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Long after the Game Ch. 01

By: jezzaz



You guys asked for it, so here it is, the sequel to Live from the Game. Live from the Game was written entirely in the first person, from Ryan's point of view. Unfortunately, quite a lot of what happens in this story is outside of his knowledge, so there's going to be a fair bit that isn't from his perspective. Not much I can do about that.

There will be people who will love this and people who will hate it, not feeling like it flows on from the first story. Well, that story is kinda complete, and this is a new story, featuring the same people; understand that this is a stand-alone story and not just an extension of the first story.

Note, this was provisionally titled "Declaration of Intent", until my editor pointed out that "Long after the game" was a better title, and tied in more with Live from the game, and he was entirely right, so Long after the Game it is!

I was contemplating putting this out in one part, instead of 5 parts, like I usually do, because people will comment after the first part, assuming they know the entire story, when there's LOTS of things to happen before this concludes. But hey, I put things out over time, piecemeal, so I'll stick with that.

Edited by nonethewiser, whose attention to detail and extremely useful feedback made this way better than it was going to be. Thanks Dude.

Here we go!

Chapter 1.

Hey. How's it going? Been a while yeah? Lets see, it's nineteen months, two weeks and four days since "The Event". Simon and I call this time P.E. – Post Event. The event, of course, being the rather public disintegration of my marriage, when I used the TV Jumbotron at Wrigley Field to call out my cheating wife, Deanna and her lover. 

In case you forgot, I am Ryan. I have three kids, one of whom is adopted, and an ex wife –the afore-mentioned Deanna – and I live in the suburbs of Chicago. I used to live in Crystal Lake, but now... wait. Getting ahead of myself. I do that.

So let's see. What's changed since The Event? Lots of stuff. Divorced – obviously. I don't live in Crystal Lake any more. After the divorce I was awarded custody of the kids – Deanna didn't have a stable enough job or earn enough, and I had the house and the stable job, so it just made sense. The judge – a crusty old bird with bi-focals that made her eyes seem huge on her face – was not a happy camper when everything that happened came out. I could see her going purple when the part about them being on the jumbotron came out –, even though it couldn't be proved it was me, courtesy of my hacker friend, Solomon -, staring at me with anger in her eyes. She was obviously one of those "the wife gets everything" judges, but in this case the facts were clear and there wasn't much she could do about that, despite her natural inclinations.

In the end, I got custody, which meant Deanna owed me child support. I owed her alimony and it worked out to a wash, so she went her way and I went mine. We had an agreement on the house, so that if I sold it, she got half, and I'd be stuck with the mortgage payments in the meantime. Not thrilled about that, but that's the law and thems the breaks.

At the end of it all, I think it worked out as well as a situation like this was ever going to. I'd not started this, I'd just finished it and I didn't see why my life had to disintegrate any more than it already had because she'd decided to go get some strange. Emotionally, that was a different matter. I was a bit of a wreck for a while, but when you have to get up, get the kids to school and be Mom AND Dad at the same time, well, you suck it up and get on with it, don't you? That's what being a parent is. God knows what waking up everyday and not being next to her kids did to Deanna. But then, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. My sympathy is somewhat muted, you know?

I did end up moving – to Naperville. It was more about not making the mortgage payments that she'd capitalize on if I sold the house than anything else –, see, even though Deanna was no longer contributing to the mortgage (not that she did much anyway), it meant that I'd have to pay it alone, but she'd still get half of the entire value of what I'd put into the house when I sold it. It's not a very fair situation I thought. I could pump another hundred grand into the house, and she'd get fifty of it, when it sold, despite not contributing at all -, although the memories in there didn't help. 

There were days when I woke up and expected to see Deanna making coffee and then the realization would come that that wasn't going to happen - and my day would start in a shitty fashion. It's weird to be both glad she's not there and yet missing her desperately at the same time. It's like being both hot and cold at the same moment. – having one feeling would inevitably lead to another. Hard to explain unless you've been there.

Speaking of Deanna, I did my best to stay away from her and not be around when she came to pick up the kids. We've had some contact; you can't be a co-parent without any. It's mostly done via text or mercifully brief email. We've had to have some physical conversations about the kids; Paula went through a brief shoplifting phase and we had to get together to work out a shared strategy of addressing it. We had dinner and it was awkward. It was awkward because we just fell right back into being partners in terms of the kids, but there was the underlying tension of us being exes there too. At least there was for me. We didn't talk about The Event – but at least she's stopped trying to apologize to me, thank god. Strangely, she's never asked for forgiveness. I don't think it's because she doesn't want it, I think it's just assumed. Either way, I'm not going there. She can if she wants, but for me, I just want to move on.

After I kicked her out, she sent me a video of her in therapy, trying to understand why she did what she did. At the end of it she said that she was coming for me; that it wasn't over and she was going to get me back. I had even written a text to her that, drunk and stupid, I sent. It asked her "Ok, what would you do to make it up to me?" I was genuinely curious about what her answer would be, but the only answer I got was one word – "Anything". And then nothing more. That was months ago – over a year in fact - and it's never been brought up again. I'm certainly not going to talk about it. She was the one who said she was coming for me; let her make any moves. I'm just trying to get on with life.

