Cheater Read online

  “Emily’s a smart girl,” Miguel answered. “She knows the score. That guy’s in our way, and when something gets in the way, sooner or later it’s gonna be roadkill.” He rolled out of bed and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the end table.

  “I have to go,” Emily said, and this time no one moved to stop her. She gathered her scattered clothes and got into them as quickly as possible.

  “Nice meeting you,” Tiffany called out as Emily slipped through the door.

  Josh’s pulse was still racing, when suddenly he lunged forward, holding his breath. He remembered that he had Miguel on video threatening someone’s life. He felt sure that it would be enough to get the police’s attention, maybe even get his parole revoked.

  He was just beginning to work through the implications of showing the police a video of his wife in bed with two other people when something on his screen caught his eye, and he cursed bitterly.

  He had forgotten to press record. All that he had seen and heard was gone.

  12

  THAT night Josh came close to confessing everything. Something kept holding him back, though, and when he saw Emily working on her computer that night, he thought of one more way to invade her privacy. While she was in the bathroom, he opened her laptop and examined her browser history.

  She had been spending her time on Google running searches such as “how to disappear.” Josh could relate to how she was feeling. He had been fantasizing about running and hiding, too. He couldn’t help but wonder whether she was planning on running away with him or leaving him behind.

  He wanted to trust Emily. He wanted it more than anything in the world, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Sometimes he had to remind himself that she was actively lying to him. He was so intimately familiar with everything that she had been doing that he forgot sometimes that she hadn’t confessed any of it. She was keeping a huge secret from him, and that made him wonder whether she had other secrets that he hadn’t yet uncovered. He couldn’t even feel certain that this was the first time that she had cheated on him.

  Even so, that night at dinner, he watched Emily chew her salad and tried to think of a way to tell her. “I know everything,” he imagined himself saying to her. “I have cameras everywhere.” And then, in his mind, her saw her expression shift from confusion to horror to black rage.

  For several minutes the sound of silverware scraping on plates had been the only sound between them. Josh hunted for something to say that would fill the awkward silence, but he couldn’t find anything worth saying that he was also willing to say.

  “Did you write today?” he asked, knowing what the answer was.

  “A little bit,” Emily lied, shooting him a quick glance and then looking back down at her plate.

  “What are you working on?” he asked, feeling like a jerk.

  She looked at him blankly. “A few different things.” She hadn’t finished more than half of her salad, but she stood up and started clearing the plates.

  When it came time to get ready for bed, they undressed quietly, then after a quick kiss they lay beside each other in silence.

  Josh started at the ceiling and listened to his wife breathe. He could feel time running out on them. He could feel it in his bones: some day soon, Miguel would do something terrible, or Emily would find one of the cameras, or some other thing would happen to knock everything sideways, and he still didn’t have what he needed to set things right.

  I need more time.

  13

  THE next morning Josh bought more time. He called his boss and said that he was coming down with something. He could pretend to be sick for two or three days, and in the meantime he’d be able to focus all of his attention on solving the Miguel problem.

  He spent most of the day online, running searches against court records, looking for a Miguel Casales who plausibly could be the man he knew. He counted himself lucky that Miguel didn’t have a more common surname, and after a few hours’ work he had narrowed the list down to two possibilities.

  The first gave him a few bad moments, because that man had been incarcerated for sex crimes. For almost an hour Josh was convinced that his wife was fucking a rapist, but then it occurred to him to check the sex offender registry. If Miguel had done his time on sexual offenses, he would have been required to register his address, and it only took a little more research to see that there was no registered sex offender living in their building.

  That left him with one candidate: Miguel Casales, small-time drug dealer. That sounded about right. Miguel seemed like exactly the sort of person who would want to make a lot of money but not be willing to get a real job. Making an honest buck takes time and persistence. Drugs were just the sort of shortcut that a man like Miguel would take.

