Twenty Minutes

When we'd dragged our suitcases into the front hall of our house, I stopped and took Angie by the hand.

"Honey, I'd like us to sleep in the guest room for right now. I'm not ready to go back into our bedroom yet, but I do want you with me."

She nodded, looking troubled but not surprised. "That's fine, Alex. I was afraid you'd want to sleep apart from me."

We got unpacked and settled in, had a lazy dinner, went through the mail that had piled up. When I heard the phone ring, I instantly thought, "Connie!" I called to Angie, "don't answer it, OK? Just let the machine get it."

She came into the room, looking quizzical, and I said, "I just had the feeling it was Connie calling, and I didn't want either of us to answer until we'd talked about her."

She instantly blushed. "OK, Alex."

"What I have to say is pretty simple. Connie is your close friend, and you're entitled to have the friends you want to have. On the other hand, I blame her in part for your affair. Not that it wasn't your choice and your responsibility, but Connie's filling your ears with the delights of her own adultery didn't exactly help.

"So I won't ask you to stop seeing her. But from now on, the details of our marriage are off-limits, OK? I'm sure she'll want to know all about our trip, and how we're doing.

"You can tell her that we had a nice time, and that we're working on getting through this. But beyond that, it's none of her damn business. Fair enough?"

I wasn't angry but I'm sure I sounded firm, and Angie didn't even attempt to disagree with me.

"Yes, honey. I've been thinking about that too. I guess I'm a little mad at Connie myself, even though I have no right to be."

"Oh, Angie, one more thing. Connie doesn't know that I know about her affair, and I want to keep it that way. All right?"

She nodded, and I let the subject drop. We talked for a few minutes about work and some other things.

Then, not wanting to wait, I took Angie by the hand and led her upstairs into the guest room.

I was feeling more apprehensive than sexy, but I wanted to make love—I wanted to see if I could still feel affectionate and loving, so close to the scene of Angie's adultery. To put it more bluntly, I wanted to get the first fuck out of the way.

We undressed, got in bed, kissed and snuggled and touched one another. But the spark wasn't there. Angie looked more and more uneasy, and I was afraid she was going to cry.

"It's all right, baby," I said, stroking her shoulders. "We knew it wouldn't be so easy at first, back in this house again."

She nodded, and kissed me gently, then planted sweet little kisses all over my face and neck. I lay back as she slid gently down my body, leaving a trail of kisses, until she reached my cock, still only slightly erect. It was clear what she had in mind, and I was happy to let her proceed.

Her lips and tongue didn't drive me as crazy as they had—repeatedly—down in Florida, but they were more than enough to produce a satisfactory hard-on. With an enormous smile, Angie slid on top of me, straddling my waist, and guided my cock inside her.

We went slowly at first, as she wasn't all that wet. But gradually we both relaxed, and the slow gliding of her pussy up and down my cock turned into a more energetic plunging. Both of us seemed to relax and stop worrying—instead we were just fucking, enjoying one another.

I loved having Angie in this position because I could cup and hold her breasts, and this time she pushed them hard into my hands, arching her back and groaning. I caressed and pinched her nipples, enjoying as she moved faster and faster on me. Then when I knew she was close I put my hands on her hips, guiding her down on me as I humped up into her. With a gasp, she came, and I felt her spasms as my own orgasm overtook me.

We lay together, both of us feeling happy and very relieved. It seemed like we'd just cleared an important hurdle, as silly as that might seem.

After a few minutes I said, "Angie, why don't you bring me your list?"

Looking stricken, she went to her suitcase and returned after a minute with a legal pad. Climbing back into bed and handing me the pad, she snuggled tightly against me. Her face pressed into my neck, she said, "OK, Alex. I knew this was coming. But I am just scared to death! Please, please don't throw me out now!"

I kissed her hair. "Angie, I know this won't be much fun for either of us. But I'm still convinced that 'writing over' what you did with Tommy is going to help us get past it. So I've got to look at what you've written."

She just nodded, and clung to me more tightly. I picked up the pad and began to read.

"The First Time. At Tommy's apartment. He gave me a soda and rubbed my back. Then he took me into his bedroom.

"We didn't talk. He undressed me, then himself. His cock was sticking up at me. He lay me down on the bed and started kissing and touching me. I was very excited.