I gave her pretty much unrestricted access to the kids – it seemed only fair because she hadn't cheated on them, just me, and she was a great mom. I'd already fucked with their lives enough when I threw their mother out and it didn't seem like a good idea to compound it. She had one or more of the kids almost every weekend, and sometimes Paula during the week too. It was all about as civil and good as it really was ever going to be, with us maneuvering around each other.

So we moved to Naperville. When I sold the house, I was extremely surprised to find that its value had almost doubled, even in these times. Both Deanna and I made $85k on the deal, so when we moved, I rented a house, paid two years up front and then sat back to wonder what to do next.

Oh job, right, yes. Sorry, the job. As you know, I was a VP at Dresdin, a company that makes high end bespoke furniture. Paul was kicked upstairs a while back and the board hired some one else for the job, one Mark Higley. He's a nice enough fella, great hair, but also pretty clueless, and he has that fatal flaw that because he was hired, he really believed he was the right man for the job, even though he had zero experience of the business or knowledge of the people working for him. Ostensibly, my job was to manage the sales group, but I basically ran the place while the Much-Loved-But-Complete-Idiot-In-Charge sat in his office, making plans to end humanity. Or whatever it was he got up to in there. He'd give me grandiose commands, I'd say 'Sure thing' and then ignore it and get the company working, like I did with Paul.

Six months in, Higley summons me to his office, says casually, "I've noticed you seem to be involved in lots of areas of the business that Sales shouldn't really be in. The other department heads don't seem to be as responsible for their business as they should be, so I've sent round a memo indicating that they need to pull their socks up a bit sharpish. You won't be bothered by them any more, which should free up some of your time."

Now I'm not an idiot - well, not completely. My wife cheated on me for weeks and I had no clue, so obviously I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer at times. But I knew what this was. This was a control situation and he was exercising his position and authority over me. I knew that if I went to the board, they'd have to support his position, since they'd hired him in the first place. The sly wink that had happened when he was hired – when they'd increased my salary by 30%, so it was larger than the new CEO's – was not actually going to be followed through by any more increase in responsibility; they were just happy someone's hand was on the tiller. 

Now that hand was going to be Mark Higley's, not mine. He'd had six months to learn from me, and this was the first act in operation Push Ryan Back Down. I just sat there, nodded, didn't say much, went back to my office and had my resignation letter written by lunch.

I went back to his office, handed it his secretary, who knew exactly what it was, then headed back to my office to start emptying it. I was done and out of the building by 1:30. By 2pm I had two phone calls from board members trying to keep me around – phone calls I gently but firmly ignored. And by 3:30pm I was comfortably buzzed. I'd gone to the The Cottage, just off the main street of Crystal Lake. By 4:00pm pretty much the entire crew from Dresdin was there, having a drink, trying to talk me out of it, and basically abandoning the company for the afternoon. I heard later, from Paul, that the board had an emergency meeting that night to determine what to do based on this event, and voted four to six to fire Mark Higley and appoint me. But he had enough friends on that board –that or my hair wasn't good enough - and so it fizzled out.

Honestly, while I'd given my all to that company, walking out didn't faze me that much. When they gave the CEO job to someone else, my loyalty was basically broken, and I'd been thinking about what else I'd do anyway. After the crap with Deanna went down, I only had the kids to think about, and while I did bury myself in the job, I also found that the joy of it was gone. I wanted to do something else; I just didn't have a clue what.

Now I had no choice. So off to Naperville we went, for a reboot – as Solomon would say – and that's where we live now.

Solomon came back into town a couple of times, and hung out with Simon and we shot the shit. He seems the same, still socially inept, still a genius. He's moved on from drinking as an experimental experience, to sex, apparently. He's discovered it and now his research moves in that direction. I have no idea how he is finding women to nail, given his ability to piss off someone within thirty seconds of meeting them, - I did idly wonder if he was cloning them; it seemed like something he'd do – but he seems happy enough. 

Oh, one other thing that happened I should mention. Once the whole story had come out, I actually had a couple of Hollywoody agenty people contact me, looking to buy the story for some movie of the week. I was flown out to Hollywood and wined and dined for a week, by this married couple of producers. They were nice people but damn, you wanted to hate them. He was this perfect specimen of man hood and she looked like a 1940's dame, from one of those war movies with Ingrid Bergman. It was also revolting how into each other they were. Constant handholding and looks and touches and stuff. At dinner they sat there, feeding each other, and forgot I was there at all. It was all too disgusting for words. A good relationship should be full of sarcasm and rudeness and thoughtlessness and arguments. Not googly eyes and puppy dog stuff. I kept waiting for some suitably saccharin music track to play over the top of them making out, or the world to suddenly go into soft focus. Apparently they'd made some movie about a fat guy getting thin or something and were the flavor of the month, and their production company was looking for new stories to churn out on the Lifetime channel, or some such. Honestly, I wasn't listening that much, as I was trying to celebrity spot without being too obvious about it. Paula about shat her self when she found out I was going to be in Hollywood, and put on a weeklong campaign that she had to go with me. When I dropped them off with Deanna, she was one pissed off teenager. But I brought her back some swag and promised that if I went again, I'd take her.

They took me to a party, in the Hollywood Hills, and I had a moment there where I truly got to see what Hollywood was. I was standing on the balcony, looking out over this unbelievable view of LA that you could not stop looking at, and some young hottie came up next to me, made some general conversation, then just asked flat out if I was a producer, since she'd seen me talking to the couple that brought me out. I told her I wasn't anybody, and she just looked at me, smiled and said 'I need to go see who else is here.' And that was that. I wasn't somebody, so I was unworthy of conversation.

