There’s Nothing Just About It

Lauren --

I know about your lover and your affair. I could not believe it was true, but your afternoon tryst at the motel erased all doubts. You have crushed my soul, and I'm so sad and angry that I cannot be near you or your cum-filled cunt right now. I will be out for a night or two while I try to get my head on straight, and then I will call you to arrange a time for us to talk. DO NOT try to contact me or find me. Believe me when I say I SHOULD NOT see you before I am ready.

David

David left the house and drove to his hotel. After settling into his room, he had dinner downstairs, ordered a double scotch on the rocks, and then begrudgingly returned to the room to listen to the recording of Lauren's afternoon betrayal of their marriage vows.

Settling into the desk chair, he turned on the recorder and heard the following audio once Lauren entered the room.

Lauren -- "Hi Rob. I can't believe we've already completed this thing already. And by both meetings and by time. I didn't think we'd get at least five meetings so easily, and also right at the 30 days."

Rob -- "Hey Lauren. Yea, I thought it would take longer than this. We spent much longer planning and preparing than we did executing. I guess that is the outcome of good planning, huh?"

"I suppose. I must say I'm glad it's over. The stress of hiding our affair is getting to me, and I can see why long-term affairs usually lead to a disastrous outcome."

"Yea, same here. I know my wife has no clue, but I can see how over time that could easily cease to be the case. You said David is out of town until late tonight, right? I was thinking we might go for a "two-fer" today to celebrate our success, and to finish with a bang, so to speak."

"Ha, ha. That was pretty lame, Rob. I am up for the "two-fer" but rules are rules, so we're not doing anything new that was not already on the list."

Lauren and Rob undressed, and David heard kissing and gentle moans coming from Lauren.

"That's nice, Rob. Lick my pussy, just like that.........oh, that feels so good. That's it, suck my clit! Ugh.......oohhh........I'm.....cumming......."

David heard some bed squeaking, and then "My turn."

"Ok, gimme that cock. I want it nice and hard for Round One."

"Oh, it will be hard. The wife has not yet been cleared for sex since the baby was born. Your tongue feels great!"

David listened to the entire 90 minutes of illicit sex between Lauren and Rob. Two things struck him: One, the sex seemed normal, pedestrian even, and David could not imagine why Lauren would risk her marriage for same old, same old. Rob had used condoms during intercourse, and nothing they did was outlandishly erotic. And two, neither of them put down or denigrated their spouses at all. David knew the affair was real, they'd met five times, but he still had no idea of the 'why' that lay behind it.

Friday night was mostly sleepless for both David and Lauren. David eventually gave up and realized that there was nothing more to learn from the recording. Deciding to take advantage of the weekend and freedom from work, he texted Lauren "I will stop by the house at 11am to talk, if that works for you."

Lauren grabbed for her phone upon hearing the 'ping' for an incoming text. "YES! Please come home. I'm so sorry I hurt you...."

"See you then." David didn't acknowledge Lauren's reply.

Arriving just before 11am, David trudged up to the front door and rang the doorbell.

Lauren opened the door, "David, you don't have to ring the bell to your own house."

"I wasn't comfortable just walking in," David replied. "Can we sit at the kitchen table and discuss next steps?"

Lauren was not happy with David's business-like demeanor and the way this discussion was already headed. Sitting at the table across from each other, time somewhat stood still for a moment, and then David cleared his throat and asked a question that shook Lauren to her core.

"Do you deny in any meaningful way the facts of what I've learned about your activities with Rob?"

Lauren teared up and thought about David's question and the lawyer-like focus it conveyed. This conversation, in her mind, needed to be about getting David to understand that nothing she had done changed how she felt about him, and that Rob and she had only had this affair to prove their work colleagues wrong. David knew only about the meaningless sex, and nothing about the conversations at Lauren's work that led to Rob and Lauren's plan to prove their friends wrong.

"David, before we go any further, you need to first understand that Rob and I only did this to prove that we could have an affair without anyone learning about it. Several months ago, many of us at work had discussed affairs and how they almost always are discovered and also the tragic upheaval they cause in marriages. The discussion split into two camps; one thought that all affairs beyond a one-night stand would certainly be discovered. The others thought that keeping anything more than a single one-night stand a secret would require some planning and of course a fair amount of deception, but could be done. Rob and I fell into the latter camp, and afterwards we talked about what precautions would be necessary."

"Wait a second. Are you saying that this was just an experiment, or a game? Just to see if you could have an affair that would be undetected?"

"Yes, essentially, that's it. Just talking about it became a game. The hypotheticals we laid out over a few lunches just took on a life of their own, and we eventually fleshed things out in quite some detail, and we became convinced we could pull it off. But that was the rub. In order to truly succeed, it would mean not a single soul could or would ever know what we had accomplished. Long story short, we decided to put our plan to the test, fully knowing that Rob loved his wife, as much as I love you, and that this "game" if you will, meant nothing as far as our relationships were concerned. It was just sex, and one of our conditions for the test was that it must last at least 30 days, and we had to meet at least five times. But it was just sex, David. We don't love each other at all, we love our spouses. We purposefully didn't do anything sexually that we don't share with our partners, and it never took anything away from our spouses."

"What do mean it took nothing from me? I used to have a faithful wife, and now I don't."

"Yes, I suppose that is true now that you know. But if you'd never found out, you'd still believe I was faithful. In my heart, this was meaningless sex. And, for this whole month, if you wanted sex after Rob and I had been together, I never turned you down."

