Tuesday morning 29th May 2018

I’d headed to bed at around midnight, but it was fully two-thirty on the Tuesday morning before I finally managed to fall asleep. Thankfully, my client meeting was in their office right next door to the hotel, so I was able to get out of bed as late as six and still shower, breakfast and prepare for the meeting.

Of course, from when I awoke at six until I walked into the client meeting at eight, much of my mind was back in Florida, wondering what had happened after the FaceTime call died and what Jill was doing right now.

When I’d woken at six, I’d desperately wanted to call Jill, but given the three hour time difference, I knew she’d already be at work. Hardly able to talk openly in the way I wanted. And my eight, when my meeting started, was her eleven so I had no chance to talk to her during her lunch break.

The only good thing during that long and difficult Tuesday was that all the shit the client was hitting me with was the perfect distraction from thinking about what had happened back home. And what might very well happen again later that day when Jill got home from work.

My meeting with the client didn’t wrap up until six-thirty LA time because there was so much to discuss and so much humble pie to eat. And even when we left the client's office, I had to go to dinner with the three members of our local team who’d been with me all day. The three guys who’d screwed up and caused the problem that had now landed on my head.

So it was eight-thirty before I had a chance to be alone back in the hotel, able to call Jill. My only comfort and contact with Jill being the two text messages she’d sent me – one during her lunch break and one when she got home. Each message was similar – telling me thanks for last night, that she loved me more than ever and that she knew I was busy and that she’d wait for me to ring her when I was free.

Finally, alone, I realized it was now just before midnight back in Miami and hoped that Jill would still be awake when I rang her. After everything I’d seen the night before and the emotional highs and lows I’d experienced, I felt incredibly nervous as I lay on the hotel bed listening to the ring tone.

After getting on for a month of normality back in our marriage and relationship, I felt the adrenaline start to pump again as I waited for Jill to answer. Waited to hear her voice, experience that skip of the heart it always gave me, even as my brain listened for every nuance of meaning, a recent habit developed as our marriage had grown complicated these last few months.

Three, four, five times the phone rang. No answer. It was only finally on the sixth ring that Jill answered the call.

“Hi, honey,” trying to hide the nervousness in my voice.

On the other end, there was no matching greeting or reply from Jill. Instead, just a dark image from the FaceTime camera. As the camera position was tilted to a different angle, light appeared within the darkness and I heard the sound of laughter. Laughter from several voices as finally I made sense of the picture, the dark blue the sky and the pinpricks of light the lit bulbs around the pool. Not our pool, but the pool next door where our three teacher neighbors lived.

The camera stopped moving and I was treated to the image of a receding black backside, clad in trunks. Evidently, the cameraman was content that he’d found a good position to rest the phone and was now intent on rejoining the laughing voices by the pool.

Slowly, I was able to get my bearings and realize what was happening. The individual voices and the less than clear picture allowing me to piece the jigsaw together. Two higher-pitched laughs, Jill and Riley. Two and then three darker images with deeper laughs and voices, Byron and his two buddies.

As the laughter died down, it was Jill’s voice I heard first. “I could have sworn I heard a phone.”

“Nah, it must have been the TV. Dave’s still probably tied up trying to clear up that shitstorm those idiots in LA caused.”

“I guess so,” I heard Jill reply to Freddy’s explanation, his words suggesting that Jill had explained to the boys the reason for my absence in California.

“Never mind. Dave’s loss is our gain,” Freddy’s voice joked, all five voices laughing in response.

Her laughter finally stopped, Jill felt the need to rebalance. “You’re terrible, Freddy. You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“What do you mean,” his mock hurt voice replied. “He should be thanking us. With his poor, lonely wife all alone while he galivants around LA, that you have some salt-of-the-earth, nice guy teachers to take care of your needs.” Looking directly at Jill he finished off. “If you ask me, it’s a damn sight safer than letting her play with some corporate big-shot VP or teamster style Union head honcho.”

When the renewed laughter had finally died down, Jill repeated her earlier opinion. “You’re terrible, Freddy. You really are,” the lightness in her voice saying she didn’t mean this one jot.

“Yes, but I’m your terrible, Jill. Just like I was ‘your terrible’ last night, and I don’t seem to remember you objecting any last night. Nor this morning, for that matter.”

Another peel of laughter must have told Jill she wasn’t going to win this battle of wits, and instead, I made out the silhouetted shape as she threw her arms in the air, surrendering in the unequal verbal battle with Freddy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the conversation headed in a different direction, I took in the picture that the marvels of technology were showing me on that little phone screen.

