There's Another One

I did not send this short story to my proofreading crew. Please forgive me for any errors.

There are no underaged characters in this story. There are no depictions of sex.

The opinions expressed by the characters in this story are not necessarily the opinions of the author.

The story February Sucks is written by GeorgeAnderson.

***

"Wow, there's another one," she said.

"Another what?" he asked.

"Another February Sucks story."

"I think it is probably the most popular cheating wives trope out there."

"Why?" she asked.

"Why is it popular?"

"Yes, why?" she repeated.

She was a curious woman and frequently asked these types of questions of him. She had a PhD in literature. Her dissertation topic was erotica. It was a risk which paid off. Now, for her research, she spent a lot of time perusing erotica online. She often asked his opinions about what was being published. This was her way of delving into the male mind.

"The underlying premise of the story is that most women would jump at the chance to cheat on their husband with a celebrity," he replied. "Well, provided the celebrity was some blend of good-looking, wealthy, sexy, and is lusted after by other women. All the celebrity has to do is show the wife the right kind of interest in the right context and she'd jump at the chance. The premise is scary to most men. I think it is scary because men instinctively recognize it as plausible. There is fear and it is relatable."

"Some women may be wired that way, but speaking from personal experience, most aren't," she said.

"Really?" he asked. "You didn't claim Chris Evans was your celebrity hall pass?" He watched her face with intent.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, blushing furiously.

"On your New York shopping trip last Christmas with your squad, you didn't claim Chris Evans as your celebrity hall pass?"

She swallowed down a rising panic and started to brazen out a denial. When she saw his expression, however, she instantly cracked.

"Jiminy Christmas!" she exclaimed. "We were just tipsy and talking shit. There was nothing to it. The gals all had a celebrity hall pass and they wheedled and wheedled me until I said one too. I'm not built for infidelity. You know that, right?"

She patiently waited for him to agree, and got pissed when he didn't.

"I can't believe you actually think I'd screw up our marriage for a night with Chris Evans. After all this time, you don't trust me?"

"Your honor, let the record show she did not deny declaring Chris Evans as her celebrity hall pass," he said dramatically.

She growled. "I could wring Amelia's neck! She forced me to say a name and then went and blabbed her mouth to you."

"It wasn't her that ran to me. It was her husband Kurt."

She gasped when he said that. Kurt was the weeknight anchor for the highest-rated local TV station and was an extraordinarily charismatic man. When she'd befriended Amelia, Kurt became one of her husband's best friends. The four of them did a lot of socializing together.

"On our golf trip two weeks ago, Kurt brought up the whole celebrity hall pass thing. He cleverly baited me into defending you. When I took the bait, he dropped your Chris Evans turd on me. When I went all-in and denied it, he played a recording of the conversation for the guys. After that, all those guys gave me no end of shit for being so fucking naive. It was so bad, I haven't talked to any of those guys since the trip."

She was clearly horrified. His story answered a lot of questions she had but was afraid to ask. Her stomach did a flip flop.

"You say you were forced into it, but on the recording, you gushed about Chris Evans. No one wheedled it out of you. You couldn't wait for your turn to place a hookup with an actor over our marriage. I had your back and I was profoundly fucking humiliated for it. That won't happen again."

"We were drinking!" she defended.

"In vino veritas," he replied.

He was amused to watch the emotions pass over her face in succession: embarrassment, humiliation, and finally, anger.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed in genuine rage. "Amelia promised me that conversation would remain between us gals! I can't believe Amelia's stabbed me in the back like that!" She was trying to make the issue about a betrayal of secrets.

He found that part of the conversation tedious and got them back on track. "We were talking about February Sucks, which we have now firmly established has a premise that is imminently relatable."

She refocused quickly. "Well, granted, the premise may be relatable, but that story is a bad one for everyone to rewrite," she declared.

"You think the story is bad?"

"No," she replied. "Objectively, the story is exceptionally well written."

