The next day is pure torture. She knows what she's done and sees it every time she looks into her husband's beautiful blue eyes. She sees a reflection of the person she's become with just one little mistake; one tiny, momentary lapse of judgment and she doesn't even recognize herself anymore.
They run errands, they grab food, they go for a walk around the neighborhood, just like they always do together on his days off, but she stays quiet. She's there with Rick in reality, but in her mind, she's still with Shane. She just can't stop thinking about him and how everything about him is so different from Rick: his lips, his smile, his scent, his laugh, the reaction of his body while she pleasured him…
He stops her, turns her to look at him. "And why are you so quiet today, huh? You're still thinking about last night, aren't you?" he asks.
She instantly feels nauseous; her eyes widen. "W-what? Whatta you mean?"
"I know how you are." He brings her hand up to his face and kisses it, before grabbing it with his other one. "Stop letting these arguments get to you. We're just going through a rough patch. It happens to married couples. It'll get better."
Right. The argument. She breathes a sigh of relief. "Yeah, I guess I didn't sleep too well. I'm…I'm ok, really." Dying on the inside, she offers her best fake smile to him before they head back home.
Rick begins showering and getting ready for his night shift, so Lori finally turns her phone on. She'd turned it off before bed last night and hasn't had the guts to look at it once today. It finishes starting up when she notices three missed calls. She scrolls: Mom, unknown number, unknown number. No text messages either.
She can't decide if she's thrilled or disappointed by this. Guess he's waiting to hear from me after all.
Except when Rick leaves for his shift at 6:00, so he can make the 45-minute drive there to start by 7:00, Shane's walking through her front door twenty minutes later.
She's standing at the sink, drying the last of the dishes, when she catches something out of the corner of her eye. She jumps at the sight of him, leaning with one arm propped up inside doorway, and the plate falls, shattering all over the kitchen floor. "Fuck! Jesus, Shane….what the fuck?" she yells, holding her chest.
"I'm sorry. I didn't wanna scare you…"
"Well, you did." She bends down to start picking up the pieces of the plate, placing them into the dishtowel. He starts to walk towards her to help, but she stops him, annoyed. "Just…stay there. I've got it."
He brings the garbage can over to her and opens the lid. She finishes picking up the pieces, dumps them inside, and slams it shut. She stands up and becomes flushed as she realizes she's about 6 inches from his face; she turns back towards the sink, pretending to find something to do.
Then, there's a hand touching her shoulder lightly. She whips herself around and pushes it off. "Do not touch me, Shane. You shouldn't even…you shouldn't even be here." The dejected look in his eyes tells her that maybe she's being too harsh. This isn't his fault. This isn't her fault. This is their fault. "I'm sorry, ok? I just…don't really know what to do with….all of this."
"I couldn't sleep at all last night, I've felt sick all day…" he begins, voice trailing off. He looks at her, almost desperately. "Can we please talk about this?"
"Fine." She pushes past him and walks into the living room, where she sits down on the couch. He follows but is reluctant to sit. She motions towards the couch with her hand and her eyes, and so he finally does, just a few feet away. "So? Talk."
"I don't feel right…" he starts, shaking his head. "I don't."
"And you shouldn't. We shouldn't. It was…it was wrong." She decides to leave out the part about how she spent the entire day trying to remember exactly what it felt like the minute their lips first touched, exactly what he smelled like. "Look, I don't know how to deal with this, how we're supposed to deal with this, but…we have to try to forget that it happened. And things have to change. It can't…Shane, it can't be like it was before. It just can't." She almost laughs at the sheer stupidity of the words that are coming out of her mouth, like this mindless drabble is actually solving something. "Ok?"
He nods. "I guess that's good a plan as any." He rubs his head, pulls his hands over his face, and turns to look at her.
She extends her arms out slowly, tentatively; he raises an eyebrow. "Come on, it's just a hug. We can still be friends, right?" He scoots closer to her and wraps his arms around her waist, but instead of hugging him back, she slowly slides both her hands up the sides of his face. She presses her palms against his cheeks and grabs whatever of his hair she can get her fingers on. They stare at each other for awhile.