The next day I signed on the dotted line, let them have the story, got a check for just south of a hundred and fifty grand, smiled a lot and left. Nothing happened with it – I was told later it was in 'turnaround' – whatever that means. I'm informed it's where TV shows go to die. Someone has bought it, but no one wants to make it. Apparently it's very common and I'm totally ok with that. I didn't really need to humiliate Deanna any more than I already had, so it never going on the screen was A-OK with me. I got paid anyway. Funny thing though – the name of the production company was on the check and I really don't know what to make of it. Heinz the Cat Productions. Hollywood people, I ask you.

Anyway, apart from that, the only other thing that happened that's worthy of reporting is my new gig. I kind of fell into it. I'd vaguely decided I wanted to do something in the mobile / web area. Watching Paula with her phone and iPad, I noticed how much time she spends glued to it, and I figured I didn't want to work for anyone else, so I'd try making an app or something. I bought a laptop and hung out at a local shared desk co-op group, where you just roll in every day, sit with your laptop and work. They have conference rooms you can sign up for and lots of resources, but the most important one is access to all the smart kids who work there day in and day out. I just sat there with my laptop, watching them, looking at what they were doing and wondering if there was an opportunity there.

Eventually I met these two guys – both older than most of the other kids, but smart, very smart. They were named Deke Simpson and Kevin Byall. Deke was the Programmer and Kevin was half coder and half designer. Not quite Solomon smart, but then I also didn't want to kill them after talking to them for twenty minutes, so that was a good start. They wanted to make a game – they had it all planned out but it was very apparent very quickly that neither of these two knew shit about scheduling or actually making something happen. It was like they were very conversant with the nuts and bolts, but had no idea what order to put them together in. They were typical geeks; knew their area inside and out, but in terms of anything else, forget it. And My God, they could talk. Within an hour of meeting them, I knew that Kevin was a part time sculptor, and also an erotic storywriter, as a hobby. Deke wrote screenplays and taught Aikido classes. They just never stopped with the flow of information. I could barely get a word in edgeways.

Anyway, they needed a backer to pay for art on this game and stuff, and I stepped up. I ended up with a contract with them, where I'd fund and run the new company, and they would actually create this game they'd pitched; a mobile version of a card game based around a pantheon of gods. We rented office space, I spent more time with Jonathan Bruty, my lawyer friend, wrote up legal stuff, and we started development. I got a crash course in what video games are, an education in how they are made and it was off to the races. 

Speaking of Jonathan, I should mention I've grown a lot closer to him. He turned out to be a much nicer human being than I gave him credit for. He reached out to me, made sure I had a place to go for holidays, or when Deanna had the kids. His wife – who I had dated before any of us where married – was also nice to me. It was nice to have new friends that weren't in any way 'our' friends, if you know what I mean. They could say things about Deanna and not have to qualify them because they'd see her at some point. They weren't her friends, and would never run into her.

I've dated some, but honestly, it was a disaster each time. I tried online dating, and some of the women were quite nice, but each seemed to have her own baggage. As an ex sales person, I'm pretty good at reading what people are telling you they want from body language, posture and tone – and most importantly, what they don't say -, and some of these women were definitely looking for something. One was totally upfront and said she was looking for a new dad for her kids, and was 'willing to make it worth his while, too'. I don't think that's really a great place to start a relationship and said so and she was mortally offended. Aww shucks.

To be brutally honest, I was just not really been that interested. I had trust issues, and the damage that Deanna's fling did to my ego and self-image was still there. I knew it, and while I even went to see Jim, the therapist that Deanna had seen, it didn't really help me that much. He was hard to talk to, multiplied by the fact that I knew he knew every thing Deanna had told him. I saw him three or four times, but nothing really changed for me, so I stopped going. 

One of the things I did notice was that when I did go on a date, I had very little patience. If she said something dumb, or did something stupid, like flick her hair or fish for a compliment, I just got internally angry. I did actually talk to that therapist guy about that on one of my few visits – it took me a while to understand I was unconsciously comparing these new women to Deanna and that worried me. I wanted her out of my life; I didn't want to still be in love with her, if that's what it meant.

Jim told me that it was natural that I was using Deanna as a measuring stick. I'd been with her for years, and she'd been a huge part of my life. It wasn't so much that this meant I was still in love with her, more that I didn't have any other kind of comparison I could make. So I compared them to her, or more to the point, to my life with her. And the trouble was, until The Event I thought I had it pretty damn good. An almost perfect married life. The standards I were using were very high and it's unlikely I would find someone that would measure up; I'd have to go on a lot of dates to find that person who would fit what I was apparently looking for, which was a Deanna replacement. Worse still, there really was no way to judge what a long term life with someone would be like, apart from doing it. You just can't judge from the initial impression people try to give you on a date. People are remarkably guarded and present only the best of themselves on a date, I'd learned. You don't find out that someone is a slob or will wear the same panties for a week, until you are practically living with them.


Long after the Game Ch. 01



What Jim said did make sense, and it was reassuring to me that I wasn't still desperately in love with Deanna. Or maybe I was, but this wasn't a manifestation of it. Or maybe it was. Hell, I'm damned if I knew any more. I was just trying to get through the day most days.

