Down on His Luck

"What about this bar?" Reena said, looking at the little hole in the wall. Douglas looked at it skeptically.

"I dunno, but I guess. Let's just get a nightcap before we head back to your place," he said. It was called The Folly. An interesting name.

He'd been with Reena a few months now. The platonic and nuts and bolts part of the relationship were working very well. They got along. They had enough in common, and their differences made each other exotic. But the sex hadn't gotten better. They hadn't had sex for two weeks now, and Reena wasn't exactly attacking Douglas when he did bring it up. And he couldn't shake the thoughts of her cuckolding him, but he wasn't sure how to even broach that topic.

"A beer for me and a daiquiri for the lady, barkeep," Douglas said as they reached the bar. The bartender turned around ... and Douglas saw it was Antoine. He gawped at the Black man for moment. "Umm ...how's Elizabeth?"

Antoine silently got the drinks, setting them in front of the couple.

"It ... didn't end well," he finally allowed. "I got overextended with the restaurants. We got a loan shark to help us out. I couldn't fix the restaurants. He collected. She's with him now." His eyes were red and raw and tired.

"Jesus, Antoine ..." Douglas said.

"So I closed the restaurants down ... started fresh. Ain't making me rich, but it's paying the bills. But it's closing time now, so I'd ask you and your lady friend to finish it off on the patio."

***

"So who was that guy?" Reena asked, curious but guarded. Douglas sighed. She deserved the truth. So he explained everything. Cuckolding. The boring bliss with Elizabeth. Antoine. How his own self-destructive habits destroyed his relationship with Elizabeth. Reena just stared at him. She should just get up and run, far away right now. Hell, go back to England. Or hell, go back to India. But Douglas was ****, pathetic, and also very sweet in this moment.

"So there's a lot of detail I'd have to dig into to understand. I mean, do you still think about this stuff?" Douglas sighed.

"Yeah. I don't know that I'll ever be able to just turn it off. It feels hard wired right now. There's a healthy way to ... I dunno ... discharge it, I guess, to have a healthy cuckolding relationship. To have honesty and transparency, but it just never starts out that way. But I know that even something vanilla and conventional won't work either. My cock is too small and doesn't last long enough to really get a girl off. And you know that."

"Yeah," Reena said. She wasn't going to ever just straight up tell him, but it was true sex with him wasn't enjoyable. "You're being honest and transparent now. I appreciate that, I really do. I mean, if we were to ever do ... something ... like this ... I mean, what would the guy be like?"

"Honestly ... Antoine was a great bull, I think. He had a hard lesson he had to learn. I'd rather a bull that had to learn a lesson, than someone who thinks they're just going to own the world. And I think he'd be more humble about an opportunity." Reena stared at Douglas, competing emotions roiling about inside her.