The School Reunion

Chapter 2 The following morning, Claire was already up when I woke. I went downstairs and found her at the kitchen table with a piece of paper in her hand. “Good morning,” I said, stretching before making myself a drink. “Do you want a coffee?” “Yes, okay,” she said, absentmindedly. She was staring at the note. “What’s that?” I asked, as I sat next to her with two coffees in hand. “Just a note that I found in your pocket.” She passed it to me. “Care to explain?” The note was her mobile number and a short message: Call me tomorrow if you want to talk xxx Steph. “Shit,” I said. Steph must have put it into my pocket when I kissed her cheek and she hugged me. That was probably what she whispered in my ear, to call her. “I felt ill and she was checking I was okay. We got talking and made friends and I guess-” “Women don’t give men their mobile numbers because they’ve made friends.” Claire pouted again. “What’s going on?” I hadn’t had time yet to form a plan of how I was going to deal with everything. I was still processing the facts at the moment, still trying to digest what happened last night. Besides knowing that I didn’t want our marriage to end just like that, I had no idea of what I wanted to happen. “Nothing’s going on,” I said, still surprisingly calm despite my mind whirling and trying to work out what to say and how to approach things. If I told her outright what I’d heard and Steph had confirmed, then what I’d seen down that alleyway, how would she react? “Then explain it,” Claire demanded. “If it’s innocent, explain to me. Or shall I call her myself and ask her?” I couldn’t believe the balls of her, to be honest. She’d fucked her ex-boyfriend and yet had the nerve to call me out over her friend giving me her number. Maybe it’d be best to let Steph explain? Then I had a thought. Was Claire being this way out of guilt? That would make sense, but the way she’d been so confident last night about me having no idea didn’t make sense. Even now, the way she was reacting, she was fully in control. There was no show of nerves or anxiety. She was as cool as a cucumber with what she’d done. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time? If not, how many times had she done this? Even if I told her what I knew, and she confessed to it - seeing as she couldn’t deny it after Steph’s testimony and what I’d witnessed with my own eyes - would she admit to anything else? Of course not. She’d deny everything. Like she’d told Steph, she’d pretend it was a one-off thing. Just a drunken fling. A mistake. A moment of drunken passion that she wishes she could take back. How would I know if she was telling me the truth? She’d lied to me for all these years. And I never, ever suspected a thing. “I got upset.” I said. That much was true. “You abandoned me to go dance with your friends, and I got lonely. For some reason, the beer got to me and I got kind of upset. I went outside and Steph was there. She offered me a cigarette and asked me what was up.” “And she gave you her mobile number?” Claire scoffed, disbelievingly. ”Not just like that, Claire. We talked and she could tell I was upset. I’d told her that I’d heard some guy at the bar talking about you. He said some stuff that I knew wasn’t true and-” Claire’s face changed instantly. “What stuff?” She interrupted me. “He said that Aaron had slept with you at school. But you told me that he hadn’t. You said that you lost your virginity to that older guy.” “Marvin,” Claire nodded. “What else did they say?” She was still cool, but I could sense just the beginnings of an undercurrent of anxiety in her voice now. “Nothing,” I lied. “Just that. I got upset because I knew they were making it up. I remember you saying those guys caused some trouble for you, so I guess they made stories up or whatever. I wanted to punch their lights out but didn’t want to ruin the party for you, so I went outside.” The look of relief on Claire’s face was evident briefly, but she smoothly covered it up. “Then you met Steph and asked her or something?” “Exactly,” I went along with Claire’s presumption. “She told me it was all bullshit and said that if I heard any other rumours and felt uncomfortable asking you, I could always give her a call and she would put the facts right for me.” Claire was silent for a moment. Did she believe me? She stared at the note in her hand. “I should give her a call and say thank you. I’ll be back in a moment.” She went back upstairs and I heard the bedroom door close. Carefully I walked up and pressed my ear to the door. They were already talking. “Thanks for covering for me last