Ownership

Ownership Part IV

Kevin

Shannon leans up, then stands up and quickly walks to her closet, where she already has some clothes. I am really impressed with her organization on this move. A few seconds later she emerges, pulling sweats up over her thighs, a t-shirt in her arm, her tits swinging, dangling as she gets the sweats pulled up. She looks at me.

"This is over," she says, her voice still thick with passion - and apparently anger. "Get your clothes on."

I set the phone back on the end table, sit up on the side of the bed, glance at my clothes sitting in more-less of a pile on the floor.

"Listen, Shan-,"

"NO," she says, louder than I've ever heard her. "It's over. Get dressed and get out."

She pulls her t-shirt on over her head and I wonder if this is my last second of seeing her tits in person.

"Shannon, what are you so pissed off about?"

Her head pops out of the top of the T-shirt.

"Are you kidding me? You sent those pictures to my husband. What the fuck?"

It was actually placid in here just a few minutes before, with her sleeping and me considering some morning finale. But minutes after I sent the photos and texts to Aaron, her phone started rumbling with calls and texts, waking her up.

"I'd better get that, it could be about Chloe," she said, startled out of her sleep.

I took her hand, told her it wasn't about Chloe.

"How do you know?" She asked. I told her. Now the room is on fire and she's asking me why.

"Youwantedto take those pictures!" I stand up, my dick still semi-hard from what just happened. She isn't looking; her back to me as she walks toward my clothes.

"I was drunk. And I'd have deleted them this morning. I can't...fuck...I can't believe you'd do that."

I catch the ball of clothes she throws at me.

"Of course I sent them. Why did you want to take them? Either you wanted to get him back..."

She hears my pause and stops rummaging through her dresser drawer to look at me.

"Or?"

I look down as I step into my boxer briefs, then look back at her.

"...Or you wantedmeto have them," I finish as I hold my hands out, palms up.

She laughs, but not in a friendly way.

"Neither. It was neither of those," she says, pulling a bra out of the drawer and stepping into her closet. Her voice muffles but stays intense and loud.

"I was pissed off. Pissed at you two trading personal pics of me. So I was wanting to do something...some kind of revenge on Aaron.Posingfor them was the revenge."

Her head pops out of the closet as she continues.

"That was it. I blew off some steam. But never for a second did I want you to send them to him."

Her eyes go to my phone but I pick it up before she can even take a step towards the table.

She looks at me again.

"Erase them. Erase them all."

I look down at the phone, open up the photos app, hitSelectand put a check mark on everything we took last night, reach the phone towards Shannon. She steps out, takes the phone, looks at for a second and hits the garbage can. She hands me back the phone. I glance down, seeing only what's missing.

"Thank you," she says softly. "But hand me the phone."

I do. I can tell he's opening the recently deleted photos album and deleting them out of there, too. I wonder why she knows that trick at all. She hands me back the phone.

I reach out to her but she steps back.

"I'm not doing this anymore Kevin. Aaron was right - with the papers signed there's no reason to do this anymore."

"We made a deal -,"

"We made a deal that you've taken advantage of. Making him send you naked pictures. Baiting him into calling you so I had to do this an extra time."

"We didn't even do anything that time...," I point out weakly.

"And that makes you a saint," she says as she starts grabbing her own fingers to continue counting off my misdeeds.

"Texting him those pics," she looks around the bedroom and spreads both arms wide.

"Our house! You had to do this in our new home," she trails off and starts to sob a little. I'm smart enough to say nothing while she regains her control and looks back at me.

"At first I thought you just wanted to fuck me but now I realize it's all about fucking with us. It's sick and it's fucking up our marriage...and it's over. We've done enough. I've done enough. And you've done enough. Get your things and go, Kevin. I don't want to ever see you again."

She walks over to me and hands me the burner phone.

"Shannon, we made a deal..."

"I've done all I'm going to do. You've taken enough." She's glaring at me, hands on hips. In the sudden silence I keep waiting for the cow to moo, but it doesn't happen.

"Please just go."

I zip my fly, the metallic rhythm of the merging teeth the only sound in the room.

Aaron

I sit on the edge of the bed. I've already stripped the sheets, so I'm actually sitting on a mattress. This was our bed, but it won't be any more. It's going to the guest room I guess. And I think I'm going to the master bedroom, but suddenly I don't know that for sure. I'm holding my phone, have been for ten minutes. The movers are here in like an hour so I don't have time to drive over to the new house and figure out what the fuck is going on.