Despite them no longer being an item, Riley and Byron were sitting next to each other on an outdoor sofa next to the pool, whereas Freddy and Josh were a few feet away, sitting either side of Jill. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the image, one of the first things I noticed was that Jill was wearing the tiny gold bikini, the one I’d encouraged her to wear when she’d gone to our neighbors’ BBQ just three days before. I couldn’t help but wonder whose choice it had been tonight, whether it was her choice or one of the guys had encouraged her to wear it.

I couldn’t pick up everything they were saying, but eventually, the conversation got around to relationships and I heard Jill ask Riley the leading question, “So, how are the things between you and Byron?”

By now the earlier small distance between Riley and Byron had disappeared and the two of them were snuggled up, for all the world looking like a loving couple rather than a pair of recently split exs. Riley turned to look up at her giant ex-boyfriend, “What do you say, big guy? Do you want to answer that, or shall I?”

“Ladies, first,” he grinned. “Besides, this way I get to hear what you really think before I offer my humble opinions.”

Riley pulled a face and gave him a playful dig in the ribs, before turning back to look at Jill. “It’s good, actually. It’s removed a lot of tension between us. Now we just get to be good friends, fuck when we want, and without all the complications that were causing us such problems.”

Riley paused for a moment before turning her head and craning her neck to look up at Byron, giving the clearest possible signal that it was his turn now.

Byron tried to keep a serious, straight face but after a few seconds gave up the unequal battle, breaking out into a broad grin. “Riley’s said it all. What’s not to like. Sure, at first I felt a bit let down and disappointed. But now I love it. We actually feel closer to each other. Less pressured about the weight of expectations. About where things might go. And it’s strange to say, but without all of that, all of that wondering where things are headed, we can be truer and more selfless friends to each other.”

Byron had spoken so much from the heart and so eloquently that I almost felt I was there with them, next to them on the pool decking, rather than on the other coast watching through my little phone screen.

“That’s quite profound,” Jill answered. What with the dark, only half adequate lighting and small screen, I couldn’t really see her expression, but her tone told me Byron’s voice had made quite an impression.

There was a thoughtful, pensive quality to her voice. “I wonder what might have happened if we’d been able to keep things like that. Great friends, and also fuck buddies.”

“You? Do you mean you and Dave, or you and Chris?” Byron asked.

“Me and Chris,” she answered, her voice trailing off as if she was thinking of places and times in the past, before she turned back to address Byron again. “But we never managed to keep things just like that. Things started off like that, but things got complicated real quick.”

The conversation had all of a sudden become serious and I held my breath as I waited to see where it would head. Part of me feeling excluded and betrayed that such a personal conversation might happen without me. Part of me enjoying that old friend, the voyeur’s thrill of listening and observing something I wasn’t meant to know.

I’d thought it might be Riley who picked up the baton, after all its normally women who seem more interested in these kinds of conversations. But she remained quiet and it was Byron who seemed more focused on Jill’s feelings and state of mind.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Jill, how are you and Dave? It must have been hard for you and him. And how are you? I know you and Chris became really close. You must really miss him?”

There was an awkward silence and I wondered if Byron had pushed too far. If he’d offended Jill by prying too far into painful and personal areas. But as I heard Jill clear her throat I sensed she’d not taken offense.

“No, it’s okay, Byron. I don’t mind you asking. After all, Dave and I have been pretty open about everything. It’s not like it’s a state secret,” the outline of a smile just about visible on the dark image on my small screen. “I’m actually glad you care enough to ask.”

“I won’t pretend that Dave and I have had some tough times these last few weeks. But we’ve done a lot of talking. A lot of crying. And a lot of thinking. And things are generally on the up, moving in the right direction. We’ll get through this. Our love for each other, and for our kids and family is strong enough to see us through.”

Again silence, I guess everyone wondering what to say next. Not wanting to say the wrong thing. To pry too much, or belittle or disagree with anything Jill has said. In the end, it wasn’t one of the guys, it was Riley who injected the typically masculine element of humor, breaking the tension with a bawdy and irreverent comment.

“Glad to hear it, honey. But what about the sex? A horny, hungry old size queen like you must be missing Chris’ delicious and chunky pork sword? After all, you’re not a grandma yet? You’ve got a few months left yet before you have to retire the bikini, swap it for a shawl and take up knitting booties for your grandchildren …”

From the silence that ensued, evidently, I wasn’t the only one holding my breath to see how Jill would react. I couldn’t see much of their faces, but I guessed the guys were as nervous as I was.

