Chapter 2

You remain on the sofa, listening to her footsteps cross the bedroom and enter the bathroom. A moment later, the shower begins running. You pick up your phone, stare at the screen, and realize that you have absolutely no idea what you were reading before she came home. Your mind is still at the gym. You imagine the thigh abductor machine, the white shorts, the enormous stranger standing nearby, and your wife's outraged expression when he delivers his remark.

The scene repeats itself with irritating persistence. You tell yourself that your interest is perfectly natural. Any husband would be curious about a man who had behaved so offensively toward his wife. But curiosity does not adequately explain the warmth creeping into your face, or your hardening cock.

Upstairs, your wife stands beneath the shower, letting the hot water run over her shoulders. She closes her eyes and tries to put the afternoon behind her. Instead, she remembers the gym with uncomfortable clarity: the rhythmic resistance of the machine, the sudden awareness of being watched, and the unmistakable satisfaction on Grudge's face when he succeeded in embarrassing her. She remembers something else, too.

When she confronted him, she had expected him to look away. Most men would have done so, even if only out of embarrassment at being caught. Grudge hadn't. He had met her eyes without the slightest hesitation, as though her indignation amused him. She ought to be thinking about filing a complaint. Instead, she wonders whether he will be there tomorrow.

Downstairs, you finally abandon your phone and head toward the small bathroom off the hallway. You close the door behind you, sit on the toilet, and stare at yourself in the mirror. You feel faintly ridiculous. You are a grown man with a wife you love, a comfortable home, and a perfectly ordinary life. There is no sensible reason for the afternoon's events to occupy your imagination so completely.

Grudge is precisely the sort of man you would ordinarily advise your wife to avoid. Nevertheless, you cannot stop picturing him standing beside that machine. You don’t actuall need to use the bathroom. Instead, you start rubbing your hard cock, thinking about Grudge. You remain in the bathroom longer than necessary, privately indulging thoughts you would be mortified to confess aloud.

Upstairs, your wife also lingers in the shower, allowing herself a few moments of private distraction before finally turning off the water. Her fingers find their way to her clit and begin rubbing. She is embarrassed by the direction her imagination has taken, and she resolves to forget the entire encounter, but doesn’t stop rubbing her wet cunt. Did she just think of it as a cunt? Where the hell did that come from.

The hot water beats against her shoulders, filling the bathroom with steam, while she tries to understand why the afternoon's encounter continues to occupy her thoughts. She has been stared at before. She has endured unwanted compliments, clumsy propositions, and the occasional man who mistakes ordinary politeness for an invitation.

None of those encounters has followed her home quite like this one. Grudge hadn't attempted to charm her or disguise his intentions beneath some ridiculous compliment. He had spoken to her with a contemptuous familiarity that suggested her opinion of him was entirely irrelevant. She remembers the casual cruelty of his words, the way he called her sweetheart while deliberately embarrassing her.

She rubs between her fold as she recalls the absolute confidence with which he laughed at her indignation. She slips a finger inside, then a second, filling her. What disturbs her most is not simply that he was offensive, but that she cannot dismiss him as easily as she dismisses other offensive men.

She closes her eyes and remembers the moment she challenged him. She had expected an apology, or at least an embarrassed excuse, and had been prepared to deliver a withering response. Instead, he had turned her own confrontation into another opportunity to humiliate her. She remembers standing there, struggling to think of something sufficiently cutting to say, while Grudge regarded her with that infuriating grin.

The memory makes her cheeks warm all over again. Her fingers continue to plunge into her cunt as her other hand finds her clit again. There is something frightening about a man who appears entirely immune to embarrassment, someone who cannot be shamed into behaving himself because he recognizes none of the social rules she has always relied upon.

Gasping quietly, your wife wonders whether that is what fascinates her, the possibility of confronting someone who simply refuses to be intimidated by her disapproval. In the privacy of the shower, where she does not have to explain herself to anyone, she can acknowledge that the confrontation has affected her more deeply than she expected. She can even imagine answering him differently, although the thought immediately embarrasses her.

Downstairs, you sit on the toilet, jerking yourself off, considering the same incident from an entirely different perspective. You are accustomed to being your wife's confidant, the person she approaches when something unpleasant happens. Ordinarily, her account of a stranger's vulgar behavior would provoke straightforward anger, followed by a discussion of what ought to be done about it.

This time, however, you have found yourself imagining the encounter rather than simply condemning it. You picture Grudge's imposing figure, his tattooed arms, his battered face, and the outrageous certainty with which he addressed your wife. The detail that troubles you most is her description of his laughter. Grudge had not merely insulted her; he had refused to take her indignation seriously.

He had behaved as though the ordinary consequences of speaking that way to another man's wife did not apply to him. You resent that arrogance, yet you cannot deny your fascination with it. You begin to suspect that your reaction has something to do with the feeling of being powerless in a situation involving your wife.

In the story she told you, you were absent, unable to intervene, unable to offer an appropriately indignant response until long after the encounter had ended. Grudge had occupied the entire scene, setting its tone through sheer audacity while your wife struggled to recover her composure. There is a disturbing fascination in imagining another man so completely unconcerned with your existence that the possibility of an offended husband never even enters his calculations.

You dislike the implication, particularly because you have always regarded your marriage as secure and mutually respectful. Yet the thought of that enormous stranger behaving as though your wife were answerable to no one but him has exposed an uncomfortable curiosity about how she might respond if the encounter happened again. The idea of another man fucking her, and disrespecting her, is very arousing.

Upstairs, your wife shudders to an orgasm as she pictures Grudge talking shit to her, putting her in her place. She knows perfectly well that Grudge's behavior was unacceptable. Nevertheless, she wonders what he would have done if she had laughed at his remark instead of becoming angry. Would he have been surprised? Would he have lost interest? Or would he have regarded her amusement as encouragement and become even more outrageous?

She finds herself considering possible answers, imagining conversations that never happened and responses she would never ordinarily contemplate. What makes these thoughts possible is the knowledge that she is alone, safely removed from the gym and free to imagine an encounter without actually experiencing its consequences.

She gets out of the shower and dries herself, studying her reflection, and feels faintly foolish for allowing a stranger with a ridiculous nickname to occupy so much of her afternoon. By the time she begins dressing, she has decided that she will not tell you about these thoughts. She doubts you would understand them, and she is not entirely certain that she understands them herself.

Downstairs, you spurt your load and begin to clean up with a few squares of toilet paper. In the aftermath, you reach a similar conclusion. Whatever fascination Grudge has awakened is best kept private, at least until you can make sense of it. You have no intention of encouraging a man to harass your wife, and the thought of admitting that his behavior has stirred something complicated within you seems almost absurd.

You wash and dry your hands, and prepare to return to the living room. Yet before opening the bathroom door, you find yourself wondering whether your wife has been thinking about him, too. You remember how animated she became while describing his enormous arms, how carefully she repeated his words, and how often she returned to the subject even after announcing that she wanted to forget it.

Perhaps she was simply angry. Perhaps she needed to vent. Or perhaps the encounter has unsettled her in ways she is not prepared to discuss. You cannot know, and you have no intention of asking. For the moment, the two of you remain separated by a staircase and a secret neither realizes the other is keeping, each privately fascinated by the same frightening stranger and each determined to pretend otherwise.