Author: not_a_good_husband

At the start of the pandemic, my wife’s friend Amanda texted me out the blue to ask if we were getting good use out of our rowing machine, as apparently she was thinking about buying one. I told her I was using it about 3x a week, but that it’d been a pain to set up. Eventually, over the course of texting, Amanda told me that her husband Colin didn’t appreciate her much anymore and hadn’t seem overly interested in her since she gave birth about a year prior. Being polite, but also ever the flirt, I told her that Colin was being ridiculous and I thought that – if anything – she might look better now than she did then. She accepted the compliment and somewhat flirted back, talking about how lucky my wife was that I was aging well too.

This then simmered down for a few weeks until about a month later, on a Monday, when she texted me out of the blue yet again.

‘Hey! Are you around this week? I wound up getting the same model rower that you guys bought and could use some help assembling it!’ Read more »

When it gets hot in the summer, I’ve had the habit of sleeping on the first floor. Our house is in an area where houses weren’t traditionally built with A/C, and the first floor has the additional benefit of being cooler than the upstairs since cold air goes down, etc. Somewhere along the way, since I’m on the first floor anyway, I’ve picked up the habit of waking up around 2 or 3 am and going for a glass of water from the fridge.

With that habit becoming fairly routine, I went to get some water around 2 am and heard what sounded like a woman’s laughter coming from my patio. Confused, and slightly out of it, I poked my finger through the blinds of the back door and discerned the familiar glow of hot tub lights.

*‘What fucking time is it?’* I thought, glancing over at the stove. It was 2:15 am, apparently. As I gripped the door handle, I heard another burst of laughter – this time including the deep tones of a man along with the woman.

“Uh… what’s going on out here?” I asked, my head poking through the doorframe. I was still pretty tired but my body’s adrenaline was quickly escalating at the recognition I had intruders. Read more »