My Wife Needed Every Detail About Mia, Our Daughter’s Best Friend (Jack, Ruby, Mia - Ch. 02) [M42/F40/F18] [Age Gap] [Daughter’s Best Friend] [Older Man] [Younger Woman] [Forbidden] [Family Friend] [Wife Knows] [Masturbation] [Secrets] [Exhibitionism] [Cum Swallowing] [Pussy licking] [Married]
(---SPOILERS---)
Recap of Part 1
Jack (42) and Ruby (40) are happily married, Beth (18), their daughter, is heartbroken over Christian (19), and Beth’s best friend Mia (18) comes over for dinner. Jack comes to realize Mia is looking at him differently and he finds himself increasingly attracted to her. After dinner, Jack is giving Mia a ride to her parents’ house. Mia compliments him, telling him his body feels “like warm stone, or something”. She redirects him away from her parents’ house, and lets Jack know she wants him. Jack knows he should just keep going straight, take her home; a good man, a good father would not do this. But he takes the turn anyway. What Mia doesn’t know: Ruby was aware the whole time that Jack might pursue Mia; they have some sort of a deal about her.
(---SPOILERS END---)
=======================
~~~
Sunday, June 7, 2026. Maplewood, New Jersey.
– 12:20 am
“You guys left, what then?” Ruby asked.
Jack had expected her to ask or say something to ease them into it, but of course he knew her and should have known better. “Well… small talk in the car. She was very complimentary of the fatherly work I’ve done and she talked about us.”
“Us?”
“You and me.”
“What about us?”
“She said we were cute together. That it was obvious we’re really in love.”
Ruby’s body tensed a bit then—enough for Jack to notice.
“Yeah, uh… listen. If you tell me you changed your mind or don’t feel right with this—we drop it. The whole idea. No questions—” Ruby interrupted him, aggressively grabbing him by his seashell shirt, stamping him with a smiling open-eyed kiss.
“Just excited. Tell me.” She sat back. Jack sat on the foot of the bed, facing his wife.
Mia had touched his hand, then apologized for overstepping.
“Oh, wow,” Ruby said.
“She was leading,” he said. “Or trying to.” Jack cringed at himself and laughed a bit.
Ruby knew what he meant, and said, “It’s very ‘she likes me, she likes me not’, yeah.”
“Yeah!” They shared a bit of a laugh and settled. “So, yeah, I mean, I told her it was ok to touch me and she could just call me Jack, enough with the Mr. D shit, you know?”
He told her about the laughs they had shared, Mia’s comments about his body.
“Warm stone…” Ruby repeated.
“Warm stone,” Jack shrugged, trying and failing to look humble.
“You fucking loved that, I know you did.” Ruby slapped his knee.
Jack made a purposefully girly noise, swatting her away. “OK, OK, I did, shut up!”
“Did you like her saying it?” Ruby asked, emphasizing the word ‘her’, not fully joking then.
“Yes, I did.”
“OK, what then?”
By the time they had reached the red light at Hoglund and Maine, Mia was almost done pretending. She kept looking at him, then away, working herself up to something, as far as he could tell.
“Almost at her house, then?”
“That’s right. She goes ‘turn here, it’s quicker.’ So I tell her, you know, straight is faster for sure. And she’s doing a lot of wording and gesticulating now, not really saying much, but more like delaying and working up courage. Then she stops herself. Takes a deep breath. And goes, word for word, ‘Basically, what I’m trying to say, Mr. D’—she turns to me—‘I would like to see your penis, and I think it’s better we do it on a street that is not in front of my parents’ house.’”
Ruby took a huge breath, eyes growing wilder, exhaling slowly, fingers tracing her collarbone.
“I put up a little bit of a fight, but, you know… it was sort of half-hearted. As I was pretending to object, she looked at me and played with her dress. Pulled it up a little, and slid her hands to the insides of her thighs.”
Ruby leaned her head back against the headboard, pulling one knee close to her chest. He could almost see her pussy, but the black sundress was still covering her.
“Jack…” Ruby didn’t have to say anything, Jack knew. Hot. Wrong. Words didn’t fit it right.
“So,” Ruby’s fingers were disappearing under the dress, “you turned?”
He did. Almost didn’t, having a crisis for about ten seconds. He left that out.
“Yeah.”
“Wait,” Ruby’s finger came back up, her thinking then. After a moment, she said, “Did she know I knew?”
“No.”
“Did she think you were cheating on me?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“So yes.”
Ruby looked at him, then away. They sat for a bit. Jack didn’t envy Ruby’s position. He had gone out and started the thing. If Mia didn’t want Ruby too, then consent or not, he had made Ruby the wife at home. He had no way of giving her a place in what had already happened.
