108 comments/ 60528 views/ 39 favorites Turning Towards Ohio By: StangStar06 Hey Folks. Here's another tale of broken hearts and broken dreams. But also of getting up and getting on with it. Once again my gibberish is cleaned, polished and bejeweled by the GREAT (he claims he isn't legendary) Barney-R. This one isn't as long as the one from two weeks ago but I think it's still a good story. For any of you who speak with a Southern accent, please don't take offense to my tongue in cheek versions of it. I used it not to insult or pick fun but because women with southern accents are the sexiest things on God's green earth. No sex between characters who are under 18 appears in this story, there are no characters who are under 18 in the story. Nuff said. SS06 * * * * * * 6 a.m. The Sun was just beginning to come up as I roared down the freeway. Last night I couldn't get to sleep at all. No, I wasn't thinking about the song from Marilyn Mcoo and Billy Davis. There was a jumble of all kinds of thoughts going through my head. They were all disjointed and most of them were about all kinds of subjects. I thought about my new Goodyear supercar tires, their grip was much better than the tires I had before. I thought about Newton's laws of physics. I thought about how my life was in limbo. My iridium spark plugs did seem to make my 2009 45th anniversary Mustang GT peppier. I wondered why there were no cops on the freeway. I wondered why I was driving 145 miles per hour which immediately made me glad I had cross drilled and slotted rotors with oversized calipers. I stomped on the brake pedal and brought my wild pony to an abrupt stop. The only sound in my ears was the incessant thrumming of my Mustang's motor. My pony wanted to run. She hated stopping and the sound of the motor let me know that she was impatient to be on our way. I had stopped in the middle of the freeway. Luckily for me it was deserted. It was a summer Sunday morning, so no one was going to work. If it had been a busy Monday or another weekday, stopping could have gotten me killed, or gotten me into an accident at the very least. I was fifty yards in front of a double fork in the road. I could go in any of three directions. The road to the center would take me West towards my new job and I suppose my future. When I left the motel that morning I was sure I was going that way. The road to the right would take me south and the left path would take me off of the freeway and back home. I'm not accustomed to being indecisive. I'm at a point in my life where I usually move quickly and make decisions just as fast, but just this once, as I sat there in my car I had no idea where to go. I'm a manufacturing Engineer and a pretty good one at that. I'm also forty years old. Being forty is like being in limbo. At forty, you're not exactly a young man any more. Most people no longer expect you to be wet behind the ears. They expect you to know what you're doing and what you're talking about. On the other hand, at forty, you're not exactly old either. That means that no one is going to give you any kind of senior citizen discounts or perks. They're also not going to simply take things you say as coming from a position of age or wisdom. It's kind of fucked up. You're too young to be old and too old to be young. My name is Robert Playne. As mentioned before, I'm forty years old. I've been married to my wife, Jane, for twenty years. Our daughter, Cassandra, is in her third year of college. She's in the nursing program at Michigan State and sucking money out of me left and right. She'll be getting married soon. She's been engaged to a really nice kid for about a year now. I think they're both waiting to graduate with their degrees before they tie the big knot. Things are different for kids these days. I guess the sensible ones want to make sure they have all of the things they need BEFORE marriage and kids. I've tried several times to explain to Sandy, that her mom and I got hitched at only twenty years old because we had to. I mean we WERE in love, but we didn't have time to wait because we wanted to be married when SHE was born. We had a few rough times early on and had to pinch our pennies. But our life turned out great. We have a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood. We have all of the creature comforts we could ever need and money in the bank. We've talked about retiring early, so we can travel together while we're still fit enough to do so. And then we'll settle down and spoil the shit out of our grand kids. At least that was the way it was supposed to work out. We had puttered along on the same path for almost twenty years. I love Jane more than anything I can think of. I feel the same way about Cassandra. I have a great job, great friends, and a very rich life. My life was an object in a state of uniform motion. I loved Jane and I was confident that she felt the same. At forty we weren't kids anymore, but we were still deeply in love. We still did all of the little things that said so. If we could have continued on that way, I'd have gone to my grave a happy camper. I woke up one morning last week, feeling heat in my nether region. Jane as usual had fallen asleep wrapped around me. I woke up and that heat had me thinking about wake-up sex. I reached between us and cupped her pubic mound. The soft curls were still damp with the residue of what we'd done the night before. She was sticky and moist but still warm and I started to gently rub her down there. "Didn't you get enough of that last night?" she asked. Her voice was scratchy and she was just coming awake. "I don't think I could ever get enough of this," I said. "Well you're going to have to wait," she laughed. "Both of us have to work today and one of us is on the early shift." She kissed me, unleashing the dragon of her morning breath. As much as I loved her, I had never gotten used to her breath in the morning. Although I had never said anything about it to avoid hurting her feelings, Jane's morning breath was awful. It smelled like she ate peanut butter and shit sandwiches before getting into bed and they had fermented over night. I reached for her butt as she got out of the bed. I squeezed it and she giggled. She turned around and dangled her boobs over my head, just out of reach. As quick as a cat, I lunged for her and dragged her back into bed with me. "You know what happens to women who tease men, right?" I asked. "What," she asked, smiling from ear to ear? "Sooner or later, they end up getting fucked," I said. She laughed. "That sounds so funny when you say it," she laughed. "When you say getting fucked, it sounds like something brutal and unpleasant. It's like you're describing a punishment. But you're so gentle and so loving that when we do it, it's the most pleasurable thing I can imagine. It's more of a reward. And I promise you can reward me all you want tonight. But I have to get my ass to the office, or Hank is going to fire me." "Hank is your uncle," I laughed. "Besides, he and everyone else there, know that you only work there to help him out. He should be paying you a lot more." "Yeah," she said. "But Uncle Hank is family. And besides, I only work at the office to give me something to do. You're at work most of the day and Cassandra is away at college. Being at the office gives me something to do." "It gives you a chance to flirt with all of those God damned salesmen," I snapped. She laughed so hard she fell on the bed beside me. "You think it's funny," I said. "But..." Before I could finish my sentence she covered my mouth with hers, dragon breath and all. "I don't think it's funny at all," she said. I noticed a tear in the corner of her eye. "I think it's the sweetest, most romantic thing ever. I can't believe you still get jealous after all of this time. You still act like I'm some hot young girl and you don't want anyone else near me." Sometimes it's best not to say anything, so I didn't. "I love you, Bob," she gushed. "Now go brush your teeth, while I shower, so your next kiss won't taste like feet." I swatted her on her substantial ass as she walked away. Jane was no longer the svelte girl/woman that she'd been when we first got together, but after twenty years, two Mustangs, three houses, a full grown daughter and a lifetime of triumphs and tragedies, I still loved her the same as I did then. I lay there in the bed, imagining what the next few years of our lives would be like. Now that our daughter was an adult, we could begin the next phase. There were so many places we had always wanted to see and things we'd wanted to do. "Hey, I thought you were supposed to be getting your lazy ass up and brushing those teeth," she said. "Hurry up, I'm not kissing you goodbye until you get that taste out of your mouth. I'll be downstairs waiting for you mister." As she said it, she grabbed her boobs and squeezed them, and then let them fall back into place. Her blouse was tight enough to outline her boobs, even though it was buttoned all the way up so that not even a hint of cleavage showed. At work she was totally professional; at home she was an outrageous tease. I hopped up and ran into the bathroom. I quickly brushed my teeth and also took the time to shave. When I hurried down the stairs, Jane was on the computer. I noticed that she had her email account open and quickly closed it as I came into the room. "Just checking the list of ingredients for the special treat I'm making you for dinner tonight, Honey," she smiled. That was it. It's often the little things, like a crack in a huge dam that let us know that a huge problem is right behind them. Jane had just lied to me. In the twenty years that we'd been married, I had never checked up on her. I had never invaded her privacy in any way. Sure she considered herself to be keeping a tight leash on me, but I trusted her. She'd never given me any reason not to. But that morning, Jane had just given me a reason. She had looked me right in the eye, smiled at me, and lied. I didn't care about her emailing her friends. There was no reason to hide it or to lie about it. Or was there? She got up from the computer after closing her web page and quickly pulled me in for a kiss. I was too shocked to respond the way I normally did, but I guess her nervousness matched mine. "I'll see you tonight," she said, before snatching up her purse and walking out of the door. I quickly opened up a new tab on the Google chrome browser that Jane had left open. One thing about Chrome is that it is designed to be very user friendly. If you close a tab, but leave the browser open, you can go back to the previous sites that you were at without having to re-enter your passwords, especially when you close the tabs before actually signing out. So by going back to AOL, I was able to access Jane's email account. I saw nothing suspicious. When I looked at her bookmarks she really did have a hell of a lot of recipes saved. I looked in her in-box and nothing suspicious leaped out at me. She had email from her mom and several from her sister. There was one from one of the men she worked with and I got angry. So I did what any husband would have done. Yeah, okay, I'm an asshole. I violated her privacy. I read her fucking email and felt like an ass. The guy had just gotten married and wanted Jane to come over so she could meet his new wife. From reading between the lines, I got the message that the guy wanted something I had. But it wasn't Jane. Apparently the guy was seriously considering buying a Mustang and really wanted to talk to me about it. I was so relieved. I quickly went back to her in-box and marked the message "keep as new." With any luck, Jane would never know that I had read it. Then I noticed that Jane had been so busy closing her e-mail, that she had forgotten to close another one of her tabs. I clicked on it and it opened to her Facebook page. I was shocked because I didn't even know that she had one. Since, I'm not really a Facebook user, I had to get used to the layout of the page. Jane apparently had over a hundred friends. Most of them were her family or people she worked with, but there were a few people that I didn't recognize. The hair on the back of my neck stood up I saw the messages section near the top and noticed that she'd been having a long conversation with someone named Jason. That was when I began to get angry. Jason was a guy she had dated long before she met me. From hearing her talk about