Tell Me Everything Page 9

  I gave her a dutiful nod, but my heart bounced against my ribcage as I thought about how, unbeknownst to my parents, Ryan, the boy I’d pictured naked after I found my brother’s magazines, was coming over to “study.” Scott was away for the weekend at a swim meet, so Ryan and I would have the house to ourselves. He wasn’t my boyfriend, nor did I really want him to be. All I knew was that he was cute, and I couldn’t stop thinking about touching him the way the women did the men in the magazine I still kept stashed under my mattress. Reading about sex no longer felt like enough; I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted more.

  “Let’s go, Sheila,” my dad said, impatiently. He stood at the front door, dressed in a black suit, his hand on the knob. He was not a person who allowed himself, or anyone else in our family, to be late.

  I watched out our front window as they got into my dad’s Mercedes and backed out of the driveway. When I was sure they’d gone, I raced upstairs to change into the low-cut top I’d borrowed from my friend, Wendy, for just this occasion. I tucked it into my tight jeans and then quickly applied two coats of mascara, pink blush, and some lip gloss. Looking in the mirror, I puckered my shimmering lips, hoping that Ryan’s eyes would be drawn to them and he wouldn’t be able to resist kissing me. But even if he didn’t take the hint, if he didn’t make the first move, I’d already decided that I would.

  He knocked on the front door a few minutes later, and I opened it, feeling like my heart was beating in my throat. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” His voice squeaked a little, but I ignored it, choosing instead to focus on his long lashes that framed his dark brown eyes. He had braces, and I wondered if they would hurt my lips when we kissed, but I wasn’t going to let that discourage me.

  “Come on in,” I said, moving aside so he could enter. As he walked past me, I looked at his body, wondering what his penis would feel like in my hand. Would it move around, or just lay there while it got hard? My body twitched in anticipation.

  “Where do you want to study?” he asked, and I gestured to the living room, which was to the right of the entryway.

  We sat down on the couch and he opened his math book on his lap. “What part were you having trouble with?” he asked.

  “Um, the formulas,” I lied. My mom taught physics; I’d learned the Pythagorean Theorem in sixth grade. But Ryan didn’t need to know that.

  “Like, quadratic, or....?” he asked, looking at me with raised eyebrows. He licked his lips and I took it as a sign.

  I lunged toward him, knocking his book off of his lap and kissed him. He startled, but didn’t push me away. He slipped his tongue inside my mouth and rolled it around, which felt weird, but kind of good, too. I put my hand on his thigh, and moved it toward his crotch, wanting him to do the same to me. But instead he grunted, and sort of shoved his hips in my general direction, so that my hand shifted on its own and landed on his erection. I began to rub him, in a similar motion to the one I used on myself when I was alone in my room. I was about to undo his zipper when the front door opened.

  “Jessica!” my mother voice struck me like lightning.

  I whipped around to see her standing in entryway, fury etched across her face. Ryan stood up, quickly, grabbed his book and started toward the door, where he ran past her and was gone. I wished I could follow him.

  “What are you doing home?” I asked, my voice trembling. I glanced at the clock on the mantle over the fireplace. They’d only been gone half an hour.

  “I didn’t feel well,” she said, impatiently, resting a hand flat against her stomach. She was pale, a little green around the edges, like she might soon throw up.

  “We were just studying!” I said, anticipating her next question. My cheeks were hot, flaming with the embarrassment of being found in a compromising position, not to mention getting caught having lied, by omission, to my parents.

  “You were doing more than that!” she said, as my father appeared in the doorway behind her.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. His dark eyes flashed. “Who was that boy?” He must have seen Ryan dart down the front steps and across the lawn.

  “Ask your daughter,” my mom said, accusingly.

  “His name is Ryan,” I said, stuttering out the words. “He came over to study. I forgot to tell you.” I dropped my eyes to the floor, unable to ignore that I was still turned on by the little Ryan and I had done. I felt frustrated we didn’t get to do more.