And Mia had… yeah, shit, either way you cut it, Mia had betrayed Ruby.
“Well, ok,” she turned back to him now. “We knew this would have to be the way.” She meant that they couldn’t just knock on Mia’s parents’ door and ask her if she wanted to fuck them both.
“You alright?” Jack asked, not approaching.
“Mhmm,” she nodded, and he believed her. “I want to hear the rest. She asked to see your cock?”
“Yes.” Jack regrouped. “So I… I turned and we—”
“Jack?”
“Hmm?”
“You better tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Ruby didn’t answer right away. She just looked at him.
He hated that look. The trouble with Ruby was she heard edits. And then she looked at him in a way. A way that let him know the jig was up.
“Are you leaving something out?”
“No. I mean—no, not really.”
Ruby waited.
“There was a second there at the light.”
“A second.”
“More, maybe.”
“OK.”
“I almost didn’t turn,” Jack said. After a moment he added, “I told myself to go straight. Take her home. Be a good man.”
Ruby watched him.
“I thought about Beth. You. Mia. Ron and Joan. Everybody. I thought ‘a good man would not do this’.”
“And then?”
“I turned anyway.”
They sat, Jack not knowing where to put his eyes, so he let them de-focus looking at a random crease in her dress.
Ruby nodded, slowly.
“Don’t leave those parts out.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Yes, you were.” Her voice was soft. She was fucking right.
Ruby’s expression relaxed. “We can’t ignore the ugly parts.”
He nodded.
“OK,” she said, leaning in, giving him a kiss, squeezing the muscle around his knees. “So you turned.”
“So I turned,” Jack told her about the dark spot under the broken streetlight, the first kiss, the touches. How quickly he could switch from guilt to sexual reminiscing. Back to being horny. As if the guilt had no weight to it at all. Was it just posturing?
As Jack spoke, sparing no detail, his wife’s fingers disappeared under the dress again. Jack knew his part in this was to sit there, tell the story truthfully, and let his wife enjoy herself. He had learned that part twenty years ago.
~~~
20 years ago, more or less.
~~~
Thursday, July 13, 2006. Maplewood, New Jersey.
– 8:40 pm
“You’re quiet,” Ruby said.
“I’m not quiet.” He had absolutely been quiet.
They were a couple drinks past dinner, two months into whatever this was, and Jack was trying to not seem too eager.
“You’ve been quiet for almost a minute.”
“I was admiring the view.”
She glanced behind her, toward the rest of the patio and the bright restaurant behind it.
“Not that view.” Great job playing it cool, stupid.
Ruby looked back at him, trying not to smile too much. “That was terrible.”
“Worked, though.”
“It did not.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m humoring you.”
“Good enough.” Jack took a drink and glanced past her shoulder. At the table near the little ficus tree, a man in a short-sleeve button-down with little anchors on it was explaining something to a woman who had clearly left her body some time ago. Jack decided it was probably insurance-related, based on nothing but the shirt.
“What?” Ruby asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“I’m just wondering how long before a man starts ordering salmon because his doctor told him to.”
Ruby glanced back, then turned to him again.
“That’s you in 20 years.”
“Pff, come on.”
“You already have the shirt.”
“This is a good shirt.”
“It has dragons on it.”
“No, it—” Jack realized it had dragons on it. “Oh, fuck.”
They both laughed. Ruby kept laughing after he stopped, pleased with herself, one knee hugged to her chest, dress falling loose over her thigh. Jack looked away, forgetting this was not their first date and looking was OK.
The patio had gotten darker around them. Not dark-dark, just the kind of summer evening dark where everybody looked a little better and every table seemed like its own little island. Jack’s Long Island iced teas were probably doing at least some of the work on that fantasy. Somewhere inside, a woman’s loud laugh could be heard. Jack bet she was laughing at something that probably wasn’t that funny.
Ruby’s hand slid from her shin to her ankle. Then back up. Down. Was it an absent-minded move? Maybe pretending it was? On her way back up her hand went around the other side of her leg, up the calf. Again: slow.
She was still smiling, but her breathing had changed. Not much. Enough. Her eyes had gone a little unfocused, then sharp again when they found him watching.
“Ruby.”
“Jack.”
“What are you doing?”
“Having dinner.”
“We finished dinner.”
“Then I’m relaxing after dinner.”
He gave her a quiet laugh. “Right.”
Her hand disappeared behind her knee, under the loose fall of the dress.
Jack felt his own smile go stupid and helpless. “Are you—”
“Am I what?”
