A Turn of the Screwed (2 page)

“Or is he saying that for your benefit?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to get divorced either. For all the reasons.”

“All the reasons” being her extremely conservative and religious parents, who hadn’t been thrilled about her marrying Scott in the first place.

Fortunately, her parents lived in Indiana. The past two years when Noel and Scott had gone up to visit them, as they had during the previous eight years of their marriage, they’d pretended all was well and dodged the inevitable questions about when they’d have grandchildren, like Noel’s two brothers and two sisters. She’d always wished to have a closer relationship with them, seeking their approval, even though she never understood why she needed it. Her marriage dissolving would be one more failing in their ever-judgmental eyes.

“So the tl;dr is that you’re living in limbo for now,” Eliza said.

“I guess.” Her friend had an annoyingly accurate way of slicing through the fat and right to the bone, cutting through the bullshit.

The truth was, Noel didn’t want to divorce Scott. She loved him. And he still did things with her in bed. She’d hoped by helping him with the BDSM part of stuff, the strap-on play, the bondage, the domination, the impact play, that maybe it would be enough for him.

Perhaps in her heart she’d always known it wouldn’t be, but she’d hoped that old chestnut would prove true, about if you loved something and set it free.

Maybe she’d set him free, but what if he wasn’t hers to have in the first place? Would he even come back?

Scott had gone out on dates a few times locally, guys he’d met online, but nothing that had panned out for him. He still hadn’t had any sexual encounters with a man, even though she’d given him permission to. He’d promised her he wouldn’t randomly sleep around, and that he wouldn’t blow up their marriage for anything less than what he felt for her already.

In her heart, she’d always hoped he never would leave, never would find someone else. She knew he loved her. She felt loved.

She also couldn’t help feeling less-than. There were lots of things she could and would do to make her husband happy.

Unfortunately, growing a penis or changing her chromosomal makeup wasn’t one of them.

Eliza looked contemplative. “You’re hoping he sows some wild oats and comes home happy for a while, right?”

Noel looked at Eliza. “That’s creepy.” She knew she didn’t have to explain what she meant to her friend.

Eliza shrugged. “It’s a blessing and a curse.” She slung an arm around Noel’s shoulders. “You aren’t the first woman in the history of the world to be a beard, and you won’t be the last, unfortunately. But only you can decide what’s right for you.”

“I don’t know what’s right for me.” Noel knew what a divorce would mean, basically having to cut herself off from contact with her family or face their “told you so” wrath that they’d been holding on to for ten years.

In their eyes, Scott wasn’t good enough not just for Noel, but for “the family.” They’d reluctantly suffered Noel’s decision to be a teacher, thinking she was simply rebelling, when everyone else was either a lawyer or involved in banking, or a high-ranking corporate wonk, something “successful,” in other words.

Not…
that
.

To them, being a teacher was a thankless, dead-end, broke-ass job that wouldn’t lead her anywhere in life. Not when her father was a successful entrepreneur who ran a Fortune 500 investment company. Not when her eldest brother was a corporate attorney for one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the US. Not when her other brother was a circuit court judge with eyes on running for state representative, and then perhaps later the Senate or House of Representatives.

Not when her younger sister had clerked for a Supreme Court judge before landing a prestigious position at a Washington, D.C. legal firm.

Not when her older sister now worked on Wall Street.

They would have been happier with Noel taking an entry-level job in the mail room at a large corporation and clawing her way up the ladder over the years than becoming a teacher. They would have at least respected her for that kind of “rebellion.”

No, Noel was the black sheep in the family. After graduating from college, she’d moved to Florida, where she’d fallen in love with the state while on spring break her junior year in college. She’d gotten a job first with a private school in Bradenton, then with the Sarasota county school system a year later.

Then she’d met and married Scott, a 911 dispatcher for the county, whom she’d met—ironically—during a mandatory sexual harassment workshop for new county employees. They’d married a year later after dating.

