Chapter 3

"I met someone," I licked my lips and Richard blinked at me across the small table where we were having lunch.

"What does that mean?" he wondered and he'd only just sat down after kissing my cheek. I'd arrived early, like I was eager, but in reality I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to see my husband, not like this, and I'd missed him terribly.

"He's a white man," I said quietly, while we pretended to look at our menus, sitting across from each other.

"Okay." Richard nodded.

"He loves me," I sighed. "Or he says he does anyway."

"Do you love him?" Richard swallowed hard.

"I think so," I looked into my husband's eyes. "I'm carrying his baby."

"You what?" He sat back like I'd slapped him.

"He's from Chicago," I explained, trying to keep the calm, measured tone I'd rehearsed so carefully. "He wants me to go back with him. To stay with him."

Richard didn't say anything so I kept talking.

"After we're divorced..." I put my menu down. "He's asked me to marry him, Richard. I ... I accepted."

"I see." The man neither frowned nor smiled, but just sat there looking at me with his big brown eyes.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

"I wish you wouldn't." Richard looked down, avoiding me. "But if that's what you want..."

"You're not going to fight for me?" I asked him.

"Do you want me to?" he asked. "What do you want me to say?"

"Never mind." I frowned and we were quiet for a few minutes, until the waiter came and took our order and our menus away.

"I love you, Amber," Richard told me. "I don't understand why you were upset. Why you left me. And now this ... What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be jealous, Richard." I stared back at him. "I want you to be mad, okay? I want you to slap my face and call me names. That's what I want."

Richard looked around as I'd gotten a little loud and I dropped my voice, leaning across the table.

"I want the man I married," I told him. "I want a man who thinks I'm worth more than ... jerking off!"

"Shhh ... Amber..." Richard cleared his throat. "You're making a scene."

"What?" I laughed. "Fuck it. Make a scene, Richard! That's what you should be doing. Not me. You!"

"Why are you doing this?" He shook his head. "I just want you to be happy, that's all."

"Do I look happy?" I asked him.

"No," my husband sighed and we looked at each other while other people watched and whispered. "Where's the papers?" he asked and I narrowed my eyes. "The divorce papers, I'll sign them."

"You'll give me a divorce?" I asked.

"It's what you want, right?" he shrugged. "Go to Chicago and have this man's baby?"

"There is no baby, Richard." I stood up. "There's no white man either. I just wanted to see what you'd do."

So it wasn't all my problem, I decided, leaving Richard to sit there by himself. I was going back to my dorm. Why couldn't the guy get mad? He should have been jealous, that's what I wanted. My husband was telling me I wasn't worth the trouble, that's what it felt like. He would have signed divorce papers right then and there. It wasn't reasonable to my mind. It wasn't how a man behaved, how a husband reacted to the news that his wife was leaving him for someone else.

I should have divorced him, I thought. Married a guy like Seth, someone selfish and possessive. I liked that. I wanted it and maybe even needed it. It made me feel safe knowing I had a man watching me, worrying over me. I thought I'd had that in Richard, but now I knew I didn't. I loved him though, that was the problem.

That and the fact that I was a coward.

I should have talked to him and I hadn't. I'd ambushed him, that's all. He wanted me happy, wasn't that important too? Richard loved me enough to let me go, or so it could be argued, and I'd thrown that selfless devotion back in his face. God! I was going crazy trying to sort this out. Why couldn't he be like all the other men? Why did my husband have to be different?

"Hi." Richard smiled at me as I walked into our condo. I'd called him to say I was coming home, not saying when exactly or even why, but only that.

"Hi." I smiled at him and dropped my bags on the kitchen floor. I was going to cry.

"I missed you," he told me, standing at the stove cooking ... Chili or something. I shook my head and walked over.

"Me too." I let him take me in his arms and hug me tightly and that was what I really needed.

"I'm sorry, Amber," Richard said softly. "I love you so much."

"Yeah," I nodded, just closing my eyes and pressing my cheek against his chest. "I'm not going to cheat on you."

"Okay," Richard agreed quietly.

"I don't want to do it," I whispered. "I don't want to see those movies. I don't want anything, okay? Just you and me."

"I'll get rid of them," my husband promised.

"Just us," I sighed and I hoped it was true, but everytime Richard made love to me, I wondered who it was he imagined I was fucking.

