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My Second Nightmare

By: ohio



My second nightmare began with a call from my mother. Which is no surprise, I guess. She tends to be right in the middle of most of the bad things that have happened to me, one way or another. 

My mother was one of the people urging me to forgive Jenny during our engagement, when she lied to me about having dinner with an old boyfriend. "She loves you, Nicky, and you're lucky to have her. She's a wonderful girl—don't let this little thing spoil what you've got."

And even in the middle of my first nightmare, when you'd expect that a mother would be totally on her son's side in a crisis, she kept telling me how it had to be at least partly my fault, how Jenny wouldn't have done what she did without reasons, how it couldn't be as it seemed.... Blah, blah, blah. Thanks, Mom.

So, where was I? Oh yes, my second nightmare. Well, it started with a call from my mother. The phone was ringing on Saturday around 11:15, just as I was walking in the door from my karate class. I was wet with sweat, looking forward to a shower and some lunch, but that's not what I got. What I got was a big fat fist to the side of the head.

"Hi, Nicky, it's me. How are you, baby?"

I sighed. My mom likes to talk—I'd be standing in my kitchen until the sweat dried on my back. "Hi, mom, I'm fine. How are you doing?"

She made chitchat for a few minutes about Naomi Alberson and her hip problem, about the neighbors' dog that barked at night and kept her up, about the taxes going up on her house. I half-listened, sipping a beer, and waited for her to get to the point. When she did, I wished I had never picked up the phone.

"Nicky, I wanted to talk to you about Jenny." She waited a second, but I was too stunned to say anything, and she went on.

"She called me last night and we had a long talk. She really wants to see you, baby, but she's afraid to call you, so she asked for my advice."

This time I found my voice. "Well, she SHOULD be afraid to talk to me, mom. I have nothing to say to her, and there's nothing she can say to me that I have any interest in hearing."

"Now, don't be like that, honey. I know she hurt you, but it was a long time ago, and—"

"What are you talking about? 'Hurt' me? Do you think that one word covers what she did? And it wasn't a long time ago—it was seven months ago. Believe me, I'm not likely to forget how long ago it was!"

"Nicky, don't you raise your voice to me!"

I sighed, and held the phone away from my mouth, and waited.

"I told her she needed to be brave and just call you. I told her I was sure you'd be fair and give her a chance to come see you, and say what she wanted to say."

"Right, mom—I'll be just as fair to her as she was to me."

Suddenly I couldn't stand any more of this. "Listen, mom, I need to get off the phone. I'll talk to you soon." And I hung up before she could say another word.

Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle. Jenny wanted to see me? How lovely, how fucking lovely.

***************

I knew that wasn't going to be the end of it. I knew it because I knew my mother and I knew Jenny. Well, I had once thought I knew Jenny—now I wasn't sure I'd ever known her at all. The Jenny I believed I had known, the Jenny I'd loved with all my heart, bore no relationship to the one who tore my heart and lungs out of my chest and stomped on them while smiling into my face.

The next week brought three more calls from my mother, all on the same subject, and a letter from Jenny. Seeing her familiar handwriting on the envelope gave me a jolt like swallowing six cups of espresso at once. My heart started pounding, and I suddenly needed to go hit something. I dropped the envelope straight into the trash and went out to the backyard to do some sparring exercises. It took me nearly an hour to calm down.

A week later there was a message from Jenny on the machine when I came home from work. Unsuspectingly, I pressed Play while getting myself a drink from the refrigerator. When I heard that voice I was momentarily too shocked to move.

"Hi Nick, it's Jenny. I sent you a letter last week, I hope you got it? I was hoping I could..."

By then I'd leapt at the machine as though it were a rattlesnake and pressed Delete. I probably pressed the fucking button six times, in fact, jabbing at it like I was trying to kill something.

Again the adrenalin rush, again the pounding heart. Why didn't the fucking bitch just leave me alone? I ran upstairs, changed, and headed off to karate.

I decided to stop answering the phone and just let the machine screen my calls. There were three more messages from Jenny over the next ten days, along with a couple more from my mother and one from Jenny's friend Angela, who'd been her maid of honor at our wedding. I had always liked Angela, but as soon as I heard what she was calling about I deleted her message too.

It was getting out of hand. Nearly every day I was coming home to a machine full of messages that got me jumpy and upset.

I picked a time when I knew Jenny would be at work and left a message on her home machine. I wrote it out in advance, making it absolutely as few words as possible.

"This is Nick. I don't want to see you or hear from you. Don't call, don't write, don't visit."

I knew it wouldn't work, of course. Two days later my mother left me a message. "How could you be so cruel to Jenny? She called me, crying, and told me about your message. Don't you have any feelings for her?"

Yes, I've got feelings for her. I wish I didn't, but I do. I wish she were caught in quicksand, slowly sinking, calling out desperately for help—and I were sitting safely on a rock ten feet away, holding a rope and smiling, watching her die.

***************

My mother left me another message, asking me to come over on Sunday and move some furniture for her, and she'd give me lunch. She still lived in the house she and my dad had brought me up in, and it was getting harder for her to take care of things on her own.

So I moved the sofa and the two chairs and the TV cabinet and the lamps, and she fed me tunafish salad sandwiches and fussed over me, and I waited for the other shoe to drop. She hadn't mentioned Jenny even once, so I knew something was coming.

Sure enough, as I chewed on a brownie I glanced out the front window and saw Jenny's green Jetta pulling up in front of the house. I said, "excuse me a second, mom," and headed towards the bathroom in the back.

As my mom went to the front door to let Jenny in, I quietly slid out the kitchen door and climbed into my car in the driveway. As soon as the front door closed behind them, I started the car and drove away.

Two hours later I called my mother. When she picked up the phone I didn't even say hello; I just said, "if you ever pull a stunt like that again it will be the last time you see me"; and I hung up.

***************

Davis was sitting in my kitchen with me, having a beer. Davis has been my closest friend since high school. He was my best man when I married Jenny, he used to be my regular sparring partner at karate (until after my first nightmare with Jenny, when I started getting much more serious about it), and he's always been the one person in the world I know I can count on. (Actually, I used to think I had two of those, but it turned out I was wrong.)

His name is actually Brandon Edward Davidson, but ever since junior high everyone has just called him Davis.

I was telling him about Jenny trying to get in touch to me, and the look on his face was hard to describe. Something like that of a man who's just swallowed five or six worms.

"Jesus, Nick! What did you tell her?"

I filled him in on my battles with my mother, all the messages I'd deleted, the message I left on Jenny's machine, and wound up with the little dance I'd done the previous weekend at my mother's house.

I sighed, and said, "you can see what's coming, right? Jenny's never gonna give up on this. Short of a restraining order, I don't see any way to keep her off my back."

"Do you have any idea what she wants?"

"None at all. I just know that whatever it is, it can't be good. Every time I hear her voice on the machine, or see a letter in her handwriting, my blood pressure goes through the roof. I swear, man, I've been thinking about quitting my job and just moving someplace else."

"Yeah, except she'd probably track you down if you moved to Outer Mongolia. She's a piranha, Nick."

We were silent a long time. Then he said, "don't get mad, OK? Just hear me out. How about if you agreed to see her, and when she showed up I was here with you?"

"I don't want to see her, Davis—I won't want to see her, hear her voice, or even have to fucking think about her!"

"I know, man. But you just said she's never gonna let this go, whatever it is. Why not just get it over with?"

I sighed, unhappily. "Let me think about it, OK? You actually might be right. One unpleasant hour, and maybe I could get her off my fucking back."

***************

I watched from the kitchen window the following Saturday as Jenny came sashaying up the front walk, wearing a yellow sundress that had always been one of my favorites. I couldn't look at her—hell, I couldn't even think about her—without intense, and complicated, feelings. 

She was absolutely beautiful, still my dream woman. She was small and slim, with light blue eyes and gorgeous blonde, silky hair that reached 6 inches below her shoulders. And she had the young, innocent face of an angel: proof positive of the fact that God has a seriously sick sense of humor.

When the door opened she said, "Hi, baby, I'm so...Davis!" She looked very taken aback.

"Yeah, it's me," said Davis, in an unfriendly voice, holding the door for her to come into the house. "I thought Nick might need a little back-up."

He gestured her towards a chair in the living room. I took a deep breath and came in from the kitchen, with three glasses of water on a tray. I'd worked out for an hour earlier that morning, then done 30 minutes of quiet breathing. I was going to hold onto my calm if it killed me. Never mind that my heart was already pounding in my chest.

"Hello, Jenny," I said quietly, and put a glass in front of her.

She gave me a sparkling smile and said, "it's so great to see you again, honey!"

