“I stopped things from going any further. Told her that I was drunk and so was she, and that it wasn’t going to happen. She stayed though. Her friends were in the bedroom with Wes, so we slept on the pullout sofa. That’s all we did, I promise.” I just stared at him, as if kissing another woman, having her publicly sit on his lap, or so obviously taking her to his room wasn’t enough? Hell, they slept together in the same damn bed. I was married to the man and hadn’t even slept in the same room with him before. Didn’t he realize what he was saying to me? How much it hurt, even if we were only together as a business arrangement? “The next morning, when her friend woke her up to show her the pictures, and she saw the caption about me being married, she freaked out.”

“Did she not notice the ring on your finger?” I asked, and don’t think I’m stupid, after I came home from Florida and checked into the hotel, one of the first things I did was go over those pictures with a fine-tooth comb, and one thing I did not see in them was my husband’s wedding ring. He had taken it off at some point. So, no matter how sorry he pretended to be, the man had gone out that night expecting to fuck up. Otherwise, why leave his ring behind?

The guilty look on his face as I asked that question told me everything I needed to know. “I was angry,” he commented. “You wouldn’t even speak to me before I left.”

“I didn’t speak to you, that’s true. I also didn’t cheat on you at any point, even though I had every reason to.”

He hung his head as his shoulders slumped forward. Then, I guess he felt compelled to finish his story, despite not directly answering the question I’d asked. There was no need for him to confirm or deny that his wedding ring hadn’t been on his finger, and he knew it. “Venla was so angry. She had no clue that I had been married. I know this, because she screamed it at me. She said she never would have agreed to seduce me if she thought it was to ruin a marriage. She yelled, threw things, and then apologized to you - through me - for her part in everything. That’s why her friend did that interview, to make sure you knew that she apologized and would never have done it if she had known about you.”

“Well, good for Venla. The fact that she didn’t know still means you’re the prick who was out there pretending you were single. The least you could have done was to be honest with her upfront that you were married, but that you didn’t give a shit about the wife you left at home. Then it would have been her decision to make.”

“You say that like she didn’t get paid to set me up. She had to know something bad was about to happen, if someone paid her to sleep with me.”