I thumb through the pictures again, read the text.

In each of the pics I look for something in her face, something in her eyes to give me a clue of what happened, why this is happening. The picture of her in the kitchen it's pretty easy to see she's drunk. The picture of her crawling on the bed, she looks a little angry. She's smiling but it's not her happy smile, or her fuck-me smile. It's something else entirely. But it's the picture of her against the wall that I really can't stop looking at. She's pressed up against the wall, her head turned to the side, eyes closed. This one she doesn't look drunk, doesn't look pissed. She looks...peaceful. That's the one that has me concerned. That's the one I'm looking at when the phone rings...her cell phone.

I let it ring once, trying to decide who I think will be on the other end. On the second ring I answer.

"Hello?"

It's quiet for a second.

"Hi." It's Shannon.

"Is he right there?"

"No. He's gone. I made him leave."

"Why? It looked like you were having so much fun?"

I stand up. I can feel my neck starting to warm.

"He's gone forever. I told him we're done."

Now I'm confused. I let it sink in.

"Aaron, are you still there?"

Another pause.

"I'm here. What the hell happened?"

"He texted you those pictures, not me."

"I know. But you posed for them."

Now she's quiet.

"I did. I posed for them. But I was drunk and pissed off. At you."

"Me?"

"You sent him a naked picture of me?"

Shit. I'd almost forgotten about that. The one of her on the bed. The one she looked angry in, that's the same pose. I never thought about it in terms of betrayal, only as a deposit.

"Hello?" She asks.

I realize I've stopped talking.

"I did. I'm sorry."

"Why would you do that?"

"It was when we were talking about all this. It was like a down payment or something."

She's quiet again for a second. Sighs.

"Yeah, that's what he said," she says. "He said he made you do it."

She's quiet again. I look out the bedroom window and the sun is starting to clear the houses on the horizon.

"But you should have told me," she says. "I hate secrets."

"I should have. I didn't really think about it as a secret. It just happened and in the wake of everything else, I'll be honest I just kind of forgot about it."

"A picture is a pretty big deal, Aaron. It's permanent. He'll have that forever."

"Well now he's got a lot more of them, so if that was your concern..."

"He erased them. I made him."

"You sure of that? You doing things with a wine bottle?"

"I didn't do that."

"Sure looked like you were about to. And how do you know he erased them? Because he showed you?"

"He handed me the phone. I deleted them myself."

It's quiet again.

"Aaron, he's gone forever. It's all over. I told him and he left. I thought you'd be happy about that. You were right, I never should have let it go on after we signed the papers."

It's starting to register with me. He's gone. I have a ton of questions. Did he really delete the pictures? Is he really going away quietly? But I can tell she wants this to be done. Bringing up doubts isn't going to lower the stress.

"I love you, Shannon. Thanks for making him end this shit."

"I'm sorry about the pictures," she says, her voice cracking a little.

"How did you find out? How did he get your log-in?"

She's quiet; thinking I guess.

"He's seen me use the phone a hundred times. He could easily have noticed my code."

"Four zeroes aren't really a code," I say and she actually laughs for a short second.

"So, he told you he sent them to me?"

Quiet again.

"Yeah."

"He only took four pictures?"

She sighs again.

"No, he took a bunch. Those places. Maybe a few more. Maybe forty or fifty. But he deleted them. Their gone. He's gone."

"Well it was nice of him to edit down just the highlights to send to me. Wouldn't want to see his lesser work," I sound chirpy by the end. Someone is walking their dog on the sidewalk behind our duplex. One hand on the leash, one hand shoved inside a plastic bag. What a life.

"I'm sorry. I mean it, Aaron. I don't know what else to do."

I think about looked how her face up against that wall. How long peace has been missing for both of us.

A ray of sun shoots over a rooftop and the houses, the lady, her dog and the plastic bag all disappear in a painful bright yellow wash of light. I turn away from the window.

"Well, I'd get ready for a moving van full of shit. That's what you're supposed to do, too."

It's quiet over the line again but I know her enough to know she's relieved.

"See you later, Shannon. Looking forward to our new home."