him with her mom and sister, they had been together for a long time and were really hot and heavy. Jason had apparently been Jane's first true love and they had always planned on getting married. The way I heard it, Jason had gone off to the army and while he was away, Jane had left the area they lived in. She had met me; we fell in love, got married, and had a kid, end of story. Over the years, I hadn't heard much about Jason, except that Jane's parents had never liked him. And since old Jason was in the past, I had never given him much thought. But here he was sending messages to Jane. Yeah, I read the fucking messages. I started from the beginning. There were hundreds of them. They started out innocently enough. They started out like two old friends re-connecting. They talked about things they'd done when they were younger and their lives. But somewhere in the middle the guy started talking about how much he missed her and wished that they had stayed together. It took a few messages but Jane had begun telling him that she wondered how her life would have been if they HAD stayed together. It took a few more weeks for it to come out but he told her that he still loved her. At first she didn't respond to that. She told him that she was a happily married woman and that she loved me. A few messages later and she was telling him that she loved him too, but only as a friend. They kept reminiscing about days gone by and the things they used to do, which apparently included a lot of sex, and the next thing I knew she was telling him she loved him too. Then he started hinting that she should come to visit. He had it all worked out. She could come to visit him on the pretense that she was visiting her parents and family in town. While she was there, she could tell her parents that she was visiting her aging aunt, Tilly. She could tell Aunt Tilly that she was visiting her parents. That way the two of them could spend their time together. At that moment I wanted to find that motherfucker and choke the life out of him. Jane of course said, "NO," it would never happen. But I was sure that if he kept trying to persuade her, eventually he would get his way. There I was standing there in my home office, angry as hell at the woman who only an hour before I had been sure that I would love forever. I was also late for work. I quickly called the plant and explained that I'd had car trouble and would be in. I called a colleague of mine who worked in IT and owed me a favor. I got him to come over to the house right then. Rick was happily married, like I thought I was. He got there and by the look on my face he could tell I was pissed. I swore him to secrecy, which was easy as hell and the reason I had picked Rick out of all the guys I knew in IT. Although Rick was happily married, he entertained fantasies of being a spy or a PI. He was one of the best computer guys I know, but he dreamed of being 007. "Rick, can you..." I began. "Steal the whore's passwords for you and rig it so that the computer explodes if she ever emails that guy again?" he blurted out. He had an excited look on his face. "How big do you want the explosion to be? I can probably rig it so that HIS computer fries its hard drive, but without getting into his house, I can't get you an explosion on his end. And it's really..." "Rick," I said calmly. "I was hoping to put the reins on him before he got away from me. If she changes her password or notices that I've been in her account, I'd be out of luck. Can you just rig it so that copies ... copies mind you, of her emails and Facebook messages get sent to my account?" "Piece of cake," he said. "I'm just wondering why she didn't have all of this stuff sent to her account at work." "For the same reason that I don't want you to send it to my email account at work," I said. "Because guys like you, get paid to snoop through people's accounts to find evidence of them doing things they shouldn't be doing at work." "That makes sense," he said. He set me up a completely separate Yahoo email account and sent copies of all of Jane's email and Facebook messages to that account. Then both of us went to the plant to work, the difference was Rick went back so charged up that he could barely function. To him it had been a dream come true. He was wrapped up finally in the world of secrets, lies and counterespionage, albeit on a smaller scale that he had always dreamed of. For me it was a much different feeling. I felt as if I had been punched in the gut repeatedly. My entire world had changed. My life was no longer an object at a steady rate of motion. * * * * * * Jane I had nearly gotten caught that morning. It was stupid. I was stupid. But after passing forty, I'd begun to just feel like life was passing me by. At first I thought it was just empty nest syndrome, with Cassandra going off to college. But once I started working in my Uncle Hank's office, it got worse. All day long I listened to the other women there, talking about all the things they did and I was jealous. I wasn't jealous that they were single. I love being married to Bob. He is the kindest, most loving man I know. I guess what I missed was the excitement we had when we were younger. Excitement isn't really the word for it. I think what I'm missing is that sense of desperation; the thrill of living on the edge. They say that youth is wasted on the young. I understand that now. That feeling of not knowing what is going to happen to you next, or just taking what life throws at you and winning your way through by the skin of your teeth is so exhilarating. A few months ago I got on Facebook because everyone else at the office did it. I occasionally got messages and friend requests from people I hadn't heard from in years. One of them was my old boyfriend. I'd been sure that I was going to marry Jason. The fact that my parents hated him only made things better between us. I guess that's that idea of living on the edge again. Jason and I never really broke up. We just went in different directions by mutual agreement. Out of the blue, I got a call from him and he told me that he had decided to join the military and he'd be gone for a few years. I was shocked to say the least. He had never mentioned enlisting before. In fact, Jason was about the most undisciplined man I knew. He hated the idea of being told what to do. I guess to be truthful, Jason was lazy. But signing up, was a very mature step and I swore to him that I would wait for him and remain faithful. Strangely enough, he told me that it wouldn't be necessary. He would be traveling to far off places and he wanted to experience everything life could throw at him. Being tied into such a severe promise while we were only twenty years old wasn't fair to either of us. So Jason joined up and I moved to Michigan to help care for my Uncle Hank's wife, Aunt Kate. I met Bob and fell in love with him and we've been together ever since. But hearing from Jason was like re-igniting a flame that had been allowed to die. It took a while, but I found myself telling him things that I shouldn't have. I also found myself comparing him to Bob. And lately, in my comparisons, I've begun to realize that Bob probably wasn't the better man between the two of them. When I was with Jason, I felt freer and more alive. It seemed like every new day brought new experiences and new challenges. The air seemed to smell better, the grass was greener, and the sex was far more thrilling. It was just...BETTER. I found myself dreaming about what my life could have been like with Jason. But I was an old married woman. It was too late to find out. I should probably just chalk it up to what should have been. I was stuck in a rut, with no way out. Turning Towards Ohio Lately, Jason has been more insistent. He kept begging and pleading with me to come and visit him. And from the tone of his messages, I know that he doesn't want me to visit so we can play cards. For my part, I'm very tempted. His idea to pretend that I'm visiting my parents seems like a good one. The problem is that if I go there and have a few days of excitement and mind blowing sex, I probably wouldn't want to come back. Bob would be lost without me and my daughter would hate me for abandoning her daddy. * * * * * * Bob It was very hard for me to even look at Jane, when I got home that night. I hadn't gotten much work done at the office. I had rolled the situation over in my mind at least a hundred times. The first thing that went through my mind was that I felt so betrayed and so hurt that I wanted to lash out and hurt Jane back. I wanted her out of my life forever. On the other hand, Jane hadn't actually done anything. She hadn't fucked the guy. She hadn't even kissed him. All she was actually guilty of was writing some messages to an old flame. No, it was worse than that. How did Jimmy Carter say it? Jane had lust in her heart. That made it just as bad as if she had actually done something. She was having an emotional affair with some clown from her past. She was spending time and effort on her relationship with him that could have been spent on us. At the same time, maybe it was just a harmless fantasy. Everyone had a right to their dreams. Her relationship with Jason hadn't hurt us much until I found out about it. Jane like everyone else had a right to the sanctity of her dreams. The thing that bothered me the most though, was the way she had begun talking about me, as if I was responsible for her life being boring. She made it seem like our life sucked. Her fondest wish was to spend a few days with Jason. And as much as the idea terrified me; I decided to give her the chance. As I walked into my formerly happy home, it was difficult to pretend that nothing was different. As a matter of fact, I sucked at it. Jane knew almost instantly that something was wrong. "Are you okay, Honey?" she asked. "Does something hurt?" "No, I'm fine," I said. She kept looking at me and coming over to me while she cooked dinner. "Bob, there's something wrong. I can tell," she said. "What is it?" "It's my tail lights," I said in frustration. "What?" she asked, looking at me as if I was crazy? "I bought those Raxion gen 5 tail lights to upgrade my car. My car is black," I said. "I know that sweetheart," she replied. "I hated those old and dated looking red tail lights," I continued. "So I bought the Raxions from American Muscle. The directions on the web site made it look simple to install them. They were supposedly plug and play. But when I looked at my car's wiring harness, I knew that they lied. I'm a God damned engineer and I have no clue about all of that wiring." "Honey, you're a manufacturing engineer," she said softly. "Exactly!" I said. "I could probably make those fucking tail lights, but I can't install them. Now I have to go to an automotive electrical shop to have them put in. They should have instructions for every year of Mustangs that the lights fit, and every model too. The GT premiums have a different wiring configuration with a lot more wires and..." She just walked over and put her arms around me. "Honey, you don't have to do all of the work on your car yourself. We can afford to have it done," she said. She was almost laughing as she looked at me. I was sure that she believed it, for two reasons. The first was because I was always doing something to my car. Cassandra actually called the car her sister because I treated it like it was my second child. The second reason was because it really was true. Those fucking tail lights were driving me crazy. But I had found a shop out on Gratiot Avenue that could put them in for me. The owner had been sure they could do it. I had dodged a bullet, but I needed to be far more careful. A couple of hours later, I was lying in bed when Jane came in. Since Cassandra had gone away to school and was only home on alternate weekends, Jane had given up all pretense of modesty. She stepped out of the shower and dried off and walked through the house completely naked looking for me. I had one eye cracked as she walked into our bedroom. Her large breasts swayed from side to side as she looked around. Normally, I'd have one of them in my mouth as soon as I saw her. "Bob," she gushed. "I've got something for you." I don't know what was going through my mind. It was the same pussy that I'd been trying to get that morning. The same pussy that I'd worshipped for the past twenty years. I was relatively sure that no one