Free The Wives of Beverly Row 3: Lust Has a New Address by Abby Weeks

said.
    “I’ll tell you, when the message came in I thought it was a joke. I’ll be the first to admit my marriage isn’t perfect but I never expected this.”
    “I never would have believed it either,” Ariel said. “To be blunt, if I’d had to guess who was the cheater in your marriage, I would have guessed it was you.”
    Jake shrugged. He looked sympathetic to Ariel. “That’s what people always think. I guess I can come across badly sometimes.”
    “I’ll say,” Ariel said, sipping her wine.
    “You want another glass?” Jake said.
    Ariel looked up at him. She felt so bad for judging him. She’d thought he was the biggest asshole in the world and now she was seeing a whole other side to him.
    “Sure,” she said. “What the hell. We only live once.”

XIV
    O VER THE COURSE OF THE next two hours Ariel lost track of the number of glasses of wine Jake bought her. She felt a bit strange sitting there with him getting progressively drunker. Just a few hours earlier she’d thought Jake was one of the biggest assholes she’d ever met in her life. Now here she was, letting him flirt shamelessly with her. She began to think that maybe she wasn’t quite as good a judge of character as she’d thought. She’d thought Jake was a jerk and it turned out he was actually a pretty nice guy. He had his issues just like everyone else did. And besides, what did Ariel know? She’d just slept with her own ex-husband, a man she knew had cheated on her literally hundreds of times. She’d also taken Zola’s side at the pool party only to learn that Zola was the one having the wild affairs, letting people videotape her while she was fucking her husband’s friends! That was crazy.
    “I can’t believe my ex asked me out tonight,” Ariel said.
    “I can,” Jake said. “Look at you!”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ariel said.
    “I don’t know,” Jake said. “It’s just, let’s just say, when I saw you and your daughter come over to our pool party that day, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
    “Come on!”
    “Really,” he said. “I’m not kidding. I think that’s the whole reason I acted weird that day.”
    “You’re so full of it.”
    “Really, Ariel. I was like, damn ! I don’t think I’d ever seen a woman as hot as you in my entire life.”
    “Oh God, Gabe. You’re just flirting with me now.”
    “I’m not,” he said. He leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. Ariel looked down at his hand. She knew exactly where this was leading. It wasn’t going to go anywhere good. How the hell could she even think about sleeping with her friend’s husband? It was insane. She lived on Beverly Row. She had to maintain good relationships with the other women who lived there. If she slept with Jake, how the hell was she ever going to be able to look Zola in the eye again? She wasn’t the kind of person who could live dishonestly. She wouldn’t be able to do this.
    But Jake’s hand moved slowly up from her knee along her thigh. It felt so good to have his big, strong hand on her leg. She felt sexy and desirable. He wanted her. All she had to do was take a glance at his lap to see that his penis was erect inside his slacks. He wanted her so badly that he was coming on to her right here in the bar.
    She wondered how he felt, finding out that his wife was cheating on him. She knew how she’d felt the first time she’d realized for certain that Gabe was cheating on her. It had been devastating. She’d have done anything at that moment. There was no way she could have controlled her emotions at that point. That was what Jake was going through right now. He was emotionally devastated. He’d wake up in the morning and begin to put the pieces of his life together, try and figure out how he was going to go on in a marriage that obviously wasn’t what he thought it was. But right now everything was different. He was in free fall and anything was possible.
    Ariel looked at him. She didn’t think about