“Alan? Are you here?” I closed the door behind me and dropped my keys into the singing bowl by the door. His car wasn’t in the driveway, but him not being home was odd enough that I couldn’t resist the impulse to call out again. “Alan?” Nothing. I kicked off my shoes and headed for his office. I knocked twice as I pushed the door open, only to find it dark and empty, the usually everglow PC cold and quiet on his desk. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen that room as empty.

It was strange. He was probably at the grocery store or something, I told myself. And it struck me that, for as long as we’d been together, I was surprisingly unaware of his daytime habits. He worked from home, and he loved his books, so to the extent that I imagined him during the day, I always pictured him hunched over and tapping away at his keyboard or maybe buried in one of his books. It never occurred to me that he “went out.”

Alan, to my mind, was the very definition of a homebody. He loved his space, and he rarely strayed from it. What parties or social events I could drag him to were a little tense and more than a little awkward. He would wander the edges, rarely speaking, always looking uncomfortable, lost in his thoughts. Oh, take the time to actually engage him in conversation, and you’d find him an engaging, intelligent, even charming man. But you’d never know it to look at him.

And I was the yin to his yang. For as rare as it was for Alan to not be home, it was almost as rare for me to be home, especially during daylight hours. My job as gallery liaison at the local art college kept me incredibly busy during the school year advising students, planning upcoming openings, collecting and cataloguing student artwork, and meeting with local gallery owners and collectors.

I’m happiest in a crowd of people, flitting here and there, occasionally circling out to the edges to check in on my dusty social moth of a husband. My presence helped him blend, helped him mingle in public spaces, but when my own wings tired, and we retreated back home, it was his presence that gave me comfort, helped me recover, returned my frenetic state to calm.

Which is why it was so disconcerting that he wasn’t home. A sudden cancellation in my schedule had allowed me the luxury of popping home for lunch. I had expected a warm smile and that funny, annoyed-but-secretly-happy face Alan makes when you truly surprise him. Instead… nothing. The house was quiet, cavernous. The emptiness unnerved me.

In the kitchen, I put together a small salad and tried to eat it while leaning against the counter - I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting alone at the table - but the lettuce crunching in my head was too much. I put the salad down and put the tea kettle on the stove.

Just keep busy, I told myself. Get some things done. I emptied the trash from the downstairs bathroom and sorted through the mail on the counter. Might as well get some laundry started.

I headed upstairs to our bedroom. I pulled the blankets from the bed, stripped the pillows of their cases and began tugging at the corners of the sheet. With a sudden thwack, the far edge popped up and…

Pin-pricks swept up the back of my neck and the blood in my veins turned to ice. A tiny piece of fabric had popped up with the sheet and landed in the middle of our naked mattress. I was frozen in place, my mind a blank, except for a tiny, whispered voice from way in the back that said, don’t.

I bent to lift a tiny piece of unfamiliar lace. It dangled open as I straightened - tiny, lacy, worn panties. Not. Mine.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, as my vision narrowed to a black-edged tunnel and a whining, piercing sound filled my ears from inside my brain. I don’t know how long I stood there like that, frozen, another woman’s panties dangling from my fingers. No, I told myself. These don’t exist. They couldn’t. These aren’t really here. I opened my fingers and let them fall as if I were releasing a dandelion seed to the wind. But they landed with a soft thwap in the middle of my bed. They were only too real.

The shrill shriek of the tea kettle pierced my awareness. How long has that been going?

Downstairs, I pulled the kettle from the burner and set it aside. I reached instead for last night’s leftover red. I poured a half a glass and swallowed it all at once, my neck wrenching back at the sudden burn of alcohol and sugar. Coughing, I poured another, but didn’t drink it. I leaned over the counter, breathing deliberately through my nose. My body was stiff. My joints didn’t want to move. I swallowed the second half-glass. The wine was either going to help me feel better, or give me a better reason to feel sick.

My skin was too sensitive, like my clothes were made of sandpaper. My chest was tight and my vision was still dark and faintly sparkling. Breathe. I told myself. Have to keep breathing. I took two long, deliberate breaths through my mouth and took a calm, measured sip of wine.

Back upstairs, in the doorway to our bedroom, I finished the rest of the glass. I stared at our bed - the bed I had shared with Alan for almost fifteen years. The bed we had bought together the week after we got married. The mattress we had comically wrangled up the stairs when we moved into this house. And there, right in the middle, a tiny, lacy stain.

It has to be a mistake. They really are mine - just an old pair I’ve forgotten about. No, they were too small, too cheap, too… not me. They got mixed in at the laundromat. It’s an accident! Neither of us had been to a laundromat in twenty years. A crazy mix-up at the gym! Rolled up in a towel or something. We hadn’t been to a gym in ten.

