Trust
by Pan
Work
Anita was glowing as she stepped into her office. She, like her place of work, was dressed up more than usual: it was her annual Christmas party, and she was excited to show her husband off to her coworkers.
The first person they saw as they came through the large glass doors was her boss, an Asian woman who was a little more than a decade older than her.
“Mrs. Teshima!” Anita said, smiling broadly. “This is my husband, Ted.”
“Please,” her boss laughed. “Call me Sue. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ted—Anita talks about you endlessly.”
Anita stood back proudly as her husband, ever the charmer, stepped forward and took Sue’s hand in his. Raising it to his lips, he planted a gentle kiss on it, maintaining eye contact with their hostess all the while.
“Glad to make your acquaintance,” he said warmly, and Sue blushed.
“You’ve got a keeper here,” she said to her employee, and Anita couldn’t help but agree. “Can you get your husband and I some drinks?”
“Of course, Mrs. Tesh—Sue.”
As she walked away to do as she was told, she heard her boss’s tinkling laugh, and sped up. She didn’t want to miss out on the joke.
It took her longer than she expected to reach the bar—even though they’d barely gotten a few steps into the building, several of her coworkers had already noticed her husband, and she was stopped several times to answer questions. By the time she got back with drinks (Anita’s boss enjoyed champagne, while Ted drank whiskey on the rocks), her boss was chatting happily with her husband, the two of them standing incredibly close.
Many wives would’ve said ‘uncomfortably close’, but not Anita. She knew her husband.
She knew she could trust him.
“Anita!” her boss said as she approached. “Your husband is simply delightful.”
“Isn’t he?” Anita replied, taking Ted’s hand in her own.
“You stay here and greet people as they come in,” Sue continued. “I’m going to give this fine specimen of manhood the tour.”
Anita’s first reaction was annoyance—she had come to the party to unwind, not do menial tasks for her boss—but she knew she’d earned a reputation for reliability, and she didn’t want to throw that away.
And it certainly couldn’t hurt for her husband to spend the evening charming the woman who signed her paychecks.
As Sue took Anita’s husband away from her, the young wife noticed their hands were linked. Wow,, she thought to herself. They must have really connected!
It made sense—like Sue, her husband managed a small team. There was his secretary, Ellen; his assistant, Jennifer; his bookkeeper-slash-accountant, Mary; and his most recent hire, a new junior saleswoman named Kay. Oh, and their intern, Charlie.
For a long while, Anita had assumed Charlie was a man, especially with the way Ted had taken him (well, her, as it turned out) under his wing. But one day when Anita had dropped by the office unannounced, she’d met Charlier for the first time, and discovered she was a woman. Well, a girl—barely eighteen.
And definitely, definitely female—Anita had strolled into her husband’s office to find Charlie on the desk, flushed and completely naked. She’d been shocked, of course, especially when Ted had emerged from his private bathroom, also naked, covered in sweat.
“I want you again, Charlie,” he’d said, before noticing his wife’s presence. “Anita!
“Hi honey,” she’d said, a smile on her face. Her husband constantly got himself into situations that many—if not most—wives would’ve found extremely suspicious.
But not Anita. She trusted her husband.
And, as always, she’d been right to. It turned out that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the intern’s nudity.
Charlie had been self-conscious about her body, and Ted took his role as the young woman’s mentor seriously. He was more than just her professional mentor, he considered himself responsible for helping her out however he could.
And so he’d considered it his duty to convince her that she had nothing to worry about.
Teenagers are difficult to convince, however, and Charlie had believed his kind words were simply platitudes, and that her clothing covered her worst flaws.
Anita’s husband had been left with no option: he’d had to convince the busty teenage girl to strip. And to help her overcome her shyness, he’d offered a quid pro quo, taking off an item of his own clothing for each piece of hers that she removed.
Soon enough, both of them were stark naked. And that was when Anita—always with the worst possible timing—had walked in.
“You really have nothing to worry about,” she’d assured Charlie earnestly. “Your body is perfect.”
Charlie had blushed and smiled at Anita’s praise, and Ted had asked his wife to step outside while he finished with her.
She’d used the time to wonder why her husband had been so sweaty, and what he’d meant by his words when she first entered. As she waited, she couldn’t help but smile—Charlie was apparently greatly enjoying Ted’s compliments (he really did have a way with words), calling his name out passionately from behind the closed door for the better part of an hour.
Yes, no wonder he and Sue had got along so well. They were both excellent managers.
After manning the door for close to an hour, it seemed like most everyone had arrived, and Anita took the opportunity to go and find her husband. For a moment she wondered if her boss was doing something other than just showing Ted around the building, before slapping the thought back.
No, she assured herself. Of course not. If the tour was done, they would’ve come back to find her. Ted practically worshipped his wife—every morning, he told her how happy she made him, and even after three years of marriage, Anita was completely besotted by her man.
There was just something about him that inspired loyalty. For his thirtieth birthday, the girls at his office had organized a lingerie party. Anita had never heard of such a thing, and part of her had wanted to object—Ted and his employees (he’d regretfully informed her that it was a staff-only event) alone for an evening, all of the women wearing nothing but lingerie?
But when Ted had explained it to her, it had immediately made sense. The real estate market was doing well, but the women who worked with him had gotten it into their heads that they needed to diversify.
Exactly why a real estate agent would diversify into lingerie sales was beyond Anita...but she’d never had a head for business.
And even after the party Ted must have still been considering it (or perhaps his staff just didn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer) because quite often when Anita dropped by, she’d find much of his staff lounging around his office, half-naked.