"Meh," he disagreed. "The premise and setup are good, but the second half of the original story reads like humiliation-fetish porn. In the aftermath, his wife repeatedly tells her husband how awesome her experience with Mark LaValliere was. She wore the blue dress in front of the kids on purpose so he couldn't lose his shit. Literally everyone in the story pressured him relentlessly to suck it up for the kids. His wife repeatedly told him how flattered she was at Marc's continued affection and how disappointed she was that she couldn't keep the flowers Marc was sending. She never sincerely apologized. She never really came to a full understanding of what she put her husband through.

"In the end, she doesn't ever face any real consequence for what she did. All she has to do is steadily insist that she wouldn't do it again and the dumbass husband takes her back. Even the twist at the end, when the husband dances with the beautiful escort was written as a lesson the husband had to learn. It would have made a shit load more sense to have it the other way around. It ought to have been a lesson for the wife to learn what it feels like to watch your spouse become enthralled and leave with another." He realized too late his response had been rather heated.

"Sheesh," she said. "Tell me how you really feel. You did not like that story, did you?"

"No, I did not," he said definitively. "There's a reason why a story that popular and that well-written scores below a four. To some readers, the husband's response to the situation was intolerable. Come to think of it, I think most people write their own take on the story out of sheer anger at the husband in the original story."

"I think you've got it completely backwards," she said. "I think the original story is brilliant. I have no issues with what George Anderson wrote. How the husband acted and reacted was what a responsible father ought to do: he put the kids' needs before his own. It is actually kind of sweet how the wife's gentle persistence wins him back. What I have an issue with is that it's a shit premise for people to copy as trope fodder."

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"First, we don't really get to know the wife's character at all before she headed off to cheat," she complained. "We know she likes to dance, that she looks good in her dress, and that she had a bad February. That's it."

"Didn't she make a promise to dance only with her husband?" he inquired.

"That wasn't a promise the wife made to Jim." she said.

"Who's Jim?" he asked.

With a sigh, she responded, "He's the main character. He's the husband."

"Is that his name?" he asked. "The only name I remember in the story is Mark LaValliere. I contend that's the only detail of the original story that most people remember."

She laughed at that. "I take your point, but they remember the cheating and blue dress too. Don't get me sidetracked, though, I was explaining about the wife's promise to dance only with Jim. The wife, whose name is Linda, by the way, used it as an excuse not to dance with one of the husbands in their group. It wasn't really a promise she ever made to her husband.

"This brings me to my point: we don't know whether Linda is loyal, or flirty, or has a wandering eye. It isn't clear if Linda's been tempted away from her husband before, or even if she is happily married. We get a little better understanding of Jim's character prior to the cheating, but not much. Without really knowing the characters, how can we evaluate the choices they make?"

"Ah," he responded. "I get your point,"

She smiled. She didn't expect he would concede that point.

"Second, the plot offers no choices. Jim had no idea Linda was going to leave with LaValliere until she was already gone. There was nothing that Jim could do to prevent the situation from happening. None. Basically, the only choice Jim has in the story is whether to take his wife back. That's it."

"Uh, there is a second decision you're missing,"

"Which is?"

"Whether or not he would seek revenge on LaValliere," he observed.

"Is that a decision?" she asked. "I was under the impression that any man with a chance at getting revenge without getting caught will take it. Didn't you tell me that once?"

"I did," he responded.

"QED, honey, There are basically no real choices in play except for whether Jim takes his wife back."

After a long pause, she asked, "Well, do you disagree with my second point?"

"No,' he answered.

"Third," she continued. "With no understanding of who the characters are, and no choices that make a difference, subsequent authors just color outside of the lines and make ridiculous shit up. Jim becomes a clandestine assassin, or a second incarnation of Bruce Wayne, or he suddenly sprouts a college roommate who runs the local TV station, or he's owed a favor by the local mob boss. This is all done to give him either an implausible ability to stop the infidelity before they leave the dance hall, or to give him the ability to expeditiously exact a disproportionate revenge."

He laughed at that. Some of the revenges cited in BTB versions of the story were ludicrously over-the-top.