So I also stopped trying to date. I figured if true love was going to strike again, it would, whether I was looking for it or not. Better to concentrate on the new business and the kids. Which is all just elaborate justification for the fact that I was demoralized, had self-image issues and couldn't take any more rejection, even when I was doing the rejecting.

So there I was; I hadn't really heard much from Deanna besides the contact we needed to have for the kids, despite all her protestations that she was 'coming for me', life was rolling on, we saw the first alpha build of the game – most of the art missing, but the game functional - and I was excited about that.

And then everything changed and shit happened. Unbeknownst to me, across town, in the sunny hamlet of Schaumburg (believe me, that's sarcasm), my life was being planned out for me.

*****

Deanna banged her hand on the coffee table and made some of the coffee cups jump.

"Ladies! Attention! The time has come."

The four other women arranged around the coffee table, stopped talking, and turned to Deanna, who was perched on the end of the long couch. One of them leaned forward and said, "Oh, you are so forceful dear." Sarcasm dripped from her voice.

Deanna threw her a fast frown along with the visual equivalent of a single raised finger and cleared her throat.

"Right. It's time. I got the all clear from Jim this week. Operation Ryan is now in effect."

One of the other women picked up her cup and said, "You sure? Jim said it was all good?"

"Well, he didn't say it in so many words, no," replied Deanna, "but he did say I was ready to move on with my life and that we'd talked out most of what we could talk about. That I should be making plans and 'getting on with it'. I choose to take that as a blessing on my attempt to get Ryan back."

"It's not really a blessing though, is it?" the other woman shot back. Deanna sent another four-letter look at her.

"Look, you gonna help or what? Making smart-ass comments is not helping." 

"Oh of course, dear. Just want to be sure that we are all the same page. You've been in therapy for a long time, trying to understand what you did and why. It's been a complicated journey. Frankly, when you petitioned to join our little group here, I was of two minds about you coming in. You obviously had baggage. But I think everyone needs a chance to get their shit together. I just want to be sure that before we embark on manipulating someone's life, we are doing it for the right reasons."

"It's not like that Gina. I'm not manipulating any body. I'm just trying to give Ryan reasons to give me another chance. I'm not the same person any more, who...did what I did. I need Ryan to look at me again, and to give me the chance to prove I can be trustworthy. That I can be the wife he needs me to be. It's not about manipulation. It's about getting that chance."

Gina sat back, the frown on her face evident. Gina was tall, athletic shaped, with arms that had obviously seen the inside of a gym. She was even wearing those comfortably tight work out clothes that seem so fashionable. The rest of the women couldn't decide if it was because she was truly off to the gym later, or because they were form fitting and displayed her fairly awesome body in very obvious ways. Gina could be abrasive, in your face, but she had a heart larger than her head, or even her boobs. She never shrank from saying what she thought, but she'd give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. If you could peel it off first. And washed it, because it was probably sweaty.

The women sitting round the table flicked their eyes at each other. They'd all sat in that spot and made similar pleas at one point in their lives, and they remembered their own desperation.

"Fine. We are all here for you Deanna. What's your plan?" said another of the women.

"Thank you Rhonda. Ok, so here's the deal. When I sent Ryan that video, he texted me and asked what I could possibly do to overcome the breach we had. I replied 'Anything', but honestly, that was the issue. I didn't know what I could do – and it wasn't fair to just ask him. He obviously didn't know either, or he wouldn't have sent me the text he did. So I have to come up with things I can do that will make Ryan open his heart to me again. I know that trust is something that comes over time, but you do actually have to be there for that trust to grow again. And right now, I'm not. What I need is the chance to show him I've changed. I need him to know I am willing to do anything. So, ladies, how do I do that?"

Rhonda sat back and glanced at the women next to her and said, "Mae, what do you think?"

Rhonda was blond – the kind of thin long blond hair that always needed a hairclip in it. She was average height, average weight, looked good in a sundress, as she was currently wearing. The most outstanding aspect of Rhonda was her accent – Rhonda was Finnish, hailing from Helsinki. She also tended to be blunt, and was, as a typical Finlander, very unconcerned with nudity and most the other taboos of North America. She had a twinkle in her eye, and was one of those women that tended to be disregarded, until she said something absolutely outrageous, in an innocent fashion, forcing you to re-evaluate her.

The older woman, Mae, pursed her lips, sucked in air through them and then said, "Well, I get where you are coming from, but this won't be easy. You need him to look at you in a different way, but also the same way. Your relationship has to be totally new but based on some of the same things you had in the past. You need to remind him of why you were so good together, without reminding him of why it ended. You can't ignore it, but it you can't lead with it either. It's a conundrum, that's for sure."

Mae was older, in her sixties. She looked good and could pass for fifty, in the right light. She'd let her hair go grey naturally, but on her it just looked good, rather than old. She dressed elegantly, and there was obviously some money behind her. Not ostentatious money, just that she had a nice Michael Kors handbag, a nice Skagen watch – all the subtle indicators of class and money without throwing it in other people's faces. She was also partially Texan, with a very slight southern states lilt to her voice.

"I have some ideas I want to pass by you guys, see what you think. But I want to wait for this secret weapon to arrive. See what's that's all about, ya know?" she said, easily.

The doorbell went and Deanna put down her coffee and went to answer it, saying, "That'll be it now!"