except me had been in it during those same twenty years. But all of a sudden, the thought of sticking my dick in her made me sick to my stomach. Maybe it was because in my mind, Jane was no longer mine alone. I had loved her and supported her for twenty years, just so some clown from her home town could reclaim her as soon as he found her. The thing that galled me the most was how quickly she had forgotten everything we'd gone through together. All the years of being there and taking care of her when she was sick, apparently meant nothing Fuck her, they deserved each other. She shook me trying to get me to wake up. I rolled over and looked at her, still feigning sleep. "Oh ... G' night, Honey," I said. "I forgot to tell you. I have to go out of town next week. I'll be gone for four days. I leave Monday. I'll be back by Friday night. That way I won't miss Sandy's visit." She didn't say anything about the trip. "But Honey, aren't we going to...?" she asked. Then she lay down beside me. She wrapped one arm around me and spooned against me. I think she was frustrated because she would have normally been the one in front. But with me turning my back towards her, she tried to get as much contact as she could. Even having her arm around me was almost painful for me. I think that I was already trying to distance myself from her emotionally. Call it a survival mechanism or just plain anger, but in my mind, I wasn't even going to try to fight for her. I had already conceded her to Jason. As far as I was concerned, she was his now and I didn't like her touching me. I felt as if I had wasted twenty years of my life. The only thing I had to show for it was Cassandra. My daughter was the only good thing to come from twenty years of wasted love and wasted emotion. Next week would tell me everything I had to know. It was a test that I was very sure she would fail and our life together would be over. Even if she came back, which I seriously doubted I would have no place for her in my heart or my life. Maybe it was the cave man in me, but MY wife, had to be MY wife alone. The whole sharing is caring thing didn't work for me. Of course to protect myself when things went bad and we ended up in court, I would need evidence. Even as we lay there, she wiggled against me trying to interest me in what she had to offer. I on the other hand began planning my exit strategy. I needed a good lawyer. I had no idea where to find anyone who handled that kind of thing. I also didn't really feel comfortable discussing my failure with anyone I knew. When it all came down to it that was the way I felt. I felt as if I had failed. I had failed to keep my wife interested in me. Obviously I was so boring or so unappealing that my wife needed to start up a relationship with a past lover. Or maybe our entire time together was a lie. Perhaps I was just a place holder in her life until he retired from the military and came back to claim her. She had probably been comparing us all along and found that I came out second in all of the most important categories. So now that G.I. Jason had returned, I was cast aside. I believe in romance. I believe in true love and all of that other bullshit, but more than anything else, I believe in fairness. And it was damned unfair of Jane to keep me on a string while she had her relationship on the side with the man she really wanted to be with. If she wanted to be with Jason, the least she could do is tell me. She should allow me to walk away with my dignity intact and move on with my life. I had the right to find someone who loved me enough to be with me alone. I fell asleep making plans. Throughout the night I dreamed of my marriage and I came up with hundreds of ways that I had failed Jane. By the time I awoke the next morning I was exhausted from my emotional dreams. And I was even more convinced that Jane and I no longer belonged together. But I had to get out of it with my pride intact. I needed to get out on my terms. I got out of bed an hour early leaving Jane asleep. She mumbled in her sleep as I left the room. I showered and dressed and left the house without saying a word to her. I had breakfast alone, in a diner near the plant I worked in. I handled my assignments that day as if I was in a fog. Normally I'd have been visited by a large number of friends and colleagues who were wondering what I was doing and what my latest research was on. But unlike the comics or the internet romance stories, no one came to visit me. In real life no one visits a guy when he's feeling down. If I had been a woman they'd have showered me with concern and affection. But as a man, they maintained their distance. Men are not allowed to have feelings. A man, even after being married to a woman for decades, is expected to just suck it up and move on. The only person, who came to see me, was Rick. When I told him about my plans his eyes lit up. I told him about what I wanted to do and what I would need. I had taken some time to go on the internet and research divorce lawyers in my area and had spoken to a handful of them. Most of them agreed that if I wanted a divorce without mortgaging my soul to Jane, I'd have to be able to prove that there were grounds for the divorce. Otherwise the judge or court would simply side with her. They would assume that I just wanted to cast her to the side for a younger woman or a woman that I found more attractive. They'd think that I was doing pretty much what she was doing to me. If I made any type of accusations against her, she could simply deny them and it would be my word against hers. Most of the lawyers thought I should hire a P. I. When I said that part Rick got upset. "What the hell can those guys do that I can't?" he asked. We had a long conversation about it and Rick ended up taking some vacation time to follow Jane back to her home town and get pictures for me of Jane misbehaving. I truly believe that Rick would have paid me for the chance to live out his 007 fantasy. I offered to pay for his motel room and plane fare and he accepted. He seemed to be more excited about the whole thing than I was. I was sure that I could get him the information regarding the flight she would take because although Jane had a bank account of her own, she didn't have much money of her own. That meant that she would be more likely to buy her plane tickets from our joint account. All I had to do was to wait for her to tell me that she would be visiting her parents. Then I could inform Rick and the game would be on. It didn't take very long. As soon as I got home that evening, Jane was all over me. She was kissing and hugging on me like we were still on our honeymoon. I tried to pretend that I was enjoying it. But truthfully, I looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. It was puzzling how just this afternoon, she'd written to Jason and told him how much she missed him and was looking forward to seeing him. She agreed with him when he said that they should have gotten married. She even told him how much she loved him. But now less than an hour later she was claiming to love only me. Women are confusing. Which one of us was she lying to? She started hinting around about having sex, so I told her that I had injured my back and was trying to rest it. When she reached around me and tried to rub it, I pretended that even touching it hurt. She looked really concerned. At that point, I really wasn't sure which one of us was the better actor. As we sat down at dinner, the answer to that question was made painfully clear. "Bob, Honey," she began. "Since you're going to be gone anyway, I think I'm going to go home and visit my parents for a few days, okay?" she asked. I had my answer. My marriage and my life as I knew it, was over. "Sure, Jane, that's fine," I said. Over the next two days, Jane showered me with affection. I tried not to show it but I grew more and more depressed. The only person other than Jane who seemed to be happy about the events was Rick. He was buying cameras and disguises and telling me about each one. I was glad that my misery seemed to be the defining incident in his life. * * * * * * Jane As I sat on the plane waiting while it taxied towards the terminal, there were at least a thousand thoughts going through my mind. Maybe I was exaggerating but at least a hundred ideas, emotions and feelings battled for a place at the forefront of my psyche. Some of those thoughts revolved around Bob. There was something off about that man. I know him better than anyone, and there was clearly something wrong with him. He was hurt by something and he was keeping it inside of him. I'd been thinking about it, I couldn't stop myself. I was sure that it had something to do with his job, because it all started on the same day that he told me about his business trip. It had been years since Bob had travelled for business. Usually they sent someone else. This was why Bob thought that he was too valuable in the plant to send him off on errands that any engineer or even some of the sales guys could handle. Perhaps that was it. Maybe there were some newer, younger hot shots around and Bob wasn't as valuable as he once was. That could be it. The blow to his ego and status could have him in a funk. Bob had to learn that his job meant nothing to us. It was our source of income, nothing more. He needed to focus on me and our future. That thought seemed kind of hollow suddenly. Did we even have a future? What if the butterflies in my stomach, were telling me that my future was with Jason? It was hard to face. And I really didn't want to hurt Bob, but perhaps I was always meant to be with Jason. What if the moment I laid eyes on Jason everything fell back in place. Maybe I would never return home. Maybe I would just stay with Jason forever. I dreaded the phone call I would have to make. I'd be as gentle as I could. After all, I had a child with Bob. And he had taken care of me and loved me for twenty years. I would have to pick my words carefully. I rehearsed the words in my mind. "Bob, Honey, I love you. I've loved being married to you. We've had a great life. But, it's time for me to turn in another direction. I guess things just didn't work out." I know he would be very hurt, but I had to think of my own happiness. Bob is a big boy. He'll get over it in time. Of course he and my daughter and all of our friends will blame me. It'll be Jason and me against the world. It'll be just the way we always imagined it when we were in our twenties and madly in love. Bob, as nice a guy as he is, has never been as exciting as Jason. He's never been as attractive. He's never been as wild, or as strong. He's never been able to float my boat the way that Jason can. Compared to Jason, Bob is nothing. I was drawn out of my thoughts by the announcement that the plane had reached the terminal. I got out of my seat and stepped into the aisle. I slowly filed out of the plane and into the terminal with the rest of the passengers and looked around. My heart was in my chest. I imagined Jason as being as hot and as sexy as he was when we were younger. In his messages he told me that he hasn't changed much. Unfortunately, I had. I hope that he'll still want to be with me even though I've aged considerably. My legs aren't as tight or as smooth as they were back then. I have a bit of a tummy too. It's a souvenir of child birth. My ass is fatter, but my boobs are bigger too. Jason always loved my boobs. They were his favorite toys to play with. I met him when I was a nineteen year old virgin. He was the first man to play with them. I felt kind of guilty about giving them to another man while Jason was off defending our country. But life was about second chances. If Jason still wanted these boobs, after twenty years of another man playing with them, he could have them. I hoped with all of my heart that he did. As I looked around the terminal, I saw people being met by their loved ones and by others. Some of them simply started talking to the people who met them and others kissed or hugged them as if they'd been apart forever. From nowhere I thought I heard the sound of someone calling my name. I looked and saw a short, balding man smiling at me. He needed a shave and his clothes looked as if they needed to be washed. Despite his outward appearance, there was something in his eyes that was the same. It was Jason. I guess the years hadn't been as kind to him as they had been to me. My initial