Lisa and I celebrated our third anniversary on Saturday with our friends George and Jane. Their third anniversary was, not coincidently, the weekend before.

My name is Jim and in college George and I were first-year roommates. George was in accounting and kept on raving about this woman in some of his accounting classes named Lisa. He managed to ensure that he was in project teams with her and that they were in the same study group. He hadn’t had a girlfriend before, nor had he been on many dates, so basically did everything he could to spend time with her doing class work, except asking her out on a date.

I kept telling him that he should ask her out, but he kept bailing whenever he had the chance.

“Look, you like this girl, just ask her out. You see her every day, she hasn’t been pushing you away from doing classwork together, so she at least doesn’t find you too annoying.” I kept telling him.

“But if I screw up, then maybe I’ll lose her as a study partner.” It was always his chicken shit excuse.

I had a brain wave for him. “Look, she is also in residence, so she also has a roommate, right?” I asked.

He hesitated, “I guess.”

“Well, ask if Lisa and her roommate want to join us for dinner and drinks Friday night. Then it is just a bunch of people getting together. Not a date.”

For some reason, that logic clicked in George’s brain and he asked her. She and her roommate said yes.

We had an amazing time. Lisa’s roommate’s name was Jane. While Lisa was a classic knockout, Jane was that girl next door type that you lusted after, and then she and her family moved away just when you were going to make your move.

The four of us hit it off and started to do all kinds of social activities together. As time went by, I gravitated more to Lisa and George to Jane.

After graduation, George and Lisa got jobs at one of the big accounting firms in town. Jane started to work as a Dental Hygienist, and I got a job as an Insurance Claims Examiner. We found an apartment building close to downtown that had 2 two-bedroom apartments a few floors apart. Lisa and Jane got one and George and I got the other. Of course, the living arrangements didn’t last long. George was spending so much time at Lisa and Jane’s place and Lisa was spending all her time and George and my place, that we just updated the names on the leases and Lisa moved in with me and George moved in with Jane.

Of course, we had pretty much done everything together, so on a trip to Jamaica for the four of us, I proposed to Lisa and George proposed to Jane.

Now, we weren’t going to have a joint wedding, but we did have our weddings a weekend apart and then the four of us went on a joint honeymoon in Hawaii. We had a great time doing things together during the day, but evenings and most dinners were just as couples.

Our life goals were the same. Work 4 or 5 years to save for a house and then the kids a few years later.

Things went great until the Wednesday morning after our anniversary dinner. You see, thanks to COVID, George, Lisa and I got to work from home 2 days a week. I know we are all just blocks from our offices, but why not have the opportunity to sleep in 30 minutes more in the morning and work wearing shorts and a T-shirt a couple of days a week?

We had set up the 2nd bedroom in our apartment as the office. Lisa worked from home on Mondays and Tuesdays. I worked from home on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Perfect. No conflict of us working from home at the same time.

Lisa had already left for work and I was making the bed in our room before heading to my office. I noticed something under the bed. I reached under the bed and pulled out a coin. OK. A coin. There was nothing special about that, except we cleaned the bedroom on Sunday, and I knew it wasn’t there Sunday night.

I looked at the coin and I recognized it. You see, when George was a boy, his grandfather always gave his grandchildren a silver dollar whenever they visited. George’s grandfather passed away while George was in High School and I knew that George always carried that last silver dollar with him wherever he went. I saw it enough while we were in college that I knew the year and every mark that had been made to that coin. This was George’s coin.

I sat on the bed and just stared at it. How could George’s coin end up under my bed?

George and Lisa worked together. Lisa worked from home on Mondays and Tuesdays. George worked from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

George must have been in Lisa and my bedroom on Tuesday. They live two floors down. I got a bad feeling. Now, I know George and Lisa usually eat lunch together when they are at the office. They typically go out and buy lunch on Wednesdays. So, maybe he just came up for lunch yesterday and for some innocent reason was in our bedroom and the coin fell out of his pocket and under the bed. This may be nothing, but I needed to know for sure.

I went to the office bedroom. I had a meeting first thing, so I tried to push these doubts aside. I hid the coin so Lisa wouldn’t find it. I thought it better to keep a hold of it for sure and then if this is nothing, then I’ll just miraculously find it and give it to George.

My first call was with my manager Samantha. Samantha was a hoot. She was about 10 years older than me. She was married to an auto mechanic with three young daughters. I doubt that Samantha is 5 feet tall, and her husband is 6 foot 6. They make an interesting couple. The three daughters are all daddy’s girls.

I get on the call with her. She also works from home on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Our company has a policy that all calls must have the camera turned on. The call starts. Samantha takes one look at me and gets a concerned look on her face. “What’s wrong?” She asked.

I pause. Do I want to get into this? Samantha has been a good sounding board since my mother passed last year. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Well, I found this coin under my bed, and I know that it belongs to my friend George. It is a coin that his grandfather gave to him.”

She looked at me over the call. “And you are wondering what George was doing in your bedroom.”

“Exactly.” I solemnly said. “George lives in an apartment 2 floors down with his wife, and Lisa and George both work from home on Tuesdays.”

“So, if those two are doing something that they shouldn’t, then there is an opportunity to do it. And you don’t want to ask her because that could cause issues because it makes your wife think you don’t trust her.”

“Yes,” I said, “the coin has put some doubt in my mind, but if it is nothing, then I don’t want to stir anything up.”