She opened the door to reveal a middle aged man, dressed in a suit and tie. He had sandy hair – a full head of it – and he was carrying a bottle. He smiled broadly at Deanna and proffered her the bottle.

"Oh! So nice! Thanks. We won't need it – teetotal for the operational planning – but the gesture is very sweet," said Deanna, taking the bottle and looking at it.

"Ah," said the man, hesitantly, "I didn't know if we'd need to bash it over the edge of the ship, so to speak."

Deanna laughed, and waved him in. "Come and meet the girls."

The man followed her in, closing the door behind her. 

"Girls. This is the secret weapon I mentioned!" Deanna said in an excited tone, as she re-entered the room.

All the women sat silently, staring at the newcomer. Mae even put her coffee down. No one said a word – the women stared at the man and the man stared back, and the tension built.

Finally, realizing that the other women weren't as excited as she was, Deanna said, "Oh come on. He's just a guy. It's not like he's going to kill us and lick our bones."

Mae chuckled and suddenly the tension evaporated.

"Trey, these are the girls. That's Mae right there. This is Rhonda, that's Gina. As I said at lunch the other day, this is the Cracked Hearts Club. Girls, this is Trey Morrison. Trey and I dated a bit, but it didn't go anywhere, and now he's a confidante." She overly pronounced Con-fee-don-t, in an elaborate fashion.

Mae was watching Trey's eyes when she said that and saw them very slightly narrow, and filed that away for future discussion.

Trey tilted his head and said, "Ladies." 

He then turned to Deanna and said, "I didn't honestly think you were completely serious? These ladies are going to help you get your husband back? How on earth did you guys come to hang out?"

Deanna rolled her lips, in the manner of one who is embarrassed by what they were about to say. "I found them on Craigslist."

Trey looked at all the women and then at Deanna and said, "Seriously?"

"Sure. Why not? The fact is, I was in therapy, my therapist suggested I find a support group. I was thinking of a book club or something, but I found this ad that said 'We help cheaters out of their holes.' I wrote an email, and a year ago got accepted as part of the group. We help each other out, do a sort of twelve-step program, advise each other, that sort of thing. And drink a lot of coffee. Every woman here screwed up her marriage by cheating and getting caught, so there's a lot of empathy and understanding here."

"And these ladies are going to help you?"

"Yes. They all know my story. Well, everyone knows the story – Ryan made sure of that. They all know what I want to do, and they are all willing to help – to be my Greek chorus, so to speak."

"And I'm here...?"

"For the male perspective. Look, let me get you a coffee, and then you can sit down and I'll explain it all to you."

Deanna busied herself off in the small kitchenette of the apartment she rented, off Roselle Road in Schaumburg. If she stood on tiptoe, she had a view of the Medieval Times dinner theater castle across I-90 from her complex.

When she came back in, Trey was perched on the arm of her couch, politely fielding questions from the group.

"...and that's what I do. It's not very exciting, but everyone needs insurance."

"Here's to that!" said Rhonda, raising her coffee cup in toast.

"Here you go, Trey," said Deanna, passing over the steaming cup, "white and no sugar, right?"

Trey smiled his acceptance.

"Right, since we are all here, we can begin," said Deanna, settling into the couch.

"I'll recap for Trey's benefit. He already knows the back-story, what happened, what I did, what Ryan did. We've met a few times and he knows most of this. What he doesn't know is what I plan to do next."

Deanna took a deep breath and launched into it. "Basically, I've been working on a plan. Something that will get Ryan to take me back. I've been waiting till my therapist gave me the all clear, but I've had it in mind the entire time. So here goes. I'm going to do a bunch of things, to try to get Ryan to give me a chance. Each of the ladies here is suggesting a course of action, and I'm going to do them all. We are going to tackle Ryan from every direction, to get him to understand how much I need him, and how much he – and the kids – need me."

Trey sat back, digesting this. Eventually he said, "And will he know this is a planned, concerted effort?"

Deanna glanced around at the other women, who looked back at her. "I hadn't really thought about it. I don't know..."

Trey interrupted, "Because if he finds out and you weren't up front with him, this is over before it's begun. This is all a trust issue here. You've betrayed his trust and now you need to rebuild it. I doubt whatever you have in mind will do that, but if there is any hint of anything held back from him, it's done. The only way this has the barest way of succeeding is with total honesty. You being honest doesn't mean he'll run, just that he'll know this is a planned play."

"It makes sense Deanna," interjected Gina. "I mean, now that he's said it, it makes total sense. We should have seen that. Hell, you should have seen that. You know the guy."

Deanna's face had clouded for a second, then she smiled mischievously. "Secret Weapon, see? I know what I'm doing. It's not a big deal, to tell him. I mean, task number one is...actually, why don't you guys go around and tell Trey what we've agreed the plan is? Gina? You want to start?"

Gina smiled, "Ok, so each of us came up with something that Deanna needs to do. For me, it's simple. She has to give Ryan her journals."

Trey looked enquiringly at Deanna, then Gina.

"Most of the time, when you go for therapy for this kind of thing, the therapist recommends you keep a journal. It helps you formalize your thoughts, and also gives you a record of how far you've come in understanding yourself and your actions. You are encouraged to re-read them every year or so. It's basically a record of the journey you've undertaken. And it's extremely personal – you write down every feeling you have, why you think you had it, and so on. It's really...very personal. But I figure that giving that to Ryan will help him understand the path that Deanna has set herself on, here, to get him back. All the things she's done to understand herself, understand what she did, her emotional state and so on. It gives Ryan the emotional backdrop to understand why Deanna is so dead set on getting him back.

