A high pitched ping alerts Foster of yet another text message. Grabbing the towel from the hook, he wrapped it around his body before stepping out of the shower and onto the foam mat.
"I haven't even been in here ten minutes," he grumbled to himself. He quickly dried off and slipped on a pair of sweats, grabbing a t shirt from a pile of clothes in the basket on the floor of his bedroom, and padded down the stairs. "Ouch!! What the fu..." he growled and looked back to see the lego village left on the stairs.
"Watch the language, Foster!" his wife yells to him through the kitchen. "And do you not answer your text messages?!" she adds.
"Dammit! I forgot my phone upstairs. Sorry, I didn't even see the texts. I was in the shower."
He could hear the mumbling sound of her still speaking to him but he turned and ran up the stairs to grab his phone off the hamper and then back down, hoping he hadn't missed much of what she was saying to him. No such luck, because as he was four steps from the bottom he glanced down to see his wife, hands on hips, scowl on her flushed face, and burning eyes. Whatever he missed must have been important to her and now she was pissed.
Foster met Jessica 13 years ago. She was married at the time and they worked together at a bar. Foster was the bouncer and Jessica was a cocktail waitress. Even though she was married, he felt a little butterfly dance in his stomach every time she walked into the bar for work.
Her light caramel eyes sparkled at him when she said, "Hey! We busy yet?" as one strand of hair fell over her eyes. Her cheek were pink as if they had just been pinched before she walked in. The longer they worked together, the more he got to know her.
Jessica also had three children. Two were still in diapers and the 3rd was 10. Her husband, from the way she described him, was a drunk jackass and Foster caught himself daydreaming about ways to sweep Jessica and her three kids up, and whisk them off to happily-ever-after.
One particular night they were both left to close the bar. He realized they were the only ones left in the smoke filled mess when her husband finally slammed through the door yelling that he was sick of having a whore for a wife. Foster could hear her sniffling behind the counter, and there she was, slumped down on the dirty floor, head in her hands crying. He finally worked up the courage to tell her how he felt about her. Tell her that he thought she was beautiful, full of life, and an amazing woman. And also let her know that any man would be lucky to have her.
They exchanged numbers and began texting back and forth; innocently, for the most part. However, it wasn't long before they were knocking over boxes in the storage room while in full make out sessions. Foster had gotten to the point where he couldn't think about another woman.
Girls would ask him out and he would just smile and say, "No thanks. I'm not looking to date at this time." He had told Jessica in text messages how he felt about her and he figured they would go on like they had been for a year or two and then she would stop it, or he would get tired of being a side dish.
That is until she showed up on his door step at 3 in the afternoon one day with bags in hand, two twin boys and a teenage daughter in tow, and tears streaming down her pretty face. She divorced her husband and had moved in with Foster in less than two months time.
"Babe, I'm sorry." Foster was trying to fix the mess he made with his wife by not staying at the bottom of the stairs to allow her to finish what she was trying to say to him. Even if he did think it was ridiculous, this was the only way to move past it. Apologize, take blame, kiss ass, move on. This was the way things worked with Jessica. It wasn't always so difficult with her. In the beginning she was fun loving, carefree, and easy going. Foster couldn't really put a finger on when things changed or why.
"Just go grab pizza, please. I don't feel like cooking dinner on top of everything else today." she sighed, still annoyed with him. He pulled her into him and kissed her forehead, and then grabbed his keys from the bowl on the dining room table and walked out to his truck.
"COME GET YOUR PIPING HOT PIZZA!!" Foster called in a sing-song voice. Screeching and elephant stomps filled the house as three boys ran into the kitchen.
"Cheese!! Tell me you bought cheese!! Foster! Is it cheese??!!" yelled Cooper.
"I bought cheese. Calm down. Sit at the table."
Cooper and Conner were twins, and both from one of Jessica's previous marriages. Then they had Dalton together about two and a half years ago, which came as a huge shock to Foster. He hadn't wanted any kids of his own at the time, but couldn't imagine his life without Dalton now.
Foster moved through the kitchen grabbing plates and cups, and then served the kids their pizza. He scooped up Dalton and put him on a pile of books on a chair next to his brothers.
"Where's your mom?" Foster asked Cooper.
Cooper just shrugged with a mouth full of pizza. Foster walked through the maze of toys in the living room and climbed the stairs calling for Jessica. When he opened their bedroom door, he found her curled up in bed with her back to him and seemed to be sleeping.
"Seriously??" he thought to himself, annoyed. Quietly, he closed the door behind him and went back downstairs to have pizza with the boys.