night,” I heard Claire say. “You know, what you said to Paul.” There was a minute’s pause. Steph must have asked Claire exactly what I’d said because Claire then went on to repeat everything I’d just told her downstairs. “So yes, I just wanted to say thanks. You’re a true friend. Listen, if he does call you, you’ll stick to that story, right? Cool. Okay, I’ll call you soon and we’ll do lunch?” I walked downstairs quickly before she caught me and carried on sipping my coffee like nothing had happened. “Okay now?” I said, “You should keep in touch with her. And your other friends.” “Oh, I’m going to,” Claire sat back down, sipping her coffee too. “It was nice to catch up with so many old friends. I got all their numbers and intend to meet up with a few of them again soon.” “No ex-boyfriends though?” I half-joked. “Especially ones that you were rampant at school with?” If Claire was bothered by that comment, she didn’t bat an eyelid. “Of course not,” she said smoothly through the steam of her hot drink. She even laughed at my sarcastic comment. I felt momentary anger running through me and suddenly decided what I had to do. I needed to find out the truth for myself. Claire had kept the note, but I’d memorised the number. First thing was to speak to Steph again. I kissed Claire and left for work, but the whole day, I couldn’t concentrate. At lunch, I took the afternoon off, feigning illness and called Steph’s number as soon as I was out. “Can we talk?” I asked her. “I need some advice.” “Who’s this?” she said. I hadn’t introduced myself. My mind was still in a whirl. “Is it Paul?” “Yes. It’s me. I know Claire called you this morning. I just need to ask you something.” “I can’t talk on the phone right now, but I can come and meet you somewhere, if you want?” “That’d be great. I’m free right now, if you are.” Steph agreed, and we arranged to meet at a local coffee shop for a chat. The place was out of the way, somewhere we’d be sure that there would be no prying ears listening in on our conversation. “You look rough,” was the first thing she said when she saw me. “Thanks a lot,” I managed to smile. I was a little hungover and I guess I’d rushed this morning when getting ready. Looking great hadn’t been at the top of my list of priorities. We found a table in the corner of the shop and sat down with our coffees. Steph looked lovely. Dressed smart, in a feminine trouser suit, straight from where she worked at some estate agency, . She’d undone a few buttons on the shirt, enough to show a modest bit of cleavage. I tried not to think about the pass I’d made at her last night, or her desperation offer of sex to stop me from leaving Claire. “So what the hell happened this morning?” Steph asked me. “Her phone call was kind of confusing.” “I told her that I’d overheard Tom talking.” I repeated to Steph exactly the story that I’d told Claire and everything that had happened this morning. She nodded as she listened. At the end, I told her how I was feeling. “I don’t want to leave her, I don’t think. I just want to know the truth. Then I guess I can make a decision as to our future.” “Well,” she said after taking a moment to think, “It’s good that you’re not overreacting. I would be, in your situation. You’ve done well to keep your head, considering everything.” She paused again. “What did you want to ask me?” “The truth,” I said honestly. “Everything that you know.” “And what will you do, if I tell you?” “Nothing. Yet, at least. I’ve got a plan.” I smiled at Steph but her pretty face didn’t smile back. She was obviously worried about being dragged into all this. “All I want you to do is have lunch with her. Like she suggested. Just find out what you can about how she really feels about me. You said last night that she was saying all these things about being so in love with me, but how can she be, when she did what she did?” Steph shrugged, so I carried on. “Find out for me if there’s anything else going on. And most of all, keep to the story.” Steph took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be part of the reason you split up. Claire’s my friend.” “I’m not asking you to split us up. I’m asking you to help me find out the truth, so I can get on with rebuilding my marriage somehow.” She looked uncertain, but eventually gave in. “Okay. So what else did you want to know?” “You can start by telling what happened in the past. How much of what Tom said is actually true? That you know of, anyway.” Steph chewed her lip for a second. “Don’t hate her, Paul. She was young and people make mistakes when they’re young.” I nodded for her to carry on, so she did. “It’s