“Riley, what on earth are you saying?” Jill’s taut voice replied before she dropped the mask and revealed her true feelings. “Well, honey, if you’d have asked me a couple of days ago, you might have got a different answer. But after my loving husband was kind enough to unlock the shackles, let me back off the leash to enjoy Freddy and Josh’s loving attentions … let’s just say my little pussy is a lot happier than she was a few days ago …”

The tension duly relieved, the guys lost their shyness and jumped in after the braver Riley, competing to see who could be the crudest and most coarse.

“Well, I’m glad she enjoyed her first taste of black cock … but I do hope she knows how addictive a diet it can be … you need to tell your little pussy she might lose all appetite for little white mice … only hungry for catching and stuffing herself full with big black rats in the future … from what I’ve seen, you have to warn her that’s a very real possibility,” Freddy shot out, smiling like a grinning fool.

Before Jill or anyone else had a chance to add fuel to the fire, Josh added his thoughts. “But look on the bright side … she’ll be a very happy and full-bellied cat … with more cream than she knows what to do with … purring and meowing like never before … and who knows, before long she won’t be pining for her absent previous owner … she’ll just wake up dreaming and hungry for next big, fat, juicy black rat …”

I could see plenty of empty beer bottles, and from the way, Jill responded I guessed she wasn’t altogether sober. “Mmm … that sounds positively heavenly … plenty to keep an old maid happy into her dotage … keep her warm on those cold winter evenings … but tell me, would the pussy only be allowed to be petted by her black owners? Or would she still be allowed to curl herself around the legs of her white owner … to let him stroke her …”

True to form, it was Riley who had the last word. “Oh, Jill, honey. If my experience is anything to go by, your happy little pussy won’t want to be petted and stroked by her old white owner before too long … after all, as any self-respecting cat will tell you, why have tuna or sardines when you can have salmon or prawns?”

The ribald laughter echoed through the still night air, Riley happy with herself snuggled closer to her ex-boyfriend. The only one who’d not made fun of Jill’s newly discovered predilection for black cock. The only one who’d been mainly concerned with Jill’s feelings and well-being.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The conversation soon petered out. It was a Tuesday night, closing on one in the morning and all of them had to work the next day. I heard Freddy make some comment about needing to visit the toilet, and as he passed on the way into the house by a deft touch, before I realized what he was doing, he’d killed the call.

My hotel room suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of quiet. One minute part of a gang of six, laughing and joking. Transported back from a week I was dreading in LA to share time with my wife and her new friends. A moment later, staring at the antiseptic and cold walls of an anonymous hotel room, thousands of miles away from the woman I loved. Aching to feel her arms around me, to feel the warmth of her smile and the emotion of her touch and connection.

For some time, I just felt numbed into inactivity, not knowing what to do. Feeling empty and unsure of what to do.

I was just coming around when my phone lit-up. ‘Jill cell.’ My heart leaped and my shaking fingers answered.

“Hi, honey,” the love of my life smiled at me. No hint of hesitation or anything less than twenty-four carat love shining forth from every muscle and pore. Her face was close to the camera. Just what I needed.

“Hi, darling,” my tight and strangulated larynx managed to emit. “I missed you.” I wanted to tell her this, not caring if it made me seem maybe a little weak and needy. It was the truth.

My unilateral admission of love managed to make Jill look even more loving and angelic. “I miss you too, baby. I wish you were back with me now.”

“Me too, honey. Tomorrow, at least, I should know how long I’ve got to stay to clear up the mess. We’re working through the day and meeting with the client at the back end of the day. I should have a better idea of when I’ll be home then.”

“Well then, work hard, my beloved, so you’re back home warming my bed as soon as possible.”

Just what a distant and lonely husband needed to hear. “I’ll try my best, my love. What better incentive could I have?”

Just then something in the conversation or my mind made me remember that I’d not yet told Jill about my meeting with and victory over Chris. I’d been on the point of telling her yesterday night just when the doorbell rang and then Freddy and Josh took over and dominated the rest of Jill and my evening.

“Jill …” was all I could get out before realizing my wife and I were speaking at exactly the same moment. My ‘Jill’ passing her ‘Dave honey’ somewhere over Texas I think.

“After you, baby. What did you want to say?” I demurred.

