Delete your messages immediately if your loved ones know your password
Love, Jealousy and Denial
Home Spun Tales
Long day at work, longer thanks to the two-hour meeting to plan tomorrow’s marathon meeting to plan for next week’s in-house training, followed by the quarterly personnel assessment, followed by an hour-long meeting with the head of IT about his future, which, he realized, no longer included his promotion to systems manager.
Followed by a stop at Drop Kick’s commiserating with his work pals who were more interested in stuffing dollar bills into g-strings than listening to Seth whine about his lousy day. Three Manhattans into the evening, he tossed a twenty onto the table and left his friends to ogle silicon until they passed out in their seats or sprang for lap dances.
The lights were out when Seth entered his house. He glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes after midnight. (Perhaps it was six or seven Manhattans.) He didn’t call out in case Delilah was already asleep, and, sure enough, when he tiptoed into the bedroom he spotted her under the covers with the pillow pulled over her head.
Three Manhattans into the evening, Seth tossed a twenty onto the table and left his friends to ogle silicon until they passed out in their seats or sprang for lap dances.
He dropped his shoes into the carpet shag and loosened his tie. The cell phone on his night table dinged to signal a new text had arrived. Without thinking, he grabbed it and opened the home screen. The text read, “I told you this would be hot,” and Seth clicked the link to a porn vid with Delilah tangling naked with a red head. Worse, he knew that red head from Delilah’s PTA committee. Jill Rogers.
He closed the browser. “I can’t believe my wife is sleeping with Jill Rogers.” Only then did he realize he didn’t think that sentence. He’d shouted it, and in that instant he realized he wasn’t holding his phone. He dropped it onto the bedspread between them like a burning cinder, only to realize it wasn’t Delilah’s phone either.
Jill threw off the covers, reached for her phone, and said, “Excuse me,” which was the moment Charlotte stepped from the bathroom wrapped in a towel.
“Don’t tell me, Seth. You’re jealous we didn’t invite you.”
See Me Saturday
I’ll be doing two virtual readings for the Flint Horror Collective’s April Ghouls’ Day Con. Eight hours online and then everything disappears. See you there.
Find my books
Wry noir author Phillip T. Stephens wrote Cigerets, Guns & Beer, Raising Hell, the Indie Book Award winning Seeing Jesus, and the children’s book parody Furious George. Follow him at Phillip T Stephens.
