The Hotwife Key Party: Willow (Chapter 5)

She laughed and went to him, smoothing her hands on his chest. In her heels she looked down on him. “I knew you’d change your mind.”

Adrian held her wrists, still serious Adrian, his dark blue eyes on hers. “I’m not changing my mind, Willow. I just… I want to know what’s going on. Who is he to you?”

“Dragan? He’s nobody, Adrian,” she said.

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

“Yeah, but it’s nothing.”

“Tell me, Willow.”

Of course he would want to know. She’d been oblivious to how her husband overhearing that conversation would understand her relationship to a famous basketball player. A little selfish, but in the grander scheme, she should be afforded a small indulgence. She stepped back from Adrian, prepared to answer him, even if it deflated her evening with Dragan, maybe wrecking the mood. She started to speak, then laughed and hid her face. She stepped back further and braced herself against the wall next to the door to bedroom 9. “It’s so embarrassing.”

“You don’t have to tell me, but—”

“No,” she said. “No, I want to tell you,” then shook her hands out. “Okay. Dragan Kursar took me to my high school prom.”

Adrian’s perplexity was expected. He shook his head, trying to make sense of it, eyes squeezed shut. “What?”

“Yeah. Under the Sea was the theme that year, and seventeen-year-old Willow Sparks had a date to the prom with Minnesota’s hottest bachelor, a man ten years her senior. Can I head back in now?” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder to the bedroom door and mimed like she was ready to leave, knowing there was no way in hell this awkward conversation was over.

“Get back here.”

She cocked her head and showed him a warm smile. “I told you it was embarrassing.”

“He was a famous basketball player then?”

“Yes. He was a top draft pick, came from the Youth Leagues in Yugoslavia. He survived the war there as a kid. Comes here to America, drafted to Minnesota, multimillion dollar contract, and then, bam, out of the blue, he meets the girl of his dreams, a high school kid with braces and glasses.”

Adrian studied her. He’d seen pictures of her when she was a teen and knew that disaster, thanks to her mother and her mother’s penchant for family photo time. He also knew of some of her other ailments.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s not true. How did you meet him?”

“I, uh, I had a boyfriend who dumped me a month before the prom and, like I didn’t have a date to the prom anymore.”

“I wish I could have taken you.”

She showed him that warm smile again. “And, uh, remember the back brace?”

Adrian’s worry softened as he seemed to see ahead and into the third act of this tale, stepping forward and taking her hands.

“Two weeks before the prom, the doctors officially acknowledged I didn’t need to wear it anymore. So that was good news after bad news, and my Aunt Klara?”—kooky Aunt Klara who Adrian loved—“she had a friend who worked at the Target Center.”

“What’s that?”

“In Minneapolis, Adrian, the stadium where they play sports ball. Anyway, this friend of hers worked in the office that handles basketball and she told her of her poor niece’s plight, and how her niece is a huge fan of the new draft, Dragan Kursar, and how she doesn’t have a back brace anymore but no one wants to take her to the prom.”

Adrian made a face showing he knew the discomfort that might bring a vulnerable teen girl. “Klara didn’t actually say that?”

“Might as well have. Anyway, to make a long story short, Dragan’s agent gets the story, and he’s got a client from a foreign country where there’d been a war with American bombings, he sees the opportunity in it for Dragan to get in the city’s good graces and Dragan agreed.”

Adrian looked skeptical. “That sounds charming, to be honest. Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”

“Adrian,” she said, cocking a hip and furrowing her brow, bothered he didn’t see it. “I was tall and skinny and weird, I had braces and glasses, I was a teacher’s pet with perfect grades… I’d worn that back brace for four years. I was a stick. My knees were knobby.”

Adrian saw it now, showing sympathy in his eyes.

“I might have said all these things around the house about Dragan Kursar this, and Dragan Kursar that, and, yeah, to my mom and aunt it was obvious I had a stupid crush on him. Listen, my aunt is the kindest busybody a niece could have, but sending me off in front of all these peers who thought I was a nerd, dumped by my boyfriend and showing up with an obvious sympathy date? . . . The real worst was how I looked next to Dragan. He’s like a seven-foot-tall god, and I’m like this ugly duckling charity case.”

“Ugly duckling, come on…”

“I was though, Adrian. To me, I was. It just proved to me I was nothing to a guy like that, you know? I could fantasize, like teen girls fantasize, before I drift off to sleep at night, meeting him somewhere, and him falling in love with me because he sees what I am underneath the braces and glasses and back brace, but then I really go on a date with him?… I’d never felt smaller and weirder in my life.”

* * *

The words she spoke, though true and heartfelt, made him want to laugh. He didn’t know that Willow. He only knew this Willow in front of him. The same way he’d always known her. Beautiful, sexy, fit and capable. It was funny to think of her diminished. Funny to think of her as some gawky nerd the other kids called Gimp or Frankenstein or whatever clever calumny they could muster that would put a straight-A student in her place. But he would never laugh. He was short and of strawberry hair and slight build; he’d armored himself with charm and quick wit, but despite those armaments had suffered under bullies as well. He took his wife in his arms. Her eyes had shown the truth. She might be a red hot number now with those long legs and that sexy smile and that fit ass of hers; the caramel hair, the tan, the whole fucking package. But on the night in question, she was not even close. And he understood.

