For the trope: coming out (of the closet). Title and opening quote from Aimee Mann's Wise Up. Super thanks to awesome beta FF, all mistakes mine. not mine, no profit garnered.
It's not going to stop until you wise up
Amy knocked on Jonah's door, and he answered quickly. "Hey," Jonah said. "You, you're right at my door."
"I am," she said, and smiled. "I wanted to thank you, you know, for today. Driving the truck, driving the truck away when we escaped through the window." She pushed past him into the apartment. It wasn't a great apartment. She looked at the wall above the couch. "You hung up that picture my dad gave you?"
"Sold me," Jonah said. He closed the door behind her. "It ended up costing me $50."
She looked around again. "I didn't, I didn't break any rules to get your address."
"No, you had it. I invited you, never mind."
"You did? Oh, you did, you invited me to your housewarming, I'm so sorry," Amy said. She glanced at the movie posters, she recognized none of the titles. There was also an album cover, again, she had no idea who they were. "I'm really sorry. I didn't RSVP."
"No, it's okay. I invited a few people from work. Not a lot of people from work, but some people. Garrett came, that was cool. Right up until we all realized his wheelchair wouldn't go through the bathroom door," Jonah said.
"Is that why you now just have a shower curtain?"
"Yup," Jonah said. "Bathroom door is in my bedroom, I think, maybe like an art installation."
"But couldn't you put it back on now that Garrett's not here?" She pulled the curtain aside. The bathroom was pretty neat.
"It's a protest," Jonah said. "When I move out, they're gonna know why I took off that door. Garrett doesn't even have a full scooter, if he did, he couldn't even have gotten in. That's wrong."
"Are you planning to move out?" She tried not to sound scared at the prospect. She was super casual. She just came by, she'd be leaving soon.
"No," Jonah said. "Pretty far off in the future. I owe a lot, it's hard to save, you know."
"I know, I actually know. How do you know? Did you actually have student loans?"
"No," Jonah said. "My dad paid for my undergrad and some stuff I did in between and then my business school tuition. But I dropped out, flunked out, so now I owe him and he takes his payment every month." Jonah shrugged and smiled reflexively. He sat down in a Cloud 9 chair that had been on deep discount two months ago.
"He just, you write him a check or -"
"He takes it right out of my bank account," Jonah said. "I owe him more than just tuition, it's, there were other things. A little gambling that went wrong. I don't do that anymore, except for the once with the seasonal hires, but otherwise I steer very clear. Still, it's a bunch of bills."
"He has access to your bank account? I don't, okay, is this some weird rich family thing? I can't tell if it's cruel or not," Amy said. She sat down on the couch which seemed more craigslist free stuff in provenance.
"It's not cruel," Jonah said. "It's not nice, but it's pretty typical when your kids are disappointing. Or have gambling problems. There's a bunch of trusts but I can't touch them, until everything's paid off. At my salary that'll be four or five years. Assuming I don't screw up again."
He seemed tense and also like he was trying to appear very relaxed, very okay with all of it. She said, "So in four or five years, you'll be back to being rich."
"I don't really think of it that way," Jonah said.
"How much of your salary does he take?"
"About a third," Jonah said. She knew how much he made, she could guess at the rent of this place and the payment on his car which was used, but only 2 years old, car insurance, health insurance unless Jonah skipped that, gas, Netflix and his big TV.
"Did you steal that TV from Cloud 9?"
"No, no, not at all," Jonah said. "A little. I might have bought it on my first day," Jonah said. He smiled a little, slightly relaxed.
"You paid a quarter for that TV," Amy said. "Good for you." She kept calculating in her head and she said, "Your dad makes your car payments."
"He bought me the car. It was my, he was trying to say he was impressed I'd been at Cloud 9 for a year. He doesn't think much of Cloud 9, and he doesn't think I have much of a job, I think he tells his friends who aren't on Facebook I'm in Tibet, meditating. But I stayed a year, yay!" Jonah pushed back his hair. "Did you want talk more about my weird family shit?"
"Sure," Amy said. "You spent half the day at my parents. Anything else they don't like about you?"
"Um. I'm not married. They haven't liked some of the people I've dated," Jonah said, looking intently at his throw rug.
Amy was suddenly overwhelmed and annoyed. "You aren't really straight, are you? Damn it."
"That's a very compassionate reaction to something I haven't told anyone else at work," Jonah said.