all true. She bragged to me that she’d lost her virginity with Aaron, then admitted to sleeping with Tom and Nick, and eventually the threesomes and foursomes that they had. I couldn’t believe it, but I saw it once when we went to a party. Claire went into a bedroom with Aaron and Nick and I had a sneaky look through the gap in the door. She was in between them both having sex.” “Like a spit roast?” I had to ask. Steph pulled a face. “I don’t like that word, but yes, I guess it’s called that by some people. I’m not into all that stuff, never have been and I told Claire that I thought she was being a bit slutty.” “I bet she didn’t like that.” “Not at all, but we didn’t fall out over it. I tried to be a good friend and protect her from those scummy boys but it all went horribly wrong when Mr Broadhurst caught them that time. Luckily he was a great guy. Otherwise Claire’s name would have been mud.” I remembered something. “Mark said to me last night that there were rumours she’d screwed him. The gym teacher.” Steph shook her head. “Rumours happen. Mr Broadhurst was just looking out for her and the reputation of the school. Claire was grateful to him, but I’m sure if she’d done anything with him, she’d have told me. She liked bragging about her conquests.” “There were others?” Steph’s face fell. She’d slipped up. “She calmed down after the incident at the gym, but when she left school, she had quite a few boyfriends. She really let her hair down, but that’s okay. It doesn’t mean anything bad. I had a few boys too. You know how it is? It’s good to get stuff out of your system when you’re young.” “She told me she lost her virginity at college to her boyfriend’s older friend.” “Well, there was one guy she was dating, I don’t remember his name but he dumped her pretty fast when he learned about the school thing. Claire ended up in bed with his dad, a really slimy guy. He pretended to be there as a shoulder to cry on for Claire, but really he just took advantage of her. Like I said, don’t hate her, Paul. She probably hid all of this from you because she liked you and wanted to make a good impression.” I could understand that but I still felt betrayed. And stupid. Taken for a fool all these years. “I need to know if what happened last night with Aaron has happened before. Has she cheated on me already in our marriage or was last night the first time?” Steph spread her hands. “I have no idea, to tell you the truth. We fell out before you met. Last night was literally the first time I’ve seen her since then.” “That’s a shame. Why did you fall out?” “I was dating Aaron,” Steph said slowly. “Claire found out and didn’t like it, so we had a big argument. The next day, I went to Aaron’s house because he wasn’t returning my messages or calls and I caught Claire in bed with him once again. So that was it.” “Ouch,” I said, wishing I hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry.” “I fell out with the pair of them. The last I heard they were seeing each other for a while after that but I hadn’t heard anything from either of them until last night. I knew from the grapevine that they split up again, then that Claire met someone and got married. I heard that Aaron got a better job and moved down south. Then as far as I know, they haven’t seen each other for years but then...” “Then last night happened,” I agreed. “Thanks for everything, Steph. You’ve been really good to me. You don’t owe me any of this, but here you are.” She smiled. Her blue eyes twinkled. “I like you. You seem like one of the good guys. I wish I could meet someone like you.” “You’re single?” I asked, surprised. She was too good-looking to be unattached. “I keep looking for Mr Right and only finding Mr Right-Now or Mr Plain-Wrong,” she sighed again. “I know I’m being as bold as brass right now, but if you and Claire don’t work it out…” There was an awkward silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to say, but then Steph burst out laughing. “I’m just messing around with you, Paul. I’m sorry. I’m a terrible tease. Just trying to lighten the mood.” She grinned at me mischievously. Was she joking? Or was she being semi-serious? We left it there. Steph promised to try to find out what she could from Claire, and I said I’d see if I could get her to admit to anything herself. I really didn’t want to leave my wife. I was a firm believer in marriage and trying to work out your problems instead of just giving up right away, but this was a pretty serious betrayal of trust and would take some fixing. Steph gave me a kiss on the cheek as I left and reminded me that I could call her at