The house was finally quiet when the last kid was put down for the night. Baths were given, dinner dishes and kitchen cleaned up, and toys put away. It was 9:45pm and Foster was beat. As he scrolled through his different social media accounts on his phone he came across a curvy woman in a bikini posted by a buddy of his. "WET WEDNESDAY" was the title at the top and he clicked on the link to find curvy, busty beauties in wet bikinis, wet t-shirts, and glowing wet skin.
He grew hard and realized it had been at least two weeks since he and Jessica had even had sex. She had been going to bed to read or have "alone time" long before the kids finished dinner and so Foster never really tried. He knew he should probably climb the stairs and into bed with his wife. He could wrap his arms around her and see if she wiggled up against him. Maybe then he could wake her fully by crawling between her warm legs and...
"What the hell are you doing?" Jessica's annoyed voice asked behind him. He realized that with his phone on "WET WEDNESDAY" and daydreaming about how he would proposition his wife into sex, his hand had moved down his pants and was rubbing his erection.
Jessica grabbed his phone and then threw it back at him as he jerked his hand from his pants, embarrassed.
"Oh I see," Jessica's eyes were now wet, and her bottom lip trembled, "This is what you want. Fake tits, fake tan, covered in water for your viewing pleasure. I'm not enough for you. I knew this would happen." she pouted.
Forster mumbled under his breath and Jessica screamed, "What?? Here we go again?? Is that what you just said? What is that supposed to mean?"
"Hush babe, you'll wake the boys. I just wish you wouldn't put yourself down when I look at another woman. I'm not doing it because I don't want you anymore. I'm looking because I have eyes. I think you're sexy, god...so sexy. I was thinking about going upstairs to wake you and that's what made me hard. Not this." Ok, so it was sort of a lie. The wet t-shirt really did it for him, but he was honest about the fact that he had been thinking about her.
"Whatever," she sobbed. "Just sleep on the couch with your fake internet girls." Before he could protest, the bedroom door was slamming and Dalton wailed from his bedroom.
"Shhhit." Foster cursed under his breath.
HONK HONK HONK HONK
Foster chucked his phone across the living room and the sound still blared, now from further away requiring him to get up off the couch and shut it off. He didn't even have a chance to dream and felt like he had slept 15 minutes tops.
Tripping over toys, he walked to the downstairs bathroom to relieve the pressure in his bladder. On his way, he passed the kitchen and found Dalton smiling with an entire box of lucky charms on the floor. He was picking out the marshmallows and eating them.
Foster left the cereal on the floor and scooped up Dalton after returning from the bathroom, then went upstairs to wake Jessica.
Leaning into her, he kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, "I'm so sorry about last night baby."
She shrugged him off and told him to leave her alone in a groggy voice. Defeated, he returned to the kitchen to clean up Dalton's mess and then woke the twins. In an hour, everyone was ready to go for the day and out of the house. Everyone except Jessica.
On his commute to work, Foster thought about ways to take some pressure off at home. They could really use a house keeper or an in home baby sitter. If he could find one person to do both things, that would be perfect. At a stop, he typed a quick email to Jessica offering the suggestion.
His work day was long and tiring. He sat in his truck parked in his own driveway at 6:04pm taking in the silence. The interior was filled with the smell of McDonald's. He figured it would be easier to assume dinner wasn't prepared than have to go back out into traffic later. He finally pulled himself from the truck with three bags of food in his arms. When he opened the door he noticed everything in the house was dead quiet.
"Hello?" he yelled out. Nothing. The living room had been picked up somewhat from the morning and the dishwasher was running.
"Eeeeaaaayyyyyy!" he heard Dalton's squeal from outside. Foster dropped his keys on the floor and bolted out the back screen door but instead of a hurt little boy, he found Dalton on the swing set. Joslynn, Jessica's 21 year old daughter, was pushing Dalton on the swing and they were both giggling.
"JOS!" Foster called to her.
"Hey Foster! Look buddy it's your daddy!" called Joslynn.
"DAAAD!!" squealed Dalton, hopping off the swing and running into Foster's arms.
"What are you doing here? Where's your mom?" Foster asked Joslynn.
"I called her yesterday and she seemed pretty out of it. I thought maybe I would come home for a few weeks. She's upstairs sleeping. She used to do this when she was married to dad. It infuriated him. I know you have a lot more patience with her than he did but I was still worried that you would snap under the pressure." she explained.
"Used to do what when she was married to your dad?" Foster asked.
"Go into these depressions. She would just snap and become a sad person hiding away in her room for weeks without coming out to do more than pee or grab some food."
"Great. That would have been good info to have years ago." Foster grumbled.
