Ashleys dunkles Erwachen
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Ashley’s Deal free porn video
Chapter One
Ashley and David were fighting. She was shouting at him, slamming doors, furious. Then she suddenly stopped.
Just stopped, and wondered what she was doing.
‘I don’t want us to be like this,’ she said.
David looked at her.
‘What?’ Ashley said. ‘You’re sick of me? This doesn’t work? This is where we decide it is actually too hard, after all?’
‘No,’ David said.
Ashley’s mood was brittle, still angry. She wasn’t really listening.
‘That’s how it works, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘With difficult relationships. With people like us. At the start we tell each other everything’ll be fine and we’ll make it, but after a while it gets hard so we just give up.’
‘Never,’ David said.
Ashley stopped. ‘What?’
‘I’d never give on you. On us. You give up if you like, but I’m not going to.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and stood there for a while. ‘Really?’
‘Not ever.’
She looked at him. He was completely serious, and suddenly she wasn’t angry any more. She couldn’t actually remember what they were fighting about.
‘We should stop this then,’ she said. ‘Old man.’
‘Tell me how.’
‘Fuck me for a start,’ she said. ‘Then we can see.’
He did. There in the kitchen, where they were standing. A year ago he wouldn’t have dreamed of sex anywhere but in the bed, but he was changing. Like she was changing too.
She leaned on the counter, wrapped her arms and legs around him, pressed herself against him as much as she could. She breathed in the smell of him, breathed the air out of his lungs, and held onto him until they were both done.
Then, pulling her clothes back on, she said, ‘One of these days sex isn’t going to be enough to fix us.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Should we worry?’
‘I don’t know. It’s working for now.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Old man.’ She kissed him and went to have a shower.
*
Ashley was twenty-three and David was fifty-one and there were times when that was almost unbearable.
She loved him. She really, really loved him with all that she had, but there were days when she couldn’t see how even that could be enough.
She was too young. In another ten years, the difference in age wouldn’t matter. At twenty-three, it meant everything. She was too young, and not ready to settle down, and she had never been completely sure what she wanted from this. It was also hard because to the rest of the world Ashley was a fling, and no matter what she did, or what David meant to her, people wouldn’t take their relationship seriously. She got sick of people noticing them, always staring, wherever they went. She got sick of the double-take when someone realized she wasn’t having dinner with her father.
She couldn’t even be sure if her job was hers, not something he’d arranged, because he was her boss, and they worked at the same law firm, and even there people whispered about her.
Sometimes Ashley felt herself not taking it seriously either, like she was being let astray by the opinions of strangers.
They managed, though. They both worked a lot, and had that in common. More than anything else, what each needed was a partner who didn’t mind the other working fourteen-hour days, and Ashley was glad she’d found that so easily. She went with David to his golf and wine tours, and he took her to concerts and wore ear-plugs and thought she hadn’t noticed. She was a first-year associate and she knew judges and barristers and partners at major firms. She was twenty-three, and lived in an unaffordable apartment and drove an unaffordable car and her life was good.
And she loved David. More than she’d ever loved anyone else.
Sometimes it was all too much.
*
Ashley cheated on David. She couldn’t help herself. She was bored, and feeling trapped by the seriousness of her life. She was twenty-three and was barely ready to sleep with the same person for a month, let alone settle down for the rest of her life.
She was making excuses.
She did a terrible to David. She did it because she was selfish. She knowing it would hurt him, and that it was completely unforgiveable. She did it anyway, and she didn’t really know why.
She went to an old boyfriend’s house, someone she’d once thought she loved. She stood at Kyle’s door and said, ‘I want you to fuck me.’
‘I haven’t seen you in months,’ he said.
‘So?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Come in.’
It had been a bad breakup. Kyle had sobbed and threatened and tried to blackmail her. She shouldn’t be here, not with Kyle, but part of her wanted his desperation. A dark little part of herself liked how much Kyle had needed her. David didn’t need her, not obsessively, not like Kyle had. David didn’t need anyone like that.
She was a monster. She did horrible things to people. She’d warned David at the start, and he hadn’t believed her.
She lay on Kyle’s bed and he fucked her. She didn’t move, put her hand over his mouth and pushed him away when he tried to kiss her, just lay there and watched him grunt and moan and got fucked.
She wanted to be there, but she didn’t really enjoy it.
Kyle phoned her a week later, and she went back, and let him do it again. Then went home to David and hated herself.
She didn’t understand what was wrong with her.
When Kyle phoned a third time, Ashley said no, never again, and don’t try and contact her. He cried again, and begged again, and she told him to stay of her life.