He got a condom, and we did it in missionary position. He was excited too. He went very fast, no subtlety. He came in just a couple of minutes. I was excited but I didn't come.

"We lay there for a while, kissing and talking. He went to the bathroom and washed, then came back and wanted to have sex again. He asked me to suck him to make him hard, and I did. Then he put on another condom and we had sex in the doggy-position, with him standing on the floor.

"This time he lasted a long time. He held and stroked my breasts, and he made me come once while we were doing it. Then after a while he came. We rested for a little while, then I took a shower, got dressed, and left."

I stopped reading and just lay there, feeling the adrenalin course through me. I realized my jaw was clenched so tight that my teeth hurt. Angie lay beside me, no doubt feeling the tension in my body, afraid to move or make a sound.

"You asked for this, Alex," I said silently to myself. "Now be a man and take it!"

It wasn't that she'd written anything surprising. In my own imagination I'd created scenes that were far wilder, far more upsetting than what I'd just read. It was rather the simple reality of it—the difference between my own unhappy imaginings and the cold facts of how Angie had had sex with another man. It hurt a hell of a lot.

I took some deep breaths, found myself growing a bit calmer, and read on.

"The Second Time, three days later, at Tommy's apartment. We met in the afternoon.

"In the car on the way there I changed out of my work clothes. When I got to Tommy's I only had on a halter top and my skirt, no underwear.

"When I came into the apartment Tommy kissed me, and I took his hand and slid it up my leg. When he realized I had nothing on underneath he got very excited. He sat me on a kitchen chair and went down on me, kneeling on the floor in front of me.

"He pulled down my top and caressed my breasts while he ate me. I came twice, the first time right away and then again after five more minutes.

"Then he carried me to his bed and we had sex, missionary position, me still wearing the skirt and top. I put the condom on him first. I had another orgasm before he came.

"After we rested, we took a shower together and washed each other, also caressing and exciting each other. Then we dried off, went back to bed and had a 69, with me on top. We both were very excited. I didn't come again, but felt a lot of pleasure. When Tommy got ready to come he held my head down on him, and more or less made me swallow. Then I showered again, and went home."

I stopped again, considering how I was feeling. I was angry and hurt, but no worse than I had been after reading about their first tryst. I decided to push on, read all of the rest and get it out of the way.

The other times were much the same, with the variations you might expect. They did it four times at his apartment and twice in our house, the second time being the time I heard them at it. That day he'd been held up at school, arriving nearly an hour later than expected. They'd had one quick fuck, and when she tried to get Tommy to leave he'd insisted on another round. Trusting that I wouldn't come home from work any earlier than usual, she'd given in.

As furious as I was, I also felt relieved that it wasn't worse. He hadn't ever fucked her bareback, she hadn't let him take her anally (as far I as I could tell he hadn't asked), and they hadn't done anything she and I hadn't done ourselves many times. Irrational or not, these things helped me feel a little better.

I realized that Angie was still clinging to me, and I could feel her trembling. I said, "all done, Angie. I've read it all."

She looked up at me, waiting for an explosion, but I just gazed at her.

"Yes, I'm mad," I said. "And hurt—hurt most of all. All I could think of as I read it was, 'how could you?'

"But I was also glad that it wasn't worse. Frankly, Angie, I was scared that he'd have done something you and I have never done, or excited you in a way I'd never been able to do.

"I'm sure you can understand this: I was afraid that you'd want to go back to Tommy, for more of something he'd given you that I couldn't."

She sat up in bed, looking at me fiercely. "There was nothing like that, Alex! It was ... exciting, you know, just because it was somebody different. And it was ... secret, like you said. I knew it was wrong.

"But there's nothing special about Tommy in bed, believe me! He was eager and fast, but not terribly considerate or sensitive. Never once did I feel like he was making love to me—or even that it had much to do with me at all. It was fucking. My body turned him on, and he liked fucking me."

I looked at her. "And his body turned you on, and you liked fucking him."

She blushed and looked away, nodding.

I pulled her to me, holding her, stroking her hair, feeling her sobs begin.

"It's all right, Angie. We're going to do everything you and he did, only better. We're going to write over it, OK?"