While her family had—sort of—kept their mouths shut about her choice in careers, apparently they’d hoped she’d at least have the common sense to marry up in the world if she was refusing to make her own way career-wise.

It wasn’t until she’d threatened to simply elope with Scott and not have a wedding at all that her parents had backed the hell off, offered to pay for the wedding if she held it up in Indiana, and told her that it was her life she was fucking up.

Well, not in those exact words, but the subtext glared like a neon sign in a dark desert on a moonless night.

Then again, she’d always felt less-than growing up. Not even the youngest, or technically the middle child, but her older brothers and sister had already set a precedent of expectations from her parents that when she came along made life damned hard for her. Even her younger sister, the baby, had fallen in line with the family thinking like a good little sheep. Yes, she lived her own life.

Still, it would have been nice to have her family’s acceptance about one damn thing. Getting divorced would only give them more ammo against her to prove she should have done what they said, regardless of how miserable it made her.

Noel had been the one getting in trouble in Sunday school for questioning the Bible teachings. Noel had been the one earning dour looks from her parents and especially from her father when she spoke up in favor of gay rights and other “liberal” causes. Noel had been the one getting eye rolls and glares of condescension for going to poetry readings and “wasting her time” on attending coffeeshops to see indie bands perform, or reading “liberal” fiction instead of the
Wall Street Journal
or
Forbes
.

She’d often wondered, more than a few times, if she hadn’t accidentally been swapped at birth. That maybe there was a conservative woman stuck in a hippy-dippy, liberal, atheist family, and who’d suffered the same amount of converse misery Noel had in her lifetime.

It was no wonder she wanted to move to Florida when she’d graduated from college. Escaping the miserable winters and even more miserable familial chill.

And then she’d met Scott and thought her life was complete.

And now…

“How sad does it make me,” Noel quietly said, “that I’m less upset by the fact that he’s going out to possibly meet up with a guy? If it was a woman, we’d be in divorce court already. But…” She stared at her bottle of beer again for a moment. “If he’s willing to stay married, and it’s just guys, I’m actually not totally un-okay with that.”

Eliza snorted. “Honey, you aren’t the first or last het woman to be intrigued by guy-on-guy sex. It’s sexy.
I
think it’s sexy.”

“What if Rusty came to you and dropped that bomb on you?”

“I don’t know. Hypothetically, I could agree to him being poly with just guys, if he only wanted to get his freak on and do it safely and come home to me. I know that’s a one-vagina policy and it’s not necessarily healthy for a long-term relationship’s success, but I’m not into girls, so it’s not like it could be a reciprocal thing.”

Eliza took another sip of her tea. “I am kind of pervy. I’d probably ask to watch or even sit in if the other guy was okay with it. Who knows? I might even make it a condition that he could bring guys home as long as I got to be the filling in the sandwich.” She smiled. “But then again, as I said, I’m a perv. And I have an adult daughter who no longer lives at home. We’re older than you and Scott and at a different time in our lives. I know you wanted kids.”

“I still do,” Noel said.

“Well…” Eliza tightened her grip around Noel’s shoulders. “Then I guess you need to make a decision sooner rather than later, don’t you? You’re thirty-three. You’re not getting any younger. Scott’s what, thirty-seven? It wouldn’t be fair to bring a baby into a situation where you’re going to get divorced in a couple of years. If you both want to co-parent, and put some stuff down on legal paper ahead of time to prevent problems down the road, okay, then go for it. Don’t think dumping a baby into the current stew you’re in is going to help or fix things. It won’t. It’ll shake things up and make things exponentially worse if you don’t have a solid foundation in place.”

“I know.” Noel lowered her head, chin on her chest. “I want him to be happy. I want to make him happy.”

“Honey, you can’t make someone happy. You can do things to make them unhappy, sure. True happiness comes from within. Just like he can’t make you happy.”

“But he’s making me unhappy right now.”

