Chapter 1: Freudian Auto-Correct

It wasn’t my fault, I swear! It was my damn, over-eager iPhone. It could have happened to anybody.

I love my Annie! I would never even consider suggesting that we all...

That the six of us...

Okay, maybe I would consider it. I’m not gonna pretend like I hadn’t been eagerly anticipating the chance to spend a whole week watching Lisa and Mina prance around the beach in their swimsuits, those heavy breasts bouncing and swaying while glistening rivulets of water dribbled down from their hair into their cleavage ... and ... um...

... Wait, what was I talking about, again?

Oh. Right. But that was as far as it ever went! Just a bit of harmless looking. We all did it. It had been an unspoken tradition of our annual “Summer Friend-cations” ever since college: sunny days filled with flirting and teasing, followed by sexy nights eavesdropping through thin walls. Happy, horny times with good friends. No lines were ever crossed.

At least, not until I sent that fateful text message.

We had wrapped up our last day of pre-vacation work, and all three couples were excitedly texting:

Chris: “Clock out, rock out!”

Lisa: “Fun and sun, here we come!”

Annie: “Aww, I’ve been missing you guys so much!”

Mina: “Here we go, bitches!”

Erik: “Whooo!”

Then there was me, Tristan. I zipped up my laptop bag, strolled out of the office to drink in the view of the setting sun, and smiled at the prospect of finally seeing my friends again.

Two years had passed since we’d all been together in the same place at the same time. Between coordinating the schedules of three different couples across three different states (not to mention a little something called a global pandemic), we’d spent an unbearable length of time apart.

I texted the group:

Tristan (me): “Can’t wait to escape all this soul-crushing monotony. Looking forward to an extra-special trip with our best friends!”

Send.

Except, that’s not the message that went through. For all its conveniences, modern technology can sometimes deliver a swift kick to the testicles when you least expect it. Maybe your bank account gets hacked by some suspiciously computer-savvy Nigerian prince. Maybe your crazy ex-boyfriend emails your boss a photo of you wasted, dressed up as skanky-sexy Chewbacca, and holding up a triumphant empty bottle of Jack Daniels, drooling into the camera.

In my case, the culprit was my phone’s auto-correct feature. Goddamn autocorrect. Just before I clicked “send,” my phone changed “monotony” to “monogamy.” Why? WHY?!!!

I looked down with a groan at the text I had actually just sent everyone:

“Can’t wait to escape all this soul-crushing monogamy. Looking forward to an extra-special trip with our friends!”

Soul-crushing monogamy. Real smooth, dumbass. Never gonna hear the end of that one.

Maybe five seconds passed before Erik followed up with: “What exactly does ‘extra special’ mean in this context, dude? lol”

“Hey Tristan, you gotta buy me dinner first,” Mina joked.

“It was a typo!” I quickly responded.

“Freudian slip is more like it!” Chris replied.

“Monotony, monotony!” I insisted.

Lisa: “Wait, you’re saying your monogamous life with Annie is monotonous?”

Only my dear, sweet wife Annie refrained from cracking a joke at my expense.

Annie had a weird energy that night.

“Okay, spit it out,” I said as we lay in bed together.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Tell me whatever it is that’s got you so distracted tonight. You spent dinner staring at the wall behind me. I mean, it’s a nice wall and all, but I’m fairly certain it can’t compete with my boyish good looks.”

Annie blushed. “I’ve just been ... thinking about stuff.” She placed a hand on my knee and asked, “Do you wish we hadn’t met when we were eighteen?”

“What?” I laughed. “Annie, you’re the love of my life! Why would you even ask that?”

“No, no, you’re taking it wrong. I know you love me, you’re my perfect Prince Charming, that’s not what I mean.”

“Okay, then what?”

She took a deep breath and sighed, “I just mean, I’m the only girl you ever got to do, you know, ‘sexy’ stuff with. Do you maybe wish that you’d met me, like, our third year of college instead of our first week? After you’d had a chance to sow your wild oats and stuff? After you’d had a bunch of wild, one-night stands with a parade of beautiful coeds?”

I laughed, “I think you’re overestimating my teenage seduction skills, honey – wait, is this still about that text message? That wasn’t me, that was autocorrect!”

“I know, I know! It’s just, you know me, I overanalyze. I wonder about this stuff, sometimes. Reading that text, even though you didn’t actually type it, made me feel guilty. It’s like I robbed you of some fundamental male right of passage when I swooped in and snatched you up at such a tender young age.”

“I was your first, too,” I smiled. “I could say the same thing about you never getting to date other guys.”

She turned deep red. “Ha! I’m way too shy and socially awkward.”

“Shy, socially awkward, and sexy as hell. Rawwwr...”

I leaned in and tickled her, prompting a squeal of giggles until she finally rolled on top of me and pinned my hands against the headboard. From my new position, I couldn’t help but admire the way Annie’s breasts swayed beneath her shirt.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she insisted. “Be honest: are you disappointed that you only ever had sex with one woman?”

I sighed. Where was she going with this?

Annie and I had been nerdy, late bloomers in high school, with repressively religious parents. We both had zero experience in the romance department, barely going further than kissing a member of the opposite sex until well past our eighteenth birthdays.

Then, just one week into our first semester of college, Annie and I met at a study group and sparks flew.

The first thing I noticed about Annie was how impossibly goddamn cute she was. She had eyes a bit too big for her face (“anime eyes,” she called them), a little upturned nose, a dusting of freckles on her dimpled cheeks, and vibrant red hair that glowed like a sunset whenever it caught the light. I was instantly smitten.

We had been each other’s first everything: first serious relationship, first real sex, and first true love. Everyone told me I was crazy for proposing so young, at just twenty one, but I couldn’t imagine a life with anyone but Annie.

I never regretted it, either. She was my angel.

Sex was something we invented for each other, mutually discovered amidst a storm of young love and hormones. Learning as we went. No guidebook, not prior experience, no mentors.

Now, after more than seven years together–including four years of marriage–we’d both earned PhDs in each other’s bodies. We had sex down to a science. But, as great as it was to be an expert in pleasing my woman, I was sometimes nostalgic for those early thrills of passionate discovery; of everything feeling new.

“Well?” she asked again. “Do you wish you’d had the chance to be with other women before we met?”

My stomach tightened. How was I supposed to answer that?

“No,” I said, maybe trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to reassure my wife. “Of course not.”

Annie gave me a short nod and a quick kiss goodnight.

“Everything okay, honey?” I asked.

“Of course. Everything’s fine,” she said. Then she rolled over and went to sleep.

If you’re not a married man, you may not understand how the word “fine” can, in fact, be the most frustrating word in the English language. This is because, when a woman says the word “fine” to her husband, the definition of the word changes from Merriam-Webster’s “perfectly satisfactory” to the following:

“Fine. Adj. Describes an instance wherein a husband has done something to upset his wife, but he doesn’t know what the fuck it is.”

Like I said, I love Annie with all my heart. I do NOT love her habit of saying “fine” and then immediately going to sleep, leaving my chronically-anxious brain wide awake into the wee hours, doing mental halftime replays of our every interaction since the dawn of time, trying to figure out what I could have possibly said or done wrong.