  Through the afternoon he had kept the feed running from Miguel’s apartment. He wanted to keep a close eye on him, in case he did something that looked like it might not be entirely legal. Getting him out of Emily’s life meant getting him out of the apartment, Josh was certain of it. If they moved away, Miguel would just find them again, and he would be angry that Emily had tried to elude him, maybe angry enough to do something violent. No, getting away from him meant getting rid of him, and the only way Josh could think of doing that was to catch him in the act of doing something that violated his parole. So he left the camera running, hoping that the battery would hold out until he had what he was looking for.

  He hadn’t been monitoring Emily at all, but then he heard a knock out in the hallway. On his laptop screen he could see that Miguel was still lying on his bed, staring at the screen of his flip phone. Curious, Josh flipped the feed over to the one that pointed to his own front door.

  When the image flickered to life, Emily was just opening the door. He saw her hug someone, and he heard women’s voices, but at first he couldn’t tell who the other woman was. When she stepped inside and took off her coat, he finally got a good look, but even then he didn’t recognize her at first.

  Tiffany cleaned up really well. She was wearing a green dress that reached just below her knees and had her blonde hair up in a pony tail. She would not have looked out of place as one of the moms at a grade school recital, though Josh knew that all of the dads would have been staring at her breasts when they thought no one was looking.

  The two women exchanged pleasantries, then Emily went into the kitchen and came back with a wine bottle and two glasses. While she was gone, Josh kept the video trained on Tiffany, and watched as she surveyed the apartment. He instinctively liked the girl, and would have been disappointed if he saw her slip something into her pocket, but instead she spent the time reading the spines of the books in their bookcase.

  When Emily came back the two of them sat on the couch. Josh switched the feed to get a better view.

  “Thanks for coming,” Emily said. “I didn’t know if you would.”

  “Why not?” Tiffany asked.

  Emily smiled, embarrassed. “After what...we did, I thought that maybe you’d look down on me. Like I’m some kind of slut or something.”

  “Slut.” In Tiffany’s mouth, it really did sound like a four-letter word. “I don’t like that word. And I’d never use it for you! You’re so pretty.”

  Emily laughed. “Now I know you’re lying.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re gorgeous! Next to you I look like I have the body of a ten year old girl.”

  Tiffany playfully nudged her. “Stop it. No more of that. I know you didn’t invite me over so you could say bad things about yourself.”

  Emily took a sip of her wine, gathering her words. “ I’d like to get to know you better. As a person. And I have a few questions for you. But first, tell me about yourself.”

  Tiffany sipped from her own glass, seeming cautious. “What would you like to know?”

  Emily shrugged. “For starters, do you have a boyfriend?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “No, not in a long time. Not unless you count my little boy.”


  “You have a son?”

  She nodded. “He just had his first birthday. He saved my life.”

  “How so?”

  “I was a junkie. Pretty much from when I was sixteen, I was snorting or shooting up anything I could get.”

  “Wow.” Emily’s eyes were wide with concern. Josh knew that look well. It was how his wife always looked when she met someone who was on the bottom and struggling to get to a better place. He knew that, in Emily, Tiffany already had a friend for life if she wanted it.

  “I started getting high with a boyfriend, and that’s why I left home. He was a shitty guitarist in an even shittier band, and we came out here so they could get some gigs and a recording contract. Of course they sucked way too much for that ever to happen, but I was in love, or at least I thought I was. I waited tables to support us, and when that wasn’t enough he talked me into dancing nights at a titty bar. I should have known better, but we were already shooting up whenever we could, and he kept telling me that it was a temporary gig. Turns out he was the temporary one. He dumped me for this girl he met who was doing porn.”

  “Oh my God,” Ellie gasped. “What an asshole.”

  Tiffany nodded. “That’s the kind of guy I go for. The next one wasn’t any better, and the one after that got me started turning tricks. I didn’t care. The money paid for drugs and I figured I’d be dead by thirty. But then I got pregnant.”

  “You knew you wanted to keep the baby?”