I made absolutely no reply to this, instead giving her the most aggressively blank face I could manage. It's your meeting, bitch, I thought to myself. Let's just get on with it.

Undaunted, she said, "actually, I was hoping we could talk alone, Nick?"

"I don't think so, Jenny. Davis is a good friend—anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of him."

She wavered for just a moment, then pulled herself together. "All right, baby, if that's the way you want it."

I watched her arrange her face into a look meant to be both serious and appealing. What the hell did she want?

"Nick, I...I realize I've made a terrible mistake. The worst mistake of my life, and I'm so sorry. Baby, I—I want to come back home. It's you I love, only you, and I want us to be together."

I thought I was going to pass out, and it took all my energy and my karate training to keep a straight face. I could feel my heart thumping at high speed, and I felt a little dizzy. I didn't move.

Across the room, Davis growled, "why you...fucking...bitch. You have really got a pair of brass balls, you know that?"

His voice was quiet but ice-cold. "After the...after the nightmare you put Nick through—you think you can just stroll into this house and pretend it never happened? You are one cold motherfucker."

I hadn't moved a muscle. I actually wasn't sure that I could stand up without just falling over. I watched Jenny's face—she looked utterly shocked by Davis' furious words.

Finally she managed a sad sort of half-smile. Evidently she decided to ignore Davis, because she turned directly to me.

"I know I was awful, baby—really, I do. You're probably still so mad at me, and—"

"Stop," I said. "Just stop, Jenny. Don't say another word."

I got up slowly and walked back into the kitchen, leaving behind me a charged silence. I ran the cold water in the sink and splashed it over my face and neck, trying to get my thoughts under control.

My mind was racing. This had to be a cruel joke. Somebody had decided I hadn't had it rough enough, so they were going to fuck with me some more. I really thought I had been through the worst of it, but I seem to have been mistaken about that.

At that moment I learned something I would have preferred not to know. I thought that when you hated someone—really, really hated them—you didn't love them anymore. But I was wrong.

I hated Jenny more than I'd ever hated anyone in my life. But my heart was singing, I heard birds chirping sweetly in the trees, and my blood was racing through me with joy. She wanted to come back again! She loved me!

To say the least, the discovery that I still loved Jenny—loved her desperately—didn't cheer me up. It actually confirmed that I was in the middle of my second nightmare.

I stood up from the sink, took several slow, deep breaths, and walked back into the living room. Jenny and Davis had been sitting in a tense silence. They both watched me.

"Jenny, you need to go now." I said it quietly, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

"Baby, I—"

"Right now—you need to leave RIGHT NOW. You've said your piece.

"I don't want to see you or hear from you ever again. I don't see how I can put it more clearly than that."

I watched Jenny as her face dissolved and she started to cry.

"Honey, I know I fucked up, but I really thought we..." Her voice trailed off into weeping.

I absolutely, positively couldn't bear this one moment longer. I turned away, and without looking back I said, "Davis, can you help Jenny to her car?"

"Sure, man."

Without another word I headed for the stairs. I slowly climbed up to my bedroom, hearing Jenny's voice behind me despairingly calling out, "Nick! Honey, please!"

I sat on my bed, feeling numb, listening for the front door to close. Then I waited for the sound of Jenny's car driving away. It came—finally—and I trudged back downstairs and collapsed on the couch. Davis came back in and sat on a chair across from me.

"Jesus H. Christ on the back of a camel". He shook his head in wonder. "She just has no clue at all, does she? After what she—"

"Davis." He looked up at me, and saw the tears on my face.

"Davis, I am so fucked."

"What do you mean, man?"

"I mean I love her! I love her like crazy, I want her back. Can you believe that? I still want her back!" I broke down and sobbed, the only time in my life I've ever cried in front of another man. Even at my father's funeral, I managed to keep it together until I could be alone.

I'm sure Davis was embarrassed, but he was a true friend. He sat down next to me and put his arm on my shoulder, squeezing hard, and just held it there while I cried like a baby. Like a fucking baby. 

***************

I just realized I've been telling you about my second nightmare. What about the first one, right? I mean, you've probably been thinking, 'what the hell did she do to this guy, anyway?'

So—I guess I've gotta tell you about my first nightmare. Not that that's gonna be any fun.

There's a story in some famous book about a rich guy who was asked how he had fallen into bankruptcy. His answer was, "gradually, and then suddenly". That's just how my first nightmare happened to me—except I didn't know too much about the gradually part. That was mostly happening behind my back.

I'd had a few girlfriends before I met Jenny, but she put them all to shame. She was gorgeous, funny, considerate, affectionate, honest (so I thought!), and in love with me. In love with me! I felt like I'd won the lottery. I mean, this was a "should be with Derek Jeter" sort of girl, not the kind of girl that would fall in love with an average-looking 24-year old electrical engineer in Dayton, Ohio.

We dated for nearly two years before I got up the nerve to ask her to marry me. Even then, even after we'd been sleeping together for more than a year, spending nearly every night together at her place or mine, I was scared to death she'd say no. But she didn't: she squealed, grabbed the ring and put it on her finger, and gave me a big loud kiss and a hug in the middle of the restaurant. People actually applauded!

We did the whole church, white-wedding-dress, throw-the bouquet, honeymoon-in-Maui thing, and then we settled down in a nice little three-bedroom house and lived happily ever after. Well, scratch the "ever after"—maybe substitute "for about four years".

It wasn't perfect, don't get me wrong. One thing was that Jenny liked to party, she liked to dance, in general she liked to go out and live it up a lot more than I did. One club night every couple of weeks was plenty for me, while her preference was a couple of times a week. 

But we compromised: sometimes I was a good sport and we went club-hopping, usually with a couple of her friends; other times she was a good sport and we rented a video and stayed in. The great thing was, both kinds of night ended with our making love. Making love with her was awesome: sometimes loving and gentle, sometimes energetic and hot. I'd never been with a woman who gave herself to me so completely, who felt so open and totally in the moment as we did it.

Our other problem is that I couldn't stop thinking she was too good for me. How did I get into this movie, I thought? A guy like me doesn't get a girl like her in real life—Kevin James only gets to marry Angelina Jolie in some dumb romantic comedy. Not that I look like him, but you know what I mean.

But she loved me, and she showed it all the time, and gradually my worries faded to the back of my mind. Whom God wants to fuck with, he first eases the worries of, as the saying goes. Or if that's not a saying, it should be.

The "gradually" started about four months before the "suddenly". Of course, I didn't know anything about it at the time. In fact most of what I'm going to tell you is stuff I pieced together afterwards. While it was going on I was almost completely unaware, like the cliché of the brain-dead husband.

When we went out to clubs, Jenny almost always danced with other guys. Sometimes I danced with other women, but mostly I was happy to have a beer and watch her—I wasn't as much of a dance-freak as she was. Jenny was so beautiful, and so hot on the dance floor, that there were always guys wanting to dance with her.

One night there was a very good-looking guy who danced with her 3-4 times, but I would never have thought anything of it except for what happened later. The rest of the evening was completely normal, including Jenny slow-dancing with me a couple of times and wrapping herself all around me, as close as she could get. We went home and had fantastic sex that night, as we often did after nights out.

Well it turns out that this guy Alec—and doesn't the name all by itself just tell you what an asshole he is? Most guys named Alexander get called Alex, or I guess maybe Sandy. But not this fuckhead—he needs to be "Alec", like "I'm so special, the usual nicknames aren't good enough for me".

So this guy Alec thinks Jenny is very hot—which she is—and it doesn't bother him a bit that she's married, so he finds out from a friend of hers what her last name is and where she works. And then he sets out to get into her pants.

The guy was an actor—no big deal but big for Dayton I guess, he'd done some TV commercials up in Chicago, and some theater stuff—and he had a very flexible schedule. So he checked out the office building where Jenny works, figured out where people who work there go out to eat, watched out for Jenny, and managed to "bump into her" about a week after he danced with her at the club.


My Second Nightmare



He played it very cool—"oh hey, how are you? What a nice surprise, remember, I'm Alec, we danced at the Mercedes last week", etc. So Jenny invites him to sit down with her and her friends, and he makes up some bullshit reason why he frequently has lunch in that neighborhood.

That started it, and I'm sure you can guess a lot of the rest. The only real question is how hard or easy it was for him to nail her, and I don't know the answer to that one. If it was hard, if she began all this while still trying to be a faithful wife, then I'm sure he took it real slow and careful: occasional coincidences, then a casual lunch invitation, then another one after a couple of weeks, and so on.

If it was easy—if Jenny gave off vibes of being available, and who the hell knows at this point? I certainly don't—then he probably moved faster, suggesting a lunch in a public spot, then probably somewhere more private; maybe a picnic in a secluded part of the park, maybe lunch in a hotel restaurant (with convenient rooms right upstairs).

