Innocent Text Messages Pt. 01

This is my first story. I know that this is a tough crowd to please, so I am expecting a fair amount of feedback that may not be pleasant. I will say that this story is loosely based on a situation that a friend of mine found himself in. Constructive comments are always welcome. Stupid ones that add no advice on ways to get better will be ignored. There is no sex. This is the first chapter, so let me know what you think.

Brian: U should've cum over my apt 2day.

Selene: U know I can't do that.

Brian: Y not?

Selene: Bcuz my husband would wonder where I am

Brian: Make up an excuse

Selene: Y would I take that risk? What would be worth trouble?

Brian: The best sex U ever had

Selene: U R pretty sure of yourself. I wonder if it's all talk

Brian: Only 1 way 2 find out

I can't even begin to describe the feelings that whirled around in my stomach after reading those texts. The English language does not contain enough words to even come close describing the tsunami of pain, anger, and emasculating torture that comes with the knowledge that the woman that you love desires another man. The tidal wave crashed my beach and left my soul desolate. I felt hollow, like something had been ripped from my chest. As I sat there on the bed holding my wife's phone, my hands started to tremble.

I hadn't realized that tears had welled up in my eyes until they started to fall down my face. I sat there frozen, unable to will my body to move. I don't know how long I sat there, because time became distorted. My marriage had flashed in front of my eyes. My daughters' births, all of the anniversaries, the birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's day, all of those days in the 10 years that I'd spent my life married to Selene flashed before me in a span of seconds.

I heard the shower water stop running in the bathroom that was attached to my master bedroom. Time once again resumed as I was brought back to the present. Just on the other side of that door I saw my wife toweling the water off of her body in my mind's eye. Normally, that thought alone would have me harder than Jeopardy clues, but at the moment my lust had been eroded. I knew that I had a good 5 minutes to collect myself and process what I just witnessed.

Tonight started off like every other night. I came home from work at 5:30 pm like I always do. Selene (my "loving" wife) wasn't home yet. This didn't set off any alarm bells or anything. She usually doesn't get home from the hospital until about 7ish.

I walked in my house through the side door that led to the kitchen. I went to the refrigerator, grabbed a soda, popped it, and proceeded to the living room while enjoying that wonderful fizz that tingles the throat.

My niece, who was 15, was talking on her cell phone while absently surfing though the channels. Chelsea is the only child of my older sister. She is a really good kid. She has that typical attitude that teenagers have once they realize that they know more about life than their parents do. Other than that, she's great. She doesn't do drugs, drink, and she doesn't feel it is her obligation to cure every hard on in the neighborhood.

I observed her as I came in. She was very animated and excited as she spoke into her phone. That all changed when she saw me. Suddenly, everything was hush hush. She whispered quickly that she had to go and ended her phone call. I laughed to myself as I realized that I may have walked in on one of her "top secret phone conversations". The way she and her friends talk on the phone in whispered tones, you would think that they were government spies involved in espionage. For some reason teenagers think we actually care who kissed whom under the bleachers because she is a total slut.

"Hey Chels! Where are the girls?" I asked her. Before she could answer, I heard a loud rumbling overhead as a pair of little footsteps came tearing down the stairs. Once at the bottom, a little girl launched herself in the air at me, having complete faith that she would not hit the ground.

"Daddyyyyyyy!" My youngest Gabrielle screamed as I caught her and scooped her up. She hit my cheek with a couple of pecks from her small lips and wrapped her arms around my neck. I knew the next words that were going to come out of her mouth before she even said them. It was the same words that she always said to me when I first get home. "I'm hungry."

My oldest daughter, Cassandra, quietly walked down the stairs and shuffled over to me before she wrapped her arms around my leg. "Hey Daddy" she said softly. Though she wasn't as flagrant as Gaby was, I could tell that my Cassy missed me too. It's funny how they are so completely different.

I gave Chelsea the okay nod that let her know that she could go home now. I slipped her the money I owed her for the week and thanked her. "Bye Uncle Tony." She said as she kissed me on the cheek. My older sister only lived a block away, so I didn't have to drive Chelsea home. I heard the side door close and I knew that she was gone.

I didn't feel like cooking, so I ordered two pizzas. The girls ate greedily and went about the rest of their evening. When Selene walked in the house at 7, I was sitting on the couch in front of the TV and working on my laptop. I guess worked on my laptop may be stretch (unless you call Candy Crush hard work). She walked in, gave me the standard "hello" kiss, kicked off her shoes, and sat next to me. I moved my laptop to the side, grabbed her feet, and massaged them as we engaged in the light conversation about our days. After about 10 minutes of that, she disappeared into the kitchen to claim her slices of pizza.