He uplifted her and humored her at the same time. “You must be pretty excited to show him what you look like now.”

“See, you get me.”

“I get you,” he said, chuckling, smoothing a hand in circles over her lower back. “Knobby knees, huh?”

“The knobbiest, Adrian.”

“Step back a sec.”

Willow stepped back, standing straight, fixing her hair, resting her hands on her thighs. “You look fucking hot, Willow. You look so fucking sexy.”

“I am sexy,” she said, convincing herself.

“Stand up straight, soldier.”

She wiggled in place like a snake and stood even taller.

He walked a circle around her. “He knows you’re hot, he can’t stop himself from seeing it.”

“No, he can’t,” she said. “I’m way too hot.”

“Way too hot,” he agreed, coming around to her front again. “He didn’t even recognize you.”

She smiled, and cocked her head, loving that he was playing with her this way. “He didn’t,” she whispered.

“And that’s a good thing. . . . Now, tell me: he didn’t get to third base with you on prom night or anything, did he?”

She snickered. “He came to the prom, we danced, he stayed for the meal, he took me home in a limo. A real gentleman”

“Did he get a smooch?”

She shook her head no.

“Fucking loser could have had you, but he left you vulnerable to this freckle-faced Harvard boy.”

“I’m a sucker for trash-talking Bostoners.”

“You were putty in my hand. I say thank god for that back brace. If your mother still has it I shall have it bronzed and rest it upon my office mantle. For, my young and beautiful Willow, if not for that back brace, that handsome skyscraper in the bedroom would have swept the woman of my dreams off her feet, and I’d have never met her.”

“Aw. No Adrian?”

“No Adrian in your life, babe. Just hoops and sneakers and I don’t know what else these jocks get up to.”

“Sports cars.”

“I could get one. I choose to drive my sensible sedan.”

Willow snickered, and she was melting under the heat from his tender care.

He said, “But with this trash-talking Bostoner, as you crudely deemed me, you get the best of both worlds.”

“I do?”

“This is like your prom night.”

“It’s a really dirty prom night.”

“It’s about to be. But, honestly, listen to me, soldier.”

She stooped a little, the parade ground pep talk dissolving, just a real married couple now. They looked in each other’s eyes.

He said, “Thank you for telling me that. I didn’t know what to think. I’m in the media room and I have W in my ear, teasing me, not helping at all. He said it was J’s idea to round up this man from your past.”

“This is some crazy sex club,” she said.

“You wouldn’t find this on the Strip. Gotta come to Malibu for this level of service.”

Then she kissed him and her lips lingered on his, cool and soft.

He said, “You’ve got me, and tonight you’ve got your crush.”

“I had pictures of him in my locker,” she said, disbelieving this man who’d she’d crushed on when she was a nerd was right now awaiting her return to their sexual chamber. He’d leave her alone about the date for drinks. He got it now. She wanted to tell Dragan a lot more than she had, but if she told him tonight, she might wreck the whole sex vibe they had happening.

“The real live Dragan Kursan is—”

“Kursar.”

“The real live Dragan Kursar is in that room waiting for you.”

“I can’t even believe it,” she said, smiling again, her eyes glassy like a school girl who just chatted with the captain of the football team.

He said, “And you thought you were doing this for me.”

“Hey,” she said, that smile still not leaving, “I am doing thos for you.”

“But now you’re into it.”

She gave him a non-speaking reaction, admitting that, yes, she was into it.

“You really are.”

“Only because you want it. But, yes, since you want it, and I’m doing it, doing it when it could have been anybody in that room, aren’t you happy I’m happy?”

“You really are happy.”

“It’s Dragan Kursar, Adrian.”

He smiled, studying her, showing her a face that let her know this was still at his command, that he could say no and dash bother their dreams if he wanted. He felt like a king. “I better not find a picture of him in your locker when we go to school on Monday.”

She shook her head no. “I swear, Adrian.”

“All right. Go get ‘em, tiger,” he said, not even believing such aloof words were streaming from his lips. Go get ‘em, tiger?

He even patted her bottom.

She laughed, knowing he was joking, stepping back in her studded leather shoes and taking both his hands.

He said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m doing this for you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What if I have my own request?”

“What is it? You’re not pulling me in there.”

“Oh, yes, I am, my freckled friend.”

“We talked about this.”

“Adrian, I’m doing this for you.”

“I know, but, it’s—” He looked over his shoulder, down the hall that would lead him back to the media room, W probably waiting there with more jibes and taunts. He looked back to Willow, gently leaning back with his hands in hers. “It’s too close.”

She eased her pull, saying, “I want you close. If it was some guy I didn’t know, I wouldn’t care, I’d prefer you weren’t there. But it’s Dragan Kursar. I want to be with him. And I want you with me.” Then in her pleading tone: “Please?”

“Willow…”

“He said you could come in.” She pouted, disappointed in him, luring him into it. The media room seemed so much safer. She said, “Do it for my birthday.”

“Your birthday’s like five months away.”

“Pretty please? I’m doing this for your birthday.”

His birthday was in two weeks. “Willow…”

She stopped pouting and showed him a serious face. “I really am doing this for your birthday, you know.”

He didn’t get it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m the one who got us the invite to this party.”