And it's not until she's straddling his lap, sucking on his neck while his hands are up the back of her shirt, that she realizes maybe 'just a hug' wasn't the best idea.
He unhooks her bra and runs his hands from her back around to the front, cupping her tits with both hands and squeezing. She pulls her mouth away from his neck, grabs her shirt, and pulls it up over her head. Her bra falls forward, slides down her arms, and she shakes it off, throwing it to the side. She slides her hands around the back of his neck and pulls his head down towards her chest, raising her hips and leaning back a little as he begins sucking on her body. He gives equal attention to both nipples before kissing his way up to her neck and moving both hands down to her ass, leaning completely back against the couch and pulling her forward on top of him.
She grinds her hips steadily into his; she can feel how hard he is. She's waiting for the guilty feelings that she experienced last night in his car to rear their ugly heads, to make her put a stop to this, but they don't. Her hands slide up to his hair, where she tangles her fingers in it and places her mouth against his ear. "Shane," she whispers, hips still moving against him. "I've been…thinkin' about this…all day."
"Mmm, that makes…two of us then," he moans against the side of her face, lifting his hips in a rhythm to meet hers.
"I wanna…" She stops, lets out shy laugh. "I wanna please you again. I…kinda liked it," she finally admits to him.
She feels him smirk. "Did you now?" He pushes her off his lap and stands up, then grabs her by the wrist and pulls her behind him, down the hallway and around the corner. Realizing where they're headed, she pushes his hand off the doorknob and stops him. "Shane, no, we can't…"
He grabs her hand, lifts it up over her head, and pins her against the wall outside her bedroom- her and Rick's bedroom. He does the same with her other arm, rendering her defenseless as he leans in towards her face with his. He teases her lips with his tongue, forcing her to part them and meet it with her own. They kiss slowly, softly, before he tightens his grip on her wrists and breaks away suddenly. "Yeah, we can." He guides one of her hands down and places it on the doorknob. "Come on, baby. Please?"
She squeezes her eyes shut and turns it slowly.
He pushes the door open and goes in, pulling her behind him. She opens her eyes; the bed hasn't been made, some of Rick's clothes from earlier are scattered across the bed and on the floor. His post-shower scent still lingers, his wet towel drying on the bathroom door hook.
Lori senses Shane's uneasiness as he rubs his head and looks down at the floor; she looks away from him. Suddenly, he reaches a hand up to her throat and closes it, just tightly enough that it startles her. He pushes her backwards until her knees hit the edge of the bed; she sits back onto it and stares at him, wide-eyed, as he drops to his knees in front of her. "So are you….done?" he asks cautiously, remembering their conversation and why he couldn't do this to her in the car last night. She nods quickly and helps him get the button of her jeans undone, lifting her hips and legs as he yanks them off. "Good, 'cause I'm about to make you come undone."
Her legs are slung over his shoulders as runs his fingers up the insides of her thighs, followed by his tongue. He pulls her underwear to the side and she shifts her hips. "Hey, sometimes it….takes me awhile," she warns him, briefly remembering the one time Rick literally fell asleep going down on her and how much they'd laughed about it later. She immediately banishes the memory from her mind.
"Not with me it don't, sweetheart."
She sighs loudly and grabs at her hair as she feels his fingers spread her apart and his tongue slides between her legs. He's slow, methodical, gentle; everything she felt when he kissed her mouth she feels a million times stronger as he works his tongue in rhythmic patterns against her clit. "Oh God…Shane," she moans, muffled because she's covering her mouth with her hand. There's no way anything should possibly feel like this, she thinks, completely caught up in the moment, unable to remember a time when she felt even remotely this good.
She's close; it's been mere minutes and she's nearing the edge already. Her panties and the sheets underneath her are completely soaked; her breathing is erratic and her eyes are watering as she bites down on the side of her hand. Suddenly, he stops; she squirms uncomfortably. "You gonna come for me, baby?" he asks, sliding a finger inside of her.
