Tick...Tick...Tick

Tick... Tick... Tick

by Vandemonium1

I was rereading my old story, 'Deafening Silence' the other day and figured I may have overdeveloped the cheated upon husband. I wrote this one as a bit of a laugh. As the world goes through a very troubling time, a laugh and a little distraction can do no harm.

WARNING: I've crammed in as many clichés as I could think of below but packaged them in what I hope is a unique way. This one has been independently rated at 3/5 pickaxe handles on the btbometer.

Myself and my partner/editor/beautiful lady, CreativityTakesCourage, hope you enjoy it and wish you all the best.

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I thought I was arriving early at the lawyer's office but by the time my attorney turned up and we were led into the conference room, Dave and his lady advocate were already there. This prompted the jealous reaction that always consumed me when I saw him interact in any way with a beautiful woman. I suspected that deep down I'd always felt a little inferior to him. He was a brilliant catch for any woman. At forty-eight, he was more handsome than he'd been at twenty, tall and muscular, owned his own successful business, and headed the local chamber of commerce. I shuddered at the thought that if today didn't go well, I might never feel his big, comforting arms around me ever again.

Dave hardly glanced up as I followed my attorney into the room. My face, I know, blanched, as the slim, red-headed, classically beautiful attorney bitch reached over and squeezed my husband's left forearm, just above the wrist, a gesture of reassurance that she was there for him. It was a little out of place in that setting, but not inappropriate. Officially, it was just her reassuring her client and settling him down. I, however, interpreted it as, "Let's get this shit out of the way so I can drop you as a client and check out that bulge in your pants." I knew from long experience that she was in for a treat if that happened. My husband was endowed better than most and knew how to use it.

Dave turned to her and smiled his beaming, familiar, jovial smile but his face was well on its way to neutral before turning and glancing at me again. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and scream that I was a stupid bitch that would spend the rest of my life spoiling him rotten if only he forgave me the one serious mistake I'd made in our twenty-eight-year marriage.

That wasn't the way I'd negotiated it happening though. Frustrated at Dave's determination not to speak to me at all, I'd been forced to this meeting.

My attorney began chatting to the red-headed bitch while I lowered myself into the seat opposite Dave, took the manila folder from my over-large purse, opened it, and spread my prepared, two-page script in front of me. I glanced up and caught Dave smiling faintly. After knowing me for thirty years, he knew that I prepared for everything important. He opened the laptop computer that rested on the table in front of him before plugging in a couple of small speakers, then lay a single sheet of paper and a biro beside it. Then, very offputtingly, he rested his hands on the table and looked at me with a horribly bland face. Totally emotionless. No anger. No hate. No grief. No nothing.

I'd prepared for this meeting for three days and I knew my script by heart. I'd used my intimate knowledge of David Brown to tailor it to tug precisely on his heart strings.

At that point, the two attorneys stopped chatting and the bitch brought the meeting to order.

"Well, we all know why we're here. The respondent, Mrs. Julieanne Brown, has agreed to sign the divorce petition, as presented, if my client, David Brown, will listen to her for a period of no less than one hour. If everyone is ready, I suggest that the hour begins now."

She turned the dial of a small kitchen timer on the table in front of her. It began a loud ticking which accentuated the silence around the room. I was still annoyed that Dave hadn't agreed for this meeting to happen in private but insisted on his lawyer being present. I was proposing to bare my soul over the next forty-five minutes, before getting Dave to admit he'd done some things to partially justify my unjustifiable behaviour. All embarrassing enough with just the two of us present. Humiliating in front of strangers as well.

Oh well, no point in dwelling on the negatives. It wasn't like I had a choice. I glanced at my entirely redundant notes on the table and crossed my fingers. My friend, Sonya, had used my opening gambit to talk her husband into not throwing her out when he caught her cheating. "Their ego is damaged," she said. "Start by repairing that." I cleared my throat.

"Thanks for agreeing to see me today, Dave. I'd just like to say from the outset that I was wrong in what I did and none of it was due to any failing on your part, but was all down to me being a self-centred, selfish bitch."