In any case, he got in her pants. Was it in three weeks or ten weeks? I don't have any idea, but the result was the same. But I'm betting that what came next was a surprise to Alec: Jenny fell in love with him. Or she thought she did---who the fuck really knows what goes on in her head. I once thought I did....

Anyway, I have no doubt that Alec was thinking of no more than banging an extremely attractive lady he met in a club—and since Jenny is a terrific fuck, it's not surprising that once was not enough and that he kept seeing her.

But for Jenny it became soulmates, hearts-and-flowers, we're-meant-to-be-together, kisses-in-the-moonlight. In fact it was probably that way for her even before she first hopped into bed with him. I don't see Jenny as the type to have a cold-blooded affair just because the guy turned her on and she felt like checking out a strange dick. Though I guess the last few months have shown me how little I knew my own wife, so why should you believe anything I say?

Anyway, they say that for women it's rarely a sexual attraction on its own that can lead them to cheat. And I suspect that Jenny really did fall for his line and decide that she truly loved him before she let him get her panties off.

So it got serious, and emotional, and Jenny got very involved. I don't know what Alec was really saying to her. I have no idea if he thought he loved her too; but in any case he didn't push her away or slow her down. She started seeing him more and more often, arranging long lunches or "doctor's appointments" during work hours so they could ball each other's brains out. 

Except for her it wasn't balling—this was sexual communion with the love of her life (pardon me while I puke). And they must have been making plans together: when she'd tell me, when she'd move in with him, all the financial arrangements—everything.

This was the "gradually" part. I never knew a thing, and even looking back on it there was very little I could have picked up on. Jenny was sweet and affectionate at home, we still went out about as much as before (she made sure Alec stayed away from her during our nights out), we were still making love more or less as much as we always had.

One night I came home at dinnertime and Jenny had been crying; I could see it on her face. Of course I was concerned, asked her about it, tried to comfort her. All she would tell me is that a friend at work was very sick—she was kind of vague about it, and I didn't press her. It wasn't until after the roof fell on my head that I thought about it again. Probably Jenny had been planning what she was going to do, and felt guilty about what it would do to me. At least I'd like to think she felt a LITTLE bit guilty.

So that was the "gradually"—you still with me here? The "suddenly" came in the typical way, for the most part. I had a two-day training session in Cleveland, which is nearly four hours away, so I planned to stay overnight.

And then the 6-9 pm session on the first day got canceled, and since I wasn't due back in Cleveland until 10am the next day I decided to surprise Jenny and drive home for the night. It's a lot of driving, but I really loved my wife. 

I bought some beautiful flowers in Cleveland and hit the road about 6:30, and I got to my house about 10:15. There was a car out front, but cars park up and down our street and I never thought twice about it.

You can see what's coming, right? Jesus, I hate being in the middle of such an unoriginal story. Though it wouldn't have hurt any more or any less if it had been unique.

Again, most of what I'm telling you is stuff I remembered later, when I went over it time and again, obsessively, unable to get it out of my head—and I recalled all sorts of details I was too stunned to see at the time.

I went into the house and straight up the stairs into our bedroom. The door was wide open, and when I was two steps into the room I stopped dead in my tracks.

The room was softly lit by a couple of candles on the night tables. There in our bed were Alec and Jenny, dozing, naked. He was propped up against some pillows on my side, and she was lying with her head on his chest and her arm around him. The room smelled like candles and sex, and they'd obviously been fucking. I never found out if they were in between rounds or done for the night, but it doesn't much matter, does it?

I'm not a quick thinker in situations like this. I tend to freeze, or to move slowly and cautiously, rather than going crazy. The going crazy comes later. So, to my eternal shame, I didn't drag him out of bed and kick him in the balls. I didn't even shout.

I dropped the flowers and said, "what the hell is this?" in a kind of quiet, stunned voice.

Well, their eyes popped open and they looked at me, startled. As for what happened after that first moment, I've been over it and over it—I've replayed the movie in my head a million times. Alec's face got a smirk on it, a self-satisfied "here's the cheated husband, poor fool" look. But I wasn't looking at him, I was looking at Jenny.

And after that first shocked moment, when she grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to cover her tits—from me! her husband!—what I saw on her face was a soft, sympathetic look. Almost pitying.

She said, "Nick! I...I didn't want it to be like this."

Notice what she didn't say! Not "I'm so sorry," or "this means nothing" or "he means nothing" or "please forgive me" or "I love you" or "it was just sex".

No, she just gave me that one sentence, looking so calm and so regretful. And then without any sign of fear or embarrassment, she turned to the asshole and said, "you'd better go, baby. I'll talk to you tomorrow." And smiled at him. She fucking SMILED at him!

And Alec, that cocksucker, gets out of the bed—still smirking—picks up his clothes, and calmly heads out of the room and down the stairs!

What am I doing? I'm still standing in the middle of the room, frozen, shocked, immobile—like Wile E. Coyote when he's run off a cliff and hasn't yet noticed that he's 500 hundred feet up and is about to plunge to the canyon floor.

Neither Jenny nor I moved until we heard the front door open and shut. Then she said, still all calm and sympathetic, "we need to talk, honey. Let me just get a quick shower, and we can talk downstairs, OK?"

And she got out of bed, pulling the sheet around her—WHY? Because I wasn't supposed to see her naked anymore, after four years of marriage? Because she didn't want me to see the body that Alec got to fuck? Because he'd left cum all over her? I have no earthly idea—and went straight out of the room and into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. In a moment I heard the shower running.

There were a number of things I could have done then, and maybe you'll think I was a complete dipshit for not doing any of them. I could have gone into the shower and beaten the shit out of her; or thrown all her clothes out the bedroom window; or set the house on fire with her in it. Or I could have gotten into my car and driven back to Cleveland; or simply driven off to a bar, or to Davis's house, and got myself stinking drunk.

But at the moment, the only one I even considered was driving back to Cleveland. And I realized that if I did that, I wouldn't see Jenny again for another 24 hours. As stunned, as poleaxed as I was, I needed to know what the hell was going on.

I mean, I KNEW what the hell was going on—that matinee-idol dickhead was fucking my wife, in my bed! But I needed to know what it meant—yes, I know, but besides the obvious I needed to know the rest. How long? Why? Who else? What next?

I wasn't angry yet. It just hadn't sunk in. I learned that day that it's actually possible to see something with your own eyes and still not believe it. At least not at first.

So I went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table and stared at the wall, and thought about nothing. For twenty minutes. I don't think I had one coherent thought, until Jenny walked into the room, beautiful, fresh from her shower, wrapped in a yellow terrycloth robe, her wet hair fragrant and glistening.

If I hadn't still been so stunned, that's when I would have started crying, and shouting, and maybe throwing things. Instead, we sat and had the most surreal conversation of my life.

"Nick, I'm so sorry you had to see that. I didn't expect you home until tomorrow, baby—what happened?"

"Does it even matter? They canceled tonight's session and I wanted to surprise you. Nice surprise!" I pointed to the flowers I'd brought her, which were lying forlornly on the kitchen counter.

She looked down for a minute, then back up at me. "I never expected this to happen. I was going to talk to you about it tomorrow night, when you got back from your trip."

"Talk about what? About the fact that you're getting a little dick on the side now, and you wanted to keep me in the loop? That's awfully considerate of you, Jenny."

She grimaced, and shook her head. "No, Nick, it's not like that. It's nothing like that."

She looked at me intently, and even reached across the table to take my hand. She TOOK MY HAND! Even now I can't believe it.

"Nick, I never expected anything like this to happen, you have to believe me.

"Alec and I: we're in love. Really in love. And he's the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm so sorry."

"What?" I looked at her, uncomprehending. "You're in love with somebody else? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I didn't mean for it to happen. I swear to you, baby! But he's everything I have ever wanted in a man." She must have seen the shock and anguish on my face, and she hurried on.

"Oh, honey, don't take it like that! You have been so great for me, so steady and loyal and loving. But our life together is...well, it's ordinary. It's solid, and nice, and dependable.

"But with Alec, it's...it's magical! He's exciting, and wild, and unpredictable. Every moment feels like a roller-coaster ride. I've never felt this way in my life before.

"Nick, I have to be with him. I'm so sorry. I was going to tell you about this tomorrow night, and move out on Saturday. I guess I should move things up by a day."

"Jenny, I—Jesus Christ, I can't believe this! How did this happen? How long has this fuckhead been banging you?"

"Nick, its not like that!" She spoke sharply, then relaxed again.

