Wiley's request

Friday morning, I was barely through the door when Wiley called me into the old boss’s office. The carpet still bore the ghost-imprints of my father’s feet behind the desk. Wiley perched on the edge like a bird scared of falling from a wire, and it was clear this was a meeting for which he’d rehearsed.

“Hey, Liam.” He fidgeted with a staple remover. “I know this…everything…has been hard on you.”

I gave him a look. “No, you don’t.”

He flinched, as if the words had released a jet of ammonia in his face, but tried to recover. “Right. Well—uh—anyway, I have another favor to ask you.”

I rolled my eyes so hard I worried I might dislodge a retina. “Seriously? Another favor. What the fuck, man.”

He looked at his shoes, cheeks turning the color of old bubblegum. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important, but—” and here he paused for maximum effect, “—you know I have my date tomorrow. The second one.”

I quickly interject “Yeah… I am surprise Sarah found someone stupid enough to want to spend two days because I never thought there was one that want could stand to spend two hours.”

He once again ignores what I said and just continues where he left off as if it was a well rehearsed speech “I thought I’d never get that far. So…well, I guess what I’m trying to say is, um, I was wondering if you would let me have sex with Sarah again tonight.”

There was a long pause in which my brain produced several error messages, none of them actionable.

He continued, rushing now: “It’s just, last time, it really helped. Like, I felt way more confident and it’s—it’s like I unlocked this part of myself I didn’t even know was there? And I really want the date to go well, and—yeah.” He trailed off. “I know it’s a lot, but I figured I should at least ask.”

I could have called him every name in the book, and on a good day I would have. But we were at work, and the only thing worse than being humiliated at home was being humiliated in front of the twelve people who still treated you like the boss’s kid. Besides, my direct supervisor had already warned me about making scenes with Wiley. So I just sat there, glowering, until the silence became unbearable.

He interpreted my blankness as a kind of **** blessing. “I know I’ll ask Sarah later, but I wanted to make sure things were cool between us first.”

“Cool between us? Are you serious?” My voice was so quiet it barely registered, a ghost note in the conversation.

Wiley, who had the emotional intelligence of a tree frog, took the non-response as a cue to keep pushing. “What if I got you your old job back?” He offered the words like a bribe, his smile stretching so wide it seemed to hurt.

I thought about saying something final—something that would burn the bridge so completely that even the memory of me bullying him in high school would be reduced to char. But the truth was, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I said no, he would likely just ask Sarah, and even if she didn’t want to, she would cave to him. She always caved to him, just as easily as I caved to her. In our triangle, I was the hypotenuse: the longest side, the most invisible ****.

So I just said, “Do what you want, just leave me out of it,” and stomped out of the office like a man in a fire drill.

After lunch, my supervisor was in a mood so black it seemed to leech color from the walls. He made me fetch him coffee four times, restock the printer twice, and then clean the lobby, the break room, and all eight bathrooms. It was supposed to be my second week training for a sales position, but it felt more like an audition for a remake of Office Space, one where the losers didn’t even get to set anything on fire. By the time I finished scrubbing the last urinal, my shift should have ended hours ago, but all I got was a text from my supervisor: [Good. You can go.] Then, as if it were a compliment taped to a brick, he added: [Just so you know, our new boss—against my better judgment—made you non-trainee starting Monday. So, I guess congratulations. But don’t get too happy. I know you’ll fall back down again.]

I walked home in a mood best described as “extinct volcano”: no eruption left, just the slow, chemical ooze of defeat. My hands were cracked from the cleaning products, and my head throbbed with the aftershocks of caffeine withdrawal. I fantasized about coming home to a dark, silent house, maybe even a note from Sarah saying she’d gone out for takeout and would be home in a few hours. Instead, the moment I opened the door, I was greeted by the unmistakable soundtrack of two people vigorously, joyously fucking down the hall.

“Oh fuck, Wiley… Right there… Keep going. Keep going.” Sarah’s voice, high and wild, ricocheted down the hallway and hit me in the gut like a thrown brick. They didn’t even have the curtsey of closing our bedroom door. As a result as took off my shoes on the landing I had a perfect view of Wiley’s sweat covered back arching and his thighs shaking as he pistoned into my girlfriend with the earnestness of a man trying to start a lawnmower. Each time he thrust, his stomach rippled like an old water bed, and Sarah clung to him with the expression of someone riding out a hurricane—not scared, but thrilled by the magnitude of it.

I walked into the living room and collapsed into my chair, too tired to be anything but numb. So I just turn on the tv.

Wiley moaned, “Fuck, Sara-bear, you feel so great! Am I doing good? Do you think she’ll like this?”

Sarah moaned back, “Yes, you are… she will… just keep going!” Her encouragement was so breathless—so genuine—it had to be true.

I wait one whole tv show before checking in on them. They are sleeping together in a tangled mess with smiles on both of there faces. She had done her mission there was no reason for her to stay by him, but I was too tired to but in any effort wake them up so I let them by and return to the tv.

Me changing the channel must have woken them up because I quickly started to hear them laughing back and forth. laughing slowly turned to soft moaning and soft moaning slowly torn to load moaning. The bed wasn’t creaking as much as it was before, so I turn to see what they were doing. And I saw my Sarah bouncing up and down on his lap.

That gross fat smelly fucker not only got to fuck Sarah three different nights times before I did even once but even get to do it once, but now he got to do it in two different positions.

I drifted off in the chair and woke in the morning to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. I turn my head to she Sarah, wearing my old t-shirt and nothing else, her legs streaked with the evidence of their marathon. She walked past without acknowledging me, straight to the kitchen, where she opened the fridge and drank orange juice straight from the carton.

She leaned against the counter, eyes half-closed, and sighed a long, complicated sigh. Only after she finished the juice did she finally look at me. “I can’t believe you actually agreed to last night,” she said, her voice a little raw, as if she’d been screaming into a pillow.

“That’s because I didn’t,” I said, my tone as flat as the television’s blue screen.

She frowned. “Wait, he told me he asked you first.”

“He did. But he mistook the way I said no for yes.”

Sarah stood there for a second, her mouth forming words she couldn’t quite say. She set the carton down and slid onto the chair next to mine, folding her legs up like a kid at detention.

“Oh,” she said, and then, softer, “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You only did it because you’re so caring, and you thought I was okay with it.” The words sounded hollow, but I knew they were mostly true.

Sarah winced, not at the accusation but at the memory of having been so easily manipulated. I watched her pull the sleeves of my t-shirt over her hands, almost hiding in the cotton. She bit her lip for a long time before looking up again. “I know. I’ll ask you first before next time.”

I registered her words, but my brain, still running on fumes from a night spent half-listening to the acoustics of the next bedroom so I repeated “Next time?”