A Rigorous Job Interview

Tuesday was the night she always had to work late until 7 for some sort of management meetings. He had never tried to call at work late before but found it just a bit odd that she would turn her phone off if the office switchboard was closed.

He shrugged that off until a couple of weeks later he was trying to call her over lunch hour, and it just rang and rang with no answer. Why? Where was her phone that she could not hear it? He remembered to ask her about it over dinner, only he did so in a somewhat round about manner, by casually asking her what she had done for lunch that day.

She answered after a 3 second delay. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. Say it out loud...a suspiciously long delay for her to calmly respond "Oh just the usual old Metro Buffet, honey. Boring but you get to choose your own poison and it fills the tummy." Eben just smiled a bit and helped himself to seconds on the string beans. But in his brain some sparks were sounding an alarm.

In the morning, he just quietly got ready early for the day, as per usual, and headed down to the kitchen. Taking Sharon's Apple off the recharger he opened it up while his coffee was brewing. He didn't feel at all guilty; they never had any secrets between them, he felt, so what was the harm.

A few strings of texts with several correspondents with male names were very eye catching.

One that stood out to him right away was to and from 'Doc Benson'. That name was familiar, Sharon's dentist. Those were mostly logistical messages regarding her appointments with him in his last time slot on Tuesday afternoon. Almost every Tuesday going back a long time. They didn't text anything sexy or use terms of endearment, nothing at all revelatory.

But a couple of things made him curious. One was that he had never heard her talk about any dental treatments, not in the prior couple of years anyway. Additionally, since he was the family bill payer, he certainly had not seen any bills from or checks to Doctor Benson. A whimsical thought flitted through Eben's head: maybe he works for free, perhaps just to get a close look at Sharon's spectacular cleavage.

Furthermore, Tuesday was the day of the week that Sharon supposedly had to work late at the firm, until about 7 pm. Yet these texts made it clear that she had a rather long string of late Tuesday sessions in the dentist's chair. Curious.

Another series of texts were from an unknown person with the handle Darren, but the content was much less mysterious. "Shar, you are beautiful; you took my beath away from that first kiss. 3 heart emojis."

Her reply was 4 heart emojis.

A few days later, "Can we meet again over lunch?"

From the woman of few words...thumbs up emoji. "12:15"

A few hours later, from Darren: "OMG I think I am in love. that was best I had in my life! U R so fucking good! I mean to say so good fucking. lol. I'm SO sorry I cum 2 soon, ur just 2 much for me. 6 heart emojis.

No reply of any kind, ever, on her text history with Darren.

Presumably, if he got a reply at all it was by email or phone call and it was lilely very brief. Sounds like Darren the creep got dumped.

No longer 'curious', or even 'suspicious', all the way to 'guilty as hell'! He layed the phone down and put his head on his arms on the table. "Oh my Jesus!!! He cried half aloud. My gorgeous wife of all these years is fucking around on me." He started to tear up and grabbed his beath between sobs.

It was an amazing cold bath, just not anything that would have ever occurred to him. He pulled himself together to go back to the incriminating text histories.

Next, he found a long string of exchanges with someone named Justin. That took some careful sorting out, but from doing so he confirmed to his satisfaction that Justin was an attorney but not with his wife's firm. He worked close by as one time they made last minute lunch plans to meet up less than 15 minutes later.

He could see they made plans to eat together several times a week at the Metro, he knew of that place, Sharon had spoken of it on occasion. The two usually seemed to have some plan following lunch, a couple of times Justin had said 'I have the key' which sounded very much like it involved some type of liaison.

They didn't talk sex point blank but the frequent exchanges of appellations such as 'honey', 'sweetie' and especially 'lover' would make any man more than a little suspicious. But now, having already confirmed that Sharon was fucked around on him, this was not a shock.

Then, more recently, there was one very promiscuous sounding message when some other lawyer was asking to join up with them over lunch.

Justin: "hon, I want to invite a coworker, name of Edwin, to join us at lunch."

Sharon: "No problem, sweetie."

Justin: "and afterwards'

Sharon: "WTF??"

Justin: "Yes, I said he is a co-worker."

Sharon: "I didn't mean WTF...I meant What the Fuck? Is he going to take video, or just watch?"

Justin: "ohhh. haha. sorry. well we didn't talk about video, would you like him to?"

At that point the texts stop, for a couple of hours. Good guess one of them switched over to phone. And, a very good guess, he sorted out the wrinkles and they did have company at the Metro. The following texts, from the early afternoon, read:

Justin: "jesus lover, I had NO idea...you were fucking magnifico. I think he may die happy. who knew you could F like that with 2 on 1? I love you I love you I love you! "

Sharon: "just got a text from him, he says the same thing. grin. but he didn't say it 3 times. youre still the best and I love you too"

Justin: "did you tell him you love him too?

Sharon: "not exactly"

Justin: "WTF does not exactly mean??"

Sharon: "LOL, u know I only love you sweetie. I just said to him 'I loved fucking you' o.k.? and I did tell him I would luv to have him join again if you invited him.

Eben was conflicted over seeing this reply. Yes, he dodged a bullet vis a vis the new guy, but another expression of love for her steady! Oh hell, a steady fuck buddy in his wife's life was actually better than wondering if she was getting into some bad new crowd.

Justin: "we'll see about that. 1 hour is not enough with you, my love. doubt I want to share any of ur precious holes."

Sharon: "u say the sweetest things darlin. but I did have F.U.N. back to work now."

Eben thought he would have to search for texts from Edwin later. But now it was time to put her phone back and get outta Dodge before Sharon got up.

Reading those texts almost gave him a boner. Almost. But Eben did not really get a lot of those. He didn't know why he had such a low libido, but it was a trait that had been with him since he attained sexual maturity. Somehow, this cell phone voyeurism was about as sexy as it gets for him. Those that can, do. Those that can't, can read about it.

It had been the height of irony that Eben managed to land such a world class hottie even though he had such a dead dick. Of course, it hadn't hurt his eligibility for dating Ohio State girls to be a sometimes starter on the Buckeyes football team.

On his way to work, he couldn't get those texts out of his mind. They confirm that his wife has been fucking around on him for some time. And with multiple partners it turns out. Actually, her playing the field was better news than just having one boyfriend; he thought that would reduce the chances that she would fall for someone new.

But this Justin seems to be a serious concern. Could that develop into something that threatened his marriage? He would love to ask her, but that would be stupid. He would have to reveal all he knew about the affair and that alone might cause the fracture. And she would probably lie and say no, even if she was tempted to go off the deep end.

Catch your breath Eben. Do your best to be the best husband you can be and cross your fingers. That's all you can do. Making some physical confrontation against Justin wasn't in the cards. If he was to beat on the guy, Eben's physicality would very possibly kill the lawyer and put himself in jail for years, or decades.

If he started any physical confrontation Sharon would for certain leave him and his parents would very likely disown him as well. Fighting over your woman's honor is so last century. Next to last.

He would bid his time, keep his eyes open and treat his wife like a Queen, while keeping silent about her infidelities. It was an easy price for him to pay for having such a sweet trophy wife. He still believed she was happy in their marriage and he wanted to keep her that way. Being happy in a marriage is a whole nother thing than being happy in a bed. A lot of people don't get that. And that fucks up a lot of lives.

THE END FOR NOW.

I definitely intend to continue this story and plan to elaborate on those workplace Retreats and, of course her future relationships with Junior, and Justin, and maybe Edwin or other scallywags she may run into. But it is going to take me some time to get to it. If any writer out there feels motivated to give it a finish you will have my blessing.