He looked around.
Her hand stayed where it was. Nothing obvious. Nothing anyone else could point at. But Jack saw the little tightening in her shoulders, the way her mouth softened and pressed together again.
“Ruby,” he said again, lower this time, smiling. “What are you doing?”
She leaned back in her chair. Not far. Just enough to give him a better angle if he chose to take it.
“Have a look.”
“At what?”
She tilted her head. Come on. His insecurity was speaking for him—he knew what she meant.
Jack stared at her, and she stared back, daring him, but there was something under the dare now, he thought. Something… less polished and refined. He could see it and, seeing it, understood that if he made the wrong joke, or grabbed her wrist, or looked around like she had embarrassed him… it’d be the wrong move, is the thing he sensed. He didn’t want to do any of those things anyway, not really. Only as an awkward reflex, to shoo away discomfort.
“Oh, boy,” he said, pushing his chair back. “You know what? I think my shoe’s come undone.”
Ruby’s mouth opened in silent laughter.
“Tragic,” she said.
“Could happen to anyone.”
He bent under the table.
For a moment he saw only shadow, the edge of the tablecloth, her knee, the black dress gathered in her hand. Then his eyes adjusted.
She was touching herself through her underwear.
Jack stopped breathing.
Ruby’s fingers, covered in numerous rings of various sizes and shapes, moved, slow and careful. Then she shifted the fabric aside just enough to remove any doubt about what she was doing. Her fingers slid around in circles, showing him how wet she was.
Jack made a sound he hoped could only be heard from inside his own body.
He sat back up too fast, bumping his knee on the underside of the table.
Ruby was looking at him.
Not laughing now. Not exactly. There was pleasure on her face, yes, plenty of it, but something else too. A question. Maybe even a little fear. Not fear that someone would see her masturbating. Or… not only that.
Fear of what he would do with what he had seen?
Jack swallowed.
“You OK?” she asked.
He almost laughed. She was asking him?
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m very OK.”
Her mouth moved like she was trying not to smile too much. Her hand was still under the dress. Still moving. Slower now, maybe because he was watching her face and not what she was doing.
“You’re not weirded out?”
“The way I get weirded out is by getting extremely hard, apparently.”
Ruby closed her eyes for a second, smiling through a breath.
“Good,” she said.
The waiter appeared beside the table.
Jack saw him before Ruby did. Or maybe Ruby saw him and simply decided that did not matter. Jack had no idea. The young man stopped with a trained, empty smile, paid not to see or understand too much.
“How is everything over here?”
Ruby kept going, not looking at the waiter.
Jack looked up at him.
“Oh, great,” he said. His voice sounded almost normal. “Really great.”
The waiter nodded. “Can I get you anything else?”
Jack looked at Ruby.
Ruby looked at Jack, barely present anymore.
Her breathing was faster now.
The waiter’s eyes darted from Jack to Ruby to Jack.
“No,” Jack said. “We’re good.”
“All right then,” the waiter said, already turning away, quicker than previous times.
Ruby’s shoulders dropped, free hand finding and grasping the table, rings clashing with the wood. She was in a full-body shiver now, which she tried to contain as best as she could.
Jack recognized the movement, of course. Her head coming down, along with the rest of her body, leaning on the table, eyes closed, still shivering, sounds of pleasure catching low in her throat.
Jack could have told her to stop. Could have made a joke. Could have looked around the patio again and turned this into something embarrassing, something she had done wrong.
Instead he stayed where he was.
He watched her.
That was all.
At twenty-two, he thought the test was whether he could handle how wild she was. At forty-two, he knew better. The test had been whether he could let her be, or whether he would make it about himself.
She looked up when it passed. His eyes were still on her. They laughed quietly and touched glasses like idiots.
~~~
Present day
~~~
Sunday, June 7, 2026. Maplewood, New Jersey.
– 12:40 am
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Ruby asked, losing herself in pleasure then, but listening.
He told her about Mia leaning over the console to kiss him.
“What did she look like? Her body, what was it doing?” Ruby wanted to know more, not just the mechanics. Jack had been there and experienced everything firsthand, but Ruby had to scavenge his memory for the impression.
Through all of this, Ruby touched herself under the dress.
The first time he held Mia’s face, he had felt it all at once: protectiveness, desire, guilt. Ruby asked if she had seemed scared and Jack said yes she did, but also excited and eager. Mia had seemed nervous, hopeful, a little wild. And her face had seemed so small and soft in his hands.
“Did you keep kissing?”
“No, actually. She took my hand. She licked my fingers and sucked one of them.”
