The Mistress (7 page)

Was she really doing this? Was she really drinking heavily in front of two children while she was supposed to be cooking their dinner? Was she really emphasizing the very thing she was trying to hide: her utter insanity? Jesus, she had to be fucking doomed. Marissa was going to read it all over her
disgusting mistress face
.

“Kids, can you excuse Haley and me for a moment?” She spit her wine in a spewing ferocity when she heard the man’s voice call from just beyond the kitchen’s doorway. They cocked their heads to the right in unison as they looked at him, both with questioning looks etched across their faces. “Please,” he finished with a pretend plea. Finally defeated, they each shrugged and hopped down from their positions on the stools, a spot they had been glued to for the last twenty minutes.

After their small figures vanished around the corner to the living room, he stepped in – and she saw only darkness in his eyes. “You have got to calm down and gain some composure or I’m going to send you home,” he spoke to her, distant. Was he really trying to pull the employer act at this moment? She couldn’t believe it.

She looked at him, perplexed, anger starting to ooze from every pore. She was trying to understand his angle, but she wasn’t quite sure she was possessed the ability to do so. “Are you going to be able to keep it together?” he asked seriously, and surprisingly calmly. It was as if he were asking a child the question, and she didn’t particularly care for his condescending attitude

“Yes or no?” he repeated.

That was it. She was over it. She turned around, not wanting to face his smugness any longer. Stirring the stew one last time, she turned the stove’s heating element to a low simmer, threw the lid on, and walked away. It would have been much more dramatically effective if she could have gone as soon as he asked the question, but her employee instincts couldn’t allow her the privilege. She passed his stern muscular figure, making sure she shoved him a bit as she went.

“See you tomorrow, kids!” she called out, only glancing at their TV absorbed bodies for a moment before she fled through the living room as quickly as she could while still appearing normal. She grabbed her purse from the foyer’s floor and exited through that stupid overly expensive fucking door and had to practically force herself not to slam it
. Not in front of the kids.

“Haley!” she heard a female voice call out. She looked up. Fuck.
Fuck
.
Fuck
. Fuck! “Marissa!” she feigned a smile as the blonde ran to her. “I finished dinner and thought I’d head out early tonight. I made beef stew. I hope you guys enjoy it,” she finished desperately, hoping that she wasn’t being suspicious.

“Are you not going to eat with us tonight?” Marissa asked, seemingly a bit concerned. Haley always ate dinner with them.

“I thought I would let you all have a family dinner for once,” Haley responded, hoping it would convince her.

“Don’t be silly! You are family!”