"We first met at the Mercedes, about four months ago. We just danced a few times, nothing more. And then we bumped into each other at lunch a couple of times, and.... And we started to have lunch together on our own after that.

"And it was unbelievable. We have so much in common! It's like we were meant to be together, always, since birth. We just hadn't found each other yet."

I stared at her, trying desperately to get my thoughts together. I must have had an IQ of about 72 right then.

"And you're telling me—you're saying you're leaving me for him?"

She nodded, still holding my hand. "Yes, baby. I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

Then her face took on this fucking exalted look again—I want to bitch-slap her every time I think of it—and she said, "but it's just something that's supposed to happen, Alec and me."

We sat in silence for a while after that. She was probably watching me, all sympathetic, "poor baby, I know I've hurt him"; and I was in some sort of coma. What had just happened to me was so far beyond any unlikely possibility I had ever conceived of, even in a dream, as to render me numb and stupid.

Finally I said, "and the vows we took? You know, 'love, honor, and cherish', 'forsaking all others', that stuff? You were just kidding? You had your fingers crossed?"

Her face took on a pained but patient look, like a mother talking to a difficult toddler. "Nick, I meant every word of that—you know that! I thought we would be together our whole lives. This is—well, it's just as much a shock to me as it must be to you. I didn't plan it, I didn't want it—it just happened.

"And if it makes any difference, I'm very very sorry. Really, I am. This is so unfair to you, I know that."

More silence. I still felt numb, like I wasn't seeing or hearing very well, like my head was full of cotton.

After several minutes I suddenly stood up and got myself a glass of water. Still facing the sink, not looking at her, I said, "I'm going back up to Cleveland. I'd like you and your stuff gone by the time I get back tomorrow."

I suddenly was desperate, even frantic, to be out of the house, out of her sight. I think I must have realized I was about to lose it. I vaguely heard her say, "OK, honey," as I rushed out the door without looking back.

I could only drive about four blocks before the tears came, and I had to pull over. I cried and sobbed and pounded the dashboard and kicked the floor and generally did a great impression of a six-year-old having a tantrum. It lasted about ten minutes, with anger and hurt and sorrow mixed in together; and when it subsided I wiped my face and started the car and drove straight back to Cleveland, which amazingly enough I was able to do without hitting anyone or anything on the way.

It was after 2:30 am when I got there, and I fell straight into bed and managed to fall asleep. Then I sleepwalked through the next day's sessions, though I couldn't tell you a thing about them, and I drove slowly back to Dayton. No point in hurrying....

Her clothes were gone, and her cosmetics and handbags and things. And she'd taken a few of our CDs but not too many, and no furniture or stereo equipment. I assume she was moving in with Alec, though she hadn't said so. And not a single picture—not one of the many pictures of us, the wedding photos and honeymoon pictures and candids of us with our families, that were displayed around the house.

I don't know why she bothered, but she left me a note. One sentence, not even really worth the time it took to write it.

"Nick: I am very sorry—I will always care for you—Jenny"

***************

So—that was my first nightmare. Enough detail for you? I hope so, because there isn't much else I can tell you. Except some of the aftermath—I guess you might be interested in that as well.

My anger came on slowly, and unsteadily, as the shock faded. It began to be slightly more real to me: that my beloved wife, the love of my life, had dumped me, had fallen in love with someone else and gone to be with him.

I knew from the first night that I could never sleep in our bedroom again, after what I'd seen. Without even looking around the room much I moved all my clothes and things into the guest bedroom—the double bed there would be plenty big enough for me.

It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I went back into the master bedroom and looked around. In my mind I could still see the two of them naked in the bed, the pillows propped against the headboard. I could see the candles on the night-stand, and smell the odor of sex in the air.

All that was gone, of course. Jenny had changed the sheets and re-made the bed, put the candles away, and everything was as if it never happened.

And I went a little nuts at that point. I'm not too proud of what I did next, though I guess it's all part of how I dealt with this. The clean, untouched look of the bedroom infuriated me—I wanted to see it again the way it had been.

I started to get mad—really mad—and I started to cry. I got the candles out and set them on the night tables and lit them. And I pulled the bed open, pulled the top sheet down, and propped the pillows like they'd been.

And then, still crying, still shouting in anger, I stood over the bed and jerked off onto the sheets. It's crazy, I know, but I wanted them covered with cum and smelling of sex. If not their sex, then mine.

When I was done, I just blew out the candles, left the room and shut the door behind me. That's how I created my shrine to my unfaithful bitch of a wife. And over the next couple of weeks I made some additions to the shrine, which I'll tell you about in due course. But after 2-3 weeks the fun went out of the project—or the madness drained out of me, I don't know which. And for more than five months I hadn't opened the door or set foot in the room even once.

How else did I get through the first few weeks? I went to work; I came home. I didn't tell a soul what had happened, except Davis. He came over on Saturday afternoon and I sat him down with a beer and told him the whole story, every word I could remember.

He looked at me in shock, in absolute wonder. All he said was, "Jesus H. Christ" a few times, shaking his head. And when I was done he just kept sitting there, shaking his head some more.

"That...bitch," he said slowly, at last. "And she thinks she's in love with this asshole?"

"That's what she says. He's the love of her life, the one she's been waiting for her whole life, even if she didn't know it before. Whereas I'm...I don't know, Mr. Slow-and-Steady, the dependable but boring one she only thought she loved."

We sat some more, and he said, "I was gonna ask you what you were going to do. But it's way too soon for that—how about we go hit some golf balls?"

And that's how Davis helped me through it. We hit golf balls. We watched football on TV. We sparred. We had some beers, though I never got plastered, strangely enough—I never wanted to. We had a lot of long talks, over the first few weeks, about Jenny and me and what I wanted to do now. Sometimes we talked about him and Kathleen, a woman he was dating casually. 

I decided to keep the house—I could swing the mortgage on my salary, and I didn't want to move. But I decided not to file for divorce. Fuck her: if she wanted to marry that asshole, she could file and pay the lawyer's bills. It didn't matter much to me either way. I canceled all the credit cards and got a couple of new ones.

Talking with Davis also helped me understand that I needed to keep busy, needed to find ways not to be sitting at home alone, staring at the walls. I'd been doing karate for years, once or twice a week, and I'd risen to the level of brown belt, but it was just fooling around. Now I got serious about it: I started going to four or five classes a week, and doing extra sparring on my own in the back yard.

Karate was perfect: it made me focus and be disciplined, concentrate on what I was doing and nothing else. The ninety-minute classes were oases without a thought of Jenny in them (well, after a while, anyway).

And, needless to say, what a great outlet for my anger! Getting to punch, kick, hit out at my opponent or even at the empty air—I probably don't need to tell you how many times I imagined Alec's smirking face on the receiving end of my blows. And when I made it to fourth-level black belt (there are twelve levels, but almost nobody makes it all the way to the top) I got to start breaking boards with my hand; that was very satisfying.




My Second Nightmare



***************

So now you know what I know. And for me it was way more than enough to make me miserable, but not nearly enough to really understand it.

I mean, how does a woman who is happily married fall in love with another man? I know that it happens—but HOW does it happen? Jenny wasn't unhappy with me, and I still don't believe she was out there looking.

But that cocksucker Alec got his foot in the door, and then he played her, and somehow he got her to believe that they were soulmates, destined to be together. Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Hero and Leander. (I read a lot of books in college.) Maybe Bonnie and Clyde. (I used to see a lot of movies, too.)

And now it's eight months later, and I was beginning to feel a little bit as though the worst was over, and I could start to think about a new life without Jenny. And NOW she tells me she wants to come back to me?

***************

I really hoped that after the day Jenny came over, that would be the end of it. I'd listened to what she wanted, and I'd given her my answer. I hadn't exactly let her give her whole spiel, but tough shit, right?

But it wasn't even a week before my mother started in on me again. By now I wasn't ever picking up the phone, so it was all messages. "She's sorry for what she did, Nick—truly she is. You should hear the way she talks about you! You've got to give her another chance." That was the gist of it, though my mom found various ways to phrase it.

I called her on Saturday morning, just before leaving to go to karate, so she wouldn't be able to keep me on the phone. "Mom, it's me. Please listen to me, OK? I am NOT, repeat NOT, getting back together with Jenny. It is over. Thinking about her, talking about her, seeing her, they all just make me feel worse. You're my mother and you're supposed to be on MY side, right? So please don't mention Jenny any more."

There was a longish silence; then she said, in kind of a hurt voice, "well of course I'm on your side, Nick. It's just that Jenny is so..."

"Gotta go, mom—bye!" I interrupted her to say the words, and hung up the phone. My fucking mom was never gonna get it.

