Chapter 2: Alyssa

While Stacy changed into yet another set of clothes, I began whipping up a grilled chicken salad for our dinner. The combination of my metabolism and her intense schedule of dancing and working out meant we could pretty much eat anything we wanted, but we worked at it most of the week so we could indulge in pizza and ice cream most weekends.

I was tying on the ridiculous bib she gave me last Christmas when I heard a beep from the hallway. We had messages on our old-fashioned answering machine.

On rather, one message. I pushed the button.

“Lawrence, it’s me,” came the familiar voice. “I wanted to remind you and Stacy that I would be meeting her at the airport, right next to the baggage claim. I also wanted to remind you to make sure she got all of the vaccinations on the list.”

She paused, but no beep. There was more.

“I hope you are doing well,” Alyssa, my ex-wife, added. “There are times when I miss your company. But we both know why I’m here and you’re there and why Stacy is with you. I just hope she can enjoy spending some time with me in Sao Paulo. It will be Festival while we’re there, so she can show off her skimpy bikinis. And so can I.”

And so can Ashley, I thought.

“ ... you don’t have to call me back,” she was saying. “Just be well and know you were the only man for me. It was...”

Beep. Damn antique answering machine.

Marriages like mine are commonly referred to as Outkicking your coverage. Alyssa Miles was a travel agency sales rep – which meant she’d been to most of the exotic locales that she advertised. We met on a cruise, naturally enough, me as one of a group of guys who were all celebrating our college graduation with a trip to the Caribbean.

Everyone scored; my buddies all hooked up with hot and horny women who were also looking for action. Me, I had to take the long road. Coming off a couple of relationships that had left some scarring, my meeting Alyssa on the trip was the beginning of a 14-month courtship that literally had me chasing her around the world. Working as a free lance writer made travel possible, and knowing her made it affordable.

I proposed on the western side of Oahu at sunset. Not only did she say yes, we fucked right there on the public beach and neither of us wore clothes or left my suite for the better part of the next week.

“Why me?” she asked in a restful moment between simultaneous orgasms.

“Easy,” I said.

“Was I?” she teased, burying half her face in the pillow and peeking over at me with the other.

“No. Not you. My reasons,” I said, goosing her. “You make me laugh. You make me think. You make me want to make myself better. You make me horny with just a smile.”

“Is that all?” she asked, turning over and fully exposing her tanned exquisite body.

“My cock fits perfectly in your sweet, hot pussy,” I said as matter-of-factly as I could.

“And my ass?” she said without missing a beat.

“That, too,” I think I blushed. “But more than the sex...”

“There’s more than the sex?” she asked with a fake wide-eyed gasp.

“You make me want to make you an honest woman,” I tried.

“That’s no fun,” she pouted. “How about, ‘You make me want to stop looking because I found the best?’”

“Who said I was even looking?” I said, sliding atop her and finding her wet and compliant.

Our wedding was on the Australian west coast. Our honeymoon was in Curacao. Stacy was conceived (best guess) in Cabo. Alyssa was the hottest looking pregnant woman you ever saw.

She was also one of the most petty, bitterly jealous mothers you can imagine.

Her post-partum period was hardly one of depression as far as I knew. She had her tubes tied and fucked like a sailor on leave. I was not yet 30, but had to turn to Viagra to keep up with the woman. Not that I was complaining. She was more beautiful than ever and had given me a beautiful baby girl.

Stacy was around three when I got my first inkling that Alyssa considered her daughter a rival for my affection.

Things were going better than ever for me professionally. With my little girl as inspiration, I connected with an out-of-work California bohemian artist named Elizabeth “Liz” Boling and the two of us made bestselling magic together with my children’s books. I wrote quickly, she was likewise faster than most and I had actually sent enough material to our publisher to give me a five-year backlog of releases. That allowed me to write strictly when I felt the muse.

So it was in this world of relaxed comfort that reality kicked me in the balls.

As I tucked her in one night during one of Alyssa’s trips, Stacy bravely said something she’d wanted to say practically since she had learned to talk.

“Why does Mommy hate me?” she asked in a whisper, as if she didn’t want her mother in the West Indies to hear.

“She doesn’t hate you!” I exclaimed. “How can you think that?”

In her limited vocabulary, I pieced together that she was playing with her stuffed animals on the floor while Alyssa was trying to vacuum the living room rug. She apparently kicked one of the beloved Beanie Babies away from Stacy’s grasp.

“Why are you in the way? You are always in the way!” Alyssa shouted at her. “I don’t need you in my way!”

That was it, apparently, but it scared Stacy that she might be sent away or whatever young children fantasize about. But my daughter was brave beyond her years.

“Please don’t tell Mommy I told on her,” she said. “I’ll be okay as long as you know, Daddy.”

