Tick... Tick... Tick
by
Vandemonium1
I was rereading my old story, 'Deafening Silence' the other day and figured I may have overdeveloped the cheated upon husband. I wrote this one as a bit of a laugh. As the world goes through a very troubling time, a laugh and a little distraction can do no harm.
WARNING: I've crammed in as many clichés as I could think of below but packaged them in what I hope is a unique way. This one has been independently rated at 3/5 pickaxe handles on the btbometer.
Myself and my partner/editor/beautiful lady, CreativityTakesCourage, hope you enjoy it and wish you all the best.
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I thought I was arriving early at the lawyer's office but by the time my attorney turned up and we were led into the conference room, Dave and his lady advocate were already there. This prompted the jealous reaction that always consumed me when I saw him interact in any way with a beautiful woman. I suspected that deep down I'd always felt a little inferior to him. He was a brilliant catch for any woman. At forty-eight, he was more handsome than he'd been at twenty, tall and muscular, owned his own successful business, and headed the local chamber of commerce. I shuddered at the thought that if today didn't go well, I might never feel his big, comforting arms around me ever again.
Dave hardly glanced up as I followed my attorney into the room. My face, I know, blanched, as the slim, red-headed, classically beautiful attorney bitch reached over and squeezed my husband's left forearm, just above the wrist, a gesture of reassurance that she was there for him. It was a little out of place in that setting, but not inappropriate. Officially, it was just her reassuring her client and settling him down. I, however, interpreted it as,
"Let's get this shit out of the way so I can drop you as a client and check out that bulge in your pants."
I knew from long experience that she was in for a treat if that happened. My husband was endowed better than most and knew how to use it.
Dave turned to her and smiled his beaming, familiar, jovial smile but his face was well on its way to neutral before turning and glancing at me again. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and scream that I was a stupid bitch that would spend the rest of my life spoiling him rotten if only he forgave me the one serious mistake I'd made in our twenty-eight-year marriage.
That wasn't the way I'd negotiated it happening though. Frustrated at Dave's determination not to speak to me at all, I'd been forced to this meeting.
My attorney began chatting to the red-headed bitch while I lowered myself into the seat opposite Dave, took the manila folder from my over-large purse, opened it, and spread my prepared, two-page script in front of me. I glanced up and caught Dave smiling faintly. After knowing me for thirty years, he knew that I prepared for everything important. He opened the laptop computer that rested on the table in front of him before plugging in a couple of small speakers, then lay a single sheet of paper and a biro beside it. Then, very offputtingly, he rested his hands on the table and looked at me with a horribly bland face. Totally emotionless. No anger. No hate. No grief. No nothing.
I'd prepared for this meeting for three days and I knew my script by heart. I'd used my intimate knowledge of David Brown to tailor it to tug precisely on his heart strings.
At that point, the two attorneys stopped chatting and the bitch brought the meeting to order.
"Well, we all know why we're here. The respondent, Mrs. Julieanne Brown, has agreed to sign the divorce petition, as presented, if my client, David Brown, will listen to her for a period of no less than one hour. If everyone is ready, I suggest that the hour begins now."
She turned the dial of a small kitchen timer on the table in front of her. It began a loud ticking which accentuated the silence around the room. I was still annoyed that Dave hadn't agreed for this meeting to happen in private but insisted on his lawyer being present. I was proposing to bare my soul over the next forty-five minutes, before getting Dave to admit he'd done some things to partially justify my unjustifiable behaviour. All embarrassing enough with just the two of us present. Humiliating in front of strangers as well.
Oh well, no point in dwelling on the negatives. It wasn't like I had a choice. I glanced at my entirely redundant notes on the table and crossed my fingers. My friend, Sonya, had used my opening gambit to talk her husband into not throwing her out when he caught her cheating. "Their ego is damaged," she said. "Start by repairing that." I cleared my throat.
"Thanks for agreeing to see me today, Dave. I'd just like to say from the outset that I was wrong in what I did and none of it was due to any failing on your part, but was all down to me being a self-centred, selfish bitch."
It had taken me days of introspection to come to that conclusion and I knew Dave would welcome my honesty. It was critical that it looked like I was taking all the blame before subtly placing thoughts that he may have contributed somewhat in his head. I firmly believed that Dave wanted with all his heart to forgive me but needed an excuse to do so. My whole speech was geared to giving him that excuse. If the kids had still been at home, I would have played the, 'oh, Dave, you can't break up the family', card, which would have been a guaranteed winner. Oh well, you can only piss with the dick you have, as Dave would say.
