Chapter 13

The St. Gerard has a nice open garden level on the first floor, and I glide into the restaurant around 11:20. I’m wearing that outfit I had earmarked for today (panties and all), and newly grateful for its demure lines. I haven’t caught any of the staff giving me ‘I saw you come in naked and sloshed last night’ leers, but it must be a different shift by this point anyway.

I wouldn’t say I feel like a new woman, exactly, but much restored from where I was. Rapid rehydration, pain pills, and a scorchingly hot shower have all helped me return to some semblance of life. Beyond that, however, I’m also functioning on white-knuckle adrenaline. There’s no slack left anymore for self-indulgence, nor for coddling my hangover, however brutal it might be. I’ve simply got to power through. I’m going to need to have my wits about me if there’s any hope of managing the fallout from Mike’s indiscretions, and my own.

As to my outward appearance, I’ve done what I can to spruce that up as well. I have this concealer that I hardly ever use, because it’s always seemed a little too yellow—but for some reason I packed it to bring with me, and I guess that was kismet. Slathered on liberally, it minimizes my bruising better than I have any right to expect. On my way here, I also stopped off at the hotel boutique for a pair of big, dark sunglasses to shield my puffy eyes. And, I’m regulating my movements carefully, keeping them slow and steady to avoid tweaking my aching joints, or bringing on another dizzy spell.

When I give the hostess my name, she leans in confidentially, girl-to-girl concern perceptible in her eye. “Your other party has been here a while. A lonnng while. He seems dreadfully eager to see you. Are you going to be okay hon?” It’s not hard to guess what she’s thinking. Between my dark glasses and banged-up face, she must figure me for a battered wife, about to be love-bombed by the abusive spouse.

It takes some effort, but I think I’m able to reassure her. After that, she points me in the direction of our table. There, I find Mike dressed for success, having chosen a stone-blue button-down shirt he knows I like. One that sets off his eyes. A serious ‘I can fix this’ expression is cemented on his face, and an embarrassingly large bouquet of roses sits on the table beside him. I grin and look away. I mean, it’s the sort of gesture that’s dated, cliched, more or less cringeworthy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like it.

“I’m so glad you came,” he says as I sit down.

I wince behind my shades. Arriving twenty minutes late wasn’t any kind of power play on my part, but I guess it could look like one. “Sorry. You were probably beginning to wonder. What time did you get here?”

He looks sheepish. “They started seating at ten. But I’d have stayed all day. I was such an idiot. I just want the chance to show you how sorry-”

I stop him there. I haven’t exactly gamed this conversation out, but I do know it can’t go this way. We’re working off an entirely different script now. “Mike, before you get started, I need to tell you something ... Last night, after you left the restaurant, I ... I handled things badly. I was really hurt, you know?” His eyes are tearing up again. “And I think a little hormonal. But I’m not trying to make excuses, because the fact is that I went off the rails. Way off the rails.”

His expression is baffled, but the prevailing sentiment is ‘I will forgive you anything.’

“I’m not proud...” I stop. I need to be candid here. Because, while it’s accurate that I’m not exactly proud of last night, the truth is that I don’t wholly regret it either.

Recalling the experience now, it appears to lie strangely outside the normal flow of my life, unrelated to either past or future. A disjuncture, a fantastical interlude, crazy, sensual, overflowing with animal arousal and an irresistible sort of depravity. Yes I was drunk, yes it was unwise. But I needed to be drunk to do it. And ... maybe it was something I needed to do?

Perhaps I needed to go crazy, and soak up all that dissipated bliss. Perhaps I needed the catharsis, or to get my own back, or to for once break free from the bland conventionality of my life. All I can really say for sure is that when I think back over last night—not just the swaths of it I remember clearly, but even the broken pieces toward the end—I know that while other people might seek to shame me for it, I don’t feel ashamed, not truly.

And, if given the chance to erase all of it? I’m not positively certain that I would.

I start again, gently. “Mike, I had too much to drink last night, and then I ... I was unfaithful to you. At the time I wanted to hurt you, but I’m sorry for that now, because I don’t want to hurt you.”

