Page 4 of Opening It Up (Humbled Superstars #2)

Lily-Mae

“ I f you want to, fine.”

“If you change your mind, just tell me,” he hastened to reassure me. “I want us to have open communication with each other. But I thought we could commit to a three-month trial first.”

“That sounds fine,” I said, dropping my eyes and sliding past him quickly into the shower.

I heard Harley whistling as I scrubbed up, tears falling silently down my face as I washed my hair.

He was whistling because he was happy, because the whole idea was delightful to him.

Because he didn’t think it would be so easy to talk me into it.

But he had made it pretty damn clear with that podcast how he really felt.

My stomach cramped with nerves.

How was this even going to work?

After I showered, we got into bed together and put on one of our favorite classic horror movies, Harley bantering lightly back and forth with me as he always did. I tried to keep up, but inside I still felt numb.

This wasn’t enough for him .

“We can talk more about logistics tomorrow,” he reassured me, but I went to bed with a lump in my throat and a sick sinking feeling in my belly.

Every morning after dropping the kids off at school I taught Gentle Yoga classes on the first floor of his office building, and Harley and I would get lunch together afterwards at the café.

It was always nice. We tried new pastries or sandwiches together, talked about the kids, sometimes Harley even whipped out our favorite Pioneers of Swampguard board game.

Would he still want to do this if we had an open marriage?

Did it matter? He was bored. I was part of what bored him.

How depressing to realize instead of the happy marriage you thought you had, your husband was feeling like his majestic eagle’s wings were getting clipped by your expectation of monogamy.

As I waited that day in our usual booth at the café, the elevator dinged and Harley and another woman from the building got out, laughing together.

She was very beautiful, with sleek dark hair and sparkly makeup all over her body, and there was something in the space between them.

Would it be weird to ask to be introduced again?

I didn’t remember her name, but somehow, I knew it was important now.

There was something between them, a crackling, shifting thing that made me feel sick to my stomach.

Harley’s walk was deceptively casual, the way he nodded his head to her as they parted.

But he still met my eyes.

Because they hadn’t done anything.

Yet.

But he wanted to.

He wanted to have an affair with her and not feel guilty about it. That’s what this was all about. Wasn’t it? I didn’t think I could bear it.

Harley sat down and began to tell me about an upcoming podcast guest, a man who was going to talk about toxic masculinity, but all I could think about was:

My husband wants to sleep with other women

Maybe once he slept with her he’d get it out of his system?

I came to a decision as I listened to my brilliant, charismatic husband talk, his strong tanned hands squeezing mine gently as he leaned forward to tell me excitedly all about this guest. If Harley wanted to do this, I was in.

But not if this was all about fucking this one particular woman.

Now I didn’t have any intention whatsoever of going on dates with other men. I loved Harley and we had a very satisfactory sex life.

I was just going to go along with this and ride it out until he got over it.

And what if he doesn’t? I wondered, my anxiety clawing at me.

What if he decides he loves her ?

Well, one thing at a time.

I would agree to this on one condition.

“Who was that woman you were with?” I asked, my voice coming out with a croak.

Harley raised a dark eyebrow at me as he cut his Reuben in two.

“Makayla?” he asked. “She works in the building.”

He met my eyes with cool directness. There was nothing in his blue eyes or strong jawline to show that he was lying. But I just felt I needed a little more reassurance.

In 17 years together, I hadn’t ever distrusted a thing he had said.

“About what you suggested yesterday,” I said, trying to calm my wildly beating heart.

My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

“It’s not about having sex with Makayla, is it?”

I played with the handle of my mug.

My foolish heart couldn’t help leaping with hope. Could Harley see that I didn’t really want to do this? He would back down now, agree it was a foolish idea.

But he didn’t.

“Absolutely not.”

“No?”

“Absolutely not,” he said firmly.

I breathed a quick sigh of relief.

At least it wasn’t that. I felt like I could handle anything but that.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, with that devastatingly handsome boyish grin flashing across his face. At 44, he not only had as much charisma as ever, but he knew it, too. And he was only going to get hotter.

