Today was her last chance to win the bet.
Isha's stomach fluttered nervously. Her plan had been in place for more than a week but it wasn't too late to call it off. The thought had nagged at the edge of her mind constantly ever since those first few mouse clicks and keyboard taps had set the whole thing in motion.
It's a stupid idea,
she told herself.
Obviously I'm not going to go through with it. Stop mucking around and just cancel it now.
Somehow she managed to hold off those doubtful voices and now here she was, only a few hours from the moment of truth. She was terrified, though she had to admit the idea was making her just a little horny too.
"Last day of the season today!" Lewis chirped from the kitchen table.
She rolled her eyes at him.
He looked back down at the iPad in front of him, no doubt reading the latest football news. The gloating look on his face remained. As far as he was concerned, the bet was already won. He had no idea what she had planned.
She imagined that triumphant look disappearing, being replaced with a combination of shock, awe, and fear, and she basked deliciously even in that fanciful glory. That childish competitive streak of hers! It had already caused so much trouble.
It was her parents, she thought. Her father especially. His parents--Isha's grandparents--had come over from India in the Fifties. They had worked hard to build a life so that their kids could be born British. "And so I'm British, whatever anyone else thinks. And so are you." He had spent most of his life competing with those around him, arguing and fighting with his peers to overthrow Indian stereotypes and prove himself as inherently British as anyone else. He had cultivated the competitive streak in Isha from an early age, believing it would give her an advantage in life. He had taught her draughts, chess, backgammon, risk, monopoly, scrabble--and taught her there was a deep, humiliating shame in losing at any of them.
She looked over at Lewis. She loved him now as she had when they'd first met fourteen years ago, but she raged at the thought of losing to him.
They'd married young--just twenty-three--and now they were closing in on thirty-five. Another fact that no doubt had contributed to this situation, she thought wistfully.
She knew from the moment they first met that he was sex mad, a bit of a pervert. They'd been introduced by mutual friends at the pub and she could tell from the way he looked her up and down, as if she was some tasty morsel he wanted to devour. He didn't care about her brown skin--he just wanted to tear all her clothes off so that he had access to every inch of it. She shivered and tingled as their eyes met.
Things were so complicated with the other guys she met: there were the shy ones who looked at her like she was some exotic, fragile being they might break if they spoke too loud; the dickheads who just wanted to sleep with her so they could tick "Asian" off some internal list; the overly-sensitive guys who wanted to talk about her upbringing and her experience of social inequality just to prove to her (and to themselves, and to anyone else they could include in the conversation) that they were woke.
Not Lewis. He saw her, he liked her, he wanted to bone her. Simple.
This wasn't how he approached their courtship. He was a gentleman. He was sweet and funny and considerate. They chatted for a while and he asked for her number at the end of the night. They started texting the next day and it didn't take much longer for him to get what he craved; she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
It didn't occur to her that it would turn into something serious, but suddenly they'd been seeing each other for a few months and they agreed it was official. Exclusive.
They did talk about the important stuff, and she found that Lewis was much less ignorant than she had originally assumed he would be. He acknowledged what she told him about being brown-skinned in a white society, about what it was like growing up as British Asian. He had a surprising depth of insight into how this affected her life and her outlook. Most telling of all, he knew that he could never truly know what it was like for her. He could listen to her stories, uncover the ignorance within himself and those around him, and know when others were being offensive. But he would never know what it was like to be on the receiving end of it all. He understood that he could never
understand.
He had a voracious sexual appetite--he hadn't just wanted to strip her naked and devour her that first time: he'd wanted to do it over and over again. He could have sex three or four times a day, and when they were married two years later this hadn't changed. She found herself struggling to keep up, but it wasn't just the volume. He was experimental--downright kinky if she let it get out of hand. He seemed to want to try
everything.
Every position, every sexual act invented--once he heard about it, he wanted to do it. He was respectful of her wishes but he would sulk whenever they came across something she wasn't keen on. Like anal. She had said no to him on this maybe a thousand times since they had first got together (she'd never counted but often wished she had)--before finally giving in.
It had been fine, and sometimes even now she would let him take her up the arse.
There were a number of other things over the years he had seemed especially interested in--making their own amateur video, sex outside, a threesome--but she had said no to all of those and he had never really pestered her about them the way he had with anal. Then one day he blurted out that he wanted to try swinging. She answered him with a firm slap across the cheek and stormed out of the house. She didn't speak to him for two days.
When things calmed down a bit, he explained in more detail for her: "I never need to sleep with another woman again for the rest of my life. It's about you. I want to see you having sex with someone else, my own little porn star doing a live show for me."
That softened her a bit--certainly, her first thought had been that he'd wanted to have sex with another woman--but she still said no. "It's not my kind of thing," she told him. "We've been married for three years. You must know I'm not into anything like that."
He shrugged. "Well, you don't really know unless you give it a try."
She still said no; but then he would bring it up at least once a month after that. When his birthday approached and she asked him what he wanted for it, he told her simply: "I want to see you sleep with another guy." Then again when Christmas came around.
Finally, after nearly eighteen months of badgering, she told him she would give it a try. "I don't know how you think we'll make it happen, and even if I find someone I like, I don't think I'll be able to go through with it...but fine. Let's do it."
He was like a big kid for a week after that. She set up a profile on Tinder and began swiping. She got a lot of matches but most of the guys were scared off when she explained the situation. "Don't tell them you're married," Lewis suggested, but she was adamant. She was going to be honest about it all. This would be a one-off thing and she wanted any potential partners to understand and be happy with that.
She found a dozen likely candidates. All good-looking, available, and who understood the situation and were happy to play their part and say goodbye...but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. It was just idle chit chat punctuated with her making excuses for why she couldn't meet up. "It needs to happen naturally," she told Lewis. "I just can't arrange for it to happen in advance--it makes me feel cheap and dirty."
They went out a few times to places where Lewis thought they might have a chance, but nothing ever materialised. The idea drifted away and for years they forgot all about it.
And then, out of the blue, it happened. Last New Year's Eve they were at a party--a house party hosted by one of the guys from Lewis's rugby team. They got drunk and silly. By four A.M. the party had dwindled to just a handful of people, slumped on the sofa and passing around a joint. One by one, members of the group began to drift off to sleep.
She was sitting close to Lewis on the sofa, but there was another guy on the other side of her, also pressed in close. He was a distant cousin of someone, on a month-long trip from Australia. He was handsome, chilled out. Lewis noticed right away that he was interested, the way his eyes roamed all over Isha's body. He told her that he thought Adam was interested but she waved him away, told him he was being stupid.
But as the three of them sat on the sofa, squished together like that, she knew Lewis was right. Adam's hand kept brushing her leg.
Lewis whispered into her ear: "It's okay."
She looked around and saw that everyone else had fallen asleep--it was just the three of them left. Lewis gave her a knowing wink and then closed his eyes and let out a soft snoring sound.