*
The problem with keeping secrets around good trial lawyers was that good trial lawyers knew when you were lying.
Ashley was often a second chair for Mary, who was tough and cold and ruthless, and in a complicated way a friend. Mary knew Ashley, and knew David, and was one of the few female partners who didn’t look down on Ashley for sleeping where she did.
Mary walked into Ashley’s office one afternoon, and closed the door, and said, ‘Who is he?’
Ashley looked up. ‘Who’s what?’
Mary didn’t answer. Suddenly Ashley understood. This wasn’t about work.
Ashley knew her face was calm. She spent as much time as anyone else at the firm staying expressionless in the middle of a crisis.
‘David thinks you’re sleeping with someone else,’ Mary said.
‘I’m not,’ Ashley said.
‘You’ve got a game face on,’ Mary said. ‘You’re lying.’
Mary spent her life waiting for CEOs to blink and confess their secrets. She was hard to lie to, but Ashley had to try, anyway.
‘I’m not,’ Ashley said. ‘I don’t know what you’re taking about.’
‘You do.’
‘I don’t.’
Mary shrugged. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If you want to talk, you let me know, okay?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Ashley said, and sat there without moving until Mary left.
*
Ashley worried all night, waiting for David to say something. She didn’t sleep, and was irritable the next day, and couldn’t work out what mistake she’d made. David seemed normal, as if nothing had changed. Except he was sending Mary to question Ashley.
Two days later, in Mary’s office, Ashley said suddenly, ‘You were right, the other day.’
‘I know.’
‘I was sleeping with someone else.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘Does David know?’
‘He wondered. He asked me if I’d noticed anything. I said I thought you’d changed. That you seemed happier.’
‘Happier?’ Ashley said.
‘Relieved.’ Mary said. ‘As if you’d made a decision. He thought so too.’
Ashley nodded.
Mary was Ashley’s boss, but the whole situation at work was odd. Talking about an affair with her supervising partner wasn’t the strangest thing Ashley had ever done. The firm’s partners came to her house, and she saw them drunk, and she knew their spouses. She’d given a judge chewing gum after she vomited in their toilet once, and had a drunk barrister with marriage pro
blems cry on her shoulder. Mary was Ashley’s boss, but a friend in a way too, and dealing with complications like this was the smallest of the problems she had being with David.
Ashley wasn’t even certain that Mary would tell David. Mary played hard. She’d had to, to get where she was. The profession was rough, especially at a firm like this. Ashley had seen far too much of the nasty side of firm politics since she’d been with David. She avoided it, but knew how it worked. She knew Mary was as likely to keep this quiet, and hold it over Ashley, as she was to tell David. It wasn’t dishonest, not really, and Ashley didn’t resent it. It was just how everyone was.
‘It’s over?’ Mary said. ‘Completely over?’
Ashley nodded.
‘You’re not leaving David? You’re going to stay with him?’
‘I was always going to stay,’ Ashley said.
Mary seemed to be thinking. ‘David’s been a friend for longer than you’ve been alive,’ she said.
‘I know. Are you going to tell him?’
Silence for a moment.
‘Perhaps,’ Mary said. ‘It depends what you say now.’
‘Yeah,’ Ashley said. ‘I thought it might.’
‘I’d have second thoughts too,’ Mary said. ‘If I was your age. With someone his age.’
‘I’m not having second thoughts.’
‘You’re having something.’
‘I was having something, but I’m not any more, and it wasn’t second thoughts.’
‘Did you care about the other man?’
‘Not at all,’ Ashley said.
‘You love David?’
‘Always. Completely.’
‘So why? Just sex?’
‘Not even that. Just because.’
‘So there’s no problem,’ Mary said. ‘End it…’
‘I have.’
‘…And don’t again.’
‘I’m not going to.’
Mary looked at Ashley for a while. Ashley wanted to tell her to stop.
‘You will,’ Mary said. ‘Once someone does, they always do again.’
Ashley wasn’t sure if she should be offended.
‘I started off in divorce law,’ Mary said. ‘Believe me. You will again. You know you can now. You know the possibility’s there. You know you’re smart enough to get away with it, and there’s something inside you, some nasty thing, that means you want to do it.’
Ashley had no idea what to say.
‘You’ll want to again,’ Mary said. ‘Eventually. So don’t.’
Ashley nodded.
‘And don’t tell him,’ Mary said. ‘I’m not going to, and you shouldn’t either.’
‘All right,’ Ashley said. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’ll feel like you want to, but ignore that. Let him keep pretending everything’s fine.’
