Curiosity officially killed the cat. I grabbed my phone and opened up the camera to scan the text. Google Translate is a beautiful thing when you're sitting in your bedroom at 11:30 at night questioning everything you thought you knew about your marriage. The translation hit my screen, and I swear I felt my blood temperature drop about 10 degrees: premium men's personal lubricant.
Long-lasting formula. Men's lubricant, not women's, not couples', men's. And it wasn't new. The tube was maybe half-empty, with that slightly worn look that comes from regular use.
I turned it over in my hands, my brain trying to process what I was looking at while my gut was already three steps ahead, screaming warnings I didn't want to hear. My wife had never bought anything like this for us. Hell, we barely used regular lubricant. And when we did, it was the basic stuff from the drugstore that came in those clinical-looking bottles.
This thing looked like it cost more than our weekly grocery budget, and it sure as hell wasn't something she'd picked up for our bedroom activities. I sat there staring at this tube like it might suddenly sprout legs and explain itself. Maybe there was a logical explanation. Maybe she'd bought it as a gag gift for someone's bachelor party.
Maybe it belonged to a friend who had left it in her purse by mistake. Maybe I was overthinking things because I'd been watching too many true-crime documentaries lately. But then my eyes drifted over to her tablet, sitting innocently on the desk where she'd left it after working on some presentation slides earlier. The screen was still glowing, showing her home screen with all those neatly organized app folders she was so proud of.
Everything had cute little names like Fun Stuff and Work Tools and Groceries. Wait, groceries. I'd never seen Marissa use a grocery app in my life. The woman who made me drive to three different stores because she insisted on getting the good brand of everything suddenly had a grocery folder on her tablet.
That was like finding out your vegan friend had a secret hamburger stash. My hands were shaking as I tapped on the folder. Inside was a single app I'd never seen before. Some kind of messaging platform with an icon that looked deliberately generic.
My thumb hovered over it for what felt like an hour but was probably 30 seconds. This was it. This was the moment where I either found out I was being paranoid or I found out my entire life was a lie. I opened it.
The chat history loaded, and right there at the top was a conversation with someone named Leo. The profile picture was just a silhouette, but the messages. Jesus Christ. The messages.
"Can't wait to see you Thursday. Got us the usual room at the Marriott. Bring that stuff. I like the silver one."
"Makes everything so much better. Going to do things to you that your husband never could." I scrolled up, my vision getting blurry around the edges as weeks of messages revealed themselves. Detailed descriptions of hotel rooms, explicit photos I definitely didn't want to see, and references to that exact brand of lubricant currently sitting in my sweating palm.