any time to talk things through, if I needed someone to talk to. I decided to head home early. Who knows what I might catch Claire doing. I didn’t shout out, ‘Hi, I’m home,” like I normally do when I walked through the door. There hadn’t been any strange cars on the drive, nor were there any banging headboard sounds or soft moaning coming from the upstairs as I quietly hung up my coat and kicked off my shoes. What I did catch her doing, was nothing more exciting than watching TV and texting on her phone. “You’re early,” she commented. “Are you okay?” “I felt a bit off to be honest,” I told her as I sat down next to her. “So I cried off sick. Who are you messaging?” If she had anything to hide, she showed no sign of it. “Oh, just Mark. He just sent me a message saying it was nice to see me again last night and he asked me to apologise to you for what he said as he left. He said he can’t remember what he was, but he knows he was really drunk and thinks he might have been rude.” “Ha,” I laughed. “Yes, he was drunk all right. Apparently, he saw or heard someone having sex around the back of the venue. When he tried to tell someone that worked there, they kicked him out for being drunk. Poor guy. He was just trying to do them a favour.” Claire blinked. The first time she’d ever given so much as a hint that something had gotten to her. Quick as a flash though, she sent Mark another message, then turned to me. “It wasn’t you and Steph fucking, was it? You were acting pretty suspiciously when I found you, and you did have her number in your pocket.” “Seriously?” “I’m joking,” Claire laughed. “I know you wouldn’t do that. I did have my doubts this morning, but I’ll sort it out with Steph tomorrow. We’re going out for lunch. I just came off the phone with her.” “That’s cool. You should definitely go. Catch up properly.” Just then my phone bleeped. I got it out of my pocket to see a message from Steph’s number. It read, ‘Just talked to Claire. Meeting tomorrow. She told me she used a condom last night so at least you don’t need to worry about catching anything. Talk tomorrow and will let you know what I find out xx Steph.’ “Who’s that?” Claire said, putting her own phone down just as I texted Steph back to say okay. “Just work checking that I’ve got home alright. I told them I’ll be in on Monday, all being well.” It was Friday today and I didn’t work weekends, so I had a couple of days to work on things here. To be honest, last night I hadn’t even considered that Aaron might have given something to Claire, some disease that I could have caught during sex when we got home. I wondered if it had been her idea or his to use the condom. Not that it mattered. Except for some reason, all these little details did matter to me. I felt myself wanting to know everything. Anger began to bubble up inside, so I told her I was going to go for a shower. Once under the hot water, breathing in the steam, I calmed down and thoughts of her being fucked filled my mind again. Visions from recollection and some from imagination. I stroked my hard cock, confused by the conflicting emotions that were still running through me until finally I came. Then all I felt was remorse and regret, so I called down to Claire that I was going to have a nap, just to make myself feel better, which was true. I stayed out of her way most of the evening, and had an early night so I was asleep by the time she joined me in bed. The next morning, I did something that I’d never done before. While Claire was in the shower, I noticed her mobile on the bedside cabinet. In all of our years together, I’d never felt the need to look at it, to go through her messages or look at her Facebook. She’d never given me reason to not trust her. Until now. She’d only been in the bathroom for a couple of minutes, so I knew I had time. I picked up the phone, expecting there to be a PIN or some sort of security lock, but to my surprise, the phone wasn’t protected at all. Then again, I’d never had reason to distrust her and I’d never looked at her phone, so she’d probably just never worried about it. I went through her text messages first but there was nothing of note in there. The latest messages were from me and her mother. The only other messaging app on there was Facebook Messenger, and again that revealed nothing. Strangely though, there weren’t any messages from Mark. She’d said that he’d messaged her, but nothing. Which meant that she’d deleted them. Nothing from Steph either. This was strange. Why would she delete their messages, but not the others, if she didn’t have something to hide? I flicked through her camera gallery. Again, nothing. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved, but just then I heard her open the door and quickly dropped the phone before she walked in, just in time. She glanced at the phone, then at me and frowned but didn’t say anything. I carried on with what I was doing before she went in the shower, reorganising my aftershave collection on top of the dressing table. “You okay?” she asked after a moment. She was covered only in a white, fluffy towel wrapped around her and her wet blonde hair was hanging down, freshly brushed through by the looks. Not every man might appreciate her curvaceous body, but I did, and I sat down, waiting for her to drop the towel to get dressed, smiling as I did so. She knew what I was doing and arched an eyebrow at me. “Can I get dressed, please?” “I’m not stopping you,” I grinned cheekily. “You’re obviously feeling better then,” she said, dropping the towel but turning away from me. “You barely spoke to me yesterday.” I stared at her curvy backside as she finished getting dry, willing her in my mind to turn around. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling myself, that’s all.” She turned and looked at me. I couldn’t make eye contact. Her breasts were still slightly damp, the moisture and the cool air making her light pink nipples hard. My eyes went down over her belly to between her thighs. Then the vision of the other night popped into my head unbidden and I had to wrench my eyes up to meet hers. “Good,” she said. “Are you going to stay out of trouble today while I have dinner with Steph? What are you going to do?” Claire put her panties and bra on, a plain black functional set, then finished getting dressed in jeans and a red t-shirt. “Nothing special. I thought I’d get my hair cut, then maybe call into the pub to see if the boys are in,” I replied. ‘The boys’ were some of the lads that I worked with. We met up every Saturday or Sunday afternoon to watch the football or just talk ‘man’ stuff. I had other plans, of course, but I wasn’t going to tell Claire that. For one reason or another, I did feel slightly better about everything that morning, and we chatted and had breakfast like any other normal Saturday morning until she went to meet Steph. I did as I’d said I was going to do, getting my haircut at the barber’s where I went regularly every month, but I didn’t go anywhere near the pub afterwards. Instead I called my best friend and asked him if he fancied coming over to ours for an hour. I needed a chat with someone about something. Lee Higgins and I went right back to primary school. We met at six years old and had been best friends ever since. He was my best man at our wedding and I’d been his. We’d been through everything together, ups and downs shared, and while we didn’t see each other more than once a week on a Saturday these days, I knew that he’d be the best person to go to for some advice. ‘Higgsy’ came straight around, like I knew he would. He had the okay to walk in without knocking, the only person beside family who had Claire’s approval to do so. I had two bottled beers waiting, football on the TV, legs kicked back on the sofa, so he picked up the beer and dropped down right next to me. “What’s up?” he said, after taking a long pull of the cold beer. “Everything okay?” “Not really, Higgsy.” I had to work out how to tell him and decided to just be brutally honest. “I caught Claire fucking her ex-boyfriend the other night.” He looked at me, then rubbed a hand through his mop of prematurely greying blonde hair. “Shit, man. Are you breaking up?” “Not yet. I don’t know. I didn’t exactly catch her. I just saw her. She doesn’t know that I know.” “Ex-boyfriend?” Higgsy’s face screwed up in thought. “She only slept with that one guy before you, didn’t she? I thought he was some old guy.” “So I thought, but it turns out that everything she’s ever told us was a lie.” Higgsy knew Claire really well, obviously. She’d told him the same as me, that she’d only ever slept with one guy before me and hadn’t had any proper boyfriends to speak of. “We went to her school reunion last week and to cut a long story short, I ended up at the bar while she went dancing with one of her old friends.” “Okay, carry on,” he encouraged me when I paused. Did I tell him everything? I guess I had to. This was Higgsy. He was cool about everything and always had the answers to things when I didn’t. “I heard some guys that had been in Claire’s year talking about her. One guy was reminiscing and told the friend he was with about Claire and his buddy, Aaron. He described how this guy used to finger