Tippi & Drew & Tyler, Too Pt. 01

I knew right away that something was amiss.

There was a sense of unease and a stiffness to the hug she gave me when she came through our front door that Sunday afternoon as she returned from her 10th high school reunion. Her light blonde hair was bound in a ponytail and the late afternoon sunlight pouring into our living room bounced off her porcelain-white skin. She wore no makeup. She almost never did during the daytime. She was wearing the cerulean blue embroidered top I'd given her for Christmas--it was her favorite--and the color echoed the blue of her eyes and complemented her golden hair. Even after five years of marriage, the effect never ceased to dazzle me.

She seemed to avoid any eye contact as she smiled, a little weakly, and gently detached from my welcoming hug. She picked up her overnight bag and made her way to our bedroom to begin unpacking.

"Did you have a good time?" I asked, as she walked away.

Yes," she said. My gut told me that something was wrong.

Later, much later, I would come to appreciate her honesty. Tippi never lied about what she did that weekend. She came clean, at least about part of it, within a few hours of her return.

Although she had invited me to come along, I'd stayed home to work on a client presentation that was scheduled for Monday was on the computer and on the phone all weekend, collaborating with two colleagues via Google Docs and Zoom, passing ideas back and forth. By mid-afternoon Sunday, we were all feeling pretty good about the new website and marketing plan we'd be showing to the client on Monday, so I took a couple of hours to prepare a welcome-home dinner for my wife.

Our kitchen table was our happy place. It was the deciding factor for us in renting that house in Millport, a bit of a distance from both of our jobs and about 45 minutes from Cutler, where we'd grown up and where Tippi had spent that weekend. The rest of the house was OK, a typical tract home on a suburban street, but the kitchen had been remodeled with a great double sink and a six-burner stove that suited a passion we both shared for cooking. That night, I'd made a terrific French pistou soup and some chicken cacciatore. We sat down to eat and download each other on our respective weekends. I gazed into her deep blue eyes and noticed that Tippi was unusually quiet and seemed reticent to say much about the reunion.

"A lot of people didn't show up," she said. "Darcy came, of course, and Sarah was there and it was good to see her. I hadn't seen her for at least two years, not since she got married. And Louisa showed up with her new baby."

"How about your old boyfriend, Tyler?" I asked. I noticed that she looked quickly away, seeming to stare at her plate. Tyler and Tippi had been a couple until their break-up in our senior year, a break-up that I was quick to take advantage of. She shifted a little in the upholstered kitchen chair, pausing before answering my question.

"Yeah, he was there," she said. "We talked for a while. His marriage has been kind of bumpy. He and Becca are separated now. Tyler said they were trying to work things out."

"Does Becca still have her health food store near the campus? I asked, my mind picturing the black-eyed brunette flashing her wide smile behind the register of the store she had proudly opened just a year earlier. Everybody had warned her: owning a retail business could be a heavy burden but Becca, a dedicated health-food person, had been determined to make it work.

We had all gone to school together since 7th grade. Among those of us who had grown up in Cutler, everybody knew everybody's business.

Although Cutler seemed to be a moderately large town, with a population of over 40,000, more than half that population consisted of students at the state university. The rest of the town was fairly insular. It was a classic small-town America place, and many of our families had shared history going back several generations.

My family's roots could be traced back in the town for several generations. My grandparents owned a nearby farm. My father was the town optometrist. My mom was the librarian. I fantasized, for a time, of moving to a big city like New York--maybe sharing a little apartment with Tippi somewhere like Brooklyn or Greenwich Village--but deep down, I knew that Cutler would always be my home.

Tippi's father was a relative newcomer. He'd arrived in Cutler from Sweden 30 years earlier as a research fellow in microbiology at the university, stuck around as an adjunct professor and then made the big leap to a tenured professor position. His wife, Rebecca, owned the real estate brokerage where Tippi now worked as a licensed agent. Real estate sales wasn't what Tippi had set out to do: she was a talented artist, but there were zero opportunities for a commercial artist in our area and, after spending a year or so in New York immediately after college, chasing gallery owners and trying to get her foot inside those very cliquish doors, she came home, and accepted that art would be a secondary occupation.

