Because the sixth, he told himself, would be different.
She wasn’t taunting. That was the worst part. Her voice was soft, almost clinical. She had folded the affair into routine the way one folds a letter into an envelope—neat, irreversible, already sent. The first cuckolding had been a storm. The second, a drizzle. By the fifth, it was weather. Cuckold -5-
He looked at the marmalade. Orange, glistening, cruel. Because the sixth, he told himself, would be different
That night, she fell asleep first. He lay awake, counting. Not the men. Not the nights. But the number of times he had almost left. Five. The same as the cuckolding. The same as his fingers, which he now laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sixth. Her voice was soft, almost clinical
The fifth was just the one where he stopped lying to himself.
Instead, he said: “The marmalade is fine.”