"No, oh my god, no, I'm not judging. I was, Garrett and I once debated for an hour whether you were straight or not straight or if it was just that weird white hipster vibe. I don't, it's not a negative, I'm not judging. You're bi, great, or however you identify. Adam wanted to hook you up with my brother, the gay one," Amy said. "Seriously." She got up from the couch and stood right in front of him. "No judging. Just a little bummed I can't ever tell Garrett I was right."
Jonah looked fractionally more relaxed. "I know the term's getting a little controversial in some circles, but I would actually say I'm queer. Only to you, or in my head, or to my brother when he's being a dick. At work, I pretty much just stick with everyone thinking I'm straight. You know Mateo is really competitive and I don't want to know how he'd react if he thought we might possibly date the same guys."
"Okay, good," Amy said. "Thank you for trusting me. Sorry for initially being kind of a jerk. But I love winning arguments with Garrett."
"Who doesn't?"
He was pretty in his sweats and t-shirt. He was pretty, generally. Even his complete awkward vibe of the last ten minutes, he made her feel comfortable. She leaned down and kissed him and after a second he was kissing her back, reaching for her hips, pulling her closer. Then he stopped. "Hey, no."
"Right," Amy said. "Married. I am. You aren't, aren't you?"
"No," Jonah said. "But I don't want to get in the way. Or do something wrong."
"I don't care," Amy said. She felt it as she said it. As soon as she said it out loud, she knew why she was here and she okay with that. "I had a great day. I didn't see Adam all day and I had a great day. And we were in counseling and I realized how long it's been since we had sex. Before the photo booth. And obviously not at all since. I know, Jonah, I get it, I shouldn't use you to get laid, but I actually want to have sex with you."
"Okay," Jonah said. "This is probably a bad idea. Definitely wrong."
"I know," Amy said. "But anyway." She took off her shirt, and stepped out of her shoes. Then her jeans were on the floor and she wondered if Jonah was about to run into the bathroom and hide behind the shower curtain.
Jonah looked at her like she was beautiful. It had been a long time since someone looked at her like that, that she wanted to look at her like that. He said, "Okay."
He pulled her down onto his lap in the chair. She'd always thought these chairs were scratchy which is why they ended up on sale so quickly. But Amy was touching Jonah and his jaw as he kissed her, and she kissed him back. She was sitting awkwardly but pleasantly, more than pleasant, Jonah held her butt, squeezed it, worked his hands under the cotton and fraying elastic to hold her bare skin. Her hands tightened on his jaw and she angled a little to grind down on his dick. He made a noise against her mouth and was even more turned on.
She'd never cheated on Adam, not once, not matter the temptation and there had been an assistant manager a few years ago, pre-Dina, who would have cheated with her in a heartbeat. If she'd done it then, ended everything. She'd loved Adam more then. She stopped kissing him. "Wait, are you a millionaire?"
"No," Jonah said. "I can say yes if you need that to keep this up. Wow, I always thought I was good person, I would never. Turns out I would."
"Because of me," she said. "It's flattering. Your parents are millionaires."
"The total family account at our brokerage slash wire house is 8 digits," Jonah said. "Is that a turn on? We're killing the momentum. For me."
"Later," Amy said. She stood up and pulled him with her so she was on her back on the couch, he was on top of her. She got his clothes off, even the socks, and he was more naked than she was. She liked his body and his dick and that he didn't have any visible scars from drug use he'd skipped over telling her. He was fit, not just naturally skinny, she felt muscle in his butt and the back of his thighs.
He said, "We're doing this? Sex? I want to make sure you really want to. I need to get up and get a condom if we are, if you want to."
"Get a condom," she said. She felt a little high, high and free and no longer exhausted and weighed down. Her parents would make it work themselves, Adam would come home and still not have a job and Amy would get to be happy.
He came back with the condom and put it on, he was not small which was nice. For his height and lack of weight. He was very invested in making her come and making her smile, the kind of serious effort that was very Jonah but also, she thought, his way of expressing his feelings. And she was so happy, she wasn't doing enough. She was too passive. She said, "I can try harder."
"No, no, I'm good, please," he said, his voice rising. She had wet her hands and she was holding his balls, he seemed to like it. He spread her legs and looked a little reverent, even though she had a tiny pooch from Emma, still, and stretchmarks. When he was inside her she had a moment of romance novel sex, it was all connection and the feeling of bright lights lifting her up. It was also smelled of sweat and sex, Jonah's hair products losing hold, the apartment, she could smell the shower curtain and that couldn't be real.