"Plus, it frames their next meetings. Instead of Deanna pushing him to meet and talk, he'll do it himself. Inevitably he'll have questions based on what he reads – assuming he reads it – and that'll prompt the conversation, rather than Deanna desperately explaining herself yet again."

Trey nodded, giving the facial expression of a down turned mouth that you do if you are finding something plausible, from a point of view you've not seen before.

"I get it. Fair enough. What next?"

"Mae?" said Deanna.

Mae shifted in her seat and then said, "Well, I'm the family oriented girl. Well, we all are, but for me, family is everything. I'm telling Deanna that she has to convince Ryan to give her a weekend, with the kids. To pretend they are a family again, to act as though it never happened. Just a weekend, where they do family things and have dinner and go to the zoo and the movies. Like a regular family would. To show Ryan it can happen. That it can be the same. It's a hell of an ask but I think, done right, it would remind him of what has been lost."

"Rhonda?"

Rhonda smiled. "I'm the resident sex addict. So, my task is in the bedroom. Deanna needs to give Ryan the night – or weekend – of his life. Something he could never get anywhere else. Something that makes it obvious that she wants to give him something fantastic. We are going to send them away to Vegas, where Deanna is going to put on a show for him, and keep his dick hard for the whole weekend. Sorry for being crude, but that's effectively what I'm recommending. You can't have a relationship without sex, and she needs to wipe the memories he has clean and replace them with better ones."

Trey shook his head and said, "They are going to have to be pretty damn amazing ones to replace the last images he has of you having sex with that other guy. Frankly, I don't see it. But stranger things have happened, I guess."

"So, what about me? Do I get a task beyond 'being the token male.'?" Asked Trey, plaintively.

"So, we need to help out Ryan's fledgling business somehow. We know – and we aren't going to go into precisely how we know, although my daughter features in that situation – that Ryan has built a start up and is developing some game on smart phones. We know it's costing everything he's got and it's a hell of a risk, so we need to help. Firstly, we'll be handling PR for the company, without them knowing it. And secondly, I'm going to be his girl Friday for a couple of weeks. I'm taking a break from the conference work I'm doing and basically going to be his front desk, HR, office manager, everything we can think of. I'm going to be full on, working for free, with Ryan every day. The whole point is to get Ryan to be aware of everything I can do for him that is not family or sex related. What a true partner can help with. He already knows; we had it for years, but he needs to be reminded. And I could really use some help with that. I've not been in an actual office in years, and to be totally honest, I didn't pay that much attention when I was. Think you could help there?"

There was silence for a moment. Everyone looked at Trey expectantly.

"Well, that all seems very interesting," said Trey, still digesting. "I can probably help. Is that it?"

"No, there is one more task, at the end, that I've come up with. But it'll have to remain confidential right now. I don't know if I can bring it off, and I don't want to spoil it if I can. So, given what you've heard, what do you think? What does your male intuition say about it all? What pointers can you give us?"

There was silence for a moment while all the women stared at Trey.

"Wellllll.... Ok, well, I can only really go off of what I think of these ideas. I don't have his history, I don't know him and I don't know his emotional state. I can only really talk in broad terms, as a guy, rather than the specific guy in this situation. But having said that, some things do occur.

"So the journals thing. That's a good idea. It's a good start. But you'd better prime him on some of the things he's going to discover about you. I would imagine there is nothing worse than settling down for a good read, with a beer, to get inside your ex-wife's head, and finding she despised your little cock, or your baldhead, or whatever it is here that caused this. If there is shit that is going to cause him consternation, he needs to know that ahead of time."

The girls all sat there, nodding approvingly.

"Good call," said Gina.

"Incidentally, how do you know he's not out there, throwing his oats around? Or got someone new that he's dating? That would seem to put a bit of a crimp in your plans?"

"Nope. Single and not dating. My sources are infallible on that point," Deanna instantly jumped in. Trey just looked at her.

"We have kids together. My teenage daughter doesn't miss a thing. If he were dating, she'd know, and she'd say something. She couldn't not, not my little blabbermouth."

Trey just nodded.

"So, you need to give him time to read these and digest them. He needs to come back to you with questions. It might take a while; I doubt he'll instantly sit down and read them once you give them to him. I know I wouldn't; it would take the right state of mind."

There was more nodding from the group.

"See girls? Told you. Secret Weapon," gushed Deanna.

Trey took a sip of coffee and barely managed to disguise the look on his face as he did so. Rhonda noticed and had to contain a smile. She glanced at Gina who met her eyes. Deanna's coffee was legendary in how bad it was. They kept trying to suggest someone bring Starbucks, "so Deanna didn't have to try", but Deanna was dead set on being the complete hostess. So they had to grin and bear it. Trey had just joined the august club of those people subjected to the worst burnt coffee in the world. They were all one now.

Trey carefully put the coffee down, wondering how he could avoid drinking any more of it.

