Out of Town Out of Mind

The last night he allowed himself to return to the hotel lounge, but only after working out and showering. By the time he arrived, several of the attendees were already incapacitated enough that conversation was easy to avoid. He simply walked away and they thought they were done. He said his goodbyes to a few people whom he actually was interested in speaking with, and made his way back up to his room to get a head start on packing for the trip home.

ST was leaving his room as Keith got to his door, and for the first time, they exchanged words in person. They shook hands nervously, and coyly passed a few comments about his former guest. Keith chided him for stealing his seat that first night, and ST apologized, then they both had a good laugh about the whole situation. Keith assured him that it had worked out quite well for him, after all, but not as good as it had for ST! ST told him that he was looking forward to getting home the next day to his only true love, a golden Lab named Zeus. Seems that he had his heart broken too many times by women in the past, and now would only allow himself to get attached to animals, since they were infinitely more loyal than humans. Sometimes, however, he needed the kind of attention that only a woman could provide him with, and he was generally able to get the only thing he needed or wanted from a woman several times a year at various locations he travelled to for his outfitting business. He was an avid outdoorsman, which explained how and why he was in such good physical shape and had such good stamina and recovery time with their friend. Keith wished him continued good luck in case he didn't see him again, both in his business and personal endeavors, and ST reciprocated by telling him he hoped he got his marriage issues worked out. Seems the ring on his finger and the guilty look on his face were a little obvious and gave him away. Keith realized he needed to get that straightened out before facing his wife tomorrow night.

Just before Keith entered his room again, he asked ST whatever happened to his guest. He told him she had left early that morning. She began to have second thoughts and guilty feelings about everything they had done, and began weeping to him about her broken marriage and what her husband would do if he found out what she had done. He was not at all interested in getting involved in her drama and problems, only her body and in using it however he could. Once he had that, it was time for her to go, he explained to Keith. So, early yesterday morning, he walked her-sobbing-downstairs, through the lobby, and out to a waiting cab to take her "slutty, pathetic ass" as he called it, back to wherever she came from. He had no idea if she was a local or where she was from, and didn't care. He got what he wanted, and had the pictures and videos to prove it. He asked Keith if he still had that web address or if he needed to give it to him again, then told him it should be up sometime before the weekend.

They parted ways, and Keith found himself feeling a little sorry for her. It was obvious that she had gotten what she wanted, and so had ST. So had Keith, for that matter. But it apparently triggered feelings in her for her husband and marriage that she may have thought were already dead. In the aftermath, she must have regretted her choices. A part of him hoped she found her own redemption somewhere, sometime. But most of him was concentrating on his own future. He had to get his guilt under control if he was to have a chance at rekindling his own marriage. He sincerely wanted to work things out and make their lives better, and that wouldn't happen if his wife found out that he had willingly accepted a blowjob from a stranger through a hotel wall!

As he repacked all of his luggage except the bare essentials that he needed for the next morning, his mind was working overtime to alleviate his guilt and justify just how and why he must take this secret to his grave. In the end, logic won out and convinced his heart that carrying unresolved guilt and this secret was his penance for what he had done, and was necessary for the future he was now envisioning to come to fruition.

He checked his phone before bed in case he missed a message from his wife, but it was once again empty. That last night's sleep was a little less satisfying, as he was looking ahead to the stress of the next day's travels and meeting up at home with his wife. No matter what, he knew that the next night and following weekend were going to be filled with deep conversation and painful realizations on both of their parts, but they had to get through it to get to the future he hoped they both wanted.

After waking up and readying himself, he grabbed something light from the hotel breakfast bar before going to his room for the last time. He gathered his bags, gave the room a once-over to make sure he hadn't left anything, and checked out at the front desk. He hopped on the first available airport shuttle with some of the other attendees, and a family with young kids who looked like they needed a vacation, instead of being on the tail end of one.

His check-in at the airport went smoothly for a change, the flight was smooth, and he quickly relocated his car in the parking ramp. Back in familiar surroundings, the events of the week began to seem like a movie he had watched, or some memory from long ago that had no bearing on his current situation. He breathed deep, now knowing that he could close this chapter and begin a new one as soon as he got home to his emotional sanctuary.

His wife wasn't expecting him until later tonight, so he decided to drop off his suit at the dry cleaner around the corner from their house, hoping that may make it available for the following week. The woman at the counter asked him if he wanted to pick up his wife's dry cleaning since he was here, and he felt strangely proud in doing so and eliminating an errand for her.

He parked his car in the garage and was happy to see his wife's safely tucked away as well. He was looking forward to showering off travel grime and reconnecting with her for the next two days. He set his carryon bag and car keys on the entryway table, intending to unpack it later, and walked into the kitchen and looked down the hall toward the bedroom. Seeing the light on, he hollered out "Hello beautiful!" which, after she screamed from surprise, she responded to with "Well, hey there studly?! What's gotten into you? You haven't greeted me like that in a long time! I like it!"