She came and he came. For a spectacular moment they were a heap on the couch, their bodies slick and coming down from some pretty great sex. Jonah said, "Let me get rid of this," and she realized he meant the condom.
She got up, stumbling and pushing on the couch to get standing. Then she went into the bathroom to clean herself up. Jonah had turned on the shower which had its own shower curtain, thankfully. She went to the bathroom and then got in with him. "I never thought showering together was sexy."
"I just wanted to see if the Scarlet A had already showed up," Jonah said, grinning at her.
"I think that's just for the women."
"Yeah, it wasn't an egalitarian society, everything was the women's fault," Jonah said. "I was kidding, though, I just like to be clean after being dirty."
He got out and she washed her hair. There was a new white towel waiting on the toilet lid for her. She wrapped it around her and came out. She found the bedroom where Jonah was lying on the bed, starting at the ceiling. He was naked and she liked the view. She really did. It had been years since she appreciated seeing Adam like this. Which was a horrible comparison. She wasn't choosing Jonah over Adam, she was choosing Jonah. She told herself that. She got on the bed next to him. "Can we get back to your parents' ten of millions of dollars?"
"It's not liquid, don't try to kidnap me and demand that much."
He grabbed a picture that was unframed, just on the bookshelf next to the bed. Jonah was in the middle of the three other boys, one woman who was clearly someone's wife. "Undergrad graduation," Jonah said.
Amy nodded. Jonah pointed to the boys. "Benjamin, Joseph, Phil and me. Ben's wife, Ruth"
"And you have the only real job out of all them," Amy said.
"No, no," Jonah said. "Ben is an architect, that's a real job. He hates How I Met Your Mother."
"Everyone hates How I Met Your Mother," Amy said.
Jonah tapped his finger on the smug looking Ben. Garrett would not believe someone in the Simms family looked more inherently patronizing than Jonah. He said, "He hated it before the finale. He thinks the architecture stuff is all wrong. Joseph is a dermatologist. Exactly the kind of suburban Chicago ritzy dermatologist you would expect. Phil works for the CBO in DC and then there's me." Jonah voice went down.
"What's the CBO?
"Congressional Budget Office, they calculate the results of proposed congressional bills, they're in the news all the time. I sent you an article about their analysis of the healthcare bill -"
Amy said, "Oh, God, okay, you can send me one a month about the CBO and I will read it, but they have to be a big part of the article, understand? No 'and also the CVO exists."
"CBO and I will hold you to that," he said.
"So you can't currently touch your money, but what if you died? You know, Marcus comes at you with the forklift, or something."
Jonah frowned. "Most of the money gets absorbed back to my brothers and parents. A little would be mine and they'd follow my will. Don't tell, because I worry what Bo would do, but I left a little to Harmonica. She's, you know, she should have the chance to go to college. Other than that, it's all charities. Admittedly, ones my dad hates. Transgender Legal Center, which I'm not but I dated a guy who was trans."
"Aww, Harmonica," Amy said. "So, 5 figures, 6 figures?"
"I'm not telling you," Jonah said. "You love Harmonica, too, and I've seen you on a forklift. Are you going to tell everyone I'm rich? It's not true."
"It was up until you flunked out business school," Amy said.
"Oh, before that," Jonah said. "Is that why you did this? I'm not in the 1%, no one in my family is. We're like maybe the 4%. I assume we're not going to do it again. This again."
"You assume wrong," Amy said. "Um, we're going to do it again."
"Okay," Jonah said. Amy undid her towel and spread it across both of them.
Amy had turned into Bo, she spent all her time thinking about sex. Specifically sex with Jonah, so maybe she wasn't just like Bo, unless Bo had some depths Amy didn't know. She made breakfast for Emma, she bickered with Adam, she went to the store and tried to be a good shift supervisor. She even flirted with Jonah, just the way she normally did. She was pulling it off because Cheyenne would have said something if she wasn't being normal-ish.
Jonah was acting a little weird. But people expected that from him.
She drove to Jonah's around 8 am. She knocked on the door and Jonah answered, blinking a lot. He said, "Hey. Did we talk about, was I expecting you?"
"I can't think why," she said, and pushed past to him inside.
He said, "Hey, hey, you're coming in."
