They said they were just friends. Turns out they were lying.
Some men might feel insecure, knowing that their wife’s best friend is a guy, but I never had a problem. He was a good man and while they were close their relationship had always been strictly platonic. He’d never had any interest in her and she’d never had any in him, or so they said.
But tonight everything is going to change. Tonight their vows are going to be put to the limit. Tonight we’ll know the real answer.
They’re alone and I’m peering in through the window. I’m watching it all happen, watching them get close.
Confessions and admissions. Opening up to one another in body and soul. Breaking down barriers and falling into each other, finding their truth in the midst of it.
Because they want each other and they always have. They need each other and they’re through with denying it.
Tonight my wife’s best friend will claim her for his own. Tonight I’ll watch it happen.
Excerpt
He has me in his arms, my hands are on his face, we are staring into each other’s eyes, we are waiting for a sign that will not come. We are waiting for an answer that this is right, that this is okay, that this is meant to be. We are waiting for permission.
It feels like it is right and it feels like we should do it but I know there will be no divine intervention here that will make that clear to us. If we’re going to make this happen, we’re going to have to choose it for ourselves.
I’ve never cheated before, never even thought about it. I’ve been cheated on and I know how bad it can hurt and those relationships were minuscule fleeting little dalliances in comparison to nine years of marriage and a house and a home and a life together. A decade thrown away in an instant if I kiss him and more thrown away afterwards because I know that if I kiss Caleb it won’t just be a kiss.
But I want to kiss him.
I’m in love with my best friend and I have been for as long as I can remember. I’ve been living a lie and selling that lie to every single man I’ve ever been with. I’ve even believed it a little myself, truly fooling myself into accepting the truth that because Caleb and I don’t want the same things we could never be together.
Except of course now we do want the same things and we always have. Except of course it turns out Caleb has been living his own lie this whole time.
And I should hate him for that, because he’s the one who fucked this all up and he’s the one who made this all so much more complicated than it could have been. If he’d just been honest from the start and opened himself up to the possibility of me years and years ago we could just be together and Bill wouldn’t be a factor in this. I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking his heart.
Bill. My dear Bill. The man who I should be loving because I promised that I would and the man who doesn’t deserve any of this, any of what is clearly going to happen next.
Because I’m going to kiss him, to kiss Caleb. Because I’m leaning forward and the gap between us is closing and then his lips are pressing against mine and dammit it’s everything that I’ve ever wanted in this life.
It’s life and meaning and all of it wrapped up into one neat package. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and it’s finally happening to me.
He’s kissing me back. Caleb is kissing me back. Caleb is showing me with every inch of himself just how much he loves and needs me and I feel his firm body beneath my hands at first and then beneath my body as I throw myself at him and we’ve touched before but this time is entirely different and it’s everything. It’s everything.
It’s everything.