The Pattern

The first time I saw my wife naked in front of another man, it was an accident.

That's what I told myself, anyway. We were at a backyard barbecue hosted by one of her coworkers, a kid named Derek who had a pool and a grill and not much else. Kim had worn a sundress, yellow with little flowers, the kind of thing that looks innocent until she bends over. She'd had four margaritas by the time someone suggested a game of chicken in the pool.

I was talking to a guy about his truck. I don't remember his name. I remember the sound of Kim laughing, that specific pitch she hits when she's had enough to drink that her volume control stops working. I turned around and she was on Derek's shoulders, and her dress was gone. Not pulled down. Gone. She'd apparently decided the game required fewer clothes, and Derek, being twenty-four and single and built like a guy who spends his weekends at the gym, wasn't going to argue.

Her bikini top was still on. Barely. But her bottoms were somewhere in the grass, and from where I stood I could see the pale curve of her ass, the dark triangle of hair between her legs, the way she had one hand tangled in Derek's hair for balance. She was laughing. Everyone was laughing. I stood there with a beer in my hand and felt something I didn't have a name for then.

It wasn't jealousy, exactly. It was warmer than that. More complicated.

That was two years ago. Since then, there had been the Christmas party where she flashed her tits to a circle of guys in the parking lot because someone dared her. There was the camping trip where she went skinny dipping and didn't bother to cover up when she got out. There was the time she got drunk at a karaoke bar and let a guy she'd just met put his hand up her skirt while I watched from across the room.

I could have stopped it. Any of it. She would have stopped if I'd asked. That's the thing people don't understand about Kim. She's not reckless. She's not out of control. She's a thirty-four-year-old woman with a degree in communications and a job she's good at and a mortgage and a retirement account. She doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do.

The question I kept circling back to, the one that kept me up at night sometimes, was whether I wanted her to stop.

I was still working on that question when she came home from work on a Thursday in October and told me about the party.

"Ryan's having people over Saturday," she said. She was standing at the kitchen counter, still in her work clothes, a gray pencil skirt and a white blouse with the top two buttons undone. She was scrolling through her phone. "You remember Ryan. The tall one with the beard."

I remembered Ryan. He was twenty-six, worked the cubicle next to Kim's, and had a habit of finding excuses to touch her shoulder when he walked past. He'd been at the Christmas party. He'd been one of the guys in the parking lot.

"What kind of party?" I asked.

"Just a thing. His roommate's out of town, so he's got the place to himself." She looked up from her phone and smiled at me. That smile. The one that knew things I didn't. "You should come."

"I wasn't invited."

"You're my husband. You're always invited." She set her phone down and walked over to where I was sitting at the table. She straddled my lap, which she hadn't done in months, and put her hands on my shoulders. "Come with me. Please. I'll behave."

"You always say that."

"I always mean it." She leaned in and kissed me, slow and deliberate, her tongue just barely touching my lower lip. I could taste the coffee she'd had on her break. "And even if I don't behave, you like watching."

I didn't say anything. She wasn't wrong.

She kissed me again, deeper this time, and I felt her hips shift against mine. My hands found her waist, then her ass, and she made that small sound in the back of her throat that meant she was thinking about something else entirely now. We didn't make it to the bedroom. We barely made it to the couch.

Later, when she was asleep and I was staring at the ceiling, I thought about what she'd said. You like watching. She'd never said it out loud before. We'd never talked about it, not directly, not in those words. It had always been something that happened around us, something we both pretended was accidental or incidental or just the way Kim was after a few drinks.

But she'd said it. And I hadn't denied it.

Saturday came faster than I expected. I spent the day doing yard work, trying not to think about it, and failing. Kim spent the day getting ready. I heard the shower run twice. I heard the hair dryer. I heard her moving around the bedroom, opening and closing drawers, and when she finally came downstairs I understood why it had taken her two hours.

She was wearing a black dress. It was short, ending well above her knees, and it was tight in a way that made the fabric look like it was holding on for dear life. The neckline plunged. The back was mostly missing. She'd done her makeup darker than usual, smoky eyes and red lips, and her hair was down, falling in waves past her shoulders.

"You look..." I started.

"I know," she said. She grabbed her purse and her keys. "Let's go."

Ryan's apartment was on the third floor of a building that smelled like weed and laundry detergent. The music was already loud when we got there, some kind of electronic thing with a heavy bass line, and the door was open. Ryan met us in the hallway.

"Kim!" He pulled her into a hug that lasted a beat too long. His hand rested on her lower back, just above the curve of her ass. "You made it. And you brought..." He looked at me like he was trying to remember my name.

"Mark," I said.

"Right. Mark. Come in, come in." He stepped back and waved us through the door. "There's beer in the kitchen, liquor on the counter. Help yourself."

The apartment was crowded. I recognized most of the faces from other parties, other nights. Derek was there, and a few of the other guys from the Christmas party, and a handful of women I didn't know. The music was too loud for conversation, so people were shouting or leaning in close or just nodding along.

Kim disappeared into the crowd. I got a beer and found a spot against the wall where I could see most of the room. It's what I always did. Find a corner, nurse a drink, watch.

She was good at this. She moved through the party like she owned it, touching arms and laughing at jokes and letting her hand rest on shoulders and chests. She knew exactly how much to give. A flash of thigh when she crossed her legs. A glimpse of cleavage when she leaned forward. The suggestion of something more.

I watched her talk to Ryan for a while. He was standing too close, his body angled toward hers, and she wasn't backing away. She was smiling at something he said. Then she touched his chest, just a quick brush of her fingers, and he looked like he'd won something.

An hour passed. Maybe two. I was on my third beer and starting to feel the edges soften when Kim appeared at my side.

"Having fun?" she asked.

"Watching you have fun."

She smiled. "You're not drinking enough."

"I'm drinking exactly enough."

She took my beer and finished it in three swallows. Then she took my hand and pulled me toward the hallway. "Come on. I want to show you something."

She led me past the bathroom, past a bedroom where a couple was making out on the bed with the door open, and into a smaller room at the end of the hall. Ryan's bedroom, I assumed. There was a bed, a dresser, a window that looked out over the parking lot. The music was muffled here, a distant thump.

"What are we doing?" I asked.

She closed the door behind us. Then she turned to face me, and I saw it in her eyes. That look. The one that meant she'd already decided something and was just waiting for me to catch up.

"I want to play a game," she said.