“The number under the heart is how many people liked it,” Mike said quietly. “The other figure is the number of comments.”
There were 72 likes and 104 comments. I clicked on the comments, and everything instantly turned worse. If a video was worth a thousand words, here they all were.
“Jacob has seen this?” I asked quietly.
“He’s the one who showed it to me.”
“Who posted this? Whose account is this on?” I tried to figure out where to click, how to get off this loop of torture.
“It’s a new account. This is the only video on it. But at the bottom . . .”
“I see it.” At the bottom of the description, it said More to come. “Is this legal?” I asked. “Isn’t this, like, revenge porn or something?”
“I don’t know. We can call an attorney or the police.”
“Shit.” I pushed the phone away from me and tried not to vomit. The thought of reporting this to the police—they’d laugh. They’d send us away, their time needing to be focused on real crimes, on something more important than sixty seconds that showed me dancing in my bra and underwear—God, I needed to lose more weight—on the front of David’s boat. Us kissing, my hand gripping his crotch through his pants. My head back, laughing as he knelt between my knees and lowered his mouth to my cleavage. Through all the video clips, there was a song playing, one labeled as “MILF,” the lyrics describing in crude detail how much the singer wanted to bang his friend’s mother. The video’s creator had dubbed in Jacob’s name in frequent fashion, so every reference was to wanting to “part Jacob’s mama’s legs” and so forth. It was a masterful and complete atom bomb of embarrassment—and the worst part was that it wasn’t just embarrassing to me. Jacob, who had once refused to go to school for three days because he had cut his cheek while shaving, would be mortified. Anyone, after reading the comments section, would be mortified for him.
“We have to get this down,” I said desperately. “I don’t know how, but this can’t . . . How long has this been up?”
“Four hours. It posted right before lunch. Apparently, it was all anyone was watching in the cafeteria. Jacob checked out as soon as he saw it.”
Shit. He’d never forgive me for this. Ever. “Where is he?”
“He just left. He said he was going for a drive.”
I rested my head in my hands. “It’s about to be rush hour. You know how he gets.” Patience was a trait that Jacob had not yet found, and he’d already been in one fender bender due to his aggressive driving. Add heightened emotions to a heavy foot, and the results could be disastrous. Deadly. Teenagers were dying all the time in car accidents. Between that, suicides, and overdoses, it was amazing that any of them lived to see graduation.
“I need this guy’s information. How long have you been seeing him?”
His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, and had this been a quiz show, I would have correctly guessed this reaction.
“A few weeks,” I hedged. “I met him the weekend Maurice Grepp died.” It was a lie, but a believable one, with just enough false detail to stick. My husband wasn’t the only one well versed in the art of deception.
“What’s his name?” His pen was poised over the page as he waited expectantly, and this item I couldn’t lie about. A lie here he would unfurl in minutes.
“David Laurent.” I had to clear my throat, the words getting stuck on their way out. “He’s nobody, Mike. I don’t—I don’t care about him. It was just a fling.” Shit, I sounded just like him.
He didn’t respond. I chanced a look at him, but he was pushing to his feet and walking out of the room.
CHAPTER 34
LILLIAN
In our bedroom, I changed out of my damp bathing suit and cover-up, the guilt radiating through me as I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt. From its place on the dresser, my phone vibrated.
It was David. My anxiety deepened at the realization that his face was on that video too. What happened if the next one tagged him or if someone in his life saw it? What if this was just the start of the repercussions?
I pulled my hair into a ponytail and steeled myself for what was downstairs—Mike’s risk-and-solutions assessment, which was already pages long and spread out on our dining table.
The aftermath of this would not be messy, but it would be harsh. Mike was not emotional, but he was cold and vindictive. When the neighbors reported our trash cans for sitting too long on the curb, Mike audited ten years of archived satellite images of their home and then sent a two-inch-thick package of documentation to code enforcement, detailing the unauthorized improvements made, along with a list of current citations. He also sent a letter to their homeowner’s insurance, alerting them to their pit bull, Snuggles, who could barely move off the couch and played with butterflies in her spare time.
I didn’t think my affair would break Mike’s heart, but it would insult his ego, and there would be punishment as soon as he properly handled the situation.
Would he go after David, drunk and furious, his fists swinging to protect the woman he loved?
No. The thought was almost humorous, if not heartbreaking.
I checked my text messages to see if I had anything from Jacob. My last text, sent twenty minutes ago, was still missing the “Read” indicator.
I took the steps downstairs, dreading what was ahead. “Jacob isn’t reading my text messages.”
“He probably has his phone off.” Mike was back at the table and looked up from the notepad in front of him. “Give him a chance to cool off. You know how he is with caring about what other people think. He’s mad.”
Jacob, for a teenager, had a very staunch moral code. If I’d sat him down and confessed that I was having an affair, he would have been distraught. If he was ever embarrassed in front of his friends, he would withdraw in mortification and anxiety. This was a combination of both, and I was sick to my stomach with a cocktail of guilt and intense rage for whoever had filmed and posted this.
“Okay, I see this as several problems. First, we have the reputations of you, me, and this David Laurent. What do you know about him?” Mike looked up at me, his pen poised ready for action.
“Look.” I sat across from him. “About that. I’m sorry. I was just so hurt from—”
“Let’s focus on the problem,” Mike snapped. “What do you know of him? Is he married?”
“No.” I knotted my arms over my chest. “He’s single. He, um. He has a chain of screen-printing T-shirt shops.”
“Have you told him about this?”
I shook my head.
“Well, we have to assume he’ll find out. It might affect his job, his clients, his reputation. Let’s talk about yours. Will the Times care about this?”
The paper. Mike still thought that I was on a temporary leave of absence from the paper. I considered using this video as my excuse but dismissed that thought. We had enough lies between us already. “I was fired, before this happened. The paper isn’t taking me back.”
He took it well, drawing a thin line through the words Lillian’s job in the aftereffects column. He moved to the next item, and for once, I was grateful he was so devoid of human emotion. “On my front, it’s personally embarrassing, but I don’t think any of my clients or coworkers will care. Other than a weakening of my perceived masculine attributes, there should not be any financial repercussions, assuming that this video doesn’t go viral and isn’t followed up by more—”