"The family thing. I think that would be great, but I think it's going to be strained. It's just not going to be the same. I get where you are coming from, but I think it would take all weekend just to get to the point of where he's relaxed enough to actually enjoy the time, if he gets there at all. But, given the angle of attack that you've chosen, I can't figure out how to make this work any better than the suggestion you've already given. Maybe make it a three-day weekend? Give yourself more time? Oh wait, what you need is an event. Something that can only be done as a family. Thanksgiving or something? Emphasize the family aspect.




Long after the Game Ch. 01



"The sex thing, well, like I said, good idea, but hard to really make work. You need to make damn sure he's dosed up with Viagra or whatever, because if he fails to perform – and I'll put money that that's a distinct possibility – then the whole project is done. If he can't get over the images in his head, he will fail, and if he does, you are done. You simply cannot let him fail.

"Thinking about it further, are you guys really aware of the damage Deanna did? I mean, I'm sure you've been to therapy and all, and the therapist has walked you through it, but all of you guys are the ones who handed it out. And you aren't male. You have no idea of what he feels, what he's trying to overcome. He'll be feeling vulnerable, frustrated, angry at you at strange times. He's overcoming a blow to his ego that you just can't comprehend. It's an attack at a place where no man has a defense. If you said shit about his cock being smaller than your lovers, well, there is nothing he can do about that. And you can't ignore it or lie about it either. What you have to do with the sex thing is show him that he really does it for you – without faking it. You fake it and it's done – and that you actively want what he does for you. That only he can do for you. That it's the best thing, and no one else can do it. And you can only do that with love. He may not be the greatest fucker – sorry ladies, I have to use the real words here – but you have to convince him that he does it for you. Without, as I said, faking or using any bullshit. And that's on top of getting him to climb into bed with you in the first place. Remember, you are tainted goods to him, although, if you've not been screwing other guys, and you say so in your journals, that will help there."

Trey looked expectantly at Deanna, who looked right back, and said, "I'm shocked you need to ask."

Trey just maintained his stare and eventually said evenly, "Well, you did fuck around on him."

Deanna recoiled and Mae stood up. "That was uncalled for," she said, sharply.

"You don't think he's not going to think that? That he's not going to say things like that? And worse?" challenged Trey to Mae.

Deanna had recovered and stared back at Trey, eyes blazing. "No, I haven't fucked around. I tried dating a bit – like you – but it didn't work. I did have a couple of guys in my bed, but I actually kicked them out before we went too far, when I realized all they wanted was my ass."

Deanna was aggressive and in his face – obviously angry.

Trey pursed his lips and said, "And is that how you are going to react when Ryan says these things?"

There was a sudden silence as the group digested that. Trey visibly relaxed his body so his body language was non-threatening, and Deanna had a dawning realization of the likely complexity of the task she had set herself.

Deanna looked away from Trey and bit her lip. She whispered, "Sorry ,Trey"

Trey said, in the kindest tone he could manage, "Look Deanna, I'm pretty sure this little plan of yours looks good and sounds good. It sounds to me that you've been concentrating on this for months. Well, I don't think it's all going to go as smoothly as you think. I think it's a hell of an undertaking. But, if you've got your heart set on it, then ok. I'll help. But my help might be given in a way that you aren't expecting. You've got you heart set on something, to the point where I don't think you are completely understanding of all the dynamics involved. But, I'm here. I'll help. I don't think it's going to work, but I'm in."

"Why won't it work?" asked Rhonda, directly.

"Well, there are so many factors here. What you did, what he did to get back at you. I mean, come on, you have to be really pissed off at someone to do what trick with the Jumbotron. The time between when you last really were with him in a family way. The fact is, he could easily have moved on since then, if only mentally. He may just not want you around, bringing up bad memories. So many potential issues."

Trey was thoughtful for a moment, and without thinking took another sip of coffee, instantly regretting it.

"Although, the strength of his response to your...activities, well, it denotes high passion, either way. He really loved you. He had to, to react so strongly," he said, thoughtfully.

There was more silence for a moment, and then Rhonda chuckled and said, "Where the hell were you when I needed you???" and everyone smiled.

Deanna got up from the couch, went over to Trey and hugged him. She had tears in her eyes and said, "Just from listening to you in the past five minutes, I don't think we could do this without your input. You are probably the difference between this working and not. Thank you Trey. You are a good man."

Trey was evidently uncomfortable and gave Deanna a bland smile.

Deanna stood up. "Ok girls, to work! We have plans to make! More coffee, anyone?"

*****

So it came to pass that about a week later, I got a text from Deanna. It said, "Can we meet for dinner? Need to talk to you."

I sat there, staring at it off and on for almost an hour. I was out with Simon – his latest love of the moment was cooking. Some how he'd persuaded the bar we were in – walls covered in TV's, of course - to switch over to Top Chef and I was squirming with embarrassment, because he was just sitting there loving it and completely oblivious to the stares of the sports fans. I, however, was not. I met the steel gaze of certain other individuals in the bar and either shrugged apologetically, or looked away.

I kept coming back to the text. What did it mean? What did she want to say that we hadn't already said? Was there something up with the kids? Maybe she had met someone, or was moving away. Or maybe she had a disease. Or cancer! Or maybe she'd won the lottery! I wonder if she'd give me any of the money, if she did? Oh. There goes that shiny object tendency again. One day I really must do something about that. Now, a nice Jaguar. I could be happy in one of those. I wonder how much they really cost? There I go, letting my mind wander again. Have I mentioned I do that a lot?