Tippi and Tyler had been a couple through most of high school. He was the town's rich kid--his father owned a pair of car dealerships--and she was the school's Nordic goddess. They broke up in our senior year for reasons that she always left vague. Tyler left town and went off to school in California. Tippi and I remained in town and began dating during our sophomore year at Cutler State. My friends loved to point out that I was punching above my weight with Tippi and I couldn't really argue the point. When I asked her to marry me, not long after she returned from New York, I was mildly shocked that she said yes.

After we were married, one corner of our apartment would always be occupied by Tippi's easel and when we bought our small starter house, she converted our garage into her art studio and painted whenever she could. She may not have been an overnight star in the rarefied world of New York's art scene, but she was a good-sized fish in the small pond of Cutler. Her paintings were on the walls of Cutler's most prestigious gallery and in another, larger gallery in the state capital. Sales of her paintings provided a nice supplement to our family income.

After we got into bed that night, I reached for Tippi and tried to wrap my arms around her, as I always did, whether or not we were going to make love. She pulled away slightly and, in the room lit by pale moonlight, I could feel her gently weeping and see her body curled up in a semi-fetal position, as if to protect her from some unseen danger. I sat up in the bed and asked her what was wrong.

"Drew, I'm so sorry, sweetie. I can't keep this from you. I had sex with him."

I lay down on my pillow again and stayed there in stunned silence. The walls of the room seemed to draw closer before I could find a response.

"With Tyler?" I asked, my voice sounding incredulous.

She unfurled her torso and rolled over to face me and even in the half-dark, I could sense her pleading look. "Yes. Oh god, Drew. It just happened. It was completely spontaneous. We were together in a common room--a suite--that they'd rented for socializing, and it got late and everybody else had left. We were talking and reminiscing and laughing together and then he leaned over and kissed me. I started to push him away but we'd both had a few drinks--a lot of drinks, actually--and I felt his hand slip underneath my top and then another one was between my legs. He was being so aggressive! At first a I got angry, like how dare you take advantage of me, but then it felt kind of good and natural, like my body remembered those hands from the old days. I know I should have gotten up and run out of the room, but I just leaned back and let it happen. God help me."

Her words slammed me into a state of shock. My inner voice was screaming, "Are you fucking kidding me?" but I couldn't get those words out. Instead, I mumbled something like, "Weren't there other people coming in and out of the room?"

"It was late, and everybody had said their goodnights. But someone could have come in at any moment and, as drunk as we both were, I think that the danger of it made it more exciting. It was like an out-of-body experience, Drew. We were on a couch and he just rolled on top of me and began kissing all down my neck while his hands were all over my body. I should have stopped him, but I wasn't thinking straight. I wasn't thinking at all. Oh god, Drew, I'm so sorry, but I had to tell you the truth."

Silence settled over the room as we lay there, both of us looking up at ceiling. Five minutes passed. It felt like five hours. It's hard to describe now the feelings that were passing through me. A feeling of nausea to shape in the pit of my stomach. I was having trouble finding my breath. Tippi lay quietly on her side of the bed a whimpering sound intermittently escaped her lips.

I felt a powerful mix of intense pain and white-hot anger. And sadness. So much sadness. Tippi was my best friend, my partner, the love of my life, and I couldn't reconcile those things with what she had confessed. Was my marriage over? Would she leave me? Should I leave her? I always thought our marriage was almost perfect.

I finally broke through that veil of silence with just a few words that barely escaped my lips.

"Why, Tippi? I don't understand why."

There was a long pause before she answered, her face still turned up to the ceiling.

"Sweetie, I really don't know. Tyler has always had this weird hold over me. I can't explain it, but it's a feeling of complete powerlessness when I'm around him. I hate him for that. It's why I finally broke free from him years ago. I feel terrible. I feel dirty, just like I felt back then. I'm so afraid that I've ruined our marriage."

I couldn't respond. I thought maybe she was right, maybe she had ruined our marriage. It sure felt that way to me at that moment.

She broke through that veil of silence when she turned on her side to face me and in a very small child-like voice, she said, "Drew, could you please, please hold me. I know you're angry, and I understand it, I deserve anything you want to say to me, but I'm feeling really bad and I really need to you to hold me now."