"Oh, god, do you have someone here? I'm sorry, I just, just pushed myself in," Amy said. She was a slut.
"No, no one's here. I wouldn't do that. It's just a mess, I worked late."
Amy looked around his apartment. His pants were on the floor and she could see a towel on the floor peeking out from under the curtain door.
"This is a disaster," Amy said. "Were you raised by wolves?"
"Ha ha," Jonah said. "So you're here."
"I dropped off Emma at school and we both start work at 11 so I thought, hey."
"Is this part of where you promised we would do this again? Do that again? I'm okay with that, I definitely want that," Jonah said. "It's been kind of hard working with you anticipating having sex again. That sounded horrible."
"No, it sounded good," Amy said. "This is all sort of awkward, except I want to do it. With you. Now." She started to take off her shirt, but then Jonah was in front of her, helping her get it off. She felt warmer.
They had sex right on the faded throw rug. Amy was on top. "Those colors might run, no one cares if you have three colors smeared on your butt."
"I care a little," Jonah said, but his fingers were soft and then flexed into her thighs as she lowered herself on to him. She let herself be loud and she was louder than Jonah. Jonah came first, biting at his lip as he worked to get her off. Then he left there as he got rid of the condom. She followed him into the bathroom again.
"I got a UTI once," Amy said. "So now I always make sure to pee after. Sorry."
"Don't apologize for maintaining your sexual health."
He sounded so much like Jonah even as he was there naked, washing his hands. Amy said, "I kinda feel like this is the best sex I've ever had."
"I'm, wow, thank you," Jonah said.
"Adam and I did it a lot when we were first got together and honestly, that first year was incredible, like eyes rolling back in your head incredible, and then again when Emma was about three, things really didn't get so, so whatever they are now, until a few years ago. I always used to tell myself he definitely wasn't having an affair, because that's one of the signs, your spouse suddenly wants to have sex with you all the time," Amy said.
"And they go to their coworker's apartment after they drop off their kid," Jonah said. "I keep waiting to feel really bad about that. I think the bonds of marriage are sacred. But when it comes to yours, I don't care."
"Obviously me neither," Amy said. "But we can stop if you want to stop. I don't think I'm going to want to stop."
"Ball's in my court," Jonah said. "I'm good."
Amy ran a quick shower and tried to avoid any of Jonah's more scented products. His body wash apparently smelled of bergamot and pear. She got out of the shower and found Jonah still in the bathroom. He said, "You are going to get a divorce at some point, right:?"
"Were you waiting for me to get out, to psych yourself up?" She rubbed at her hair with the towel.
"Basically," Jonah said. "I haven't even thought about what I'll do if you say no."
"I am going to get a divorce," Amy said. "I am going to ask for a divorce and separate from him. It might not be this month."
"Oh, cool, no, that's fine, no rush," Jonah said.
It was horrible and definitely wrong, but Amy's life as a cheating wife was sort of great. She was really easygoing with Adam, because it didn't matter that much to her. Her irritations fell away. She cleaned up after him and pretended to be enthusiastic about his job applications because it wasn't going to be her job for very much longer. She was already viewing Emma as 90% her responsibility. And every other day, for an hour or two, there was Jonah outside work. His not so bad couch and really nice bed and the nice game set up and general Jonah things.
She knew better than to ever tell anyone, secrets didn't stay secrets at Cloud 9. So she drove to work and debated with herself. Was it a real relationship with Jonah, was he just someone she was creating in her mind or projecting onto, someone to be better than Adam? Where did she think all of this was going?
And exactly how rich was Jonah?
Glenn complimented her on general good cheer. "I'm glad things are going better with Adam," he said, with a awkward pat on her shoulder which was endearing because Glenn didn't touch employees unless he was so moved he just had to break the rules.
"Oh, they're not," Amy said. "We stopped counseling. I think this is the point where we're detaching from each other. And I try to be careful with Emma, I don't want her to get her hopes up but I guess kids always do."
"So you're just getting ready to get divorced?" Glenn looked frightad - a word Marcus claimed to have made up that meant frightened and sad. Amy hated herself for thinking the word and letting Marcus that far into her head more than she hated herself for her affair.
"It's like, now I've only read about this, but when couples are sure they're getting engaged, they're just waiting for someone to say it," Amy said.
"It's the exact opposite! Engagements are wonderful like marriages are wonderful," Glenn said.
