Innocent Milf Ch. 28

Warning: depictions of non-consent and drug use.

Chapter 28

I came back from the showers in a fantastic mood--Cary and I would have the whole weekend together, and Aaron was supposed to be gone for both days, so we'd have the room to ourselves. I knew it was technically against the dorm rules, but half of the folks were gone for fall break, and nobody would really care. I was hardly the first guy to sneak a girl into his room for sex.

As long as Cary and I could stay quiet and keep from banging the ceiling again, we should be fine.

I went to open the door with my key, and found it slightly ajar. I pushed, frowning, and immediately felt my heart leap into my throat. Cary was blissfully asleep on the bed, lit by the tiniest sliver of the waning moon and the diffuse outside light from behind the curtains. Her arm dangled off the edge of the bed, gold bracelet catching the light. The sheets still covered her waist and butt like a skirt, but she was naked and lying on her stomach, and her long, beautiful legs were stretched out.

In front of the bed was a tall, dark figure in shadow, reaching hesitantly towards her. I immediately leaped forward and grabbed the arm silently. Fist raised, I suddenly recognized the round, shocked eyes of my roommate, halfway to an Aikido counter himself.

"What the fuck, dude!" I hissed. "That's my girlfriend!"

Aaron gasped like a landed fish, and stumbled backwards, knocking over a pile of his CDs and tapes. Cary woke at the clatter, sat up, and then quickly snatched the sheets over her chest as she noticed another person in the room. "Um, Matt--?"

"My roommate, Aaron," I quickly explained, turning on a desk lamp. Aaron seemed to have been stricken dumb by the events, and was pale as a ghost. "Who said he was going to be gone for the weekend," I added peevishly.

Aaron found his words, stuttering. "Umm--well--I was supposed to. But my ride is going to be an hour late." He was still staring at Cary. "You're--I can't believe you're real. I thought Matt made you up."

"Made me up?" Cary laughed, and the tension was broken.

"You know--'I have a girlfriend. She's super cool and smart and hot and she lives a long way away.'" Aaron went from pale to flushed. "Guys at school used to say stuff like that after they came back from summer camp."

I relaxed, and suddenly realized that I was standing with slighty dripping hair and holding my towel up with my left hand. "She's real," I said to my shell-shocked roommate, who had now turned at least two shades of crimson.

Cary reached her hand down to shake his. "I'm Cary Bernham. Matt's girlfriend. Pleased to meet you. I usually have more clothing on."

Aaron shuffled backwards, suddenly aware of what he had interrupted. "Dude. Miss. I'm sorry. I've heard stories about people walking in on their roommates while they have a girl. I just thought--sorry. The way he talks about you--I figured there was no way a girl as great as you actually--dude, sorry. Sorry. I'll get out of here."

I caught his elbow. "Not your fault, man. I would have hung a sock on the doorknob or something if I knew you were still on campus." Now I felt like a jerk. And also ridiculously proud that my roommate--who had apparently never believed me about Cary--had seen how absolutely smoking hot she was.

Aaron nodded, still scarlet, and shuffled back out, mumbling something about watching TV in the common area until his ride got here. As the door closed behind him, I blew out a breath and ran my hand through my damp hair. "Jesus. I'm sorry. What a doofus." I couldn't decide whether I meant Aaron or myself.

Cary pulled her shirt on, braless, and held her hand out for the key. "I'm going to sneak down to the showers myself. I'll be back in a few." Grabbing a small bag from her suitcase and the extra towel I had brought, she gave me a quick kiss and slipped out of the room, skipping down the hall.

While she showered, I considered the incident. If Aaron reported that I had a girl in the room, I might get in trouble with the RA at the very least. Being here on a scholarship kept me extra sensitive to making sure that I toed the line. I considered heading down to the common area to talk with Aaron, but thought better of it. Given his treatment of girls as something like sexy cryptids, he would probably keep his mouth shut. At least to anybody in charge. He seemed more likely to blab about it to other students.

Cary returned shortly, looking even prettier with her damp ringlets of auburn hair. She dried her hair gently with patting motions of the towel, and pulled one of her new outfits from her suitcase. Cutoff denim shorts, sandals, and a rainbow-striped tube top. I grinned, delighted. I also touched her nipple through the fabric and raised an eyebrow.

She flushed. "Well. I wanted to look like I belonged here. At college. You know, women's lib. 'Burn the bra' and all of that? Do girls still do that?"