There was a pause as I struggle to decide whether this woman who just confessed to a horrible betrayal deserved my comforting, But in that moment, I knew I still loved her. I rolled over to face her and took her in my arms.

"I'm so blown away, Tupsa," I said, using her Swedish birth name, She hated that name, which is why I used it when I was angry. "With all that we have together, how could you? Why would you even put yourself in a position to be alone with him?"

"Please don't hate me, Drew. I'll do anything--I mean anything-- to make it up to you." she said. And her hand drifted down to my penis which, in a completely involuntary action, was starting to grow hard.

I flinched and started to pull away, but wow, her skin felt so good against mine. For the past five or six years, Tippi's arms were where I found comfort whenever I felt distress, whenever life threw me a curveball. The antidote for stress and tension was in the soft soothing feel of flesh against flesh, in the connection I felt with this woman. Where could I go now for shelter from life's curve balls when it was Tippi who was throwing them?

I couldn't help it. She touched my cock, lightly, very lightly, and it began to grow. Tippi took that as a sign of encouragement and went with it, stroking me slowly, silently, feeling my erection harden in her hand. I was powerless over my intense attraction to this woman.

"I know that you're really angry, but do you think you could make love to me, Drew? Maybe it will help with the anger. Let me prove that you're the only man I care about. I need you so bad. I want to be possessed by you now. Could you do it? Please?"

My feelings bounced between intense anger and pure lust. In the end, lust won out.

"No foreplay tonight, Drew. Please just fuck me."

I rolled on top of her and, bending my knees between her legs, I felt her hand guiding me inside as I pushed forward between her lips. I wanted her to feel my anger, to give her a hate fuck, but once I felt my cock was enclosed within her pussy, her familiar warmth and the connection we'd developed over the previous years took over. I fell into the familiar pattern of building a slow rhythm, taking delight in the silky smoothness of her vagina, feeling our breaths come into synch and our bodies melting together. I loved the way her skin felt against mine. I couldn't stay angry at Tippi while we were making love. We were just too close, too bonded.

I moved my arms up beside her shoulders and lifted her legs up, allowing me to plow deeper inside. She responded to the steady rhythm of our movements, and I could feel myself getting close. Tippi's orgasm came just moments before I went over the edge. I came, hard, my spasms lasting longer than usual. I know I came more than usual.

We spent several minutes lying motionless, silent, just listening to each other's breath before I finally rolled off to her right, my arm still beneath her head. With my body spent, I felt a wave of resurgent anger, not white-hot, but lingering, mixed with an equal measure of hurt.

"Did he use a condom, Tipp?"

She was quiet.

"Did he come inside you?"

When she answered, it was almost a whisper: "Yes, Drew. I'm sorry. I thought about it, but we didn't have one. He came inside me."

"Fuck!," I said. "Shouldn't you get tested for STDs?"

"I asked him. He swore he hadn't had sex with anyone but his wife in the past several months. Oh, and one other woman from his work, too, he said. But he was sure he was clean."

"You should probably get tested, Tupsa. Oh fuck!, we both should get tested. And if that happened on the first night, wasn't the rest of the weekend awkward?" I asked.

Tippi was quiet again. Her quiet little interludes were getting on my nerves.

"Drew, I fucked him again the next day. And we slept in his room on Saturday night."

"So how many times did you fuck Tyler this weekend, Tippi? It sounds like a complete sex-fest." My shock and anger were mounting.

"I don't know, Drew. It's hard to count. We pretty much skipped all the reunion activities and just stayed in bed most of the weekend. I think we did it maybe four times on Saturday and another two this morning..."

"Oh shit, Tippi. Did you fuck him before coming home to me?

"Sweetie, I am so sorry. I really, really didn't want to hurt you with this. If I could have kept it secret, I would have, anything to avoid hurting you. But yes, we did it one last time before I drove home.

"So you came home with your pussy full of his come?"

"We were past check-out time and there wasn't any time to shower again. I went to the bathroom just after I got home and washed out as much as I could."

"So I just had sloppy seconds?

"I showered before coming to bed, Drew, but that's why I didn't want any foreplay, I didn't want you to go down on me while I wasn't completely clean."

We both lay quietly. I moved a few inches away from her and removed my arm from behind her head.

