Page 25 of Opening It Up
“Want to go out for lunch?” I asked Makayla later that week.
Did I actually want to go out with Makayla?
Not particularly, but by God I wasn’t going to be caught sitting bymyselflike a loser since I knew Lily-Mae was going out with Leopold.
I felt aggrieved.
It wasn’t like Lily-Mae and I haddiscussedlunch dates. Because I had assumed she would always be available to have them withme.
They were great, really.
My wife always helped me brainstorm topics for my podcast and questions for my interviewed guests. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on her input and ideas, because suddenly my show was feeling slightly weak, not as sharp as it usually was. The last two episodes had felt really off.
“I guess,” Makayla said, after scrolling through her phone for a minute.
The elevator ride down was silent.
Not really how I expected things to go with Makayla.
When we headed into the café for lunch, I expected to see my wife down there eating with Leopold, but to my surprise she was nowhere to be found.
I sat next to Makayla dispiritedly.
Where could she be? Suddenly I didn’t feel hungry at all, and could only pick at my burger and fries.
“Do you like to play any board games?” I asked Makayla.
“Board games?” she snapped, her mouth curled up in disdain. “You mean like Candyland?”
“No, I don’t mean like Candyland. I mean like Pioneers of Swampguard. Like complex, multi-leveled strategy games.”
“No.”
After that, conversation languished for a bit.
Why the hell had I wanted this so badly?
Instead of sitting with my wife cracking inside jokes, playing games, and working on my business, I was eating in silence with this random woman I had thought was hot.
What the fuck had been wrong with me?
Meeting new people was extremely overrated.
Having new experiences was not all it was fucking cracked up to be. And surely Lily-Mae could see that. Surely she would agree it was not worth it.
I was. . . very tempted to suggest stopping our three month open marriage experiment early.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” Makayla yowled, breaking into my thoughts and pressing her nose against the café window.
“Huh?”
I twisted around to see a bunch of shiny food trucks pulling into the high-rise parking lot, followed by a limo I recognized as Leopold’s.
The fuck?
One food truck said Crème brûlée.
Another said Macarons.
