'm sorry, we need to talk."
"Is this about the sink? I'm sorry, I should have cleaned it, I realised when I was on my way to work."
"What? No. Do you remember when I said things had been getting stale in the bedroom and I wanted us to try inviting someone else around?"
Mark sighed. "Becca, look, I thought we'd been over this. I'm sorry, I'm just not interested. Have you tried the vibrator I bought you?"
"I've done a bit more than that, Mark. I've been having an affair."
A deep, plunging chill went right over Mark, as if he'd fallen through an ice sheet into the Arctic Ocean below. "Are you serious?"
"I'm afraid so. I'm so, so sorry Mark. It's not that I don't love you, but you're never home, and when you are, you just don't look at me the way you used to. You never touch me sexually, or let me touch you. You won't try Viagra, you won't go to therapy..."
"So you thought that meant you could cheat on me?"
"Is it really that different from masturbating?"
"Yes! Obviously! Why didn't you just masturbate?"
Becca sighed. "I made a mistake. It won't happen again. Please, can you forgive me?"
Mark looked Becca in the eye. It was clear that she was truly, deeply sorry. But then he thought about the long hours he'd been putting in at work. He'd been paying the bills on his own so she could pursue her crafting. Now she was blaming him for being distant? How many times had he had the opportunity to sleep with someone else and turned it down, because damn it, he'd made vows, and they meant something. The cold inside him was replaced with a fire that threatened to get out of control. Mark took a couple of deep breaths.
"No. You don't deserve my forgiveness. You don't deserve me. Pack a suitcase and tell your sister you need to crash on her couch. We're getting divorced."
----------------------------------------------
Mark was still angry the next morning. He didn't think that was how it was supposed to work. Didn't a good night's sleep magically make difficult emotions go away, at least for a little while?
The good thing about the anger was that he didn't miss her. If she'd just upped and left him, he'd be missing her warmth under the duvet, her scent, her voice. As it was, he was glad to be rid of her. How could she have done this to him? Destroyed their loving marriage in pursuit of a quick lay?
When he got into work, his secretary, Sandra, was sat at her desk outside his office. She was eight years older than Mark, a mother to three children - extremely efficient. Mark had never seen such a competent secretary. She was, in his view, irreplaceable - when she wanted to leave to spend more time with her children, he'd fought to get her a flexible working pattern and an assistant who could cover the evenings.
"Good morning, Mark. How are you?"
Mark sighed. "It was a rough night, Sandra." There was no point trying to hide it. All the same, while Mark had known Sandra for a long time, he didn't want to open up to her about his wife's infidelity just yet. It was tender. "Anything come up this morning?"
"Bramley and Stockford called to ask for another extension, I told them that we've been patient and tomorrow is a hard deadline."
"Great, thanks," Mark said. That sort of thing was outside Sandra's job description. Technically, she should have told them that Mark would call them when he got in, but she'd been doing her job long enough, and well enough, that she often knew what Mark would do and could accurately and confidently make the same decisions he would.
They had a busy day. Mark started off by removing the framed picture of him and Becca from his desk. Sandra's assistant, a buxom young redhead named Lorna, arrived at 1pm for the afternoon shift, doing a handover with Sandra before she left to pick up her kids. Mark had quite a chilly opinion of Lorna. She was intelligent enough, but this was her first job out of university and she just lacked Sandra's well-drilled competence and confidence. He suspected that whoever hired her had been swayed by her pretty face and dynamite body. Lorna was a cute bespectacled redhead with an hourglass figure - slim waist, wide hips, and breasts that made eyeballs jump out of their sockets. Oh, Mark knew the recruitment manager would have taken one look at her and decided to hire without an interview. Still, she wasn't the worst assistant Sandra had had - it was a pretty junior position, so good options quickly moved on to better things and bad options sometimes had to be tolerated.
Mark had a packed schedule that day, and was desperately trying to cram small bits of work in around his meetings. He was glad he wasn't getting as many phone calls as usual.
He did get a text from Becca.
"Mark, I'm so sorry. You're the man I love and want to spend my life with. I have made a terrible mistake. I know I don't deserve forgiveness, but can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"
He didn't respond. He certainly couldn't forgive Becca right now.
Lorna knocked on the door. He beckoned her in, and she sashayed into the room. She just had an effortlessly sexy way of walking, all hips. Mark felt his cock harden, and wondered whether Lorna knew the impact her walk could have on men.