He wasn't really happy with our sex life either. It wasn't so good as it had once been and our lovemaking felt mechanical and obligatory. I wanted him often, but when Richard would take me, there was something missing and it was frustrating. I remembered him in the car that night, after I'd danced with Seth, and the urgency my husband had felt. I needed that, even artificial as it had been, it had been something and now it was nowhere to be found. After a few months it was getting to the point where I was almost willing to let him get another one of those movies, the interracial videos that turned my husband on so much. The spark that was missing, I wanted to believe, was his and I didn't know what to do about it.

We argued over little things and after nearly a year of marriage ... had we made a mistake? It was depressing. After awhile we mostly just stopped. We didn't talk. We didn't fuck. We shared a condo and that was all. Shared some bills and some furniture. We were roommates, my husband and me. I found Richard's stash of interracial porn on his computer by accident. Photographs and stories, video clips and all that stuff. More disturbing were some of the emails he'd saved from men, white men presumably, who were interested in fucking me. My husband had opened some sort of account on a lonely hearts web site in my name.

"He did what?" Lisa was drinking her beer and I was just looking at mine. I'd moved back into my dorm on campus without leaving so much as a note behind for my husband.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Married black female seeking white men for dating and short term relationships."

"He was pretending to be you?" Lisa took a swig of her beer just so she wouldn't laugh. It wasn't very funny.

"I guess," I shrugged. "He put a dozen pictures of me on the website. The ones he said he'd never show anyone."

"Uhhh ... What's the name of that website?" Lisa asked and then she did laugh and I rolled my eyes.

"Lisa!"

"I'm just kidding," she said. "God, that's kinda sick."

"Yeah," I drank some beer and made a face. "He was writing them back, those guys, telling them what I'd do. How I liked to ... you know, do stuff with white men."

"That's really sick," Lisa frowned and then tried to smile, looking at my unfinished beer. "If I'd known you were coming back I'd have bought some wine."

"Well, I'm here to stay now," I told her. "I feel totally used, you know? Just ... used. Half the city probably thinks I'm a slut. I'm afraid I'll be walking around the mall and some white guy's gonna recognize me. God! I can't believe he did that to me."

"Are you going to divorce him?" Lisa asked slowly.

"I don't know," I sighed. "I don't feel like I love him right now."

"He's not gonna change," Lisa predicted, pushing her glasses up her nose. "I mean, it's in his head. Richard wants what he wants, same as everybody does."

"Why can't he just want me?" I frowned and then I was crying again. "What about what I want?"

"This isn't a good idea," I decided and I was ready to get back into the taxi, but Sheila was holding my hand.

"Why?" she asked and I really hated that question.

"I'm still married, for one thing," I frowned at her.

"You're separated," she told me. "That means you get to play the field."

"Doesn't change the fact..."

"That you're going to jump off a bridge if you don't have some fun?" Sheila cut me off. "Come on now, you look fantastic. Put on a smile. There's three billion boys in the world, remember that."

"Uh ... so?" I laughed weakly.

"So let's go break a few, girl!" Sheila grinned at me. "And forget about what's-his-name. You should have taken off your rings."

"Don't start," I told my friend seriously. My rings didn't come off, not while there was a chance. But if there was a chance ... What was I doing here?

"Okay, okay..." Sheila sighed theatrically as we entered the dance club and it was just like I remembered it from the one night Richard had brought me there. Notorious. That was fitting.

I didn't want to be there, not really, but Sheila was right. If I didn't have some fun, I was going to lose it completely. I was separated from my husband, but only in practical terms. Legally I was still very much his wife and the idea of cheating on him ... I felt my stomach tightly knotted and my mouth was dry. I wasn't supposed to be out by myself like that. I wasn't supposed to be wearing a little red dress that hugged the few small inches of my body it covered. I wasn't supposed to be wearing the black stockings and three inch fuck me pumps I was balanced on. I was wearing a thong, for crying out loud, and made-up perfectly the way a married woman shouldn't be. Not without her husband holding her hand.

Sheila was right. I looked fantastic and it was the first time in more than a year that I'd dressed up for someone besides Richard. Supposedly that someone was me, like I was looking all hot and sexy just to spoil myself. To bolster my self-esteem and feel good after the degradation of Richard's secret betrayal. I deserved to be beautiful, that's what Sheila had told me and I desperately wished I could believe her, but I soon felt the hungry stares of all those men ... wasn't that the real reason? I wanted to be desirable, even if it was only in the eyes of a stranger. Richard had his porn and his strange fetish and his loving right hand to keep him company.

