Chapter 12
My two months of Monday-to-Friday absence had finally come to an end.
And, even just one week, into what was now my ‘new normal’ pattern, I felt like I’d cracked the secrets of alchemy!
Flying out Tuesday morning and back Thursday night, even in our first week in the new routine, the three of us seemed to have discovered the perfect balance between loving couple and kinky playing time.
Friday night, Saturday night I was home, and Sasha was mine.
Sunday night I was still home, but I gave up my husbandly rights so Sasha and I could get our different pleasures as Thomas and his big black cock joined us for dinner and a sleepover—as normal, taking my place in the master bedroom while I listened in from the guest room and beat my meat.
Monday night was just me and Sasha—back to loving couple time before I departed Tuesday morning for my standard Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday daytime meetings with clients. With evenings reserved for client meals, a run-of-the-mill call home, followed by a dessert of wife watching.
The whole week of pleasure-pain kinkiness rounded out by the cherry on the cake. Arriving late on Thursday night to find Thomas still in situ, sleeping on my side of the bed. The strangest but most satisfying of Goldilocks ‘whose being sleeping in my bed’ vibes for a confirmed voyeur-cuck like me.
That had been what played out last week, and as we started our second week of this new normal, I honestly felt that after all our years of playing with three different long-term boyfriends we’d finally found the ideal guy and the ideal groove.
Thomas loved fucking Sasha, and unlike Victor, he made her his priority.
Unlike Andre, he was mature enough not to screw things up.
And, most important of all, unlike Benson he wasn’t looking for a wife.
He was young, handsome and rich and was happy with his playboy lifestyle.
Fucking and sleeping with a beautiful and sexy flight attendant four nights a week and getting to play all kinds of satisfying mind games with her voyeur-cuck husband.
If this was indeed our new normal, all three of us were very happy as on Monday evening I arrived back from my half-hour commute from Ann Arbor to wonder what pleasures Sash and I would get to enjoy tonight.
But when I got home, I soon discovered pleasure was totally off the menu for the evening.
It wasn’t Thomas’s SUV parked in our drive that shocked me or killed the mood. It was the news Sasha shared—the news they’d gotten when they’d landed back from their return trip to Chicago.
Thomas’s mom, not even fifty years old, had suffered a massive and unexpected stroke. Rushed to the best hospital in Johannesburg, a tearful Thomas told me what Sasha—sat by his side, squeezing his hand—already knew: her condition was touch and go.
Always a picture of confidence-bordering-on-arrogance, I’d never seen my wife’s charismatic boyfriend in anything like this mood.
Entirely understandable, he was hunched over, rocking back and forth, his face streaked with tears. Even Sasha’s presence by his side, holding his hand tight, didn’t seem to register.
“Thomas, that’s terrible… I’m so, so sorry… if there’s anything I can do… anything at all…”
He looked up.
We’d had our moments, he and I. But in that moment of the basest human suffering, there was a bond between us. Nothing but the most honest of human emotion and compassion.
He was sniffing as I spoke, as that look passed between us.
But he managed to suppress it just for a moment as he looked up at me.
“Jase, I know it’s a lot to ask… after what happened with Benson and that trip with his daughter Vicky… but it would mean the world to me if you’d allow Sasha to make the trip with me… right now, I really feel like I need a good friend… it would really help…
If he’d not mentioned Benson—who was actually a million miles from my thoughts right now—he’d have made answering easier for me.
As I looked at Sasha—her eyes pleading with me to say yes—I realized it was a mark of the man that he’d not shied away from the Benson reference. He was well smart enough—even in his traumatized state—to insert that edit between thought and words. But he’d not done that, and that spoke volumes.
“Sure, Thomas… think nothing of it! I can see Sasha wants to be there for you… if I could be a help, I’d come too, but we both know that would look odd…
I took a deep breath, and spoke what was on my mind.
“Look, I know we’ve had a few ups and downs… and I know we throw the term ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ around as a bit of a kinky joke… but, let’s be honest… we all know it’s the truth… and if Sasha really is your girlfriend, then she should go with you at a time like this…
Those words had felt natural and honest and the only thing to say on that Monday evening when I’d seen the pain in Thomas’s face, wondered how I’d be in his place, and wanted to do the right thing to ease his pain.
