Drug use, parties, constant flirting with other people, and living what Ben referred to as a double life persisted. The married Rachel, who took considerable advantage of the stability Ben provided, did what she wanted, when she wanted, without regard to the marriage or her husband’s unmatched faithfulness. And it all led to this moment, when Ben had dealt with all he could take.
By this time, his heart truly was broken; he felt helpless. Nothing he could do would change her ways. He wanted to go to counseling, though she never seemed to be interested until he appeared to be ready to give up. Being taken advantage of was gut-wrenching for Ben, and for said advantage to be taken by someone who he thought had loved him… that was even more agonizing.
Knowing of the multiple previous offenses of unfaithfulness, Ben learned in early 2018 that Rachel was cheating again. Nearly everyone in the town had been aware for some time that she was sleeping with Aaron Carroll, but, as usual, the betrayed husband was the last to get in on the news. Aaron was Freeden’s city manager, a transplant from northern Virginia. He had what every college girl wants in a guy: jock persona, big-man-on-campus label, a chiseled body, and a decent career with a good-paying job. In Ben’s opinion though, he was dumb as a box of rocks, and he began to assume most of the grown women in this area who admired Aaron were too, considering he was what every college girl would want, not what every grown woman would want.
Aaron was the type of guy who would have you think he knew everything there was to know that was relevant in life, but the reality lay just under the surface of his flat persona. Ben perceived Aaron to be a guy who thought he was the shit. And Ben was right: Aaron was a prideful man who would never stoop so low as to admit he was wrong. When he and Ben crossed paths at local events, he often dropped the jock, most-important-guy-in-the room facade, as if he recognized Ben was not buying it. He rarely talked to Ben, because truth was, he was intimidated by Ben’s success and notoriety in the community. Aaron certainly lived a more involved social life in Freeden than Ben did, but Ben had the respect of the community, and that was something Aaron strongly desired. For this reason, Aaron had little to do with Ben, and Ben certainly did not mind.
When it came to being nice and generous to people, you would not find a seemingly better guy. But over time, that too proved to be a result of another motive: he liked to sleep around and show his much-sought-after body to as many women as possible. He could sleep with any woman he wanted in town, and probably would, regardless of the effect it could have in the way of breaking apart families. He simply bet that he would escape each time without being discovered, and that a simple rendezvous would not do any harm. In his eyes, it was just sex.
Ben longed for a relationship built on decent principles, yet Aaron and other community members’ perception of it’s just sex had become the thought of the times –a misconstrued one that seriously conflicted with what Ben thought sex was really supposed to be. Like most people, Ben perceived sex as something he should enjoy, but he viewed it as something he should make exclusive with someone he loved. He didn’t feel that way as much earlier in his adult life, but at this point, it made the most sense to him.
Ben wondered if, perhaps, Aaron viewed sex the way he did because he, like Ben, had never actually made love with someone. Ben had tried to make love with Rachel, but she never seemed interested in cherishing a physical relationship beyond that of friends having sex. She often told Ben she only wanted to fuck, and that she was just not interested in making love with him, implying that she too believed there was a difference. And while Ben desired an exclusive relationship, Rachel often told Ben that she wanted to venture out and fuck around with other people, both together and separately. She was not interested in the intimate, loving marriage Ben so desired, and he held onto the hope there was a difference between just sex and making love, and that perhaps he would one day encounter real love. With Rachel, there was nothing of the sort. And much to his dismay, he knew there never would be.
Whether Rachel had sex or made love with Aaron, Ben knew for a fact she was doing one of the two, and both exemplified unfaithfulness that could destroy a marriage. And regardless of whether they viewed it as making love or just sex, Aaron was sticking his cock inside of her, and she was willingly taking it.
A year had passed since Ben had last suspected that Rachel was sleeping around, and at the time he simply dropped the issue and moved on because he didn’t want to believe she would do this again, especially after they had committed to showing more love to one another. Now though, he was fully aware that she was sleeping with Aaron on a regular basis.
Concrete evidence of the extramarital affair surfaced as a result of a local woman named Terri Hathaway, a psychiatrist who attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and returned home to open her own office and serve a community that had a dire need for mental health development and wellness. She, too, performed as a member of the community chorus. A soprano with an angelic voice, she had been selected to be featured as a soloist in Requiem.
Terri always had lunch at the same place as Ben each day, but they rarely spoke other than saying, “Hello” and carrying on a minute or two of small-talk. One day though, about a month prior to Requiem, Ben noticed that she kept peering at him across the restaurant. Her face was blanketed with anxiety, and even though Ben knew very little about her other than growing up together as children, what she did for a living, and that she was widely known to be a kind-hearted person, he could tell something was gravely wrong. Soon enough she abandoned her half-eaten BLT, signed her receipt for lunch, and instead of walking to the door and exiting, approached his table.
“Afternoon, Ben.”
“Terri.” He nodded in acknowledgement of her arrival. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” She nervously looked around, then back at Ben. “Mind if I join you for a minute?”
“No, please do!” Ben grew concerned about the way she looked, even more so now that he could see her close up and the anxiety seemed to be growing. More often than not, Terri was a woman who looked calm and poised, and at this moment, she was neither.
She sat down in the booth across from Ben, peered around the restaurant once more to see who might be listening, and said, “I need to tell you something that has really been bothering me. And…umm,” she stuttered, “I am not sure anyone else has told you.”
Ben raised an eyebrow, leaned back in his chair, alarmed at her approach and what she might tell him. “Well, to be honest, Terri, I have no idea what you are talking about, so it is a good guess to assume no one else has told me anything.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Well, what’s going on?” he asked.
“Ben, I don’t know how to say this but to say it direct and straightforward.” She stopped, all the while looking down and avoiding eye contact with Ben.
“Go on,” Ben nudged.
She looked up, directly into his eyes. “Your wife is cheating on you with Aaron Carroll.”
The blankest, most emotionless stare must have come across Ben’s face as he looked into Terri’s eyes, a gaze that could have drilled a metaphorical hole through her head.
A man constantly worried about the impression he made on others, it killed him to be told this by someone else other than his wife, and it also hurt to think that if Terri knew about it, that it was very possible a large number of others did as well. What made Rachel’s past transgressions easier to deal with was that he did not think the folks around town knew, so when she asked for forgiveness and he granted it, Ben thought the hard part was just between the two of them. If a church-going, good girl like Terri knew about his personal problems, he surely believed they had become ingrained into the heart of Freeden’s gossip pipeline, and the old adage of everybody knew but him was probably applicable.
He did not want her to know, but his heart was breaking