Preemptive Strike

She turned to him in surprise. "Hi, Nick—uh, give me a sec.

"April, Nick's come back home; how about if I call you later? Ok, bye."

She hung up and came over to Nick. "Is everything okay, honey? I didn't expect to see you this morning."

Nick gave her a serious, troubled look. "Em, just come sit in the living room with me, okay? I need to talk to you."

She sat on the couch and watched him pace, acting uncertain. He saw her worried look. Finally he sat in a chair across from her.

"Emily, I ... I was gonna, um, talk to you about this tonight. But I thought about it, driving to work, and I—

"Well, I just realized there was no reason to wait. No good time to say it. I'm moving out—I think I'm going to be getting a divorce."

He watched her. Nick had never seen a person's mouth hang open like that, as though her jaw muscles didn't work. She stared at him, swallowed hard.

"Nick, I—Why?! We love each other, we have a great marriage—why?" She started to cry. "Why would you do this, walk out on me, on Charlie and Ben?"

He got up and paced the room, delivering the words he'd been thinking about ever since Friday.

"There's just no spark anymore, Em. Married life is so damn repetitive! I go to work, I come home, I play with the boys and get them to bed, you and I watch TV, we kiss each other good night and go to sleep. Then the next day we do the same thing.

"I need ... a little excitement. Something new, something that makes me tingle, gets my blood racing."

He stopped and looked over at Emily. She had gone utterly pale—he wondered how obvious it was that he was throwing her own words to her sister right back in her face.

"I've met someone who—"

"No!" she shouted, looking desperate. She jumped up. "No, please, Nick, please tell me you're not—" She broke down, sobbing.

"I'm not having an affair, Emily. I wouldn't do that to you! I haven't even kissed her, even touched her yet. And I won't, not while you and I—"

He stopped, watch her cry, her whole body shaking. Then he spoke his final sentences.

"But I want that spark—I want someone who will want me, make me feel attractive. Make me feel like a man again, instead of a drudge who's getting old before his time.

"Listen—I'll be away on a business trip until Friday. I've got a motel room reserved for when I get back. I'll call you and we can find a time to talk, figure out how we're going to settle things. If you want to speak to a lawyer that would probably be a good idea."

She gazed at him in horror as he pulled out the suitcase from behind the couch.

"No, Nick, please—honey, can't we—"

"I'm so sorry, Emily." He turned and headed out the door, listening to her sobs of despair behind him. As angry and hurt as he was, he still felt for her. She was in agony, and the part of him that thought "serves her right, the bitch!" battled with the part that wanted to come back into the house and hold her in his arms, kiss away her tears and tell her everything would be all right.

**********************

"I fucking enjoyed that!" he thought to himself, with a kind of grim satisfaction. Nick sat at his desk staring out the window. He'd gone straight to work—the "business trip" he'd told Emily about was pure bullshit. He just wanted her to have a few days to feel miserable.

He asked Suzanne to come in and explained the situation to her briefly.

"Emily and I are having a ... well, a little tension at home. So I'm staying away for a couple of days, and she thinks I'm on a business trip until Thursday night—in case she happens to call, okay?"

Suzanne looked troubled. "I'm so sorry, Nick. Anything I can do?"

He shook his head. "Thanks, no, Suzanne—I hope we're going to get through it."

She smiled a little and said, "been there, done that. Ralph and I once split up for almost a month, way back before we had the kids. It was pretty grim at the time—now we look back and joke with each other about it."

They chatted a moment more before Suzanne went back out of the office, and Nick realized he felt a little better. God knows I'm not the only guy who ever had marriage trouble, he thought to himself.

The three days passed quickly, to Nick's surprise. He'd booked a nice room at the Hyatt on Capitol Square, so he could walk to and from his office. He worked late every day, getting back to his room around 9 pm for a quick room-service dinner, and he got a lot accomplished, sketching out his short-term and long-range plans for his new department. He made phone calls and emailed his contacts in Tokyo, he consulted with the other Far East personnel at Thomaston, and in general he got his new job off to a good solid start.

He checked his cell phone a couple of times a day, always finding one or more messages from Emily, and he deleted them without even bothering to listen. He did the same with her emails, after glancing through them to make sure there weren't any problems with his sons.