"I went straight from pregnant to married, so I have no idea about engagements," Amy said. She walked away from Glenn to help a customer. Amy thought while she helped the customer find the specific nail polish remover she wanted. She thought maybe she'd never had a happy marriage. They'd had happy times. But she was pretty sure Jerusha and Glenn were doing marriage better than Amy ever had.
She'd been sleeping with Jonah for a month. She'd been cheating for a month, she did more than have sex with Jonah even though the sex was consistently awesome. They hung out and talked. They played video games. They watched the new One Day At A Time and she stopped Jonah from saying what a great COObahno family they were. One night they watched a few episodes of Party of Five and Jonah called it embarrassing how enthusiastic she was in bed after. "I know you're picturing Scott Wolf."
"We can watch Who's the Boss, god," Amy said.
"Okay, that's not fair, I bear a slight resemblance to Scott Wolf - white guys with thick brown hair, neither of us are tall. You don't look like Alyssa Milano," Jonah said.
"I bet you she's played a Latina anyway," Amy said.
Adam tried to come upstairs and sleep with her one night. She said. "I'm sorry, no."
"You've been in such a good mood lately, I assumed that meant. Maybe we've gotten over the hump," Adam said.
"No, we haven't, we failed to make it even halfway up the hump. I'm sorry, Adam," she said. She pulled the blanket up. There were tiny marks on the inside of her thigh, close to her vagina, ("Actually, you mean the vulva, the vagina -" she told the Jonah in her head to shut up) when Jonah had gone down her and asked her if she wanted to try something. The little nips of his teeth had been so hot.
Mostly, she didn't want to have sex with Adam again.
She waited for him to press, to ask her how this would end, why didn't they just divorce? But he sighed and went back downstairs.
She decided she would wait until after Emma's school year was over. It was only a few months away.
She was eating some weird Parmesan and rosemary microwave popcorn Jonah had made while they watched an actual Scandinavian crime drama. It was a lot of reading subtitles. She said, "Do you have any ex-boyfriends?"
"Uh," Jonah said. "Like, three. One of them periodically gets drunk and sends me and a bunch of other guys who he dated dick pics. I got one two weeks ago."
"Which you're telling me so you can show me," Amy said.
"I deleted it," Jonah said. "He has a tattoo on his foreskin, though, which I can't even imagine. Wow."
Amy said, "You don't have to imagine, you had up close and personal contact with it, and you could show it to me if you hadn't deleted it."
"He got the tattoo after we broke up," Jonah said.
"But no contact with your other exes? I know you keep in contact with your ex-girlfriends," Amy said. She snarled at Naomi in her head, especially that idiotic voicemail Naomi had left about this movie she was thinking about seeing.
"There's girlfriends and boyfriends and then there's people you spend some time with, sleep with once in college or while you were building houses -"
"Stop," Amy said. "Is the difference between the two the time spent or something else?"
"Both," Jonah said. "My first boyfriend, I only dated for three weeks, but you know, the first and it felt very revelatory, very important. My first girlfriend, it was the same though we dated for 5 weeks."
"What is your longest relationship?" Amy would be embarrassed to list hers since it was obviously Adam. She should left so much earlier. Maybe she should have.
"Ha, you think they were all short. 20 months, okay? My dad loved her," Jonah said.
"Unlike how he would view me," Amy said.
"Yup," Jonah said. "You're not Jewish, you have a kid, who is wonderful, at some point you'll be divorced, you're not, uh, white, and he'd assume you were in it for the money. He'd be wrong about all of that, of course."
"All of those things are true," Amy said. "Even the money, I'm playing the long game."
"I meant," Jonah said, smiling, "he would view all those things as negatives, reflections of the kind of person you are."
"So he wouldn't mind the whole thing lack of college degree and working at Cloud 9, ugh, for nearly 10 years. Or 12 years."
"You're already halfway to your college degree. And he's weird about people working at Cloud 9," Jonah said. "Specifically me, but that would probably spill over to you."
Amy said, "I don't get how Jews are racist. It's not like you're striving for a white Aryan ideal."
"There's actually this great books about the construction of whiteness I can lend you," Jonah said. "But yes, there are some of my people who don't think of their whiteness as conditional and basically just act like any other white supremacist and get nervous about those other people over there. You should hear Joseph on this stuff. I had to block him on Facebook, he kept posting horrible memes about Obama."