She nodded vigorously against me, still crying. We held each other tight until she was calmer, then without another word we slept.

********

I awoke to the smell of coffee and quickly headed downstairs. Angie, in her bathrobe, was standing in the kitchen smiling at me, getting ready to scramble the eggs I always ate for breakfast.

"Why don't we do something different today, Angie—how about I take you out to breakfast?"

She looked surprised but pleased, and I added, "not what you expected from your predictable old husband, is it? Well, I'm trying to be a little less predictable."

She came over and wrapped herself around me for a long hug.

"Just as long as you keep on being the wonderful, loving man I married, I'll be happy with a little unpredictability."

When I got in to work I was greeted by a lot of smiling faces. People were glad to have me back, and maybe also glad that I seemed to be OK—John must have mentioned something about my marital troubles.

I spent the morning getting caught up on the past couple of weeks, and was pleased to find only a couple of small fires for me to put out. My staff had indeed risen to the occasion, and I praised them sincerely for how well they'd kept things running.

The only difficult thing that day was not worrying about Angie, not wondering what she was really doing at work or whether she would call Tommy. It was hard to believe she would—but then when your trust is gone, imagining the worst turns out to be awfully easy.

The afternoon brought me the call I'd been waiting for, from a security whiz named Caleb whom I'd contacted from Florida. I knew about him because he'd once done some work for our company.

I'd put Caleb on Tommy's trail, asking for any information about Tommy's life, specifically including his fiancée and his own activities. And he'd struck gold.

It turned out that Emily, the fiancée, was also a teacher: she taught history in a local high school. Even more interesting, she was a distant relative of the Heinz family, and worth a lot of money.

And it also turned out that Angie had not been Tommy's only recent playmate. He was fucking Darlene, a secretary in the principal's office at Tommy's school, a couple of times a week. Caleb, that wizard, had a lovely set of pictures of the two of them doing naked acrobatics in Tommy's bed—somehow he'd gotten access to an apartment in the building right across the alley from Tommy's.

That evening I explained to Angie how I proposed to deal with Tommy. My plan began with Angie writing a letter to Emily, revealing to her that Angie and Tommy had been sleeping together while he was engaged to Emily.

Angie was reluctant to write the letter, but I was firm with her. First, I said, it would never be sent. I only intended to use it as leverage with Tommy. Second, I asked her bluntly, was she more interested in protecting Tommy or in reconciling with me?

That question brought a few tears, but without further protest Angie wrote out the letter I dictated to her.

Later that evening I set up a new Hotmail account and emailed Tommy. Using a made-up name, I introduced myself as the Superintendant for a neighboring school district: I had heard about what a good teacher Tommy was, and was interested in possibly hiring him for one of my schools (at a considerable raise, of course). Since luring a teacher away in mid-year was a bit "irregular", I suggested that we meet privately some afternoon that week to discuss the possibilities.

We met on Thursday afternoon in a local coffee bar. Tommy was a big, open-faced guy with sandy hair and bright blue eyes. He wasn't unusually handsome, but I could see that women would find him attractive.

After we shook hands, he began at once to ask about the job. I held up my hand to stop him, said, "why don't you just read this first?", and handed him a photocopy of Angie's letter.

After only a few seconds he looked up at me, confused and angry. "What the fuck is this?" he hissed, trying to keep his voice down.

Without losing my cool I said, "just read the rest of it, Tommy, and then we'll discuss things. And you should know that there are several other copies of this, all in the hands of friends of mine, all ready to be mailed if anything should happen to me or Angie."

As Tommy read the rest of the letter his face flushed with rage. Finally he put it down and glared at me. "All right, asshole—what is this all about?"

I smiled. "First, let me introduce myself. I'm Alex Ravenna, Angie's husband.

"Second, you had an affair with my wife and I'm not happy about it.

"Third, you're engaged to a very wealthy young lady, and if she sees this letter you'll be totally fucked.

"How am I doing so far, Tommy?"

There was a silence as he glared at me, undoubtedly considering his options. He didn't have a lot of them.

He said, "Emily would never believe that letter anyway—I could convince her it's all bullshit."

"Oh?" I replied. "What about the part where Angie perfectly describes your bedroom, even down to the nice photo of you and Emily on the dresser? And what about the part when she talks about those cute little birthmarks you've got, one on your shoulder and one just to the right of your pubic hair? How are you going to explain those away, lover-boy?"