“Which one?”
“Ring finger. And she sort of licked circles around the ring,” Jack saw her react to that. Not entirely negatively, but it was significant. He admitted then that he didn’t know why Mia had chosen that finger, whether the licking of the ring was something she’d done on purpose because of the marriage, on purpose because it was just hot, or in the absence of any thought at all.
“What do you think it was?”
“Honestly, I get the feeling it was maybe just hot and unplanned. But I could be wrong.”
“Did she say anything about me after that?”
Jack said no and then paused. “Not directly… but sorta. Later, I’m gonna get to it.”
Then she said “‘Mr. D?’ and I said ‘Yes, Mia?’ and she said ‘Can I see your penis?’”
“And she insists on calling it a penis, huh?” Ruby smiled with her cheeks, corners of her lips pointed down.
“Yes.” Jack paused to see if Ruby had other interruptions to get out. “I said nothing for a bit, just enjoying the moment. It was very exciting, having her ask. Having her want to see it. I don’t know if I can explain it.”
“I get it, I’m pretty sure,” Ruby was swallowing hard.
“‘I want you to see it,’ I told her.”
He tried to move quickly through the obvious parts—Mia taking out his cock, the gasp, the first lick, her mouth. Ruby let him, until his hand reached Mia’s back, then lower.
“She wasn’t wearing anything under it,” Jack said.
Ruby’s hand stopped for a moment. Eyebrow up.
“I don’t know if she planned it, hoped for it or just dressed that way for other reasons. I really want to know, though.”
“Me too.” Ruby sharply inhaled, which Jack was almost certain meant she had slid a finger inside herself more fully now.
Ruby asked Jack what Mia was saying and doing.
Ruby’s hand was moving again, and Jack had trouble looking anywhere else.
“She told me she’d fantasized about my penis since she learned how to masturbate,” Jack said.
Ruby swallowed. He told his wife that he pulled up their daughter’s best friend’s dress over her tanlined bottom. Mia’s perfect petite body in his lap, his cock almost all the way disappeared inside her mouth. “I could barely see. Let alone think. I told her she was a good girl, and that we were doing such a bad thing.”
“How did she respond?” Ruby asked.
Jack felt her attention sharpen.
“She kissed it, put it against her cheek, and said, ‘I love your cock, Mr. D.’”
“What did you think about?”
“I thought about wanting to do nasty things. I wanted to cum inside her, pick her up and fuck her, use her as an—” Jack’s shorts were filling up once more. He couldn’t find words to describe his fantasies.
“I love the darkness in you,” Ruby said as she pulled up her dress, showing her husband her hand doing circles around the opening below her clit.
Jack was ashamed of it. Feared it. But Ruby’s recognition of the darkness made him think it was OK to have thoughts, even unpalatable ones.
“I told her it was so wrong,” he said after a moment. “Though of course, I did nothing to stop it. She asked me to please let her keep going. I told her she was so young. She said, ‘I’m a consenting adult, Mr. D,’ and I asked if this was really what she wanted. She told me to touch her and find out.”
He gave Ruby the version she wanted: not just where his hand went, but how Mia moved against it. How wet she was. How sensitive. How she pushed back when he touched near her ass.
Ruby’s breathing changed at that.
“She wanted that?” Ruby asked.
“I think so.”
“She said, ‘Oh my god, I’m such a bad girl. Please make me cum, Mr. D. I want to cum so bad,’ and I called her by her name and told her she was a good girl, as she came, and as it was happening, she took my cock all the way into her throat.” Ruby’s eyes widened at that. But Jack kept going.
“She told me no one had ever made her cum.”
“What?” Ruby said, almost taking a break.
“That was my reaction too, though I kind of got it, with her age and lack of experience, maybe?”
“And she could take your entire cock? I can barely do that.” Ruby considered, still rubbing, but slowing down a bit. “I think your idea about Mia’s lack of experience might be a little misguided.”
“Maybe.” Jack paused. “After she came, she said I’d opened something in her. Still Mr. D then.”
Ruby watched him.
“I didn’t know what to say. Then she said, ‘I want to taste your cum, Mr. D.’”
“It’s hard to imagine her like that,” Ruby said, “But, fuck, it’s so…”
“Yeah, I know, baby. And she kept at it, too. She said, ‘I want your cum in my mouth. I know it’s wrong and we’re ruining our lives and we will be in so much trouble, but I need it.’ That’s what I meant earlier,” Jack said. “She didn’t say your name. But ‘ruining our lives’ meant you too, far as I could tell.”
“I see.”