I shrugged. "There are a couple of courses in Women's Studies. So maybe there. I don't think anybody will complain, regardless." I pulled her into a deep kiss, and I could feel her curling a leg against me as she sagged into my embrace. After we broke apart, I took her hand. "I've heard of a nice place just a couple of miles away that everybody says does amazing Chinese."

She laced her fingers into mine and we walked down the hall. As we exited, we passed the common area, where Aaron was still sitting. We waved at him, and he gave us a hesitant wave back. Even though there weren't many people around, I noticed a few of them--guys and girls both--giving Cary a long look as she walked past. If she noticed as well, she made no indication. I hoped it made her feel less like she was competing with anybody.

Dinner at Pearl's was great. Not only did it really hit the spot to have something other than the food from the mess hall, but I felt like a prince sitting across from Cary. More than once I noticed other diners looking at us, and I wanted to shout She chose me! I told Cary about my fumbling attempts at piano (all music majors and minors had to take a piano class), and promised to play her something when I was good enough. She told me about a series of paintings she had been doing inspired by our prehistoric getaway.

Afterwards, we went to the nearby movie theater and saw True Lies. More than once Cary and I gave each other knowing looks as certain scenes reminded us of Ty's graduation party. When Jamie Lee Curtis did a sexy dance and accidentally fell on the floor, I burst out laughing--it reminded me so much of Cary.

We got back into the dorm without any issues, and Cary happily returned to the top bunk. It was a tight fit to squash both of us onto a mattress meant for one college student, but we made it work. Entangled in each other's limbs, we fell asleep. I was truly content for the first time in a month and a half.

The next day, I showed her more of the campus and the town--what little of it I had the time to discover. We also found a nice regional park similar to the ones back home. Out of habit, we found a trail that looped around a few miles and started into the semi-wilderness. We talked happily as we walked, and chuckled about the previous night's incident. "I'm not sure Aaron has ever seen a girl in that sitation before," I said. "We're just lucky he didn't pull out an Instamax and start taking pictures of you."

"We certainly gave him a shock," Cary giggled.

"I think you gave him heart failure, mon amour," I replied. "When I walked in, he was reaching towards you. I almost decked him." I tilted my head. "He's not super well-adjusted. I wonder if he really was just trying to see if you were real."

Cary shook her head. "He didn't do anything--he was just surprised. I'd have been surprised too at his age if I had walked into my college dorm room and found a half-naked guy sleeping on the top bunk in my room." She stretched, and the gold bracelet glittered prettily on her wrist in the afternoon light. "Especially since my freshman roommate was such a prude. Besides, I've dealt with worse than a teenager surprising me out of a deep sleep."

I frowned, thinking of her past. "Yeah. As if one psycho in your past wasn't enough then you had fucking Eric."

Several moments of silence followed, and silently cursed myself for mentioning his name. "I think it's time," Cary said hesitantly. I gave her a searching look, and she went on. "I already told you about Adam and my first marriage and what a terrifying disaster that was," she said. "But to really get a sense of what I walked into afterwards and what a piece of crap Eric was--is--you should hear about Valentine's Day."

I sighed. "Let me guess. He managed to ruin that one, too. Worse than your birthday?"

"Much worse." Cary's gaze was distant. "Yeah, much worse."

I rubbed her arms and pulled her close to me by her hip. "We'll make this next Valentine's Day really good to make up for it," I promised.

She barked a cynical laugh. "It had better be pretty amazing, then."

=====

"Eric and I had been married for nearly two years. I already told you that after Adam, he was a breath of fresh air. He seemed so normal in comparison. And he was so worldly and sophisticated! He'd been to Europe twice already, and knew all about politics. At least, he certainly had opinions about Reagan and Andropov, and I was too naïve to realize that he didn't need to be informed to have opinions.

I really look down on Eric now as a small, mean, unimaginative, selfish man--especially in bed. But at the time, I thought I was in the throes of love. He would take me to the movies, to dinner, to concerts (if I asked), and I was having the time of my life. I was painting and just getting a foot in the door with a cooperative studio in town. And I didn't think it was odd that Eric always wanted sex--even though after the first few months I had begun to catch on that he never did anything for me without the expectation of "payment."

I had asked about having kids, and Eric always demurred and said we should enjoy just being a couple first. It sounded sensible to me. It was after the first company Christmas party that things started to change. First of all, I noticed that Eric was getting pretty friendly with some of secretaries who were there--and it didn't seem to matter if they were married. Secondly, he noticed that some of his coworkers were attempting to get friendly with me. I didn't let it go anywhere, obviously, but it seemed to make him angry.