So what was left? Something had happened to put them there, tucked under the mattress like a teenager’s stolen porno mag.

Alan could’ve found them. But where? Alan could’ve taken them. From whom? Someone must have given— NO! My brain snapped at me as the bile rose in my throat. Just forget them! Just put them back… You never found them, never saw them... There was an odd and instant comfort in the thought. What did it matter after all? Better to just keep quiet. Women had been dealing with this kind of situation since the dawn of time.

But as I stared at the soiled scrap of cloth in my bed (MY bed) I knew that was impossible; I couldn’t ignore this. I’m not that person! I don’t smile and say nothing! I am not the fucking other woman! A holy rage swept up my body and I stomped across to the bed and snatched up the panties.

Downstairs, I tossed the underwear on the dining room table and headed to the kitchen for more wine. My senses were roiling now, an icy sharp dagger in my chest that spread out and filled every extremity with tingling, burning energy. It built up until it felt like I would explode. I needed to do something, hit something, hurt something. I shouldn’t have to be the one who hurts! Hands shaking, I poured more wine into my glass. I drank too fast and coughed. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and drank again. I set the glass down too hard, snapping the foot from the stem.

It was the excuse I needed. With a roar, I hurled the broken glass into the sink, shattering it into oblivion. It felt good. It helped. The energy had arced out of me and given me a tiny space to breathe. And there was something oddly satisfying in the rivulets of red streaming down the wall.

I took one deep breath, straightened myself, smoothed down my hair, and calmly took another wine glass from the cabinet. I set it down gently and poured a very full glass.

I walked into the dining room and sat down at the table in front of the panties. Just who are you, bitch? I spread the white panties flat with my hands and studied them. Small, maybe extra-small... young or skinny or both. Bad, jagged stitching, rayon, some brand I’ve never heard of... cheap or tasteless. Faded, off-white, trailing threads of elastic… careless, bad at laundry. That kind of semi-thong that shows off a lot of ass that’s so popular these days…

I took a long, slow sip of wine. These were not the panties of a grown woman. No. These panties belonged to a college student.

It was at that moment that the front door opened and Alan walked in with an armload of groceries. When he saw me sitting at the table, he froze, and when his eyes lowered to the pair of panties on the table in front of me, his face fell. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke, or even looked at each other. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, a tableau vivant of modern marriage: him, standing, stunned at having been found out; her, beaten down and far away, eyes dry but lifeless; and between them, on the family table, a treacherous piece of lace and a bottle of wine.

It was Alan who broke the scene, shifting the groceries on his hip and closing the door behind him. He set the bag on the table and took the seat opposite me, the panties in between us. Somewhere in my brain, his silence, his quiet acceptance registered as a kind of final confirmation - the panties were no accident. I felt a lump rise in my throat and hot tears pressed from behind my eyes, but I pushed down both. There would be time for that later.

“Charlotte, I-“

“One chance,” I interrupted immediately.

“What?”

“You have one chance to explain, so do it right. Who? When?” My voice cracked and faded to a half-whisper. “And why?” I met his eyes for the first time - I needed him to see the pain in them.

He let out a long breath through his nose and rubbed his palms together. “It was a couple of weeks ago, at the fall student exhibition.”

“In my gallery?”

He nodded. “In the storage closet.”

“With a student? One of mine?” He hesitated before nodding again. I stifled back the urge to sob. “Who was it?”

“Charlotte, it really doesn’t matter who.”

“It matters a great deal who! I have to see these girls every day. I have to work with them. I’m not going to just smile, look them in the eyes, and secretly wonder if it was them! Are you trying to torture me? Who?”

“Her name is Maddie.”

“Maddie? You mean Madison Fuller? Red hair, blue eyes?” He nodded and looked away, grimacing as I burst out in acid laughter. Madison Fuller was a rising star in the art program. She was smart, charming, and cute as a damn button - America’s fucking sweetheart. That she would want to have anything to do with dusty old Alan was beyond laughable. “You’re kidding, right? Why the hell would Madison Fuller - of all the women on this planet - want to be with you?” It was cruel, but I was far past the point of kind.

“She wouldn’t,” he replied, shaking his head slightly. “And that’s exactly why I did it. Because girls like her don’t want to have anything to do with me. But somehow this one did. It was a fluke - a once in a lifetime choice, and I took it.” He wasn’t arguing. He wasn’t defensive. I believed him when he said it, but I was far from satisfied.

“So that’s all it would take? One moment of madness from her, one unbelievable stroke of luck for you, and you throw our marriage out the window?”

“No, Of course not! I said it was why - I didn’t say it was right.”

Not exactly an apology. I let Alan’s words hang there and took a long sip of wine.