Sounds like a normal night, right? It was. Just like every night that preceded it. This was our comfortable routine. The rest of the night remained the status quo until the girls were in bed and Selene was in the shower. I heard her phone buzzing on the night stand and the chime that indicated that she had a text message. Without thinking, I grabbed the phone in mild curiosity. I figured it was probably her sister or one of her friends. Imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of a guy's rock hard dick and the words "This is what u missed out on".

After a recovering from the punch to my gut, I went through the rest of the texts from this number, who was in her contact list as Brian. The ones that I mentioned in the beginning were the ones from earlier today. By the time stamp, it looked like these texts were being passed back and forth as she was driving home from work.

Those were the latest ones, but there were many, many more. Her phone holds a capacity of 200 texts for a conversation. Their conversations filled that 200 limit, and they only dated back a week. It was obvious that these two texted each other often. Their comfort level indicates that they have been doing it for quite a while. Going through the texts from the past week, I was beginning to see that this sexual banter was the norm in their conversation. I couldn't fully read all of them (there were 200), but one other conversation stood out to me. The texts from a couple of days ago, and went like this:

Brian: It was hard watching u walk away from me when you left the cafe

Selene: I know it was hard. I could see that.

Brian: Could u really see it

Selene: Of course I could. U can't hide something that big! ;)

Brian: U could hide it

Selene: U r sooooo bad!

I sat there trying to gather my wits about me and jump start my brain into thinking clearly. I only had a few minutes left to process this. When that bathroom door opens, the rest of my life, my marriage, hell, my sanity, depends on what the fuck comes out of that bitch's mouth.

The door opened and Selene came out. The steam that filled that bathroom made it seem like she was just a dream. She had one of my T-shirts on and some cotton panties. For a second, I forgot about the texts messages. I swear to God that Nike should pay her for making their T-shirt look that good.

She nonchalantly walked toward the bed. I don't know if I just emitted anger or what, but something made her stop. Her eyes got big and her face took on a look of horror. Her mouth was hanging open in a state of shock. I realized that she wasn't looking at my face. She was looking at my hands. More specifically, she was looking at her phone in my hands.

We sat there in grim silence as the reality of our situation settled in the room. She knew that I knew. Neither of us spoke. I looked into her eyes and I saw them darting from the phone to my face. There was no mistaking what was on my mind.

Since she wasn't going to say anything, I decided to start this off. I just dove right in with the most obvious question.

"Selene, who's Brian?"

The question came out in a surprisingly clear, even tone. I even sounded calm. It was an exact contradiction to what I felt though. It hung in the air as her lips trembled.

"Ummm, he's just a guy that I work with. Why?"

Why? Did this bitch really just ask why? Now, on top of being hurt, my intelligence was insulted.

"Why the fuck do you think Selene?" I spat at her. The calmness was gone, replaced by a voice filled with mirth and venom. I wasn't exactly yelling, but the harsh tone let her know that the ice she was on was paper thin.

"He's nobody special. He's just a nurse that works with me." She still hadn't moved from her spot. She stood frigid and stiff. Her face told me what was going on inside of her. It told me of her fear and guilt.

I scoffed at that. "Nobody special." I repeated sarcastically. I stood up and paced around the room with the phone in my hand. Nobody special. As I paced back and forth I felt the rage well up inside of me. It was bubbling up from my belly. I could feel it coming up into my throat, like puke. It was white hot, and it began to consume me. Finally, before I knew what I was doing, I threw the phone with all of my might in her direction.

I wasn't trying to hit her. I swear to God I wasn't. I didn't intend throw the phone at her. Well...maybe subconsciously I did. I was pretty pissed.

Luckily for the both of us, it sailed past her and hit the wall behind her. When it finally landed on the floor, it was in three pieces.

She looked back at her broken phone and then turned to me. For the first time in our lives, she looked at me with genuine fear.

"B-baby. You need to calm down. Tony, we need to talk before you do something we both will regret." She said in a pleading voice as she held out her hands in front of her. She slowly backed away from me. She looked like the kid who is about to get a spanking pleading his case.

"Selene, you better stop fucking lying to me and start talking. Who-the-fuck-is-BRIAN?!" I asked again. I emphasized every word of the question as I closed the space between us. By the time I spit out his name, I was yelling. She shrank back in fear and burst out into loud sobs. I didn't reach out to comfort her. I just sat there, glaring at her and waiting for an answer. If she was afraid of me, then she's a lot smarter than she was when she sent those texts to that asshole.

"I-I'm not lying!" She said in between gasps. "H-He's a nurse that works with me on my floor." I did notice that she conveniently chose to exclude the "Nobody Special" statement from her answer.