On the ride home, he kept asking what I had done to lead them on, and no matter how much I protested that I had just been sitting by the punch bowl and making polite conversation, he didn't believe me. That was when he started asking about what I did with my days--who I worked with, if they were married, and so on.

For Christmas my dad and stepmother came over to visit us--dad was still alive then, but the lung cancer was starting to wear him down. Eric gave me some really skimpy lingerie, and I was mortified opening it up in front of them. And instead of showing any sort of shame or apologizing, he said, "Oh, now you're embarrassed? What about at the Christmas party a few days ago?"

He had somehow constructed this narrative in his head that I had been shopping myself around to his coworkers and giving them a view of my body whenever I could. Of course, it was ridiculous--I was so nervous about trying to make a good impression on his office-mates that I was mostly paralyzed with anxiety at the time. And Eric was the one who had picked out my revealing green dress, even after I had wanted to wear a more conservative sweater.

Anyway, there were little things like that for a few weeks.

One day I came home from the studio after we had been visited by a local business owner looking to commission some illustrations for advertisements at a trade show. He wanted to talk to me and to Pablo--a sculptor at the studio--over lunch. So of course we went. Well, it was a smaller town in the early 80's, and Eric was on lunch, too. He saw me walk into the restaurant with two strange men, and immediately leaped to the wrong conclusion. The only conclusion somebody like him was capable of reaching.

I came home and he grabbed my arms so hard that he bruised me. He started yelling at me, asking how long "the affair" had been going on, and accusing me of "whoring myself out just to try to get my stupid painting off the ground." He was unhinged. I was crying so hard I was nearly hysterical--I had no idea what he was talking about, and he stormed out in a fury.

He came back drunk that night--he had driven himself, of course, and nearly run over the bushes in the front yard. When I tried to talk sense to him, he just started ripping my clothes off and repeating, "You're mine. Nobody else's." It was scary. Luckily, he fell asleep before he could do too much else.

The next morning, he was cool as a cucumber. He gave a half-apology by saying, "I'm sorry we had a fight." As if I had instigated anything. But I was so grateful that he didn't keep yelling at me that I let it pass. But for the next month, things started to get strange.

I had received a couple of calls at home from somebody who just hung up when I answered, and from a woman who thought that I was Eric's visiting sister. Even as naïve as I was, I had begun to wonder what was going on: especially when Eric suddenly kept getting "held over" at the office after work every week. My friends immediately suggested to me that he was cheating. A few of them offered advice about how to keep him from straying, but it all made me blush, and I didn't really believe yet that he was having an affair.

As February approached, he told me to clear my weekend and the first couple of days of the week for Valentine's Day--we were going to do something really special. He also told me to start going to the gym more and doing my Jazzercise or aerobics. I was a little hurt at the suggestion that I was letting myself go, but I did as he said.

The Friday before, he surprised me by having a full outfit delivered from Montgomery Ward to the house for me: short pink satin dress, lacy pink underwear and bra, and glossy lipstick. I was delighted--even though it wasn't the sort of stuff I would have picked out for myself, it showed that he was thinking of me and trying to be thoughtful. Or so I thought.

When he got home and I hugged him and said thank you, he seemed genuinely confused. Then he seemed mysteriously angry. After I pressed him on it, he grumbled rather unconvincingly that it was meant to have been a surprise, and I had ruined it. He went back to the office, and said he had a couple of other things to finish.

When I took the dress out of its mylar bag to try it on, I found a packing slip--it had been delivered to the billing address rather than the shipping address. The shipping address was across town, and it was supposed to go to somebody named Katie.

Naturally, I started putting the pieces together. I may have been naïve and trusting, but this was too obvious. I didn't call my parents or girlfriends--I was determined that I would handle this myself. Since Eric was out "at work" again, I took the dress and underwear back to Montgomery Ward and exchanged it all for the right size. I had a copy of the receipt stapled to the packing slip, and it was easy to just pretend that my clueless husband had gotten the measurements wrong.

Whoever Katie was, she wasn't going to get this dress.

When I woke up the next morning, Eric was back and in a much better mood. I told him that I had tried on the dress and underwear and that it was all the wrong size. I played dumb and told him that I just went back and got it in the right size, since I had the receipt it had come with. He looked nervous, but I steadfastly refused to acknowledge the other woman's name.

