Unintended Consequences

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the thick tropical air as I swayed gently in my chair to the music blaring from the speakers that were mounted above the bar. After a long, hard school year, this was exactly what the doctor ordered. For the next five days, I planned on doing nothing but lying on the beach, taking long naps, drinking margaritas at this funky little beach bar, and maybe reading a good book if I got ambitious.

I had just ordered my second drink when my phone buzzed. I glanced down to see that it was a text from Michael, my husband. "Hey Jules, I just wanted to let you know that the boys made it to my parents with no problems. You and the girls relax and have fun. I'll see you on Sunday. I love you."

"Thanks for letting me know. I love you too," I replied. "You enjoy your peace and quiet this week because when I get home on Sunday, you're going to need all your strength for what I have planned for you Mr. Elliott!"

"I plan on holding you to that. Bye now," he texted back.

Every year for the past five years, my friends Beth, Jen, Donna and I had made this trip to the beach as soon as school finished. Beth and her husband, Steve, owned this beautiful, four-bedroom house in Pawley's Island SC. We were all teachers, so it was nice to get away by ourselves and just relax for a few days with no kids and no husbands.

I think Michael enjoyed the break as well. Over the past two years, on the day that we left, he made the two-hour drive to drop our boys, thirteen-year-old Cole and eleven-year-old Jackson, off at his parents for two weeks at their lake house. So, we both got a few days by ourselves to relax and then we had a week at home together to reconnect with no kids.

I was still lost in my thoughts, thinking about all the things I planned to do to my sexy husband next week, when Beth returned to the table with four guys in tow. "Hey ladies! Look who I found hanging out at the bar. Donna, you remember Mason and Lucas from that math conference we went to a few months ago, don't you? I was so shocked when I ran into them at the bar."

Beth quickly made introductions as Mason and Lucas, along with their friends Phil and Jonathan pulled up chairs to join us at our table. The rest of the evening was pleasant, with a lot of talking and laughing. We even did some dancing for a while before Jen and I decided to call it a night. Beth and Donna wanted to stay a little longer, so the guys offered to drive them back.

When we got back to the house, Jen and I went straight to bed. Between the drive down and a few too many drinks, I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep. I must have really been exhausted, because I didn't stir the entire night until I awoke the next morning to the bright sunlight and the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

Jen and I sat on the porch drinking coffee and talking for most of the morning before Beth and Donna finally emerged from their bedrooms. Apparently, they hadn't gotten back to the house until two or three in the morning and they looked like they were paying the price for overindulging the night before.

After a light lunch, we spent the afternoon on the beach reading, sleeping, and drinking margaritas until someone finally suggested that we should probably head back to shower and go to dinner. After we all showered, Beth poured tequila shots for everyone and between the shots and the margaritas from earlier, I was buzzing pretty good when we headed out to dinner.

After dinner, we stopped in again at the Pawley's Island Tavern for some more drinks and live music. As luck would have it, the guys were there again, so we spent the evening dancing and drinking until the band finished around midnight.

As we were headed to our golf cart for the short ride back to the house, Beth invited the guys back to the house for a "surprise" desert that she had cooked up. Jen and I tried to tell her that we didn't think it was a good idea for four married women to have these guys hanging out at the house, but she insisted that it was all just innocent fun and that we should just "lighten the fuck up!" We knew Beth well enough to know that it was a waste of time to argue with her, so we just went along.

When we got to the house, everyone settled into the den as Beth put some music on and disappeared into her bedroom to retrieve her surprise. When she returned, she was waving a brown paper bag in front of her and asking "who's up for some really special brownies?"

"Oh my God, Beth. Are these some of those THC edibles?" Donna asked.

"Fuck yes!" Beth said. "My friend Sandy just got back from Colorado and brought me a whole bag as these."

"Uh Beth, I'm not sure that this a good idea. A little drinking is one thing, but marijuana is a bit too much," I said.