“It’s a bit embarrassing really,” she said, her face backing up her statement. “But I promised I’d ask you.” Then the inevitable delay as Jill sought the right words and screwed up her courage, with the matching inevitable blender knives mixing all the adrenaline in my churning gut.

“I’ll understand if you say ‘no’, but they made me promise to ask you if it was okay.”

I already had a good idea of who ‘they’ were, but with the blender knives now doing their worst on full speed, I waited to hear the words I both dreaded and wanted to hear.

“They wanted to know … after last night … well, was it a one-off, or … you know, you’d be okay if it happened again?”

“Happens again? Like when?” my staccato brain spat out, not thinking, just reacting.

“I don’t know, love. We didn’t discuss that. Just ‘again’. Whenever.”

“Whenever,” I parroted back, both excited and frightened by what I was hearing. With where this conversation was headed.

Something changed in Jill’s face at that point. Before, as she’d initially asked, she’d looked nervous and frightened. Trying to sound neutral, neither keen nor negative. But although she tried to hide it, a spark of excitement and keenness appeared on her beautiful face. As she moved from nervous neutrality to gently advocating and encouraging.

“Honey, it’s your call. I’ll go along with whatever you want. But I just want you to know it’s only sex. Not like before, when things got out of hand.”

“Only sex?” Hell, I really was sounding like a parrot now.

“Yes, only sex,” Jill repeated, more than a hint of hurt in her voice, taking my words as doubt mixed with rebuke.

I took a deep breath and Jill and I just looked at each other through the medium of Apple’s finest. Our eyes locked together, each with our different thoughts.

Jill tried again. “Sorry if I caught you off-guard, honey. If I shocked you. It’s just, well, after last night, it’s kind of an obvious question.”

Our eyes locked back together in the silence I searched Jill’s face as I looked into my own soul and feelings, softening and feeling less angry as I realized what she was saying was true. After last night, it was an obvious question. An obvious question, just not one I’d necessarily wanted to face up to tonight. At one in the morning, after a shitty and long day at work, and with an equally shitty and long day ahead of me.

“Sorry, honey. You’re right, you did catch me off guard. Sorry if I snapped a little. I can see what you’re saying. The guys are wondering where things left them after last night.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I also knew it left Jill wondering where it left her after last night.

Another long silence as I looked deep into the eyes of my woman. Seeing nothing but love coming back.

“Honey, it’s totally your decision. I only want to go along with what you’re comfortable with. But I want you to know it wouldn’t be like before. Just sex. Like we originally planned it with Daryl. I think that’s why you were okay with last night.”

“And it would, you know, fill a hole,” were Jill’s final words of gentle advocacy, her serious face evidence she was totally unaware of her unintended double-entendre. The English major would need to be reminded of this failure at a later point.

More seconds of wordless eye contact, another deep sigh from California and I finally gave Jill an answer. The answer I knew she wanted to hear, and the answer that set my own pulse racing with thoughts of what might be. “Okay, honey. You have my blessing. But let’s take it one step at a time. You have my permission to ‘see’ Freddy and Josh until I come home from LA. Is that wanted you wanted to hear?” I couldn’t resist adding as the gentlest of digs.

Jill’s barely effective mask of not being invested in the question and my answer slipped and disappeared with remarkable speed. “That’s why I love you so, honey. You’re such a mind-reader. Positively telepathic,” she beamed.

The die-cast, Jill’s joke dispelled any remaining tension between us.

“And, honey, don’t think me prurient, but might I enquire when you, Dopey and Sneezy plan on exercising your new-found freedom?”

Jill grinned, evidently amused by my newly minted nicknames for her neighborly admirers. Her grin soon mixing with a blush. “Would you be shocked if I told you the boys got me to promise to ring them after we’d spoken …”

That was a half-answer, part evasive and not Jill’s normal style.

“Jill, for heaven’s sake, it’s one in the morning. You’re going to get fired if you’re not careful. Are you really that hungry for cock that you’re not going to sleep, you’re going cock hunting?”

Jill giggled, evidently quite proud and amused by my comment. No hint of shame as she smiled and answered my question. “You only live once, and as the good book puts it, live every day as if it’s your last. And, after all, like Riley so delicately pointed out, I might be a grandma before the year’s out. I’m not sure the boys will still look at me in the same way and still want me when they know they’re fucking a grandmother.”

With hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so shocked by Jill’s evident enthusiasm to pick up where she and the boys had finished off last night. After all, from what I’d seen before the phone battery died, she’d certainly been enjoying their attentions. And after her passionate and sex-filled affair with Chris, she’d been cold-turkey for several weeks.