Marissa grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards the door. She thought she had escaped. But, as life would have it – she didn’t. As life would have it. As life would have it, indeed.

~~~

T
he kids were confused when she came back into the house, but Preston acted as if nothing had happened at all. There were no indiscretions, there was no scene that caused her to leave, there was nothing. There was just him, his family, and the steaming stew in front of him.

Haley found herself zoning out of many of the conversations during the actual eating portion of the meal. Her mind was reeling, palms sweating, stomach twisting and turning, and the nausea was surely showing through on her pale face. She just wanted to leave and escape the torment of sitting amongst a family she had humiliated, wronged, and perhaps even ruined.

She had done horrible things to this family, and now here she was, breaking bread with them. She had prepared this meal for them, just like she did every other night, but this time the food was tainted with guilt rather than seasoned with love and gratefulness.

The clank of a spoon scraping at the bottom of a bowl pulled her back to her surroundings. She looked up, her vision steadied and her hearing repaired. However, once she actually heard who was speaking, she wished that she could have gone deaf in that moment – or at the very least zone out again.

Preston was talking about his day – at least, his version of the day. She wanted to throw her food at him and boo him out of the spotlight of the table’s conversation. But she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t. He had talked about waking up that morning and going on his run.
Truth
. He then went to get a cup of coffee with a co-worker of his to go over this quarter’s sales.
Lie
. Then apparently, to top it all off, he had prepared a fifteen page legal contract that could land his company a “huge sale”.
Definitely a lie
. She nearly snorted stew all over the table, wishing more than anything that she could mock him aloud.

He talked about Lucas coming home early, and when she looked over to the twelve-year-old boy, she saw him look down at his bowl, face red, eyes low. He held a look of embarrassment mixed with fear in his eyes, and a horrendous paleness seemed to sweep over his face. Haley felt bad for him, but also could relate. Her face likely looked almost identical throughout most of the meal.

Marissa looked to him too, just as worried as Haley, if not more so. Preston didn’t seem to divulge why Lucas had come home; hell,
she
didn’t even know. She assumed that he told his father when they had their discussion, but she could never be sure.

“What’s that about?” Marissa asked, still looking at the young boy.

“Honey, not now. We’ll all talk about it later,” Preston interjected, seemingly doing his best to deviate the conversation to another path.

They all continued to talk, but Haley seemed to question herself. She wondered whether, if she had been less preoccupied with Preston as of late, she might have known what was wrong with Lucas. She wondered if she had been separating herself from them purposely. Although she and Preston had only just committed the sin of adultery starting last night – she had been developing feelings for him for quite some time. Perhaps her subconscious had more control over her and the situation than she had initially anticipated. Perhaps this all held a much greater meaning than she really ever imagined.

After dinner, Haley cleaned off the table and began the atrocious duty of doing dishes. One less chore she would have to complete tomorrow, she thought gleefully. However, she overheard a conversation that she really wished she hadn’t.

Next to the kitchen neighbored the extravagant living room, and in that room sat the married couple. She overheard their voices as they discussed possible vacation plans. Pet names were being uttered time and time again, sentence after sentence, and giggles and playful slaps filled the air. She hated feeling the way she did about it, but she began to roll her eyes. She wished that it would have brought her joy to know how well they had always gotten along, but it didn’t. It made her more concerned, in fact.

If they were happy, why would he stray? What did that say about his character? What was worse though – what if they really weren’t happy? Was he truly that good of an actor? If so, again, what did that say about his character? What did that say about what he felt for Haley? After all, if he was planning a family vacation it was obvious he had no intention of pursuing things further. Right? Confusion fluttered in again, and her head began to pound.

W
hat a great fucking end to a great fucking day. Fuck. That was her new favorite word. Nothing made her as fucking crazy as being in that fucking house all day with that fucking man. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The fucking nerve of that man. The fucking absolute nerve.

This was the longest day in the history of long days. It wasn’t the fact that the guilt almost ate away at her every time she breathed in the cinnamon aroma of the house – which was every breath, she might add, and it wasn’t even the fact that the beautiful children that she loved so much were going to be crushed if they should ever find out the truth, and it wasn’t even the fact that she had made
love
to him again.

Hell, it wasn’t even the fact that all the guilt and negative feelings came rushing back when Marissa called and he accepted the phone call. It was none of that. It was the fact that he fucking smiled, paraded around like the best dad and husband in the fucking world while she
served
them and waited on them hand and foot. It was the fact that she overheard Marissa talking about next summer and him engaging in the conversation as if nothing in the world was wrong.

What kind of fucking prick
is
he? You would think if a man was “unhappy” in a marriage, he would at least have the common courtesy to tell his fucking wife. The more she stewed on it, the more it simmered like tonight’s dinner, and the angrier she got.

Fucking day, meet your fucking doom
. Haley growled as she threw herself violently into the bed, not even bothering to turn to her back. She hoped, with any luck, that she would suffocate and not have to bear another moment of her agonizing fate. Groaning into her pillow, she clenched her fists, which were rested above her head. She drew them back and pounded the mattress below her, imagining that it was Preston.

Breathless and arms tired from the continual pounding, she stopped. She didn’t understand the anger, which seemed to pour from her depths. Lately, she couldn’t really understand anything that she felt. What was that old saying? “If walls could talk”? Being there, on the verge of tears, she wondered what that wall might say. Would it tell all of the secrets we all hold so dear? Would they tell her secrets? Would they tell Preston’s?

Time for bed.
She tried to remind herself to stay calm. Her body formed into the comfort of the bed, and before she knew it she drifted off to sleep. Part of her hoped that when she awoke, this would have all been some sort of a strange, detailed, exotic dream.