"Oh, come on Julia! Quit being so such a goody goody. You're out of town, you don't have to drive, and we're out of school for the next three months, so you don't have to worry about a drug test. Try having a little fun for once on your life, "Beth argued.

At that point, everyone seemed to take Beth's side, so I finally gave in an agreed to try just one.

After eating the brownies, we all danced a little before the effects started to really kick in. By the time I realized what was happening, my head was really beginning to spin and I felt really sleepy. So, I sat on the sofa and closed my eyes to try to get the spinning to stop. I'm not really sure about a lot after that. I remember feeling someone playing with my hair and a hand caressing my inner thigh, followed by some gentle kisses on my neck.

"Oh God, Michael. You know how that drives me crazy," I whispered.

I was still in this haze as he grabbed my hand and led me towards the bedroom. By the time we got to the room, I was so turned on that I didn't wait for him, I simply pulled him back onto the bed and started ripping his clothes off and throwing them on the floor as he crawled on top of me. He was obviously as turned on as I was because he didn't even stop to take my panties off.

He simply lifted my sundress over my head and pulled my panties to the side as he rammed his cock into my already soaking wet pussy. There was nothing loving about what we were doing. This was just a primal, animal fuck. I can remember feeling his weight on me as he rammed his cock into me over and over.

I don't know if it was the alcohol or the marijuana, but this whole thing felt like some kind of out of body experience. It was like I was watching the whole thing from above as he fucked and licked me to orgasm after orgasm. I don't remember how long it lasted or when it ended. I just remember waking up at some point, still in some kind of haze, and heading to the bathroom to pee.

When I returned to bed, I could feel Michael's naked body next to me, so I rolled over and curled up to him. I couldn't help but smile a little as I felt the sticky remnants of last night's sex between my legs. My head was still spinning and I wasn't really sure where I was. I could remember going out with the girls and dancing with some guys at the bar, but why was Michael here? He was supposed to be back in Charlotte.

Subconsciously, I began tickling his chest like I always did when I curled up behind him, but something wasn't quite right. Why did he have hair on his chest? Michael's never had any body hair. My addled brain was struggling to put the pieces together when suddenly it all hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea how I had gotten there, but I was suddenly aware that I was curled up with some naked man who wasn't my husband.

I jumped out of bed in a panic and ran back into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. By now, the tears were flowing a I began to remember small snippets of what had happened last night. Between my tears, I finally got a good look at myself in the mirror. Damn! I looked horrible! My eyes were red and swollen, there were bite marks on my neck and on my breasts, and the dried remnants of some strangers cum were all over my matted pubic hair, my stomach, and my inner thighs.

As flashes of memories from the prior evening came back to me, I was suddenly nauseous, barely making it to the toilet before the contents of my stomach exploded from my mouth. When the vomiting finally stopped, I crawled into the shower and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it and spent the next hour trying to scrub the guilt off of me. But hot water and soap couldn't wash off what I had done. I was still sitting on the bench in the shower, sobbing, when the hot water finally ran out so I got out, dried off and wrapped myself in my towel.

Opening the bathroom door slightly, I peered into the bedroom to see if the strange man, who I think was named Jonathon, was still there. Luckily, the room was empty and upon further inspection, he was no where to be found. I guess my panic attack must have scared him off.

I wandered into the kitchen, surprised to see that someone had already made coffee. After last night, I was sure that no one else would be up till noon. I poured some coffee headed to the porch to try and figure out how things got so fucked up last night and what I was going to do about it.

Out on the porch, I found Jen already sitting in the swing. When she looked up, she looked almost as bad as I felt. We spent the next several hours talking and crying trying to figure out what we were going to do about what we had done. We went through as many options as we could think of before finally accepting that the best way forward was to avoid those guys at all cost for the rest of the week.

That would be the easy part. The hard part would be telling our husbands and begging for their forgiveness. We tried our best to come up with a good reason to just keep it to ourselves and chalk it up to a painful learning experience. But I had never lied to Michael and I didn't plan to start now. As painful as it would be, I knew that as bad as my cheating was, lying would only make it worse.