feeling was one of shock. There was something just not right about this whole thing. I suddenly felt as if ... No. I realized that what I was feeling was probably just guilt. As Jason made his way over to me and quickly grabbed me into his arms, the feeling that I was making a mistake grew stronger. My body was confused. Somehow, being in Jason's arms, didn't feel right. And his arms were thin and hairy. They weren't the arms that I remembered from my youth. And they certainly didn't make me feel as safe as when Bob hugged me. And then I jumped. Jason had run one of his hands down my back and was squeezing one of my ass cheeks as if it belonged to him. I quickly moved his hand away. "Jeezus, what the hell is wrong with you?" he asked. "Jason, we're in a public place," I said. "Why are you grabbing my ass in full view of all of these people?" "Fuck them," he smiled. "They don't mean shit to me." His words were familiar. It was the kind of thing he always said. As I looked around and saw the looks on the faces of the people who had seen what he did, I was embarrassed. He leaned over towards me and whispered into my ear. "I can't wait to get you to your hotel and get those clothes off of you," he growled. "I'm gonna tear that pussy up!" "Jason, I'm not staying in a hotel," I said. "I'm staying with my parents." The look of shock on his face confused me. For months now, he'd been telling me how much he loved me. He'd been telling me how he'd always loved me and how we belonged together. That wasn't the way I was feeling. I told myself that it was only an initial reaction. I told myself that we needed to get used to each other again. But my gut was in a state of flux. "Aren't you glad to see me?" I asked. "Of course, Baby," he gushed. "But my hormones are on a state of uproar. I've been dreaming of us getting together since you told me you were coming. I want you bad." In a way, I guess I should have been flattered. Especially since, Bob hadn't touched me for the past few days. That was another thing that bothered me. My body always seemed to crave Bob. But from the second that Jason had started squeezing my ass, I'd felt nothing but revulsion. I needed time to think about this. Jason grabbed my hand and led me out of the terminal. "I have to get my luggage and my rental car," I told him. "That sounds like it's going to take a lot of time," he said. His voice sounded kind of whiny. "I've got some things I need to do tonight." Turning Towards Ohio "I thought you said that we would spend every moment together," I told him. "That was the plan," he said. "But my boss can't seem to do without me. Can we spend a little bit of time together and then come back for your shit? I've missed you. I've been waiting for you to come back to me for almost twenty God damned years. You'd think that spending a little bit of time with me would be more important to you than just getting some suitcases and a cheap ass rental car." * * * * * * Rick It was almost too easy. But then I had to remember that I was born to do this. Bob had given me all of the information I needed to do a good job. I had her flight information both ways. I had the addresses of most of her relatives in the area as well. I also had Jason's address and I'd done some snooping. I, and through me, Bob knew some things about lover boy, that Jane didn't know. The funny thing about it is that most of the things I found out about him were public knowledge. Somehow it seemed almost wrong that Jane didn't know that Jason was married and had a couple of little kids. As I watched them meeting for the first time in a couple of decades, I was underwhelmed. I had trouble believing that Jane was stupid enough to cheat on Bob with a short, balding, loser. And from the way he was pawing at her in the airport I could tell that he was just oozing personality. I pretended to dial a number on my iPhone and took several high resolution photos of Jason with his hands all over Jane's wide matronly ass. I took even more pictures of the kiss they exchanged. I had come in on a flight two hours before Jane's so I could see the joyous occasion and take pictures. I wore a baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes and big sunglasses. Jason had never laid eyes on me and Jane didn't know me well enough to pick me out of a crowd. Jason had used his wife's credit card to book a room in a motel. I wonder what kind of whore Jane led him to believe she was. He'd rented the room for three nights, starting tonight. Did he really think he was going to just fuck her the first night that she came into town? I could hear the disappointment in his voice as she told him that she wanted to go to her parents' house. They left the airport and got into a crappy car. I didn't bother following them. Bob had bought Jane's phone for her and he paid the bills. He had installed a tracking app on the phone, like a lot of parents do to their teenagers. I could follow them anywhere since like most people nowadays, Jane never went anywhere without her phone. I had met Jane several times over the years at company events and a couple of times at parties they held at their home. I had always thought of her as being kind of ... meh! Not overly attractive, but not exactly a troll. I thought she was a good catch for a guy of Bob's age. But there were a lot of women at the plant who were much hotter that he could easily have been with. But he loved her, so I'd always been happy for him. The funny part about all of this is that I had always considered her to be too smart and too classy to do something like this. I guess it goes to show you that we can never tell what any other person might do. It's hard to imagine that after nearly twenty years of being married to each other, Jane decides to go off of the reservation and turn whore. It was probably one of the reasons why I tended to stay with short intense relationships, myself. Like everyone else on earth, I needed sex. I just didn't understand all the bullshit and drama that goes along with getting it from the same person all of the time. Where guys like Bob had to constantly tip toe through a minefield of emotional baggage and hard to fathom female idiosyncrasies, my only problem when stepping into a bar was remembering which of the available ladies I had already screwed. Where the married guys had to worry about inducing desire for the same, rapidly degrading woman over and over again, I got to hunt for fresher and more exciting pussy any night that I wanted it. The one place where the married guys had the advantage was certainty. Where I had to go on the hunt and worry about my batting average, they had live in pussy at their beck and call. Of course some of my married friends don't seem to score as often as I do. I looked at the display on my iPad. Despite her protestations, Jane and Jason were headed for the motel. This was almost too easy. Just after I had found out that Jason had rented the motel room, I'd approached the desk clerk. Before I could even give him my pitch, we were overheard by the manager. "Let me guess, you're a P.I. right?" he asked. "You're working a divorce case, right?" I nodded. He smiled at me. "You're in luck, Bud. I have just the room for you." He took me to a room on the second floor. "So what do ya think?" he asked. I looked around the room and failed to see anything that impressed me. "Pardon me, but it looks just the same as every other shithole motel room," I said. "Hey, what do you expect for sixty dollars a night?" he asked. "But we're not talking about the accommodations. Your quarry won't be thinking about the accommodations either. All they need is a bed and walls between them and everyone else. But this room isn't outfitted for them. It's outfitted for you. You were hoping to get into the room before they took it so you could put a couple of cameras or some bugs in here, right? You need some evidence to give your client leverage in the divorce case even though we both know what your client doesn't. The video or audio evidence we gather will not be admissible in court in any state in the God damned union." I had to admit the guy knew his shit. "This room is already wired for audio and video. I have seven hi-def cameras mounted all over the room. You'll get video from angles that you couldn't get if you were in the room. I'll give you a copy of the video as soon as it's over," he said. "What's in it for you?" I asked. "I uhm run a sort of website for people who appreciate a certain reality in their erotica," he said. "So you want to put the video up on your smut site?" I asked. He nodded. "You'll make a Buck selling subscriptions to the site and for copies of the video, right?" I continued. He nodded again. "That and two hundred bucks for the room," he smiled. "I thought you said the room was sixty bucks!" I said. "It's sixty for them," he smiled. He held out his hand and I gave him the cash. "Oh, if your client doesn't want the video on the net, I have to charge you five hundred dollars extra. There's a price to be paid for anonymity in this day and age," he said. "I'll give you thirty days to let them work out the legal details and if I haven't been paid, the video goes live. It usually works out well that way. If the divorce isn't going well for your client, internet fame for their cheating spouse goes a long way to making them feel better. And since they have no contact with me, they can assure the court that they are not responsible for what happened. I sometimes get a thousand to pull the video off of the net after it's been released. Of course your client can use that as leverage to get his or her way in the settlement too." I shook my head. "You'd be surprised at what some people will give up to avoid having their parents and everyone they know see them fucking some scumbag on the internet. Careers and families have been destroyed by less," he continued. That had been about an hour before Jane's plane landed. And at the time I was almost sure that there was no way that she'd have done it. But after what I'd seen at the airport, I wasn't quite as sure. * * * * * * Jane Almost from the start, I realized that I had made a mistake. Though I had been here for less than an hour, the trip wasn't shaping up the way it had in my mind. What was that old saying? You can't go home again. I think I was starting to really understand it. "How about this for romantic," asked Jason? We had pulled into the parking lot surrounding a shitty looking motel on the outskirts of town. I looked at him with puzzlement all over my face. "What are we doing here?" I asked, thinking I had missed something. "It's the place where we first did it," he said. "Doesn't being here bring back memories?" "Jason this isn't the place," I said. "It was the Motel 6 near the college that I was going to go to." "Well it looks like the place," he said angrily. "You sure know how to take the romance out of things. Maybe you did grow old after all. Maybe you deserve your boring old husband." His words had the ring of truth to them. "Maybe I do," I said. And I was telling the truth. "I'm sorry, Babe," he said quickly. "I didn't really mean that. I was just angry. It's just that I've missed you so much. I've ached for you. And you just don't seem to care." He grabbed me and kissed me. Again the alarm bells went off in my head. I compared the way he was kissing me now with the way that he had kissed me when we were younger and our hormones were burning hot. I suddenly realized that he really was kissing me the same way he had back then. The kisses he gave me were like kisses from a desperate man/boy with very little experience who just wanted some pussy and was afraid of being caught at any moment. We had a little problem checking in. Obviously Jason had rented the room in advance. The clerk at the desk told him the room he had rented wasn't available. The guest who was staying in it had decided to stay for another night. He gave us another room. He claimed that it was a nicer room. I couldn't tell by looking at it. Again the fact that he had rented the room in advance bothered me. It was as if the only reason he wanted me to come to town was so we could have sex. He was treating me more like a whore than his long lost true love. As soon as we got inside the room, Jason pushed me down onto the bed and started pawing at me. He pulled my blouse out of my skirt and reached under it grabbing my breasts. "I always did like sucking