Free My Secret Love by Darcy Meyer

 
    I suppose somewhere in my mind, I knew that I must have been a bad person. But even that felt like it might have been an understatement.
    I guess if you really analyzed what I’d made myself a part of, I could be seen as downright evil to some people.
    I don’t know, what do you think?
    I'm not gonna say I never felt guilty, but I can't pretend I regret it either. There was nothing particularly wrong with my relationship, or with my boyfriend, but I'd begun to feel a longing for something more, something I couldn't easily explain. I couldn't talk to any of my friends about it. They all thought I had the perfect relationship. It would have shattered them to learn how monotonous my whole life was becoming. 
    We still slept together, but there was no passion to it. He came inside me and then rolled off of me and fell asleep, not even bothering to learn if I'd cum yet, or checking if it had been good for me. We fucked because it's what we were supposed to do, here in our nice house, with all the things we were supposed to want all our lives.
    All we needed to do now was get pregnant and start a family.
    The thought of it was like a casket closing me into my grave. 
    And none of the people in my life understood the anxiety that I was experiencing. I didn’t have a single friend who didn’t want all the things I had, or who didn’t already have them and love them herself. And forget about having male friends, my husband was far too suspicious for that.
    Although I suppose all things considered, he was right to be suspicious. But the point I’m getting at is that I felt trapped and alone. I felt like I’d gotten myself in a place where I would never escape. Never feel really alive again.
    But that all changed the day I met my lover. I knew his name and he knew mine, but he was an odd man, a thoroughly strange person. He insisted that we use code names when referring to one another. He'd assigned both names, and when he did, I thought he was joking at first, but the look in his eyes told me that he was utterly serious. 

 
    I stepped outside and was greeted by the bright, humid day, stark sunlight shining down on green lawns and white houses. An idyllic suburban morning. My husband was off at work, and wouldn't be home until late. Which meant that this was the ideal opportunity for me to slip away and be with my other man. 
    The beauty of the day I was stepping into dampened my desire a little. That guilt I mentioned earlier. I remember being a teenager, stealing money from my parents wallets while they were passed out drunk in the living room, so that I could go out and buy some booze for myself. I had an older guy that I knew who would boot for me, Dennis, I think his name was. He would only do it for me on certain conditions, after I'd done him a particular favour, which I don't care to discuss any further. 
    It was always easiest for me to go through with this on days where the sun was gone, when it was raining, or just dark out. If the sun was shining, it would make me feel like I should be doing the right thing, and not relying on something outside of myself to make me happy. Often I would simply abandon my plans for the day if the sun was shining bright enough. Return home and wait for my parents to awaken from their hangovers.
    And that man I'd mentioned before would call me angrily on my phone, asking about me. And I'd have nothing to say except that I'd developed a conscience just long enough to get out of sucking his dick and then getting wasted with him. 
    What we had wasn't particularly romantic, is what I'm saying. 
    But things were better now. My current lover respected me, at least before we were in the bedroom, and by then, I wasn't concerned with respect. I just wanted him to do whatever it took to make me orgasm. 
    As I walked down the street toward the intersection, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn't have my purse, he'd been quite clear that I wouldn't need it. I took my phone out of my