For the rest of the week, things were really strained in the house. Beth and Donna spent every night with Mason and Lucas while Jen and I stayed home by ourselves most nights. We did pick up take out a few nights, but we did everything we could to make sure that we didn't run into Jonathon or Phil. To be honest, it was a miserable few days.

All I could think about, was how I was going to handle this discussion with Michael when we got home. I played out the conversation in my mind a thousand times, but none of them ended well. I was even getting a little paranoid. Michael and I always sent these flirty texts to each other whenever we were apart. I tried my best to fake it and make mine as flirty as I normally did, but his seemed to all be really cold. Had he found out somehow?

"No Julia! Stop with the paranoia! There's no way he could know. He's probably just got a lot going on at the office," I told myself. But, no matter how many times I told myself, I couldn't get past this feeling that there was a lot more than stress from work going on with Michael.

Finally, Saturday morning came and we loaded up Beth's Tahoe for the ride home. Jen and I rode, mostly in silence, for the four-hour drive. Unfortunately, Beth and Donna weren't so reserved. They went on and on for four hours about all the crazy sex that had over the past week and how it was better than the sex at the conference when the first met Mason and Lucas.

Suddenly, it was all making sense. Those guys weren't at the beach by coincidence. This whole thing was planned out by Beth and Donna. Jen and I were furious that we had been set up. They tried to apologize, but it didn't really do much to ease our outrage.

Their plan was to use the alcohol and marijuana to make us oblivious to their affairs, hoping that we would just get sleepy and go to bed early. They never dreamed that we would end up cheating ourselves. It was easy to blame everything on them, but deep down, I knew that they didn't force me to do anything. I was a grown ass woman and every choice I made was mine and mine alone.

I thought it was odd that Michael wasn't home when they dropped me off at our house. In fact, I had spent most of the trip home trying to figure out how I was going to handle our reunion. Every year when I came home from this trip, Michael would meet me at the door and we would spend the rest of the day in bed taking advantage of having the whole house to ourselves. But, this year, he was nowhere to be found.

I dragged my suitcase upstairs to our bedroom trying to think of where he may be. When I got to our room, my heart sunk when I saw a large manilla envelope lying on the bed with my name on it. I knew the instant that I saw it that there was no way that this was going to turn out good.

So, I opened the envelope and slowly pulled out three 8x10 photos showing me having sex with Jonathon at the beach house. There was a picture of me lying on the bed with him kneeling beside me while I sucked his cock. Another showed me in the same spot with him licking my pussy and the final one showed me, once again, in the same spot with Jonathon's cock inside of me.

"Oh my God! He had known all week. But how? How the fuck did he get these pictures?"

Still in shock, I realized that there was more in the envelope, so I held it up and dumped the contents onto the bed before collapsing in tears as a handwritten note from Michael and his wedding ring fell out of the envelope. I'm not sure how long I sat like that, but I finally picked up the letter and started reading.

"As you can tell, your yearly whore's trip is no longer a secret. I'm not sure how I could have been such a fool all of these years, but at least I finally know the truth. I hope it was worth it. I will contact you before I go pick the boys up next week to work out our custody arrangements going forward. I have already talked with Dan Hamilton, who runs our family law practice, and he will be serving you with the divorce papers later this week.

My first inclination was to file on the grounds of adultery to speed this process up, but I really didn't want to put the boys through that because then these pictures and the associated video would have to become evidence in the court case. So, my offer to you is to file on the grounds of irreconcilable differences as long as you are amenable to fair financial and custody arrangements. You can have your attorney negotiate these details with Dan.

Also, I have moved my things out of the house because I can't stand the thought of being around you at the moment. So, please do NOT try to contact me. At least have the decency to let me grieve the end of our marriage without causing me more pain.

Michael."

"Oh God! What have I done?" I asked myself. My stupidity and selfishness had hurt the only man I had ever loved and, in a few days, it would bring immeasurable pain to my boys. I tried to figure out how I was going to fix everything, but I was at a total loss. So, I did what I had always done when I needed help. I called my mother.