these big soft titties," he mumbled. "I thought we were going to talk about the old days and catch up," I said trying to remove his hands. "We'll do that tomorrow," he said. "I used to love the way your nipples stood up like little soldiers at attention." He licked at my tits and slobbered over them, just the way he used to. "I guess they don't do that anymore, huh?" he said. At that moment the thought going through my mind was, 'They do when Bob licks them.' Shit, they usually stood up when Bob looked at them. Jason had worked his other hand into my panties and had me squirming. I wasn't squirming out of desire though. I was squirming because what I was doing felt wrong. "Come on, Jane," he whined. "We're grownups now. There's no law against what we're doing. We don't have to play hard to get anymore." He looked into my eyes in the way that used to make me melt, but all I felt was ... nothing. I was confused. I think that Jason saw my confusion as acquiescence. He wrestled my panties down and thumbed my pussy. "Damn you got a lot of hair down there," he said. "I like a bald pussy; you should shave it for me." "That's not going to happen," I said. "I'm a forty year old adult woman, not a twenty year old virgin." "That's probably why you're not wet, the way you used to be," he said. "But don't worry, my lady, I came prepared." He reached into the top drawer of the table beside the bed and pulled out a tube of lubricant. He smeared some onto me and then lined up and slammed his dick into me. I almost screamed. Not because his dick was huge or anything. If anything he was a bit smaller than Bob. I screamed because I wasn't expecting him to slam it all the way into me in one hard stroke while I was still dry. "That's it baby," he muttered. "Ride that big dick. I'm gonna make you feel good." I laid there on my back staring up at the ceiling and at the ridiculous face he was making as he sawed away at me. He wasn't even making eye contact with me. His eyes were tightly closed as he moaned and grunted. It took about fifteen strokes and then he stiffened and went soft. "Speechless, huh?" he smiled. "Pretty much," I said. I was hurt. I was disappointed and I was pissed. He on the other hand, was getting dressed. "Come on Jane we have to go," he said. "I told you I have to be somewhere." "You have to take me back to the airport so I can get my luggage and my rental car," I said angrily. "Hey, why don't you stay here?" he asked. "I'll take you back to the airport first thing in the morning. Maybe we could even fool around a little before we go?" At that moment I realized that I was the only "Fool," around. "No, Jason," I said angrily. "I want to go to the airport, NOW!" "Fine," he said angrily. "I wouldn't have brought you down here, if I'd known you'd become so selfish." Even before I could pull my skirt down all the way he was heading for the door. "Hurry up," he threw over his shoulder. Once we were back in the car he took off at a rapid pace. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. I looked over at him and saw anger in his face. His lips were tightly drawn and he didn't say a word. The speed limit on that section of freeway was 55 miles per hour. We were doing sixty eight miles per hour and the car was straining and making noises like the Enterprise at warp seven. I half expected Scotty to come out of the back seat and tell us that we were damaging the dilithium crystals and she couldn't hold that speed. I heard two things then, but neither of them was Scotty. The first thing I heard was Jason grumbling one word under his breath. The word sounded suspiciously like, "bitch." The second thing I heard was a siren. Jason angrily pulled over. A cop soon came up to the window and asked him for his license and the registration for the car. He also asked for and got the proof of insurance. "Mr. Vorhees this vehicle is not registered to you, sir," said the cop. "It is registered to an Alice Thompson. Does Ms. Thompson know that you have her vehicle?" "Yes, she does," said Jason through clenched lips. "Ms. Thompson and I are married." "You were speeding, sir. I'll have to write you a citation. Since Ms. Thompson is the owner of the vehicle she will have to be notified. Your insurance policy is also in her name and you two have the same address. I would suggest that you notify her as soon as possible. Drive safely, sir," he said after handing Jason a speeding ticket. For the rest of the trip back to the airport, Jason didn't say a word. Finally when we arrived at the airport, he looked at me. "I was going to tell you," he said. "But..." "But you thought that you probably wouldn't get to fuck me if I knew that you were married too, right?" I sneered at him. "Just stay the fuck away from me, Jason." I got out of his car or his wife's car and slammed the door. I walked away from him into the terminal. I went to the rental car desk first. Luckily they were still open. I guess they had to stay open to service customers on red eye flights. I was filled with a sense of dread that I had never known before. It was more than just disappointment. It was as if the very fabric of my sanity had been proven wrong. I wandered though airport until I finally found the luggage retrieval area. There, I saw something that disturbed me. I didn't know why at the time, but in retrospect it now seems very clear. There on the huge luggage carousel, a machine that could easily handle hundreds of bags was one lone suitcase. It was a beautifully made and well cared for bag that had cost a lot of money. But it looked as if it had been passed by and forgotten by whoever paid so much money for it. That lonely, forgotten bag was of course ... mine. Seeing that bag made me think abut what I had just done. In my mind, I saw myself as the bag. I was well taken care of and well loved but I ended up alone. And if Bob ever found out what had just happened, I might. I decided at that moment that I had been stupid. Not only was my husband better looking than Jason, he was more caring and more loving as well. What was I thinking? I grabbed the bag off of the carousel just as the carousel stopped. If I had been seconds later my bag would have gone into storage somewhere in the bowels of the airport. A few moments later, my face drawn and tight I was negotiating the streets in the rental car headed for my parents' home. I got there some time after Midnight. Needless to say, my parents were both curious and pissed at me. "Why the hell would you show up in the middle of the night like a burglar?" my dad asked me. I knew that his anger stemmed mostly from being roused from his sleep. My mother on the other hand got right to the point. "Where's Bob?" she asked. "Did you guys have a fight?" "No, Mom," I said. "Bob and I are fine. He had to travel for his job. So I figured I'd come home for a visit." "How long is he going to be gone?" she asked. "Three days," I said. She just looked at me strangely. "Three days," she laughed. "You could spend three days shopping. Seriously, Jane what's going on?" "Mom, can we talk about it in the morning?" I asked. I headed up the stairs to the guest room. As I grabbed my bag I heard my dad mumbling behind me. "It's already morning, God damn it." "She's hiding something," said my mom. "Maybe she's pregnant again. You know how emotional she got last time." "Shit, they certainly have enough sex for her to be pregnant. Remember when we were there for Christmas? It was unreal. They couldn't keep their God damned hands off of each other. They were going at it every fucking night. They screwed on Christmas Eve. Who does that? And they've been married for twenty years. You'd think they'd have slowed down by now," he kvetched. "I think it's romantic and wonderful," said my mother. "Someone I know could take a lesson from them." It was a running joke in our family that everyone slept in my room. Although there was a third bedroom in the house, my parents had long ago turned it into an office. During the Christmas holidays if there was a larger than normal number of people sleeping over, my parents put a cot in the office and others slept in the living room on one of several comfortable sofas. But the main guest room was the bedroom I had slept in as a child. Even after getting married and moving away, it was still my room. In fact it had never been redone. My same silly posters adorned the walls. My stuffed animals and other long abandoned toys were in the closet and on the shelves. I took comfort in those familiar objects as I closed the door and broke down. I realized then exactly how stupid I had been and now much trouble that I could be in. Facebook was obviously a tool of the devil. As soon as I got home, I intended to delete my page. I'd thought that reconnecting with old friends and seeing how they'd aged and changed over the years would be fun. But it clearly wasn't for everyone. I had become something and someone that I had never in my wildest dreams imagined I could be. I was a cheater. I had taken something that was real and special and ruined it. Even my parents sounded as if they were jealous of what I had with Bob. Only now I had tarnished it, possibly beyond redemption. I knew for a fact, that if Bob ever found out what I had done, that we were over. Twenty years of living with a man had told me that his pride would never allow him to get over what I had done. I had been taken in by a fantasy. All of the things that I thought were so special were childish memories that had been amplified over time. It's like going back to your old middle school after you've grown up. Those giant lockers from your childhood, really aren't that big. Those huge desks are actually too tiny to get your adult sized ass into. All of the things that you thought were terrifying or heavenly; just aren't. What made them seem special was the youth and inexperienced perspective that you viewed them through. But years later looking at them through the cruelly factual lens of adulthood, you see them for what they really are. Turning Towards Ohio When I was twenty years old and living in my parents' house where I was treated like their child, sneaking out to spend time with Jason seemed exciting and larger than life. Jason seemed to be brave and strong. Sex was something new and special and forbidden. I guess I was easily pleased. But twenty years later, I could see that what I thought was passion and love and desperation coming from Jason was something else. Jason didn't give a fuck ABOUT me. He just wanted to get a fuck FROM me. He never even kissed me. And as I remember it, we didn't kiss much when we were younger either. He just got me in his beat up assed car and started grabbing my boobs. It had been the same thing in the motel this evening. And once he got what he wanted, he got up and got dressed. He couldn't wait to get away from me. Then there was all of that bullshit he'd told me on Facebook about how he had always loved me and now I needed to be with him instead of Bob. In the first place he was married himself, a fact that he had lied about. And in the second place, somehow he had convinced me that he was better for me than my husband is, when he has never met Bob. How can he possibly know that if he's never met Bob? I had been such a fool. Bob, on his worst day is three times the man that Jason will ever be. Even as I lay there silently crying, I thought about how Bob's face lit up every time he came home and saw me. Bob spent hours kissing me and he played my body like a God damned fiddle. I don't know what I'd been thinking. Maybe I'd just gotten bored with what I had and wanted to try something else. I already had the perfect man for me. I had a man who had loved me and supported every dream and goal I had for twenty years and I had cheated on him for a man who wasn't worth the sweat in his underpants. I deserved to suffer for what I had done. But thinking about it, Bob didn't deserve to suffer. Bob deserved to have the perfect marriage that he had worked for over all of those years. And I was going to give it to him. From this moment forward I would be the best wife ever. From this moment forward, Bob's wish was my command. He could have anything he wanted, however he wanted it, whenever he wanted it. If Bob wanted to fuck my ass, there would be no bargaining, he could have it. We would have a marriage that would make everyone we knew jealous. Bob would be the happiest man in our town or any other. I would make sure that Bob kept his fantasy of the perfect marriage. How would I do that? I would lie of course. I would never tell Bob anything about what had happened. I would spend the next couple of days with my parents and then fly home to be with my man. What happened tonight would be buried in the deepest recesses of my mind. Not only would I never tell anyone, I would never even think about it again. I would bear my shame in silence, keeping my own counsel. Bob deserved that much and more. I tried my hardest to sleep, but rest was illusive. I had all kinds of stupid, impossible dreams. I dreamed that I had never met Bob. I dreamed that he was alone and miserable. He had done well for himself and he still had a great career and that stupid Mustang of his. But his heart was empty. He cried for me every night, but he didn't know who I was or what I meant to him. The worst part of the dream was that I had married Jason. I was fat and ugly and we had several dirty little children and we hated each other. But we were trapped together. Neither of us was willing to let the other go. We each hated the thought of the other having a better life so we went on, locked together by our shared misery. When I woke the next morning, it wasn't by choice. "Jane get up, we have to get moving," said my mother. "Whah? Sleepy," I mumbled. "We're going to a barbecue at Aunt Tilly's house," she said. Aunt Tilly was actually my great aunt. She was the family matriarch and she ruled the family with an iron will. And by iron will, I don't mean she was strong minded. Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean the old woman had more money than Google, and if you displeased her in any way, you were out of her will. She often interfered in the lives of the members of our entire family. She had an opinion on everyone and everything. Fortunately for me, she was happy with my choices in life, so she left me alone. She actually approved of Bob and liked him, unlike the spouses of some of my cousins. Some of them had been forced to make hard choices. A few of them were waiting for her to die to marry the people they loved, while others married anyway, knowing that they were probably cut off. But Aunt Tilly loved Bob as if he, not me was actually her relative and I was sure that whenever hell could no longer do without her, I would get a healthy share of all of that money. With that reason in mind, I dragged myself out of bed. Just before we left, my phone rang. I quickly answered it hoping it was Bob. I needed to hear his voice like never before. "Sorry about last night, Babe," Jason said. I cringed just hearing his voice. "I guess there's a lot we need to talk about. I need to see you, now," he continued. "I was nervous, yesterday. I wasn't myself. I was so keyed up that I just freaked," he crooned. His voice was soft and caressing. But I was onto him. There was no way I would fall for his shit again. "Does your wife know that you're visiting me instead of working?" I asked sarcastically. There was nothing on the line then but silence. It was a silence that was so thick you could feel the tension in it. Theoretically, matter is anything that has form and takes up space. If that's a true, the silence on the phone existed as matter. "I'm sorry about that," he said in words so clipped, it felt as if he had broken each syllable off from that thick, matter like silence. "I was afraid that if you knew that I, like you had chosen to have a life with the wrong person while we've been separated..." "My husband isn't the wrong person," I said. "He loves me more than you ever could ..." "Which means you probably don't want him to know about us, right?" he asked. "Look, Jason," I hissed. "It's been fun catching up with you. But there is no "US." I just don't think this is going to work out. Last night was a colossal mistake. It was probably the mother of all fuck ups on my part. So have a nice life and..." "8-6-7-5-3-0-9, right?" he asked. "Huh?" I asked. "That's your home phone number, right?" he asked. "What about...?" I was getting angry, but he was angrier and he cut me off and yelled into the phone. "I said we need to fucking talk, Jane," he screamed. "We need to work this out. So if I can't talk to you, I'll just call and talk to Bob. Does he prefer, Robert, Rob, Robbie, or just plain Bob?" "No!" I said. "You can't talk to him!" "Then meet me, so we can talk," he said surprisingly calmly. "It will have to be later on, perhaps this evening," I said. "I have to go to a barbecue at my Aunt Tilly's house." "Tilly Prentis, right?" he asked. "Perfect, I'll meet you there." "You can't," I screamed. "You aren't invited. It's family only." "I should be part of your family," he grumbled. "I was your first love. The two of us should have gotten married. But don't sweat it. This is good. There will be all kinds of people in that big old house of hers on Elm Street. I'll meet you there. We'll slip away and talk for a few minutes and you can go right back to the barbecue." "Only for a few minutes," I said hanging up on him. I wondered what he thought he could accomplish by talking to me for a few minutes. I went out to my dad's SUV and got in the back seat. All during the drive across town to Aunt Tilly's house, I thought about the fix I'd gotten myself into. I was having a long debate with myself about why lying to Bob was the right thing to do. In the end I decided that telling him would only cause him more pain. There was no reason to ruin Bob's happiness over a mistake that he would never find out about and that would never be repeated. In fact, my stupid little episode would in the long run probably end up making our marriage stronger. I now knew how special Bob was and how great my marriage was. That one mistake had made me far more appreciative of what I have and far more determined to work to make it even better. There were several times during the drive when my mother or my father would direct a question to me and find me too locked inside of my own head to answer. Once we got to Aunt Tilly's house, I went around into her huge yard and sat down in a lounge chair to get some sun and wait for Jason to call me. I was determined to get him out of my life. Aunt Tilly, as usual, had summoned almost every member of the family to her house. There were kids running around and adults talking, cooking, or doing other barbecue related activities. I was just thinking about how much better it would have been if Bob was there with me, when my phone rang. Actually I knew about a second before the phone rang because I could hear the sound of that same shitty car driving down the street. "Hey, doll, I'm here," said Jason. "I'll be out as soon as I can slip away," I said. "I can't really leave the premises and I can't be gone for very long." "I thought the main reason you came back here was to spend some time with me," he said angrily. "Calm down, Jason," I said. "I'll be right out." I looked around and saw what everyone in the yard was doing. No one was paying me any attention, or so I thought. So I slipped between Aunt Tilly's house and the house next door. The area was thick with trees and there was a high fence so the neighbors couldn't see into my paranoid Great Aunt's yard. I spotted Jason's crappy car and waved to him. He got out of the car and quickly ran to where I was. We ducked between the houses together. I thought it was a good idea. I didn't want to be seen with him. "Wow, good place to hide and talk," he said. Then he leaned over and tried to kiss me. I avoided his kiss. He looked hurt. "Why do you need to hide?" I asked. "Because ... well there are a few people on this town who just don't like me," he said. "They still see me as being that wild, sexy, untamed, guy that I was when we were together." Even as he said that he reached for me. "Jason what are you doing?" I asked. "The same thing we always do," he said. "You could co-operate a little. You enjoy it as much as I do. Why do you always have to play hard to get. That shit always got on my nerves when we were young. I loved you like crazy. I never got enough of you." It was extremely flattering to hear him say that, but it told me something about us. Our whole relationship had been about Jason flattering me and trying to fuck me. The flattery made me feel good and inflamed my libido, which led to the sex. But that was all we had. It was all we had ever been. Jason had never taken care of me when I was sick. He had never saved every spare dollar he could to buy me some silly thing that I didn't need, yet had to have. Only Bob had. Jason had never massaged my muscles when they were sore. He had never put up with me when I was being a bitch during my period and still told me that he loved me. He had never cleaned me up and kissed me after I had vomited. And of course Jason could appear cool and mysterious. I only saw him for an hour or so at a time, when we were dating. Jason and I had never spent days on end together and gotten to know the best and worst of each other. I had never gotten angry at him for shaving and leaving those tiny hairs in the fucking sink right after I cleaned the bathroom. I had never gotten angry at him for leaving the toilet seat up. Jason and I had never spent enough time with each other to get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses. Jason wasn't a real person to me like Bob was. He pulled me out of my thoughts then. I felt his hands under my skirt. "Jane why are you wearing panties?" he asked. "I'm not some whore, Jason," I said. "I always wear panties. I thought we were going to talk about things." "We'll talk later," he said. He pulled my panties down and I grabbed his wrist. "Jason, if we do this, I have your word that you will never call my husband or try to contact me again, right?" I asked. "Whatever," he said. I let go of his hand and allowed him to pull my panties down my legs. I leaned back against the house and allowed him to step between my legs. I just leaned there like a statue. I let him do it, but it didn't mean that I had to participate. The fact that I wasn't wet didn't deter him. He spit into his hand, and rubbed it on both of us and then started working his dick into me. I concentrated on what I was going to do to make my marriage better. This was the first stop. This would get Jason off of my back in the short term. In the long term, I would delete my Facebook page as soon as I got to a computer. Then I would tell Bob one last lie. I would tell him that I lost my cell phone. I don't know how Jason, got our home number. I probably gave it to him before things got out of hand. But as soon as possible, I would have the number changed. While waiting for the number to be changed I'd just block Jason's number. I was thinking about all of that while he jumped away at me. I looked into his eyes and felt really stupid. There was no love there for me. After all of my fantasizing, after all the ways I had compared him to the man I married, I finally realized that he was just using me. He slammed his pelvis against mine harder and harder. Each stroke almost knocked my breath out of me. But it didn't feel sexy. It didn't feel romantic at all. It just felt like he was using me and I wanted it over with. "Hurry up, Jason," I said. "Oh you, like that huh, Baby?" he asked. His smirk told me that he thought he was ringing my chimes. But suddenly things got worse. "What the fuck is going on!" screamed my eighty year old aunt. "Jane, why are you fucking some scumbag on the side of my house?" she screamed. Jason looked at her in shock. His dick wilted so quickly it felt like it was sucked out of me by the vacuum of space. He looked her dead in the eye and his jaw dropped. "Is that Jason Vorhees?" asked Aunt Tilly. "Your wife is not going to be happy about this. Why that poor woman married you after you got out of jail is beyond me. And you Jane; is this why you left my nephew at home? You came by yourself so you could whore around, right?" Aunt Tilly's screeching voice had brought a lot of other people to the side of the house. Jason pulled up his pants and took off running. But it was too late for me. "You'd better run, Asshole," she screamed. "But it won't do you any good. I'll have the Sheriff after you as soon as I get to a phone." Jason jumped into his car and went ... nowhere. We all heard the starter whine, but the engine refused to catch. He tried over and over to start it and finally got out of the car and took off running down the street. He gave Aunt Tilly an angry look as he ran back past the house. My dad pushed his way through the group of cousins and related family members who surrounded Aunt Tilly and me. "Jane, Honey, what's going on?" he asked. "Your daughter was whoring herself out on the side of my God damned house," said Aunt Tilly. She took a big puff on the cigarette she was holding. "Tilly you aren't supposed to be smoking," said my dad. "If I hadn't been, your daughter might have gotten away with selling her ass on the side of my house like it was a street corner in Detroit," cackled Ain't Tilly. "Tilly, you have to be mistaken," said my mom. "Mistaken, my ass," said Aunt Tilly. "My body may be getting old, but my mind and my eyes are still sharp. I even know who she was screwing. It was that no account Jason Vorhees." My mom and Dad rolled their eyes. "Jason may not have become much, but he defended our country," I said. "He's a veteran. He deserves some degree of respect." "A veteran of the penitentiary," cackled Aunt Tilly. "Boy, are you stupid. I guess it's not your fault. Your father and I each got different amounts of genes. His side of the family got the looks. My side got the brains." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Honey we should have told you a long time ago. It just didn't seem necessary. You'd moved away and seemed to have a great life..." began my dad. "Dad, talk," I said. "Honey just before you moved away, Jason and a couple of his friends were arrested for burglary. He gave you that story about going into the army because he was ashamed. By the time he got out of jail you had moved out of town and moved on. "Yada yada yada and now he has a big fat wife and three ugly assed kids. It doesn't change anything," said Ain't Tilly. "Get out of my house. I don't want to have the family whore turning my stomach every time I spot her." "Hold on Tilly," said my dad. "You can't just throw Jane out like she was garbage. She's my daughter. I'm sure there's an explanation for this." "Bert, I'm proud of you," she said. "You stuck up for your child, whore or not. That takes balls. You can go with her. And when I die, you can spend all of your time playing with those balls because you won't be playing with any of my money." "Buh-buh-buh, Aunt Tilleeeeeee!" whined my dad. "Your impression of a motor boat was better when you were a child," said Aunt Tilly. "Now take that strumpet and Git! The both of you." My mother drew in a breath as if she was going to say something. Aunt Tilly's ancient head snapped around like that little girl in the exorcist. Her eyes locked on my mother as if they were radar controlled. "Where you about to add anything?" asked Aunt Tilly imperiously. "No, Aunt Tilly," said my mom. "Smart girl," said Aunt Tilly. Then she turned her head back towards my dad and I. "Why the hell are you two still here?" * * * * * * Bob I don't know what I expected. I was supposed to be gone for three days. My plan hadn't actually gone any further than pretending that I was going out of town while I waited for Rick to tell me what had happened. I guess I was hoping that he would tell me that nothing had happened. I hoped that he would tell me that she had gone there, gotten cold feet, and had stayed at her parent's house for the past twenty four hours. I guess I hoped that twenty years of marriage actually meant something. But now, faced with what Rick had emailed and texted to me, I was in shock. I really didn't know what to do. I was too hurt to cry. I just stood there in the motel room I had rented, staring at the wall, while the lump in my throat grew bigger and bigger. When I had seen the pictures of her kissing him and letting him feel her up at the airport, I had been angered. The video of her having sex with him in the motel room had ended my marriage. But the latest video clip of him fucking her on the side of her Aunt Tilly's house just made me want to throw up. The sex in the motel made it clear what was going on. But when her hips started to move in concert with his, as they fucked beside her aunt's house and she told him to hurry up, I remembered her using the same words with me. It had been nineteen years ago, a year after we married. It was during her most fertile time and she had been begging me to drop a load in her so we could have a baby. Ever since then, when she's really enjoying sex, she always says, "hurry up." It's to remind me of that special time. After hearing her tell that asshole to hurry up, it no longer seems to be as special. As if in a daze, I leave the motel and drive home. I begin packing everything that means anything to me. I pack all of my work clothes and most of the clothing I like. Everything that I can't, don't, or shouldn't want anymore is moved into my closet near the door. Turning Towards Ohio If you don't open the closet door fully, you would almost think that my closet is still full of clothes. I realize at once that all of this stuff won't fit in my car. Mustangs are not noted for trunk space. I rent a storage unit in a facility only a mile from my house. I make several trips during that day. I move everything that matters to me into the storage unit. I go into work and talk to my boss. He's an old friend and he offers to help me in any way he can. As much as he hates the idea, he puts in an application for a transfer for me. The new position is a Senior Engineering position. It's actually a promotion and comes with a hefty raise. It's also located much further west and also further south. I have no problem with it. The more distance between Jane and I, the better. I decided against calling my daughter. I didn't want to disrupt her education. I'll call her as soon as I'm settled. She can split the holidays between her mom and me. My lawyer and I are still going over what I want as a settlement. I'm hoping that I can get out of the marriage easily. I don't really anticipate there being a problem. After all Jane is back with her first love. Besides all I wanted was what my lawyer assured me the judge would offer. We'd split everything fifty/fifty. Instead of me paying Jane any type of alimony or support, she could have the house. She could start working on a real basis for her uncle and take care of herself. I would continue to pay for my daughter's college. It all looked good and seemed reasonable. I gave my lawyer my power of attorney. He had my contact information if things went wrong. I told him that I just wanted to move on without looking back. I didn't want to have to deal with Jane's anger and fake sadness. I also didn't want to face my own embarrassment if she wasn't angry or sad; and more than likely, she wouldn't be. This would give her the chance to rectify the mistake she made by marrying me instead of her dream man. As I walked around the house, giving it one final look, a lot of memories came up. We'd had a lot of good times in that house. Most of my daughter's memories, good and bad were here. I grabbed a few photos here and there as I remembered funny or sad things that had happened during our time there. Then I headed towards the door, before I broke my promise to myself and shed more tears on a situation that was clearly not worth it anymore. I had a few days before I needed to show up at the new plant that I had transferred into. So I was at an impasse. I actually had no idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with the time. I guess I had overestimated the importance of our marriage. I thought it would take a bit longer to crumble into nothing. Then it hit me. My life had always been so scheduled. I knew where I had to be and when I had to be there all the time. Engineers love schedules and metrics. Even my vacations had been planned down to the hour. I had often dreamed of taking a road trip. My idea of the perfect road trip was just an open stretch of road with no destination in mind. Just me and my Mustang out looking for adventure and whatever is there. It would give me a chance to see some sights. And it would give my pony a chance to stretch her legs. I looked through the duffle bags of clothing that I had stuffed into the trunk to make sure that I had everything I would need. I had already made arrangements for the storage company to ship the rest of my things to Arizona as soon as I got scheduled. I paid the guy a little extra to ship my stuff to one of their facilities there, so that as soon as I had a place, they'd deliver my stuff. With that in mind, and a big dumb-assed smile on my face, I jumped into my Mustang and hit the road. I didn't even look back. I had no clue where I was heading and I enjoyed it. Jane had always been mortified by the prospect of just driving for days at a time. She hated how tiny the cockpit of my car was; and especially my loud droning exhaust system. The exhaust note that was music to my ears really bothered her. I just drove. I thought about many things. I wondered what my new job would be like. I wondered what my new life would be like. Of course all of those things just took me back to the reason I needed a new life in the first place. I began to wonder what I would do if Jane wanted to talk to me. What would I do if she contacted me through my lawyer and told me that she had made a terrible mistake and she'd do anything to get second chance? I knew what I would do. I'd feel a hell of a lot better. But after what Jane had done there was simply no way I could ever take her back. Our marriage was over. I had tried to be as fair about things as possible. I was willing to listen to any possible changes in the settlement through my lawyer, but I didn't have anything to say to Jane. The sun was starting to sink lower in the sky when I saw it. I actually had no idea where I was. I didn't really care. I could always find my way home or to Arizona through the magic of GPS. There in front of me was the oldest truck I had ever seen. It wasn't old in terms of being a faithfully restored classic or antique. It was old in a bad way. The truck looked as if it was only held together by spit and a promise. There were holes in the body panels and I think there was more rust on it than remaining paint. The hood was up and then I got the shock of my life. There was a small figure bent over looking under the hood. She ... and it was very definitely a she, was bent over under the hood. She had long tapering incredible legs that ascended into an ass that was simply a work of art. Her ass was full and round without being huge, but it was clearly bigger than it should have been for her frame. Her shorts rode up and revealed one of her perfect upturned C shaped ass cheeks. As much as I had only recently sworn off of women for good, I was moved. And by moved, I mean I was rock hard. Apparently my dick hadn't gotten the memo that I had sworn off of women. As she heard the rumble of my Mustang, she turned to look at me. Her face showed her distress and she watched as I slowly drove by. I stopped a little bit in front of her and she turned her head to watch as I got out of the car. I made my way back to her and stood in front of the truck. When she looked at me I was even more astounded. Despite the dirt that covered it, her face was beautiful. She had those huge cornflower blue eyes that you only see on cartoon characters. Her tiny upturned button nose had a few freckles on it, but then again they could have just been more dirt. And I have to admit it; I felt something when I looked at her. I'm sure that humans will one day develop telepathy. Maybe we already have it in some capacity, because something passed between us. And it was more than an empathic communication. For a second I started to turn around and head back to my car. "Disappointed huh?" she said. Her voice and her accent sounded southern. Not Texas southern, or Mississippi southern, it was like half of those. It was just a very slight, lazy drawl that made me think I could smell the Magnolias growing on the banks of the river and the winds blowing through the Sycamore trees. The pain emanating from those cornflower eyes drew me in. I uttered the most literate and urbane statement I could manage. "Huh?" I said. "When ya pulled over and saw my big fat ass, ya thought I had some big old titties and a purty face ta go with it, didn't ya?" she asked. "Then when ya got up on me, ya found out that I ain't got no titties and mah face is just as plain as