“But I told her it’s OK. She didn’t hear me, I don’t think. She was only focused on one thing, she was obsessed. I’ll be honest, it was incredible. To have her want me to cum inside her so badly.” Jack touched his cock then, feeling new surges of heat.
“She kept saying she needed it. That she wouldn’t sleep if she didn’t taste it. And I encouraged her.”
“What did you say?” Ruby asked through strained breaths, rubbing herself faster now, her feet digging into the bed.
“I told her it was hers whenever she wanted it.”
Jack recoiled before saying the next part. Too private. Too ugly. But Ruby got the truth from him, that was the deal. “I told her I would sneak into her house and let her suck the cum out of me while her parents slept. I’d cum inside her any chance I got.”
He half-expected Ruby to be angry. She wasn’t. She just lost herself further and further into the story, using her free hand now to pinch her nipple, biting her lip.
“I was touching her all over her pussy and ass when I was getting ready to cum and she seemed to get back into it as well,” Jack’s ability to go into details was diminishing as he himself was reliving the story then. “I put my little finger in her ass, just the very tip of it. She groaned and I told her to take my cum and she did. I started cumming.”
Jack moved over Ruby then, taking her by the backs of the knees and pulling her down the bed.
“As I came, my finger was still in her little asshole.”
Ruby was on her back now. Jack pushed her legs up, opening her to him.
“I was pumping my cum into her throat, and rubbing her with my whole palm. Her pussy, her ass, all of it. She was so wet.”
He dripped saliva on his wife’s pussy from his opened mouth, having salivated from reliving the evening. Her hips were in the air below him, held there by his hands. Her mouth was pressed shut, lips almost white, the sound trapped in her throat.
“As I was almost done, I could feel her cumming again. She was rubbing herself against my palm.”
Jack lifted Ruby higher.
His wife’s familiar, pink, wonderful pussy and tight asshole were right there in front of him, on full display.
“We came together,” he said. “I can’t wait to make her come again, baby. I want you to see it. Feel it. I want you two together.”
Then he lowered his mouth and gave Ruby one decisive, strong, long, hot lick from her asshole to her clit.
He put her down and went back to his seat at the end of the bed.
Jack watched his wife finish the job herself, writhing on the bed, one hand tight on her breast, the other between her squeezed legs.
Jack gave her a moment to recover. As he did, he squeezed his cock. Throbbing. So soon after Mia. Surprising.
“The story’s not over, though,” Jack said.
Ruby got up, straightening her dress, giving her husband a kiss. “Please, continue.” They both laughed a bit.
“Afterward she called me Jack,” he said.
Ruby sat with that.
“After?”
“Yeah.”
“No more Mr. D?”
“No. She was normal again. Or not normal, exactly. Just… not like she’d been a minute before. Not sex-crazed. I don’t love that description of her, but I don’t know what else to call it.”
“I get it,” Ruby said. “So, Mr. D… she’s doing that on purpose. And calling it a penis as well, I think, no?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He paused.
“I hate how much I liked it,” Jack said. “The Mr. D thing.”
Ruby’s hand rested on his leg.
“And I think she knows I like it. I think she used it because she knows.”
That was the part that made him feel sick. Or made it hotter. He couldn’t quite separate those.
“Yeah, it’s…” Ruby gestured. She seemed to agree. Not just with the shame, but with how hot this forbidden dynamic was. And what were they going to do about it anyway? Stop here?
“Honestly, I don’t want to stop. Even though we probably should,” Ruby said.
Jack said nothing. His cock was still hard as a rock, mocking his moral struggle.
“Why didn’t you go all the way with Mia?” Ruby asked.
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it again.
The answer did not come easy or clean. That meant it was liable to be honest.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not exactly.”
Ruby waited.
“I think part of it was… what we were already doing felt like more than enough. Enough for the first time, I mean. It was already insane. It felt like we’d crossed every line there was.”
“Except the one.”
“Except the one,” Jack said. “And part of it was probably that I wanted you there for that. If it happened. When it happens. I don’t know. Maybe that’s me making myself sound better.”
“Is it?”
“Maybe. I wanted to fuck her. I definitely wanted to fuck her. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I stopped because I’m a gentleman or some shit.”
Jack stopped to think, then continued thinking out loud.
“Maybe it was hotter not to,” he said. “Leaving it there. Having something still waiting. Or maybe she asked for exactly what she wanted right then, and I gave it to her, and that was the shape of it.”
Ruby’s eyes moved over his face.
“And afterward?” she asked.
“Afterward she said she wished we could meet like that again.”
“And?”
“And I told her we shouldn’t.”