The next week was a good one, mainly because of karate. I was preparing for an amateur tournament in Columbus, so I stayed after my regular class every night for an additional hour of instruction, and my teacher just about wore me out. I'd come home, feeling exhausted but great, have some dinner, watch a game with Davis or do some reading, and go to bed.

Then on Saturday, when I came home after karate at about 2:00 pm, Jenny's friend Angela was sitting on my front step. For a moment I considered driving right by the house, and then I thought, fuck it, you can't dodge people forever.

She gave me a nice smile as I came up to her, and said, "hey Nick—buy a girl a beer?"

"Sure, Angie, if you don't mind being around a sweaty guy while you drink it."

"I think I can handle it," she said with another smile.

We went inside and had a beer, chatting about nothing in particular. Like I said, Angela was someone I'd always liked. She was short and curvy and brunette, all the opposite of Jenny—but like Jenny she was outgoing and fun-loving. Early in our marriage Jenny and I had hoped that maybe Angie and Davis might get together, because we liked them both so much, but they didn't really click. They'd tease each other in a friendly way, but they never dated.

In any event, I didn't mind having Angela around—she was funny and she was nice to look at—but I couldn't help waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was no way this surprise visit was about anything but Jenny. When we'd finished the beer I said something about it.

"As nice as it is to see you, Angie, there must be a reason for your dropping by. Want to tell me what it is?"

She blushed, and looked down for a minute. "You must be thinking it's about Jenny, Nick, but it's really not. I also like you, you know. I always thought I was friends with you too, not just with Jenny. And I've missed seeing you. When Jenny...when she...left, I guess I felt I should stay away, out of loyalty to her or something."

Now she was looking right at me. "But I finally thought, screw it, Nick's my friend too, why the hell can't I go see him? So here I am."

I looked at her suspiciously. "So this really isn't about Jenny? You're not working your way up to a pitch about how I should take her back?"

Angela looked a bit uneasy, but she held my gaze and said, "no, Nick, it's not. I just hoped we could...spend time together, you know? Like we used to."

I won't tell you I believed her. I'm just not that trusting, you know? Maybe I once was, but not since Nightmare #1. But I didn't push it any further.

"OK, Angie. How about I take a quick shower, and then we'll go get some lunch?"

***************

And that was the start of a few really weird, yet really enjoyable weeks. Angela came over twice more in the next week, and we also went out for dinner and a movie the next weekend. True to her word, she didn't mention Jenny at all, nor did she pry into my feelings or my current love-life (which of course was nonexistent).

Instead we acted pretty much like buddies—almost like me and Davis, I guess, except that Angie was prettier and smelled a whole lot better. Angie liked baseball so we watched some games on the tube, and at her request I showed her some of the fancy karate moves I'd been learning. I told her about the upcoming tournament and about random things at my job, and she seemed quite interested.

And we talked about other things too, like Angie's job, and her family life growing up. We just got to know one another better. And I slowly, slowly got a little less suspicious.

No, that's not right. Let me try it again. I got less suspicious that Angie was coming to see me to talk me into getting back together with Jenny. But at the same time I got more suspicious: I mean, if she wasn't doing that, then what WAS she doing? I liked being with Angie, but why was she spending so much time hanging around me?

And what made it more complicated is that she was beautiful and sexy. She looked good and smelled good, and she was enjoying my company an awful lot. I'm only human, and I hadn't been with a woman in nearly ten months. I started to realize that the feelings I was having for her were far more than "buddy" feelings; but I didn't know if they were purely lust or something way more complex.

Before I could figure out what I felt, and what to do about it, things came to a head in a way I didn't expect. Angie invited me over for a Friday night dinner at her apartment, and I assumed it would be casual, as we had done several times before.

But when I got there her kitchen table had a tablecloth and candles on it, the lights were low, and Angie herself was ravishing. No jeans and sweatshirt—she was wearing a short black skirt, tights, and a pale blue sweater that clung to her and really showed off her cleavage. Her hair was down around her shoulders.

"Jesus, Angie—you look amazing! Is there a fancy party we're going to that you forgot to mention? If so, you're gonna have to fight the guys off with a stick!"

She blushed and looked really pleased, but all she said was, "thanks, Nick. I just felt like getting dressed up a little tonight, that's all."

At first I was uneasy, feeling sure that something was up and having a hard time believing that the most obvious conclusion—Angela was out to seduce me—was actually the right one. We made nervous conversation for a few minutes, but after that we settled down, ate our dinner, and enjoyed one another's company.

She and I usually favored beer, but tonight she'd come up with a bottle of red wine. It wasn't anything with a screw top either, but one of those bottles of Chateau-la-$42.50 that the guys at the liquor store are always trying to get you to buy. It tasted great to me, but I'm far from an expert.

We did the dishes together, like we always do when we have dinner, and I noticed Angie was standing awfully close and managing to touch her hip to mine quite a bit, while acting as though nothing was going on.

Then she led me into the living room, put some music on, and sat us down close together on the sofa. I knew I had to say something, so I just went ahead.

"Angela, I'm having a lovely time, but I need to know what's going on, OK? We've been doing buddy stuff for a few weeks now, but this is..."

She stopped me by putting a finger to my lips. "Don't talk, OK Nick? Just go with it. I've been waiting a long time to do this."

I watched her carefully, in some surprise. She looked nervous but determined, as she leaned over and gently kissed me. The kiss was delicious, and I was in no hurry to break it.

When she pulled away, she gave me a shy smile, then came back for another one. This time it wasn't long before her arms were tightly around me and we were passionately necking.

Like I said, Angie is gorgeous and stacked; and like I said, I hadn't been laid in a very long time; and like I said, I'd been feeling more and more affectionate and lustful towards her; and like I said, she was wearing a sexy outfit; and like I said, we'd just had a romantic candlelit dinner and a lot of wine; and like I said, she was coming onto me pretty strong.

So don't give me a lot of shit, OK? I had a beautiful, willing girl in my arms, and I went for it. I held her and kissed her, and stroked her back, and I told her in a soft voice how beautiful she was, and after awhile I slipped a hand down and over her breast. As I caressed it she groaned and pushed closer to me, so I figured I was doing all right.

Within a few minutes I was lying pretty much flat on the sofa with Angie on top of me, and the foreplay was proceeding nicely. I'd slid my hand gently up under her skirt and was entertaining myself by stroking her ass, most of which was easily available on either side of her thong panties. Angie was breathing hard, in between kisses, and pushing her hips down firmly against my impossible-to-miss hardon.

I can't say, if I'm going to be honest, that I wasn't even thinking about Jenny. I knew all too well that the only other woman that I'd been with like this in many years was Jenny, and even my pleasure and excitement with Angie didn't push my faithless cunt of a wife completely out of my thoughts.

But on the other hand, thoughts of Jenny weren't tormenting me, either. I was very focused on Angie and how much pleasure we were giving each other, and eagerly looking forward to what seemed the obvious next steps. Seemed like there were only two questions: here on the sofa or in the bedroom? and, would I get to lick her first, or would we be proceeding directly to the fucking?

Happily for me, there was no wrong answer to either of those questions!

So imagine my surprise—don't you hate that, such a cliché, when someone says "imagine my surprise", but unfortunately it fits perfectly in this case—imagine my surprise when Angie suddenly pulled away from me and gave me a sorrowful look, tears filling her eyes.

Before I could say a word she was on her feet, standing over me and saying, "Nick, I'm...I...I'm so sorry, I just...can't, I can't do this."

Bewildered, wondering if I'd missed some sign of trouble, I got up and moved to embrace her gently, saying, "it's OK, Ange, sorry, I guess we got going too fast."

"No!" she cried, stepping back away from me. "No, Nick, it wasn't you, it wasn't anything you did—it's just me, I never meant..."

She broke off and began to cry. Looking at me through her tears she said, "would you just go, please? I'm so sorry!" And she wept harder, putting her face in her hands, just standing there in the middle of the living room.

I tried again to take her in my arms, if only to comfort her, but she shook her head violently and ran into the bathroom, locking it behind her. At a loss, I simply waited for a few minutes. When she didn't come out, I went to the door, knocked softly, and said, "I'm so sorry, Angie—I'm going to leave now, OK?"

Her timid voice came through the door. "Yes, Nick—I'm sorry! It's all my fault!"

Utterly baffled, I got my coat and headed home.

***************

Davis was sitting with me in my living room. "I don't know, man," he said, "it doesn't make much sense to me either. She didn't give you any explanation?"

I shook my head. "All I can think of is that we got going too fast, or that she feels some kind of fucked-up loyalty to Jenny. But what makes me really nuts is that she won't talk to me about it. I've left her probably ten messages this week, very gentle ones, not pushing, you know?