It had taken me days of introspection to come to that conclusion and I knew Dave would welcome my honesty. It was critical that it looked like I was taking all the blame before subtly placing thoughts that he may have contributed somewhat in his head. I firmly believed that Dave wanted with all his heart to forgive me but needed an excuse to do so. My whole speech was geared to giving him that excuse. If the kids had still been at home, I would have played the, 'oh, Dave, you can't break up the family', card, which would have been a guaranteed winner. Oh well, you can only piss with the dick you have, as Dave would say.

I glanced at his face to see how my speech was being received and was taken aback by his reaction. In the ticking silence of the room, Dave's expression was still neutral. He wasn't even looking at me. He just lifted the biro and put a tick beside the first sentence of his notes.

That almost threw me completely. With my opening words, I'd obviously said exactly what he'd expected me to say and that shook my confidence. In my arrogance I'd forgotten that not only did I tailor my argument based on thirty-years of knowledge of him, but he'd spent those thirty-years looking back at me. I'm not ashamed to say I was rattled. So much so that I kept entirely to my script.

"Um, as I said, Dave, it was all down to me and some stupid, selfish choices I made. I was feeling lost with the kids gone and a little old, unattractive, and useless when I met Jason through my work on the church committee. He was subtle and was also obviously a master seducer. He knew exactly which buttons to press and when.

"He started off pretending he was just a friend, listening to all my problems after the church meetings. That was when you were away a lot last year. Then one day they kicked us out of the church straight after the meeting, so Jason suggested we go to a coffee shop and I stupidly agreed. It all seemed so harmless and he appeared to be a good friend, so I didn't realise that he was very skilled at getting under a woman's defences.

"Well, coffee shops led to restaurants where he complained that his wife didn't understand him. I know that's an old cliché, but by then I trusted him. The restaurants became classier and classier, the gifts he bought me nicer and nicer. Oh, Dave, you have no idea how complimentary it is to have a guy fifteen years your junior trying to woo you. You would have been proud of me, though; it was over four months ago that he asked me to sleep with him and I turned him down.

"I know I should have refused to see him after that, once his intentions were clear and all, but by then I'd become kind of dependent on the effect his compliments and attention had on my ego and confidence."

I paused and sniffed at this point, rubbing my eyes with the finger I'd rubbed on the piece of onion in my pocket. It stung like a bitch, so much so that I dared not rub the other eye. One eye streaming tears would have to be enough. I halted, re-started, stammered, and hesitated.

"Oh, darling, I'm so ashamed I didn't break it off with him. He took me to a restaurant and bought me a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Grange, even though he doesn't drink wine. Rather than waste it, I ended up drinking just about all of it. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he wanted. I was too tiddly to resist him when we left the restaurant. He offered to drive me home and I stupidly agreed. Once in our driveway, he leaned over and kissed me, and I was too drunk to stop him. You know how I get after a wine or two. Then he started rubbing my, er, breasts. My logic was all screwed up at this point and I remember just thinking I had to get him out of my driveway so the neighbours didn't see us. That's also the reason I opened the garage door and got him to park inside."

I was taking a little bit of a punt with my admission that even in the car I thought Jason might be staying for a while and certainly didn't want the neighbours to see a strange car in the driveway the next morning. But it was all a calculated risk on my part. I knew enough about men in general to know being cuckolded is a severe blow to a man's ego and I wanted Dave reassured no one else would ever know about it. Well, apart from the two lawyers, that is.

"Well, Jason got out of his car, as the garage door was closing and began kissing me again. Like I said, I'd had most of a bottle of Grange and was ripe for the plucking. He grabbed my key and led me inside. I steered him into one of the spare bedrooms and, I'll be embarrassed about this till the day I die, let him have his way with me. I'm so sorry, Dave. My only saving grace is I was with it enough to make him wear a condom."

"After Jason, um, climaxed, I think we both fell asleep. Me, because I was drunk, and him because he must have been exhausted after a four- or five-month chase. I do know that I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't drunk and would have been mortified when I woke up and I most definitely would have kicked him to the kerb immediately.

