DITW 14-3: The Good Of Evil

Josh pulled away again and this time she didn’t seize him or hold him back. He wasn’t angry, he was exhausted, enervated. He sat up, looking away from her. “Kimmy, I . . . I don’t want to live a life like this where I can have a conversation like this one. I can’t believe I’m sitting in my bed with my wife and my wife is assuring me the baby that’s growing inside her is mine. This conversation should never happen. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. That’s the whole point of getting married.” He hung his head and sighed. She couldn’t think yet how to console him. How to assure him she loved him. Thoughts of sharing her video of Devlin diminished. Thoughts of the two of them snuggling up and laughing at Devlin together, of Josh getting aroused by what he saw, of them making love all night, were fading fast. And that was only the first step in revealing to Josh what she’d done. It scared her to sense that wedge between them again, that dividing force. 

She said, “I know you love me—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No,” she said, “I know you love me, but I know you can love me more. I know how I can show you how I love you.”

“What about what’s happened? You want to pretend it didn’t.”

“I don’t. I confessed, Josh. I told you what I did. I want you to see how I might think—”

“That what I liked it? That I wanted it?”

“If you’re here with me now it’s because you’re not sure if you didn’t like it.” This time she met his gaze and held it and Josh didn’t look away. She kept the connection until Josh wavered, doubts flitting at him, getting him blinking as if he stood on the threshold of a bat cave at dusk. At last he looked away.

She said, “And I know you tell yourself that you never wanted it, that the wanting of it is a function of manipulation. That Devlin did it, or that Amy did it. I know I did it. I did it only because I hoped if you liked it even a little it would save me in your eyes.”

She waited, watched Josh’s eyes travel the bed space between them until finding their way to her again.

He said, “That sounds pretty honest.”

“That’s honest. I want you to like it because then I’m not the devil.”

Josh stared at her, thinking. But he didn’t absolve her of her own condemnation. Didn’t babble in effusive amelioration how she wasn’t the devil. The reflection of her badness in her husband’s reaction tightened her chest. Residual angst, abhorrence of harming another, general proclivities of moral goodness held so much of her past in place. Wickedness had liberated her from fear and from harm and shown her success and mastery over others she would have shrunk from in another life. Josh was the damper and the foil. Without Josh would there be a limit to her wickedness? And without Josh would there be wickedness’s thrill at all?

“You’re the reason I want to do anything, Josh. You’re the man I want in my life. You’re the man I want in my bed. You’re the man I want to be the father of my baby.”

Josh’s features quivered and he hung his head again. She feared he would cry but he didn’t. He stayed in the posture of mortal pain for a long time. She said, “I hope that means even something little to you.”

He looked up, eyes wet. “It does. It means everything. . . . I don’t know what you want, Kimmy. I’m not going to throw my arms around you and everything’s fixed. I want what you’re saying. I want it with every part of my being. But it’s not easy. What I watched, how I know . . . How you lied to me. How you betrayed me.”

She ran a hand over her hair, slumping, her own eyes drifting. “I’m terrible,” she said. 

“I don’t need you to say anything like that. That’s not why I said it.”

“I’m not going to lie anymore, Josh. I told you that. I am terrible. I did awful things to you. And even though I know they were awful and that they hurt you . . .”

He looked up, seeing her stalling. “What?”

She licked her lower lip. “I enjoyed those things.”

Josh’s soft features pinched tight in disbelief.

“Hear me out,” she said, touching his wrist. “I want you to like it. Okay? I’m being honest. All of it, Josh, all of it—not Devlin, that’s not what I mean. I mean all of the betrayal, the lies, the . . . Fuck. The ascent. It turned me on. I hate that I hurt you, but I want to be honest. I liked it. I still like it. I’ll never hurt you again, but I can’t help how it turned me on.”

Josh’s scowl loosened to something like a silent howl, and she stopped him. “Don’t,” she said, almost like a warning. “Don’t take what I just said and run with it. Don’t take it and use it against me. Don’t say anything. Think about it and don’t say anything, Not now at least. I handed you a weapon and I know you want to hit me over the head with it as hard as you can, but please wait for a minute or two.”

Josh hid his face in his hands and turned away.

“I didn’t want to trick you into liking what I did. I wanted to lure it out of you because I hoped it was there. If it’s not there, Josh, it’s not there. And if it’s not there, I’m horrified how it must hurt.”

He said, “And now you might be carrying Devlin Stone’s baby.”