I took a step back and sat on the bed. I had to get control of this. I was shaking with rage. There was no way I would get answers like this.

I took at breath, closed my eyes, and pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and my finger. I heard Selene still crying in the background. I gathered my emotions and regained control of this conversation. After a few seconds, I decided to try a different approach.

"Are you fucking him?" I asked. My voice was once again even.

It took her a few seconds for her to stop crying when she heard the question. She looked at me with eyes full of tears as the words sunk in. Then, I saw her face turn into one of disbelief. "OMIGOD! NO I'M NOT FUCKING HIM!" The words spilled out of her mouth with disgust, like they tasted bad. She actually had the nerve to look at me incredulously, like I was completely absurd for asking her that.

I studied her reaction. She appeared genuinely shocked by my question. I'm not going to lie. A feeling of relief swept through me. I actually believed her. There is no way she could fake that initial reaction to a direct question. Selene is a very smart woman, but not that good of an actress. Besides, the text "Only 1 way 2 find out" indicated that they hadn't actually fucked. Her reaction bought me over on that ONE point. But there was no way she was getting off of the hook that easily.

"Then explain the text messages that I just finished reading."

Once again, the guilt was back in her face.

"Me and Brian...we just flirt sometimes to get through the night. Its har...I mean difficult to get through the night sometimes." She caught herself remembering the text about it being "hard" to watch her away. This was not lost on me. "It just helps the night go faster. It's completely innocent. We don't mean anything by it."

"Selene, if it's so innocent, then why was he asking you to come over to his place for the best sex you've ever had? " As the words came out of my mouth, another horrible thought came to me. "Do you sit and tell him about what we do in the bedroom? Do you sit with him and trash me?"

Once again she got the look on her face of disbelief. Then she came running over to me, grabbing my hand.

"Baby no! No, I would never disrespect you like that! Please, you've got to believe me!" Her words poured out of her, pleading with me to believe her. She kissed my hand and placed it on her cheek. I felt her tears in my palm. "Please Tony! I'm so sorry."

I snatched my hand away. She looked so hurt when I pulled back from her. The pain in her face would have had me moving heaven and earth to take it away. 15 minutes ago. Now it filled me with a sick pleasure.

"Do you honestly think that sending another man messages about how big his dick is respectful to me? You already disrespected me Selene!" I was back to pacing the room. "Why would he assume that being with him would be the best sex you ever had?"

"They were just innocent jokes Tony! I'd never even seen his dick. We were just playing. It was completely innocent. He knows that."

I looked at her in stunned amazement. This woman was the smartest woman I know. There is no way that she is this stupid.

I crossed the room with a quickness that made her flinch. She may have thought that I was coming after her, but I was going past her. I picked up the three pieces to her phone and saw that the only thing that came apart was the battery compartment. I prayed to God that the phone still worked. I needed to poke some holes in this explanation.

She watched me put her phone together as tears streamed down her face. I couldn't tell you what she was thinking. At that moment, I didn't care. My only concern was getting this phone to turn on.

God must have been listening, because when I put the phone together and turned it on, it booted right up. We sat there in silence as we waited. She looked at me through the tears with eyes of uncertainty. I'm sure she was confused that I was no longer focused on her for the moment.

Finally, I was able to get to the text messages. I pulled up the last text and the picture that set this whole thing in motion. Since this one came when she was in the shower, she hadn't seen it yet.

I thrust the phone out in front of me so that she could see it. "If everything is so innocent Selene, then why is he sending you a picture of that big dick that you seemed so infatuated with?"

As she looked at the image on the screen, her hand went to her mouth. She gasped and the tears were really streaming now. She didn't even take the phone from me. She closed her eyes and hit it out of my hand.

"I don't want to see that anymore. Get that out of my face!" She cried as she ran out of the room.

I sat back down on the bed and thought. Well, she didn't fuck him. That much I believe. But I couldn't really feel good about that. Even though they hadn't fucked YET, I couldn't shake the thought that if I hadn't found out about it, they may have done it. She says that it was completely innocent, but that's a bunch of bullshit. Those were not innocent texts sent between two people who were not attracted to each other. Those texts were an escalating form of foreplay between two people who were harboring illicit thoughts. The fact that she mentioned his big dick let me know that she AT LEAST THOUGHT ABOUT IT. Then, this asswipe decides to up the ante and send her a picture.

What if I hadn't found it? How would she have reacted when she saw it if I were still in the dark? Would she have reacted with the same level of disgust, or would she have been turned on? Would she have sent him a picture of her?

Selene never came back upstairs that night, and I didn't go down to see her. I just curled up on the bed and fell into a shallow, fitful sleep. I had more questions than answers, but I was too drained to do anything about it now.