Instead, you came in. When you entered the room and turned the lights on, I've never felt so ashamed in all my life. The look of pain on your face just killed me. I realised what damage I'd done to you and us with one simple lapse of judgement."

With tears still tricking from one of them, I turned beseeching eyes toward my husband. After a lifetime together, I knew I could read his expression like an open book and would be able to judge how my plea was going. Wrong! His expression was still neutral. In fact, he wasn't even looking at me. Bizarrely, he was fiddling with the bloody laptop in front of him. I thought he was writing notes until he must have clicked on a link on his screen. A voice came from the speakers. My voice.

"Ugh, don't kiss me, your breath reeks of beer."

Followed by Jason's voice, "What about you, rotten grape breath?"

"What? I had one lousy glass of the house white."

The audio clip stopped and a thunderous silence filled the room. I think that's what happened anyway. The roaring sound in my head drowned out everything else. Yes, I'd felt embarrassed and humiliated when Dave caught me that night with Jason; before hauling Jason upright by his hair and beating the hell out of his naked body. But that paled into insignificance compared to having been caught in a huge lie like I'd just been. It completely threw me. I'd been so confident my script would work.

My eyes flitted around the room. Dave's bitch of a lawyer had a faint smile on her face. Mine looked slightly embarrassed. Dave was just looking at me, expectantly, with that damn blank expression.

Later, I would never understand why I didn't fully process what it all meant. What the hell? Dave had an audio recording of my time that night with Jason. In the heat of the moment, it never occurred to me to follow up the logic of that. Why did he have a recorder there unless he knew beforehand it might record something? What else had we said? All this went right over my head in the humiliation of being sprung so quickly, easily and... unemotionally.

The silence dragged on uncomfortably long and I looked at the cryptic shorthand of my notes and, stupidly in hindsight, plunged on with my prepared script. I clung to it the way a drowning man will cling to a scrap of flotsam.

"It was just the once. It would never have happened again, nothing like it. Please believe that. I just wasn't strong enough to resist him, but I...I wasn't out of control enough that I didn't make him use a condom or allow him to take me on our bed. He wanted to, you know. But I would never do that, no matter how drunk I was. You saw us right; we were in Karen's old room?"

Dave just looked at me sadly and I didn't know what was worse; his sad face or the emotionless one. He shook his head, then turned to face his computer. I sensed rather than heard him double clicking on an icon and cringed until..., in Jason's voice.

"I just love seeing my cum dripping out of your pussy. It is sooo hot."

Then, as soon as that finished, another double click. Again, Jason's voice.

"When can I fuck you in that clueless husband of yours bed again? That was so cool."

This time, Dave clicked and cut the clip off short, then just looked at me. Silently. Accusingly.

What could I say? Every bullshit thing I'd said had been blown out of the water. Not by anything Dave could have said, but by my own words. The condoms; this being a one-time drunken mistake; not cuckolding my husband in his own bed; all exposed as the lies they were in just thirty-odd self-condemning words.

Tick, tick, tick.

I was struck speechless. Although it was embarrassing, I glanced at Dave, looking for some sort of clue. His neutral stare still gave nothing away. In my peripheral vision, I saw my lawyer glance at his watch. This focused my thoughts on the loudly ticking timer and the knowledge that the sixty minutes I'd sold to try to retrieve my marriage were passing rapidly and, I must admit, spectacularly badly thus far. I forced my panic down.

"I'm sorry for lying, Dave. About that being the first time, I mean. I...I just didn't want to hurt you any more than I had already. I thought if I could convince you it was only the one time, and it was for the reason I said, you wouldn't be so hurt."

I stumbled back to silence. Did I now confess I'd been seeing Jason several times a week for over half a year? The trouble was, I didn't know what Dave did and didn't know. He knew from the recorded conversations that the night he walked in on Jason and I wasn't our first and only time, but how much more did he know? The fact that he'd hidden a recorder where I usually did the deed with Jason suggested he suspected at least one other time. I just didn't know. I did know, however, that if I was caught in one more lie, it was all over. Oh well, Julieanne, old girl, time to be vague, avoid details and stick to facts.

