Twenty Minutes Ch. 02

She looked as though I'd slapped her. After a minute she started to cry, hard, and put her face in her hands. I could hear her saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" in between her sobs.

I slid over next to her and held her in my arms, letting her cry. Neither of us said another word for a long time.

*** *** ***

When Angie had cried herself out, she sat up and used a tissue to dry her face.

Then she said, "Alex, before you left you asked me to think about what I would do if you had been the one who ... had an affair.

"I have thought about it a lot, and I have my answers for you. I'd like to share them with you after lunch, if that's OK."

I nodded, and then she said, "would it be all right if you ate lunch down here? I'd like to go ... wash up, and have lunch alone in the room. It'll give me time to get organized."

We agreed I'd come up after an hour, and she left me.

When I returned to our room Angie was ready for me. She'd showered and brushed her hair, and didn't look as sad and lost as before. She asked me to sit on the sofa, and sat facing me in a big armchair, a pad and pen in her hands. She had on the glasses she always wore at work, which gave her a pert secretarial look that I secretly adored.

"Alex, I thought a lot about this. I think that what you really wanted me to do was think about how I would feel if you had ... cheated, then understand how you were feeling about what ... what I did, and finally think about how I could address those feelings and try to make things up to you.

"So I've set up three columns: the first is how I would feel, the second is how you must feel, and the third is what I will try to do."

As she sat there, glasses on her nose, explaining her neat little system to me, sounding just like the first-rate, highly organized paralegal who was so valued at her job, my heart just swelled up with love for her.

I had been so angry and so hurt, it had been hard to remember how much I loved Angie, or even why. This reminder of another side of her—her work-side, and her organized, efficient approach to problems—brought back vividly to me why she was so special to me. And why it was worth trying to save our marriage.

She went on. "I'm afraid that for some of these there isn't anything in the third column, because simply I don't know what to do." She looked up at me with pain in her eyes.

"So I'll just read an item in the first column and the one in the second—then if there's something in the third column I'll read that too."

"Okay, Angie," I smiled at her.

"First, I'd just be angry that you cheated on me. And I know you are angry, Alex—and I deserve it!

"Then, I'd want to know how you could possibly justify or explain doing such an awful thing. And you deserve that explanation too. I think I tried to give it to you at home, before you left. How Connie's affair seemed so exciting and harmless—and I just stopped thinking, and stupidly thought I could do the same thing and you'd never know, and I'd never hurt you."

I interrupted and said, "well, your friend Tommy's behavior is surely part of the explanation, too—but we'll get to him later. Why don't you just go on."

"Well, I would be beside myself with insecurity, Alex—scared that your lover was sexier, more fun in bed, than I was. So you must be feeling some of the same feelings too."

I growled, "and what's in your 'fix-it-all' third column for that one, Angie?"

She looked at me sadly. "Nothing that can just make the pain go away, sweetheart. What I wrote is 'show Alex how much I love and desire him, convince him over time that he is the only lover I will ever want from now on'.

"But I'm not such a fool as to think I can just snap my fingers and make it happen, Alex. I don't know whether it would be better never to talk about ... what I did with Tommy, or tell you all the gory details and then we can put it behind us."

"Actually I have decided that I am going to want to know every detail, Angie—but we don't have to do that now."

I saw alarm in her eyes, but she didn't respond. After a minute she went back to her list.

"Well—my pride was hurt, thinking about Christina, and I'm sure yours is too. To think that there's a person for whom you're Number 1, and then learn they're screwing someone else ... it's just not forgivable, is it, Alex?" Suddenly she was crying again.

Without a word I went over and held her for a few minutes, and she gradually calmed down.

"What else is on the list, Angie?"

"Just two more things. The first is trust. How can you ever trust me now? How can I earn back your trust?"

I said, "I think I know the answer to that one. It will take a lot of time, and both of us will have to work hard at it. For a while, I won't trust you a bit, and you're just going to have to live with it. I'll want to know where you are every minute, who you're having lunch with, who called on the phone, what you talk about with Connie—"

I stopped, and grimaced. "Oh yes, Connie. That's another conversation we'll have to have." Angie nodded.

"The last thing, Alex, is reassurance. You used to be able to believe that you had all of my love and my desire. That you were my first and only choice for a husband and a lover and a best friend. That when we made love I was entirely with you, not thinking of someone else or comparing you to him.

"And I ... fucked up, and I took that away from you. And now I need to find ways to give it back to you again.

She looked at me, fiercely, her cheeks still wet. "And I will, Alex! You just watch me—I will do it! Every day you let me stay in your life, I'm going to show you just how much you mean to me, and how sorry I am for hurting you."

She got up suddenly, came straight over to me, and dropped into my lap, throwing her arms tightly around me. She squeezed me hard, putting her lips near my ear.