Ashley nodded slowly, not completely sure.
‘Trust me,’ Mary said. ‘Let this go. Pretend it didn’t happen, and in a month you won’t even think about it. But tell David, and in thirty years he’ll still be looking at you suspiciously.’
‘I know,’ Ashley said. ‘Yes. I will. Can we stop now?’
Mary smiled, and held out a file, and said, ‘I’m just trying to help.’
*
‘Have you been sleeping with someone else?’ David said.
Ashley stopped where she was. It was out the blue, as she got home. She had just closed the door, and come down the hall. David was on the sofa.
She looked at him, and decided that no matter what else, she wasn’t going to lie, not directly.
She loved him. She was a monster, and had done a terrible thing, but she loved him and she wasn’t going to lie.
She went over and sat down. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘Just one?’
She nodded.
‘Once?’
‘A couple of times.’
‘Are you still?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what was wrong with me.’
He looked at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am. I was fucked up and confused and everything with us just overwhelms me sometimes.’
He was angry, but he never showed his anger. He got up, and left the room, and she let him go. She wondered if she should start packing now. It was her home too, but she was the newcomer. She should just go, if he wanted her to. If this ended them.
She sat there for a moment, then decided she cared enough to try. She had to try.
She followed him, and found him in the bedroom, sitting on the bed.
‘I never promised you I wouldn’t sleep with anyone else,’ she said from the doorway. ‘I said that, right at the beginning.’
‘At the beginning,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’
‘I never took it back. I never said it had changed.’
‘I know, Ash,’ he said. ‘This is all my fault. I just assumed it had.’
‘That isn’t what I mean.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m fucking twenty-three,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready for this. For all this.’
He looked at her, thinking. ‘Can you promise me that now? That there won’t be anyone else?’
She stood there for a while. ‘I don’t know.’
‘For god’s sake, Ashley…’
‘You don’t want me to lie, right? I’ve never lied to you and I never will.’
‘Except this.’
‘I didn’t lie,’ Ashley said. ‘I didn’t tell you where I was, but I never lied. I was careful about that. I didn’t say I was somewhere I wasn’t, or with someone I wasn’t.’
‘And if I’d asked?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’d have been honest. Like I was just now.’
‘Even if I’d only asked how your day had been?’
She shrugged, not sure what he meant.
‘If I’d asked something casual,’ he said. ‘How was your day? You’d have said great, you had some sex with someone else?’
Ashley looked at him for a while, then said, ‘No.’
A long silence. Ashley felt like her heart was going to break. She went over and sat on the bed too.
‘I don’t know if I can be with you like this,’ David said. ‘If you might do this again.’
‘Yeah,’ Ashley said. ‘That’s fair enough.’
‘You can’t try?’
‘I’ll try. Of course I’ll try. But I’m being completely honest. You need a promise, right? Like one I’ll never break, no matter what.’
He nodded.
‘I’m twenty-three. I can’t make a promise like that, not that’ll be there for years and years.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’
She looked at him, wondering if that was true.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I expected this, when we started.’
‘You didn’t trust me?’
‘I trusted you. I trust you now. I just expected something like this.’
‘I didn’t lie,’ Ashley said.
‘I know.’
Another silence. David still seemed too calm. After a while Ashley took his hand. ‘Can we think about this?’ she said. ‘Try and think how to make us work?’
‘We know how to make us work. Don’t sleep with other people.’
‘I’m not going to promise you something I don’t know I can keep. I can’t do that.’
He nodded.
‘I don’t want to lose you,’ Ashley said.
‘Or I you.’
‘You’ll have to throw me out,’ Ashley said. ‘If you want me to go. I won’t leave on my own. Not ever.’
‘I couldn’t,’ David said.
Ashley looked at him, hopeful. ‘That’s good, right? If you won’t and I won’t, then we should be okay. We’re stuck with each other.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Eventually you’ll change your mind. You’ll leave because staying hurts too much.’
She didn’t know what to say. He didn’t seem angry, just sad. So painfully sad he was calm, was logical, just thinking out loud and not even trying to hurt her.
‘I’ll hate myself for stifling you,’ David said. ‘And you’ll hate yourself for hurting me, and in the end it will all be too much. You’ll go because I won’t.’
‘No,’ Ashley said.
‘You will because that way it hurts us both less, in the end. Not because you want to.’
‘I promise…’ Ashley said, then stopped. She didn’t know what she was promising. ‘I promise I’ll try as long as I can,’ she said, which wasn’t what she had been going to say at first.
‘I know you will,’ David said.
