Page 41 of Just Past Two

Hey. She sent him a smiley face emoji. You have a good time at the party last night?

That might be a double entendre, or not, but whatever. Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

Even beyond the closet fucking?

Sam stared at the screen. Jo was probably on the other end of the phone laughing. Or…was she flirting? She was married, and she knew he was married, but he didn’t know her that well, and maybe there was something else going on here.

I’m just teasing you, she added, not giving him a chance to reply beyond staring at the screen of his phone in disbelief. But I wanted to talk a little more about what I said last night.

Oh good. She was going to explain that she might have been misunderstood, and wasn’t actually propositioning them, and that maybe she was drunk, and there would probably be an apology in there somewhere.

Okay, he typed, not wanting to go too far and presume anything.

I overheard you and Abby in the closet.

That wasn’t news. She’d already teased him about it last night and then again today. I figured that out.

The little dots on the screen indicated that she was typing, and typing for a while, too. Some sort of big message was coming through.

No, I mean I overheard all of you and Abby in the closet. I heard what you said about Stephan.

Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He didn’t normally swear much, but this was the time, and a whole litany of curses began running through his head. He started frantically typing, dragging his fingers all over the tiny screen of his phone. Why were these keys so small? I’m sorry, he began. We got carried away in the moment…

Before he could finish his message another of hers typed up on the screen. I’m not mad. I think it’s hot.

Sam stared down at the screen again. He looked around the empty room; Abby was at the pottery studio tonight, but her presence lingered all around him, like she was watching the screen along with him. This sick sense of guilt and confusion welled up inside him. He deleted what he’d written so far. What do you mean? I was typing up a huge apology.

LOL, she replied, with another smiley face. What the fuck?

Stephan and I have an open relationship. We each can sleep with whomever we want as long as we communicate about it. I have a girlfriend, and he’s gone on some dates with other women as well.

Sam tossed the phone onto the couch. Was everyone in this whole town living a double life that no one could see? What was it with small New England towns? First Mitchell dropped that bomb on him that he was in a whatever-it-was-called relationship with two other people at the same time, and now his coworker and friend, the guy he’d been work buddies with for over a year, turns out to be in an open relationship. Everybody in this whole fucking town must be punking him.

I’m not sure what to say, he typed, picking up the phone again, because he might as well be honest. I’m starting to think everybody in this town is into kinky sex things and I’m just figuring it out now.

LOL. Jo’s text came back right away. It’s a liberal college town. I’m a sex educator. You’d be surprised how many people have secret lives.

He hadn’t considered that. This part of the state, liberal and open-minded, was bound to be more open-minded in everything. I’m still really embarrassed that you overheard us. It was inappropriate.

Yeah, but inappropriate is kind of my thing. Wink face emoji.

He didn’t want to give her the wrong impression, though. We’re not in an open relationship, he typed, and then hit send and quickly sent a follow-up message. Not really, not like that. Not like you and Stephan are.

More typing on her part. You seemed to be pretty into the idea of it. I want to know what you’re interested in.

He let his hands drop and stared at the television, some show about gold mining on in the background just for noise. What was he into? He’d been trying so many things lately, so many different experiments. He hadn’t wanted Abby to feel bored by him. He hadn’t wanted her to think she’d made a mistake settling for him. Now that they’d moved beyond that, though, and were actually expanding their whole sexual repertoire, he had to face this question. What, really, was he into?

I like to be dominant sometimes. We played a little with power exchange. He sent that message, stared at it on the screen, then added another one. I like watching Abby enjoy herself, with me or with somebody else. He sent that message and then elaborated. I got to watch her with another guy recently and it was incredible. That was an understatement, but it was enough to get started.

So is it about watching for you? She asked.

Was it? He certainly loved watching her, but there was another part to it, another deeper element of the fantasy that he hadn’t brought up to the surface yet. Jo was just a person on the other end of the chat, and he could confess this in writing. I like thinking about it, too. I like imagining someone else taking her the way I do.

Was he oversharing? Jo was asking these questions, but he was just answering them without thinking too much about it. Maybe he should rationalize some of this away. I don’t know, he added.

It sounds like you do know. And it sounds hot as hell. She sent a smiley face.

What about you? She should share, too. Her situation was different than his. Why do you share Stephan?