DITW 13-5: Reckoning

Devlin reared back and lounged in the chair once more, clapping a hand over his bare chest. “Agh . . . You got me,” he said, smirking the whole while.

Josh raised his hand to his mouth and blew imaginary smoke from the index barrel of his finger pistol, then holstered it back into his pocket. His eyes were long gone, beyond troubled, somewhere past forlorn. But he smirked, too, saying to Devlin, “Some day you will get yours.”

Devlin raised his eyebrows. “I think I ‘got mine’ today, Josh.” Totally naked, totally unabashed, lounging in the padded chair after she’d been dumb enough to fuck him in front of her husband. Penitence.

Josh’s expression right now stole away all the hope and promises he’d offered an hour ago, the two of the alone in the room. She understood, but hated him for it. Betrayal came in many forms. Josh’s sickly face tightened from loose and lost to firm resignation. He was done here—and she couldn’t blame him for that. He said, “You two think you’re so smart, so great. You think you’re better than everyone else.”

Devlin’s eyebrows twisted and he looked her way. She didn’t meet his gaze, didn’t want to be associated with him right now. “That’s not true,” she said, voice submissive, even nodding her chin down, eyes drifting to the floor.

“You cheated on me. You plotted behind my back.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

Even Devlin said, “It wasn’t like that.”

#

It was astounding that Devlin believed he could change gears, and trusting Josh would believe him, trust him all over again.

Agreeableness had led him down this dark path. Right from high school. If he’d retaliated against Devlin back then, where would he be now? Not in a hotel room with a finger pistol making empty threats to his wife’s lover. He didn’t know back then how much it could mean in his future. It had always felt like he was being the bigger man—turning the good-book’s “other cheek” and all—but now look where he was.

He regarded his wife, standing here in this sun bright hotel room, freshly fucked good and deep, barefoot in her expensive pants and her crisp white dress shirt with her nipples poking out double tents. Maybe for the first time ever he saw her for what she was. Evil. Manipulative.

He said, “Did you ever love me?”

Kimmy instantly went limp, as if he’d cut half the cable that ran up her spine. All red-eyed and teary, face harrowed, gravely wounded by such a terrible thing her husband could say to her face.

He followed it up right away with a clarifying angle. “I hope I’m not embarrassing you in front of your boyfriend.”

She cupped a long-fingered hand over her mouth, whispering loud enough to hear: “You’re just being cruel.”

He said, “Can you get him a fucking towel, please?”

She nodded and walked to the bathroom, pausing right in front of him, her eyes searching for his but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. She said, “I never stopped loving you once. Not even a little.”

He rolled his eyes. “How can I even...?”

Talking to her was ludicrous.

“Josh,” she said, firmly. He looked at her. “Don’t let this situation get away from us. Don’t let him direct the way you think.”

“You’re treacherous,” he said. “Get him a fucking towel, please. I’m sick of looking at him.”

Devlin stood up. “You’re taking this the wrong way, man. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

Was the guy fucking kidding? Standing there naked after he’d fucked Kimmy and Kimmy wanted to see their cocks together? To compare them? With his giant load on his stomach and runnind down his legs and his deflating donkey dick hanging between his thighs.

He didn’t answer, looked aside, out the window on the adjoining room where Kimmy had set up their pretend appointment for some guy named benny Chan. Kimmy returned, staying at his side like they were in this together throwing a towel to Devlin, landing it on the foot of the bed. “And here,” she said, tossing one of the hotel’s fluffy robes to join the towel. “Put it on.”

Devlin held out his hands at his thighs, like he couldn’t believe the direction the afternoon had taken. “There’s still fun to be had.”

Kimmy said, “Just, please, Devlin...”

Devlin swiped up the towel and ran it over his stomach and chest and down his legs, his dick wagging back and forth and making sticky sounds against his thigh flesh.

Josh couldn’t help making a disgusted sound, and he walked into the suite’s sitting room and turned his back on them, hands on the upright of one of the chair’s seat-backs. He hadn’t thrown up in the bathroom, but he’d come so close. He could taste the bile; could smell it in his nose. The non-stop eruption of his bully’s massive load all over his chest and stomach had turned him over. Kimmy had watched Devlin do that before. She’d done it in Cayman while her shit-head heel of a husband sat in a hot tub fantasizing she might be doing that very thing.

He’d pictured it before, or at least things like it, but could never imagine it would be so ugly, so disgusting, when bearing direct witness. How many times had he come inside Kimmy? How many times had he come in her mouth, on her tits? He shook his head in slow, deliberate wags, feeling an unstoppable rising flux of shame and hate and bottomless sorrow. He’d offered Kimmy Chang his heart and every ounce of trust he could scrounge. Kimmy started it. Kimmy never stopped it. She’d coaxed him, encouraged him, lured him to his darkest fantasies so she could entangle him, drown him in her own lust. Kimmy never stuck up for him, never put an end to this, just let it all happen. A boot forever stomping on his face, and she just watched.