But nonetheless, it made me realize just how much things had changed over the last few months. And that any thought we’d had about turning the clock back and slamming the lid shut on the Pandora’s box that our marriage had become was a pipe-dream. Just wishful thinking most likely.

Feeling a strange mix of weary tiredness and excitement, I offered my last thought on the matter. “Okay then, the sooner you call them, then I guess the sooner this thing’s over and we can all get some sleep,” my brain noting another downward spiral in the crazy new world of our re-shaped marriage. Almost like brushing your teeth or gargling with mouthwash, a pre-sleeping fuck with two black strangers being Jill’s new bedtime ritual. Her husband simultaneously wanting to and not wanting to watch this new development in our evolving marriage.

Jill giggled again, a mature forty-five-year-old soon to be grandmother seemingly transported back to her teenage behavior of excited crushes and staying up into the early hours for the sake of some new heartthrob. “I’m shy, anyway I can’t call them with you on the line. I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave the line open but ring them from the landline,” she said, almost to herself. “You do want me to leave the line open, right?”

That was the moment when I stopped pretending a weary resignation, Jill’s question forcing me to be honest with both of us. That I actively did want to watch what was about to transpire again. Almost as keen and involved as Jill.

“Dave, honey. Don’t put this all on me. You do want to watch, right?” her gentle but firm voice telling me I needed to answer.

“Sure.”

“Sure?” mild annoyance now registering in her tone. “Sure? Are you really that bored? David Andrew Foster, we’re in this thing together. If you’re really are that disinterested I’ll call the guys and tell them ‘thanks, but no thanks. The whole thing’s off’.”

It was late. I’d had a terrible day and had another terrible day ahead of me. My patience snapped. Deep down I knew what Jill was driving at, but I didn’t care. I’d reached my limit and didn’t feel like meeting her half-way.

Looking back later I didn’t understand how we ended up in an argument. After all, the night before I’d given Jill permission to enjoy a multi-hour sex romp with her two black lovers. Before they’d started they asked my permission and told me to let them know if I wasn’t comfortable with how things developed. And even after they’d both done Jill once, they’d all asked again if I was still okay, before they dived back into their three-way orgy. Hell, I’d even listened to their trash talk and Jill’s slightly milder version as they teased me about how much better black guys with big black cocks were, and how much more Jill preferred it.

I’d gone along with all of this on Monday night, and sensing this was just sex, I’d enjoyed it. But something tripped in me and something in Jill’s annoyed reaction pushed me over the edge. Looking back, it must have been a mix of tiredness, work stress and most likely deep and unresolved issues from everything that had happened with Chris.

Either way, I snapped.

“Jill, whatever. Do what you want, honey. It’s late and I’ve had a god-awful day and have the same to look forward to tomorrow. Honey, do what you want. I’m going to sleep, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Go and get your cock fix from Dopey and Sneezy, do whatever the hell you want with the phone. I’ll call you tomorrow, if you’ve got the time, that is.”

And with that, I pressed ‘end’ and closed the call. Instantly feeling a mix of satisfaction and regret. As I stewed in my mixed emotions, I knew from past experience there was a fifty-fifty chance that Jill would call. It depended on how her mood took her. She could be just as stubborn and temperamental when the mood took her. Equally as determined as me to make a point, knowing that any call would undermine the point she was trying to make and her sense of self-worth.

As the seconds built into minutes, I knew in my heart that Jill wasn’t going to call back tonight. But what I didn’t know was whether she’d be like me – stewing alone in her sea of feelings – or would go in the other direction. Calling the boys over for a late-night fuckfest, to both take her mind off of things and at the same time make a point.

Five minutes gave way to ten and I was now certain that I’d heard the last from Jill for tonight. She wasn’t going to ring me, and I certainly wasn’t going to ring her. Pouring myself a couple of shots from the hotel minibar, I tuned into watching some old show on my laptop’s Netflix channel and tried my best to avoid thinking of anything but the TV show.

Two more shots and one beer later and I managed to doze off, the last strange thought going through my head was even now I’d still not managed to find a chance to tell Jill about my conversation with Chris. To crow about my victory and tell her how he’d said how much he envied me. With everything that had happened, a strange thought to go through your head as you finally drift off to sleep.

With this odd thought my last of the night, I drifted off, waking only about an hour later by the insistent buzz of my iPhone.

(Thanks to cbears52 for spotting errors and correcting.)