They were off to a great start already, and he smiled to himself at the thought that things were already starting to get better. He set his luggage down in the living room and went down the hall to properly greet his wife. They hugged each other tighter and kissed more lovingly than they had in a long time, and they both seemed to sense that there was something different going on. He was secretly hoping she didn't know just what that was, or why he was being so different.

He went into the master bathroom and began stripping his clothes off to shower, continuing their greeting conversation through the doorway. He told her he had stopped at the dry cleaner for himself and picked up her dress, hoping he saved her an errand. She didn't respond right away, so he said it again. "Thank you. I have another errand to run tomorrow though. My cell phone must have gotten lost somewhere between the airport and the hotel the conference was at right away, so I haven't had any way to communicate since Sunday night." Well, that explained why he couldn't reach her! He offered to use his phone to activate the GPS tracker and hopefully find where hers was lost, but she was sure that the battery was dead by now, or that it had been snatched up by someone. There was nothing important on it anyway, as she was more responsible that way than him and always backed up her phone before going on work related trips.

He stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off. He didn't bother to get dressed, just wrapped a towel around his waist, hoping that she would want him to be naked soon anyway. He wandered down the hall looking for his sexy wife, only to find a note on the table telling him that she had gone to the grocery store quick to get a few essentials for breakfast tomorrow and to pick up a pizza for now. He was famished, and pizza sounded perfect for that.

He sat down on his recliner and turned on the TV for background noise, then fired up his laptop. He realized that with all of the week's unusual activities, he hadn't checked into any social media in over three days. There was a daunting number of notifications, but he wasn't in the mood to sift through them all just yet. He opened another tab in his browser and stared at it for a moment waiting for a thought to pop into his brain for a website to distract him and waste some time. He remembered the slip of paper that he had stuck in his wallet that ST had given him. He retrieved it and typed in the address. He had to register to get access, but it was a free site, so he went ahead and chose a username and logged in. He clicked through some of the most recent posts; most of them were of couples playing together and getting off to the idea of sharing their bodies and sexual acts with strangers on the web. Videos that were self-titled with things like "My slutty wife", "My hot wife", "Wife and I while kids are at Grandma's"; generic titles like that.

There was a new post titled "Hotel Cheater Slut Wife" that was divided into three separate submissions. He clicked on the first one and began thumbing through the pictures. Jackpot! There she was, "their" friendly dark haired slut wife, happily sucking on cock. There were dozens of pictures, all of them showing her from the point of view of the man who was enjoying her, but never overtly showing her face. Ass up in the air with her pussy lips stretched around his cock; on her back, legs high in the air, with her arms covering her face while his cock filled her asshole; a close-up of cum leaking from her swollen pussy; another of cum dripping from her ass; a series of shots of her in front of the glory hole, some of them backside views of her sucking what he knew to be his cock, some of them from the photographer's viewpoint, with his cock deep in her ass; a couple showed her tits covered in cum; then several more obviously taken at different times of her pussy or ass filled with cock or cum. The last couple shots that he looked at began to show a little bit of her face as she was dripping cum from her lips and cheeks, and one video with her tongue sticking out as she stroked him and made him cum directly into her open mouth.

Feeling her through that glory hole was one thing, and it was incredible. But, seeing her in action was much better, and the things she was willingly doing made him insanely jealous of the man in the pictures! Keith had wanted to have sex with a woman like that his entire life! His wife and he had a pretty good sex life over the years for the most part, but this woman was very strongly and very comfortably in touch with her inner slut, and not ashamed of it. The possibilities that came to mind if he could have a woman like that?! But, he loved his wife and if that was not to be, then that was that. Hopefully in time, they could get to that point, but there were more important issues they had to resolve before then.

He had been staring at the screen fantasizing for a couple of minutes, not really paying attention, when the kitchen door opened signaling his wife's return. He minimized the browser window, not wanting to close it until he had a chance to save everything he wanted from the site. He took his laptop upstairs to the office across the hall from the bedroom and went back to the kitchen to help with the groceries. They quickly put them all away and sat down with the pizzas and a couple cans of pop. Once they had some food in them, what little nervous energy they had settled down into pleasant conversation about their respective weeks, and he began to feel afraid that he might accidentally reveal his secret. He chose his words carefully and tried to steer the subject toward the future. Before he could, the phone on the wall rang and she answered it. It was her mother, so this was going to take a while. He took the opportunity to check in to his social media on his phone and just get it over with. Thirty minutes later, she was still talking to her mother, and he was getting bored and sleepy.

He remembered that she had lost her phone, and trying to be a good husband, he took it upon himself to use the phone app to try to locate hers, on the off-chance that it could still be found. Amazingly, it was still online, so either it was on a charger or it was sitting somewhere undisturbed since Sunday and the battery was still okay. He set his phone down while it narrowed the search and went to get a glass of water. When his phone dinged to let him know that his wife's phone was located, he picked it up, intending to call it and see if whoever answered could get it returned to them.

He was just about to dial when he noticed where her phone was. It wasn't on the east coast, where her conference had been; it was in the southeast, near where he had been.