grass, so ya wish ya hadn't bothered ta stop." My face flashed with anger then. She was obviously just another woman who thought she knew everything. That was the reason she wore those fucking shorts. She did it just so she could lure some unsuspecting guy in to help her. I looked around then. I expected to see three or four guys jump out of the bushes and car jack me. It was almost like the beginning of the movie "Bad Boys," with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. "Whut are ya looking around fer?" she asked. Her bemused smile, relaxed me. And the more I looked at that face the more I wondered what the hell she was talking about. There was no way that her face was plain. Cleaned up and made up, she was probably a goddess. Even with the dirt and sweat on her face she was one of the most attractive women I had ever met. Her leonine mane of tousled tawny curls followed every movement of her head. I guess I was in more emotional pain than I had wanted to admit. And she seemed to sense it somehow. "Uhm, what's wrong with your truck?" I asked. "It's broke," she smiled. "It started ta smokin' and then it jest stopped." "Where was the smoke coming from?" I asked trying really hard not to look into those too blue eyes. "Did you call a tow truck?" I asked. "Ooh, you are so smart!" she said. "Lem' me do that raht now!" She walked into the middle of the road. With every step, her incredible ass jiggled. She put both hands to her mouth and shouted, "Tow truuuuuuuuuuckkkkk!" Then she put a hand to one ear and pretended to listen. She looked up at me with a smirk on her face. "Honey, I'm not sure that worked," she said. Despite all of my problems and the things I was running away from, she had me smiling. In fact the two of us were throwing off sparks we were grinning so broadly. "Okay, Smartass," I began. "I knew it," she interrupted. She started nodding her head. "You knew what?" I asked. "That you couldn't take your eyes off of my ass," she said. I just sighed. "Do you want me to call you a tow truck or not?" I asked. I don't know what it was that broke the mood, but the look in her eyes changed so suddenly that I wondered what I'd done. "I guess that's better than some of the things I've been called," she said. I pulled out my iPhone and got on the internet. I looked for a local listing and found there was a service station only three miles away from where we were. The guy on the phone told me that he'd be out to us in less than ten minutes. "I hope it's nothing serious," she said quietly. "I don't have much money." "I don't think it's major," I said. "I think it's your radiator." "It's not actually my truck," she said. "I'm kind of..." Then she broke out in tears. By the time I got her calmed down the tow truck was pulling up. The driver got out. He was an older guy and he looked and acted friendly. He gave us a big smile full of yellow teeth and a few spaces where some were missing. We watched as he hooked up her broken down ride to his truck. It took him only a few minutes. He had obviously done this a lot of times. "You two kin foller me down to the station, or one a ya kin ride along with me," he said favoring us with another smile. I was already missing her. She had made a strong impression on me in the twenty minutes or so that we'd been together. "Well, it's been nice knowing..." I began to say as she grabbed my hand like it was a life preserver. "We'll follah ya there," she told the driver. If I'd ever had any doubts about the nuances and differences in regional southern accents, listening to the two of them would definitely convinced me. His accent though southern was more hillbilly. He spoke with a definite twang, where she had the softer more refined Alabama/Georgia delivery. "Please," she said. "Ah'm scared a him. He's a stranger." "So am I. At least you know his name. I could be some axe murderer," I said. Any doubt that there was something going on was wiped from my mind. "No you couldn't. At least not towards me," she said knowingly. Then she looked at me. "What d'ya mean we know his name?" "His name is Clem," I said. "How the hell did ya find that out?" she asked. "It's on the name tag on his shirt," I laughed. Didn't you see it?" She took my hand again as we walked over to my car. "Oh my God, it smells like a new leather jacket in here," she exclaimed. The whole trip to the station she oohed and aahed over my car. We followed Clem back to the station where he turned us over to Goober. Goober assured us that he'd get to the bottom of whatever was wrong with the truck, so we headed for the strip of buildings next to the station, hoping to find something to occupy our time while he looked at the truck. I had nowhere to be and I wasn't in a hurry to get there, so I stayed. Part of the reason I stayed was that my new friend hadn't let go of my hand since we got out of the car. Attached to the service station, in the same rustic strip mall, were a restaurant, a super market and a feed store. We opted for the restaurant. We sat down and a friendly looking, though over weight, waitress appeared before us dropping menus, before our butts made an impression on the booth. "Well ... I can't keep calling you smart ass," I said. "I'm Bob. What is your name?" "Callie," she said. "It's short for Callista Mae. Callista Mae Twinkle. It used ta be Callista Mae Porter til ah got married, boy was that a mistake." "I'll stick with Callie," I said. "What would you like to eat?" "Kin ah have a burger n fries?" she asked gleefully. I just nodded and told the waitress to make it two. We started out talking about nothing and ended up opening up to each other. I was amazed to find out that Callie at thirty seven years old was nearly my age. I had thought her much younger. "You're how old?" I gushed almost spitting out a mouthful of food. Between bouts of laughter, she fetched her driver's license out of the pocket of her too tiny shorts. Looking at the license I saw that she'd been born in 1977 which meant her 37th birthday had just passed. "Ya'd think that with all the time I've been alive, I'd have bigger titties," she said. "Ya'd think ... I mean you'd think that with all the time that you've been alive, you'd realize that you're beautiful just the way you are and be happy with it," I said, far more sharply than I'd intended. She looked up at me and again time stopped as something passed between us. "I shore wish the people where ah'm from saw thangs the way you do," she said continuing her story. Callie had excelled in school until she ran out of school to excel in. In Callie's small Kentucky town, high school was as far as most of the people went. Very, very few went to college. And almost all of them were men. Callie had dreamed of being a teacher, but it didn't happen. In fact, she had started working to save money so she could go to college. She felt kind of odd at nineteen, and then twenty and twenty one years old; when all of the girls she'd gone to school with, and then the ones who'd graduated a year younger were all married and either pregnant or raising kids. People started to look at her funny when she helped to plan her younger sister's wedding. Especially since she was not only unmarried but not even dating seriously. By the time she was twenty four, there were rumors that she was a lezzie. By the time her twenty-fifth birthday rolled around, her parents had started inviting men over to socialize with her. She looked around and started dating Jed Twinkle. She'd chosen him as the lesser of all evils. Jed didn't put any pressure on her and he was a complete gentleman. That did a couple of things for her. It gave her something to do with her free time and for a while it stopped all of those small town tongues from wagging. After a while though, the pressure came back and it was far more intense. Everyone in town was wondering when they would marry and start having kids. And this time the pressure, beside being more intense became more concentrated. Besides just the people in town, the pressure came from her family and from his. It didn't help things that the store she worked at was owned by his family. So at the ripe old age of twenty eight years old, the town's old maid walked down the aisle and said, "I do." "Thangs started ta change as soon as we got married," she said. "Jed was kind of a late bloomer because he among all of his brothers chose to work the family's large farm, instead of working in one of their several businesses." As the wife of a farmer, she was expected to quit her job and work around the farm and farm house with her husband. Sex was also not what she expected. The perfect gentleman was rough and brutal in the bedroom. It was almost as if he had learned about the birds and the bees by watching the horses and the cattle. Jed had no idea what foreplay was, let alone how to do it. What he did was, he got on, got in then got off and got lost. Her initiation into sex lasted fifteen minutes. It left her confused and wondering why everyone thought sex was so great. It didn't help that while she lay there in their bed, experiencing the pain and discomfort that her mother had warned her about, something happened that colored the rest of her marriage. She was feeling warm and the house, as large as it was, had no air conditioning. She had opened the bedroom window to catch breeze. About twenty minutes later she heard Jed talking to some of the farm hands and a couple of hhearI nting buddies. "So how was she?" asked one of them. "About as bad as I imagined," said Jed in a tone she had never heard him use. "Believe it or not she was a virgin. How stupid is that? I'd almost forgotten how to even handle that. I know all you boys like a tight pussy, but when it's so God damned tight that you can barely move and she ain't too wet ... it's a problem." "Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to my husband describing how awful the gift I'd just given him had been." "Whull, why the heyell did ya marry 'er for in the first place?" asked another one of the guys. "Cuz mah dumb assed father din't want me ta marry Sue Ellen Terwilliger," said Jed. "He told me that if'n I married Sue Ellen, I could kiss inheritin' the farm good bye. Neither him nor his pappy before him or my great grandpappy before either of them would be able to rest in their graves knowing that a baby that was part Terwilliger would ever own even one square inch of our farm." "Shit, half of the town knows that you done already got Sue Ellen pregnant twice," said one the guys. "What you gon' do when he finds out that both a his Grandkids is Terwilligers?" "Them kids is Twinkles through and through," spat Jed. "Besides, Daddy has that heart condition. So he ain't gonna last too long. Plus his eyesight is already failing and Callie has the same color a hair as Sue Ellen. In a couple a more years he won't be able ta tell the difference." "Yeah but everybody else sure can," laughed one of the guys. "Callie ain't got no titties at all. What did ya hold onto whilst you was fuckin' her?" They all laughed at that. "Shit, if'n she din't have them awesome legs and that bubble butt, Ya'd never even notice Callie." That brought more laughter. "So how're ya gonna handle havin' two wives?" asked one of the men. "I'm gonna do my husbandly duty ta Callie," said Jed. "I'll throw a mercy fuck her way a couple a times a week, or whatever she kin stand, but I'll be fucking Sue Ellen every day like always. Sue Ellen git's evil as hell when she ain't gittin' no dick." "I din't know what ta do," Callie told me. She grabbed onto my hand across the table. I squeezed hers gently letting her know that I was there for her. What she was telling me was obviously hard on her. "Fer about a year we circled around a maypole of deception," she said. I noticed new wetness on her cheeks. "He pretended that he loved me. And I pretended that I din't know that he was pretendin'," she said. But after a while I just couldn't take it anymore. There were all kinds of thoughts goin' through me. My parents were happy. His family was happy. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that I hadn't gotten pregnant. I got to the point where I actually wanted a baby. I wanted one just so there would be someone around who really loved me. I couldn't talk to my parents. They didn't want to rock the boat. His parents thought that everything was hunky dory, so no one knew the kind of emotional pain I was going through.