"But she hasn't called me back at all. Shit, Davis, I don't deserve this!"

He smiled at me, cocking an eyebrow. "A, nobody deserves it. And B, you especially don't deserve it. You deserve a parade a women, all of whom are hot for you and none of whom are impossible to understand!"

I snorted. "I've never met even one of those, let alone a parade of them."

"What are you going to do?"

"For now, nothing," I said. "I've got the tournament at the end of next week, and I'd like not to make a complete fool of myself. Once I get back, maybe I can get Angie to talk to me and figure out what the hell is going on."

***************

I won five bouts out of eight, and finished up 9th in my division. Aside from being utterly exhausted, I felt pretty good as I drove back from Columbus. I'd had an intense weekend of doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and doing karate, and it was great. I hardly thought about Angela at all, and even less about Jenny. More than at any time since my wife left me, I felt like there might be a chance that I'd come out the other end of my nightmare—make that nightmares—capable of putting my life back together.

"That's great, man!" Davis congratulated me when I called him. Then he said, "and think of what a wuss you were just a few months ago—even I could beat you!"

Laughing, I said, "yeah, about two times out of ten. Any time you'd like to try me again, pal, just let me know."

"No way, buddy—now that you're a high-powered black belt you'd make firewood out of me. I can still out-drink you, though."

We exchanged some more friendly teasing before getting off the phone, and I thanked the Gods once again for letting me have such a terrific friend. Especially during the past year.

A couple of days later I decided to drive over to Angela's after work and talk her into seeing me. After all, she'd done it to me—and I was sick and tired of leaving phone messages that were never returned.

I rang the bell to her apartment and waited; after a moment I could hear her footsteps approaching, and then she must have looked through the peephole.

"I'm...I'm sorry, Nick, I can't see you." Her voice sounded slightly muffled through the door.

"Well, then, Angie, I guess I'm in for a long night. I've brought this folding chair, and I'm going to sit right here in the hall until you let me come in and talk to you. If you walk by me in the morning, I'll be here again tomorrow when you get home from work. You'll have to get used to seeing me every day."

There was a long pause, a very long pause, and then I heard the chain being removed and she opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a black AC/DC tee-shirt. She had bare feet, and must have just washed off her make-up. She looked like she was about to cry. She looked absolutely beautiful.

I realized I hadn't seen her in nearly a month, and my heart was pounding. How about that, I thought—my heart is pounding and it's not for Jenny!

"Angie, you have to talk to me. I don't know what happened, what I did to scare you off—but please give me another chance. You're important to me. Can you imagine what it feels like for you to dump me, after what...what happened to me with Jenny?"

"I'm so sorry, Nick. I...guess I didn't think about it that way. Come in—and bring that stupid chair!" she added with a little smile.

She got us a couple of sodas and we sat in her living room, me on the sofa and her across from me on a chair. 

"All I ask, Ange, is that you tell me what went wrong. Was it me? Did I hurt you in some way?"

She shook her head, energetically. "No! Nothing like that—it was never you, Nick! Not anything you did. You were...I always had a great time with you."

She leaned forward. "What I've got to tell you is a long story, OK? And one that's...that is going to be hard for me to tell. So you have to promise to listen to the whole thing, and not to get so mad that you walk out on me."

I'd never seen her look so serious. "I promise, Angie. Though I can tell from your face that I'm not going to like it."

"No, you're not." She stared out the window for a while, and then turned back to me.

"Nick, Jenny is right in the middle of all this, and there's no way around it. If you want the truth, you're going to have to hear about her too."

I won't pretend I was happy about it—in fact I could feel my stomach tighten—but I just nodded, and waited for her to continue.

And what followed, as God is my witness, was yet another rendition of Nightmare #1. As if I hadn't already suffered enough by living through it! Angela walked me through Jenny's fucking affair with that dipshit Alec—except she didn't call it an affair, of course. She explained that Jenny really fell in love with the guy—as I've told you—really thought he was the man for her, and that they'd live happily ever after.

Except, it seems, that it didn't turn out that way. At first things with Alec seemed much more exciting than life with me. How could they not? He was a handsome actor, he loved to dance and party and stay out late, and life was a mad gay whirl. Hard for the routine of any married couple to compete with that.

But Alec was a total jerk—no surprise to me, I assure you! He was hyper and emotional and pretty unstable, especially when he was on coke, which turned out to be a large part of the time. He couldn't stick to any routine, couldn't manage to be where he'd promised to be half the time, and in his wild mood-swings started being abusive to Jenny.

According to Angela, it wasn't so bad at first—just occasional shouting matches, though sometimes he got so wound up Jenny hid in the bathroom with the door locked. But after a few months their fights got so bad that he'd actually hit her a couple of times, and Jenny had come to stay overnight in Angela's apartment, frightened out of her mind.

Jenny finally began to understood that she had fallen in love with a fantasy—that married life had become a little dull, and that she'd attributed the dullness of routine to me, not seeing that no marriage could compete with the excitement of something new. She had finally realized what a horrible mistake she had made, thinking that she could find magic with a shallow, immature asshole like Alec.

"Good for her!" I interrupted bitterly. I'd been sitting quietly, listening to this story as I'd promised Angie I would, but it was getting harder and harder to take. I was pretty much ready to bolt for the door.

Angie could see it, and she said quietly, "Nick, you promised!" I nodded and tried to relax. She's got to be near the end of this, I kept telling myself.

Anyway, Jenny moved out of Alec's place and got an apartment of her own; and that's when she started talking to my mother and trying to get back in contact with me. The rest of the story I knew—or at least I thought I did. But no, of course, there was more coming to further fuck up my head. How could I have thought it would be any different?

Angie sat down next to me and took my hand. "Nick, please don't be mad at me. I may be the world's most horrible person, but I did what I did because I care for Jenny AND you."

I looked at her in alarm—now what?

"After she split up with Alec, Jenny was so determined to win you back. She just knew that if you gave her a chance to talk to you, she could make you understand how much she loved you, that she'd do anything to make it up to you.




My Second Nightmare



"When you told her to go away that day you finally saw her, she was utterly devastated. She cried for weeks. I was really worried she'd do something to herself."

I almost thought, wish she had. But I realized that Jenny killing herself would have been the final knife in my back: a lifetime of feeling guilty, even though it was all her fucking fault. So I was glad she had at least spared me that horror.

"She kept thinking that there had to be a way to make you understand, so that you'd give her another chance. We'd talk about it for hours, me just patiently listening to her go over it time after time.

"And then she came up with this idea..." Angie squeezed my hand tighter.

"Nick, you have to really promise me you won't blow up, OK?"

I nodded, my teeth clenched. The last twenty minutes had been TMI, as my teen-age niece likes to say, and I wasn't looking forward to whatever was coming next.

"Jenny thought that if you had an affair too, it would be easier for you to forgive her for what she'd done. But she knew from your mom that you weren't dating at all. So she came to me one night and asked me—no, she begged me—to seduce you."

I dropped Angela's hand and jumped to my feet, staring at her. "So that's what this was all about? All the weeks of hanging out, being buddies, having a good time? And then the tight sweater, candles, bottle of wine routine?"

"No, Nick, please, let me finish!"

"Old Nick hasn't been deceived, cheated on, and fucked over enough, so let's do it to him one more time, is that the idea?" I was pretty much yelling by then.

"Nick, listen!" Angie shouted it at me, tears on her face. "You promised!"

I was furious—livid. But I shut my mouth and sat down in a chair, as far across the room from her as possible. And I waited for her to go on.

"I told her it was a horrible idea. It was unfair to you, to take advantage of your unhappiness. Not to mention that she was asking me to be a whore. And I detested the very idea of lying to you, or playing any sort of game. You are my friend! And I told her that it would never, never work.

"But she begged me. Nick, she begged me! She got down on her knees in front of me, and she cried, and she told me it was her only chance ever to get you back, and I was her best friend and I had to help her, she had no one else to turn to.

"And, Nick—I knew how much you loved her. Or at least, how much you had loved her...before. You were always so crazy about her, and so good to her! And I wondered if it maybe wouldn't be a good thing for you too, finding a way to take her back.

"So I told her I would see. I'd drop in on you, and just hang out a little, and see what happened. But I made her no promises."

Angie's voice got very quiet. "Part of the problem was that I was so attracted to you. I'd never thought of you that way, you know—since the day I met you you were Jenny's guy, and the three of us have always been great friends. But now that you were...apart from each other...I couldn't help wondering, you know, what it would be like.

"So I came to see you, and we started hanging out, and—well, you know, Nick, we had a great time together. Didn't we? And nothing romantic happened. And what I kept telling myself was, I'm doing this for Jenny, but I've gotta go slow, lay the groundwork, not rush it. I don't want to blow this.