She must have heard the desperation in my voice, because she immediately dropped everything and made the two-hour drive from Greensboro that afternoon. We spent the evening talking about what I had done and crying together.

My Mom kept trying to convince me that things could still work out between me and Michael, but that I just needed to give him some time to sort everything out. I wasn't so sure, but she assured me that it was possible.

"Listen Julia," she started, "I need to tell you something."

"Okay Mom. I'm listening."

"Baby, I know that with a lot of work, you can rebuild your marriage. I know that because your Dad and I have done just that. You see, back when you were really little, he went to a medical convention while I stayed home with you and your baby sister. While he was there, he had a drunken affair, much like you did. It was a one-time thing and when he came home, he confessed everything and begged me to forgive him."

"Shit Mom! I never knew," I said.

"Well baby, it's not something that either of us like to talk about. But we're living proof that there is life and marriage after an affair. Now, I'm not going to tell you that bull crap about it being better than before. It can be really great again, but it will always be changed by what you've done. Just try to be patient with Michael. He may lash out at you. He may act out in some way. But I know that he loves you and that he will eventually be willing to hear you out."

Mom spent the next three days with me so that I wouldn't be all alone. We had a lot of really good talks and by the time she left, I had at least a glimmer of hope. It was only a glimmer, but it was something.

In spite of his request, I had tried several times every day to call Michael, but it was obvious that he had blocked my number because all of my calls went directly to voicemail. By Wednesday, I couldn't stand it any longer and decided that if he wouldn't answer my calls, then I would just show up at his office. I figured that at least he wasn't likely to cause a scene there.

I could feel my hands shaking as I walked up to the reception desk and asked his administrative assistant, Karen, if he was in. "Yes, Julia, he's in. But, I'm not sure that he wants to see you," she said. "It may be better if you go back home and give him a little more time"

"Well, I've given him four days and he's still avoiding my calls. He's got to talk to me eventually and there's no better time than the present," I replied.

I was halfway down the hall to his office, before she could react. I heard her pick up the phone to warn him, but before he answered I opened the door and burst in, "Hey Michael. I'm really sorry to bother you at work, but I really need to talk to you and you won't answer my calls."

"Well Julia, to be completely honest, unless you have something to say that is somehow going to unfuck that asshole teacher from the beach then I don't really give a fuck about anything you have to say!" he growled as he looked up from the papers on his desk.

I had this whole speech planned about how I was going to apologize and beg him for another chance, hoping that the past eighteen happy years might mean something. But, standing there, seeing the pain I had caused, the words just wouldn't come out. It suddenly hit me that I could never do enough to make up for the pain I had caused.

'Please Michael, I don't want to hurt you anymore. I just needed to see you and we need to talk about the boys."

"Julia, this is not the time and it's definitely not the place, so please go."

"I'm not going anywhere until you agree to talk to me. So, you can either meet me at the house after work, or I can stay here all day. I have nowhere else to go!"

After glaring at me for what felt like forever, he finally gave in, "okay, you win. I'll stop by after work if you'll just go."

"Alright Michael. I'll go, but please don't stand me up. I'm begging you. Just let me say what I need to say and I promise that I'll respect whatever choices you make moving forward."

True to his work, Michael showed up at the house just before 6:30. It broke my heart a little when he rang the doorbell instead of just coming in, but I understood. We made some small talk about his day as I made him a drink and asked if we could talk on the patio. I had always loved spending time with Michael in the swing on our patio and I hoped that being out there would help him relax a little. Tonight, instead of the swing, Michael took a seat at the patio table and waited for me to join him.

"Well Julia, what exactly is it that you needed to say that couldn't wait?" he asked.

Oh God, Michael! This is harder than I thought. But first, I want to say that I'm sorry. I know that it doesn't mean much right now, but I really am. I can give you all kinds of excuses for what happened, but none of that really matters. All that really matters is what I did and what I did was awful.