“I know, sweetie. I know. And that’s something you have to figure out how to deal with. On the plus side, if it makes you feel any better, I respect him for dealing with this with you honestly, and not just sneaking around behind your back. Not to discredit or invalidate your feelings, but it could be worse.”

Yes, it could always be worse, and Noel was fully aware of that.

She leaned against Eliza. “I know I could put my foot down and order him to stop, but I don’t want to do that.”

“Then don’t do that. You don’t have to make a decision now. See what happens. Who knows? Maybe he’ll bring home someone cute and you can check something off your sexual bucket list.”

Noel stared at her.

“Hey,” Eliza said. “You wouldn’t be the first or last woman to enjoy a ménage. I have poly friends. You know some of them. The whole ‘having your cake’ thing. I say if it works, go with it. There are no ‘rules’ you need to worry about breaking. It’s your life, your marriage. Quit worrying about the Indiana faction and worry about you and Scott and your happiness. He might surprise you.”

“Yeah, but will it be a surprise I can live with?”

Scott sat at one of the bars in the Toucan’s courtyard. Each bar at the resort had a different theme, and this one was the Tiki Hut. He’d opted for shorts and a T-shirt and sat off at one end of the bar where he could watch the activities in the courtyard and the pool.

There were guys of all shapes and sizes and ages, from barely legal twinks to elderly bears, and everything in between. It was a smorgasbord of men.

All he had to do was find his own balls and figure out how to approach any of them.

When he’d first heard about this event, he thought it’d be the perfect way to finally break through, maybe meet someone. He wasn’t much for online dating, although that option was growing more attractive the longer his search continued.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t be here at all. It didn’t matter that he had Noel’s permission and blessing, this whole situation wasn’t fair to her.

Maybe I should give her a divorce and get it over with.

But that would put her in a damned bad place with her asshole family. The conservative pricks would be all over her, the “I told you so’s” flying faster than the speed of spite.

He didn’t want to do that to her.

He also envied some of the people he knew from Venture and the munch group, like Tilly, Landry, and Cris. Or Cali, Sean, and Max. They had three-way poly relationships that worked for them, all three of them involved with each other.

That’s a unicorn I doubt I could find.

In his dreams—which he would be the absolute first person to admit were nothing approaching even remotely realistic—he’d find a bi guy who would also fall for Noel, Noel would fall right back for him, and the three of them could live kinkily ever after.

Maybe if this was a romance novel…

He sipped his overpriced drink, a weak rum and Coke—weak by his request—and continued scanning the courtyard. Well, he’d have a whole weekend here to see if this was really what he wanted. For all he knew, the experience might send him running back to the safety of Noel’s arms with whatever wild oats he’d sown safely purged from his system.

Although even he admitted that was also a highly unrealistic wish. He was definitely bi with a heavy leaning toward the gay side of the spectrum. He’d never wanted to admit to Noel that he usually fantasized about other guys when they made love. He thought it was a phase he’d grow out of. But the longer he was married to Noel, with her trying her hardest and damnedest, the more he realized it wasn’t fair to her.

It wasn’t her fault.

He also knew from his job that life was too short not to live authentically, or to keep Noel chained to him with a loving lie, either. He didn’t want to be in his late seventies and mourning the fact that he’d never pursued true happiness, that he’d settled and cheated Noel out of the best possible person for her, too.

He thought about texting her, to check on her, but he didn’t want to bug her or make things worse for her. He knew she was going out with Eliza and Kennedy tonight and hoped they, at least, would keep her mind off him and what he was doing.

Well, what he hoped to be doing but as of yet hadn’t found the balls to do.

At least her waking up alone wouldn’t be a problem. After ten years of him working in the 911 call center, Noel was used to his sometimes draconian shifts, including all-nighters when necessary. Although summer would be worse, if they were still in their current state of relationship limbo.

Then, she didn’t have to get up every morning and go to work at the school. She didn’t usually teach summer school, either, his salary enough to get them through those months without her needing to work part-time. In fact, she usually used summer for continuing education classes, working on requirements for her teaching certificate, things like that.