"Yes, God yes….please, Shane," she begs softly, and he continues. A few more quick, steady circles of his tongue and she loses it, completely coming undone beneath him, as he promised. She covers her mouth with both hands, stifling her high-pitched moans, as she comes while he fingers her.
Everything that happens next is so fast. Before her body's even done contracting, he stands up and pulls his shirt off. She watches him from her position on the bed; he reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a condom. He climbs onto the bed, straddling her, and she reaches up to get his pants undone, frantically working them open, as he tears open the wrapper. She slides them down and watches him move so he can kick them off; at the same time she pulls off her underwear. "Felt good, didn't it?" he asks, as he watches himself put the condom on.
She nods; everything's fuzzy, as she realizes she's about to let him fuck her in the bed she shares with Rick. His best friend. Her husband.
He climbs on top of her, spreads her legs apart with one hand and guides himself inside of her with the other. They both let out a load groan as he pushes in slowly. He's much bigger than she's used to and it hurts, not to mention she's never had another man inside of her besides Rick. "You ok?" he asks gently, leaning in to kiss her.
She turns her head, rejecting him. "Mmm, yeah, just…do it already," she moans. One of her hands is positioned on his shoulder, the other reaches over to the side of the bed. She feels around for a bit, finds Rick's shirt, and grabs a hold of it tightly, not knowing why. "Shane, just do it already."
There is absolutely nothing romantic about the way he fucks her. It's hard, fast, purely animalistic, the kind of sex she's always wanted to have but has never had the guts to ask Rick for. The noises coming out of both of them are like nothing she's ever heard or made before. He grabs her hair, pulls it, bites down on her neck while he slams his hips into hers repeatedly. Her free hand fumbles for any inch of his skin that it can grip, a desperate but futile attempt to gain some control against his powerful thrusts.
As her body adjusts to his size, it stops hurting and feels amazing. She lets go of Rick's shirt and digs both sets of her nails into Shane's sweat-slicked back, hard; he responds by grabbing her hair even harder. He leans down, mouth to her ear, putting all his weight on top of her. "Yeah, you like gettin' fucked by me, don't cha?"
"Yes….yes," she squeaks, as she grabs him with both of her hands and positions his face directly over hers. Their noses touch, the sweat from his forehead runs onto her face; she opens her mouth. She wants to feel that amazing tongue of his inside of her at the same time.
Never losing his rhythm, he teases her with it, flicking it against her lips but then pulling it away when she tries to kiss him back. "Tell me," he growls. "Tell me I'm better than Rick. Tell me I fuck you better'n he does."
"Yeah," is what comes out.
"Yeah what?" He teases her some more. "Baby, I'm so close. Tell me…come on."
Slightly conflicted but desperate to please him again, to make him feel as good as he just made her feel, she shoves his head to the side and whispers into his ear, "Shane…you fuck me so much better than Rick does…"
He pulls out of her and sits up, straddling her hips. With one hand, he removes the condom and with the other, grabs her hand and places it on his cock. "Finish me, baby." A few quick strokes and he's moaning her name as he comes onto her stomach, a completely new experience for her. She feels the warmth of him on her skin as she watches him orgasm; she enjoys knowing that she got him there and locks eyes with him as he finishes.
Scanning his immediate surroundings, he grabs the nearest thing he can find: Rick's shirt. She looks away as he gently uses it to clean her stomach off and tosses it onto the floor. This isn't happening. This didn't just happen. His hand brushes the side of her face as he lies down next to her; his arm wraps around her shoulder, pulls her close. "Listen, Lori, Rick's my friend, alright? But I have to…I gotta tell you somethin'…"
Eyes closed. This will go away if she just ignores it; there's no way this is reality. Do not say it, Shane. Do not even say it.And he says it.
And as though she's watching herself from a place completely outside of herself, she hears her own voice reply, "I love you, too."
She does the math: twenty four hours plus four words spoken equals three lives, relationships, pretty much destroyed. Realizing sadly that whatever hope there was of coming back from this, from cutting this off is completely gone, she decides to go ahead and embrace it.