Maybe he thought he was in the clear, because he didn't try to explain anything. He just went and started watching TV. When I asked what we were doing this weekend that I had cleared my plans for, he just shrugged and said, "It's all messed up now. Do what you want."

So I told him I was going shopping and drove to the address from the packing slip where "Katie" lived. It wasn't hard to spot her--she was a blonde lady with big sunglasses and big boobs. Big enough that the dress would have fit her rather than me. I was furious. I actually got out and talked to her, pretending to be a prospective renter, and curious about the apartment complex. I told her that my husband and I were trying for a baby, and asked how soundproof the walls were. She just laughed and said "Trust me, everybody here has heard louder."

When I went home, Eric asked why I hadn't bought anything while shopping. I told him that I didn't see anything that I liked, and he muttered "That's a first," as if I were some shopping-crazy bimbo. It made me want to slug him. Sunday he went to a bar and told me not to bother "tagging along," as if I wanted to hang around with him in a loud, messy sports bar all day.

When Valentine's Day rolled around on Tuesday, I had determined that I was going to face him. He told me we were going to a fancy restaurant, so I put on the pink ensemble and made myself as pretty as I could--as if I were dressing for the runway. Or a battle. I put on my long coat over it all.

When we got to the restaurant, he said he and his "girlfriend" were here for a reservation under "Sanchez." When we sat down, he immediately ordered a vodka for himself and a glass of wine for me. I sweetly asked who Katie was, and why the dress and underwear had been sized for somebody taller and bustier than me.

Rather than admit to anything, he just got evasive and starting making accusations about how I never made time for him, and was always at the studio--which wasn't true in either respect. He drank his vodka faster than I would have believed possible. I went to the powder room for a moment to collect my thoughts and take some deep breaths. I had been promised a romantic Valentine's Day, and instead I was having navigate the tantrums of a husband who had almost certainly been unfaithful.

By the time I got back a few minutes later, he had ordered more drinks for both of us, despite the fact that I had barely sipped my wine. Well, I was getting angrier and angrier--Eric had clearly been fooling around with another woman. Looking back on the past two years, it was increasingly obvious that nothing I tried to do made him happy enough. He always seemed to want something more than I could give him.

And I had cleared my week for this? I had dimly hoped that he would make some grand gesture, or at least talk to me. In the back of my mind, I had held onto the hope that this big dinner would be our way of reconnecting. Instead, he was evasive and sullen and just kept knocking back drinks like it was going out of style, and encouraging me to do the same.

You better believe I finished the wine, and downed the martini he had ordered as well. It seemed like everything was falling apart. The last straw was when the waitress came by and asked if we wanted anything else, and Eric not only said, "What are you up to tonight?" but when the lady said, "I don't think your wife would like that very much," he shook his head and said, "Wife? Hardly."

That did it. I stood up and walked to the bar--a little more unsteady than I would have thought for only having a single glass of Pinot Grigio and a martini. I wasn't ready to leave after getting all dressed up, but I couldn't stand to be around my philandering creep of a husband. So, I went and found an empty spot at the bar and asked the bartender for a drink.

"Are you even old enough to drink?" he asked skeptically. The age limit for drinking had recently been raised, so everybody was pretty cautious about it. I rummaged around in my pretty new purse that Eric hadn't even noticed until I found my license, and he raised his eyebrows. "Well, you don't look a day over eighteen," he said apologetically.

"Twenty-four this month," I mumbled. I suddenly felt out of place--bars had never really been my thing. They still aren't. "Can I get a drink?"

"What kind?" the bartender asked.

Not being a big drinker, but not wanting to look like I knew nothing, I just shrugged. "Whatever kind will make me forget what a jerk my husband is on Valentine's Day."

He nodded knowingly and came back in a minute with some sort of delightfully tangy blue drink with a lemon slice on the edge of the cup. He said it was Blue Lagoon. It burned a little at first, but it went down pretty easily, and I found myself talking. Talking about how Eric had changed since we got married, about how he seemed like he was "meeting" other women, about how he looked down on my painting and told me to get a "real" job.

Pretty soon, the bartender had become my personal therapist, and was nodding along and saying supportive, appreciative things to me. He asked if we had considered marriage counseling, and I just laughed--Eric wouldn't even consider it.

