As I was swinging the door open, she called out, "Bill, be nice to him, okay?" I agreed and she added, "I love you. Always remember that."
I rode the elevator to the ground floor, left the hotel and hopped into Trevor's truck - he had been waiting for me. I noticed that he didn't look directly at me when I climbed in, he didn't say a word.
"Good morning," I greeted him. "Let's get going!" I wanted to put him at ease, having noticed that he was very tense and that he was gripping the steering wheel tightly. I suppose in his position I would be feeling a lot of apprehension as well. I needed to quell his fears.
"Cheryl seemed pretty happy when she got back to the room last night," I ventured. He gave no response, just continued to drive with a death-grip on the wheel. "Listen, it's okay, she was there with my blessing, not to worry, okay?"
Still avoiding looking at me, he nodded his head 'yes', said, "Good enough, thanks." Evidently he wasn't convinced just yet.
"Actually, I'm grateful to you for last night. I think this marks a turning point for Cheryl and I - we haven't been 'active' in long time and I'm pretty sure that last night was an ice-breaker for us. So thanks for that."
Silence. I could see that he wasn't ready to talk to me about fucking my wife and that I would have to carry the conversation until he loosened up a little.
"So yeah, she was pretty happy and in the end, she looked after me when she came back to the room. I suspect she'll want to see you again tonight."
"I was thinking about visiting my sister tonight," he replied. "But that isn't critical, she doesn't even know that I'm in town." While he spoke I watched him, noticing his shoulders visibly relax.
"I'm good with this, Trevor. You can 'do' her anytime she's up for it."
Trevor appeared to be focused on his driving, navigating the truck through the early morning Edmonton traffic. After perhaps fifteen minutes he asked, "Are you taking her to Fort St. John with you next week?" (I had to spend the next week with him at his company's head office while we finished off his project).
"Yeah, she told me that you had asked her to come along. It's fine with me, do you think you'll be able to get away to spend time with her?"
"Well, yeah, I'm pretty sure I can do that. And thanks. But listen - you need to know that Shirley (his wife) won't be getting involved. She would shit a brick and cut my nuts off if she knew about this."
I chuckled and told him that was fine. I added that I would cover for him with an alibi if he needed one.
We spent some time discussing the project and work things in general. After awhile, Trevor had loosened up enough to talk about other 'guy stuff' like his passions for jet-boating, fishing and the like. We passed the time on the road in friendly chit-chat. About a hour into the drive I heard his smartphone beep, indicating that he had received a text message. Moments later my own phone buzzed, notifying me of the same. Because he was driving, Trevor ignored his phone but I had no such limitations - I pulled my phone from my hip and had a look at my message. It was from Cheryl.
'Everything OK?' I smiled and typed in reply, 'Peachy, no problems. How are you doing?'
In seconds Cheryl answered me: 'Good here. Trevor OK? Didn't answer my txt.'
I knew that a roadside turnout was up ahead about one kilometer and I asked Trevor to pull over so that I could have a smoke. As I stepped out of the truck, I said (unnecessarily), "You might want to check your text messages."
I lit up and watched through the window as he read his message and appeared to reply. I found myself wishing that I could know what they were saying. Not out of jealousy, but rather so that I had a handle on what, if anything, they might be planning. But I took my time smoking, noticing that the whole while, Trevor was typing sporadically on his phone. They were either cooking something up or teasing each other - maybe both.
Finally I could delay no longer, crushed the butt of my smoke on the ground and climbed back into the truck just as Trevor received another message and replied. Then off we went again, heading west towards the mountains.
Arriving at the work site, we did what needed doing. Nothing strenuous - technical work and discussions with a few workers about natural gas compression and managing the hazards associated with that. Soon we were back on the road, more or less done for the day with only the long drive back to the city in front of us. With about an hour left in the drive, I asked, "How is she doing? You guys have plans for tonight?" I knew this was a bit outside of the agreement - Cheryl and I had agreed that she could see him anytime she felt like it and that I wanted to know immediately afterwards, not necessarily before. I thought we might need to modify that arrangement before problems crept in.
"Uh. Well, yeah, she said something about supper and relaxing afterwards.