She took in a deep breath to strengthen herself for his possible rejection. "What these authors do to Jim, of course, pales in comparison to what they do with Linda, the poor wife. I don't think there is a version of the story other than George Anderson's where she doesn't end up in the LW dark triad of misogyny: evil, stupid, or narcissistic."

When he didn't fly off the handle or snipe at her, she gained some courage.

"God save us from the dark triad of misogyny," she replied. "There are such women in the world, but they are thankfully rare. We certainly don't need an entire genre of erotica devoted to glorifying them."

"You don't think you know women like that?" he asked.

"No! I do not!" She was clearly offended.

"What about your best friend Amelia?" he responded.

"Amelia isn't evil!"

"She baited her best friend into a compromising conversation, recorded it, and then gave it to her husband so he could use it to humiliate her best friend's husband in front of his peers," he said. "You don't think that falls into the dark triad?"

Her mouth opened and closed.

"I'm aware you think Amelia is your best friend, but her actions clearly demonstrate that she isn't. She has already taken steps to undermine your marriage. I'm willing to bet she's already filled your brain with criticisms of me and stories about how she and your other friends have it so much better. I'm guessing Amelia presented Kurt as the big-dicked lover who would change your life."

She flushed almost purple.

At her unwitting confirmation, he simply shook his head and said, "You're being groomed to cheat on me with Kurt. He intentionally humiliated me on the golf trip. That was supposed to precipitate a huge fight between us. You were supposed to be pissed off at me and mad enough to spit nails when you showed up to lady's night last week. When you arrived it was just Kurt there, wasn't it? My guess is that he bragged about bagging all of Amelia's other friends. I'll bet he said that he made them scream his name in ecstasy with his big dick. I'll bet he said you were better looking than Amelia and that he wanted you most of all."

She put both her hand's over her face. That was yet another confirmation.

"The guy I had following you said that after your one-on-one date, you fended off Kurt's advance, but you gave him a smoking-hot goodbye kiss. The fact that you didn't confess any of it to me right away tells me you were very tempted and are still trying to figure out a way to justify a tryst."

She didn't respond. She just began to silently sob. It was a third confirmation.

"I want you to know this," he continued calmly. "Unlike Jim, I will never accept infidelity from you. Never. Sleep with him and we are done. Your friends are not your friends and you are about to destroy our marriage because of them. You'd better wise up quickly."

He sensed her imminent collapse. He humiliated her badly and she was going to be useless for hours unless he pushed forward now.

"I do get what you're saying, though. There is a hell of a lot of misogyny on display in LW. If there has to be a cheating wife story, give me a woman with complicated motivations, a brain, a difficult circumstance, some acknowledgment that the husband is partly to blame, an honest mistake or two, an unexpected bad influence, and a moment of weakness. Make it a narrow close call rather than actual cheating. A character development arc in the epilogue where the wife learns from her temptation and resolves to make it up to her husband would be icing on the cake."

It took her a moment to realize what her husband was really saying. When she did, she utterly marveled at his subtlety. An intense wave of love, affection, and appreciation washed through her. She felt the weight of a ton of stone lifted off her shoulders.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was a fool. I will never speak to Amelia or Kurt again. I will never again disrespect our marriage like that."

He smiled at her. They sat in silence for nearly ten minutes while he gave her the space she needed to pull herself together.

She broke the silence. "Honey, how many of those February Sucks knock-offs have you read?"

He counted on his fingers for a minute and then gave up. "A lot. More than ten but less than twenty?"

She smirked at him. "I thought you hated those stories?" she inquired.

"I do, it's just...." He fought to keep the defensiveness out of his tone of voice. "Well, look, February Sucks stories are a rite of passage for LW authors. Every writer with a catalog worth reading seems to have their own version. You kind of have to read them, you know?"

After an uncomfortable silence and a continued smirk from her, he said, "It's a guilty pleasure, okay? Sue me."

When she finished laughing, he challenged her. "All right, smarty pants. How about you? How many have you read?"

She flushed with embarrassment.

"Come on. You owe me an honest answer," he insisted.

