Some ‘Me’ Time – Dale Scherfling

February 10, 2026

I knew why I was there before I walked in the door, and that knowledge didn’t slow me down. It felt settled, already decided, like something that had happened earlier in the day and was only now catching up with me. I told myself it was just a drink, just conversation, just killing time—but I’d dressed for the outcome, shaved for it, left the house without hesitation.
        Cathy was already waiting for me in a dark corner of the Omni Hotel Seaside Bar, showing leg even in the dim lighting. I looked around for Ron. In confusion. Sort of.
        I knew he wasn’t coming.
        “Ron’s not here,” she said, patting the red leather cushion beside her. It was one of those circular booths and she sat dead center, so there was no sitting across from her. Right or left, you were next to her.
        I sat to her right. Close enough to smell her perfume under the vape clouds.
        We ordered drinks—she got a vodka tonic, I got bourbon—and her hands were on me immediately. Fingers on my sleeve while the waitress took our order, on my hand while we looked at menus, straightening my collar while we opened napkins. Touchy-feely all the way. That, and vape breath every time she leaned close. Something sweet and chemical, like artificial strawberries. It sort of bothered me.
        I’d shown up anyway. That said everything about where my head was.
        “You were expecting Ron too, when I invited you. Right?” She laughed, low in her throat. It reminded me of a cat with a bird in its mouth.
        Her foot found my leg under the table. I didn’t move it away.
        “No, baby face. Just you and me.”
        She pulled out her vape pen, took a long drag, exhaled slowly. The cloud drifted over me.
        “I live with him twenty-four-seven now,” she said. “At home and at work. I have to. My parents left me two houses, two thousand miles away. Ron’s business is here, opposite coast. So we sold them when the market was good and put the money aside, for retirement.”
        I nodded. I’d heard some of this before, at a Christmas party last year when she’d had too much wine.
        “That money was ours, for the future,” she continued, “but Ron talked me into start-up funds for his PR company.”
        “It’s booming,” I said, because it was true. “He’s pulling in clients left and right. Sounds like it was a wise investment.”
        She snorted, and I felt her hand move from my collar to my shoulder.
        “Right. That’s why I took over the books. He talks a good game, knows PR, works a room like nobody’s business—but he doesn’t know numbers. Can’t balance a checkbook to save his life.”
        The salads came. Overpriced and underwhelming, Omni all the way. We started eating, but she kept talking.
        “I’m the one with business sense,” she said. “Wives, you know. Always cleaning up the messes while husbands play. So I checked his books—first year he brought in ninety thousand and burned through sixty-one in expenses. Sixty-one thousand! And now he’s looking at newer offices. High-class, don’t you know.”
        I could see her point. Ron was a big spender, always had been. Always laughing, buying rounds for clients and strangers alike. The latest suits, the newest camera gear, all the trappings of success whether he could afford them or not.
        “So I took over,” she said. “Put him on a strict budget. I dole out the expense money now, track every receipt. No more three-hour, three-drink lunches three times a week.”
        “Other than this one,” I said.
        She leaned close, brushed her lips against mine. Soft. A tease. I could taste the vodka.
        “Other than this one,” she agreed.
        The meal continued. The main courses came—steak for me, salmon for her. Dessert too, some chocolate thing we shared with two forks. She ordered another drink. I nursed mine, trying to keep my head clear. Trying and failing.
        Another soft kiss. A whisper against my ear. A hand on my knee that moved higher, slowly, deliberately.
        “Shall we?”
        We were both in our forties, as settled as we were ever going to get. My marriage had its own separate bedrooms by now. I assumed hers did too, based on everything she wasn’t saying. I felt myself responding to her touch and it seemed persistent, insistent even. The vape breath didn’t seem so bad right then. Her tongue against my neck helped me forget about it entirely.
        “Why not,” I said, and heard how my voice sounded. Thick. Wanting.
        She picked up the check with one hand—didn’t even glance at the total—and reached into her purse with the other. She pulled out a plastic hotel keycard and slid it across the table toward me.
        She’d planned this. Reserved the room before I’d even walked in the door. Maybe before she’d even called to invite me to “meet for drinks.” The thought should have bothered me more than it did.
        “I’m with him at home,” she said, standing and taking my arm, “and at the office now too. Every single day. I need some ‘me time.'”
        I pocketed the keycard and let her lead me to the elevator. The lobby was mostly empty—a businessman on his phone, a young couple checking in. Nobody paying attention to us. The elevator doors closed and she pushed the button for the seventh floor.
        “One expense I found,” she said, watching the numbers climb, “was a monthly subscription to Brazzers—you know, that porn site—billed to the company card. Thirty bucks a month for two years. Seven hundred and twenty dollars of my money so he could watch porn at the office.”
        The elevator dinged. Seventh floor. The doors opened onto a quiet hallway with patterned carpet and soft lighting.
        “That really pissed me off,” she added, walking ahead of me now, hips swaying.
        She unlocked the door—Room 714, I noticed—and tossed her blazer on a chair. The room was generic hotel: king bed, flat-screen TV, desk, chair, bathroom visible through an open door.
        She started unbuttoning my shirt, her fingers steady and sure.
        “Then I started watching it myself,” she said, her voice flat, matter-of-fact, “when he was out schmoozing clients. All those videos. The scenarios. Plumber shows up, bored housewife answers the door, you know the drill.”
        I knew the drill. We all knew the drill.
        She pushed me back onto the bed. The comforter was already turned down.
        “Figured I’d try some of what I saw,” she said.
        She smiled, but there was nothing sweet about it. Nothing warm.
        “Consider this research and development.”
        I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. I’d made my choice when I walked through the door of the Seaside Bar. Maybe before that.
She turned off the lights.