Ruby gave him nothing.
“To which Mia gave a disappointed, deflated response, nodding to agree with me. Then I told her we would anyway.”
That got the smallest breath out of her. Not a surprise, exactly. Not approval either.
Jack felt the need to explain and hated himself for it. “I did say we shouldn’t. I made sure she heard that part.”
“But you also told her you would.”
“Yes.” He’d tried patting himself on the back for some semantic bullshit. Like a fucking coward. “You’re right.” He thought for a bit. “But it’s what we wanted, right?”
Ruby looked down at her own hand, at the wedding ring, it seemed. Then back at him.
“Yes,” she said. “That was the door.”
Jack let out a breath he had not meant to hold.
“But,” Ruby said.
There it was.
“I’m not going to sit here just jacking off to the transcript forever.”
Jack knew it. He nodded. And he wanted her to join.
“No, Jack. I mean it.” Her voice stayed soft. “This was hot. Very hot. But I’m not going to become the wife you come home to with stories. I’m not going to be your audience.”
“You’re not.”
“Yeah. Not yet.”
He had no answer to that. He saw what she meant. A lot was hanging on whether Mia would be interested in Ruby as well. If she wasn’t, it’s a problem. If she was—that’s an even bigger one in some ways.
Ruby leaned back against the headboard again, calmer now.
“If this keeps going,” she said, “we have to move it forward.”
Jack nodded.
That sounded simple. Forward. Sure. Whatever the hell that meant.
“Do you feel something for her?”
Jack sat back a little.
“Yes,” he said, having taken a moment to genuinely think on it.
“What do you feel?”
“I don’t think it’s romance.”
“You don’t think.”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean I don’t think it is. It’s confusing because she’s not a stranger. I’ve known her since she was a kid. I had feelings around her before there was anything even remotely sexual in my head. Protective feelings. Fondness. Familiarity. Whatever you want to call it.”
Ruby watched him. “And now?” she asked.
“And now all of that is still there, except now I’ve had my hands on her, my cock in her mouth, I’ve made her cum. I can’t take any of that back.”
Ruby looked away at that, but not like she had been hurt.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
He believed he was telling the truth. But he had believed he would not betray Beth either, right up until he just fucking did it. He had thought about it. And then just did it. So what did his certainty mean now?
“I’m really not a fan of what this adventure is revealing about me as a man.”
That got half a smile from her.
“At least you know,” she said.
“Great.”
“And I’m right there with you, Jack.”
“At least there’s that.”
She laid her head on his lap, petting his leg.
“When do you think you’ll see her again?”
“I don’t know. We have no plans. This happened barely more than an hour ago.”
“Right.”
Ruby went quiet.
“Even without plans, she’ll come here again eventually,” Ruby said.
“Yeah, probably.”
“With Beth?”
“Most likely.”
“Alone?”
“I don’t know. Not likely,” Jack said. “Well, maybe.”
“What did you tell her about me?”
“Not much. I told her I love my wife.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I think so.”
“Does she have any reason to think I know?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Jack watched her nod in silence. He didn’t like that particular silence. Something in it.
“I might not need to propose anything.”
“Ruby.”
“We have to make a move.”
“Agreed. But she could panic.”
“Yes. She could panic regardless.”
“She could tell Beth.”
Ruby’s expression sharpened at Beth’s name, but she did not cower. “She could already tell Beth. I more or less almost entirely trust that she won’t, though.”
Jack stared at his wife. As long as she fucking more or less almost entirely trusted her.
Ruby scared and excited him.
“I just want to see what she does,” she said.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked, more or less almost entirely certain he wasn't going to like the answer.
~~~
Monday, June 8, 2026. Maplewood, New Jersey.
– 4:18 pm
Spending time with Beth was weird now.
Mia loved her. She did. She loved her and she had fucked her father.
Not fucked. Technically. She had only sucked his dick in a car while he made her cum twice and touched her in places she had not known she wanted to be touched by anyone.
So, fine. Tomato potato.
Beth was really going through it with Christian, but Mia, bff of the year, could only think about Beth’s father and his wonderful, heavenly, thick, stupidly perfect tasty cock.
What the hell was wrong with her?
She didn’t know. Something had changed. But of course something had changed. Everything had changed. Her whole life was upside down now, and no one knew except Jack.
Beth sat beside her on the stone edge of the fountain, flicking water with two fingers, talking like the words were coming out because if they stayed in her body she would explode.
“It’s not even just that he cheated,” Beth said. “I mean, obviously fuck him forever, but it’s the lying. Like last month when I asked if something was going on and he made me feel insane for asking.”