"You're still young," the bartender said. "If it doesn't work out, there's plenty of fish in the sea." I was too drunk to be stunned--at least, I thought I was drunk at the time. Being widowed from Adam had been a blessing in disguise, but the idea of a divorce seemed impossible. Hey, it was 1984. It was less common back then, and I had been raised to think of divorce as a failure, and an absolute last option.

Instead, I leaned forward and put my elbows on the bar. I could feel my boobs pushing up against the satiny edge of my dress as I did so, and the bartender obviously took notice, too. I fiddled with my string of pearls. "What about you?" I asked. "You must hear all sort of sob stories in this job. Do you ever get cynical about relationships?"

He smirked. "A little. But like I said--there's always more fish in the sea."

It suddenly occurred to me how much like Burt Reynolds he looked. I mean, not really. But enough that with my anger at Eric and drink, I had intrusive thoughts of my own naughty Cannonball Run. Of course, they made me flush even deeper and start to sweat a little, but I had been really thinking that Eric and I were going to have a romantic night, and now I was frustrated.

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. I was dimly aware of Eric coming over and saying something to me, and me snapping at him that he didn't think I was enough woman for him, and telling him "there are plenty of fish in the sea," which made the bartender laugh, but made Eric angry. Of course. After that, I don't have a whole lot except impressions and flashes of imagery and sensations.

You see, Eric had put something in my drink when I went to the restroom to freshen up. I don't know what it was, and I don't know where he got it. Months later, when I found out, I had a panic attack that almost sent me to the hospital when I thought of all the things that might have gone even worse. You look shocked, but remember that this was the same guy who tried that stunt at my birthday party.

Anyway, I remember almost falling off my stool, and the bartender reaching out to grab me. And I remember that he came around the bar and helped me stand up. He was very gentle--he must have had a lot of practice with silly girls like me who came to drink their problems away. And I sort of remember smiling up at him and telling him that he was a "very big fish" and making a sort of sucker-face at him. I thought it was hilarious as I said it.

You're laughing at me--you've been with me after I've had a few. You know how I can get.

Well, the next thing I remember was staggering down a hallway in a hotel. I didn't recognize it, but I knew it wasn't home. I was cold--I didn't know where my coat was, and I could feel goosebumps all over. A pair of hands was holding me up by the waist, and occasionally reaching down to squeeze my butt or wandering up to fondle my breasts. I was in a fugue state of confusion, and kept wondering if I was dreaming it all.

The next thing I knew, I was on a bed with scratchy sheets in a room with an unfamiliar ceiling. I was sort of sprawled, with my pearls tangled and my dress all askew. I could tell my pink high heels had been taken off, because I could feel that my toes were free. I remember stretching and hearing movement, and having a headache.

After that, just images and feelings. My nipples being bitten, and my butt getting slapped. Rocking back and forth so hard I thought I might get motion sickness. Somebody was fucking me--not making love, but fucking me. Hard. I know I tried to say something, but mostly just slurred a bunch of words. It seemed to go on forever. I must have orgasmed three or four times--but it wasn't all good. Hard to enjoy things when you aren't really fully aware of what's happening.

After that, I woke up in the morning alone in a cheap hotel room. Somebody was knocking on the door and yelling that checkout had been half an hour ago. I was naked and covered with sticky residue. My hair and makeup were a disaster. My stockings had been absolutely shredded, and I was sore all over. My dress was more or less intact, although one of the straps was ripped. My panties were nowhere to be seen. Luckily, my purse was still there, with my money and ID and credit card.

So I got dressed as best I could and called a taxi. I had a pretty good idea of what had happened--in my drunken state, I had made Eric so angry he went home without me. It wouldn't have been the first time he had stranded me somewhere to try to teach me a lesson. And, being drunk, angry, and more than a little horny, I had gone with Mr. Cannonball Run and gotten my brains fucked well and truly out.

You can imagine I was a nervous wreck. Quite apart from my good-girl upbringing screaming at me in my head that I was a whore and a liar and a cheater as bad as Eric, I was terrified. What if I got AIDS? Everybody was really worried about that back then. What if I got pregnant? What if Eric divorced me for cheating on him?

Everybody from the hotel clerk to the taxi driver looked at me like I was a hooker. I could feel their eyes on me--and the fact that I wasn't wearing any underwear and that my dress had been clearly abused didn't help matters at all. I got home shaking, but Eric wasn't there. He had gone to work, and left a note on the counter:

"If you see this before I come home, you're in trouble."