  “Don’t lie to us, Jessica,” my father said, sternly. “You know perfectly well you need to ask permission to have anyone over when we’re not here.”

  “But you’re never here!” I said, feeling tears well in my eyes. “Mom’s on campus, and you’re always at the hospital! How am I supposed to have a life if I can’t have friends over?”

  “That boy was not just a friend,” my dad said, in a thundering voice. “What were you doing with him?”

  “Nothing!” I said, throwing my back against the couch and crossing my arms over my chest.

  “You’re smarter than that, Jessica,” my mom said in a harsh voice. “You don’t want to be that kind of girl. You don’t want to be easy. Do you understand me?”

  I remained silent, feeling their judgment pour over me like hot, black tar. I’d taken a required health class the first part of my freshman year, so I knew that masturbation was perfectly normal, but my gym teacher, who taught the human sexuality portion, had stammered and blushed his way through that section of our book, and seemed relieved that no one raised their hand when he asked if there were any questions. All I’d taken away from the class was that, yes, sex was something everyone did but it wasn’t something most people talked about.

  “Answer your mother,” my dad said, now, in a firm voice.

  “Yeah, I understand,” I muttered, and then stood up in order to run up the stairs to my room. I slammed the door behind me, and threw myself on my bed. The sound of their voices floated up the stairs, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. All I knew was how embarrassed I felt, and how anything I did with a boy after that was something my parents could never know about.

  I thought about that night, now, the Friday night after Memorial Day weekend, when Jake and I were going over a list of things that needed to get done around the house. The lawn needed mowing, the deck had to be power-washed, and the paint on all of the shutters was peeling, so they were in need of sanding down and a fresh coat of Queens Ridge homeowner’s association–approved, Bright Lights white. We would have tackled the list last weekend, but after our night with Will, Jake and I had spent most of Sunday in bed, sipping coffee, reading the paper, and replaying what had happened the night before. The kids got home after dinner, and the four of us decided to spend Monday at a Queens Ridge community picnic that Tiffany had organized.

  “You’re looking gorgeous,” Charlotte had said when we arrived at the park. She kissed my cheek and gave me a quick hug. “All happy and glowing.”

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing down at the blue sundress I’d chosen to wear. It showed a little more cleavage than I normally would have been comfortable with for a family event, but after Will had complimented me on my curves, I felt more confident showing them off. I wished I could tell Charlotte that having a threesome with your husband was better than a trip to the dermatologist for Botox and a chemical peel, but I was still worried she’d think what we had done was simply a way to justify cheating. I didn’t feel prepared to face that kind of judgment.

  “Babe,” Jake said, now, jerking me back to the present. “Did you hear me?” We sat at the kitchen island, the household to-do list and two glasses of white wine in front of us. The kids were upstairs in the family room, eating pizza and watching TV. “I think we should hire someone to take care of the shutters. Do you agree?”

  “Did you like the first girl you had sex with?” I said, totally ignoring his question. I quickly summarized my experience with Ryan that night when my parents walked in on us, a story I’d never told him befor
e. “I was thinking about it, and I realized that I wasn’t upset that he might not like me, I was pissed that I didn’t get to do what I wanted with him.” I paused. “Is that weird?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jake said, setting the pen he held down on the piece of paper in front of him. “I wasn’t in love with the first girl I messed around with. I guess I liked her because she was pretty, but mostly, I wanted to touch her boobs.”

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed, getting up from my stool. I spun him around so that I could stand between his legs, putting my arms up around his neck. “I just wanted to get my hands on Ryan’s cock!” I kissed him and let one hand drop downward to his lap. “Like this.” I moved my hand, feeling my husband twitch under the thin fabric of his shorts.

  “Mmm,” Jake murmured against my lips. “God, I wish I would have known you in high school. We could have gotten into all sorts of trouble.”

