The next day, Emily met with Tom Malden, in her shower.
"You know…Jordan has a sleepover this Friday, perhaps we could meet for dinner?" she asked him afterwards. "Max has been obsessing over a case, as usual, so he'll probably be working late"
"Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll pick you up at the usual spot at eight" he smiled.
Friday came and they had dinner at an Italian place. She loved the way Tom was in bed and enjoyed his company. They first met, when Max had brought him over for dinner one night. Soon after, the affair started. Tom thought that aside from Max, Emily wasn't with anyone else. Sex was just one of many things used by Emily for power and for attempting to fill this void inside of her. As a child, she found herself with rather distant parents who left most of the childrearing to a stern nanny, who could be cruel. When she first met Max, he seemed like a breath of fresh air from the world she grew up in: he said what he felt, and didn't put on airs, though he had a bad temper and could be volatile. Despite the fears she would have during her more paranoid moments, he had never struck her. When he suspected that their first child, whom he gave away during one of her bad episodes, wasn't his he didn't confront her, though she felt that he had his suspicions.
"Care to join me in the shower?" she asked Max that night when he got home.
"No, I gotta work this case" he sat down with various crime scene photos, as he munched on jelly donuts that he got from a 24 hour donut place.
"You should stop eating so many of those things. I can barely sit on your lap" she told him, as she took a quick glimpse at one of the crime scene photos. "How can you prefer those disgusting pictures to me?"
"My next promotion rides on this case and the tuition at Jordan's school is going up." Max was usually the practical one in the marriage.
"You've been working late all week." Emily complained.
" It's part of the job."
With a sigh, she went to watch Johnny Carson.
TBC