~~~

T
he sun shone in through the spaces of the blinds and gleamed into her resting eyes. It was already Saturday morning. Rolling over to her stomach and extending her arm, Marissa felt for Preston’s flesh. Only she didn’t find it and instead felt only the smooth silkiness of the Egyptian cotton sheets. The warmth, still radiating off the surface gave her solace in knowing that he had not been up for long.

She leaped out of bed, refreshed and ready to continue the conversation they had started last night. “Honey?” she sang as she rounded the corner and skipped through the hallway. Only she didn’t find him in the living room, which was very strange, given it was Saturday and he was usually piled on the floor with Sophie – their eyes glued to the television. This time, there was no Sophie. There was no Preston. There were just empty spots on the floor.

Just when confusion began to sit in, she heard noises coming from the kitchen. She investigated as she crossed the living room and reached the kitchen’s entryway. She stopped dead in her tracks, utterly amazed at what she was witnessing. There they were.
All three of them.
Not just Preston and Sophie, but Lucas as well. They were all individually undertaking their own tasks, but together were preparing a meal. They were cooking!

Lucas was chopping up bananas and strawberries while Sophie whisked together ingredients to make what looked like some sort of pancake batter. Preston, in his pajama bottom clad body, was controlling the stove, and for the first time in a long time – they were all laughing together.

“Who are you and what have you done to my family?” Marissa accused in jest.

“She’s up! Oh no!” Preston comically screamed. To make his theatrics even more dramatic, he grabbed his chest, fell to the floor, and began to shake uncontrollably. To many other women he’d be seen as immature for acting to seize in jest, but Marissa found it amusing. All of a sudden, he made an audibly agonizing groan and ceased his antics at once. He then proceeded to stiffen his body, his eyes frozen open, tongue sticking out; he was playing opossum.

“Funny,” Marissa responded, stepping over his limp body. “Good morning,” she continued, giving her children each a kiss on the top of their heads.

“Morning, Mom!” both kids giggled in unison.

“Morning, Marissa!” Preston screamed as he leaped from his laying position to a standing one. He grabbed her from behind and hugged her suddenly. She giggled as he squeezed her ticklish spots around her rib cage.

He continued tickling her and poking at her ribs. Laughing uncontrollably, she lost her balance and nearly fell to the tile below. Preston grabbed her, launched her above his head and over his shoulder, and took off with her. He ran through the house with her in tow as if she were weightless – which she knew, all too well, was not true.

He hurriedly jogged through the living room, turning ‘round and ‘round as he went. She was getting dizzy, but admittedly she was having a blast. She felt him shift and his shoulders tighten. What was he doing? Just when she was about to ask, he slapped her ass animatedly and galloped as if he was riding a horse. Which was ridiculous, really.
He
was the one carrying
her
.

Before she knew it, they were in their bedroom. He threw her to the bed, which she had only just left, and pointed down to her. “Stay here; we’re making you breakfast,” he demanded with a laugh. She loved his laugh. His eyes and his laugh were so innocent at times, each holding a child-like presence that she had always been fond of. Sadly, she didn’t witness it as much as she would have liked, but doing so at this moment made her feel something intense.

“Come here!” she demanded as she pulled at his arms roughly. He collapsed into her and she whispered in his ears, “Be quick... but I want you to fuck me. And I want you to fuck me good.”

“The kids,” he began to protest, but when her lips crashed against his he fell into a lust-filled trance. He kissed her back with a passionate fierceness.