Once, my husband went away on a business trip. Whenever he was gone, I made it all about me. I spent the day at the salon, hit the spa for a massage, and went on a massive shopping spree. When I finally got home, I poured myself a glass of Pinot Grigio and started trying on all my new finds. As the bottle emptied, my mood only got better. In those new clothes, I looked absolutely fantastic.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I was surprised; it was a bit late for visitors.
Opening the door, I found my neighbor, Mark, standing on the porch. He asked if my husband was home, and when he found out he wasn't, he started stammering through an embarrassed explanation. His wife was away at their summer cottage, and while heading home from a night out with friends, he'd managed to lose his keys, his phone, and his wallet. It clicked then that he'd also had a fair amount to drink that evening. We've always been on great terms with our neighbors, so I invited him in. We spent the next half hour calling Uber support and locking his credit cards. He couldn't get a hold of his wife, but she was due back the next morning anyway. Eventually, everything was sorted—a driver found his things and promised to drop them off in the morning.
I decided to let him crash on the living room sofa; I couldn't exactly kick the man out into the rain in the middle of the night. As I was making up the bed, I leaned over to smooth out the sheets. That's when it hit me: I was still wearing this tight, incredibly short cocktail dress I'd bought that day, and the price tags were still dangling off it. I straightened up and glanced back. Mark was staring at my long, tanned legs with pure admiration. Flustered, I wished him a good night and retreated to my bedroom, swapping the dress for a pair of plaid flannel pajamas and firmly shutting the door.
***
Falling into my soft bed, it became glaringly obvious that I'd had way too much wine during my fashion show. My head was spinning. I drifted off and started dreaming: the ocean, palm trees, white sand, a light breeze. A gorgeous, bronzed man was swimming naked in the turquoise water, then he walked toward me and began kissing my neck, my shoulders, my back. It was exhilarating. I turned my face toward his, and we started kissing. At some point, the haze lifted enough for me to realize this wasn't a dream at all. I was actually kissing someone! Opening my eyes for a split second, I saw Mark, but I squeezed them shut again immediately, and he morphed back into the man from the beach. I had neither the strength nor the desire to stop.
Leaning back against the pillows afterward, we stayed silent for a while, neither of us knowing what to say. The wave of passion was instantly replaced by a cold wave of sobriety.
I finally broke the silence. "What the hell, Mark? We're neighbors!"
I went to take a shower. When I came out, he was asleep on the sofa. I was shaking as the weight of what we'd done set in, and I marched over to wake him up. He left early that morning—to go to a friend's or a relative's house, I wasn't sure. I even had to lend him some cash since he'd lost everything during that crazy night. Talk about a night of losses! He lost his phone, his keys, and his money, and I lost my integrity as a married woman.
***
A week later, we ran into each other outside the apartment building: me and my husband, Mark and his wife. We were all joking, laughing, and chatting about the weather and our weekend plans as if nothing had happened.
Only the goosebumps on my back threatened to give away my part in the crime. But under my dress, no one could see a thing. My husband stood a little to the side, lighting a cigarette. The ornate smoke drifted upward, curling into strange, whimsical shapes that looked exactly like a pair of deer antlers. I felt a mix of hilarity and shame. My husband, the cuckold!
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