“Is there a way you can check to see if they are doing something inappropriate on Tuesdays?” I noticed that both of us had been staying away from the word “cheating”. She paused. “You know, my husband had an issue with a worker stealing car parts. Although he had security cameras, the parts were disappearing out of a corner of the shop not covered by the cameras. He bought a battery-powered camera that was easy to hide. Do you want me to see if he still has it?”

For the first time, I smiled. A potential solution to the doubts in my mind. “That would be great. It would give me peace of mind. If not, there is an electronics store around the corner from the office, I could pick one up when we are in the office on Friday.”

She smiled back. “I’ll ask him and then if it is available, bring it in on Friday.”

“Samantha, thanks.”

“I’m sure that this will just show you that there is nothing to worry about.”

Now that I had a plan, we got onto the job.

I tried to push the coin out of my mind that night and tried to be as normal as possible around Lisa. She didn’t seem to notice that anything was different, so we went on with our evening as normal.

I wasn’t my usual self Thursday night. As much as I tried, the coin was eating at me. Lisa asked and I just said that there was a health claim at work that was getting to me. Lisa knew that sometimes some of the claims had tragic stories behind them and that sometimes it bothered me. She asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said no and smiled at her to reassure her.

On Friday, Samantha brought in the camera. It was small, so easy to hide. She showed me how it worked.

I had to visit my father on Saturday. This gave me an excuse to not be around Lisa for the day. He needed some help cleaning up that attic and moving some things around the house, so I would be gone all day. I also remembered that Jane sometimes worked Saturdays at the Dental Clinic, so if anything untoward was going on, Saturday would be another opportunity for them.

While Lisa was going to the bathroom Friday night, I managed to set up the camera in our bedroom. Lisa had kept an artificial Hawaiian Lei from our honeymoon hanging on the wall, and I was able to hide the camera behind it.

Because I had to get up early on Saturday, I was able to avoid our usual Friday night of passion.

My father lived in the next town. We were saving money and since everything was pretty much within walking distance we didn’t have a car, so I was up bright and early to take the bus to my father’s town.

My father picked me up at the bus station and we had a busy day going through things. He knew that eventually, he would need to downsize, so wanted to go through things that had been put away for years. “Better that we go through it thoughtfully versus tossing it out because you don’t have time” he always said.

We identified many things for donation and took a load to the dump. There was still more to do, but we were going to slowly chip away at it over the next few months. He was happy with the progress.

On the bus ride home, I started to get anxious again. I was worried that I might find something on the SD card on that camera.

I got home late. Lisa had been waiting for me and we ordered a pizza for dinner. I took a shower while we waited for the pizza delivery. I needed to get some of the dust off of me. I nervously scanned the bedroom but couldn’t detect that anything inappropriate had occurred while I was gone.

I feigned sore muscles that night and went to bed early.

I was dreading Sunday night when we were going to George and Jane’s for dinner. Sunday nights were our usual get-together for dinner night. We took turns hosting. I was relieved when Lisa said that she was going grocery shopping with Jane on Sunday morning. That gave me some time alone to check the camera.

I stuck the SD Card into my computer and copied over the video files. It took a video anytime there was movement. It captured us going to bed Friday night and then me getting up Saturday morning to go to my Dad’s. Jane usually starts working at 9 on Saturdays.

Then the moment I was dreading happened. According to the timestamp, shortly before 9, Lisa got out of bed. There is no audio, so I don’t know why she got up. Then George walked into the camera view with her. They kissed, then removed their clothes and got into bed.

I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of what occurred, and this isn’t one of those stories where she did things for him that she didn’t do for me, but I was stunned that my best friend and my wife were fucking in my bed.

I guess that they had lunch there as the time stamps showed no action around lunch time and then they were back in my bedroom fucking and lying naked together in the afternoon. Then I saw them go to the bathroom. The next time they were in view, they were wearing towels, so I guess they showered together.

The video then showed them stripping the bed. George must have left because the next timestamp showed Lisa a few hours later making the bed again with the same sheets. She must have washed them.

I have had the odd migraine in my life, and this was the time to fake one. I wasn’t going to go to dinner with those two cheaters.

I quickly backed up the incriminating video to the cloud and my personal drive at work. I wanted to ensure I had copies of these while I figured out what to do. I then placed the SD Card back into the camera and changed the batteries. I still wanted to see what was happening on Tuesdays. I also printed some screenshots and put them in amongst the papers in my work laptop bag.

I knew Lisa would be back soon. The migraine medication that the Doctor had prescribed for my migraines came in blister packs, so I opened up two pills, flushed them down the toilet, and then left the blister pack on my bedside table with a mostly empty glass of water. When Lisa arrived, I was already in bed with the blindfold I used when I had migraines to keep all possible light out.

She saw the blindfold and quietly asked if I had another migraine. I said yes, but there was nothing she could do, so I told her to go to dinner at George and Janes.

She kissed my forehead. She told me that she was sorry and to call her if there was anything I needed. She left to help Jane make dinner. She knew from past experience when I had these that I would be out of action until the next day at the earliest.

Even without the migraine, I didn’t feel like moving. My mind was swimming with the images from those videos. I remembered there was a divorce lawyer in my office building. He was one of those slimeball lawyers. He was handing out cards one morning by the elevators because “most marriages end in a divorce.”

We had no kids and only had the savings that we were putting away for the house. Really a 50-50 split. So, the divorce part was easy. What I wanted, though, was to make sure that if my relationship with Lisa was over, then George’s relationship with her was over as well. Eventually, I would also need to talk to Jane. She deserved to know.

An idea formed in my mind. I needed to talk to Samantha.