I put my hand on her arm. “I didn’t see it as being stuck in a relationship. Not even then. But I was starting to listen to Aubrey, other girls, my fraternity brothers, the football team, hell, even some coaches, telling me to release steam by fucking around. They said everyone did it, and that college was the timefor that. They talked about me having the rest of my life to settle down. You know the drill.”
She nodded. “I remember you asking me once if you’d thought we’d met too soon. That was you having doubts about us. I asked you about it, but you wouldn’t admit it. Why?” The hurt I saw in her eyes killed me.
“Because I was selfish and wanted both,” I admitted. “I wanted to be free to experience different women. But I wanted to keep you, too.” I ran a hand through my hair and looked up at the stars. It was brisk out, but not cold. I was actually enjoying the breeze. It had gotten too warm in the country club. “My therapist says that’s where I made my biggest mistake. He says I should have made a choice. I could either have kept you and ignored all the talk, all the women, Aubrey, and so on. Or, I could have broken up with you. Trying to have everything—thinking Ideservedeverything—was the height of arrogance. But it took me losing everything before I began to see exactly what I’d done.”
“Thank you for telling me that. When did you start cheating with Aubrey?”
“Have you ever heard of emotional cheating?”
She nodded. “That’s where you spend more time with a woman other than your girlfriend or wife, tell them things about your relationship, confide in them, and just basically give more of yourself to the other woman, right?”
I stared at her. “Wow. You really do know what it means.”
“You’re not the only one who went to therapy, you know. My therapist and I talked about emotional cheating. I wasn’t completely sure that had been going on with you and Aubrey, but I suspected it had. It was hard to figure out all of your lies without talking to you, but I assumed all those times you told me you were with guys from the team or your fraternity weren’t true. I’m sure you were with Aubrey, right?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Most of those times.”
“So, you were having an emotional affair for months.”
“Yes. I had never heard of it before therapy. But that started with her long before anything physical happened. I’m not sure exactly when the emotional affair started, but I think it was towards the end of our first semester. We had a class together and she introduced herself to me as one of your friends.”
Sadie snorted. “We were never friends.”
“I didn’t know that yet and by the time I found out, I was already friends with her. Anyway, she suggested we take more classes together the next semester. I agreed, thinking it was no big deal. Then second semester started and class turned into getting a coffee or lunch afterwards, and that led into the next class, which led into dinner, and before I knew it, I was spending most of my time outside of practice with her.”
“Why’d you hide it from me?”
“You saw us together in the dining hall and warned me that she was into me. You told me that she went after guys that were in relationships just to break them up. I didn’t want to hear it. I’d become invested in her. You treated me like I was still the same old Harrison I’d always been. But Aubrey treated me like a superstar.” I shrugged. “It makes me sound like a douche, but I liked it. A lot. It was addictive, and I didn’t want to give it up. So, that’s when I started lying. I would tell you I was out with guys from the team or from the fraternity when I was really hanging out or eating with Aubrey.”
She nodded, the expression on her face hard to read. “I was afraid of that, but I didn’t want it to be true.”
The light breeze blew her hair around, and I was tempted to touch it. I clenched my fists to keep myself from doing it.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes and looked straight out over the river. “I need to know when the physical stuff started.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have…”
“I need to know.”
My heart was beating too fast. I drained a glass of wine and poured another. She held her glass up and I poured more for her, too. “Nothing physical actually happened until a few weeks into summer semester. But I think I knew it was leading there for at least a month or so before that. I… started having dreams about her. I usually jacked off to images of you in my head, but I started seeing her instead. I should have ended the relationship way before any of that started happening, but Idefinitelyshould have after that. I should have ended the friendship and stayed the hell away from her. But I didn’t.”
I cast a quick glance at her to see how she was taking things so far, but she wouldn’t look at me. She just drank her wine and listened.
“What I’m about to say is not to blame Aubrey. She was an awful person, but I made the choice to sleep with her. I could’ve said no. And I didn’t. She was incredibly sexual around me, though. She was always talking about sex. Always. She even let one of our professors fuck her knowing I was standing in the hallway watching it happen.”
Sadie made a shocked sound.
“I know. I should have run for the hills then, but I didn’t. It was like I was entranced by the unknown. I became almost obsessed with what it would be like to be with a different woman. I couldn’t get it out my head…”
“And she helped keep it there by talking about it.”
“Yeah. So, a couple of weeks after you left for summer break, she came to visit the frat house.” I told her what had happened with my fraternity brother and then Aubrey following me upstairs. “That’s the first time it happened.”
“Didn’t you care that you were cheating on me?” her voice was small.
“Yes. After the first time, I took a shower and washed myself over and over again to try and get any trace of her off me.”
“Then why did you do it again?”
