Chapter 5 #2
“You’re married.” His tongue moves to wet his lower lip, his focus on my mouth. “He loves you.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” I challenge.
I can see the battle taking place in his mind. He’s lonely; I know that. I overhear it when he jokes with Tripp, but I know the truth that hides beneath the jokes.
I’m lonely, too.
“Please,” I plead with my lips millimeters from his, “just for a minute.”
He stares at me, studying me, for too many moments too long before his lips crash into mine again. My hands take a firm hold of his jaw as his tongue meets mine, and I whine, letting my body melt against the counter behind me, trapped between it and the pressure of his warm body.
“We can’t do this,” Connor breathes as his hands work to open his belt and slacks.
“I know,” I nod.
His body presses against mine again as he dives into me, meeting me in a fervent kiss as he reaches past the slit of my dress to pull down my thong and send it to the floor.
Lifting me onto the counter as if it takes no effort at all, he pulls my legs to hook over his hips before pushing inside of me in one harsh motion, and his hand presses against my mouth to muffle the moan that escapes me.
“Oh my god,” he groans, tucking his face into crook of my neck.
My eyes drift shut, my head falling against the mirror behind me as Connor’s hips work. Quickly; almost too quickly, but I haven’t had sex with anyone but myself in so long that I don’t care if all we can manage is a few fleeting minutes.
The pleasure radiating through my body is almost blinding, forcing another muffled whine from my mouth and into the palm of his hand.
“I know, Princess,” he pants against my ear, “but you have to be quiet.”
I nod in understanding, letting my eyes flit to the bathroom door and the party that rages just on the other side of it.
Where my husband is having a beer with his friends.
Connor’s free hand trails up the length of my thigh to knead into the flesh of my ass as he pushes in to the hilt, forcing my eyes to roll in my head as I’m met with a shockwave that sends a shudder throughout my body.
As his breathing grows heavier and his body stills, I grunt with a hard shake of my head, using my hands to push at his hips.
The confusion that flashes behind his eyes is immediately replaced with realization as he pulls out of me, leaving no longer than it takes to pull in a breath before warm jets hit the inside of my thigh, each pulse paired with a quiet groan that pushes its way from his throat.
Pulling his tie from around his neck with abject horror carved into every feature of his face, Connor balls the fabric in his hand and works to wipe his spilled cum from my thigh, his eyes locked onto mine as he wipes the fabric between my legs.
“He can never find out about this,” he tells me. “We didn’t do this. We can’t have done this.”
“I know.”
“Shit, Julia.” He moves to the side of the counter to deposit the tie into the waiting garbage bin before returning to me, studying my face.
Neither of us moves for a long time – too long.
My underwear are discarded on the floor, Connor’s tie is in the trash, and the single strap of my dress is now hanging off of my shoulder.
My dignity is somewhere else – it’s certainly not in this room with me, anymore.
I silently slide off of the counter to pick up my underwear and slip them back into place before fixing the strap of my dress.
Gripping tightly onto my arm, Connor pulls me out of the bathroom and through the party, searching for what feels like forever until we finally find my husband.
He has a beer in his hand, leaning against a table while he chats and laughs with his friends, and my insides twist and turn over on each other.
“T-Mo,” Connor says, clearing his throat. “Jules needs to go home. She—” his eyes rake over my body for a moment too long. “She got sick.”
“Baby,” my husband says with a frown and a sympathetic tilt of his head. Setting his beer on the table behind him, he brings his hand to cup my face. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I slur, shaking my head as my tears threaten to spill over.
What the hell did I just do to him?
My stomach churns as Tripp wraps his arm around my shoulders and excuses himself from his friends. When we walk out of the party together and his lips meet the side of my head, I think there’s a chance that I might vomit for real.
As he helps me climb into our waiting ride share, I can’t keep my mind from traveling back to the night of our first real date.
His parents wouldn’t let him get his driver’s license, and I’d offered to drive because I’d already gotten mine.
It really wasn’t that big of a deal to me, but it was to him.
He’d taken money from his parents’ account so he could get a cab for us, and he opened the door for me that night, holding my hand as I climbed inside, just like he does tonight.
He slides off my heels for me when we walk in the front door of our townhome, letting me brace myself against his shoulders, and then he’s guiding me up the stairs, pulling the zipper at the back of my dress as we make our way to our bathroom.
“Tripp…”
“It’s okay,” he assures me as he reaches behind the curtain to turn on our shower.
Moving closer to me to slip my dress down my body, he says, “People puke, it happens. Remember the rager you threw junior year? I was sure there was no way your parents were gonna let you keep seeing me after the way I violated their pool.”
I nod, biting my lip so hard that it threatens to bleed as I close my eyes to keep my tears from falling.
They didn’t want me to see him again after that night. They told me that he was trouble, and that he would take me down a path that I wouldn’t be able to come back from.
What they said was true, but what they meant by it wasn’t.
Tripp helped me think for myself. He made me realize that not everything was as black and white as I’d been taught to believe; that everything wasn’t simply God or Devil. He helped me to gain confidence in a body that didn’t look like the girls that I saw on TV or in magazines.
He made me feel beautiful.
He gave me the confidence to look in the mirror and know that I’m beautiful.
As the hot water melts into my hair and courses down the length of my body, washing away the evidence of my crime, my hands cup my face to cover the sob that rips through my throat.
“I’m so sorry,” I cry.
“Jules,” Tripp says from his post leaned against the counter.
He pushes himself off of the counter, climbing over the ledge of the bathtub and into the shower with me, still wearing all of his clothes. His hands brush my hair away from my face, and I can feel my heart breaking.
“You still love me.”
He pauses, scrunching his face as if to say that I’ve lost my mind entirely.
“Of course I love you.” I wipe my eyes as he reaches behind me for my makeup removing cloth. “Why the hell would you think I didn’t?”
“We used to be so happy, but we fight all the time now,” I tell him. “I thought…I don’t know.”
“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t stick around to fight with you,” he counters. “I’d just walk away.”
With a quick kiss to the tip of my nose, he runs the cloth under the running water, ringing out the excess before he brings it to my face.
His touch is gentle as he wipes away my eye makeup.
I can’t count how many times over the years I’ve explained to him how delicate the eye area is.
It wasn’t until I told him that being too rough with the skin there was like going too deep with his tattoo machine and blowing out the ink that he actually understood what I was saying to him.
My body is turned to face the shower head as Tripp reaches for the bottle of purple shampoo that I use religiously, the one that he remembers to use maybe once every two weeks on his own hair, only when I remind him or point out that his silver tone is starting to lean more blond.
His chest presses against my back as he lathers my hair, working the product in with his fingers the way that I taught him to when I was still in cosmo school.
He’s been by my side through so much. Even when he was struggling with his family, his religion, and who he wanted to be outside of those things. When his parents cut him off and forced him out for leaving the faith. He has always supported me.
Through the worst days of our lives, he was always right there.
He stifled his own pain to let me feel mine and he handled everything that I couldn’t. He’s the only reason that I made it through.
And tonight, I betrayed him.
Everything that we’ve survived and all that we’ve built together, I put it under my heel and I snuffed it out.