"You are my best lover, my best friend. You are the only man I want, and the only man who will EVER have me again. And if you let me, I'll prove it to you every single day."

Without another word, she got up and pulled me over to the bed. She had a determined gleam in her eye as she pulled off my shoes and socks, my shirt, and finally my shorts and boxers. Then, quickly stripping off her own clothes, she knelt between my legs and caressed my half-erect cock.

After a moment, still gazing into my eyes, she opened her mouth and drew my dick deliciously inside. Using her hands to gently stroke my balls and my thighs, she tongued and sucked my cock, taking her time, getting me rock-hard. Angie couldn't quite manage a full deep-throat, but she had most of my 6 ½" inside as she worked on me.

Her face wore a look of fierce concentration, as though she were doing multiplication in her head or cooking from a complicated recipe. I almost had to laugh at those thoughts, but I was enjoying her oral loving too much.

Keeping her eyes fixed on my face, she brought me closer and closer to my inevitable, intense climax. Finally I asked, "Angie, don't you want to come up here with me?"

She shook her head, and then began to slide her lips more rapidly up and down my shaft, intensifying the pleasure by using one hand to cup my balls gently. She got me into a rhythm that had me pushing my hips forward, and after another delicious minute I began to pump my cum into her throat, groaning with the wonderful pleasure.

She stayed on me all through my orgasm, and then delicately continued to suck and clean my cock as it softened. Only when my excitement had completely subsided, and I was lying back in total relaxation, did she let me slide from her mouth and climb up next to me on the bed, gazing down with a look of triumph on her face.

She saw my own smile, and said, "consider that a down-payment."

I had to laugh, and after a moment she was laughing with me, as we lay on the bed in each other's arms.

Angie had never been wild about oral sex. She had done it occasionally to please me, but it was far from her favorite thing, and she'd never been very comfortable about swallowing. So I understood that this "down-payment" on her part was a conscious act of love and atonement—an attempt to tell me how much I mattered to her.

We spent the rest of the day in bed, separating only long enough for a leisurely room-service dinner. I even skipped my swimming for the first time all week. Some combination of desire and determination to reassure me had Angie hotter than I'd seen her since the first days of our relationship, and I was happy to go along for the ride. Sometimes we made love, with great tenderness, and sometimes we just fucked. By about 10 pm we were both happy, both exhausted, and both fast asleep.

*** *** ***

The next day, after a relaxed breakfast in the sunshine, we had another serious talk, and I shared with Angie the things I'd been thinking about our return.

"I need to hear about you and Tommy, Angie, and I'll tell you why.

"What I wish you could do is just un-do your affair with him, just erase it somehow. But it's not possible. So what I've decided I want us to do is 'write over it'."

She looked at me in confusion and I said, "don't worry, I'll explain. But first, can you tell me please how the affair started?"

Unhappily but willingly, she told me the story, some of which I'd heard already: the tennis class, the casual drinks afterwards in a group, the evening just the two of them were left and he made a pass at her.

"I said no, Alex, but I didn't slam the door tight. And he kept after me, not at all forcefully but persistently. The night of the last tennis class he walked me from the bar to my car—and he kissed me. And I let him, Alex. It was a short kiss, but we both knew what it meant.

"Then the next week he called me and said we ought to play tennis together, just to keep up our skills from the class. He's a phys. ed. teacher at a middle school, so he's always free after about 2:30 pm. I agreed to take an afternoon off and meet him at his apartment, and we'd go to some nearby courts."

She looked at me, the pain clear on her face. "I have no excuses, Alex. He took the lead, Tommy was the one who made it happen—but I knew what I was doing, too.

"When I got to his apartment he offered me a quick soda before tennis, and then he ... put the moves on me. Gently--he flattered me, and he stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders.... God, it is just awful having to tell you this!

"When he had me nice and relaxed—and turned-on—he took my hand and gently led me into the bedroom. You can guess the rest." Her voice had turned flat, empty.

"Just one more question for right now, Angie. Did you use condoms?"

She nodded. "Yes, always. The first time we weren't even talking at all, except when I said 'you have to use a condom'. He had them in a drawer by his bed."

"What else do you know about Tommy?"

"Well, he's a phys. ed. teacher, like I said, and he's originally from Buffalo. And he's engaged, though that obviously doesn't mean he's faithful to his fiancée!" She made that last remark in a bitter tone.

After a moment, I said, "OK, Angie. Here's what I meant by 'writing over'. I want you and me to re-create what you did with Tommy. I'm going to ask you to write down for me the details of each time you two were together: what you did sexually, where, what it was like, who took the lead, what positions, how many times each of you came—everything.

"And then I want you and me to do all those things, in all the same places and in all the same ways. So that each time you had sex with Tommy, it'll be 'written over' by you and me.

"That may sound totally nuts, but it's the closest thing I can come up with to 'un-do' your affair."