"Me too, baby," which is what she usually calls me. She's called me by my first name more in the last three months than she has from the day we kissed. Sometimes I wonder if that helps her keep us both straight, both separate in her mind. I'm ready to not wonder about that anymore.

"See you soon," I say.

"Love you."

"Love you," and I hang up. Out the window the sun is growing even larger, but the intensity of that first ray is gone and it's brightening up everything instead of obscuring it. My last look at this neighborhood, at least from inside a duplex window.

Kevin

As I unlock my office Monday morning, I can feel what had been a color-drenched summer turn back to gray.

I turned it over in my mind the entire rest of the weekend. I'd pushed it too far, and I did it just when the table was tilting towards me. She was mad at Aaron about the picture, not as much at me. She'd done all that posing. She'd been a fuckbeast. She was closer to the place I'd been hoping for all along. And I screwed it up.

Getting her to turn on Aaron would have had to have been her decision, not mine. She has a lot of years with him. A kid with him. While I may have had her on that road, she wasn't there yet.

Sure, the alcohol dulled my judgement. But I let that card from Aaron throw me off, too. He's so angry about all this. He thinks he's losing, but he doesn't realize he's winning in a rout. He's had Shannon all along. Now he has the house. And he's going to keep Shannon. He loses a little bit of ego and maybe once in a while wondering what she's thinking of. I go back to wherever I was before with a few nice memories and a sense of loss. He wins. He wins. He wins and he sends me hate on top of it.

I'm sure at some point it will all become a nice memory for me, but right now it's pretty goddamn raw, especially the abrupt ending. I had a great final weekend planned. I think I had a plan to get myself back in a good emotional spot, or at least I would have.

Now it's just a blank. Something then nothing.

So instead of planning the August dates, I'm sitting here going through emails. More loan requests to be rejected, many of them a hell of a lot more viable than the Beechums.

I take a break, pull out my phone and open up browser, go to gmail. Log into AaronMakesADeal and look at the emails I sent myself so late Friday night, before falling asleep, my leg wedged up against her crack. Plenty of pictures, some hot, some funny, her blinking at the wrong second or her mouth in the middle of anOor aT, not ready for the camera's click. I didn't know I'd lose her, or that these pictures would be why, but I knew someday I'd be glad I took four minutes to forward them all. She's gone, they're still here.

I open up one of her in the shower, skin on her knees taking the shape of the unforgiving tile, her eyes closed, my hardening cock in her mouth, her lips vacuumed around it. Maybe I should send them a housewarming card with this photo on the front, clip art of cupids, hearts, bows and arrows surrounding it, one small silent emoji smiling and winking on the inside, a maddening yellow circle alone on solid white.

I'm imagining Shannon's face when she opens it alone some afternoon. Or Aaron standing at the mailbox, card in his shaking hand. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where they both open it, how to manifest that, when a voice breaks my daydream.

"Mr. Barr?"

I look up and the temp is at my office door.

"Hi, uh...you told me this. I'm sorry," I work up a look of embarrassment although I honestly could care less what her name is.

"Cindy. That's okay," she says, clearly equally or more embarrassed that she keeps failing to make any impression at all. "I'm sure you'll get used to it as time goes on."

I glance back down at my phone, Shannon's lips and my office interactions all merging for one quick second.

"You're a temp, right?"

She smiles and shakes her head.

"Yes, but they told me earlier today they are trying to turn me into something perm- something long-term," she explains.

"Well congratulations. Congratulations,Cindy, that is," I smile and glance down at Shannon again, thumb over to a shot of her sitting uncomfortable on the hard marble in the kitchen, the cold rock pressing on the bottom of her vagina. I look back up and Cindy is still there, gripping the door jam.

"Was there something else, Cindy?"

She seems nervous, realizes she's testing my patience. I look down at the phone again: an inanimate object is taking more of my interest than her. Wonder if she gets that yet.

"Yes, sorry. Just wanted to make sure you remembered that card you got Friday. The one from the Beechums. You tossed it on your desk. Didn't want you to forget it."

I look up at her as she continues on.

"You know, in case you wanted to respond or something. I mean I can write you up a response if you'd like. That's the kind of stuff I can help with...," she trails off.

Eyes back to my phone.

"I did read it Friday," I say absently. "I don't think I need to send them anything back, though."