Well, that did it. My conscience was already a shambles, and I collapsed in a sobbing heap. I was hysterical. I had done something terrible and wicked, and I didn't even remember it fully. I was just starting to get some fragments of memory back by then, and it wasn't looking good. I found myself in the shower, scrubbing so hard I was starting to bleed in places."

=====

I interrupted. "Jesus Christ! That's terrible! That sounds more like rape than anything else. Dragging a drugged girl back to a seedy hotel--even if you said yes, you were obviously too wasted to know what you were doing." My hands were curled into fists, and my heart was hammering.

Cary took a deep breath. "It gets worse--or better, depending on your point of view. Let's sit here under this tree. I don't think I want to head back to the car yet."

I was stunned. I'm sure it was obvious to Cary in retrospect, but Eric seemed so obviously to be just a classic narcissist manipulator. I followed her to the shade of a drooping Jerusalem Thorn and set my back against its trunk. Every additional story I heard in which Eric played a part made me want to punch him in the face.

"You okay?" Cary asked, noting my somber silence.

"Absolutely not. I thought the story about your first marriage was bad, but this--what an asshole! You're so smart: how did you ever fall for him? Or his crap?" I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that the end of this story eventually led to Cary divorcing Eric and being with me.

Cary didn't look angry--just thoughtful. "Smart and wise aren't the same thing. I just had such a Pollyanna view of the world before Adam. And even afterwards, I still thought that he was an exception. Maybe he was." She stretched and leaned back into me, pulling my hands to cross over her belly. It seemed to be a favorite position of hers--maybe it made her feel safe. "But you know, in retrospect it seems like all of this had to happen for me to get to place where I could be a functioning individual."

I tried to keep the doubt from my voice. "If you say so. But if Doc Brown shows up with the DeLorean, the first person I'm going back in time to kill is Eric. Hitler is second."

Cary laughed, but then shook her head. "Then I wouldn't have my kids, and I wouldn't give them up for anything. But it feels really good to know that you care so much about me that even my old traumas get you riled up. Well, let me wrap this up."

=====

"After my shower, I called my friend Lori--yes, the one with guns in her purse who thinks that you and I shouldn't be together. She was my neighbor at the time, and still married to Tom. She came over and I bawled my eyes out and told her everything I knew. She held me and let me cry and then helped me to get dressed. She made some tea and suggested I take some Tylenol for the soreness all over.

After a couple of hours--it was after lunch--we made some plans. We drove everything I was wearing the night before--everything that was left--downtown and got rid of it in a dumpster behind a grocery store. Dispose of the evidence. Lori told me I was still a good girl, and that it wasn't my fault, which almost made me lose it all over again. She pointed out that something was odd--she saw it before I did. Of course, she thought that the bartender had been up to no good, rather than Eric.

She actually went and staked out the restaurant bar for a couple of weeks to see if she could get any information about the guy. But that was later. In the meantime, Eric came home. I expected him to be furious, but he wasn't--just annoyed. He kept coming back to the fact that I had yelled at him in the restaurant and embarrassed him.

He didn't seem at all concerned about where I had been--just that I had called him out for being a cheating rat in public. He suggested make-up sex, but I was so sore, guilty, and shell-shocked that I almost threw up just thinking about it. I told him that I felt sick from drinking the night before, and he left me alone for once. That should have been a sign as well.

Later in the week, he eventually started insinuating things about how chummy I had seemed with the bartender, and asking how I had gotten home, and where I had stayed the night. I was pretty evasive--like I said, I had pieced together what I thought had happened pretty well, and I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. It wasn't even completely a lie that I didn't remember most of it.

He looked disappointed, but not alarmed.

Two things happened at once. First, I missed my period. I got a home pregnancy test and found out I was pregnant. Then I got two more just to make sure. I started freaking out all over again, but just as I did, Lori called me. She said she had tracked down the bartender and asked about me. He said he barely remembered me, and that my husband had asked him to treat me extra-nice and given him a ten-dollar tip.

Lori didn't believe him, but I wasn't so sure.

Eric seemed genuinely excited when I told him that I was pregnant. My whole body was shaking as I told him--I didn't know whose baby I was having. I was sick to my stomach all over again, and not with morning sickness yet. Eric immediately started complaining about the bills when we went to the doctor to get things officially confirmed. Of course, he didn't have any questions about whose baby it was, despite his insinuations. At the time, I thought it was because he didn't think I was capable of cheating on him.