Nick was lonely, of course. He missed Emily, as angry as he was, and he missed the boys like crazy. He even considered parking down the street from his house to get a glimpse of them, then decided he could wait until Friday. But the "business trip" gave him a taste of what a divorce might actually mean, and he didn't like it one bit.

Of course, that wasn't the plan. The plan was to scare Emily shitless, really put the fear of God in her, and see if that was sufficient to get her head back on straight and put their marriage back together. If not ... if not, he'd deal with that when he had to.

**********************

With a degree of self-restraint that made him proud, Nick waited all the way until Thursday afternoon to check Emily's secret email account. He wanted to see what she'd been up to, but he also didn't want to torment himself constantly.

When he looked, he found nothing to or from April—obviously she and Emily had been talking on the phone—but six messages since Monday morning from that asshole Pritzker. Why had she changed her mind? What had happened to the magic they'd been sharing? What had he done wrong, why was she mad at him?

Clearly the bastard had known how close he was to Emily's pussy and it was just killing him to be denied now. Nick smiled to himself.

Emily had ignored the first four messages. In response to the fifth one, sent on Wednesday, she simply wrote back:

"Jason:

Let it go. I'm not going to see you again. Stop contacting me. Emily"

Jason had written her once more but half-heartedly, along the lines of "okay, but keep me in mind." He knew he'd lost, at least for now.

"And," Nick thought, "I've won—at least for now. But for how long?" That was the question—what was to prevent this from happening again?

**********************

On Friday around 11 a.m. Nick called Emily from his cell. He tried to strike a tone that was businesslike without being too brusque.

"Hi Emily, it's me. How are the boys?"

"Nick, my God!" He heard her starting to sniffle. "How are you? I've missed you so much! And the boys, they ..." She started to cry.

"I'm getting on the plane in a few minutes, okay? I'll be home for dinner tonight. I was wondering if your parents could maybe take the boys on Saturday, keep them overnight for a visit, and you and I could have some time to talk."

He could hear her pulling herself together. "Uh, I'm sure they'd love that. I'll call them today and set it up.

"Honey, what would you like for dinner tonight? I'd like to make us something really special."

Nick grinned. "Oh, I don't care, Em—don't go to any trouble. Make something that Ben and Charlie like—hot dogs, whatever."

"Okay, honey." She was obviously disappointed. What was she expecting, that he'd fall right back into her arms? Nick shook his head.

"Gotta go—see you tonight. Bye!" He hung up, not waiting for the "I love you" that was sure to follow.

**********************

Nick's return was fantastic. The boys were all over him, wild with excitement, and he let them wrestle him and clutch at him and tell him all their stories of the past few days. They were thrilled with the Columbus Clippers hats he'd bought them, and ran and got their baseball gloves so they could have a catch in the back yard.

Emily watched all this with obvious sadness. He'd let her hug him when he arrived, but pulled away far sooner than she wanted, and her eyes followed him despairingly as he threw himself back into the lives of their sons. Maybe she'd hoped that his shocking announcement had only been a mirage, that things would go back to normal, but it clearly wasn't happening.

Nick let Ben and Charlie stay up ridiculously late—almost until 11. Partly it was to prolong Emily's obvious misery, but mostly he'd just missed them. It wasn't until they could hardly keep their eyes open that he agreed with Emily that it was time to get them into bed.

And once they'd had the last story and the last glass of water, he wasted no time in getting ready for bed himself. Before Emily could attempt either a seduction or a conversation, Nick already had his head on the pillow and the light out.

She still tried, though. "Honey? Could we talk for a few minutes?"

Nick smiled to himself in the dark. "Tomorrow, okay Em? This was an exhausting trip, and the boys wore me out tonight. Are your folks taking them tomorrow?"

"Yes—I said I'd drive them over around 11."

"Okay then. Sleep well." He offered her no kiss, no hug. Now that he was home again, the anger that had died down a bit during his busy week at work was roaring through him. It took him a long time to fall asleep, and as he lay there he was aware of Emily tossing and turning as well.

