Chapter 16
The last week had been a strangely mixed experience.
After agreeing to Sasha’s South Africa trip in the early hours of Friday morning, she persuaded me to take a personal day so at least we could get a few hours together before she flew.
We made love, cuddled and talked. On the surface she was more loving and attentive than ever, but even so, my antenna still told me something was off.
It wasn’t that she was being false—that wasn’t Sasha’s style—but more like there was something she was struggling with that she didn’t feel ready to share.
I kept telling myself I was imaging all of this. That my fears were the result of heightened stress after my promotion and the fact Sasha and I had seen so little of each other these last few months.
But however much I tried to rationalize the feeling away, it just wouldn’t go.
At least when they landed and the ceremony took place, their efforts to involve me helped damp down my paranoia.
When their flight duties were finished, when they got to Thomas’s family home, Sasha found the energy to call me.
We chatted about all kind of unimportant nonsense—it wasn’t the talk that mattered.
What mattered was that—despite her obvious exhaustion after crewing a sixteen hour flight—she’d prioritized calling me.
Which told me what I’d said about us not having enough time and connection had sunk in.
The ceremony itself, involving me with calls or texts would have inappropriate given the solemnity of the event.
But as soon as they were back at Thomas’s sisters home and in party-celebration mode, the photos came thick and fast. I even had the surreal experience of a call with the celebrant, Thomas’s eight-year-old niece Cecilia.
She was bright as a button… totally sweet…
thankfully with zero idea why she was talking to this strange man on the other side of the world.
She was polite and friendly… but by the way she kept looking over at her sister and cousins by the pool, it was clear that was more exciting than talking to his uncle’s American friend.
The rest of the week, we managed to stay in touch, but time differences meant it was only really my early-morning / their noon-time that we could talk.
Which meant I had little real chance to talk to Sasha as our calls were always against the backdrop of the Twana family lunch.
On the upside, by the end of the week Cecilia and the other three members of the family(Ruth, Sarah and Elizabeth) had gotten over their initial shyness as they peppered me with questions about the strange country called America—asking me if I’d join them on the trip to Disney Uncle Thomas had promised them.
I was able to give a halting and half-honest ‘yes’ to this question—after all, I might join.
But when the youngest, Elizabeth, asked me a question, my answer was even more hating and less honest: if I was her uncle’s friend, why was it I spent most of the call talking to his uncle’s girlfriend rather than to her uncle?
Thankfully, there were no other questions on this difficult topic—but there presence and the presence of Thomas’s Dad and Sisters meant those lunch times calls never extended beyond the superficial.
And by the time I was free of work commitments, it was one or two a.m. for them.
Hardly the time for deep conversations about the changes we needed to make when they arrived back in a few days time.
Not only did the situation stop Sasha and I having any meaningful discussions about how to make things more balanced—but the sexy side of our nighttime calls was also on hold.
As they were staying at the family home, Thomas was adamant it would be disrespectful for them to make out and broadcast it for my pleasure.
So those nightly calls became nothing more than a series of ‘goodnight, love you calls,’—although I had zero doubt they would be ‘making out’ and making love after our calls. It was just Thomas’s convenient moral queasiness meant I wouldn’t be allowed to watch.
By the end of the week, I was counting the hours until Sasha’s return. I’d taken her up on her suggestion to work from home on Monday afternoon. Even if we’d only get the afternoon and evening alone, at least that gave us time to reconnect and start talking about the changes we needed to make.
Their flight was Sunday at ten in the evening local time, which meant they’d report for duty around two p.m. my time.
Sasha had seemed a little remote on our main Saturday call and I got the same vibe on our last pre-flight call on Sunday lunchtime, but she said it was just tiredness.
All through Sasha’s sixteen hour flight I had this strange, antsy feeling, unable to settle to anything.
I struggled to put my finger on the cause, so I wrapped up and took myself off for a walk.
Hoping the chilly autumnal air would help clear my mind so I could work out why The rest of that Sunday I was feeling so on edge.
