CUCKOLD | HOTPAST | EROTICA | ACHE

I Found a Box of Photos of My Wife… And Her Ex (Chapter 1)

As Phil assists his mother-in-law, moving her into their home’s new extension, he discovers a trove of dusty boxes from his wife Sue’s childhood room. While unpacking, a particular box filled with old diaries and Polaroid photographs piques his curiosity. Sue’s swift dismissal of its contents raises questions about her past and begins a journey where Phil has to navigate boundaries of love, trust, and the mysteries of the woman he thought he knew.

Chapter 1

“There are just a few more things left,” Irene, my mother-in-law told me, pointing towards the door which I knew led to my wife’s old childhood bedroom. As far as I knew, it had been empty since we married, twelve years ago, but when I walked in, there was a pile of dusty old-looking cardboard boxes.

“What’s in these?” I asked the grey-haired Irene but she shrugged her indifference.

“Just some of Susan’s old stuff,” she replied. “I’ve never had the time to go through them. It’s what she left behind when she moved out. Just put them on the truck for now. You can always let Susan go through them later.”

I nodded and did as she suggested. The removal guy seemed nice enough but was getting impatient to clear the stuff and move on to his next job. Irene’s health had deteriorated in the past year to the point where she needed care, so we’d built an extension — a ‘granny flat’ — onto the side of our family home, and today was the big day. Moving day.

“That’s the last one,” I said, sliding the final box onto the back of the truck and when I gave the removal guy a nod, he pulled down the shutters and climbed into the cab to leave.

“All done.” Irene sighed as she took one last look at her old house. “Let’s go before I get emotional.”

When we got home, I had the unenviable job of helping get all of the things back off the truck and into the newly built extension, but this time I had Sue helping me.

“How is she?” I asked my wife as she joined me, lifting a box of crockery out of the back of the removal wagon.

“She’ll be fine,” Sue replied. “It’s a tough day for her but she knows she’s better off here, close to us.”

I look admiringly at my wife, her brunette hair tied back into a loose ponytail, her body slim but curvy. Not only was she a good-looking woman — too good-looking for me, truth be told — but she was also kind and warm-hearted. I was a lucky man.

When everything was off the truck and into my mother-in-law’s new abode, I headed into the house for a well-deserved beer and rest but Irene had other ideas for me.

“We need to start unpacking,” she said, her eyes a faded version of her daughter’s bright blue. “No time to sit down.”

“Mother, relax,” Sue laughed. “You’re sleeping down here tonight on the pull-out bed. We’ll get everything unpacked and set up tomorrow. Phil needs a break!”

I did. She wasn’t wrong. My back was aching and my throat was parched.

“Okay, Susan.” Irene always used her daughter’s full name. Everyone else called her Sue. “I just don’t want to be a burden. You know how independent I am.”

“We know,” Sue smiled, resting her hand on her mother’s shoulder for a moment. The two of them were close. They hadn’t always been. Irene had been a strict parent during rebellious Sue’s teenage years and as a result, Sue had been closer to her father but when he died a few years ago, she and Irene had finally found their mother-and-daughter bond again.

After dinner, Irene excused herself, claiming exhaustion. “I think I’ll head to bed,” she said, her eyes meeting Sue’s for a moment. “Goodnight, you two.”

“Goodnight, Mom,” Sue replied, giving her a warm hug.

Once we heard the door close to the living room where we’d set up the pull-out bed for her, I turned to Sue. “Hey. I forgot to tell you but when we were clearing the house earlier, Irene asked me to move some cardboard boxes from your old room.”

“Oh, wow,” Sue tilted her head. “Yeah, it’ll be my old childhood stuff. I didn’t know if she’d thrown it away.”

“Why would she do that?”

“You know…” My wife shrugged. “After mom and I fell out… Things weren’t good between us for a while.”

“Yeah,” I patted her knee then gave it a reassuring squeeze. But things are better now.”

“True.” Sue leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. “Thanks for being so understanding about everything.”

“Not a problem,” I smiled. “So, about those boxes from your old room. Want to go through them?”

Sue looked surprised but then nodded. “Sure, why not? It’ll be like a trip down memory lane.”

We made our way to the granny flat, through a door that connected our two houses and into the entranceway where the boxes were stacked. I’d thought to grab a utility knife from the kitchen drawer along the way and we began to slice through the tape sealing the boxes.

The first couple of boxes contained old school yearbooks, stuffed animals, and a collection of CDs from the ‘90s.

“Oh, my God,” Sue giggled. “Backstreet Boys. N-Sync. Classic music.”

“If you say so,” I shook my head. Boy bands had never been my thing.

Then I opened a box that seemed different. It was filled with several diaries and some Polaroid photographs, some tucked into envelopes, some loose, scattered around in the box. As I picked up one of the photos, Sue’s bright blue eyes widened.

“Ah, that’s just some teenage stuff,” she said quickly, smoothly taking the box from me and setting it aside. “Not really important.”

I looked at her, sensing her sudden change in demeanour. “Are you sure? It looked like there might be some interesting memories in there.”

“Only interesting if you want to see me on family vacations with really bad hairstyles and fashion sense,” Sue shook her head. “I’m not quite ready for you to see those old embarrassing things yet.”

“Aww,” I pouted. “Spoilsport.”

Sue hesitated, her eyes meeting mine. “Honestly, it’s just old diaries and photos of people I haven’t thought about in years. It’s embarrassing. No need to dwell on the past, right?”