Mia looked at her.
Really looked now.
“He said I was paranoid,” Beth said. “He said I was inventing problems because I was scared of leaving for school. And I believed him. I apologized to him. Apologized!”
Mia felt something cold move through her.
Beth laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it. “That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. He had the real version. I didn’t. He got to walk around knowing what my life actually was, and I was out there making decisions with fake information. Made me a fucking fool.”
Christian had done the thing Mia was doing.
No. Worse. Mia was doing something way worse.
Beth turned her head. “Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“What did I say?”
“You said he made you feel insane for asking,” Mia said. “That he had the real version and you didn’t. That you apologized to him, when it should have been the other way around.”
Beth considered that, then nodded. “Okay, fair.”
“And you are not a fool,” Mia said, emphasizing each word.
Mia had gotten lucky. She had been doing that a lot lately. Getting lucky. Making irresponsible decisions and then being allowed, somehow, to continue without having to answer for them.
Her phone was in her hand, screen black. Jack could text her, maybe? She kept thinking at the phone.
He would not text her. He couldn’t. Neither of them were that stupid. They had made no arrangements except the agreement that they would meet again.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Mia prayed, silently, for God to please let it happen again.
She had to snap out of it.
Come on. Her best friend was right there, heartbroken, venting. She couldn’t just sit there remembering Jack’s big strong hand holding her head down on his cock.
Back to reality, Mia.
Focus.
Beth. Beth. Beth. Christian. Boys. College. Gelato. Town square. Sun. Fountain. Water. Ruby walking over. Pigeon.
Ruby walking over.
Mia’s thoughts stopped so abruptly she coulda sworn they hit something.
Ruby crossed the square in a white dress, blond hair loose, sunlight catching on her arms and collarbone. She looked like she belonged there more than anyone else did. Like the benches and trees and the clock and the fountain were all falling into place around her.
She was looking at Beth.
Then she was looking at Mia.
What was that look?
Why was she here?
Act cool, stupid!
Mia turned back toward Beth too quickly.
Beth had not noticed. She was still going, “And now I keep replaying everything. I keep combing past conversations for clues I was too stupid to understand.”
“You couldn’t,” Mia said.
Beth looked at her.
“You couldn’t,” Mia said again, softer. “That’s not on you. That’s on him.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No. Seriously. If someone is hiding something from you, and they’re good at hiding it, that’s not you being stupid. That’s them lying.”
The sentence came out strong enough to sound real.
That was the worst part.
She meant it.
Beth’s eyes got wet, and Mia wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“You’d tell me, right?” Beth asked.
Mia’s mouth went dry.
“If I was being ridiculous,” Beth said. “Or if someone was lying to me. You’d tell me.”
Mia could hear the fountain, the soft rush of water, people talking outside the café, a dog barking once from somewhere behind them.
“Of course,” Mia said.
The way Beth looked at her made her want to confess. She didn’t. Mia smiled. Apparently that was what she did now.
Lied and smiled.
“Of course I would.”
Beth nodded as her thumb wiped the wet from her eyelid. “Good.”
Mia reached over and squeezed her knee.
Ruby came and sat on the side of the fountain. Not too close to Mia. Not far either.
“How are we doing?”
“Bad,” Beth said.
Ruby nodded. “That tracks.”
“Mom.”
“What? You asked for honesty.”
“I did not.”
“It was implied, I felt.”
Beth smiled despite herself, and Mia hated Ruby a little for how good she was at that. For being beautiful and calm and funny and soft, all at once. For effortlessly allowing the world to form around her.
Ruby looked at Mia then. Just looked. Not angry. Not suspicious. Maybe not anything.
Mia’s body did not believe that.
“Hi, honey,” Ruby said.
“Hi, Mrs. D.”
Mia heard it after she said it. Mrs. D. Fuck.
“Ruby is fine, sweetie,” Ruby said.
Beth groaned. “Mom, no one calls you Ruby.”
“People call me Ruby.”
“Dad calls you Ruby when he’s annoyed.”
“And when he’s not.”
Mia examined her cuticles. Enthusiastically.
Ruby’s perfume reached her. Clean and warm. Grown-up. Expensive maybe. Or maybe Mia was assigning value to everything because she was losing her mind.
Beth pushed herself off the fountain edge. “I’m getting snacks. You guys want anything?”
“No, thanks,” Ruby said.
Mia shook her head. She was pretty sure she couldn’t move.
Ruby stayed seated at the fountain beside her.
There was no reason for Mia’s pulse to be doing what it was doing. Ruby had said nothing. Ruby knew nothing. Jack would not have told her. Why would he tell her?