“I could lose my job, you know.” My voice felt far away and small. It was a practical thought, not an emotional one, and it felt like someone else saying the words.

“What? No! It was me, not you!”

“Won’t matter to the ethics committee. My gallery, my student… my husband.”

“It’s not like we even fucked! I just used my hand -“

“No!” The room took a sudden lurch sideways. “No, god, please, no details!” I closed my eyes and gripped the table, but the image of Alan sneaking off to the closet with Madison flickered across my wine-addled brain just the same. I saw them kissing, saw his hand running up her leg and disappearing under her skirt… When I opened my eyes again, the tears poured down my cheeks. The room was spinning in earnest now, but I took a defiant gulp of wine. I was suddenly exhausted, sapped of all energy.

“What happens now?” Alan asked, finally.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“We can fix this. People get past this kind of thing.”

“Fuck, Alan! I said I don’t know!” With the last of my energy, I pushed back from the table, scooped up Madison’s underwear and threw them in his face. “That means I don’t fucking know!”

I grabbed the almost empty wine glass and headed for the stairs, leaving Alan behind to sit and wonder. But I had told him the truth. I didn’t know. Leave him? Be angry for a while, but eventually forgive and forget (but never trust again)? I didn’t know. Those answers don’t come quickly, if they ever come at all.

When I got to the bedroom, I didn’t have any energy left to slam the door. My arms and face were buzzing from spent anger and too much wine. Suddenly heavy, I stumbled to the bed and stared down at where I had discovered Madison’s panties. I drained the last of the wine from my glass and set it down clumsily on the nightstand before sinking down on the naked mattress. My vision was shifting, tilting, as the walls of my bedroom began to spin.

“I don’t fucking know,“ I mumbled as I curled over on my side and closed my eyes. It felt like I was falling slowly, uncontrollably into a blackness with no bottom.

I woke up some time later, my cheeks pressed hard against the bare mattress, the rest of me tangled up in the sheet. When I opened my eyes, the walls were still shifting slightly. It felt better to keep them closed.

My brain struggled to right itself in this shifty new reality. A dark pit seemed permanently lodged in my stomach now, and a thin blade of icy pain pierced through my heart with every beat. Thoughts of Alan and Madison flitted across my brain, but I shoved them aside. I needed to think about what to do - of how to be - next. What does my life look like now? What about Alan? Do we stay together? Should I cheat on him? What would that accomplish? And if I left him, then he’s just free to be with her and I’ve got… nothing.

And then my brain showed me an image of her and him together, embracing, his larger frame engulfing her tiny body. It was a ludicrous image: a middle-aged man who had no business being with this slender young woman. And yet, this image was harder to shove aside.

Ahhh! I screamed inside. I didn’t want to think about it. But another image - him violently fingering her in the closet, her screaming out in ecstasy and looking directly at me…

I was too tired, too emotionally drained to fight it. With a whimper, I let go, and the images came flooding into my awareness. Images of Alan kissing Madison, her red hair floating in the air, curling around his face and obscuring them from me. Of his hands wandering along her naked back, tracing the curve of her. The tears welled hot and bitter in my eyes. A searing pain split my chest as I thought of them fucking, of wild-haired Madison riding my husband, of him bucking up into her, pushing her up and away before clawing her back down onto him. I sobbed and pounded the mattress, but the lid was off now and the thoughts would not stop.

Their sweat-covered bodies moved perfectly together. His hands swept up her back and around to her ivory breasts. Her fingers dug into his chest, tearing at it, raking down, leaving shredded trails of red, broken skin.

I let out a soft moan. The image of them dissolved as I snapped open my eyes. What the fuck? The room was still spinning, but my thoughts cleared long enough to realize that my hand was between my legs, pressing hard against my cunt.

No!

I sat up quick and hugged my sheet-tangled knees to my chest. No! I refuse! That is not a turn on! He fucking cheated on you! That’s not sexy, it’s horrifying! I laid my head on my knees to ease the dizziness. This is a nightmare.

And still, the thoughts crept back. Her with him, him with her, me with him… And all the time, a growing wetness between my legs. I shook my head and felt the tears well up again, before stretching back out on the mattress. Tears trickled down and dropped, tapping softly on the mattress either side of my head.

I saw Madison standing, nude and glorious, young, flawless, fearless. And then Alan stepped up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, taking her. His hand dropped lower and began to caress her vagina, just as my own hand slipped down to mine. She melted in his arms, her face turned upward to his, features soft and breathtakingly beautiful. He bent to kiss her lips as I furiously masturbated, tears dropping one after the other on the mattress.

Finally, I could take no more. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I untangled myself from the sheet, threw the door open, and marched down the stairs.

