Slide closer

You shuffle down the counter with small side steps so that you're standing near the booth where your wife and best friend are chatting. While you're inching your way closer to the pair, you turn your head in the other direction, so that if they look your way they won't see your face. When you've moved until they're almost sitting directly behind you, you hear your wife's soft voice.

"-just feel so bad," you hear her say, although you missed the beginning. "I can't even look him in the eye."

It's obvious that she's talking about you, when you think back to this morning and how she practically avoided you whenever she could. You wonder what she could be feeling so guilty about.

"I told you, just show him the dress," Matt exclaims. "It looks so good on you he won't think about anything else."

You remember Matt telling your wife in the text message conversation to wear the dress for you so that you wouldn't care about the price. But you can't help but think that maybe they're trying to hide something else as well. You don't know that they're keeping any other secrets but that you can't prove otherwise either allows your imagination to speculate wildly.

"I still can't believe I let you talk me into buying that obscene thing," she growls, although she sounds more frustrated than angry. "I can't imagine what Eric will say if he sees me dressed as a hooker, and if I can't even show him, how am I supposed to where it to Chez Mignon!"

The barista returns with your coffee and pastry and you pay her while keeping an ear to your friends. Even after she returns with your change, you linger there and sip at your coffee. You're not in line and the shop isn't busy, so no one seems to mind.

"You do not look like a hooker. I have business meetings at Chez Mignon, do you really think I'd make you dress like that when I have to go back to this place every week? You're going to look elegant, stylish and beautiful, and I'll be proud to walk in there with you." he assures her. "Have I ever steered you wrong?"

In the shiny, polished steel behind the counter you can see the reflection of the couple at the table, and you watch as Matt gazes up at your wife's face and reaches out to place a reassuring hand on your wife's hand. The stainless steel is a little blurry, so you turn your head and look at them briefly. The image in the reflection didn't lie. Your best friend's hand is covering your wife's and worse, from this angle you can see its her left hand, and Matt's palm is covering her wedding ring. Maybe it's unintentional, and the skin to skin contact is more concerning, but your mind focuses on the symbolism of that one act.

"Well...no..." she replies shyly and doesn't move her hand from his grasp. "I don't think you'd try to embarrass me."

"Oh that's not true, but if I wanted to embarrass you, I'd bring up the time you got drunk and flashed your bare ass at a party."

The accident he's talking about is one you know well. It wasn't long after you and Ariana had started dating, maybe a couple of months, and you and Matt had heard of a party at a friend's house. Ariana seemed nervous about attending but she went because you asked, and wore a nice, flowing summer dress that reached just above her knees. You don't remember her drinking heavily, but a couple of hours after arriving at the party, when the entire house was packed, your girlfriend was walking from the kitchen to the living area, drink in hand, when she tripped and planted herself face first on the thankfully carpeted floor. The result was that she on her knees, her torso slumped forward and her ass high in the air. To make matters worse, in the fall, her loose billowing dress flapped up around her waist, revealing her cute rounded butt, with only a thin white thong to protect her modesty. You were really surprised to see her wearing that kind of underwear, but she was so embarrassed that she was almost in tears, so you took her back to her house right away.

"I've never been so mortified in my entire life," you hear your wife say while watching her reflection bring a hand up to hide her face. Her left hand however stays under Matt's. "But I've told you before, I wasn't drunk, my foot got snagged on their rug. Of course, it had to happen on the one night my friend convinced me to wear a thong to impress Eric. Never again."

"So you won't be wearing one with the dress?" Matt asks, a hint of eagerness in his voice. "That white one you wore to the party would look so good with it."

"Oh god, you remember what color it was?" Ariana's voice sounds strange, a mixture of shock, amazement and further humiliation, as if her embarrassment was so extensive that even the color of her panties is memorable. But you think that the color is burned into Matt's brain for another reason.

"Well, sorry to disappoint, but those belonged to my friend, and after that incident I gave them right back. But I picked out a nice lace-" Her voice suddenly stops and you don't even have to look over to know that she's blushing. "W-well, it doesn't matter. You're never gonna see them."

Your heart stops in your chest. Your wife's words may have just betrayed that she doesn't know that the dinner tomorrow is part of a sex date. If you don't intervene right now, Matt might question her ignorance, and your whole prank could come unfurled.

On the other hand, if you have to intervene, it will raise serious questions about why you're there at the coffee shop rather than at work like you said you would be. So either way you might be caught in a lie.