So I said nothing. But I watched. And listened. And I might have missed it otherwise. Alyssa said and did all the right things when we were together as a family, but when I looked closely, I failed to see any genuine affection towards her daughter.

I read up on post-partum depression and realized that it could be temporary. I was fooling myself.

A few months later, I was pleasantly taken aback one otherwise unremarkable day when she greeted me at the front door with a cocktail and a birthday suit that 99 percent of the women in the world would kill for.

After ravaging her in a session that started in the front hallway and ended over the back of the couch, my brain finally kicked in.

“Where’s Stace?” I asked, still panting hard, my erection still filling her from behind.

“In the kitchen, eating her supper,” she replied.

“No I’m not. I’m finished,” Stacy said from the doorway. “You and daddy are sweating. Are you sick?”

Having been caught in the act, the last thing I wanted was for my daughter to see my erection so I stayed inside Alyssa and turned her around towards her.

“Mommy and I were just having some grownup fun,” I said to my daughter from behind my wife.

“Daddy and I were fucking. That’s something only I can do with him,” she said, clinching her muscle enough that I couldn’t have pulled out even if my erection had softened (which it hadn’t). “Daddy and I do this all the time, and I’m tired of hiding it from you. I enjoy it; so does he. Understand?”

Stacy nodded her head in a little girl way that said she had no clue what Alyssa was talking about.

“I’m going to go play in my room now,” she said like a big girl and left without a word. As soon as she was gone, Alyssa relaxed and I spun her around to face me.

“What were you thinking?” I said, as angry at her as I’d ever been in my life. “Letting Stacy see us? My God!”

“I’m thinking that she’s getting a lot of my quality time and I’m not as willing to share,” she replied. “It’s not her fault, but I swear to God if I could parcel her out to grandma and grandpa, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, knowing full well that she was.

“I want my marriage back,” she said. “I want to be able to travel the world and fuck you on every beach, on every mountaintop I can reach.”

“You still travel,” I protested. “But we agreed that I would have to stay behind and give Stacy a stable home life. Besides, I can write better when I’m stationary.”

“Stagnant, you mean,” she scoffed, lighting a cigarette and looking so fucking hot since she was still naked. “So, I’m having a problem sharing you with my daughter – our daughter. And yes, I know how fucked up that sounds.”

“Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t,” I said. “I’m having a hard time loving you right now.”

“Your dick says different,” she said through a cloud of smoke.

“That’s the Viagra,” I said defensively.

“Yeah, well,” she laughed derisively. “Gee, what would you do if I wasn’t here? Fuck Stacy?”

I slapped her. Hard. Put out her cigarette.

“To even think that, much less to say it out loud, is repulsive,” I said.

She ran out of the room crying, and I sat on the very same couch and turned on the television. I lit a cigarette and watched the news. She came in a few moment later, wearing a robe, and curled into a ball next to me. I remained impassive.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me,” she said in a tiny voice.

“It’s Stacy you need to apologize to,” I said, softening. “What were you thinking, anyway?”

“You just heard the voice that has been inside me since she was born,” she whispered. “I know I have to do better. It’s not her fault. I feel this way, even though she’s so, so pretty.”

“But she is so much you. Her eyes, her smile that’s you, in her,” I said, tears forming. “That’s a wonderful thing.”

“I know,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder and looking more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her. “I know.”

Things seemed to be better for a time; Alyssa’s smiles towards Stacy seemed to be genuine. But when she was gone to a reps’ trip to Baja, I got a text meant for someone else.

Same place, same time? was all it said.

It required little imagination to believe there was a tryst in her future. Only she had my cell phone and I had hers by a simple act of carelessness. While the pain in my heart was growing by the minute, my head told me to play along.

Remind me, I texted back to whoever it was.

LOL! came the inevitable reply. Meet me on beach noon Tuesday by grotto unless U want to meet in grotto!

OKOKXOXO, I cleverly responded. Five minutes later, I was calling Greg, the travel agent I keep on retainer, and 24 hours later (leaving Stacy with a sitter and a note to avoid questions and, frankly, to avoid bringing her along) I was in Ensenada, inquiring about grottoes. Turns out there is a beaut on Todos Santos, an island about a two-hour boat trip from the port. Most people go there for the surfing, or to watch the surfing or to avoid being found for a day or two. Alyssa had legitimate enough reason to be there and indeed the agency had rented an estate called the Casa del Cielo for their agents and their clients.

I didn’t have much of a cover story, and because I knew a number of Alyssa’s co-workers from get-togethers over the years, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. But here I was, riding in a rickety cab on a spectacular climb above the coastline. Then it hit me: I knew where to be and when to be there. These folks didn’t need to know I was there.