Once she was back in her hotel room, Kylie tried to put the confrontation with the stranger out of her mind. For a while, she"d been sure that she"d done just that and put it behind her. Then, when she saw Ethan, she began to have doubts. Is it possible, she thought to herself, that Ethan is keeping something from me? Did he really lie to me?No, her mind replied. Let it go. He has always been there to comfort me when I am down. He has always given me the benefit of the doubt, so don"t I owe it to him to do the same for him? Why would I trust the words of a creepy stranger over what I know to be true? My husband will not be going to hurt me,"
"I suspect him now, her mind replied, because, if it weren"t true, what motive would the stranger have, to go out of his way to tell me that I should suspect Ethan. Either way, if I believe the stranger or not, what would he have to gain by warning me?
"Nothing…" Kylie muttered under her breath. Several weird thoughts bother her mind. She even lost interest in checking her social media account.
As she was thinking about this, Ethan came out from the kitchen with two bowls of Thai soup. "Your favorite," he said as he placed it in front of her. The aromatic smell quickly lingered her nose.
"Thank you," Kylie said as she leaned into him so that she could kiss him on the mouth. Ethan set his dish beside her and sat down to eat. As they ate, Kylie scolded herself for even entertaining the thought that there might be some evil side of him that he was keeping from her.
"You look tired," Ethan said between bites. "When you"re done eating, why don"t you take a bath and then go down for a nap? You badly needed a nap, wife. You don"t look good," He added.
Hearing this, Kylie began to wonder if he was genuinely concerned for her well being, or if he was aiming to have s.e.x with her. From what he"d said so far, she had no way of knowing. She hoped, though, that he didn"t try anything cheeky. She was still on her period, she had bad cramps, and she just wasn"t in the mood.
Kylie wracked her brain to figure out how to get out of having s.e.x if that was what he was after.
Of course, he wants s.e.x, her brain said, in her mother"s voice this time. He is a man, isn"t he? All men think about is s.e.x. All-day, it is the one thing they are after. Then they go to bed, the dream of s.e.x, and then they wake up with a hard-on. This makes them feel happy and content.
I could play hard to get, another voice in her brain suggested, but he might think that you are just teasing him…But what if he doesn"t really love me and he just only wants to bed me?
In the end, it seemed that Kylie had been overthinking the whole thing, and she scolded herself for not giving Ethan the credit he deserved. As she left the table to run a bath, he said, "I am going to go for a jog," and off he went.
As soon as the bathtub was full of her satisfaction, she undressed, climbed in, and opened her phone to check out what was happening in her social media account. She quickly scrolls her Facebook feeds. After about five minutes of random checking, her phone buzzed, and a bubble appeared on her screen to indicate that she"d received a text message. She opened the messenger application and found herself looking at a relatively old photograph.
In the picture, there were several people standing outside a theater. Among them, there was one particular person that Kylie found her eyes being drawn to. When she looked closer, she could see that she was the girl in the picture. Ethan was there as well, except it wasn"t Kylie by his side, it was some other girl.
Seeing the picture, her mind began to nag at her in a way that it never had before. Ethan had told Kylie that she was the only person he had ever loved. If that were true, she wanted to know about this girl who was so obvious with him. Above all, she wanted to trust him, but she learned that an unpleasant truth is better than a pleasant lie. Jealousy suddenly took over her mind. She craves to know the truth.
Looking at the muddled expressions in the photograph, she could almost imagine Tom Thomas"s triumphant laughter. The message had come through as Unknown Name/Unknown Number, but she was fairly certain that the picture had come from him.
Not wanting him to think he had gotten the better of her, she typed out a quick response: "Your talent with Photoshop is pretty good, but your work does not stand up to extreme scrutiny."
Having said that, she turned her phone off and set it on the toilet.
By the time Ethan returned from his run, Kylie had gotten out of the tub, dressed, and was relaxing on the couch. He took one look at her and asked her what she was reading.
"It"s called Lord of the Flies. It"s written by William Golding. If you haven"t read it already, you should. This is my third time reading it; that is how much I like it."
"What"s it about? I haven"t heard a book like that," Ethan asked.
"It"s about a bunch of boys who get trapped on an island," she replied as she held her place with a bookmark and set the book on the coffee table in front of her. "How was your run?" she asked.
"It was good," Ethan replied. "While I was out, I picked up a few doc.u.ments. I"ve already looked through them, but it is important that you also read through them carefully." He said afterward.