"Okay. It was just that Aaron seemed so excited to get it to you..."

That gets her my eyes back again.

"Aaron?"

She hesitates for a moment.

"Mr. Beechum. He's the one who brought the card back in."

Something seems off.

"You have a good memory for names, Cindy."

She smiles, but still seems a little uneasy for some reason.

"Thanks," she says and turns to go.

"Hey, what's Mr. Beechum's wife's name?"

She pauses at the door and turns around, her eyes up at the ceiling.

"I...I can't remember. Colleen?"

I click my phone to darkness, set it on the desk.

"What are the names of the couple coming in at 11?"

She almost involuntarily shrugs her shoulders, looks down at the floor.

I lean forward. I feel like the room is now just a bit brighter.

"Cindy, do you know Aaron Beechum somehow?"

She shakes her head no as she looks from the floor to me to the floor.

"No, he just seemed nice, came back in to give you the card..."

"And that's all?"

She looks at me quietly for a moment, considering...something.

"Actually, I ran into him at the bar Friday night."

"What bar?"

"The Bull," she says. "You know, the one we all go to. You go to, too."

"They were there Friday?" I've got to be careful here in my demeanor: I'm mildly interested but can't be too interested. Her face scrunches nervously.

"No, just him," she says.

"He was alone at The Bull on the night they closed their house?"

"I thought that was weird, too. He said she had some pre-existing plans and couldn't go."

Words are practically tiptoeing out of my mouth by now.

"So, you talked to him?"

She nods, no words.

"Cindy, close the door and sit down for a second," I motion to the chairs on the other side of my desk, chairs once occupied by the Beechums.

She looks a little rattled. Yeah, something is off. She closes the door and sits down in a chair. The one Aaron sat in.

"Cindy, do you have something to tell me?"

She shakes her head.

"No, Mr. Barr. I just ran into Aar-, Mr. Beechum at the bar. We talked for like two minutes. That's it." Her hands are folded, thumbs massaging each other.

"Cindy, you aren't going to be a temp here anymore. I feel like I need to make sure you understand that we have rules about friendships...and other fraternizations...with customers."

Her eyes are pretty wide at this point.

"If you have something to tell me, I can keep this between us. But you need to come forward now."

I'm looking directly at her and she's looking all around the room. There's something here and it's starting to feel like gold.

After maybe thirty seconds of silence, of her scanning the walls, the ceiling...her shoulders just wilt. Her face disappears as her hair hangs around it as it faces the floor.

Aaron sent me a card Friday. Cindy is giving me a much better card, one I can actually play, right now.

Aaron

The rest of the weekend was a lot of not-fun stuff in aid of getting to the place we want to be: loading a moving truck, unloading a moving truck, loading my car with stuff we didn't want to risk in the truck, driving cleaning supplies back to the duplex and then driving them all back, the two of us crashing from exhaustion late Saturday and waking up early Sunday, the cleanings and unboxings and rewirings and lifting and wadding papers back into boxes and mopping and vacuuming and organizing and reorganizing piles of trash all hanging over our heads, our desire to have it all over with superseding even our exhaustion. By evening Sunday, we were tired beyond description again, even speaking requiring too much energy by the end. But we slept wrapped up together, the sun coming up Monday on a house we live in and a relationship that is ours and ours alone again.

When I kissed Shannon goodbye to go to work her lips were especially soft and when she reminded me that Chloe is back tomorrow, she also reminded me that we're still alone tonight. She said it in a way that held great promise, and I smiled widely. I think we both wanted each other to know the past is the past.

I'm still kind of processing the pics. I tell myself Shannon was just drunk and pissed off. I tell myself not to think too hard about the hours they spent together. I try to let it go.

But her face on that one photo is sticking with me. She was standing, so she wasn't asleep, but that's what her face looked like: the peace I see when she's sleeping. But even more so. If I am seeing what I think I see...where was that coming from?

The rest of it I'll just have to live with. The good news for me - for us - is the whole thing ended early, and it was Shannon who made that happen. Best case scenario. So, when I come full-circle back to the pictures, maybe I shouldn't be so troubled. Would I trade those pics for her fucking him a bunch more times? I definitely would. Maybe Shannon knew what she was doing all along: she knew the pictures would push him over the line, cause him to do something she could use to end this all without us looking like we went back on the deal. Maybe.