You look disgusted, but keep in mind that I thought I had cheated while drunk, and I was desperately trying not to make waves--to salvage my marriage because I had been raised to think that's what good girls did. As far as I was concerned, getting pregnant by a random bartender on Valentine's Day was ten times worse than Eric running around with his floozy behind my back.

I considered an abortion. But as soon as I started making noises about this maybe not being the right time for a baby, Eric flew into a rage. He eventually let slip something about "moving heaven and earth to make it happen," as we argued. I finally got it out of him that he had been the guy all along, and that he had put something into my drink to "make me horny" but instead all it did was make me almost comatose.

Of course, then I was furious. I screamed so loudly at him, I'm sure Lori heard it down the block. I was furious at not only how hard he had used me and hurt me, but that he had just pretended that he knew nothing about it. He had told the bartender to be extra nice to me--in retrospect so that I might get flirty with him.

"You let me think for a month that I had cheated!" I yelled.

And you know what he said? "It was the best fuck you ever gave me. Maybe I should drug you more often." I almost punched him in the face. I think he knew how close he came, because he held up his hands and said, "All I did was have sex with my wife. You thought you were cheating, and you screwed me that hard? You really must be a slut at heart!"

As you know, it wasn't the first time I had been called a slut, but it hurt just as badly as if it were. I walked out on him and went to stay with my dad and stepmom for a couple of days. Typical Eric--trying to turn it around on me like that. He had set the whole thing up to take advantage of me when all he ever would have had to do was ask. And then he tried to make me feel like I was a worthless hooker.

I can see you getting mad, there. Easy, tiger. I'm all right now. And I got my beautiful boy Patrick out of it. But we had some real rough months before Patrick was born. I kept holding on to hope that a baby would fix things. I know it sounds stupid, but I wanted it to be true so badly that I believed it for a while.

I hadn't even found the tape yet.

That's right: the tape. I found that years later when I was cleaning out the closet. It made me furious at Eric all over again, because he had rented a video-camera for some exorbitant fee and recorded the whole thing at the motel. It wasn't even typical Eric opportunism--he had premeditated the whole thing and even tried to sell it! There were rejection letters from VCA Pictures and Arrow Productions folded into the case. Who even knows if he had gotten an acceptance letter from somewhere else that I never knew about.

So that's what I told Ty about when we were at his party during that tie-breaker game for the trip to Puerto Vallarta. When they asked if we had ever been in a porno movie, I whispered that my ex-husband had taped something and sent it to couple of companies, and that I honestly didn't know if it had ever been published. No details, of course. But now you know the background.

Anyway, naturally I watched the tape. Patrick was at my parents' house for an hour or two while I went to do shopping, so I put it into the Betamax and watched the real story unfold."

=====

Cary stopped for a moment. Her expression had been stormy throughout this part of the recollection. I took her hand and held it for a long moment. She sighed. "It feels good to get this out," she said. "Cathartic, in a way. I didn't mean to tell you the whole thing when I started talking, but it just sort of kept flooding out."

"It's okay," I said. I pulled her head to my chest and held her.

"Your heart is beating fast," she murmured.

"Yeah, I'm all worked up and furious for you," I said hotly. "If I didn't think it would hurt your kids, I'd kill that fucker right now."

I could feel her smile. "It's all right. It's in the past. Long past. He can't hurt me anymore. I have you now. It'll be all right. And I've long since made my peace with how everything played out. It was a bad time, but it made me smarter. Tougher."

"I guess," I muttered doubtfully. "But... fuck. Nobody should have to get tougher like that."

Cary nodded, then shrugged. "This one was pretty nuts, but I've talked to other women, and stuff like this wasn't as uncommon as you might think. Some time I'll tell you about the time he took me to the lesbian bar and told everybody while I was in the restroom that I was looking for a hookup." She shook her head ruefully, took a deep, steady breath and continued.

=====

"It started with a shot of me lying on the bed, all drunk and drugged and flopped unsuspecting there. Eric moved into frame, loosening his tie. He seemed a little nervous, but also excited. He talked right to the camera. "Dirk, this because you said I was too chicken to do it. Well, here we go, asshole. Proof that I win the bet."

He finished pulling off his tie, and then his pants. He threw them to the side and pulled off his shirt. With just his briefs on, he knelt on the bed. He poked at me and I groaned. He tugged at my dress straps, and I moaned and rolled away, mumbling.