"Did you kiss him?" I asked. "Like on the mouth?" I realized it was an absurd question as soon as I asked it, but somehow the thought of Tippi giving her affection to another man hurt as badly as the idea of her having sex with him.

She waited a beat.

"It was more like he kissed me. I didn't kiss him like I kiss you, Drew. It wasn't a loving thing. But we were having sex, he was fucking me, so yeah, we kissed. But I wasn't making love to him, Drew. It was just fucking, just sex. We weren't making love like I do with you.""

"Did you tell him what a great lover he was?"

Another pause, a longer beat.

"When you're having sex, you know you say a lot of things. You don't necessarily mean them, you just blurt things out. I know I was being very vocal, more than I usually am during sex. It was the strange combination of newness and familiarity of it all, a sense of wildness. I honestly don't remember exactly what I said. Whatever it was, it doesn't mean anything. I love you, sweetie. I don't love Tyler. Please, please believe me when I say that. What we just did, the way you just made love to me and held me, even though you're angry, it's just so much more meaningful to me that what I did with Tyler."

"Is he a better lover, Tippi? Is that why you did it so many times"

"Oh god, Drew, no! No, not at all. It was just different with him. He pushed me to do things I didn't really want to do. There's this weird thing between us. It's always been there. He's incredibly dominant and I find myself becoming submissive, despite myself. When you and I have sex, Drew, we come together as equals. And I love that about us. It's the sweetest thing about our marriage. With Tyler, it was more like following orders. And in my mind, everything about it was repulsive. But in those moments, it became strangely erotic. I have to be honest with you: I had amazing orgasms, lots of them. I was coming like crazy and they all ran together. I hated myself for it, but I was begging him for more. Drew, honey, this is so hard to talk about." Tippi began to sob.

"Oh god, Tippi. I don't know what we do now," I murmured,

"Are we going to be OK, Drew? I love you so much and I just can't lie to you. I want us to stay married. I still want to have a family with you, to get old together. Can you forgive me, Drew? Please say you'll forgive me. I'll do anything you ask."

The suddenness of all this information had left me a little numb and with a hollow feeling inside my gut, a vacuum feeling as if my insides would implode. I felt my heartbeat racing.

"Tippi, I have to think about this. I'm angry, but even more than angry, I'm really, really hurt. We never agreed to have an open marriage," I said.

"No, no Drew! I don't want an open marriage! This was an isolated thing, an unplanned meeting with an old boyfriend. You know that Tyler and I had been together in high school and you knew we had sex before I broke up with him. It wasn't like I was fucking a new person.

"So, Tippi, if I ran into an old girlfriend and had sex with her, you'd be OK with it?" I asked.

Tippi turned over on her side, facing away from me. I could feel her weeping again, softly, quietly.

"Please don't. Drew. This wasn't something I planned. I didn't go looking for Tyler. We just happened to meet at the reunion. It was the situation, the circumstances. I would never, ever cheat on you with some random guy. It wasn't like I set up a Tinder account or picked up someone in a bar," said Tippi. "Please don't think of this as the beginning of an open marriage. I don't want to have sex with anybody but you, ever! I hope I never see Tyler again."

She paused for a moment and then sighed deeply.

It was late. Our dog, Sita, climbed up on the bed as she usually did before we went to sleep.

"This has been exhausting, Tippi. We'll have toi talk more--a lot more--tomorrow."

I rolled over, facing away from my wife, my mind racing in a hundred directions. What was the appropriate response to this adultery? Divorce? Some kind of trial separation? Should I fuck someone else? (I really didn't want to.) My eyes finally closed, and I slept, fitfully.

But when tomorrow came, we didn't talk. Not much, anyway. For the next week, we tip-toed around each other, not angrily, but warily. Tippi seemed to be regularly checking me to see if I were harboring some seething resentment. And I wasn't quite sure about the state of our marriage. We didn't hug or touch each other as much as we usually did. But I was sure, as some very deep level about three things: 1) I wanted my marriage to survive, 2) I wouldn't tolerate any more of Tippi's indiscretions and 3) I wasn't really interested in "getting even" with Tippi buy fucking some random woman. I thought about it, but I couldn't think of anyone who's be a more exciting partner than Tippi.