Ex with Benefits (sequel to Roommates with Benefits)

Boys do cry

These days I'm walking on egg shells, I'm perfectly aware that the tiniest mistake can cost me everything, and it's not like she's any wrong in that. Even though, I have written my list of her own faults, and I plan to give it to her some other day.

So I assume that everything can doom me. When she said everything I found out throughout this dinner can and will be used against you, I swear, I felt color drain out of my face. I thought, there, I'm screwed. Sheila won't go easy, she'll dig up everything, she'll tell Tara how I sought her, how I called her, went to her, how it was me to begin it all, she'll tell Tara the awful things I said about her while I was drunk and brokenhearted, she'll tell her everything, and Tara will never forgive me ...

I felt like the worst sinner would feel upon facing final judgment. I thought, this is it, this is where everything ends. Because I know my Tarry, she's quite proud for a type, and she easily believes other people instead of me, which I suppose figures given all the lies I've told her over the years – another list I made and that will have to deliver soon –, but it's still frustrating. I mean, I've been loyal and truthful for 15 years out of 18, doesn't that count anything?

Okay, okay, before you all angry ladies start attacking me, yes, I know, it doesn't.

Even one cheating is unforgivable, imagine seven. I understand now how Tara felt, and I have no excuse. Even though I tell myself I did it out of spite, just to hurt her because she'd hurt me, it definitely doesn't justify me. I vowed to stand by her through thick and thin, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health ... yet I abandoned the ship when things got tougher than tough.

I thought this dinner would serve to dig up all of my errors, so it would doom me, instead ... it had the complete opposite outcome.

I gotta be honest, you know me, I'm a bit of a control freak, and I've spent year believing that a real man is a man that is in perfect control of the situation more than just his feelings, yet ... sitting there, listening to Tara give that speech, finally get off her chest all that she'd been evidently wanting to say to her ex best friend since years, it was ... mind-blowing. I was a mere spectator, yet I was the whole center of the topic. I guess now I understand why do some women find so sexy when two men quarrel over them.

That claim on me as her man that Tara did, I gotta be honest, it was fucking hot.

You know what's odd, though? None of those women had an answer. None of them was able to hold Tara's steely gaze, none of them was able to do anything more than mumble a stuttered apology.

One by one, all my past flings apologized to my wife for even only trying to seduce me. It was weird, really, especially because it's not like it was entirely their fault, and Tara knows that. In fact she sent me meaningful looks, implicitly demanding I say something. What could I say? Other than "sorry if I used you to get back at my wife", that is.

I explained to each of them that I complied with their advances because my wife and I were having a difficult period, and I was angry at her for some reasons, so I let my loyalty quiver because subconsciously I knew she would notice the difference in me, I knew she would read it on my face that I'd been with another woman, and she would hurt.

It was awful. Saying those things out loud to those women while Tara stoically stood there, it was really awful, I felt all the weight of my dirty conscience nearly crush me. Yet there was the relief of her earlier speech, where she claimed she was taking me back ... I was torn. I was over the moon because finally I was back in her graces, and on tenterhooks because knowing her, anything those other women might say could possibly make her change her mind again.

In the end it was a raging success for me. We could finally bury deep, deep the hatchet about my cheatings and start anew, on a clean slate.

The only exception amongst those women was Belinda. At my reasons to have a fallback with her, at Tara's question as to why she sought me if she knew I was married, Belinda just snorted and said she couldn't care less, a good fuck was a good fuck, she justified. Ah, God, every time I see that woman I'm reminded of what a fucking jackass I've been. She brought out the worst in me, even worse than Sheila, yeah.