  “I can get you in even more trouble, now.” I tugged at his waistband, and slipped my hand behind it, feeling the jerk of him growing hard, knowing I would have to stop if I heard one or both of the kids’ footsteps. This wasn’t something we normally did, making out in the kitchen, especially when the kids were still awake, but I couldn’t help myself; I liked the sense of daring, the idea that we might get caught.

  I moved my mouth to his ear and said, “Remember how I looked with my hand on Will’s cock?” I bit his earlobe lightly. “My mouth?”

  Jake groaned, and I withdrew my hand, stepping away from him in order to sit back down.

  “Hey!” he said, smiling, his blue eyes filled with lust. “It’s not fair to start something you’re not going to finish!”

  “Who said I’m not going to finish it?” I said, playfully. “But we need to get the chores sorted out. I think you’re right. We should definitely hire someone to do the shutters.”

  “You are an evil woman,” Jake chuckled. I relished the feeling that he saw me in an entirely different light, now—something separate from the woman I was as his wife and a mother—a woman who wielded words like “cock” like verbal Viagra, who didn’t hesitate to stroke him in the middle of the kitchen even though the kids might walk in. I liked this version of myself; I felt more honest, more authentic, somehow. I was more comfortable in my own skin.

  “So, Tuck can mow the lawn after his baseball game tomorrow,” Jake said, “and I’ll handle the power washing. What about Ella?”

  “The flower beds need weeding,” I said. “She and I can do that together.”

  “She’s going to love that,” Jake said, and I laughed. Ella didn’t mind getting dirty when she was doing something fun, like playing soccer, but she tended to pitch a fit whenever we asked her to do anything that required garden gloves or bathroom-cleaning products. It was always a struggle to get her to do her chores, but Jake and I were sticklers about making sure our kids knew the value of hard work, even if we could afford to hire a cleaner. Most of their friends’ families had housekeepers; some even had drivers who would bring them to and from their activities and school.

  “Bentley actually has a Bentley,” Ella bemoaned to me a few weeks ago, when work was too busy for Jake or I to take the kids school, so they had to take the bus.

  “No,” I corrected her. “Charlotte has a Bentley, because Charlotte built her own event planning business from the ground up. She started when she was twenty-one, as a bartender for another company. Then she catered kids’ birthday parties, and busted her butt for years to get the point where now, she plans Bill and Melinda Gates’ fundraisers. She worked to afford that car. Bentley only gets to ride in it.” I’d actually tried to talk Charlotte out of buying a car with the same name as her daughter, but she refused to listen.

  “I’ve had a picture of a silver Bentley on my vision board for twenty years,” she said. “I love it so much I named my daughter after it. I’m buying the fucking car.”

  Now, Jake’s phone buzzed on the countertop in front of him, next to the to-do list. He picked it up and checked the message. “It’s Will,” he said.

  My breathing changed, instantly, my head suddenly swimming with images from the previous Saturday night.

  Jake handed me his phone and I read the short email: “Hey guys. Just wanted to say hello, and tell you again how much fun I had last week. Let me know when you’re up to playing again. Or Jessica, if you’re interested, I’d love to get the chance to spend some time with you alone so you can tell Jake all about it, later. Totally up to you guys. Take care.”

  I handed the phone back to Jake. “What do you think about that?”

  “You mean being with him without me?”

  I nodded, pressing my lips together. We had yet to discuss this particular possibility, but I had thought about it, and was intrigued by how it might play out. Having a threesome was hot, but the idea of Jake not being there with me and Will—knowing my husband would be at home, thinking about what I was doing—amped up my excitement even more. He’d be watching me, in a sense, the way I’d always fantasized a man might do, but only after the fact, through my description, alone.

  Jake reached over and took my hand. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know.” I squeezed his fingers. “I mean, you trust him, right?”

  “Yeah. Do you?”

  “Yeah. He’s not creepy or weird about the whole thing, like I was worried he might be.”