Angie gazed at me, a very serious look on her face. "Yes Alex, it does sound nuts—but it sort of makes sense to me too. If you give me some time today, I'll write down all the stuff you've asked for. But can I ask you one favor?"

I nodded, and she said, "could you ... read it when we're in bed together, with me in your arms, after we've made love? Somehow that way I'll be less utterly terrified about ... how you'll react when you read it."

I smiled and said, " sure, Angie." Then she asked me one more question.

"Alex—you said 'all the same places'. Do you mean we're going to make love in Tommy's apartment!? How can we do that?"

I gave her an evil smile, and said, "just leave that little detail to me!"

After lunch we separated for a few hours. Angie sat in the room and made her list—not an easy or pleasant task, I'm sure. I made a couple of phone calls, then did my laps in the pool. After just a few days my wind and stamina were already improved, and I vowed to myself that I'd keep up my routine at a pool back home. It felt great to be a little more fit.

We had three more days together at the resort before we had to be back at our jobs, and we made the most of them. I didn't bring up the dreaded list for a while, and we just played. We swam, we lay in the sun, we went out to eat, and we spent a lot of time either talking or making love.

Angie's determination to make things up to me came out energetically in bed. We spent more time on foreplay than we were used to, often with Angie making me lie down and giving me delicious massages, that turned into caressing and sex-play.

She asked me several times if there were new things or new positions I wanted to try. The one I enjoyed the most was screwing her standing up against a wall, with her legs tight around my waist. Once we got our balance settled, I would lift her by her ass-cheeks, then gently drop her back down on my cock. It took a minute or two to get the rhythm right, but that was really exciting! We both were gasping and groaning as we came, and then we collapsed onto the floor together, giggling, my cock still stuck inside her.

We also had some good talks about our marriage. Before her affair we both had thought we'd been doing great—but surprisingly, our conversations revealed to both of us that things had gotten a little stale. We loved and appreciated one another, but we'd each gotten a little lazy about expressing it.

Some of that is surely inevitable—being married is far different from dating, after all—but we agreed that we could do better. An occasional dinner out, a weekend getaway, taking the time some evenings for a walk in the park—we had lots of ideas for ways we could be more attentive to each other, once we started thinking about it.

Angie proposed the idea of planning an "Alex" night or an "Angie" night, when the person whose night it was would have everything he or she wanted: a favorite dinner, being waited on by the other, and then (of course) being served sexually by the other one in his or her favorite ways.

Finally, we talked about starting a family. Both of us looked forward to having children, and we'd always felt that we'd "know" when the time was right.

I said, "Angie, I still want to have children—but only after I know that our marriage is going to continue. And I don't think I'll be sure about that anytime soon."

She just nodded, looking meek. "I can't blame you, Alex. That was something I worried about when I thought you'd had an affair with Christina. How could I have children with a man I couldn't trust to be faithful to me? And now you're in that position."

I took her hand and smiled. "Yes I am—but I look forward to not being in it. This week has been terrific, Angie. It hasn't made all my anger go away, but it has reminded me how much I love you."

She leaned over and gave me a kiss, pulling me tightly to her with her arms.

When we broke apart I said, "one more thing. When I do feel like we've made it back, like we're really going to be OK, you'll know. Because I'll come to you and say, 'Angie, let's make a baby.' "

As we sat together on the flight home, I found myself getting more and more tense. My time away with Angie, despite the circumstances, had felt like a honeymoon. She'd been loving and passionate, desperate to show me how much I mattered to her and how much she wanted me. The sex had been fantastic, and just being with one another had been great too. In a thousand ways I was reminded of how much I loved her, and why.

But that was in Florida, at a beautiful resort, a thousand miles away from our regular lives, and from the house where she'd fucked someone else. I had real doubts about how well my loving feelings would survive once we were back home.

We'd each be back at work, with the stresses that brought. And most of all, I'd be back to not knowing every minute where Angie was and what she was doing. I'd either have to start trusting her or drive myself crazy.

Angie must have sense some of what I was feeling. She held my hand for hours on the flight, and kept glancing over to me with a look of increasing concern. Finally, soon before we were to land, she turned to me and squeezed my hand tighter.

"Honey," she said quietly, almost whispering. "Please don't give up on me now! Please believe everything I said to you in Florida, and remember everything we did.

"I know it's going to be hard. I can tell some of what you're thinking, just from watching your face. But I'm the same Angie who adores you, who would give anything to take back what I did. Please give me a chance!"

I looked into her face, seeing the tears in her eyes, and forced a smile.

"I'll give you a chance, Angie, I promise. You're right, I'm tensing up, just thinking about what it will be like. But let's both try to hold on to what the past week has been like."

She smiled at me, pulling my hand to her lips and kissing it fiercely. "It's a deal!" she said.