Dear Wife(22)

The fury fills me like a furnace, bathing my body in a thin layer of sweat. Somewhere inside this stupid, pretentious house, my wife’s body is wrapped around her lover’s, and if one of them doesn’t open this door right fucking now, I’m going to bust it down with my bare hands. I cup my hands around my face and lean into the glass, searching for movement, but all I see is an empty foyer. I haul back a fist and bang some more. On either side of me, two gas-fueled porch lights flicker in the fading light.

Two feet appear at the top of the stairs—male feet, sticking out from under blue scrubs. The man comes down trailed by a tiny white dog that is losing its shit. Each frantic bark pops all four of his paws off the ground, a fluffy jumping bean bouncing down the stairs.

But it’s Trevor, all right. A shirtless Trevor. I recognize him from his headshot—full head of hair, strong shoulders that taper down into the abs of a movie star, not an ounce of fat or love handles on him. Not that I would normally notice such a thing, but Sabine would. She’d notice, and then she’d want to trace all those sculpted muscles with her fingertips, and maybe her tongue.

“It’s you,” he says, studying me through the door’s paned windows. All those years of hospital training, of on-call shifts and middle-of-the-night births are working now like a Xanax, making him look almost bored at the prospect of his lover’s husband banging on his front door.

I beat on the wood hard enough to crack it. “Where’s Sabine? Tell that little bitch to stop hiding and get her ass down here!”

On the other side of the glass, the dog is going ballistic. Trevor scoops it up and cradles it to his chest like a football. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear his words over the barking and the doorbell, which I’m mashing over and over and over again with a thumb.

He opens the door with a whoosh of cool air and moneyed manliness. “I’m sorry, Jeffrey, but Sabine’s not here.”

Jeffrey. I’ve known about this motherfucker’s existence for less than half an hour, and now he’s calling me by my first name. Did Sabine show him my picture? Did they laugh about poor, clueless Jeffrey and talk about the best way to make me look like a fool?

I shove him out of the way, marching to the stairs and hollering up them. “Sabine! You can come out now. I saw the emails. I know.”

“Jeffrey.” A hand lands on my shoulder. “Calm down. She’s not here.”

I shrug him off, swinging my arm through the air. “You touch me again, Trevor, and I will shove my fist down your throat hard enough to come out the other side. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

The dog kicks things up a notch or ten, barking so hard he’s starting to foam at the mouth. Jeffrey holds a chill-out hand in my direction, then wraps his fingers around the dog’s snoot like a muzzle. Finally, thankfully, the beast stops barking.

“Where is she?” I’m not looking at him, but beyond him into the foyer. A family’s foyer. Kids’ shoes, a soccer ball, forgotten jackets and book bags. I wonder if Sabine has met them yet, if they hate her for blowing their happy home to bits.

Trevor shuts the door. “I already told you. She’s not here.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn’t. But I’m telling you the God’s honest truth that she’s not upstairs. I’d let you look, but my kids are up there.” He winces. “Jesus, I’m going to have to explain this to them, aren’t I? They’re only six and four. They’re never going to understand.”

If that was an attempt to make me feel sorry for him, it gets him nowhere. I don’t give a shit about his kids, or the fissure in his family. I only care about mine.

“You fucked my wife.”

A normal person would deny it, especially one who’s just been threatened with a fist down his throat, but not Trevor. His shoulders slump and he sighs, and his body language just lays it all out there. Yes. Yes, now that you mention it, I did fuck your wife. He even has the balls to look apologetic.

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t want you to find out like this. Sabine was going to tell you to your face this weekend. Ask her—she’ll tell you we had it all planned out. She was going to tell you the right way.”

“The right way. What in the fucking hell could possibly be the right way?”

Now that the dog’s calm, he settles the thing on the floor. “By telling you that we’re in love. That we want to be together. I know that hurts to hear, and believe me, we’ve struggled with it ourselves, but—”

I throw back my head and shout hard enough to burn the back of my throat, “She’s married, you asshole!” The words bounce around the house, then fall into a silence so absolute it rings in my ears.

“I understand that, Jeffrey, and I’m sorry. Truly. You can’t even imagine how sorry. But swear to God, Sabine and I didn’t set out intending to break up two families. It just happened, and this isn’t just some fling. This is the realest, most genuine thing I’ve ever felt. Sabine is my soul mate. I love her. I adore her. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

His speech might have worked on another man. His words might have been a balm on a brittle, broken heart. Sabine will be loved, cared for, cherished. He’s not stealing her out of greed or spite, but because he has no choice, because their connection is too great to ignore. Only an asshole stands in the way of soul mates.