Even after two laps of the party, Anita still couldn’t find her husband. Or her boss. She asked a few of her co-workers, but they either didn’t know or seemed to somehow misunderstand the question, dodging her query and asking how her marriage was going.
“Perfectly!” she answered honestly, a broad smile on her face, but for some reason they seemed to find her answer amusing.
Anita blamed it on the alcohol. She still hadn’t had anything to drink—she liked to keep a clear head.
She hadn’t had anything to drink for years, ever since one night—before they’d even been married—when she’d been drinking with Ted and her best friend, Rosie. When Anita returned from the bathroom, she’d been shocked to find the two of them sitting on the couch, making out.
“What the fuck is going on?” she’d asked, shocked. In these situations, she was normally calm and collected, happy to listen to Ted’s completely reasonable explanations.
She trusted him.
But the alcohol had muddied her thinking, and in that moment, all she could feel was rage. Jealousy. Betrayal.
“It’s, um, very simple,” her fiancé (as he was at the time) had replied. “There was only one glass of wine left, so Rosie and I were...sharing it.”
Years later, Anita knew that it made complete sense. They both loved wine, they were close, and so there was obviously nothing untoward going on. They were just sharing the last glass of wine. Ted loved her, and she trusted him.
She trusted him.
But at the time, Anita had—and the memory still filled her with shame—lost her temper, telling Rosie to get out, telling Ted to get out, telling him that the engagement was off, that they were never going to be married...
Rosie had left, but Ted had stayed. And Anita was so, so glad he had.
The next morning, he’d woken her up with a hot cup of tea (her preferred hangover cure) and sat on the side of her bed. In the light of day, she immediately realized how unreasonable she’d been. She’d wanted to call Rosie to apologize, but Ted had insisted that he go over to her house and explain it to her.
He was gone for several hours, and when he returned (strangely sweaty and disheveled; he’d been completely put-together when he left), Anita was relieved to learn that he’d smoothed everything over.
After that, she never blinked an eye at the sight of the two of them sharing beverages. It even became a bit of a running joke between them; whenever Rosie came over, Ted would immediately take her in his arms and passionately kiss her, even if neither of them had a drink nearby. Anita knew it was his way of gently teasing her for her overreaction. She would just watch, a smile in her eyes, understanding the gesture for what it was: their way of saying they knew she’d been a fool, and that they forgave her for it.
Anita loved her best friend almost as much as she loved her husband.
And since that night, Anita hadn’t touched even a drop of alcohol.
As she passed her boss’s office, Anita realized the door was closed...and from inside, she could hear what sounded like Sue’s voice. But it didn’t sound like she was giving a tour, or talking about the company.
It sounded like she was moaning and gasping with pleasure.
Anita felt her cheeks heat up, but she kept walking. If her boss wanted to shut herself off in her office and touch herself during the Christmas party, that was her business! The real mystery was where Ted had gotten to.
She never even considered that Ted could be in there with her. That he could be the one giving her boss such pleasure, making her moan and cry out with bliss.
She trusted him.
It was almost half an hour later when she finally found her husband. He was covered in sweat, his formerly-immaculate suit crumped, his hair messy. If it had been anyone else, Anita would’ve assumed that he’d just had sex...but it was her husband. It was Ted. He’d never cheat on her.
“Where have you been, honey?” she said, reaching up to give him a kiss. He smelled of whiskey and her boss’s perfume, but Anita didn’t give that a second thought.
“I was...well, I was with Sue.”
Anita’s eyes widened. If he’d been with her...oh, god. He must have seen the older woman masturbating in her office! Anita was so embarrassed; what kind of a workplace would her husband think this was?
“What were you doing for so long?” she asked, trying to keep the concern out of her voice. Her husband thought for a few moments before responding.
“We were sharing management strategies,” he finally said, and Anita’s body flooded of relief. Of course—that explained everything. Her boss was so passionate; when Ted had been telling her the specifics of how he ran his real estate business, that must’ve evoked the extreme reactions Anita had heard through the door.
Anita blushed. And to think, she’d assumed it was the sound of...well, of an orgasm. I don’t know where this dirty mind of mine comes from, she thought to herself. Certainly not her mother, an absolute paragon of virtue.
“Actually,” Ted began, catching the eye of a buxom redhead from the other side of the party—Sally, from accounting. Anita couldn’t stand her, she was so loud and obnoxious. But in the spirit of Christmas, she smiled at the accountant.
Sally didn’t seem to notice. She only had eyes for Ted, it seemed. So, now that Anita looked around, did several other women in the office.
Many wives would’ve been jealous, but not Anita. She knew that her husband was a one-woman man. If anything, she felt proud—the attention he was attracting could only serve to impress her co-workers and raise Anita’s position in the office. She clutched Ted’s arm, showing him off to anyone who wanted to look.
“It might be a good idea if I, uh, ‘coach’ some of the other employees.”
“That’s a great idea!” Anita beamed. Okay, so she’d spent the entire Christmas party alone so far...but Ted must have really impressed her boss, if she was asking him for help with the rest of the staff. “Go for it, darling.“
Ted smiled at her as he made his way across the party and started talking to Sally. Within a few minutes, he was leading her away.
Wow, Anita thought, stars in her eyes as she watched her husband work. Ted must have really left an impression on Sue, if she’s letting him use her office.
Curious about what kind of tips her husband was offering, she stood by the door for a few minutes, but soon had to step away.
Sally was just so loud. Anita couldn’t stand it.