"A bold stand," Amy said, mostly kidding.
"I know," Jonah said. "The books are really interesting, though."
"Me reading those things anywhere in public is the most obvious way I can think to say we're having an affair, maybe more than actually having sex on my front lawn," Amy said.
"Right," Jonah said. "I don't view you that way, I can't say I'm not racist because there's so much unconscious bias, but I try."
He fell asleep on the couch, but Amy had to drive home and be there by 2 am. That was the latest she could claim for work or drinks after. She didn't have to leave for another hour.
Since she no longer had any morals, she snooped. She was naturally someone who snooped, she liked to know things, specifically about people she was having sex with. She went to Jonah's bedroom and took out the box at the bottom of the closet, carefully placing the shoes on top of it to the side. His shoes were always expensive, she noted. Not a surprise, she thought, they had already settled that Jonah was rich. The box had yellow folders with papers inside. He filed his statements. She skipped over his lease, car papers, birth certificate (his father's name was Bernard, his mother's was Hepzibah which was just unfortunate), and went to the bank statements. His bank was no Cloud 9 Credit Union, but a big financial firm Amy had only heard of in commercials. He got a statement that included 4 different accounts. She assumed the one he could access was the one that showed steady, sad Cloud 9 direct deposits. The other three had a lot more money. A lot more. Saying he wasn't a millionaire was splitting hairs, really. She wondered if it was frustrating seeing those big numbers and only having access to a tiny portion of it.
He probably didn't care.
She put it all back and then woke up Jonah to kiss him goodbye.
There were the usual store hijinks she tried to manage and couldn't, and Jonah would help or at least make fun of her for trying. One day, Cheyenne said, "Amy, should I invite your husband to the wedding?"
"Your wedding?" Amy indulged in a brief fantasy of attending with Jonah, which even if she asked for the divorce today wouldn't be possible. She said, "I don't think so, Cheyenne. He's really happy for you and Bo, but the two of us aren't really a joint invite these days."
"Oh, thank goodness, Bo said he didn't want the super bad vibes of having a divorced couple in our pictures," Cheyenne said. "Also, don't bring a date."
"I wouldn't," Amy said. "Who would I even take?"
"Jonah?" Cheyenne kept talking. "If you brought a date then we'd have a couple who weren't even married and broke up as soon as you were done rebounding before you found a nicer guy. Mateo says you're too old to find anyone, but he's totally wrong. Look at Dina! She has Garrett."
"That sounds great," Amy said, frowning. She wasn't looking where she was going and ran right into Jonah who jumped back like she had the plague. She understood, she even appreciated he did it, but after she'd spent a week furtively looking up anal stuff for a guy, it was still irritating. "You're not my date for Cheyenne's wedding," she said, too loud.
"Why would I be?" Jonah looked unhappy, maybe even upset.
She stepped close to him to straighten her clipboard and whispered, "Maybe for the anniversary party, okay?"
He shook his head and moved off to work.
Later that night things were beyond slow so Amy, Garrett and Mateo were hanging around Garrett's announcement table. Mateo said something about Jonah being so cheap so Amy said, "Come on, Mateo, you know Jonah's Jewish. Lay off."
"Also, he constantly offers to pay," Garrett said.
"Not to me," Mateo said. "And I had no idea he's Jewish, of all the things Jonah talks about which is everything, I don't think he's mentioned it."
"He's mentioned it," Amy said. "And he does offer to pay every time we go out."
"Not for me," Mateo said.
"I can't imagine why," Garrett said. "How can he afford to pay all the time? Did Glenn give him a secret raise?"
Mateo said, "Duh, he's rich."
"No rich person would work here," Garrett said.
Mateo looked at Garret with bored contempt. "Look at his shoes. Not cheap. Did you see how nice that camera was he had for Black Friday? He just bought it, also not cheap. We know he graduated from college and he went to Business school at 28, that leaves 5, 6 years in between and, again, of all the things Jonah talks about it which is absolutely everything, he never talks about a job. He talks about volunteering and going to Italy. He's clearly rich. They probably cut him off because he's so annoying but they still toss some money his way."
Amy made a face trying to think how to respond that but she looked over and Jonah was standing right there. He said, almost but not quite casually, "It wasn't because I was annoying. But yes, my family has money, and yes, I no longer have access to it."
"They don't hate you," Garrett said. "So if you were kidnapped, as a hypothetical -"
"And they were sent your ear," Mateo said, way too eagerly.