  “Oh, no,” Tiffany said. “In fact, I was sure that I didn’t. How was I going to be a mother?! But I could never quite make it to a clinic, and then I realized that if I was keeping it I needed to get clean. It’s been eighteen months now, all because of him. That’s why I say he saved my life.”

  “You are so brave,” Emily marveled. “That must have been so hard, to go cold turkey like that. But you did it.”

  Tiffany shrugged. “I guess. So what’s your story? No offense, but you don’t seem the type of girl who would be hanging out with Miguel.”

  Emily to a deep sip of her wine, collecting herself. “I actually wanted to ask you about him. Are you close?”

  “He’s a client. He comes into the club sometimes when he has money to spend. And he likes me. He likes all the white girls, but me more than most.”

  “So he...pays you for sex?” Emily asked, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

  Tiffany wasn’t phased, though. “Yeah. When he has the cash. I don’t really do that anymore, so I keep my rate high to keep the johns away. But when Miguel’s feeling flush, he doesn’t care how much it costs. When he told me that he had a girl he wanted to break in, I didn’t know what to expect. But then I saw you, and I almost laughed out loud. He should have shown me a picture. I would have done it for free.”

  Emily giggled. Josh couldn’t be sure from the video, but he thought she might be blushing. “So Miguel has a job?” she asked. “He’s been telling me that he can’t find work, so I can’t imagine where he’s getting the money to spend on you.”

  Tiffany shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it. But I’m still waiting for your story. How did you get mixed up with a guy like that?”

  Josh leaned forward. He wanted to hear this story, too.

  Emily looked down into her wine glass for a long moment. “It wasn’t anything I planned,” she said at last. “It just sort of happened, and after that it was hard to stop.”

  Tiffany nodded. “Miguel doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. That’s kind of his thing.”

  Emily chuckled ruefully. “God, that is so true. Do you like him?”

  “Not really,” Tiffany said, as if it were the first time she was considering the question. “We have a business arrangement. He pays, and I provide a service, dancing or the other things. I probably shouldn’t be taking his money in the first place, but I get the sense that it’s not a good idea to turn him down.” She laughed self-consciously. “You must think I’m a terrible mother.”

  Emily seemed to be gripping her wine glass very tightly. “I’m in no position to judge. I haven’t done a very good job of saying no to him, either.”

  “You’re married,” Tiffany said, nodding in the direction of the ring on Emily’s finger. “Are you a bored housewife or something?”

  Emily shook her head. “It’s not that. I like being married. It’s just, I’ve spent most of my life being afraid of doing the wrong thing, and then along comes Miguel. He makes me do things that are really, really wrong. I feel terrible afterwards. I feel like a liar and a cheat. But the worst part is knowing how much I like it.” She spoke the final words in a voice just above a whisper, as if divulging her most closely-guarded secret.

  Josh grimaced. It hurt to hear Emily say those things, even though he already knew that they were true. He wanted her to lie. As terrible as it would be, part of him would have preferred her to say that Miguel had raped her. It made him feel like less of a man to know that his wife was enjoying her affair.

  “He forces you, and you like being forced?” Tiffany asked.

  “Not quite,” Emily said. “It’s more like he makes me do the things that I might be doing anyway if I wasn’t afraid that people would think I’m a slut, or a whore, or one of the other names we call women who enjoy sex more than we think they should. And since he won’t take no for an answer, I get to do those things and also be the good girl who says ‘no.’” She took a fortifying gulp of her wine. “I mean, I fucking hate the guy, but it’s also been the best sex I’ve ever had. And I don’t know how I can ever explain something like that to my husband.”

  She sounded close to tears, and Tiffany stroked her fingers along one of Emily’s shoulders. “You love him? Your husband, I mean?”

  Emily nodded. “So much. I don’t deserve him. He’s off now, working hard and taking care of me, and meanwhile I’m cheating on him. I suck.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, and Tiffany pulled her into a hug.