I walked angrily into Alan’s office, and found it dark, except for the glow from his computer screen. His head was down on the desk, an empty glass and half-empty bottle of bourbon nearby. He lifted his head and turned around to look at me.

“Charlotte?”

“Show me.”

“What? Show you what?”

I strode across the room and pulled him to his feet. I pulled off my jeans, stripped out of my panties and threw them at him. “Show me how you fucked her! Show me what you did to her!”

Alan stared dumbly up at me, lips quivering like he wanted to say something, but had no idea what it could be. "Charlotte, please," he stammered finally. "Let's take a step back, maybe talk about this in the morning."

"No, Alan, now! It's in my head, and I have to get it out! I have to know." I knew he could hear the quiver in my voice, but I needed him to know I was serious. "Alan, I have to know."

He sighed and took a sip of bourbon. He guided me gently back against the wall, and then stepped back and just looked at me, eyes moving all along my body. I shivered at the intensity in his eyes, and at the realization that this was how he had looked at her. I imagined Madison standing against the wall in the storage closet, sounds of the exhibition muffled behind the door, and my husband a few feet away, gazing in naked lust at her.

Alan stepped up to me and kissed me hard, forcefully, on the mouth, and I returned it instinctually. He tasted like whiskey, and I drank him in, kissing him back, chasing his tongue with mine. His body pressed against me, squeezing me until I was nearly breathless. His hand slipped around to grip my ass hard - had he been this rough with her? I thought of the cheap white lace panties on the dining room table. This was when he had first touched them.

His hand slid around my hip to rest on my pussy. I gasped as my legs automatically spread to receive him. He rubbed roughly with his fingers, before slipping effortlessly inside me. I cried out at the penetration and he instantly put his free hand over my mouth, pinning my head to the wall. I was startled, but then I remembered that he must have done this to Madison - she must have cried out, and he had to silence her to keep from being discovered.

The feeling was surreal. I was her - the person I was crying angry, hot tears about, and now I was her. The icy pain in my heart was twisting around the fire in my cunt, and I was spinning.

Alan was pushing into me harder, each thrust sending ripples of pleasure up and through my body. I moaned into his hand, relishing each thud against my clit. I felt myself beginning to climb a wave. I had felt what she had felt, but I wasn’t going to cum like her.

Violently, I pushed him away. I gasped for air and Alan just looked at me. He was confused, worried. He started to say something, but I cut him off. “No. Don’t talk.”

I walked over to his desk and drained the last of his bourbon before moving the chair out of the way and bending over the desk, arching my back and sticking my ass up. A few seconds passed before I heard the jangle of his belt and his zipper. I closed my eyes, lost in a fuzzy twilight of anticipation and liquor.

The tip of Alan's cock grazed my lips and I took a deep breath, letting it out again as it spread me, stretched me, pushed deep inside of me. Fuuuccck… He slid out and pushed back in, slowly, as my fingers curled and scratched at his desk, crumpling papers as they went.

He paused and left his dick inside me, and I took the opportunity to step up on my toes and push myself further back onto him. I wanted to swallow him, consume him completely. I wanted to take his cock, to wrap my cunt around it and never let it go.

He pulled back and I gasped. He plunged back in and I shrieked. Again and again he withdrew and penetrated, again and again I relinquished and reclaimed. The fiery sensation pushed up from the base of my spine until it felt like it was going to explode from my head.

I couldn’t help but picture Madison in this position, pale toes straining red to keep traction on the hardwood, legs spread, ass up, back arched, tiny rosebud nipples bouncing, curtains of red hair sweeping over the desk, hands grasping for corners and edges, lips screaming primal sounds of pleasure and pain.

Alan gripped my hips, fingers tearing into my flesh as he began to cum. The liquid heat filled and spread upward as he thrust and spasmed into me. My mind conjured up one last glimpse of red hair and I felt my pussy contract, clenching down on his cock. Waves of pleasure exploded and rippled through me, twisting my shrieks into gasping, messy sobs.

Alan staggered out of me and braced himself against the wall, pants and underwear around his ankles. I eased myself off the desk, feeling the pinprick burns on my hips where he had gripped me, and crumpled to the floor. Panting, I looked over at Alan. His face was sad, a little distant, but his eyes were glued to mine.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I let the words hang in the air. They didn’t deserve an immediate response, but I knew they were genuine. I didn’t hate him. And what anger and sadness that I had been feeling had just burned brightly enough to turn into something else. Something more useful. Madison Fuller was no threat to my relationship. And there, with that transmuted realization, the thought of the two of them together crossed my mind and didn’t terrify me. In fact, the thought of Alan fucking Madison was a turn-on.

“Never again, right, Alan?”

He nodded wearily.

“Say it.”

“Never again.”

I didn’t believe it. I knew neither of us was done with this particular redhead.