Unless he had. Unless they talked.
Married people talked. Did married people talk about this? No. No normal married people talked about this.
Ruby looked toward Beth leaving, then back at Mia.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Mia said too fast. “I’m good.”
Ruby smiled a little. “You don’t look good.”
That was it.
That was death. That was the police. That was Beth crying. That was Ron killing her, Joan using it as an excuse to move to Belize. That was dying of shame right here in the square.
HOMEWRECKER.
“I’m just worried about Beth.”
“I know.”
Mia nodded.
Ruby’s eyes stayed on her.
“She loves you,” Ruby said.
“I love her too.”
“I know.”
Mia could not tell what she heard in Ruby’s voice.
Ruby rested one hand on the fountain wall between them. Her fingers were long, nails pale, wedding ring bright in the sun.
Mia saw the ring and immediately remembered Jack’s hand.
His finger in her mouth.
The ring against her tongue.
Oh, fuck.
She had licked his wedding ring.
She had put his married hand in her mouth and licked the ring like some kind of message.
Had she meant it?
No. She had been horny and stupid and trying to do something hot.
Ruby’s palm moved slowly over the stone beside her.
“These get so warm in the sun,” Ruby said.
Mia stopped breathing.
Ruby looked down at the fountain edge, like she was only talking about the fountain edge.
“Warm stone,” Ruby said.
The water kept falling behind them.
A kid laughed somewhere near the clock.
Mia’s whole body went numb.
Ruby looked at her then.
Not smiling.
Not angry.
Just there.
Mia opened her mouth and nothing came out.
Ruby’s voice stayed soft. “That’s a good phrase.”
Mia swallowed.
“I didn’t—”
Ruby waited.
Mia had no idea where that sentence was supposed to go.
I didn’t mean it like that.
I didn’t mean for him to tell you.
I didn’t mean to want him.
I didn’t mean for you to find out.
“I hadn’t thought about it. I guess it is, yeah,” Mia said, smiling and hoping to Christ her nose would not grow large enough to hang her over a man-cave fireplace like a swordfish.
Ruby’s mouth softened.
Beth appeared from the café window with a paper bag in one hand and a drink in the other. “They were out of the good chips, which feels targeted.”
Ruby took her hand off the stone.
“Obviously a personal attack,” she said.
Beth dropped back beside Mia and shoved the bag between them. “Eat something. You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” Mia said.
Ruby stood, smoothing the skirt of her dress. “I gotta get going.”
Beth leaned into her mother’s side for a quick hug.
Ruby kissed the top of Beth’s head. Easy. Natural.
Then she turned to Mia.
Mia stood because staying seated felt impossible.
Ruby leaned in for the usual cheek kiss. Mia had done this a hundred times. Hello, goodbye, birthdays, holidays, dinners at their house, rides home, ordinary life.
This time Ruby’s hand touched the side of Mia’s neck.
Not aggressive. Not dramatic.
Just there.
The kiss landed on Mia’s cheek.
Ruby smelled clean and expensive. She was so close. Mia’s body wanted to lean in as much as she wanted to make a run for the border.
Beth was digging through the paper bag. “Do you want the weird barbecue ones or the disappointing plain ones?”
Mia looked at Ruby.
Ruby looked back.
Mia could not tell if she was being tested. Or warned? Hunted? Forgiven?
Invited?
“Yes,” Mia said.
Beth frowned. “To which?”
Mia blinked. “Plain. Sorry.”
“Fuck, ok. Here.”
Ruby smiled at that, kissed Beth once more, and walked away across the square.
Mia watched her go, taking the bag from Beth’s extended arm.
Come on, turn around, Mia thought.
Look at her like that again.
Let her know she wasn’t imagining it.
Ruby did not turn around.
Mia sat back on the fountain edge. The stone was hot under her thighs now. Too hot. She put one hand beside her, where Ruby’s hand had been.
Warm stone.
Jack had told her.
Or Ruby had guessed.
No. You couldn’t guess that.
He told her.
Jack had gone home to his wife and told her what Mia had said in the car.
Why?
Beth bumped her shoulder against Mia’s. “You are being so weird.”
“I’m tired.”
Her neck still felt Ruby’s fingers. Ruby’s smell lingered. Her mouth remembered Jack’s ring.
===============
End of Chapter 2
===============
Huge shoutout to:
- The early readers for their support! You can join them on Patreon, where we have also images of these characters and other stuff.
- All of you for the incredible response to the first chapter!
- To Ruby for being such a fucking rocket.
Let me know if you want part 3 and any feedback you have ❤️