"All right, all right!" he spat at me. "What the fuck do you want?"

"It's very simple," I replied. "I promise that Emily will never see this letter. In return, you give me a key to your apartment, and the right to use it for the next three weeks."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You fucked my wife in your apartment, Tommy. Now I'm going to fuck her in your apartment. As many times as I like, in your bed, on your kitchen table—wherever I want, for the next three weeks. Then we're done. You don't see me, you don't hear from me, I give you your key back, and all the copies of that letter go right into the trash."

He sat and stared at me, no doubt wondering why he was getting off so easily.

"That's it? Three weeks, and then I'm done with you?" I nodded.

"And how do I know that you won't send the letter anyway?"

"That's a good question, Tommy," I said. "You don't. You're going to have to trust me on that. But you don't have much choice, do you?

"I give you my word, once the three weeks is up you get your key back and Angie and I are out of your life."

There was more silence. Then he said, unwillingly, "Jesus H. Christ! OK. But when will you be using the place?"

"Only on weekday afternoons—that's when you were there with Angie, right? So you'll need to stay out of there from 2:30 until 6:00 every weekday for the next three weeks. Nights and weekends are all yours—knock yourself out."

After a few more questions and answers, we got up together. Three stores down was a hardware store, and Tommy had them copy the keys to his building and his apartment. He sullenly handed them to me.

Smiling, I gave him the copy of Angie's letter. "You can dispose of this one—I have more. Today's the 3rd. If you don't play any stupid games with me, Tommy, I'll mail these keys back to you on the 24th. Then it's bye-bye Alex."

I waited to see if he had anything else to say. He didn't. Shrugging, he turned and left me.

I caught myself whistling as I came in the door of my house. I must be feeling better! As I entered the kitchen I saw Angie at the stove and Connie sitting at the table. Both women turned to me, looking vaguely guilty.

I said "hi" and went over to give Angie a kiss. Before I could speak to Connie she said, "hi Alex. Listen, I've got to be going—hope to see you both soon!"

"She seemed awfully strange, Angie," I said after a minute. "What's going on?"

Angie said, "Connie came over about an hour ago, and we caught up for a while. As you can imagine, she asked a lot of questions, but I fended most of them off. I told her that we were working on our relationship, and that we'd had a good time in Florida. But I also told her that I felt incredibly guilty for what I had done with Tommy—and that in the future I was going to have to keep the details of our marriage private, even though she was my close friend.

"She didn't protest that at all. I think she realizes how all that raving about Henry contributed to what I did, and to the trouble we're having now."

"And that's what that guilty expression was about?"

"I guess so," Angie said.

I wasted no time telling her about my conversation with Tommy. Her face was a fascinating mixture of eagerness and dismay. I told her I wanted to begin right away, and asked that she meet me at his apartment tomorrow at 3pm.

"OK, Alex. Can I just say, though ... I'm feeling a little bit freaked-out about this? I want to do what you want, but it makes me feel even more guilty, you know? Like going back to the scene of the crime."

I held her, and stroked her hair. "I can understand that, I guess. But let's both keep in mind what the goal is: to enjoy each other, to have a good time, to make some new memories on top of some upsetting ones.

"When I think of you with Tommy, I want to be able to replace those thoughts with memories of you and me together, doing what you did with him, enjoying each other."

She pulled away far enough to look into my eyes. "I don't deserve you, you know that? Instead of ... punishing me, raking me over the coals, throwing me out on my ass—you're being so loving and patient with me."

I answered her very seriously. "Well, perhaps right now you don't deserve me. God knows you've hurt me. But I love you—and when I think about our whole relationship, all these years, you've made me happier than anyone I've ever been with.

"I hope that after a few weeks, or a few months ... we'll both feel that you deserve me."

She gazed into my eyes, and without another word gave me a long, intense kiss.

********

The three weeks of writing over Angie's affair were weird but fun. I knew that I'd have to cope with feelings of rage, and I did. But doing it in Tommy's apartment was also exciting—it almost felt like we were having an affair together. And Angie, as I'd anticipated, was desperately eager to make it good for me, to follow through completely on my idea.