He couldn't believe it! Obviously, he had messed up something and was actually viewing where his phone was earlier in the week. He decided to just call her number and take a chance on someone honest answering it. It only rang twice before a woman's voice answered. She was a bartender, and this phone had been left there almost a week ago. His wife must have misplaced it at the obligatory meet and greet when she got to her conference. The bartender was glad to finally locate the owner and have this phone out of her way. He gave her his address to send it to, and she promised to get it sent out the next day. He offered a reward and asked where he should send it to.

His heart sank. He had called his wife's cell phone, and the bartender who answered, who had been holding onto it for days, was named Roxy. The same bartender who he had been ordering drinks from all week! His mind ran through all the possibilities: had he accidentally taken both phones, then left hers at the bar, not noticing because he always had his phone? Was it possible that another traveler had taken it and somehow ended up at the same place as he had? There were several possibilities, none of them seemed as plausible as the one he feared the most.

But, why was his wife at the same hotel as he was, and why didn't she come to see him? She finally got off the phone, and he asked again how her conference went. "In Boston, right?" he asked. "Yes. In Boston. How was your conference in Vegas? You seem to be handling the time change alright." Was her response. "No, I was in Atlanta, not Vegas." Her eyes briefly widened before she questioned him again, saying "I thought you were going to Vegas?" "Nope, Vegas is in June. This one was in Atlanta." Again, eyes widened, and this time she stared at him, trying to read his face for signs of surprise. He was doing the same to her, and when she began to turn a little pale, he knew something was amiss.

She covered her mouth in shock, and he sidestepped around her to the dress he had picked up from the dry cleaner earlier. He had seen this dress before, but it had been a while. It looked eerily familiar, but he couldn't say anything for sure yet. He ran down the hall to the bedroom, and dumped her suitcase on the bed. He rifled through the unworn clothes until he found what he was unknowingly looking for: a long, black wig.

His heart sank. This could not be. There was no way. This must all be a dream. This has to be some kind of misunderstanding.

He heard his wife's voice behind him, trying to explain. It was almost incoherent rambling, but what he could make out was that her conference had been changed at the last minute to a different city; she couldn't contact him because she lost her phone; the wig was from a role playing team building exercise.

He pushed past her and across the hall to the office. A tap on the touchpad brought his laptop's screen to life, and he hesitated for just a second to catch his breath and compose himself before he opened the browser window.

She was standing to his left and just behind him, sobbing and still trying to explain away what they were both realizing was painfully true.

He scrolled through the pictures, slowly at first, then faster, until he got to the ones showing her partially obscured face. She began losing it then, crying uncontrollably and moaning "no no no no...". he stopped on the one that had caught his eye earlier, though at the time he didn't realize why. There, along the woman's hairline, an inch or so from a load of cum that was dripping off her lips, was a stray telltale lock of blond hair jutting out, proving the dark hair on the woman in the picture was a wig and providing the final piece of damning evidence. But he didn't need it. He couldn't move, and neither did she. He felt the tears well up from somewhere deep inside him that he hadn't known about before. It was a place inside him of profound pain and incomprehensible darkness. He felt like his heart had been torn out and twisted inside out, then tossed haphazardly back in his chest.

He slowly turned to look her in the eye, and no words were necessary. The agony on her shamed face, the sorrow in her eyes, told the story that her trembling, paralyzed lips couldn't. He didn't need to hear anything from her: he knew her story. He knew why she did what she did. He knew everything that had happened, and how it happened. He had known it all from the first moment he saw her across the bar. He knew it by all of the sounds emanating from the hotel room next to Keith's those three long nights. He knew it from the note she left on the hotel door, neither of them knowing who they were communicating with. He knew it by the words of the man whose room she had been staying in when they met in the hall that last night. He knew it by the pictures and video that were now available for all the world to see.

The only thing he didn't know until that moment, and wished he didn't know now, was that he was the husband who neglected his wife. He was the man who unknowingly helped her justify her actions of those three days to herself. He was the man involved in the marriage that was destined to fail. He was the husband riddled with guilt over accepting an anonymous blowjob from an unknown married woman in a hotel room several states away from home. He was the man who didn't care about the "slut" or what she was doing, nor did he care what she felt about it all. He was guilty of his own indiscretion, one which he reasoned could be more easily forgiven because it occurred in a moment of weakness, foolishly taking advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity. She had more than ample opportunities to stop, but she went back repeatedly and often over the course of several days. He was the man who knew that, if that woman's husband ever found out about what she had done, there was no way their marriage could be saved. He was that husband.

He was not the man who could ever forgive what he now knew. He was not the man who could stay in a marriage with a woman who did what the woman in that hotel had done, and done repeatedly. He was not a man who was optimistic enough, or foolish enough, or naive enough, to maintain a shred of hope that this marriage still possessed something that could be saved.

They had gone too far. They had let their marriage slowly die, and then in a fantastic fury in a non-descript hotel over the course of a few random weekdays, she and he unwittingly beat their marriage to its bloody demise until no hope for reconciliation could possibly remain.