her in front of him and his buddies, and then fucked her in front of them.” “I’m calling bullshit on that,” Lee scoffed. “This is the same Claire they were talking about?” “Yeah, they had old school photos on the walls. Same Claire.” I took a big gulp of my beer. “It gets worse. He then said how he’d also fucked her, and they’d gone on to have threesomes and a foursome once. He told his buddy she was the school slut for a while but that it all ended when one of their dirty little sessions, in the school gym no less, got busted by one of the teachers.” “And how did it get from there to you catching her with this guy?” Lee scratched his head, clearly not believing a word. “Obviously, I was upset, so when I got the chance, I asked her school friend, Steph if it was true. She didn’t want to admit to it, but I managed to coax her into telling me that it was. All of it.” “Claire. Your Claire. Our Claire. The Claire we know? This is unbelievable.” Lee was looking down into his lap, shaking his head. “The past is the past, dude. She was probably ashamed of what she did. She shouldn’t have lied, but it’s not the end of the world. It was before you. However, I guess you better carry on with the rest of it.” “I could live with her lying about her past,” I agreed. “But what happened after, I don’t know. It wasn’t the guy talking that I caught her with. It was the ex-boyfriend, Aaron. Steph was acting weird, and I had this gut feeling something was up. When some other guy told me that there was a couple fucking out behind the back of the venue, I just knew.” “No way.” “Steph tried to stop me, but I walked down this little alleyway, and there she was.” “With this Aaron guy?” “Yeah.” For the first time, I felt a lump in my throat and quickly swallowed it down. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Higgsy saw me cry. I lost my dad several years before and had broken down while out with him one night afterwards. I’d seen him in tears too, when his first girlfriend left him years ago. I wasn’t going to cry over this though. I took a deep breath. “What was she doing?” Higgsy asked then he sat up straight suddenly. “Sorry, That came out wrong. I guess I can assume-” “No, it’s fine,” I interrupted, not wanting him to feel awkward. “He was fucking her. They didn’t see me because they were facing the other way. He had her dress pulled up and her tits out and was doing her from behind against a wall.” It all came out in a rush. How I’d watched them for a minute, then walked away. I even told him about my clumsy pass at Steph and then how she’d weirdly offered me sex to get even with Claire. Higgsy didn’t say anything. He just listened, until I eventually caught up to me seeing Steph yesterday and even checking Claire’s phone this morning. Then I went silent, waiting for his reaction, feeling embarrassed, slightly humiliated and basically lost. “Wow,” he said after a few minutes. “I’m glad you feel like you can tell me this stuff, Paul. But I have to admit to wishing that you hadn’t. I really don’t know quite what to say. You must be in pieces.” My head was all over the place with conflicting emotions, but I wasn’t going to tell him about the fact that for some perverse reason I found it quite arousing that she’d been a slut in the past, or how seeing her fucking someone else had turned me on slightly. The fact was that anger and shock had easily overridden those emotions and won out, but I shouldn’t have felt them in the first place, so I kept them to myself for now. “I don’t want to lose her. She’s my wife, Higgsy. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I really don’t know what to do just yet.” “You have to confront her, Paul. It’s not easy but that's what you have to do. Sort it out.” “But what else has she lied about?” I had to explain my dilemma. “If she’s kept her past from me all these years, what else has she been hiding? Who else has she been fucking? If I confront her, yeah, she’ll admit to it, she has to. But how do I find out if there’s been anyone else before that? We’ve been married for ten years. I know Claire. She’s not just suddenly going to confess to everything. She’ll admit to what she can’t deny, but if there’s other stuff going on, I want to know about it before I confront her. I need to know exactly what I’m dealing with here, before I bring it all out into the open.” “Hold on here,” Higgsy stopped me. “Don’t you think that maybe it’s better off that you don’t know? Ignorance is bliss, so they say. Speak to her. Deal with the lies. Tell her what you know and how you saw her. Ask her what the fuck is going on. But don’t