"Sixty-seven," she replied.

His response was an open-mouthed stare.

She felt the need to explain. "When we got into January of this year, and more and more knockoffs started getting published in advance of Valentine's Day, I got curious. I searched and found sixty-seven. I read them all-- every single one I could find."

"Why?" he asked in horror. "What would drive anyone to self-torture like that?"

"I think it started as a desire to see what kind of variety would be written. I realized pretty quickly, however, there was almost no variety in them at all. A lot of them are so similar, they all bleed together in my brain. I am not alone in this. I saw many comments that made criticisms on plot points only present in different versions of the story. For example, many people reference the burly teammates that LaValliere uses to keep Jim away from him. That detail isn't in the original story. All the commenters assume that it is."

"If the stories all bleed together, why did you go to the trouble of reading them all?" he asked.

"They pissed me off," she admitted. "I found that the more they pissed me off, the more I wanted to read the next one to see if it pissed me off too." The look on her face was profound. It was clear she was just realizing this as she said it out loud.

He laughed for a solid minute until he said. "I think you may actually be onto something here. At a certain level of abstraction, that's more or less why I read them. I think maybe that the cheating wives stories in the 'February Sucks' catalog is like the Craigslist personals section for people looking to be outraged."

"I can see the personal ad now," he continued. "RAAC-curious BTB-leaning Loving Wives reader in search of a February Sucks story for hot meaningless outrage."

She laughed so hard in delight that she snorted. He looked at her fondly. She reached out and held his hand. They laughed together.

After she settled, she said, "Do you know how you won my heart, Honey?"

"When all the boys figured out they were in love with you and ran to propose to you, I took a cab," he said. "I was the first one to you."

"Nice James Matthew Barrie pull!" she said with genuine admiration. "Seriously, though. You won my heart with your sense of humor. No football player, or movie star, or local news anchor, no matter how rich, good looking, or well-endowed, could ever steal me from you. Not even for one magical night when I was the surprise belle of the Ball." She smiled mischievously.

"Why do I sense something is coming that I'm not going to like?" he spoke out loud to the ceiling.

"However," she said with a wicked grin, "Matt Rife would have a shot."

"Matt Rife? Who is Matt Rife?" he dissembled.

She licked her lips. "He's a comedian!" she gushed. "He's fashion-model hot and it's become a thing where drunk and boisterous women in the audience of his shows flirt with him. He flirts back and roasts the women. He's quick on his feet and in the moment, his comebacks are just so clever and devastating." Have you seen his act?"

The look on her face proved to him that she was being a little too honest. She didn't realize she was showing it, but he could see she was getting a thrill from clandestinely sharing her dirty little secret to her husband.

"Baby?" he asked.

"Yes, Honey?"

"Shut up."

She laughed mischievously.

"If February Sucks is bad trope fodder, is there a story which is good trope fodder?" he asked.

She got a thoughtful look. "Just Once... If You Don't Mind by Kalimaxos is better. There's more meat to the story, we know the characters better, and the main character in that story has a bunch of choices."

"I don't know that one," he responded.

"In that story, the wife pushes her husband to open the marriage. Don't you dare read too much into that," she said.

"I'll have to read it," he replied.

That evening after dinner, after the kids were in bed, she pulled her husband into the living room for a talk. They talked for hours. Some of it was confession. Some of it was an airing of grievances. Some of it was admission of contribution. A lot of it was about how to recover and prevent that sort of situation from ever happening again. At the end, they came to a mutual understanding of the status of their marriage and the inviolability of their vows. It was a talk that they needed to have and it restored sanity to their relationship.

She was utterly wild in bed that night. 'Unleashed' was the word that popped into his head. It was amazing.

He expected she would be like that for a while. He kept her from cheating, he saved his marriage, and he would benefit from her desire to apologize for her close call. He congratulated himself for handling that conversation just right. Of course, the cost of her folly would be eternal vigilance. He wasn't naive about that. He knew neither one of them would emerge from this mess Scot-free. A heavy price would be paid, mostly by him.