I glanced at his face to see how my speech was being received and was taken aback by his reaction. In the ticking silence of the room, Dave's expression was still neutral. He wasn't even looking at me. He just lifted the biro and put a tick beside the first sentence of his notes.
That almost threw me completely. With my opening words, I'd obviously said exactly what he'd expected me to say and that shook my confidence. In my arrogance I'd forgotten that not only did I tailor my argument based on thirty-years of knowledge of him, but he'd spent those thirty-years looking back at me. I'm not ashamed to say I was rattled. So much so that I kept entirely to my script.
"Um, as I said, Dave, it was all down to me and some stupid, selfish choices I made. I was feeling lost with the kids gone and a little old, unattractive, and useless when I met Jason through my work on the church committee. He was subtle and was also obviously a master seducer. He knew exactly which buttons to press and when.
"He started off pretending he was just a friend, listening to all my problems after the church meetings. That was when you were away a lot last year. Then one day they kicked us out of the church straight after the meeting, so Jason suggested we go to a coffee shop and I stupidly agreed. It all seemed so harmless and he appeared to be a good friend, so I didn't realise that he was very skilled at getting under a woman's defences.
"Well, coffee shops led to restaurants where he complained that his wife didn't understand him. I know that's an old cliché, but by then I trusted him. The restaurants became classier and classier, the gifts he bought me nicer and nicer. Oh, Dave, you have no idea how complimentary it is to have a guy fifteen years your junior trying to woo you. You would have been proud of me, though; it was over four months ago that he asked me to sleep with him and I turned him down.
"I know I should have refused to see him after that, once his intentions were clear and all, but by then I'd become kind of dependent on the effect his compliments and attention had on my ego and confidence."
I paused and sniffed at this point, rubbing my eyes with the finger I'd rubbed on the piece of onion in my pocket. It stung like a bitch, so much so that I dared not rub the other eye. One eye streaming tears would have to be enough. I halted, re-started, stammered, and hesitated.
"Oh, darling, I'm so ashamed I didn't break it off with him. He took me to a restaurant and bought me a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Grange, even though he doesn't drink wine. Rather than waste it, I ended up drinking just about all of it. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he wanted. I was too tiddly to resist him when we left the restaurant. He offered to drive me home and I stupidly agreed. Once in our driveway, he leaned over and kissed me, and I was too drunk to stop him. You know how I get after a wine or two. Then he started rubbing my, er, breasts. My logic was all screwed up at this point and I remember just thinking I had to get him out of my driveway so the neighbours didn't see us. That's also the reason I opened the garage door and got him to park inside."
I was taking a little bit of a punt with my admission that even in the car I thought Jason might be staying for a while and certainly didn't want the neighbours to see a strange car in the driveway the next morning. But it was all a calculated risk on my part. I knew enough about men in general to know being cuckolded is a severe blow to a man's ego and I wanted Dave reassured no one else would ever know about it. Well, apart from the two lawyers, that is.
"Well, Jason got out of his car, as the garage door was closing and began kissing me again. Like I said, I'd had most of a bottle of Grange and was ripe for the plucking. He grabbed my key and led me inside. I steered him into one of the spare bedrooms and, I'll be embarrassed about this till the day I die, let him have his way with me. I'm so sorry, Dave. My only saving grace is I was with it enough to make him wear a condom."
"After Jason, um, climaxed, I think we both fell asleep. Me, because I was drunk, and him because he must have been exhausted after a four- or five-month chase. I do know that I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't drunk and would have been mortified when I woke up and I most definitely would have kicked him to the kerb immediately.
Instead, you came in. When you entered the room and turned the lights on, I've never felt so ashamed in all my life. The look of pain on your face just killed me. I realised what damage I'd done to you and us with one simple lapse of judgement."
With tears still tricking from one of them, I turned beseeching eyes toward my husband. After a lifetime together, I knew I could read his expression like an open book and would be able to judge how my plea was going. Wrong! His expression was still neutral. In fact, he wasn't even looking at me. Bizarrely, he was fiddling with the bloody laptop in front of him. I thought he was writing notes until he must have clicked on a link on his screen. A voice came from the speakers. My voice.
"Ugh, don't kiss me, your breath reeks of beer."