What did I have?

I danced with Sheila for the first ten minutes, which was part of her master plan to get us all the attention we could handle. Two very attractive women, one white and the other black, grinding on the dance floor? Sure, guys love that stuff and while I wasn't exactly the type for dirty dancing, my friend was. All I had to do was play the straight girl for her impromptu stage act. And it was fun, I admit it. I love dancing and once we started I found myself relaxing and smiling, loosening up and forgetting everything else. Sheila was a good dancer and it had been too long for me.

Ten minutes, or fifteen maybe, that was all it took and when we returned to our table we had drinks waiting for us, a lot of drinks and of course they came with men attached to them. Black guys, white guys, handsome and otherwise. This was fun of another sort and if I was reluctant and out of practice, Sheila was neither and she'd finally settled on a tall, dark dance partner named Steven. He was hot and black and Sheila was making a point.

I wasn't ready to settle for anyone and my nerves were faltering as I held my left hand in my lap, rubbing my wedding band and wondering why Richard wasn't with me. Sheila was dancing a slow one, a close one, and Steven had her ass in his hands and that just made it worse somehow. The guy reminded me of my husband.

"Where's your husband tonight?" a voice asked me and I looked up suddenly, blinking at the man.

"Um..."

"Seth," he smiled at me. "Would you like to dance? Amber, right?"

"What are you doing here?" I wondered dumbly, but I'd only been in that club twice in my entire life and he just happened to be there both times? Either he lived there, I thought, or fate had a real twisted sense of humor.

"I live here," he shrugged and then laughed at the look on my face. "I'm kidding. Come on, they're playing our song."

He held out his hand expectantly and I wasn't sure why I was taking it, except that I remembered dancing with him before and how nice it had felt. That wasn't the reason though. I remembered how Seth had told me he was a jealous man, that if he were my husband I wouldn't ever be sitting alone in a club. Not for a whole night. Not even for five minutes, and those words had almost haunted me when I'd compared them so often to Richard's desires.

Seth was as handsome as I remembered him too. Big and strong, he was a construction worker who had the bearing of someone else, an athletic attorney or a stock broker maybe. There was nothing brutal or crude about him, but a sense of control and patience. It was strange and interesting actually, although I couldn't say why. I'd been attracted to him though, I knew that, and now I was again. A good looking white man with neat black hair and soft blue eyes, a nice smile and warm, gentle hands. I liked the way he held me and I'd somehow forgotten that the song was so slow when I'd stood up.

"Hmmm..." he sighed. "You smell good."

"Do I?" I laughed lightly and I had my hands on his shoulders while he held my hips and waist.

"Yeah," Seth nodded and he was being polite, keeping some distance between us as we moved. "A lot of women don't know how to wear perfume."

"Oh," I said with mock condescension. "You like my perfume."

"No, uh-uh," he gave a bare shake of his head. "I mean, I can smell you underneath it. You're not hiding. I like that."

"Thank you," I laughed again, flirting with him. "I think."

"Your welcome," Seth smiled and his hands caressed me through my dress, giving me a small squeeze. "So where is that husband of yours?"

"Um..." I frowned slightly. "I'd rather we didn't talk about him, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed. "I'm just trying to figure out why a beautiful woman like you is alone in a place like this."

"Me too," I rolled my eyes, maybe too playfully. The dress I wore was thin and tight, as I said. My braless breasts strained against the spandex like they were supposed to and my nipples were swollen pebbles, prominent and aching. The tops of my tits were exposed with deep cleavage and and Seth's eyes caressed my dark skin and God help me, but I liked it.

"We could go someplace else," Seth said softly and my heart stuttered as it picked up speed.

"Ohhh..." I smiled at that and shook my head. "That's not a good idea, I think."

"What if I said please?" Seth chuckled and I laughed because he had a certain boyish charm that I hadn't noticed before. I liked that as well. I liked everything about him and I wasn't supposed to.

Sheila had left me all too soon, deciding that Steven was Mr. Right Now and happily taking him home. Or at least to some motel room near the airport probably. That left me alone with Seth who had promised Sheila that he'd be on his best behavior. That was the last thing my friend wanted out of him, but she'd made a big show of it just for the sake of appearance in case something went wrong later.