go digging deeper. You said you don’t want to lose her, so why go doing things, looking for more reasons to split up? You could open up a real can of worms.” I heard what he was saying. If there were others, did I really want to know about them? Would I be better dealing with what I did know, listening to her reasons and then trying to move on and fix what problems we had, without potentially creating more? Higgsy had a valid point, but I knew myself just as well as he did because he spoke before I did. “You just need to know, don’t you?” he said, with a tone of resignation in his voice. “Yeah. I can’t live pretending shit didn’t happen, or with distrust and doubts in my mind. Will you help me?” Higgsy pulled a face, but nodded. “She’s my friend too, don’t forget, but yeah. I’ll help. Not sure how I can though. I’m not going to try it on with her, if that’s what you’re thinking.” That wasn’t what I had in mind, although it would have potentially been fun. “No,” I laughed. “I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll let you know when I do. I just wanted someone to pour all of this out to, for now. Thanks, Higgsy.” “That’s what friends are for, mate. I’m sorry you’re in this situation, but we’ll sort it out somehow, I promise.” He punched me in the shoulder. “Now go and get another beer, there’s a good lad.” We had a couple more drinks before he left, citing that he didn’t want to be there when Claire got back. He was feeling the effects of the alcohol and didn’t trust his face not to give the game away that we knew. He timed it just right, because Claire arrived five minutes later, a little earlier than she’d estimated. She tossed her phone onto the arm of the chair and flopped down into it. “In future, remind me not to have Champagne cocktails in the daytime,” she giggled. “I’m not good with drinking during the day. It goes straight to my head.” “Had a good time then?” I smiled, while looking around to make sure that I’d cleared away Higgsy’s beer bottles. I didn’t want her asking what we’d been talking about all afternoon if she knew he’d been around. I felt slightly tipsy and didn’t want to risk accidentally dropping any clues. “Steph okay?” “Oh yeah. She confirmed that it wasn’t you and her having sex the other night. So you’re off the hook, mister.” “Told you,” I forced a bit of a fake laugh. It was hard to believe what a good actress she was. “We had a really good chat. She thinks of the world of you, by the way. I think she’s jealous of me.” Claire stretched and yawned. “I really am quite drunk. I think I need to go to bed and have a nap. Is that okay?” “You don’t have to ask,” I told her and she went upstairs, wobbling slightly on her feet as she did so. I was quite relieved as it gave me a while to sober up a little and compose myself before I found a way to speak to Steph later. Then I heard a ping. At first I wasn’t sure what it was but then I heard it again. I looked around and saw the screen on her phone light up. I checked the staircase to make sure that Claire wasn’t on her way down after hearing, then sat down and picked it up. It was a Facebook message from Steph. I pressed ‘open.’ ‘It was really good to see you again today. We need to meet up again next week. I enjoyed myself. I really hope you and Paul can work out your problems. He really does love you.’ What problems exactly? What had they talked about? At least I knew that I would be getting some sort of update from Steph when we next spoke. As I came out of the message, I saw another one, underneath it. A conversation with Aaron. I barely dared to click it. My finger hovered over it for a second. Was Higgsy right? Was I better off not knowing? Of course, I clicked it. The conversation was several messages long. ‘Hi Claire. Hope you don’t mind me messaging you through here,’ read the first one, from him. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t want Paul seeing them. He’s already suspicious, I think.’ So, she did have an inkling that something was up. ‘I want to see you again.’ Aaron put simply, in his next message. ‘Me too. But we have to be careful.’ My heart sank. ‘Does Paul work during the day?’ As horrified as I was, I couldn’t stop reading. The messages went back and forward over the space of an hour. She must have been with Steph while this was going on. By the end of it, Claire had given Aaron our address. He was coming over Monday morning. The phone dropped from my fingers, numb with shock at how quickly this had all happened. I sat there staring at the phone, before pulling myself together. I picked it up and cleared it back to the home screen, remembering to mark Steph’s last message as unread before I put it back where Claire had left it. Then I wrote a note and stuck it to the fridge, letting Claire know that I’d gone to the shop for some bits and went out for a walk to clear my head. As I paced around the streets, my immediate thought was that it was over between us. She was planning to see him again, presumably for more sex, and this time at our house. Probably in our marital bed. So, if it was a drunken one-off thing as Steph had suggested, then how did she explain this? Yes, she was drunk again, but it was hardly a spur-of-the-moment thing. This was planned, set up for Monday. Like I didn’t matter at all. This was full-on, flagrant cheating. I stopped at the end of the street, deciding to go back, pack a suitcase for her and tell her to get out, but something was stopping me. How many other men was she seeing, or had she done this with in the past? I had to know. Once we’d split up, I’d have no way of finding out. I needed to know exactly how much of a lying, scheming, cheating bitch I’d been married to all these years. I knew it was self-destructive, but I needed to know. Then, as I thought of her, imagining her in our bed, with another man on top, fucking her, I started to get turned on again. My cock was rock hard in my shorts, and I had no idea why. Was the burning fire inside me pure anger, or frustration, or arousal? Or a fucked-up mixture of them all? I had no idea, but I walked back to the house, deciding to try and put on some sort of poker face and ride this out until I had at least heard what Steph had to say. We went out for dinner as usual for a Saturday night, and I managed to be as ‘normal’ as I possibly could. I managed to keep a poker face and stick to my plan. Once we were eating and having a glass of wine, I did somehow push everything to the back of my mind for a while, and actually enjoyed myself. We didn’t stay out all night, as the drinking we’d both done at dinnertime took their toll and we found ourselves tired and happy to go home fairly early for a weekend night. By the time, we got in, my anger had completely gone and I was only interested in one thing - getting Claire into bed - and while she wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I was, a few kisses down her neck and across her shoulders soon had her responding. In the bedroom, I couldn’t wait for her to get undressed. I pulled down her top and bra cups, spilling her breasts free and pushed her on to her back. “Easy, tiger,” she giggled, wriggling away from me. I managed to grab her and pull her back towards me, but she rolled onto her front to try and escape, so I lifted her skirt up and pulled her knickers down with one hand, while pinning her down with the other. Then I grabbed her hips and pulled her towards me. She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, allowing her feet to find the floor and then pushed back towards me as I took down my trousers and shorts. “Go on then,” she said quietly and I didn’t hesitate, putting the end of my cock in between her small pussy lips, and pushing it in hard. As I started to fuck her, I realised that we were in almost the exact same position that Aaron had fucked her in a couple of nights before. The thought turned me on. I tried to remember how hard he’d fucked her and the exact rhythm and tried to match it. I moved my hands up to her shoulders, pounding her fast and hard and she started moaning, just like she had the other night. “God, Claire,” I said, panting for breath. “You’re so tight. You’re always so tight.” It was too close to what Aaron had said, just two nights before. She stiffened again and looked at me over her shoulder with the strangest look on her face. “Are you okay?” I asked her. I knew what it was, but I was trying to cover up my mistake. Her expression softened again, but she rolled onto her back, opening her legs for me and drawing me on top of her. “Yes. Fuck me. Don’t talk. Just fuck me,” she purred. So I did and minutes later, my mind began to fill with the realisation that she might be doing this in a couple of days, right here, on this bed, but with him, and for some reason, that thought made me cum. Claire drew the quilt over me, wrapped an arm around me, hooking her leg over mine, and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. --- Part 3 to follow, or buy my book for the other 6 chapters in full. Or if you're enjoying the story so far - feel free to buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulgarland The full book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HCVS3DW