  “So you feel comfortable with him.”

  “I do.”

  “And I know you liked fucking him.” Jake kept his tone low, too. His eyes fixed on mine.

  “I did.” My breath immediately hitched, remembering how it felt to have Will touch and kiss my body. To feel him slide inside me.

  Jake and I were quiet for a moment, staring at each other. “If you want to, I’m fine with it,” he said, breaking the silence. “I have to admit, it’s a huge turn on, knowing another man wants to fuck my wife.”

  I gave him a coy smile. “Strokes your ego a little, baby?” I hadn’t given much thought to that side of things, how this dynamic put Jake in the position of alpha male—leader of the pack. He might not only be turned on by watching me have sex with another man—he might get off on the power he felt, giving his “permission” for it to happen.

  He nodded. “I also like that it seems that you can’t help yourself. Or at least, you don’t want to help yourself.” Again, his eyes fixed on mine. “You want to fuck him, too. Don’t you?”

  “I do want to fuck him,” I said, slowly. I watched his face respond to my words. He licked his lips and released a quick, hard breath. This kind of talk was different than the playful, innuendo-laced flirting we used to do before we met Will. It was raw, visceral, and direct; more affecting because it wasn’t only talk—it was something we were actually going to do.

  “Then you should,” he said. “As long as you feel safe.” He waited a beat, and then gave a slight frown. “And as long as you don’t think you might develop feelings for him.” He looked at me with questioning blue eyes.

  “Oh god, honey, not at all,” I said, surprising myself by how true this was. I liked Will, I thought he was funny and smart and attractive, but when I thought about him, it was only in terms of sex. I didn’t picture us going out on dates or snuggling together on the couch. I wasn’t interested in learning about his childhood, or whether or not we liked the same kind of food. The only person I cared about those kind of things was my husband. Again, my mind flickered to that night all those years ago, on the couch with Ryan, when all I’d wanted was to know what his cock would feel like in my hand. I didn’t have a crush on him; I didn’t want him to be my boyfriend. Later, even as I fumbled my way through two high school relationships—one in which I would lose my virginity to at the beginning of junior year; a less than sixty-second event that left me orgasm-less and deeply disappointed—my mother’s words never left my mind: “You don’t want to be that kind of girl; you don’t want to be easy.” I couldn’t help but feel that there was something wrong with
me, because what if I did want to be that girl? I thought about sex a lot. When I was at school, I liked how it felt when I caught a boy staring at my cleavage, knowing that he might be wondering what it was like to have sex with me. I liked knowing that my body could influence his thoughts. Besides my threesome fantasy, I often pictured myself in a room with a large group of men—ten or more—waiting their turn to fuck me. This was my favorite fantasy actually, the idea of so many men standing in line, stroking their hard cocks, me on the bed, legs open, taking on as many of them as I could.

  Still, as I got older, I never actually considered acting on my fantasies. Save a few one-night stands in college (before I met Peter), and after my divorce, I’d only had sex with men I cared about. But now, what I felt about Will had nothing to do with love and everything to do with lust. It was casual, based on physical chemistry. Like he had said, no strings attached.

  “Are you sure?” Jake asked, and I loved him all the more for the question. It showed me he had a few insecurities, too. That he wasn’t pushing me into this possible scenario with Will purely for his own satisfaction. He wanted to be sure that my heart still belonged to him, and only to him. Which it did.

  “Completely, totally sure,” I said. I stood up and wrapped my arms around his neck again, hugging him to me. His arms encircled my waist, his hands resting on my ass, and we stood there, kissing. I thought about telling him about my fantasy of having a roomful of men waiting to fuck me, but something made me hold back. Because even though he’d been open to having a threesome, and now, to the idea of me having sex with Will on my own, I was afraid he might judge me for the sheer depravity of wanting to be fucked by so many different men at one time. That experience was probably one better left to be lived out in private, and only inside my mind.