"But the truth was—the truth was, I was falling for you." She was speaking even more quietly.

"I just loved being around you. Those casual dinners, or watching TV together or whatever we did—I was just so happy, Nick! And I didn't know what to do, except that I wanted it to continue.

"But Jenny was getting more and more impatient, kept asking me when I was gonna get you into bed. And I felt so guilty! I felt guilty because I wasn't being honest with you, and I wasn't being honest with her either.

"Worst of all, if we DID sleep together, would you actually go back to Jenny? I didn't think so, but I had to face the fact that I didn't want it to happen."

She looked at me, imploringly. "So there I was—Jenny pushing me to seduce you; and there I was—desperately wanting you, but for ME, not to help her; and there you were—being so sweet and fun, such a good friend.

"I started avoiding Jenny, not returning her calls. Because I just couldn't face telling her the truth, that I wanted you for myself! It was easier not to talk to her.

"That night, with the candles and the wine—I'd just decided I was going to get you into bed. I'd worry later about why I did it. But then when...when we were kissing, and you were touching me, and I got so excited..."

"Dammit, Nick, I wanted you to make love to me! I wanted you to be my lover! I still want it! But I'd made this promise to Jenny...and I also knew that I was being dishonest with you...and I suddenly felt like my head was going to explode.

"I just knew it was wrong, even though I wanted you so much—and I just had to stop."

We sat in silence. Angie was crying a little, quietly, and I was clenching my fists so tight I was afraid my nails would draw blood on my palms. I knew what Davis would have said if he'd been there, and it almost made me laugh, hearing his voice in my head: "Jesus H. Christ in a hot-air balloon!"

We probably sat more than five minutes in silence. Then I stood up and said, "quite a story, Angela.

"One more chapter in the annals of Nick Perryman being jerked around by women. What's the expression, 'same shit different day'? That seems to fit pretty well."

"I'm sorry, Nick." Her head was down, and I hardly heard her.

"Me too, Angie." I turned around and went home, carrying my stupid folding chair with me.

***************

Davis said, "I don't know, man. I need a little more information."

We were sitting in my backyard, each of us with a beer.

"Just answer the question, Davis. Is it my third nightmare, or just a continuation of Nightmare #2?"

"I guess it depends, Nick. Tell me this: are you feeling hurt and angry because of the Jenny part of this? Because she found a way, yet again, to mess with your head? Or are you so upset because Angie deceived you?"

"And if I tell you it's both?"

"That's a cop-out. Which one is worse? Which one REALLY hurts?"

I thought for a moment. "I guess it's the Angie part. Believe it or not, the Jenny part isn't quite as bad, because it's just what I'd expect from her. She wants what she wants, and how she gets it doesn't matter to her so much. I've long since stopped thinking highly of her ethical standards." I laughed a little.

"In that case," Davis said, "this is definitely your third nightmare. Because the first two were Jenny's doing, and this is Angie's."

"Glad we cleared that up. You want another beer?"

"Sure," he said. "And after that, let's go get some food."

We had polished off a pizza and a half, and were both leaning back contentedly in our chairs, watching the ass of the pretty waitress as she moved around the restaurant.

"So where does it stand with Angie now? Have you talked to her?"

"Not once. She's left me a handful of messages in the past two weeks—all low-key, just how sorry she is. I just haven't felt like calling her back."

"Why not?"

I thought a little. "I think it's because I don't know what to say to her. Before I call her, I feel like I oughtta know what I'm feeling, what it is I want to happen. And right now I don't know at all.

"I mean, she lied to me, right? She pulled a Jenny. But on the other hand, when she got close to going through with it she pulled back, she stopped herself. That's gotta be worth a few points. And when I made her talk to me, finally, she told me the truth. Even the part that makes her look bad.

"And the thing is, I miss her. I keep thinking about how much fun it was, hanging out with her. Not to mention how unbelievable she looked in that blue sweater, the night we nearly did it. I certainly wouldn't mind finishing what we started.

"Except, can I trust her? Is there any reason to feel I can count on her, any more than my bitch of a wife?"

Davis looked at me and said, "time to go, man. When you start talking around and around in circles, I know it's time to take you home."

***************

Three days later, Jenny came to see me. Just like that, out of the blue, no warning.

Was this Nightmare #4, or just Appendix A to Nightmares #1 or #2? By this time I'd sort of lost count.

It was about 8:30 at night, and I was cleaning up my dinner dishes. The doorbell rang, and when I opened the door there she was. If I hadn't been so totally startled I might have closed it in her face, but I just froze.

"Hello, Nick," she said in a tiny voice, like a little girl. "Can I come in and talk to you?"

I silently stepped back and let her walk into the living room. We sat across from each other, saying nothing. My heart wasn't pounding, my palms weren't clammy. This time I just felt cold, and kind of empty. It was like seeing a person from a painful but distant part of my past. And I realized that I was further along in the process of getting over Jenny than I had realized.

"Do you want a drink, or a cup of coffee?"

"Some water would be great, thanks."

I brought her a glass of water, and one for me. We sat some more. I knew one thing: I wasn't going to say a word. She'd come with something in mind—I was going to wait to see what the hell it was this time.

"Nick, I...I haven't seen you in a long time. Since the day I was here with you and Davis."

I waited.

"I know you've been...been spending time with Angie, because she was telling me about it now and then when we talked."

She looked at me, obviously hoping I'd jump in and help her out, but I just watched her.

"But recently, for some reason Angie doesn't return my calls. I don't know what's bothering her, whether she's mad at me or something."

More silence. Her look got more imploring.

"Nick, are you and she...dating? Are you a couple, or are you just hanging out together, you know, like friends?" Her tone was a little pleading.

I said, very slowly, "I don't really think that's your business, Jenny. You and I aren't together any more, and what's going on in my social life is private."

She looked hurt, but she nodded her head. "Yes—I see that."

Then she took a deep breath, and plunged ahead. "You know why I'm asking, don't you? I still love you, Nick—more than I ever realized. After my—my horrible mistake, with Alec, I've had lots of time to think about everything I threw away.

"Baby, all I want is you again! I'll do anything to make up for the hurt I caused you. God, I was such an idiot! But I know that now, honest I do!"

I wondered why my heart wasn't pounding, why I felt kind of dull rather than wired. "Jenny, I'm—I'm just not getting back together with you.

"You say you've been thinking about your 'mistake'—but I don't think you have any idea of how totally you destroyed me."

Impulsively, I made a decision. I stood up. "Come with me, OK? I want to show you something."

Looking puzzled, she followed me as I went up the stairs. Soon we were standing in front of the closed door of what had been our bedroom.

"In the first couple of weeks after you left I went kind of crazy. I moved into the guest room, but I kept going back into our bedroom and...doing things to it. Venting my feelings.

"Then I got sick of it, and I just stopped. I haven't been back in this room since about three weeks after you moved out. But I think when you see it, you'll have some idea of how your betrayal made me feel."

I opened the door and flipped on the light, then stood aside to let her walk in ahead of me. I heard her gasp, "Oh my God," as she gazed around at what had been the bedroom for all of our married life.

The bed's sheets had been pulled part way down and were covered in dried cum, the results of the 8-10 times I'd jerked off onto them. The whole room still smelled like stale sex.

Pinned up on one wall was Jenny's sexiest red nightie (actually, it was a copy I'd bought, since she'd taken the original with her when she moved out). Right where her heart would be if she'd been in it, a steak knife was plunged deeply through the nightie and into the wall.

The candles that had stood on the bedside the night I found her with Alec were broken into pieces, lying randomly on the floor. Waxy stains marked the spots where I'd repeatedly hurled them against the walls.

Pieces of our wedding album lay everywhere. I'd torn it apart, page by page, then torn the pages and the photographs into pieces and scattered them randomly.

At about ankle height there were several deep gashes in the walls, where I'd kicked hard with my shoes. And on one wall, written in huge letters in red lipstick, were the words "DIE CUNT BITCH".

I watched as Jenny looked at the room, taking in the ugliness and the destruction. When she turned to me, shock evident on her face, I said, "bet you didn't know I could get that angry, did you? I didn't either.

"They say that in times of stress you find out new things about yourself. Well, I found out how much hate and rage I had inside me, ready to be released by sufficient provocation. And you provided it, Jenny."

Her face wore a look of sadness I'd never seen before. I sensed that maybe she was starting to get it, starting to understand just how badly she had hurt me.

In an empty voice she said, "oh, Nick—I am so sorry. So very sorry."

She moved slowly towards me, wanting to take me in her arms. But I said, "no, Jenny, I don't think so." Without another word I turned away from her and went back down the stairs.