"Great, Lauren. Sloppy seconds and no harm done. I'm feeling really warm and fuzzy now."

"Look, I know you're hurt, and must feel awful about what you heard, and I'm truly sorry for hurting you. But I hope that the details I shared might allay any doubts you have about my love for you, and erase any thoughts you have about my feelings for Rob. He's just a colleague with whom I had sex, but that is all it was. Just sex. No love, no feelings. It's only because you know that it is now this awful thing. Rob and were very careful, and we were sure we would never be discovered, and we would never have thought this would do any harm to our marriages."

"OK, so that's a long story to essentially admit you cheated on me for a month, fucked a man other than your husband approximately five times, and fully intended to keep that affair a secret from me, your husband, for the rest of our lives together. Back to my fundamental question: I guess you are not denying any of the sordid facts of what I've learned about your activities with Rob?"

Lauren wilted a bit from the repeated direct attack on her justifications. "Yes, the facts are what they are, I guess. But the reasons for them should make a difference. It was just sex. And it wasn't even sex borne of an attraction to one another. There was no lust between us. We just needed the sex to prove that we could hide an affair. The sex was meaningless to each of us."

David was torn between thinking Lauren must've swallowed a bottle of stupid pills last month, and wondering if she'd always held such crazy beliefs.

"I actually believe that thin sliver of your bullshit. It didn't sound like there was much passion between the two of you."

"Exactly, David! There was no passion. It was just sex. I know you're hurt, but I'm willing to do anything to make it up to you."

"Hold on -- it's still 99% bullshit. This whole "It was just sex" justification is nonsense, and you should know that very well. We talked about being faithful when we decided to be exclusive. We discussed it at length when we talked about marriage. We dated exclusively for almost a year, and we talked again before I proposed. We specifically promised each other fidelity during pre-marriage counseling, and in our damn wedding vows. I don't recall a single mention of the "It was just sex" escape clause."

Lauren could see that arguing against their history was pointless. "David, you're right. We did discuss fidelity at length. The point I'm trying to make is that we're on the same page where it matters, meaning our love for each other. I've loved only you for the past seven-plus years, and never for one second felt a damn thing for Rob. If playing Yahtzee with Rob five times over a month could have counted, then we would have done that. It was just sex, but sex was needed to pull off the secret affair."

It was feeling more like stupid pills were at fault, and then David latched on to what Lauren just said....."So why didn't you just play Yahtzee? Or just play backgammon? Or just do any other damn thing except have "JUST SEX? You've clearly claimed that you didn't necessarily WANT to have sex with Rob. And you also said that no other soul could ever know about the affair, so you could have done anything else in that hotel room, and it would have looked and smelled like an affair. Mission accomplished, right? To prove yourselves capable of having an affair, you didn't really need to have sex. You still needed to "hide" your activity from your spouses, so there's still some guilt there. You were still cutting out of work early, so you would still have to cover that up, all the same really."

Lauren's head cocked as she considered David's challenge, and she felt herself go full tilt. Lauren could not think of any other justifications to overcome his premise. Since no one would ever know, it really was immaterial whether Rob and Lauren had sex or not. To win their little undeclared wager, they merely had to act out the affair, with all the requisite sneaking around and meeting in hotels. So why did she actually have sex?

"I don't know, David. I never thought of the secrecy aspect like that. We planned a secret affair to see if we could. Then we decided to test our plan. It was just assumed we'd go all the way."

"Lauren, all day today you've used the word "just" to minimize what you've done, similar to saying "just a second" or "just a bit" when in reality what you've done is a critically damaging thing, and it's the easily the worst thing one of us could do to our marriage. The fact that you don't see that yourself is possibly worse than you fucking another man five times in a month. Hell, it almost feels like in your mind, you fucked him JUST five times, so no big deal. Well, it's a big deal to me, and we're not really getting anywhere at the moment, so I'm leaving for now."

David left, returning to the hotel. He called off work Monday, and stewed over Lauren's arguments. He could not believe that she thought so little of her faithfulness that she'd toss it aside to win a phantom wager against work colleagues that knew nothing. It's all a game to her. I'm done, David thought to himself. I could sit here and stew and try to find some rationalization for her actions, but there is none. It was NOT just sex. It was a betrayal of her commitment to him, her precious vows to keep that commitment to him forever, til death do us part. What struck David the most, ultimately, was that as horrible as his final decision was, he felt surprisingly at ease with it. He felt better than he had since before receiving that bloody email.

Ever hopeful, Lauren readily agreed to another meeting the next day.

"What's this?" Lauren asked while quickly scanning the package of papers.

"It's just a divorce," David replied.

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

Author's Notes: First, kudos to all authors that consistently crank out new stories from scratch. I found it much easier to write a follow-up to a Santee110x story than to write a full story from nothing. I started this one long ago, and it changed shape numerous times. I don't view my efforts as story-telling as much as social commentary; here, I was focused on the lameness of the "it's just sex" excuse. While stalled, the 750-word thing was hot, and I tried to slim this down and failed. I'm not overly interested in writing hot sex scenes, so that was a hurdle. So, again, frequent writers deserve some credit for that effort. Since finding this site, I've been most impressed with shorter, high-impact stories such as Words (jezzaz) and Scenes from a Marriage (ohio), so that's generally what I strove to accomplish. Thanks for reading.