Two Sides of Terri
Read Two Sides of Terri Online
Authors: Ben Boswell
Two Sides of Terri
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Two Sides of Terri © 2013 by KW Publishing
Edited by Kenny Wright
Cover design by Kenny Wright
Cover image © Forgiss/BigStock.com
First digital edition electronically published by KW Publishing,
January 2014
First print edition published by KW Publishing, January 2014
Printed by CreateSpace, Charleston SC
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without explicit written permission of the copyright holder.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d asked Terri to dress up for an evening out. She’d dug out a slinky black dress, but here she was, sitting on the floor, legs curled beneath her, giggling happily as she played a rousing game of Shoots and Ladders with the kids. The dress looked like a costume, and a not very convincing one. The real her was the woman there on the floor, completely focused on the kids, wholesome to a fault.
I saw the way men looked at her. That hungry look. If they only knew the truth. Not that the truth was bad. I love Terri. She’s a wonderful friend, a great mother, and a caring homemaker. She’s the perfect wife. But she’s a good girl, albeit in a bad girl’s body. I’d lived with this disconnect for so long that I didn’t even think about it, not often at least.
“Honey, are you ready to go?”
She looked up at me.
“Bill, really, you didn’t need to make a fuss.”
“I wanted to. Come on, let’s go. I promise, it’ll be fun.”
She jumped up lightly and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, let’s do this thing.”
CHAPTER 1:
REVELATIONS
It was Terri’s 33rd birthday, and I’d decided to throw her a “third of a century” party. We started off with a nice romantic dinner for two. Well, romantic more in theory than practice since we spent most of it talking about the kids.
Braden had just started kindergarten, and Terri had volunteered to be “classroom mom,” so she was deeply involved in planning the “Turkey Feast.” At some point “Thanksgiving” had stopped being politically correct or something. Anyway, there were songs to be selected, costumes to plan, a feast to be prepared.
“Some of the parents are giving me such a hard time,” she lamented.
We also covered Halloween. “Annabelle wants to be a princess.”
Of course, I thought to myself.
“But so does her friend Sophie, and they don’t want to have the same gown, so we need to exchange ours. Do you think you could stop by the store some time this week?”
I nodded in the affirmative and drank another glass of wine.
Happily, I managed to shift Terri’s attention away from the kids by the end of dinner. We got in some good people watching, and the Tiramisu was so decadent that it seemed almost inappropriate to talk about the kids while eating it.
After dinner was the highpoint of the evening, I hoped. I’d planned a trip to a downtown nightclub. I’d invited a dozen of our friends, reserved a booth, bottle service, the works. We’d dropped off the kids with my folks, so we didn’t have a curfew. I was hoping it would be a blowout bash, the likes of which we hadn’t enjoyed since before we first became parents six years ago—or ever really, come to think of it.
We arrived, Terri giggled apprehensively as she eyed the place. “Oh, Bill, a dance club?”
I laughed. “Yeah, let’s boogie.” I gave her a preview of my white man’s overbite.
She laughed a little awkwardly.
I knew she felt out of her element, but figured she’d enjoy herself if I could get her to try. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” I encouraged.
But when we got inside, I wasn’t so sure. The place was dark and loud. Real loud. The thumping bass line was palpable and jarring. And the people. It was like walking into the middle of a roman orgy. Well, not quite, but the first two women we saw were tottering on four inch heels and had dresses that barely covered their bottoms. Out on the dance floor, some of the couples were grinding on each other in ways that almost made me want to shout,
Get a room
.
I leaned in close. “It’s okay, honey, people are just having fun.” I patted her on the shoulder.
She gave me a queer look. “I’m not a prude, you know.”
I kissed her forehead. “No, of course not,” I said with as much conviction as could muster.
She gave me a slightly incredulous look before the other party guests mobbed us. Terri shrieked when she saw all of our friends. It was a great way to turn the mood around.
We drank a bunch of toasts. Then Terri lured me out onto the dance floor. Backing away from me, beckoning me toward her, she hiked up her dress to mid thigh and gave me a sexy little shimmy with a generous shot of cleavage. For a skinny girl, she has big boobs. I laughed. It was so out of character, but great to see her embracing her sexy side, swaying sensuously, her long blond hair whipping back and forth in time with the music. We danced for a while and collapsed back into the booth for more drinks and chit-chat.
The basic theme, clichéd for a birthday party but almost required, was making fun of Terri’s advancing years. Terri, as usual, looked great, which made it easier to tease her. And she was also drawing a lot of attention, especially that night in a clingy party dress and spiky heels and, especially, since she was still apparently trying to convince me she wasn’t a prude by grinding against me on the dance floor.