Calm and collected, she said, “I asked you not to hit me with it.”

“I’m just supposed to take it,” he said, dropping his hands to his lap and looking out the apartment window.

“If you’d look in my eyes I could tell you everything you’d ever want to hear. I would tell you that not only do I love you, I will love you forever. I will make you the happiest man. I will make you a father. I will buy us a house. I will make our dreams real. I will crush your enemies. I will destroy anyone you ask me to. I know in my heart that I am everything you ever wanted.”

Josh chuckled once, still not looking at her, but hearing her claims and laughing at their face value. In time Josh would see those words weren’t empty and that he would reap the benefits of her devotion.

He quarter turned, saying, “I don’t want you to destroy anyone. I want you to be mine. My faithful wife. My partner. I don’t need you to say frightening things.”

“It’s too late for me to be faithful. Can you love me the way you did before?”

Josh said, “That’s up to you.”

And for that she had no comeback. There were no more vengeful claims to be made, no more promises, no more enticing whispers of lust and lechery. 

Josh said, “I’m going to get up now and I want to leave but I know you’ll say I’m fleeing and that I’m a coward.”

“I won’t say that. But you could stay. You could stay and we could eat dumplings and we could watch TV and we could have sex again.”

Josh stilled and didn’t get up. She thought he might stay. Eyes looking away, he said, “You went on the pill so you could have sex with Devlin. Is that right?”

She hesitated, biting her cheek. “Yes.”

“It’s not so easy, Kimmy. Not so easy to submit to the things you can do for me, the ways you can remind me of when things were better. Everything weighs on me. I don’t think we can be the same.”

She nodded once, feeling the bitter bile of anger. She said, “Can we be different?”

Josh nodded.

She said, “Maybe we can be close to the way it was, but a little different. Where I’m sorry for the things I’ve done and you’ve forgiven me and we’re almost the same.”

Josh nodded again. “We could do that. I would like that.”

She exhaled, surprised by the trembling of her breath. Hearing that relief conjured wet to her eyes and she sniffled. And now she worried Josh would think her emotional relief was an act. She bit it back and gritted her teeth.

“I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay with me.”

“I want to stay,” he said. “But it’s easy to stay.”

“It’s easier to run away,” she said. “I felt it, too, how easy it would be. I stayed and I’m fighting for you even though I ruined everything and it would be so easy to let it all sift through my fingers, let it all go away and blame everyone else. I can blame me, Josh. I can blame me and I can prove that I know I fucked up and I know I hurt you and I can humiliate myself through any ritual you want.”

“That’s not true.”

She shook her head. “No. You wouldn’t make me do it. I can say it because you’re too kind to humiliate me.”

“It’s not kindness. Your humiliation would be my own. I’m the man who failed you. I’m the man who lost you. I’m the one who couldn’t satisfy you, I’m the one you cheated on and lied to and manipulated. That’s the reason I wouldn’t do it.”

She was the one covering her face now, breathing into her hands.

He said, “What would you father say? Your sister?”

“Don’t, Josh,” she whispered. 

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. I hated saying it now. But it felt good to remind you.”

“You could crush me. If you did that you could crush me.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Kimmy.”

She smoothed back her hair, leaned to the side table and plucked up a tissue and held it to her eyes then wiped her nose. “It’s late,” she said. “You’re not going to a hotel and you’re not going to Meyer’s or wherever. Stay here. I can sleep on the couch.”

“And tomorrow?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “That’s up to you.”

He said, “Tomorrow you go to work for Devlin.”

Her lips slimmed. “I do.”

“And you’ll turn your phone off at lunch time again.”

Her scalp prickled and a shiver ran up her back. She said, “Don’t ask me about that.”

He stared at her for a long while then said, “I guess I don’t have to.”

She shook her head side to side, staring away and thinking of Devlin today and his thick cock in her hand and how hard Josh would get if he could embrace the worst of himself and of her. “I’m not ready to explain it,” she said. “But it was for you.”

“You went to Devlin’s. Correct?”

She looked in his eyes. “I told you I’m not ready to tell you, but please consider how you might not be ready to hear it, either.”

“More wickedness,” he lamented, voice low and admonishing.

She said. “Yes. I’m the wickedest.”

Josh chuckled, taking the opportunity to retreat. She wanted to scold him, point out his cowardice and how he used her sins as his own virtue. But she bit her tongue and let him rise from the bed.

He said, “I’ll sleep on the couch, you can take the bed.”