THREE CAN PLAY

ADRIAN'S POV "Babe, you've got a text!" No answer. Just the hiss of the shower behind the bathroom door, water hitting tile in that steady rhythm that used to be the most boring sound in the world. Adrian sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, waiting for a reply that wasn't coming. "Babe. It might be important." Still nothing. He reached over to the nightstand and picked up her phone. He wasn't trying to snoop — three years married, he'd never once needed to. He just wanted to read her the notification so she wouldn't come out into a pile of missed messages. That was all. The screen lit up in his hand. R❤️ Craving your juicy p***y mama. Tonight's gonna be crazyyyyy, can't wait to bite that tit. He read it once. Then again, slower, like the second read might rearrange the letters into something that made sense. It didn't. His stomach dropped somewhere below the floorboards and kept falling. His ears started ringing over the sound of the shower. Somewhere in his chest, something that had been standing upright for three years buckled at the knees and went down hard. Who the f**k was that? His hand was shaking when he set the phone back down exactly where it had been, screen-down, same angle, same spot on the nightstand, like a man staging a crime scene he hadn't committed. He told himself he'd ask her. Straight up, the second she stepped out of that bathroom, he'd hold the phone up and say who is this and why does he crave your p***y and watch her face for the lie. The water shut off. He had the whole speech ready. He'd rehearsed it in the four minutes it took her to towel off, and in those four minutes he'd gone from calm to murderous to something worse than both — small. Like a man watching his whole life get repossessed through a window he couldn't open. The door opened. Steam rolled out first, then her. And every word he'd built up just — dried. Turned to sand in his mouth. He watched her cross to the dresser, towel wrapped under her arms, humming something under her breath, completely unaware that he had just watched their marriage die in fifteen words. "Adrian, you okay?" She was rubbing lotion into her arms now, that shea butter smell filling the room, the smell he used to associate with Sunday mornings and nowhere to be. She kept talking — something about a coworker, something about traffic — but her voice came to him like it was underwater. All he could see was some man's hands where his used to be. All he could hear, on a loop, was crazyyyyy, can't wait. "Babe." Sharper now, snapping him back. "Yeah." His voice came out wrong. "I'm okay." "Okay. I said I'm not gonna be home tonight, we've got a vigil at church. I'll be back tomorrow." He nodded, or thought he did. "Can I come?" "I don't know, babe, I'm going straight from work. Can't wait around for you." "Or you could just give me the address," he said, quieter than he meant to. "We'll be praying all night. You'd be bored out your mind." She was already stuffing things into her bag — a change of clothes, her Bible, her perfume. "Stay home. Do what boys do." "Are we cool?" The question just fell out of him. He hated how it sounded — needy, small. "Since I got back from the trip we haven't even — we haven't touched each other." Lisa laughed, actually laughed, grabbing her phone off the dresser. The same phone. "Babe, I'm late for work and that's what's on your mind?" She kissed the air near his cheek. "Bye. Have fun." The door shut. Her car pulled out of the driveway a few minutes later, and Adrian sat there in the quiet house doing the thing he always did when something broke — he checked himself for cracks first. Maybe if he hadn't taken that contract in Denver. Maybe if he'd called more, come home sooner, put his hands on her more than twice since he'd been back. Maybe he'd built the loneliness himself and some unknown man had just walked into the room he'd left empty. By evening he'd talked himself into something. He got dressed — real clothes, not sweats, like this was an event — and drove to her office and parked across the street where he could watch the exit without being seen. He was going to follow her. See the church with his own eyes, or see it wasn't a church at all. Her car came out of the garage at 6:40. He watched it slow at the light, watched her profile behind the glass, watched her turn onto the main road toward wherever she was actually going. He didn't move. His hands stayed on the wheel, engine running, and something in him just — refused. He didn't want to see it. Didn't want a face, a car, a hotel parking lot burned into his memory forever. He sat there until her taillights disappeared, then he sat there some more, and when he finally came back into his own body he was already driving, going nowhere in particular, until a strip of neon caught his eye off the highway exit. VELVET. He didn't remember parking. He remembered a cover charge, a dark room, bass thudding up through the floor into his chest like a second, angrier heartbeat, and a whiskey that turned into three, four, he lost count. He sat in the back with his elbows on the table and his head somewhere else entirely, barely registering the girls on stage, the noise, any of it. Just that text, over and over, and Lis's laugh, and his own voice asking are we cool like a f*****g i***t. "Never seen a nigga be sad in a club full of hoes and pussy." He looked up. She was lit half-gold from the stage lights behind her, caramel skin, a body poured into a bikini that didn't leave much to argue about, arms crossed like she already knew the answer to whatever she was about to ask. "I'm just a man," he said quietly. "Having a bad night." "Mm. Your girl's cheating on you?" He blinked at her. "Wife." "That's what I said." She rolled her eyes. "Damn, that's worse." "How'd you—" "You got that look. Seen it before." She tilted her head. "You got ten dollars on you?" "Yeah." "Okay. Give it here." "For what?" "Private session. Ten dollars, thirty minutes." "I don't pay for hoes." She laughed at that, low in her throat, not offended, more like he'd told a joke she'd heard a hundred times and still found funny. "I'm not a hoe, baby. I'm a stripper. An entertainer. You pay for a session, we go somewhere quiet, and for thirty minutes you get whatever you need — I can dance, or you can just talk. Half these niggas in here just need somebody to listen." He pulled his wallet out before he'd fully decided to. Passed her the bill. She folded it once, tucked it into her bikini top without breaking eye contact, and held out a hand that was steadier than his. "C'mon." Then, taking a real look at him swaying slightly against the booth. "Oh my God. You are drunk drunk." She got an arm under his and pulled him up anyway, and Adrian let himself be led, because for the first time all day, somebody was asking him what he needed instead of telling him what he'd get.