One of the guests was Janet, an old college friend of Terri’s. We don’t see her very much anymore. She’s still single and resentful about it. She’s cute enough. A ginger with big boobs, a pretty face, but a little thick in the body. At the club, Janet was pounding cranberry and vodkas like it was going out of style, which, of course, it was. And the drunker she got, the pissier she got.
At one point, she was chatting with Terri when this hot guy sidled over to them. After the first couple of dances, I’d been giving Terri space, letting her enjoy hanging out with her friends. We did everything as a couple as a rule. But tonight I’d made a conscious effort to make the evening about Terri and not “us.”
So, I’d hung back, encouraged her to dance with her girlfriends, and enjoyed the attention they’d attracted out on the dance floor. Part of that was observing the various men watching from the sidelines. It was always a little bit of a thrill seeing a man checking out my wife. This guy was blond with curly hair and broad shoulders. I’d seen him observing our table all evening.
Janet had been eye-fucking him for a while, and when he approached, she turned toward him, thrusting out her boobs, her fingers twirling a strand of red hair. But the guy greeted both girls, then immediately positioned himself facing Terri, giving her his full attention. The combination of her looks and her sexy moves out on the dance floor had apparently captured his attention. Janet’s face flushed hotly. She sneered sideways at Terri. Her mood didn’t improve when Terri politely declined his attention and he walked away instead of chatting up Janet.
Later when the DJ went on a break, we all gathered in the booth to talk and reload our drinks. Janet was still fuming, though; sitting silently even when folks started sharing old stories about Terri. But everyone was laughing and having a good time and I stopped paying attention to Janet and her moods.
Don told the one about the Thanksgiving eve that Terri had spent driving around in the snow handing out charity turkeys. The highpoint being when an elderly African-American woman alternated between thanking her and calling her a “crazy white lady” for being out in the storm.
Ellen was more risqué and told a story about Terri getting out of a speeding ticket by flirting with the cop and flashing boob. Terri vigorously denied the allegation, claiming she hadn’t realized she was showing that much cleavage. “I was breast-feeding. How’d I know they were hanging out?” She blushed bright red.
We all laughed. Those stories were pure Terri. Sweet, generous, and more than a little naive.
After a while, there was a lull in the conversation, and Janet suddenly leaned forward forcefully, almost demanding we pay attention to her. She turned to Terri and forced a sugary smile.
“Hey Ter? I just realized. Wasn’t this the place where you and Chucky got thrown out for doing it in the bathroom?”
There were a few nervous chuckles. Terri never broke her poker face. “Is it? I thought this was the place where you got bombed on Jello shooters and puked down the front of your dress?”
Janet flushed a deep red. “No, that was....” She stopped when she saw Terri break into a malicious grin. “Never mind.”
Janet’s sourpuss became downright toxic, but happily she left a few minutes later when the DJ started back up. And after a few more awkward moments, the booze and the music got the rest of us back in a party mood.
It was a great time. I’d stupidly driven and was designated driver, so I was taking it slow, but everyone else was partying in a way that would leave them all hurting come morning.
My relative sobriety came at a price, however. Instead of completely losing myself in the party, I kept replaying Janet’s remark in my head. It was a malicious bit of snark, but I couldn’t help but notice that Terri hadn’t denied it. She’d just deflected.
Terri and I met when she was 24, so I knew she wasn’t a virgin. And I think I might have even heard of an old boyfriend named Chucky at some point over the years. But with me, Terri had always been, for lack of a better word, a real lady. It took me forever to get her into the sack, and our sex life, though frequent and often passionate, was generally pretty vanilla. Over the years, I could count on one hand the number of times we’d had sex other than in bed, and even then, the strangest place we’d ever done it was the shower. So the idea of my Terri, my wife, the mother of my children, getting thrown out of nightclub for having sex in the john threw me for a loop.
I didn’t say anything, of course. At least not while we were still in the club. But back in the car, on our way home, with Terri curled up in the passenger seat nursing a happy buzz, I couldn’t resist.
“So baby, what was that about? That thing Janet said about you getting thrown out of the club?”
“That was years ago. You don’t want to know.”
“Sure I do,” I insisted. “Sounds like something I should know.”
“
Should
know?” she replied, a tone of annoyance in her voice.
“Want to know? Is that better?”
She sighed. “Really?”
“Come on, Terri, spill it. I can take it. I’ve had some crazy times in my past.”
She gave me a quick eye roll and then responded. “Oh, you know the old saying,
it wasn’t as bad as it sounds
?” She paused for a second. “Well, in this case it was much, much worse.”
I coughed in surprise.
“You okay, sweetie?” she asked, her tone playful.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I was a bad girl that night.” She replied in a sultry voice, low, raspy, full of suggestion. “See, that wasn’t just some night out. That was the night Chucky and I met...and, well, before we got kicked out, we’d been warned.”