**********************

Saturday breakfast was subdued, though you couldn't have told it by Charlie and Ben, who were jumping around with extra energy. Dad was back, and they were going to Gramma and Grampa's—for an overnight visit! "Can we take our baseball gloves? And our new hats? Will Grampa play baseball with us?" Etc., etc.

Nick quietly enjoyed Emily's mournful looks, and when she was ready to drive off with the boys he just said, "we'll talk when you get back."

But the house was empty when Emily returned, and she had a miserable hour of sitting at the kitchen table, looking out at the driveway and imagining the worst, before Nick returned. He walked in with an armload of U-Haul boxes and she burst into tears.

Nick handed her a napkin. "C'mon, Em, it's all right. Let's just talk this through like two adults."

But he had to wait nearly five minutes until her sobbing subsided, and another five while she washed her face and repaired her make-up. When she came back she looked better—still devastated, but in Nick's eyes oddly beautiful. He really was crazy about her, the stupid bitch, he thought.

She got them cups of coffee and sat back down at the table. "Can I talk first, Nick?"

He nodded.

She leaned forward and looked at him imploringly. "I don't want a divorce, I don't want a separation. I want you, and I want our marriage back.

"I love you and I know you love me, Nick. And you adore the boys. We should be together. And I'll do anything I can to make our marriage better, anything. Just tell me where to start."

He gazed at her, keeping his face neutral. "The excitement's gone, Em. Don't tell me you don't feel it too. All the routine, the dishes and the boys and the bills?

"Can you tell me honestly that you haven't noticed? That you haven't been tempted to find something else, something a little more exciting, something or someone that would put a little spark back in your life?"

The moment of truth. He wondered if she'd burst into tears again, or run out of the room, or even look straight into his face and lie to him.

Instead she said, "yes, I've felt it, Nick. And I've been an absolute idiot, and I'm afraid when you hear about it you'll just walk out the door and I'll never see you again."

She was trembling, and squeezing the fingers of her left hand with her right so hard he was afraid she'd break them. But she didn't stop looking at him.

With a straight face he said, "what are you talking about?"

Stiffly she got up, went to the cabinet above the refrigerator and pulled out three pieces of paper.

"I just couldn't bear telling you about this, so I wrote it all down. I'll go into the bedroom and give you all the time you need. But Nick, will you promise me, please—if only for all the years we've been together—

"Will you promise me that you'll come talk to me about this, before you decide what you're going to do?"

He looked into her frightened, tear-stained face. "Okay," he said. He took the papers and went into the living room to read them, hearing her crying behind him as she went down the hall towards their bedroom.

**********************

There was little in her letter that he didn't already know, or had pretty much guessed. She'd met Pritzker at the seminar, and he'd singled her out and flirted with her discreetly. Then he'd gotten her email address and invited her out for what would appear to be an innocent business lunch.

Emily had been flattered, and he'd smoothly worked on her over a period of weeks. At some early point he'd suggested she set up a private email account "just so no one will misunderstand" their relationship.

She appeared to be telling the whole truth, as far as Nick could tell. There had been four occasions when she and Pritzker went beyond acceptable behavior for a man and a woman married to other people. The first of those had been a long, sloppy kiss, in the parking lot behind a luncheonette where they'd had coffee together.

After that, three make-out sessions in Pritzker's car, parked in a little woodsy lane near a local golf course, where he'd gotten a little further each time. "Christ, it was like high school all over again!" Nick thought. The second time Jason had gotten her bra unhooked and his hands on her bare tits; the third time, she'd taken her blouse and bra off completely. He'd licked and sucked her tits, then finger-banged her until she came. Emily had played with his cock until he shot come all over his own shirt.

In between the letter's desperate apologies and the affirmations of her love for Nick, Emily had been pretty hard on herself. "I was a complete fool" was the least of her self-condemnations. She freely admitted having been naïve about Pritzker's attention at first, and then denying to herself how serious and wrong her behavior had been.

"I just lied to myself, Nick," she wrote at the end. "I pushed all thoughts of my marriage vows, my responsibility to you and the boys, out of my mind. I acted as though this was nothing more than a little bit of flirting with a friend at a party. I am more ashamed than I can possibly put into words.

