Anonymous

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Nathaniel tramped down the stairs and followed his wife to the kitchen.

The blender was on its side, empty but bouncing in a puddle of cream on the blue tile countertop. There were a few peaches on the counter, but most had ended up on the floor. Cream drizzled down at its own unhurried pace.

Hannah sighed.

Nathaniel laughed.

She whacked him in the arm. “Shut up. You’re helping me clean.”

“Me?” He knew that teasing her right now would be pushing the limits, but how could he resist? “Hey, I didn’t make this mess. You’re on your own, Banana.”

Hannah swung her head around. He could see her beady eyes gearing up to shoot daggers at him.

When their gazes met, her expression softened. “Like hell I am. Grab a towel.”

He knew he shouldn’t, but he kept on pushing. “I have to work in the morning. You can sleep until noon if you want.” If he plucked the same string enough times, maybe his insistence would take on a comedic effect.

Apparently not.

Hannah’s lips pursed. She ran water over a dishcloth and rung it out in the sink.

After all these years together, he knew when to admit defeat. “I’m sorry, hon. I was just joking. I know how tough it is looking for work. That’s why I keep teasing you about it: to lighten the mood. Laughter is the best medicine, right?”

She didn’t respond except to wipe mashed peaches across the counter. She bundled the mess into her cloth and then hurled a handful of creamy mush into the sink.

Nathaniel took a deep breath. “It’s not working, huh?”

Hannah snapped around to face him.

He braced himself, wringing a tea towel in his hands as she opened her mouth to speak.

Nothing came out. Not a sound.

She was reformulating her approach. He knew by the look on her face. If nothing else, she was organized in her thoughts. Arguing with Hannah was like debating a politician. She was very persuasive, especially to an undecided voter like Nathaniel.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. A pleasant surprise. A bit of a shock, actually.

But an apology was a valuable commodity in a relationship, and one of hers was worth two of his, at least. Probably three. Maybe even four. He knew he owed her something.

He said, “Let me take you out for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Nah.” Descending to the cream-coated floor, she got on all fours and mopped the mess into a weeping pile. “I’m just a little on edge these days. We’ll go out when we’ve got something to celebrate—when I’ve got a new job. How about that?”

“Sounds good.”

He watched her naked t**s sway as her housecoat hung loose around her front. Even after all this time, her breasts mesmerized him. He couldn’t stop himself from staring, not even if he tried. But he didn’t try in this instance. He let himself stare as she eased her body back and forth, scooping up the liquid that had flowed away from an already-saturated cloth.

“Could you get the dustpan?” she asked.

“You’re going to push soup into a dustpan?”

She looked up at him and c****d her head. “Do you have a better idea?”

He didn’t, of course. His mind was too enraptured by the swing of two naked breasts barely concealed by a housecoat. He tightened the belt around his own robe before grabbing the dustpan and kneeling down across from Hannah. Peach juice and cream soaked his knees, but he was more interested in the peaches and cream texture of his wife’s lovely cheek. He leaned forward and kissed it.

She stopped shovelling soup into the dustpan just long enough to let out a faint coo, like the chirp of a baby owl.

“You are so beautiful,” he said to her. He said it because he meant it. No ulterior motives. He just looked at her and saw her beauty and wanted to communicate that.

Instead of debating the issue, she quietly said, “Thank you,” and went on cleaning the floor.

Nathaniel wetted the tea towel he’d slung over his shoulder and started on the cupboards. He wanted to give her something special. More than anything else, he wanted to find a job for her. The thought made him chuckle in his mind. Not that kind of job. But maybe one would spark the other. Hannah certainly wasn’t stingy in that department, but he could never get enough. She seemed to realize that he liked it and maybe even enjoyed giving, but she would never fully understand how great it felt to sit back and watch the woman he loved wrap her lips around his c**k.

And the sensation, of course. She could never understand the sensation.

Only another guy could understand.