Tramping around one of the many local trails, ever the structured, logical thinker, I forced myself to think all the way back to the beginning to try and work out what it might be that was bothering me.
I thought back to the first time I’d ever heard Thomas’s name, just before Fourth of July celebrations last year.
When Sasha had finally told me about the new young co-pilot who seemed determined to take over where Benson had left off.
I thought about how she’d not told me about him for several months and about how they’d clashed that first time I met him round at Lisa and Samuel’s party.
Step-by-step I thought through their first time together.
Thought through the multiple times either Sasha or I or both us had planned to stop but totally failed.
And how in the end we’d gone the other way, me agreeing to delay starting a family for another year so Sasha and I could play the Incheon Game—the most extreme form of the voyeur-cuck we’d ever played in all the years we’d been playing.
I don’t know why, but the last scene my mind replayed on the Sasha and Thomas reel was how they’d danced and made out after Lisa and Samuel’s wedding—and how Lisa seemed concerned when she asked me if I was okay about how they were behaving in public.
Then the penny finally dropped. All those memories from the reel finally making clear what should have been obvious to me weeks or months ago.
This was never going to stop.
Sasha and Thomas was never going to stop.
She’d not stopped loving me—but she had started loving him. And she was also well and truly addicted to the amazing and exciting taboo sex he gave her.
My new reality finally sank in.
It was like I’d thought on Lisa’s wedding day, the first time we’d behaved in a way that showed Sasha had two men in her life—we were no longer a couple, we were a Throuple.
With this realization throbbing in my head, I trudged back to the car—not quite knowing how I felt.
I knew we needed to change things—to rebalance, giving Sasha and my relationship more time to breathe. Which probably meant taking back from Thomas the Thursday and Sunday nights.
That would help fix things for the last few months of their Incheon schedules, but where did things go after that?
How the hell did we start a family when Sasha was busy fucking two guys? One of whom whose skin color would make an accidents obvious once our first child was born.
Was it as simple as Thomas using condoms and maybe only fucking Sasha during her safe periods? Certainly not zero risk, but if the three of us stuck to the plan and were careful, probably just about okay in terms of probabilities.
Was that it? Was that the conversation I needed to steel myself to have with Sasha when she got home tomorrow?
Finally feeling like I’d worked it out, I felt far more at peace with myself. That restless, antsy feeling had gone right away.
I knew it would be a difficult conversation—Thomas was hardly likely to love less time and always wearing a little latex overcoat—but I knew how much Sasha loved me and how much she wanted to start a family.
Her sister Kate and her two, Phoebe and Adam. Her bestie Lisa and her due date early next year. Thomas’s two sisters and their four little girls.
Everyone was getting in on the act, and I knew just how much Sasha wanted that she and I soon become part of the proud parent club.
I slept well that night. Yes, the conversation would be tough, but I felt sure that when he recovered from the shock and thought about it, Thomas would agree to my suggestions. Glass half full, not half empty—better to have some of Sasha than none at all.
Like many math guys, hard and emotional conversations had never been my strong suit. But, having seen so little of her lately, I was excited to see Sasha again, so I used this as emotional ballast as I steeled myself for the hard conversation ahead.
Flight Tracker told me they landed Atlanta just before eight in the morning, a few minutes early which meant she should definitely make her eleven a.m. connecting flight.
However excited I was to see her again, married to a flight attendant for more than a decade, I knew better than to interrupt her when she was busy with her myriad end of flight tasks. But with a relaxed three-hour connection time, ten was the ideal time to call her.
When I called I saw and heard the same remote and distant response I’d experienced the last few days.
But this time her explanation of tiredness made perfect sense. After all, ensuring the happiness and physical well-being of two-hundred people cooped up in a thin metal tube for sixteen hours is hardly child’s play!
Never mind, she’d be home in just four hours…
I’m not proud to admit it, but as I parked myself in our home office (offering the best vantage point over our driveway) the image that came to mind was a small boy excitedly waiting for Christmas.