But Thursday night when I finally got home from Texas, I was cursing how God had designed the world as a sphere with time zones.
Totally fried from meetings and travel, I had to drag my energy reserves to one a.m. to have even a remote chance to connect with Sasha for the first time since that Monday evening.
My one a.m. was her seven a.m.—they’d flown out late that Monday evening, arriving Johannesburg late Tuesday night, which meant Wednesday was a day I dare not interrupt. So my Wednesday night, her Thursday morning was my first chance to speak to Sasha.
“Hello…”
Fuck, she sounded sleepy… almost like she didn’t recognize my voice…
“Hey babe, how you doing?”
“Jason, sweetheart!” She sounded happy to hear my voice.
“How are you?”
We negotiated a twenty-minute pause while she found something to eat and got one of the staff in Thomas’s family home to brew coffee.
“That’s better… so good to hear your voice baby,” she beamed. The joys of modern communications, even over eight and a half thousand miles, Wi-Fi meant we could see each other.
“Less about me, how are you, honey? That long flight, a new country, and then walking into such a sad situation…”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” she said softly. “It’s good to have someone in my corner… someone thinking about me…
“I won’t kid you, honey… it’s hard. Thomas is heartbroken. I think they all know she’s slipping away. Thomas, his Dad, his two younger sisters… they can all see there’s no coming back from here…”
We shared a look. Me here—thousands of miles away, back in our family home. Her, on the other side of the world, in a strange land, with a culture she’d never experienced before. The only comforting factor for both of us, her airline training equipped her to deal with pretty much anything.
Then a more optimistic, happier look appeared. “But, even if there’s no way back, she seemed super happy to see Thomas… her baby boy… the nurse said she seemed to be hanging on, determined not to go before she’d seen him… fighting hard…
“And she even seemed pleased to see me… she had this funny smile on her face… then, she did this really, really moving thing… she got the nurse to hold her hand up while she wrote on her board…
“So you’re the one… the one he talks about…”
The call between me and Sasha went on a while further. It was a weird call. I was glad she could be a help to Thomas and his family. But the look on her face when she’d described that connection between her and Thomas’s dying mother troubled me.
I knew Sasha. I loved the fact she had the biggest and most loving of hearts. But I’d have been stupid or less than human if I’d not made the link-up with how Sasha’s emotional connection with Benson’s daughter Vicky hadn’t driven a wedge into our marriage.
The look on Sasha’s face when she’d described that connection with Thomas’s mom was an identikit match with how she’d looked when she’d talked about her bond with Vicky.
Now was not the time to call her on it.
She’d spent a day flying, then another day in the most intense and draining of situations.
The conversation my fears needed to have with Sasha would have to wait for at least another day… and maybe even a day beyond that.
That brief call on my Wednesday night was the last meaningful contact I had with Sasha for four days.
The day after, she was slipping away, only able to make the most fleeting of communications with Thomas’s dad, Thomas, his sisters and ‘Thomas’s girlfriend’.
Because—strange as it may seem, even on her deathbed—his mom found energy and focus to send a second board message to my wife.
‘One woman to another… follow your heart.’
Sasha relayed that to me when we finally managed to speak. After the funeral, early on her Monday morning.
“Hun, it sounds like your emotionally wiped!”
“You’re not wrong… but I’ve been glad that I’ve been able to be here for Thomas, his mom and sisters… hos dad…”
That was just who Sasha was.
That was who Professor and Mrs. MacAllister had raised. She’d shed most of their more conservative beliefs, but she’d retained that loving open heart that was pure Jesus…
That was the upside, the part of Sasha I loved and would always be proud of… but maybe there was another side.
I sensed it in my bones.
We were treading on dangerous ground.
This felt eerily similar to how Benson had gotten his hooks into Sasha by involving her in the life and needs of his teenage daughter.
But what could I do?
I was on the other side of the world? And I knew Sasha was in the most confused of emotional states.
All I could do was wait until she was back in Detroit and then deal with the clashing needs in the most sympathetic of ways…
Fuck, just days before, I’d told myself this new phase of our lives would just be straightforward and fun.
But right now I was dreading the moment Sasha and Thomas touched down back in the States.
Sasha and Thomas were there for another three days, flying back late Thursday. We only managed one call. I’d have liked more, but however anxious I was starting to feel, now wasn’t the time to be all needy and insecure.
