Through these thin walls I can hear everything. My wife thinks I’m asleep, but I know what she’s doing with my best friend.
A compulsion is something you can’t control, an urge that drives you crazy, a hunger that needs to be fed. I’ve needed this for so long and I just can’t help myself. I need to listen.
He’s making her moan, making her confess truths that slip through my ears and lodge deep in my heart. It hurts to listen, but it hurts so good.
I’m not a good man. A good man wouldn’t set his wife up like this. A good man wouldn’t put her in a position to cheat. A good man wouldn’t lie one room over listening while it happens.
He’s my best friend, or so I thought. Practically my double before he moved away and came back better. Back in town now he’s claiming what belongs to him, he’s taking my wife for his own.
She’s my beautiful wife, a woman I don’t deserve. Perfect and bubbly and sweet when she’s not being pressured like I pressure her. She’s doing this for passion but she’s doing it to hurt me too.
And me? I’m just a weak man. I’m just a weak man who wants to listen.
Excerpt
“Eric we shouldn’t,” she protested, her footsteps moving backwards until I heard the dull thud of him pressing her body up against the wall beside me, “He’s right there.”
“Asleep,” he told her, “Dead asleep. You and I both know how well how sleeps. He won’t mind. He won’t hear a damn thing.”
I listened to her breathy moans. To the press of his body on hers. I listened to him working her and playing with her, making her pant as the repetitive shuffle of their bodies led to shuddering gasps while he worked on her and broke down her barriers one by one.
“Eric,” she gasps in a hushed tone, “I can’t believe you’re doing this right here?”
I heard him laugh softly, and each chuckle stabbed into me like it was a sharp knife, “Here. Next door. Downstairs. What does it matter?”
Then I heard her mewl. Her panting and near desperate cry. Taking a chance I opened my eyes slightly and slowly and though I could only see them outlined from the light of the door I saw clear enough to know what was happening.
Alissa was panting and distraught. Her pants were undone and shoved down a little on her hips. Her fingers were curled, pulling at the wall behind her as he held her pinned to it with one hand.
The fingers of his other hand were slick with her wetness and he was holding them just in front of her, drawing them slowly up to her face as if to make her come face to face with the fact that she had enjoyed it while he played with her. That she couldn’t lie about that at least, and that there was so much more he wanted her to be honest about.
“Tell me the truth, Alissa,” he said, “If he woke up right now would you even deny it? Wouldn’t you be relieved to know that all this could be over? Wouldn’t you be glad to tell that asshole what you really feel? What you really want? Tell me the truth, Alissa. You don’t give a fuck about him.”
I saw her head turn to look at me and she stared deep, gazing into my face that for all intents and purposes she thought was in rest. To my shock and my horror she didn’t look resentful of any of what she was about to say. She looked relieved.
“I would,” she said, “I’d be so glad to stop living a lie. To tell him everything that I told you before. To tell him what I’ve learned.”
“So what does it matter if it’s here or there?” he asked, “If I ask you right now to get down on your knees and blow me right here in the same room as your husband, would you do it?”
“Baby,” she moaned, “You don’t even need to ask.”