"The truth is Jason did seduce me and it did take a while. He has a thing for older women and it's very true that a woman my age gets a huge ego boost being pursued by a man almost the age of her children, and I just wasn't strong enough to resist. I admit. I was weak and needy."

I considered telling him that I'd only ever used the master bed once and that was the first time. It would be a lie but one that would paint me in a far better light than I currently was. I kept coming back to the fact that I hadn't a clue how long Dave had known about my extramarital activities. I decided to remain silent on the issue.

Tick, tick, tick.

I couldn't remain silent on all the issues though. I had a shortening amount of time to turn this disastrous situation around. With no clue what to do, I glanced at my notes. Discarding the first few points after where I'd been hijacked, I focused on a couple of words I'd highlighted with capitals.

"I never stopped loving or respecting you, though, Dave. I never gave you any less love than I always have. Jason was just an extra dimension to my life that took nothing away from you. Just the overflow, if I can describe it that way."

When I paused, Dave looked back at the screen of his laptop. He frowned. He seemed to be having trouble finding something, and for a brief second or so, his expression changed from neutral to confused, but then he relaxed again. After hearing the recording, an extension of the soundtrack he'd paused before, I realised his frown signified he'd been looking for an icon on the screen before realising it was one of the already opened files. I wished he hadn't made the realisation. He obviously re-started from the beginning of the clip. I listened again to Jason's question about screwing me in the marital bed. Same as the first time, I cringed. And, again, my own words condemned me.

"I told you before, never again. Not after the last time when Dave came out of the shower that night and stood on a big blob of cum that must have leaked out of my pussy onto the carpet. I could smell it from where I was. Thank god, Dave swallowed my story that I'd sneezed and it was snot."

I sunk lower in my seat, knowing what words were coming next. At the time I spoke them I felt smug. That was no longer the case.

"Me offering to clean it off his foot, then giving him a blowjob distracted him, though."

"You've got to admit, baby doll, your husband does sound like a clueless dick sometimes. How we got away with it that time he came home early and I had to hide in the cupboard. What a dickhead."

"Yes, but he's my dickhead. When we first started our thing here, I thought it was cute that he trusted me so much that he never saw even the most obvious of clues. Now, though, I agree with you; he's just a clueless schmuck. I sometimes wonder if you and I could fuck right here while he was in our room and see if he noticed."

The sneer I heard in my voice, as much as the actual words, made me realise I was flogging a dead horse here. With those words and tone, I couldn't even convince myself I still loved and respected my husband, never mind him. Once again I was thrown into a flat spin of confusion. Before this meeting, I'd convinced myself I still loved and respected Dave, but after what I'd done and said, how was that possible?

Tick, Tick, Tick.

In the ticking, loaded silence after the latest nail in my coffin, Dave turned to look at me. I couldn't face him so I turned to his lawyer. She had such a look of contempt on her face that I actually flinched. If I had any doubts that Dave was more than just another client to her, they were blown apart by the emotion in that expression. I averted my gaze from her as well which left me looking at my lawyer. He wasn't quite quick enough to mask his look of contempt either.

Here I was, in a room, fighting for my future, surrounded by people who thought I was something they'd stepped in at the dog park, and one of those was supposed to be on my side. My confidence evaporated like dew under the midday sun. My self-respect wasn't far behind. That is, maybe, why I looked at my notes again and decided to go on the offensive.

"You have to admit, Dave, that over the last half year or so, you've been paying me less and less attention, taking me for granted, going out of town on business more often, and, dare I say it, drifting away from me. All this at the exact time the kids left home and I started feeling lost. You were never there when I needed you. You weren't there telling me I wasn't as old and unattractive as I was feeling. You weren't there reassuring me when I needed it most."

I paused and Dave's eyes went back to his damned screen. Once again his fingers danced and I cringed. This file he selected opened with Jason speaking. I recognised it as being just after our second round of bunny-fucking on that horrible night, not long before Dave sprung us.