‘We’ll be okay. I want us to be okay.’
‘We won’t be,’ he said. ‘We won’t even hate each other a
t end, probably. Or be angry. We’ll just realize it hurts less to be apart.’
Ashley wanted to cry. She wanted to hold him, and say she was sorry again and again, and cry. She stayed where she was, silently, mainly to punish herself. Stayed there with him, and his terribly hurt, grave mood, knowing she had caused it, and hurting too.
Later she went and made dinner, because that seemed useful.
Later still, when she undressed for bed, he looked at her a little sadly, as though her being naked was reminding him of what he’d lost. Which didn’t make sense, because he hadn’t lost anything, but she understood what he felt. She tried to hold him as they lay in the darkness together, but he kept rolling over, shifting away, until she gave up.
He’d never tried to avoid her in bed before.
*
Ashley didn’t sleep well. She didn’t think David had either. She woke five or six times, and each time his breathing was wrong, his body too stiff. He was awake too.
She would have tried to talk again, but she didn’t know what she could say.
The next morning, as they ate breakfast, David said, ‘It’s the idea of it, isn’t it? Making this promise. It isn’t that you particularly want to. It’s that you don’t want to promise you never will again.’
‘I think so.’
‘Everyone thinks that at one time or another.’
‘Oh,’ Ashley said. She hadn’t actually realized. ‘What do other people do?’
David shrugged. ‘Lie, usually. Say they never will again, when they aren’t sure they mean it.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘I don’t want us to be like that.’
He looked at her.
‘We’ve got this far,’ Ashley said. ‘By being honest. Even now, with this.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You trust me, don’t you?’ she said. ‘That I won’t lie to you. No matter what else.’
After a while he said, ‘Yes.’
‘So that’s good. We should keep that.’
‘I want to keep that.’
Ashley smiled, and wanted to cry. ‘And us?’ she said.
‘Of course I want to keep us.’
‘Me too,’ Ashley said. ‘Of fuck, me too. I wasn’t sure you’d changed your mind.’
He shook his head, and squeezed her hand, and then she did sniff, a few times.
‘So what do we do?’ David said.
‘I don’t know. But we need to do something.’
‘You could just not,’ he said. ‘Not do it, ever.’
‘I can’t promise that,’ she said. ‘I can’t. Not if I’m not going to lie to you.’
They sat there for a while.
‘It’s no-one particular,’ he said. ‘Right? Just the idea that you could, if you wanted to.’
She nodded. ‘I suppose.’
‘So if there were rules. If I said it was okay, but never anyone from work, or only ever on holiday?’
‘You’d do that?’
‘I’m asking if you would.’
‘Not if you weren’t okay with it.’
‘But if I was. And if there were rules. Would you stick to them?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I would. If that was what we’d agreed.’
‘You’d stick to it absolutely? No matter what the circumstances, no matter how much you liked someone particular you couldn’t have?’
Ashley thought. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘If there was some other thing out there, some other place or person I could wait for, then yes I would. I’d wait for that. Is this what you want to do?’
‘Let me think it through,’ he said. ‘Just let me talk this out.’
They were lawyers, Ashley thought. They were both lawyers, and they solved problems all day, and this was really just a very complicated problem that mattered a lot to them.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Of course. So what, I go away every year on my own and get it out my system?’
‘I’d hope not every year.’
‘But sometimes? And that would be okay?’
‘Let me think about it.’
She nodded slowly.
She stayed quiet for a while, but he didn’t say anything else.
‘I’d tell you,’ she said. ‘Or not. Whatever you wanted me to do. Tell you first, or not tell you ever. If you were willing to do this for me.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I think I’d want you to tell me.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt you?’
He shrugged.
‘Could you cope with that? Me going away, and I’m utterly yours the rest of the time?’
‘Let me think about it,’ he said. ‘All right. Let me think this over.’
She nodded, and put her plate in the sink, and went to get ready for work.
*
Life seemed to go back to normal, but Ashley wasn’t sure it had. She worked, and David worked, and they came home, and talked for an hour and went to sleep. Their lives were busy, and they didn’t have much time outside their jobs. David didn’t mention anything more about his idea, or about her affair, and they didn’t have sex either, but she hadn’t expected they would, not so quickly. He didn’t ask her to leave, and that was all she needed for now.
Occasionally Ashley wondered how David had found out. Whether he’d just decided to ask on his own, or if Mary had said something, but she decided she didn’t want to know. She spent enough of her life around lies and half-truths that she didn’t want more.
Wynona
- 08.11.2020
- 9
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