The Cheating Zone 14: Warning Signs
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All episodes of "The Cheating Zone" can be read as separate stories.
For the nit-pickers who want to say this or that would never happen, remember, this is the Cheating Zone, a place outside the normal space-time continuum where literally anything is possible... Please remember, this is a work of fiction, meaning that it is not real in any way, shape, matter or form.
...
Your eyes flit from left to right as you drive down the tree-lined country road, looking for any signs of danger. You look ahead as the headlights pierce the inky blackness of night. There's a signpost up ahead. You've just entered... The Cheating Zone.
(Cue dramatic music.)
...
Jennifer Greene hummed to herself as she prepared to leave for work that Monday morning. She took one last look in the mirror to make sure everything was just right. Her long blonde hair was just as it should be, and her makeup was just the way she liked it. Her dress fell just above the knee and highlighted her curves just right.
She looked at the picture of her and Miles, her husband of six years, on her nightstand and blew it a kiss, imagining that he could feel it even though he was on a job site four hours south of home. He was a project manager for a major construction job that would last about seven months.
He had already been on site for the last three months, driving home every Friday to spend the weekend with her before heading back down on Sunday. This was the biggest job he had ever worked and he wanted to get it right. She was so proud of him but she missed being with him during the week, even though they would spend as much as two hours either on the phone or on Skype every night.
Some of those calls got pretty steamy, and she would often find herself naked under the covers with her vibrator -- Little Miles, she called it. More than once, they ended up either having phone sex or teasing each other into a mutual masturbation session on Skype.
Convinced that everything was as it should be, she headed to the kitchen, where she poured herself a cup of coffee, using one of those paper travel cups. She grabbed her purse, making sure she had her phone, and headed out to the bus stop just outside the complex where they lived.
She could have driven her own car, but the truth was she really enjoyed this time of the day. She would get to the bus stop about a half hour before the bus arrived and pull out her phone so she could start to catch up on her reading. Once on the bus, she would spend that half hour reading her daily stories.
Jennifer loved to read, but not just any old stories would do. She enjoyed reading erotic stories online and spent much of her free time reading the offerings on a couple of websites. It was her one naughty indulgence, and one that Miles didn't mind as it seemed to get her motor running when they got together.
One site she thoroughly enjoyed had been around for over twenty years and had thousands of stories in all kinds of genres, mostly written by amateurs. Most of the time, she stuck to romance stories, but had also spent a lot of time in a section the site dedicated to what it called "Loving Wives."
Sadly, there were quite a few wives in that section who were, frankly, anything but "loving." She remembered sharing one of the stories with Miles, a story about a wife who had a long-term affair with a man and even gave birth to the man's child, passing it off as her husband's. Miles simply shook his head and muttered something about it all being a bunch of bullshit.
"No self-respecting man would put up with that level of disrespect and betrayal," he told her at the time.
"You don't think he should've forgiven his wife and tried to move forward, for the sake of the child?" she asked him. He shook his head.
"Nope," he said. "I could see maybe if it was just a one-time drunken indiscretion or something like that. But I can't see how he could get past years of betrayal. And passing her bastard child off as his? No way. You're not thinking of doing something like that, are you?"
"Oh God, no, Miles," she exclaimed. "I love you too much to do anything like that."
"I hope so," he said. "And I would never do anything to hurt you, either."
"I know you wouldn't," she said. That was over four years ago and the subject never came up again. And she meant what she said. She would never do anything to deliberately hurt her husband, and she never had any intention of cheating on him.
But sadly, she missed him in her bed at night. Even though he came home over the weekend, and even with their marathon calls and Skype sessions, she needed him next to her in bed. Until a month or so ago, she never once thought about having sex with another man. Then her company brought Jake Williams in from their New York office.
Jake seemed to be everything a girl could want. He was handsome, bright, witty, muscular and exhibited a boyish charm and a quick smile. He also sported a rather significant package below the belt, something all the girls in the office commented on.
She often had to remind herself that she was a happily married woman when she was around him. So far, he had made no overt sexual moves toward her, but he had taken her to lunch a few times.
Surely there was no harm in that, was there? It's not like he had offered to take her to a motel, and all they ever did was talk shop. Well, except for those few times she lamented that her husband was out of town on a long-term project.
"He's crazy for leaving a beautiful woman like you by herself," Jake would say.
"We talk every night, and he does come home for the weekends," she responded.
"Still, that's no way to live," Jake said. "Listen, if you ever want to get out of the house for dinner or something, let me know."
"Thank you, Jake, that's so kind of you to offer," she said. She never took him up on his offer, and she never mentioned it to Miles. But now, she was beginning to think, "what could it hurt?" After all, it was just dinner. It's not like she was going to sleep with him.
She finally got to the covered bus stop and pulled out her phone. Logging into the site, she saw there were several new stories for her to read. One, however, jumped out at her. It was called, "A Warning To Jennifer, Pt. 01," and it was written by someone using the handle, "TCZ_Zrglbork." She had never seen that writer's name before, and she felt strangely compelled to open the story, so she did.
She was shocked as she found that one of the main characters in the story was a woman named Jennifer Greene. That's my name, she thought as she read. Worse yet, the woman's husband was named Miles, just like her husband.
Many of these stories start with a bit of biographical information, and this story was no different in that regard. The Jennifer and Miles in this story led the exact same life that she and her husband led, and even met in college the same way they did. The more she read, the more concerned she became.
The characters in this story led the EXACT same lives she and Miles led. They even had the same jobs, lived in a condo just like theirs and even had the same likes and dislikes. It was almost as if someone had written a biography of them -- without even talking to them first.
When the bus pulled up to the stop, she put her phone away and climbed on board. After taking her seat, she got her phone and continued reading. The similarities between the two main characters in this story and them was too uncanny to be a coincidence.
There was another character that appeared about halfway into the story -- Jake Williams. The story went on to described her lunches with Jake. Even the words spoken between them were the same.
"My God," she thought to herself. "Someone must be watching me. Is it Miles? Is he having me tailed? Did he write this? Is he really 'TCZ_Zrglbork?' How can I explain this to him?"
She continued reading the story, which even discussed the emotions her husband felt -- how much he loved her, and how bad he felt about working so far away from his bride. It even talked about how much he missed holding her at night and making love to her.
He had to be the one who wrote this, she thought. No one else could recall this much detail about their lives together. Maybe this is his way of sending a message to me, letting me know how much he really loves and adores me, she said to herself. But how could he possibly know about Jake and what was said between us over lunch?