"And when you told me you were thinking about divorce it all hit me in the head—suddenly. How selfish, how childish I had been, to think that my desire for a little 'excitement' entitled me to fuck around behind your back.

"I didn't fuck him—please believe me. But I won't lie to you and say it wouldn't have ever happened. It's what Jason was after, and it would have happened, if your walking out hadn't put an end to the whole thing.

"I'm done with him—forever, absolutely, no matter what. I never want to see that smooth-talking prick again, even if you never forgive me. Even if you divorce me. I'm just so very, very sorry that I didn't get my head out of my ass soon enough to see what I was doing to us.

"And I can't help wondering whether things would be different if I'd put more energy into our marriage, into making things more interesting and exciting, instead of that stupid flirtation with Jason—whether you might still want to be married to me, instead of looking for another woman to give you that spark.

"I am so very sorry. Can you ever forgive me? Can you give me the chance to make this up to you?

"Your foolish, loving wife—

Emily"

**********************

Nick sat for a while, gazing out at the back yard, before he went into the bedroom. Emily was asleep, curled up in the fetal position under the bedspread. He stood watching her for a few minutes, then found a wave of exhaustion washing over him. He took off his clothes, lay down next to her in his boxers and tee-shirt and was asleep within moments.

Some time later, he had no idea how long, he came awake feeling Emily's warmth against him. As his eyes opened he realized she was naked, squirming against him, kissing his neck, looking desperately into his face. When she saw him looking at her she started to cry, holding onto him tightly.

"Please, please," she said, "please love me. Please, Nick—whatever happens, whatever you're going to do—just hold me and love me."

She pulled his tee-shirt up and kissed his chest, slid a hand down into his boxers and caressed his cock, then leaned down and yanked the boxers off. Before he could stop her she had taken his half-hard dick between her lips and begun kissing and sucking it.

Nick's response could be summarized by the words, "What the hell." He didn't know what was ahead—he wasn't even sure what he wanted—but there didn't seem to be any good reason to pull Emily off his cock. He stroked her back and her ass while she sucked him, getting him very hard in her mouth, moaning when his hand slid between her legs and into her wet pussy.

Then she was rolling over, pulling him down on top of her between her open thighs, kissing him and saying, "please, baby," over and over again. He drove himself into her smoothly, groaning, and fucked her while she clung to him like a drowning woman to a floating log, squeezing him, kissing his neck, humping her hips up at him until he shot his sperm into her.

They lay side by side, still in each other's arms, catching their breath. Emily was weeping quietly onto his shoulder, her face hidden from him. Each time he moved as if to disengage himself she clung to him tightly.

Finally he said, "I need the bathroom, Em," and she released him. When he returned he sat up against the headboard, gazing at her unhappy, uncertain face.

"How can I ever trust you again?"

She lowered her head, nodding.

"I mean, this wasn't a drunken fling, a one-night discretion. This was a flirtation, an affair over several weeks. Planned meetings. Emails back and forth—when can we meet, when will hubby be out of the way? Pretty fucking cold-blooded, Emily."

"I know," she said, not looking up. "It's ... it's really terrible, what I did. I have no excuse."

Then she said, "I didn't ... have sex with him though. I mean, actual sex."

Angrily Nick said, "but you were going to, right? Until I screwed up your plans?"

Again she nodded. He could see tears on her face again.

"So—how can I ever trust you? How can I live with you after this without wondering when the next sleazy asshole will come along and work his fingers into your panties?"

She sat up straight, brightening. "You mean you're thinking about it, Nick? There might be some chance we could ..." She looked hopeful, and very nervous.

"I don't know. There's 'once burned, twice shy,' right? I mean, you put your hand on a hot stove and burned the shit out of it, maybe you've learned your lesson. But there's also 'once a cheater, always a cheater.' How do I know that if I find some way to get past this, some way to get over your stabbing me in the back, that you won't do it again in a couple of years—once the dust has settled, once everything's back to normal, and life starts getting a little dull again?"

Suddenly he wanted to be out of there, he didn't want to talk any more. He jumped up and started putting on his clothes. When Emily began to speak he put up his hand.

"No more, Em, okay? Not now. I'm going out. Make some dinner, or call me and I'll pick up some take-out. We can talk then."