Hotwife Key Party: Willow (Chapter 3)

ONE MONTH AGO

After a long and stressful day on the set, he got home at ten at night to find Willow waiting up for him, watching TV in the family room of their Hollywood Hills bungalow, Bird Streets, view of silver-twinkling nighttime L.A. out the window wall. Willow looked cuddly and adorable, wearing her old comfy white college hoody, the Swarthmore logo fading after a decade of washings. Below the comfy top, she wasn’t adorable—she was pure sex appeal. She wore skimpy cotton shorts he could hardly see, just long tanned legs, shaved and gleaming, like she’d showered after work tonight and oiled them, then lay in wait for her husband’s return. But then back to cuddly: thick comfy socks to keep those tootsies warm, bright green and knee-high, slumping to a bundle around her ankles. Well, you couldn’t win them all.

Argyle and Pooter came running to greet him, out of their minds that daddy was home, never making it to him in the hallway, Pooter grabbing Argyle’s scruff, and their race to greet daddy turning into a wrestling match before they even made it—just like every night. He threw his keys aside and joined in, getting down on his knees and putting Argyle in a headlock. Pooter attacked his face with his tongue and Adrian broke up laughing, rolling around on the ground with their two tail-wagging Labradors snuffling and nosing and licking his face.

“Knock it off,” Willow said from the TV room. “I’m trying to watch Rock Hudson.”

He struggled to stand, pushing his dogs away and trying to encourage them to be good boys when he’d just rewarded them for being rascals, all three of the males of the household coming into the family room. “They started it,” he said and sat down at the opposite end of the couch, batting Willow’s feet to give him some room. She drew up her knees then waited for him to sit and put them in his lap.

“Huh, Pillow Talk,” he said, watching what she was watching. Both dogs visited Willow for a second before finding their dog bed spots to plop down and resume their TV watching. Then couldn’t help himself, saying the film name over again to the tune of the movie’s theme song, “Pil-low talk, ba-dum da-dum, pill-ow talk—”

Willow said, “Please, don’t.”

But he was on a roll. It had been a shitty day and this was a pretty damn nice homecoming. His beautiful wife, his boys, Doris Day. “A-nother night of hearing myself talk, talk, talk—”

Willow jabbed a heel into his thigh, trying to Charlie Horse him. He stopped, but only because he was laughing.

He grabbed and rubbed her ankles. “Hm, birth of the modern rom-com, if you ask me, established the romantic beats, the meet-cute, the black moment, the second act swell, the grand gesture…”

Willow paused the movie, eyeballing him. He liked to expound on writing theory because it was her least favorite thing he did.

She said, “How was work?”

“Look at me. I’m a wreck.”

“You look fine. You look how you always look.”

“Can’t help it if I’m unflappable. It was still a shitty day. How ‘bout you? How was your day? Any fights at the office?” The joke between them being Willow worked from home.

“Pooter threw up in the front hall.”

“Oh, is he okay?”

“Yeah. Just grass.”

In a seventies stoner voice, he said, “Mostly Maui Waui, man, but it’s got some Labrador in it.”

She looked at him, knowing he was doing a movie line, but not knowing the movie.

He laughed and said, “Cheech and Chong, babe. You gotta keep up.”

“Up in Smoke?”

In his stoner voice: “Yeah, my dog ate my stash, man.”

“So, what, the dog ate the guy’s weed and then he waited for the dog to poop?”

He shot a finger pistol at her and clicked his tongue against his cheek.

Willow said, “It wasn’t that kind of grass, man. Just regular Kentucky Blue. Pooter’s fine now. But that was the highlight beyond loading up on calls today.”

He groaned lustily. “Oof, loading up on calls? Stock market lingo turns me on.”

“If I make it to the end of this movie, you’re probably in luck.”

“You won’t tear yourself away from handome Rock to indulge me and my hot desires?” He guided her feet off his lap and got up from the couch, the boys lifting their heads to track where he was going.

“Watch it with me. Pour yourself a stiff one and—”

“Rub your feet,” he finished, back in the hallway and grabbing the stash of paperwork his assistant handed him when he’d gone onto the lot this morning for a hellfire day of writing and meeting and fucking phone calls with idiots. On the way back he splashed some sipping rum into two crystal glasses for them both, coming into the room with a glass in each hand and a wad of papers under his arm.

He passed Willow a glass before he sat down again.

She sniffed the rum. “What is this?”

“That’s that twenty-five year, the Demarara.”

“We got it in Dominica?”

“That’s right.”

Willow sipped it. “Ooh, Adrian, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Nice, huh? It was five-hunny at the duty free.”

“Holy shit.”

He took a sip and then put his glass on the side table, unwinding the elastic from around the bundle of papers and mail. Willow pressed play and resumed her movie, returning her feet to his lap, mindful of the work he had there, giving him some space.

A lot of mail to sort through, notes from an executive producer who he had already told he wouldn’t accept notes from, grumbling, irritated, throwing those to the side table. Then a stiff packet. An unmarked 8x5 manila envelope, which he opened to find another envelope, this one bright gold foil. Around it, his assistant had stretched an elastic band, holding in place a jotted note, reading: HAND DELIVERED.

This was hand delivered to his office? Very fancy. Very hoity-toity.

On the screen, Thelma Ritter was tipsy in the elevator, sass talking the operator. The envelope was curious. Delivered by hand? Who delivered it? He turned the envelope upside down and found out why it was heavy. A thin golden card slipped out into his waiting hand. He held it up, turned it over to see both sides. It was metal, and he was no metallurgist but damn, if this wasn’t a sheet of real gold. In the movies, a guy would put in between his teeth and try to bend it, but he had no idea what that would tell him.