Kimmy called his name, tender and hopeful.

“What?”

“Josh, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. You asked me to do this today, and I didn’t want to, and I definitely didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh my god,” he groaned on a long exhale. He had. He’d asked for it. He’d thought he could be bigger than the crime. Rise above it, walk through the throngs of writhing demons like some anointed noble, impervious to harm; cloaked in some kind of righteous armor. He was such a fucking idiot. He couldn’t trust Kimmy. He couldn’t even trust himself. What was left for him?“There were good parts to this,” Devlin said. “Those good parts were what I wanted. It’s what you want, too. Both of you. I don’t know why either of you made this so hard.”

Devlin was unbelievable, the only one in the room who couldn’t see the unsalvageable destruction in the moment. Josh said, “I never wanted this.”

“You dreamt about it.”

“Not once, Devlin. Not once.”

“Amy said you told her you did. When you were drunk.”

“You gotta be kidding me. You’re writing fiction now. I never said that to Amy.”

“She said you wanted to watch me mess around with Kimmy, give her what you couldn’t.”

Kimmy’s voice, quiet, but chilled with serious warning: “Devlin, don’t.”

“Josh, you wanted this. You asked for it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sure you did. You put your hand on my cock, remember? Held it in the tent at Tiffany’s.”

Now he turned, saw Devlin’s face in a mask of pleading, but his eyes sparkled with clear malevolence. All he’d hoped he’d only imagined that night at Tiffany’s was real. It was real, and he’d been manipulated that very night, sold a bill of goods he’d never ordered in the first place.

Kimmy looked unsure, onboarding this wild reveal, trying to determine whether it was true her husband had held Devlin’s cock.

Devlin kept up the charade, eyes innocent, still pleading for Josh to understand the situation. “You wanted it for Kimmy. Amy said you told her your dick was a useless little Double-A.”

Kimmy said, “He doesn’t have a small dick, Devlin, Jesus Christ.”

Devlin snuffled an indignant laugh.

“You both need to stop talking about my dick,” Josh said. He turned away from them and put his hands on the seat-back’s crest again, staring at the table, wanting to leave, knowing he should, but waiting for something. Not knowing what it was, but still standing here and taking it all, just the same.

Devlin said, “You need to go deep for a pregnancy to take.”

Kimmy gasped.

Red heat raced up Josh’s neck and his hearing went to muted cotton. His temples throbbed and his eyes bugged. It was all so clear. It was laid out in front of him from day one, and his passive malaise allowed it all to roll downhill until it picked up too much speed to stop. Kimmy had shared with Devlin the pain of her miscarriage. Had laid in bed with this man with the enormous dick and lamented her closest, most personal loss. Maybe held in his muscular arms. Shared something that big with him. Bigger than the death of her mother. They’d barely talked about it themselves. Just got up one morning done with crying and went back to doing what they did.

His hands went like claws into the padding of the leather office chair and squeezed them in shaking lumps. The chair was one of those big ones; comfy, chrome flashing, four wheels set on four arms and braced with a chrome racer. It was way lighter than he thought, but then again adrenalin flooded him with hate and rage and revenge.

Rage felt amazing. It felt better than total helplessness, powerlessness—the warm comfort of his everyday environment. Destruction loomed, large and wonderful on the horizon, like a beautiful glowing sunset, like when the asphalt was steaming on a burning day and you could see the waves coming off, hot and sultry. The chair went out of his grip, hurled with surprising force, and he didn’t think he’d ever forget the wonderful snapshot image of Devlin Stone’s face when he saw it coming and realized he wouldn’t be able to get out of the way. It was handsome horror. And, if he saw it right, recognition, like maybe some part of Devlin’s stunted neanderthal brain calculated his own responsibility in summoning the chair down on him at such a vicious and surprising speed.

Kimmy shrieked. The strangest sound Josh had ever heard. Didn’t think he’d ever heard her make a sound like that before. Not once ever in their lives together.

The chair collided with Devlin’s upper body, a mangling crash of awkward angles and sharp edges. Devlin managed to put up an arm in time, but one of the wheels landed a wicked knock on Devlin’s forehead. Devlin crumpled and turned away, the breath knocked out of him. Down he went, face first, naked under the flapping robe, the belt coning undone. The chair toppled onto the other more comfortable chair where Josh had sat and watched Devlin do things to Kimmy he could never do, all in the name of absolution, bounced off the cushy upholstery and landed on Devlin’s back. One of the wheels had knocked off in the prang and it thunked the window hard enough to make it sound like the glass had cracked. It bounced on the carpet and rolled around Devlin’s bare feet in a contracted circle before falling to rest.