When they landed Friday evening, Sasha called and asked if it was okay if she spent the night with Thomas as she thought he’d appreciate the company.
What now?
“I don’t mind you being with him… but howzabout you bring him here? That way I get to see you, and he gets two friends to talk to… knows he’s got two friends…”
The screen went personless—muted and a fine view of the airport as Sasha conferred with him before returning.
“That’s a lovely thought, honey… but we both would feel more comfortable at his place… then I’ll be home first thing in the morning… I managed to swing the whole weekend off, so we’ll get the whole weekend together…”
“Is that okay?” she asked nervously.
Was that okay? Good question. I wanted to say ‘no’—that Benson feeling was growing stronger by the minute—but I knew I didn’t really have a choice. The guy had just lost his mom, and they were only asking for an extra few hours more.
Saying no would have painted me as a total selfish Grinch.
“Sure, honey,” I smiled, trying to mask my true feelings. “Take your time, I’ll still be here tomorrow morning…”
My words had just been throwaway words. Upon reflection, I wish I’d said something different as Sasha’s ‘I’ll be home first thing in the morning’ combined with my stupid ‘take your time’ meant she finally arrived home about three Saturday afternoon.
My sense of self-pity and fear gave way to my role as Sasha’s best friend, as she cried and talked for the next couple of hours as I held her and patiently listened.
She talked about Thomas’s family, about his sister’s and her kids… about the happy memories of their late mom they’d all shared to cheer themselves up and celebrate her life.
She talked the many quiet conversations she’d shared with Thomas on their two long flights and many nights together.
“How did they take to you? How did we explain who you were? With him but with a wedding band on your finger…”
I’d not planned to ask it. And certainly not that way. It just kind of came out. I instantly regretted it, because it made Sasha blush.
“Total honesty, honey,” I reminded her, squeezing her intertwined fingers, my soft smile signaling I wasn’t angry, but did need the truth.
“Well,” she blushed, “I didn’t really think about it, I was too busy trying to comfort Thomas…
“It was only when Thomas’s dad, had a quiet word that I even thought about it…
he was very gentle about it, explaining they were a conservative, Christian family…
that he knew all about my ‘situation’, and that it would raise less questions if I took my rings off while I was there…
but only if I was comfortable with it… he was emphatic about that bit…
that he didn’t want me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with… ”
As her retelling of the conversation unwound, I felt a lump in my throat… and, even more embarrassingly, a lump in my pants.
She didn’t do it on purpose, but she just left me hanging there, forcing me to ask…
“And? And, what were you comfortable doing?” I managed to croak out.
Her face flushed deep red, she looked deep into my eyes.
“I hope you don’t mind honey… but I thought it was the best thing to do…
Thomas and his family already had enough to deal with…
I didn’t want to add to that… to force them to face awkward questions…
so I took your rings off, put them in my bag…
that way, it was easy just for them to introduce as his flight attendant girlfriend…
with him based in the States and a pilot, that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows… ”
There was a long painful silence as we just stared silently.
“Are you okay with that, honey?”
Sighing. Thinking. I answered honestly.
“I guess…” No enthusiasm, just weary acceptance. What’s done is done. No point crying over spilled milk.
“Thanks baby,” she kissed me softly, her watery eyes telling me she knew my true feelings and appreciated my flexibility and sacrifice.
We talked a little more.
Then I did what I’d wanted to do ever since Friday evening—I led Sasha up to our bedroom.
We made love and spent the rest of the day cuddling and reconnecting in bed.
Of course, given where she’d been, there was still lots of talk of Thomas and his family. But talking about that felt different and less threatening with the two of us naked and cuddled next to each other in bed.
After we made love for a second time, we were laying in quiet silence when an impulsive idea came into my mind. Something that when I said it loud was to totally change the tone of the evening.
“Sash, hun… I know you’ve been away with him for 10 days and that weekends are normally mine, but as it’s just a few days to until the Fourth of July and we start trying for a family, do you want to spend Sunday with Thomas?”
I’d meant it as a genuine offer, a kindness. But for some reason I felt Sasha tense. And she didn’t speak.
“Sash?” I asked, genuinely inquisitive, not understanding.
Still no reply. Not even lifting her head to look at me.
“Sash? What is it?”