Three weeks later, Amelia and I decided to try number nineteen.
We did others on the list and I had to admit Jayden and I had been attached more. Our old system of doing things separately was now forgotten. Now we were hopping into bed together the minute our Alycia fell asleep. I would turn and land my hand on his chest and start artlessly into a chat topic that would ineluctably induce an enticing fantasy.
Recently, I had been telling him much about my Asian girlfriend Anastacia. About my doubts that she might be dating the gym instructor Lucas. I used to ask him if he was okay with his own wife being friends with an adulteress or I should end the friendship.
He said he was comfortable and couldn't judge. I made sure I told him how that made me feel better. I confidently whispered, like he was one of the girls, if he could picture the two of them together. I asked if he could imagine such a petite Asian tiger mom f*****g the big intimidating black man!
He never made it far into that one before exploding in my hand.
I felt a twinge guilty painting Anastacia in that light. I had no idea what she was aimed at apart from signing up for Lucas's basic fitness training class. All I knew that between Lucas and Johannes and recalls of my fanciful w***e phase with Bikato, there were many teasing fantasies for me to select.
I didn't know if Jayden believed them or just wanted to believe them. I didn't even know if the distinction really mattered to me anymore. My husband either was living in a reality where his wife was circling into an orbit of extra marital affairs or he hopelessly wished our marriage would live in that reality.
And then came Number Nineteen. The real challenge.
"Honey, can you put some cash in my purse?" I yelled out from our bedroom that morning as I snapped on my stockings.
I had been dressing in an extreme seductive manner for work lately. After a shopping carousal with Amelia, I now had a collection of lingerie options that I only wore under my work clothes but never to bed with hubby. When Jayden asked about it, I just shrugged or offered some elusive answer: "I needed new underwear anyway and these are just really comfortable."
That was number seven on the list. Number nineteen was a totally different ball game.
"How much cash do you need?" Jayden promptly stepped into our bedroom doorway and caught me pulling down my skirt so that it just concealed the tops of my stockings.
"A hundred dollars. I'm lunching with a workmate today."
"Okay, I think I have it." Jayden tramped down the hallway, forking through his wallet.
I waited with baited breath. Silence engulfed the house for several disturbing minutes. I ventured down the hall and found Jayden walking back from our foyer with a pale face.
His lower lip was quivering. I felt responsible at once. Maybe I had crossed the line that morning. I felt that I needed to stop everything, to grab hold of him and let him know I was just teasing. It was all a game.
"Babe! You seem like you've seen a ghost! Are you alright?"
"Um, yes." He grunted, avoiding my eyes.
He had seen them in my purse. It was obvious. But where was the explosion? And confrontation?
"Did you put the cash in my purse?"
He nodded. I waited expectantly. He faced me and our eyes met.
Now was the time, I thought to myself, for you to be a man and say something. I straightened my back, preparing myself for his anger.
"You'll be fine for your lunch date," Jayden muttered.
"Oh. Thanks."
I walked to my now open purse and threw a flashy eye in it. The packets of Trojan Magnum were candidly right there, like a sticky note announcing: Your wife is banging a dude blessed with a giant d**k.
"I might work a bit late tonight, so you'll have to prepare dinner with Alycia alone. Okay?"
My voice trembled as I uttered it. As if my words danced on a high thin rope over a dark valley.
"Okay. Enjoy."
Enjoy? My husband had just saw condoms in my purse and told me to enjoy!
When I left for work, my heart was racing. I could not tell if I was happy or sad or angry. Would it be this easy if I really was having a ripe affair?
*
I didn't outstay to late hours that night however. I couldn't endure torturing him.
Jayden had been quieter than normal since then. I could tell he was fighting to understand what was happening. The changes had been unexplainably quickly prevailing in me.
Many times I felt like opening up to him what I had done. How I investigated and became aware of everything secured in his old desktop.
But I didn't. The power my private knowingness gave me was too drunkening. Seeing what was on his desktop was like having a chart of my husband's mind. To all you married women reading my story, would you give such vantage up? Be frank, queens.
Furthermore, my Jayden and I were having the most marvellous monogamic s*x lives in the history of marriage. Jayden was cumming two or three times a night with me in our bed and I was certainly delighted.
My plan had succeeded completely. I was no more a thirty-five-year-old working mom in a boring sexless marriage. We were doing it more than we ever had in our entire relationship.
Thinking about it now, that was the time when I should have terminated the game. I should have told him the truth. Having that heart to heart with my husband and all this could have gone in a different direction.
It could have prevented him from turning into what I made him. It could have saved me from turning into what I made myself.
But Amelia had a different idea.