It wasn’t until Hannah asked, “What are you thinking?” that Nathaniel realized he was scrubbing the same spot on the cupboard over and over and over again.

“Oh.” He moved on to another splatter zone. Every time he mentioned imagining another man’s mouth on his bits, he and Hannah ended up doing the horizontal mambo. No harm in reinforcing a point. “You just got me thinking about Jameson at work. Those lips, you know?”

Hannah chuckled deep in her throat as she emptied the dustpan into the sink and rinsed it. “Oh, I know.” When she turned off the water, she quickly asked, “You would never have an affair with him, would you?”

Uh-oh. Bombardment. But was she hoping for a negative response, or would she prefer the affirmation? “I...I suppose...”

“Oh, I don’t mean would you suck him or f**k him. I mean would you do all that and keep it from me?”

“Oh!” Nathaniel chuckled in relief. “Well, no. Of course not. If any of that stuff happened, I’d want you right there by my side. I’d want you to watch.”

“Watch and learn?”

“No, you’ve got mad skills, honey. I just think it would be hot.”

She left the dustpan to dry in the sink and circled her arms around his middle.

His body throbbed beneath her knowing touch.

“I think it would be hot, too.” Pressing her cheek against his back as he went over the countertop again, she said, “We should do it.”

The proposition hit him like a punch.

Nerves took over the pit of his stomach, just like when he was at school and he had to give oral presentations.

She was serious. Something in the lilt of her voice told him this was for real.

How could he respond to a request that they, as a couple, initiate a s****l relationship with a guy from Nathaniel’s workplace?

“What do you mean?” he asked, which was stupid. He just didn’t know what else to say.

She hugged him harder and enunciated every word: “We... should... do... it.”

Nathaniel ran more water over his tea towel and scrubbed the backsplash grout with the edge. He wasn’t ready to face his wife just yet. “You mean invite him for dinner and seduce him?”

“Him?” she asked. “Him who?”

Now Nathaniel was really confused. He turned around and looked at Hannah fleetingly before sinking to the floor. There was still a big puddle of cream soaking into the new laminate. “You said... I thought you meant...”

“Oh, Jameson?” she asked, as though she hadn’t been the one to bring him up in the first place. “No, I think that would end up biting us in the ass.”

Relief helped Nathaniel settle back into his groove. “And what if I like getting bit on the ass? Hmm? Maybe I’m into that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” Hannah chuckled. “But no, if we ask someone we already know things could go really wrong really fast. Say you ask Jameson. Maybe he goes for it, but what if he doesn’t? You get fired for s****l harassment and then we’re both out of work. That’s the last thing we need right now.”

“True.”

“And even if he did go for it, who’s to say he wouldn’t get obsessed with you and want you all to himself. Or... I don’t know... there’s no predicting what could happen next, but it could turn our lives upside down. Don’t you agree?”

“I do agree. You’re absolutely right about everything.” A little overboard, perhaps, but she’d be happy to hear it.

She set her hands on his shoulders and rubbed them while he mopped up the sweet peach liquid. “So that’s settled. We’ll put up an ad, I guess.”

An ad? Now what was she talking about? “An ad for what?”

When he looked up at her, she looked down at him with utter confusion in her eyes. “An ad for a man.”

“For a man?”

“Yes, a man.” Her eyebrows curved down in the middle and a goofy grin rose to her lips. “What did you think we were talking about?”

Nathaniel sat on his ass beside the wet tea towel. “I still don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“A man.” Hannah leaned against the counter and tightened her housecoat. “Do you think we’d have to pay him? Or could we put a call out and random guys would just flock here? Would they be ugly? Would we get better-looking guys if we offered money? Maybe we should ask for a picture first.”

He wasn’t following any of this. “Hannah Banana, what the hell are you talking about?”

She stared at him for a long moment, but he couldn’t read the look in her eyes. They were wide, like her open mouth, but her nostrils weren’t flared and her cheeks were blotched red, so she probably wasn’t angry. He felt it was safe to ask again: “What are you talking about?”