  Josh was struggling with his own emotions. He was relieved to hear that Emily still loved him, but it was hard to hear so soon after hearing her talk about how good the sex was with another man.

  “It will be OK,” Tiffany murmured, holding Emily close. “Everything will turn out alright.”

  Emily clung to her, sniffling. “What if it doesn’t? What if my husband finds out? He’ll leave me.”

  Tiffany pulled back and brushed a strand of brown hair from Emily’s face. “That could never happen.”

  “Why not?”

  Tiffany brushed her thumb along Emily’s cheek. “Because he wants you too much to leave. Just like I do.” Then she leaned in, and they were kissing.

  Josh’s eyes widened and his cock immediately began to stiffen. He hadn’t been expecting this, and from the look of things, neither had Emily. Her eyes were open, though her hands were on the other woman’s shoulders, and she watched Tiffany kiss her more than she took part in it. She made no move to pull away, though, and it was quite some time before Tiffany broke the kiss.

  “I was so excited when you called me,” she smiled. “How did you get my number?”

  Emily smiled back, a little shyly. “I knew your first name, and I knew you’re a...dancer,” she said.

  Josh guessed that she had been close to saying “stripper.”

  “I called around and gave them your description, and finally I talked to a guy named Bart who was willing to give me your number.”

  “Bart,” Tiffany repeated thoughtfully. “I’m going to have to thank him later.”

  And then they were kissing again, and this time Emily was a full participant. She melted into Tiffany’s arms and their lips merged. Josh, watching, felt his mouth fall open. He felt none of the rage or torment that he had suffered watching his wife with Miguel. He could tell how much she was enjoying the soft touch of another woman, and he was surprised to realize that he was honestly happy for her.

  He wasn’t happy about one thing, however. He wanted to be there, in the room with them. He wanted to be a p
art of this.

  What he could do was watch as the two women stood from the couch and, still kissing, made their unsteady way to the bedroom. He switched between the feeds to follow them along their way. He watched as Tiffany pulled Emily’s shirt up over her head, dropping it on the floor. He watched other articles of clothing join the first: Tiffany’s dress, Emily’s pants, their bras, their panties. He unbuttoned his jeans and lightly stroked himself as they tumbled together onto the bed, their mouths still working together.

  Through the computer’s speaker came the sound of soft gasps and moans. Tiffany was the aggressor, rolling Emily over onto her back and kissing her way down her neck to take both nipples into her mouth. Emily watched her every move, her mouth open, and gasped in appreciation of the heavenly sensations that the other woman was giving her.

  When Tiffany dipped down between her thighs, Emily let her head fall down and gasped deeply. Josh could see that she had taken two handfuls of the bedspread and was squeezing them tightly in her fists. Her bare belly was undulating in waves of pleasure. He reached a hand out and stroked her face on the screen as her excitement picked up speed.

  It wasn’t long before she climaxed. Tiffany’s tongue snaked along her pussy for only a few moments before Emily was shaking and moaning. At first Josh was a little disappointed that the show had been so brief, but he soon learned that he had nothing to worry about. Once Tiffany had kissed her way back up again, they kissed briefly and then Emily rolled on top.

  “I want to lick you,” she whispered.

  Tiffany giggled in delight. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said a little shyly.

  Emily traced her own path with her lips and tongue down the other woman’s nude, voluptuous body. She spent some special time with Tiffany’s breasts, holding them in her hands and kissing the soft skin. Then she brushed her lips over the other woman’s taut stomach and slipped her head between her thighs.

  Josh’s view was obscured. He ached intensely with the need to see this moment, the time when Emily went down on another woman for the first time, but all he could see was the back of her head in between Tiffany’s legs. Whatever she was doing there, it seemed to be working, because in no time at all Tiffany had a handful of her hair and her mouth was emitting some of the foulest curses that he had ever heard. It took a moment before he realized that this was the sound of an earth-shattering orgasm.