He pulled at my stockings, and I could see my hands weakly batting at him. I murmured, "No." That seemed to make him angry, and he ripped my stockings. He pulled the tatters off of my legs as I turned weakly back and forth. A cold feeling settled in the pit of my stomach as I watched the tape--I fully expected at this point to see my own husband forcing me.

But something happened. As he started to fondle me, my slurred and mumbled protests turned questions. "Who are you?" "Where are we?" and so on. Eric seemed surprised but turned on. He tore my dress off me so fast and violently, I was surprised that there was anything left afterwards. I moaned as he did it--and it didn't sound like a moan of resistance.

I was conflicted watching myself on the TV. On the one hand, I was clearly too drunk to know any better, and my past self obviously thought she was being touched by somebody other than her husband. But she also seemed to be tentatively aroused by it. On-screen Eric pulled off my bra and started nibbling, and then biting my nipples. My past self made a sound I didn't even know I could make, and grabbed him by the hair, smashing his face further into my chest.

When he started screwing me (mercifully not very explicit since the angle of the camera was so amateurishly positioned), he yelled at me and called me a whore, and demanded that I say his name. But my drunk on-screen self just moaned and said "Don't know. Who are you?"

That drove him wild, and he pounded me as if I truly was a porn star.

It went like that for almost an hour. From time to time he would get up and move the camera. By the halfway mark, whenever he slapped me or told me fuck him harder, I watched in horrified fascination as I bucked and thrust with wild abandon. When I had reached the end of the recording, I admitted to myself that maybe it hadn't been technically rape, but it walked too close to the line for my comfort. It also showed me that somewhere deep inside, there was a well of wild sexual potential. It just hadn't had a chance to come out before. And I didn't like that Eric had tricked me and forced me to unlock it under those conditions.

Of nearly equal concern to me was the increasingly obvious fact that I had been more excited by the idea of having sex with somebody other than Eric. And as I walked out to the car to go pick up Patrick, I realized that Eric had planted a cold seed of disdain in me when he cheated. And even though I felt a deep, instinctive revulsion at the thought of cheating, I also had to face the fact that my marriage to Eric had a deep crack in it. And as you know, it would only get wider with time, until it was an uncrossable chasm."

=====

Cary heaved a shuddering sigh and ran her hand down my chest. "So... that's everything. You know all my darkest secrets now. My first marriage, how I ended up in a video that Eric tried to sell as porn, and how I started down the road of divorce."

I lay silently for a long time, digesting the information and stroking her hair. She made a contented sound. After a while, she observed, "You're awfully quiet."

"Just putting some pieces together," I answered. "It's a lot clearer why you were so instantly ready to divorce that sack of shit after the incident at your birthday party. And why you were looking for a recording device that day after paintball." I blinked. "Huh. I guess this was his first time trying to 'make things even,' huh?"

Cary nodded almost imperceptibly. "Yep. Not the last, but the first and biggest. If he could make me think I'd cheated and gotten pregnant by a stranger, then I wouldn't have any sort of moral high ground against him and his affairs. He might never have told me the truth, except that he was afraid I might get an abortion."

"It seems like forever ago, but when you were faking an affair, I asked why you didn't just... really cheat." I shifted. "You got pretty upset. It makes sense why, now."

"And you can see why it hit me so hard given everything that had happened with Adam," she murmured. "Waking up covered in... goop. Being called names."

"Fuck, I'd have killed him," I snarled. "And that you got through all of this without being an absolute wreck... I can't believe you're still so vivid and adventurous and full of life! Nobody would have blamed you for just retreating into a shell."

Cary idly let her hand drift across my body. "Not done being adventurous yet," she promised. "Anyway, I still have some wild college stories to share. But nothing as deep and dark as that." She rolled over in place so that she was leaning into me with her breasts on my chest and her legs stretched out behind her. She looked up into my eyes. "And I've thought of a good way to make sure that I'm not dwelling on those days during the rest of the week. But first, let's go get some food, my mighty protector. I assume you know the way?"

I did my best impression of Hawkeye. "Well, you face north and then real sudden-like, turn left." Cary smiled as she stood, tugging on my hand.

Hands linked, we walked back down the trail towards my car, happy in each other's company. Cary's spirits rose as we hiked and the anxiety of telling her story slowly faded. My heart rate returned to normal, and I tried not to think about how terrible her life must have been, stuck in an unhappy marriage to a manipulative philanderer borderline-rapist. But I also swore to myself to never let Eric hurt her again.