It was nearly ten minutes before she came down and sat with me in the living room. 

"It's really, really over, isn't it?"

I nodded to her. "You killed it, and it's not coming back to life."

She started to cry, looking at me, her shoulders shaking. Then after a couple of minutes she rose, still crying, and walked out of the house.

***************

"I really want you here, Davis—are you my friend or not?"

He gave me an exasperated look. "Do you think I'd have put up with your bullshit all these years if I wasn't your friend? Spare me!" he said with a snort.

"I just don't see why I need to be around while you talk to Angela."

"For luck, maybe," I said. "Remember when Jenny came to the house? It was your idea to be here with me, and thank God you were. I really needed you.

"So call it a silly superstition, man; just don't go, OK? At least hang around for the first few minutes."

He sighed with elaborate resignation, but I knew he'd stay. We watched another half-inning, and then when the doorbell rang I turned off the TV and went to answer the door.

"Hi, Angie".

"Hi Nick," she said shyly. She looked so beautiful I just wanted to grab her, but I didn't. She was wearing a white skirt and a sleeveless knit top, with just a little hint of cleavage. Very attractive, but not at all provocative or slutty. And her hair was shiny and gorgeous. I knew she wasn't a beauty in the same class as Jenny, but I didn't care—she looked lovely.

"Hi, Davis," she said, giving him a smile as she came into the living room. He rose and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Hey, Angie."

"I asked Davis to stay while we talked—at least for a little while."

"Nick, I don't care who's here to listen to me apologize, I'm going to do it anyway. I am just so sorry..."

"Shh," I interrupted her. "I know you're sorry. You said so when we talked at your place—and you've said so in how many phone messages since then?" I smiled at her.

"So let's talk about what comes after 'sorry'. Me first, then, you, OK?"

Angie nodded.

"Okay. Number One is—again!—Jenny and I are done. Finished. Over. I don't even hate her quite so much as I used to, but I'm never getting back together with her. Got it?"

Angie nodded again, with a little bit of a smile peeking through.

"So, Number Two is, anything that you and I decide we want is about just the two of us—all promises to Jenny are null and void. She is out of the picture. Can you agree to that?"

"Yes, Nick," she said, sounding a little meek.

"Now, to Number Three. You really hurt me, Angie. After what Jenny did, just about the last thing I needed was to fall for somebody else who was going to deceive me, do you understand that?"

"Of course I do Nick, and I am so ashamed of...

"Wait a minute. Did you say, 'fall for'?" She looked at me, a smile starting to break out.

"Yeah," I replied, smiling back at her. "You got a problem with that?"

"No, baby, I don't have a problem with that."

I looked over at Davis and gave him a wink. He looked at Angie and me a moment longer, enjoying our smiles at one another; then he waved a hand to me and headed for the door.

I went over to Angela and gently pulled her to her feet. "In that case, I think you owe me for a rather painfully interrupted evening." I kissed her, and she threw her arms around my neck and pulled me tightly against her.

You know the drill now, right? Hard to do justice to in words. Kisses, tongues, clothes come flying off, she drags me to the couch....

I'm not saying it wasn't great. In fact, I'm saying it WAS great. It was fantastic, especially for the first time. I hadn't been so excited since I was 16, touching Arlene Arnold's rather small tits for the very first time in her rec room.

Well, actually, I was probably this excited the first time I had Jenny too, but I sure wasn't thinking about that at the moment. In any case, Angie and I were on the couch naked in a matter of two minutes; and I was inside her within thirty seconds after that; and we were fucking hard, kissing each other, whispering to each other, and there were tears on her cheeks; and she was saying "yes, baby, yes, baby" over and over; and when I came it felt like utter heaven.

It's actually the second time I want to tell you about. When we'd finished making love the first time—and damned if it didn't feel like making love, too, not just like fucking—we lay together and giggled a little. Then we got up, leaving our clothes on the floor, and I led her by the hand into the kitchen.

We got out some salami and bread and cheese, and a bottle of champagne I'd had in the fridge forever, since long before Jenny left, and we headed upstairs to my real bedroom, the one I actually slept in. And we got into bed and ate and drank and giggled some more, and enjoyed the tipsy feeling that a shared bottle of champagne can give you.

And then we did it a second time, and that was the magic one.

Angie lay on her tummy and I massaged and stroked her all over, long smooth strokes, from the top of her neck down her back, and from the bottom of her feet up to her beautiful ass. I took my time, letting her relax and enjoy it, with an occasional "mmm" or a sigh of pleasure.

And then I had her turn over and I did the front, avoiding her lovely breasts and her pussy until last, just running my hands up and down her arms, around her chest and belly, then her legs and thighs. I knew she was loving it, both from the smile on her face and the smell of arousal that got stronger and stronger.

Then I made love to her breasts, with my fingers and lips, until she was breathing hard and ready to orgasm. And I left my hands up there while I slid my mouth down into her wet pussy—I kissed it and licked it and teased it, and then finally I sucked her clit into my mouth and tongued it while still pinching her nipples, and her whole body rose to an explosive climax and her hips bucked up at me and...

Wait a minute, that was kind of a run-on sentence, wasn't it? Shit. Well, I'll try to do better.

After she relaxed from her orgasm, Angie looked at me with dreamy eyes and said, "get up here, you". She pulled me gently up her body, and without waiting any longer I slid right into her.




My Second Nightmare



We had a long, slow, absolutely delicious fuck. I remembered vaguely doing this with Jenny, in the early days of our relationship: me sliding in and out, easily, no hurry, varying my pace and my depth. Angie and I looked at one another, we kissed, I put my head on her shoulder and kissed her neck; and we went on and on. It was intimate and sweet, and much more like making love than just fucking. During those minutes everything but the joy of Angie's body was forgotten, far away—I was as happy as I had ever been.

I lost track of time, but finally Angie started humping her hips up at me more energetically, and whispered, "c'mon, baby, come for me", and I sped up at last and came hard, came like crazy, gasping with it, while she squealed and pulled me tightly into her, her arms squeezing the breath out of me.

And then we kissed, and smiled; and slept for a while.

And then we talked.

"That was backwards, you know Angie?" I said to her. I was sitting up in bed, two pillows behind my back, and she was lying half-way on me, her head on my chest, playing idly with my chest hair.

"Mmm?"

"I mean, we did it first, and now we have to talk about what it meant."

She suddenly tugged hard on my chest hair, and she giggled when I yelped and pulled her hand away.

"Well I don't think it will take very long to talk about what it meant—at least for me."

"Oh?" I said.

Without looking up at me, she went on. "What it meant for me is that I'm crazy about you, Nick. I started feeling that way about the third or fourth time we hung out together, and it's just gotten stronger and stronger.

"If it weren't for Jenny and my promise to her, if I'd only been thinking about myself, I would have dragged you into bed weeks ago."

Now she sat up and looked right into my eyes. "I don't want to tell you I'm in love with you—but that's mainly 'cause I don't want to scare you off.

"But I will tell you that you mean an awful lot to me, and I intend to make sure you know that." And she kissed me gently, looking seriously into my eyes.

"Okay, Angie. My turn now.

"I'm pretty crazy about you too. But I'm also coming out of a pretty painful, destructive relationship, and it may be that I still have a few trust issues." She poked me in the ribs, and I swatted her butt with my hand.

"I know why you did why you did—and thank God you stopped us that night, and then were honest enough to explain it all to me. But it's going to take me a while, maybe a long time, to feel that I can really trust you.

"It might have taken a long time anyway, after what Jenny did. But that bullshit about sleeping with me so Jenny could get me back...

"Listen, you need to see something." I got out of bed and pulled her out with me. Naked, hand in hand, we walked down the hall and stood before the closed door of Jenny's and my old bedroom.

"In there is a kind of shrine to how fucked-up and angry I'm capable of getting. You shouldn't be under any illusions about me." I opened the door and gestured for her to go in. Then I padded back to bed, and sat waiting for her to return.

After a few minutes Angie came back into the room, her face serious. Without saying a word, she climbed into bed and pulled herself tightly against me, wriggling until we were as closely pressed together as we could be.

She whispered into my shoulder, "I'm so sorry for what she did to you!"

Then she sat up. "And I'm so sorry for what I almost did to you—it just kills me that I might have lost you that way."

"Well, you didn't," I said gruffly, my throat suddenly kind of tight. "And if you play your cards right, you won't." I pulled her to me and kissed her gently.

Wouldn't you know it? At that moment the fucking phone rang. With a muttered curse, I picked it up.

"Hello? Oh, hi mom. Listen, I can't talk now—I'll have to call you back." With a smile at Angie, I hung up the phone.