“But it might be funny,” I suggested. “Come on. I won’t laugh too much.”

“Don’t embarrass me, Phil,” Sue said softly and suddenly, I felt guilty.

I nodded, but couldn’t shake the feeling that the box held more than just ‘unimportant teenage stuff.’ Yet, I respected her wish to keep it private. “Alright, if you say so.”

We continued to unpack the remaining boxes, filling the room with more relics from Sue’s past. But that one box, now set aside and almost hidden behind the others, remained in the back of my mind. What was in it that made Sue so uneasy? I’d known for a while that she had a tough time during her teenage years. She didn’t like talking about it, or why she and her mother had fallen out and now didn’t seem like the time to pry.

As we finished up, Sue looked around the room, her eyes lingering for a moment on that particular box before meeting mine. “Thanks for helping me go through all this, Phil. It means a lot.”

I smiled, wrapping my arms around her. “Of course. We’re a team, remember?”

She nodded, her eyes still holding a trace of something I couldn’t quite identify. “Yes, we are. Now are you going to listen to some Backstreet Boys with me?”

She brandished an old Sony Walkman in my face and a couple of cassette tapes.

“Don’t threaten me with the Backstreet Boys,” I laughed but as we headed to bed, I couldn’t help but wonder about the hidden layers of the woman I loved, layers that perhaps even she had forgotten — or chose to keep buried.

Once in bed — and after a tortuous hour of pretending to enjoy 90s boyband music, Sue curled up next to me and I felt my dick stiffen at the feeling of her warm near-nakedness.

“I know how you can thank me for helping your mom,” I teased, taking her hand pushing down the front of my shorts.

“Don’t,” she whispered softly. “My mother is downstairs. We can’t do anything. Wait until tomorrow when she’s next door.

“Urgh, okay,” I sighed and let her wrap her arm around me to sleep.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the soft sound of Sue’s breathing beside me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the box we’d set aside earlier was more significant than Sue had let on. My curiosity was gnawing at me, unsettling me.

After what felt like an eternity, I heard Sue’s breathing deepen into the steady rhythm of sleep. Careful not to wake her, I slid out of bed, put on my robe and then tiptoed down the stairs, my heart pounding in my chest as if I were committing a crime.

I went into the extension and plugged in and turned on Irene’s small table lamp, casting a dim glow over the boxes still scattered around. There it was — the box Sue had quickly dismissed as ‘unimportant teenage stuff.’ I took a deep breath, pulled it out, sat down on the floor next to it and opened it.

Inside were several diaries, their covers worn and faded. On top of them lay the stack of Polaroid photographs. I picked the top one up and looked at it. It was a picture of a much younger Sue, her brunette hair so long it reached her waist and her arm around a guy I didn’t recognize. They looked happy, and carefree. I shuffled through more photos — Sue with different guys, some at parties, some at what looked like vacations.

I felt a pang of something — jealousy? Sadness? I couldn’t quite place it. I put the photos down and picked up one of the diaries. Flipping it open to a random page, I began to read Sue’s neat handwriting:

“I can’t believe he said that to me. I thought he was different, but I guess I was wrong. Why does love have to be so complicated?”

I closed the diary, my heart sinking. What had Sue gone through? And why hadn’t she ever mentioned any of this to me?

I picked up one of the envelopes that had more photos inside it and when I slid the first one out, my breath caught in my throat. This one was of Sue with the guy I’d seen in the first photograph but this one was different. Sue was naked.

She was much younger, maybe nineteen or twenty, so her figure wasn’t as curvy as it was now. Her breasts were smaller, slightly more than a handful and her nipples were a pale pink and erect in the picture. A triangle of soft dark hair peeked out from between her thighs, which is where the guy’s hand was.

Just then, I heard a soft noise from the doorway behind me. I looked up to see Sue standing there, her eyes filled with a mixture of emotions — surprise, disappointment, and something else I couldn’t quite identify.

“Phil, what are you doing?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

I felt like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’m sorry, Sue. I shouldn’t have… I was just curious.”

She sighed, walking over to me. “Curiosity is natural, Phil, but some things are better left in the past.”

I looked at her, my eyes searching hers. “Even if it’s a part of you?”

Sue paused, her eyes softening. “Especially if it’s a part of me that I’ve moved on from. Can you understand that?”

As she sat down next to me, I quickly shoved the envelope of photos, including the one with the nude Sue inside my robe and then looked at her. She hadn’t seen it. She was more interested in going through the box, leafing through the photos quickly as though searching for something but the rest of the pictures weren’t nudes. They were just pictures of her on vacation and with the boys I’d seen earlier. When she seemed satisfied that the remaining pictures weren’t too incriminating, she closed the box.

“Can you understand that?” she repeated.

I nodded, feeling a mixture of relief that she hadn’t seen me take the envelope of photos and a lingering curiosity as to what else was in there.

“I can try.”

She took my hand, leading me back towards the door that led into our house. “That’s all I can ask for.”

As we climbed back into bed, I realized that love wasn’t just about knowing everything about someone; it was about respecting what they chose to keep hidden. As I lay there, listening to the renewed rhythm of Sue’s breathing, I felt a sense of peace wash over me but it didn’t last long. In the back of my mind, the envelope that I’d just stealthily pulled from my robe and hidden beneath the bed remained — an unopened chapter in the book of our lives, its photos filled with secrets from Sue’s past.

Chapter 2 is out now!

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