Jonah covered his ear. "No, I think they'd be suspicious I needed the money and was going it all myself. Please don't abduct me or cut off my ear."
"So no one tell Bo," Amy said. "Come on, guys."
"Why do your parents hate you? Is it the gambling thing?"
"They don't hate me and yes, it's the gambling thing," Jonah said. "I'm not personally rich at all."
Mateo said, "How rich are your parents?"
"Mateo, you're being creepy. You can't ask questions like that after mentioning cutting off someone's ear," Amy said.
Mateo huffed and headed out to housewares. Garrett said, "It's really unlikely Mateo would do something like that. He might, though. Maybe make up a story about your parents going bankrupt."
She could tell Jonah was bothered by it. It wasn't because she knew Jonah so well, he really didn't have much of a poker face. She'd driven him to work so she was driving him home. They were acting just like they used to, had been and Amy gave Jonah rides sometimes.
She drove towards a park and pulled over. Jonah said, "Did Mateo talk to you? Am I about to lose an ear?"
"You seem down, I thought we could make out in the backseat."
"Oh, awesome," Jonah said. "I'm not that down."
"So I'll just drop you off at home."
"No, I'm sad, downtrodden," Jonah said, getting into the backseat.
Amy followed him and pulled out a paper bag and then the smaller plastic bag inside it. It was lube and gloves and condoms. Jonah said, "You just have that in the car? The one you drive Emma in?"
"The outside bag is from a medical supplies store, I told her I'd picked up something gross for my dad." Between the two of them they got Jonah's pants down around his ankles. She was sitting on her knees in the well of the seat, getting lube on her gloved hand.
Jonah said, "What specifically are you doing?"
"I read up on this," Amy said. She used her lubed up gloved fingers to play with his butt. She started licking behind his balls and then up to them. Jonah was breathing heavily in a very good way.
He was good and hard so she put the condom on him. He said, "Are we, uhhhh."
"You're so articulate," Amy said. She had worked a finger inside him and he was straight up moaning. When she got to two fingers, she said, "Okay." She moved her fingers the way she'd seen demonstrated in two of the blogs, and Jonah arched off the seat. He moved down, grinding on her fingers.
Amy smiled, and jerked him off with her free hand. He came loudly and then practically slid off the seat. She gave him some napkins. "Don't get anything on the car, sorry," she said. "Sorry, but you know, Emma."
"Got it, got it," Jonah said. He ducked around and kissed her, groped her breast. "I think I owe you."
"We're not doing this tit for tat," Amy said.
They threw everything away at a gas station and Jonah scrubbed a little at the backseat when Amy got gas.
A week later it had been 10 weeks of being a cheating slut. She managed to arrange a night away from Adam and Emma and spent it on Jonah's bed. She genuinely loved him.
He said, "When exactly are you asking for a divorce? I can wait, I swear, I know you'll do it, I just, I can't wait forever."
"Do you have a timeline for me?" She sat up and started looking for her clothes.
"Don't be mad," Jonah said, "Don't be mad. I just, I can't wait until Emma goes off to college, you know?"
"Five or six years is too long, I get it," Amy said.
"Five years, yeah. You know how I feel. I'm not going to leave you, I don't want to leave you. But I don't want to hold you back," Jonah said. "You're not happy with Adam and you and Emma and Adam will all be happier when you're able to be free."
"Free as a bird," Amy said. "Flying over the mountains."
"I mean, being married at this point seems to make both of you miserable. You'll be happier apart. Emma, eventually, will be happier when her parents aren't fighting constantly. If sleeping with me is delaying that decision for you, then I can stop," Jonah said.
"Me delaying this has nothing to do with you. We've been married since before we could drink. We had a lot of happy years. It's not easy to say, okay, we failed," Amy said.
"Did you fail? You made a family, you raised a great kid. There's a really good Dear Sugar column about this, I can get you that book," Jonah said.
Amy didn't roll her eyes. She said, "Okay, okay. I'll tell him soon."
"Okay, no pressure," Jonah said. "Sorry, I just pressured you."
Amy said, "I know."
She still waited a week. It was hard to say this is over, it was actually easier to just sneak around and be happy with Jonah, push off the actual work. So much work, she thought.
It was morning, and Emma had left for school. Amy sat down across from Adam and said, "We should get a divorce."
He didn't even look surprised.