“I just couldn’t bear telling you about this, so I wrote it all down. I’ll go into the bedroom and give you all the time you need. But Nick, will you promise me, please—if only for all the years we’ve been together—
“Will you promise me that you’ll come talk to me about this, before you decide what you’re going to do?”
He looked into her frightened, tear-stained face. “Okay,” he said. He took the papers and went into the living room to read them, hearing her crying behind him as she went down the hall towards their bedroom.
**********************
There was little in her letter that he didn’t already know, or had pretty much guessed. She’d met Pritzker at the seminar, and he’d singled her out and flirted with her discreetly. Then he’d gotten her email address and invited her out for what would appear to be an innocent business lunch.
Emily had been flattered, and he’d smoothly worked on her over a period of weeks. At some early point he’d suggested she set up a private email account “just so no one will misunderstand” their relationship.
She appeared to be telling the whole truth, as far as Nick could tell. There had been four occasions when she and Pritzker went beyond acceptable behavior for a man and a woman married to other people. The first of those had been a long, sloppy kiss, in the parking lot behind a luncheonette where they’d had coffee together.
After that, three make-out sessions in Pritzker’s car, parked in a little woodsy lane near a local golf course, where he’d gotten a little further each time. “Christ, it was like high school all over again!” Nick thought. The second time Jason had gotten her bra unhooked and his hands on her bare tits; the third time, she’d taken her blouse and bra off completely. He’d licked and sucked her tits, then finger-banged her until she came. Emily had played with his cock until he shot come all over his own shirt.
In between the letter’s desperate apologies and the affirmations of her love for Nick, Emily had been pretty hard on herself. “I was a complete fool” was the least of her self-condemnations. She freely admitted having been naïve about Pritzker’s attention at first, and then denying to herself how serious and wrong her behavior had been.
“I just lied to myself, Nick,” she wrote at the end. “I pushed all thoughts of my marriage vows, my responsibility to you and the boys, out of my mind. I acted as though this was nothing more than a little bit of flirting with a friend at a party. I am more ashamed than I can possibly put into words.
“And when you told me you were thinking about divorce it all hit me in the head—suddenly. How selfish, how childish I had been, to think that my desire for a little ‘excitement’ entitled me to fuck around behind your back.
“I didn’t fuck him—please believe me. But I won’t lie to you and say it wouldn’t have ever happened. It’s what Jason was after, and it would have happened, if your walking out hadn’t put an end to the whole thing.
“I’m done with him—forever, absolutely, no matter what. I never want to see that smooth-talking prick again, even if you never forgive me. Even if you divorce me. I’m just so very, very sorry that I didn’t get my head out of my ass soon enough to see what I was doing to us.