I felt a spasm of nerves, feeling unexpectedly vulnerable.

“It--makes me nervous. . . but I’m willing to try it. If it’s important to you.”

For a minute, I hoped Harley would see my clear reluctance and call the whole thing off. But he didn’t.

Grinning at me, he went to grab us refills of coffee and came back to the table.

“I’m really happy to hear that you’re open to this, sweetheart. I think this honesty will lead to increased intimacy and connection in our own relationship.”

“Will it?” I asked through numb lips. “How will it do that?”

“We’ll be open with each other,” he said earnestly. “No secrets between us. Open and affirmative communication only.”

“And you really want this?” I asked. “You really want me to go on dates with other men?”

“Of course!” my husband said brightly. “I want you to explore new relationships and perspectives, too.”

New relationships? Even the thought of it was exhausting to me.

Teagan had a science fair project, Rowan was wanting to get into soccer.

“I don’t know how much time in my schedule I’ll have for this,” I said weakly.

Harley knew me. He knew I was a busy, frazzled mom. I barely had time to condition my hair, let alone seek out the perspective of some random man’s penis.

But he didn’t acknowledge that at all.

“We can figure that out. I’m just so happy you were open to hearing my point of view,” my husband practically purred, kissing me on the top of my head. “I hear your concern about scheduling. So let’s talk logistics.”

I stared down at my own toes, the pink nail polish chipped and peeling off.

“I want this to be fully open and transparent,” Harley continued, suddenly unrolling a massive calendar in front of me. “We’ll mark all our dates on here. I propose that we do a rotation schedule and trade off days for going on dates. Allowing, of course, for the usual family time.”

I nodded.

Of course. Right. All the dates we’d be going on with other people.

“Let’s say Friday night will be family night. One of us will take the first weekend, then the other. You can have Tuesday and Thursday evenings?—"

“Harley,” I interrupted, clearing my throat. “Are you sure this isn’t—about anyone in particular?”

“Why would you think it would be about anyone?”

I gritted my teeth.

Sometimes.

Just sometimes.

My husband’s grasp of psychological principles was very annoying.

“I just want to know.”

“No,” he said, taking both my hands and looking right in my eyes. “This is about me wanting to push the strict and repressive boundaries of what’s expected in a long-term monogamous relationship.”

“All right,” I said.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me, a little frown line between his eyebrows. “It’s not too late to back out and decide to go back to what’s safe and comfortable. I only want you to do this if you really want to. I don’t want you to feel pressured into it.”

But what will you do if I don’t? my brain screamed fearfully at me.

You have made it abundantly clear that you think monogamy is a recipe for stagnation.

Wouldn’t I lose you?

I could have said no. But I just didn’t want to lose him, even though it made me feel sick.

“No,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind. I agree to do this.”

“You won’t regret opening up our marriage,” Harley said with a wink. “I promise you, nothing essential will change. We will both come back to each other feeling revitalized and refreshed.”

“All right,” I said unenthusiastically.

God, how many moms in my mom group were going to be trying to sleep with my husband now?

“I am hoping to eventually transition into kitchen-table polyamory,” Harley went on in his eager way. “Where the two of us and all of our partners can have a good enough relationship that we can all have dinner together sometimes.”

The idea of sitting at the kitchen table with the other women Harley was fucking sounded absolutely nauseating to me.

Fat bloody likely I’d ever be down for that.

Even the idea of multiple partners was so foreign to me. I hadn’t thought of another man since I met Harley in college.

“I don’t know about that.”

“New people and experiences are everywhere,” Harley said. “If you only open yourself up to them. I know you can do this, Lily-Mae.”

“I’m not sure how easy this is going to be for me,” I warned him.

“Remember, it isn’t a competition. And you can’t be discouraged because it takes you a little bit to get back into the dating scene,” Harley said encouragingly.

But I was not encouraged.

Maybe it would be easy for him .

But I was a frazzled, frumpy 38-year-old mom of two.

Who was even going to want to date me?

I was just going to have to grin and bear it until Harley got this out of his system.