Willow paused the movie, Doris Day looking over her shoulder, looking magnificent in 8K OLED. The only marks on the gold card were engraved on one side.

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO OUR HOTWIFE SUMMER PARTY

RSVP

W & J

RSVP how? He turned it over and now saw another small engraving near the bottom. Just a simple email address.

Then he read it again.

Wait a second.

It had been a long day and his brain was sluggish. Hotwife Party?

The hair at the nape of his neck prickled and his skin went to goosebumps. His heart started to race. Hotwife? A sex party. For hotwives.

Willow said, “What is that?”

And his first thought was to hide it. Right, hide a sheet of real gold after your wife saw it and tell her it was nothing. He came clean: “It’s an invitation.”

“Wow. Really? It’s metal?”

“It’s real gold, I think.”

“An invitation where?”

“Who are W & J?”

“You’re asking me?”

He read it again. Flipped it over. Looked at the envelope. His name was written on the front of the envelope in calligraphy and he hadn’t noticed that before because his assistant’s note had covered it.

“Let me see it.”

“Why?”

Willow said nothing and he looked up to regard her. She showed him a lazy, unimpressed, and determined look that told him he better damn well let her see it.

He passed it over, cringing with the dread of her oncoming questions.

She had trouble reading the engraving in the low light, angling the card one way then the other, then at last finding a suitable slant, her eyes narrowed to slits. She said, “What’s a hotwife party? What is that?”

He shrugged like he was as clueless as her, exhaling a raspberry. “Pshh.” But that was stupid. He knew what it was and Willow would google it and know in a second. So he said, “I think it’s like a sex party.”

“A sex party? What’s a hotwife?”

“It’s like a woman who is a wife, and uh…”

“Yeah, a wife I get that. It’s in the name.”

He couldn’t help laughing because of the guilt he felt. He was the one with this fantasy and she knew all about it, but he’d never uttered the word hotwife. Who the fuck sent this invitation?

“What’s so funny?”

“You know what? Nothing. I have no idea who sent this invitation or why, but… a hotwife party would be a party for swingers, okay? But only the wives are swingers. The husbands share their wives around.”

She didn’t get mad or blow up or laugh, she only made a confused face, looking again at the invitation. “So basically your fantasy.”

He threw his hands up. No sense denying it, they dirty talked it all the time.

She said, “It’s gotta be a joke, right?”

“Expensive joke, a lot of trouble. And what’s funny about it?”

“I don’t know. You show up with a boner,” she said, smiling, kidding with him, “and all your frat buddies are there ready to make fun of you. Maybe see if they can get in my pants.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“You know how I love frat guys, yeah. I’d do each one of them while they emptied a keg over my titties.”

“Now that’s funny. Maybe I’m the jokester. Maybe I’m pranking you, trick you into spite-fucking all my friends, then you find out you’re the butt of the joke.”

She flung the card back at him, betraying a small amount of anger she had over the surprise invitation. It his his arm and flopped on his lap. She said, “Okay, Adrian. Who did you tell?”

“Who did I tell what?” Though he already knew who it was.

“About our thing. Or your thing in which I participate.”

“Who did you tell, Willow?”

“When would I tell anyone about the dirty things you and I say when we’re getting off? Can you picture any of my friends interested in learning my dirty talk?”

“Frankly, yes. Courtney’s a real pervert.”

Willow didn’t deny it, but moved on. “Who did you tell, Adrian?”

He blew another raspberry. Stalling. “Uh, Hugo.”

Willow’s features pinched to a scowl. “Hugo, your manager?”

He threw his hands up in the air. “How many Hugos are in our life? How many Hugos do we know?”

She shoved his leg with her lime-green sock feet. “Adrian. What did you tell him?”

“Last November, when we were in Tokyo. It came up. Not me, I didn’t bring it up. Hugo did, but it was just a natural part of the conversation, and I said, yeah, I think that shit’s hot.”

“What’s hot?”

“Like, wife swapping. I said I was into it, but we didn’t do it. You and me weren’t into it or anything. He knows that. I was adamant.”

That was the truth, and Willow sensed it, and she couldn’t find something wrong with his behavior, sitting there trying to, rubbing her chin. She said, “Does Hugo manage a W and J?”

“My brain’s not working tonight, babe. This has knocked me for a loop.”

But then Willow did a strange thing. She sat up, drawing her feet to her butt, just long legs and a delta of cotton short fabric showing uner her hoody; her expression was pensive first then contemplative, her eyes off and to the right. Then she rolled forward until she was on her knees, knee-walked to him and straddled his lap.

He looked up into her beautiful blue eyes, wondering what was the message behind this strange reaction. “What are you up to?”

She patted his shoulders, drumming her long fingers, still contemplating. Then: she took the hem of her college hoody and pulled it up overhead, revealing she wore nothing underneath. She tossed the hoody so it fell over Argyle’s head, Argyle lifting his noggin and looking left and right, wondering why the lights were out.

Her breasts jiggled then swayed as she returned her hands to his shoulders. He was eyeballs to nipples with his wife’s perfect naked rack, her nipples beginning to rise from slumber. The cotton shorts she wore hugged her hips and ass, the waistband a thick panel that crossed her flat tum.

“What I’m up to,” she said, lips parting, sultry as fuck, “is finding out what you’ll do to convince me to go.”