Raw feelings of horror and dismay hijack his features. His muscles tense, as if confronting a physical threat, or perhaps coiling to flee. His lips part to say something, but nothing emerges. I blunder on, slow and deliberate. “You might say that I did what you did, more or less. But you should know that in certain regards it was ... worse. Different, anyway. In my defense, it all happened in the heat of the moment, and in response to the pain you caused me. But ... yeah, I not only cheated, I crossed other lines as well. A lot of lines. Really big lines.”

There’s a heartbreaking croak in his voice when he finally speaks. “What did you do?”

“Oh Mike, I ... I’m willing to tell you what happened, if you truly want to know. I am. All of it. But think first. Are you sure that’s what you want? One hundred percent sure?”

He recoils slightly. “No, don’t tell me.”

I’m grateful for that. It certainly makes things easier for me. But I’m not sure what good it would do for him to suffer all the gory details either.

“Okay. If you have questions later, I’ll answer them. But there are a few things you definitely do need to know, and they won’t be easy to hear ... For one thing, I’m going to have to get STD tested. You’re going to have to too, if you want us to be together. I hope you understand that.” He nods warily.

“Also, I’m going to need to take Plan-B.” I actually had missed my progesterone pill yesterday, and popped today’s rather late. I could have stayed mum about it, and dealt with the matter privately. Hell, if our couple’s getaway had happened as planned and then I’d noticed the gap, that’s probably what I would have done. But context matters. In the current circumstances, concealing it would feel like the coward’s way out.

Worse yet is still to come. “And sweetheart, I ... I hope you’re never going to encounter any references to what happened last night. I pray you won’t. I mean, like from people we know, or online. But—it’s possible. I can’t guarantee that you won’t.”

His face is ashen. “Jesus Christ, Jess...”

We remain trapped in silence for an uncomfortable spell, as Mike turns all this over in his head. I can only imagine the things that are running through his mind. Vulgar images of me no doubt—doing who knows what, with who knows who. I’m well familiar with that sort of mental torment, having experienced it myself only yesterday. The real irony in this case is that, no matter how salacious the notions he cooks up, reality is probably worse.

I sip my drink. A tiny dose of hair-of-the-dog. The waiter dropped off a couple of mimosa flutes soon after I landed my bombshell. But either the restaurant is really busy, or the staff has read the situation perfectly, because they’ve been impeccably absent ever since. I’d like to summon them over for some coffee, actually, but we don’t need the distraction.

Even just with what he might guess, I’m sure Mike’s first inclination is to chuck me over the side like deadweight. Our society still grants license to men for actions that it would never pardon women. However, I think my husband is too fair-minded and self-aware to stop there. Because at the end of the day, even if what I did was very wrong, even if things have spiraled far beyond what he might have envisioned, he knows that at core, this is a disaster he himself set in motion.

After a while, I decide I ought to give Mike permission to leave. There’s no law saying that either of us has to absolve the other. Maybe neither of us deserve absolution. “The ball is in your court, honey. If you need time to think, I understand. But, if you’re simply done with me, I can understand that as well. We can keep the thing amicable, right? We both bear some of the responsibility for what’s happened, and we both love the kids.”

This shocks him from his stupor. His voice rasps painfully. “I’m not ... Are you saying you’re done with us, Jess? Because—look, I’m fucking furious at you. And hurt. And ... yeah, ashamed of myself too. But I’m not running away from this. Are you?”

My heart warms. “No, I don’t want to run either, Mike. I want to fight for us. We have something, we always have. And I do think it can be fixed—maybe even made better. We’re in a position to understand each other better now, aren’t we...? Like, I don’t really believe I’d ever have cheated ‘first,’ you know? But you did what you did, and I did what I did, and last night ... well, it did give things to me. Things I didn’t know I wanted; things I needed, maybe, without realizing it. So, perhaps now I ... I can see where you were coming from. Perhaps grasp what you got from it.”

Mike is taken aback by this. I was trying to say something about mutual insight and empathy, but I put it badly, and he seems to have heard something quite different. “You- what you did last night, you enjoyed it?”