Eventually, of course, it dawned on me that there was a pretty easy way to find out what she wanted. I texted her back "OK. Concerning?"

I got one back saying "Us," which at least removed the concern about the kids or health or money, sadly. I had an inkling that this would be interesting, or at least informative, if I could keep my cool and keep my emotional distance, so I showed Simon and said, "What do you think?"

He looked at the texts and looked at me, and drank a big old quaff of beer – incidentally, what is a quaff? Is it different from 'sucking it down'? Can you quaff other things? How big is a quaff? What differentiates it from just chugging? Enquiring minds want to know. OH! There goes that distraction thing again. Man, I gotta do something about that. Seriously. One day.

Simon put down his beer and said, "Interesting. What ya gonna do?"

I looked at him and said, "I was asking you that."

"Well," he replied, "Polly says you should stay as far away from her as possible. 'Don't let that she devil get her hooks into you again' were her words I think."

Polly was Simon's long-suffering wife. Petite, a firecracker and resigned to living with what was effectively a 42 year old 10 year old. But she loved him – he totally lucked out with her. Oh, she loved him. She had to, to stick around.

Our relationship was great. I gave her shit, she handed it back, and everything was golden. She made no bones about her opinions; they were given to you with no apologies. You either accepted them or you did not. I always did; it seemed safer all around. I'd leave visiting them with the same number of limbs I started out with, that way.

"Yeah," I said, considering, "trouble is, she IS the mother of my kids. Easier to say than to really apply in a practical manner though. But I think I can handle this. It's been almost two years now."

Simon nodded, looked at me for a second – and I could tell he was in two minds to say something – and then just said, "Yeah. You gotta go."

And then someone did something amazing with a cheeseball or something and his attention was back on the stupid cooking show.

So instead of doing it all by text, I took a chance. I got up and wandered outside of the bar – being grateful it wasn't raining; this is Chicago, after all - and called her.

"Hello Ryan," she answered, "I didn't think you'd call."

I could hear the TV in the background. Unless I missed my guess, it was an episode of the Big Bang Theory. Sheldon was describing the rules to Rock, Paper, Scissor, Lizard, Spock.

"Might as well, otherwise it takes forever to go back and forth. What do you need Deanna?"

"Dinner, with you," she said, simply. I should have guessed what was up just from that statement alone.

"Is there something up? Something we need to talk about?" I asked, curiously.

"Sort of. Look, it's easier to do in person. The phone is too...impersonal. Can we meet?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess so. How does Thursday work? Paula is home and can watch the other two that night. Outback? In Schaumburg? I can come to you."

"Sure, that works. 7?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

There was an awkward silence. We'd both run out of things to say at this point. In the end, I broke the silence.

"Well, I'll see you then, then," I said, then broke the connection.

I put the phone away – I'd learned my lesson about leaving it out, finally. The most recent event had been when I'd left my phone out and twitter logged in and discovered that while I'd been in the bathroom, I had my phone number posted, along with an invitation for anyone to text me the dirtiest sentence they could think of. Since text notes showed up on the main screen of my phone, having those suddenly appear when in the middle of a meeting was embarrassing to the nth degree. Simon always asked innocently if I'd 'gotten any new suggestions recently'. At some point I'm going to have to get him back. I went back inside, wondering what was so pressing. She was probably going to get married or something. Wanted to tell me in person.

Boy, was I ever wrong. Well, not about her wanting to get married. Just who to.


*****

Thursday arrived, as it is wont to do. I had a meeting in Des Plaines that day, talking to an artist we'd found. We, – Deke, Kevin and I, - were trying to decide if this guy was good enough to be our art director – create the style the game would use, like cartoony, gritty, 8 bit (yeah, I'd had a huge crash course in the past months. I now knew what '8 bit' meant when talking about graphics and music) – or whether he was just going to be good enough to farm out some pre-defined art needs. I took the guys with me, since they were better able to judge than I was.

They seemed satisfied that he was competent, but still wanted to see other artists' work before making a decision. At some point I was going to have to force them into a decision, because time is money and we were wasting some, I felt.

They went back to the office once we were done, and I headed over to Schaumburg, to the Outback on Golf road. Traffic was horrendous, but I got there with ten minutes to spare. Luckily I'd called ahead and got call ahead seating, so when Deanna arrived, I already was already at a table.

She looked good. I could tell she was trying. Her hair was perfect, the make up, just so. I even noticed she was wearing her engagement ring, just on the other hand. That was a nice touch, if a little ominous. I began to seriously wonder what this was about.

She sat down and did the usual, "You look good," "How are things" etc. I didn't honestly know how much of my situation she knew – she knew we'd moved, obviously, and she knew where I was living since she picked up the kids. I wasn't sure how much she knew about my new career, but I figured Paula or Saffron had mentioned it. Jamie was beside himself over it all – he was a video game-aholic, and was chomping at the bit to be involved and see the game we were making. One of them must have talked about it. I didn't bother going down the path of "I want nothing spoken about me to your mother" to the kids because, well, what's the point? They aren't going to do it anyway. They'll mention stuff; better not to put the pressure on them to try and keep it all silent and then be mad at themselves if they accidentally blabbed.

The waitress arrived, we ordered drinks and dinner and then we just sat there, looking at each other. She seemed to be searching my face for something – what, I've no idea. I looked at her searchingly, and she suddenly shook her head and smiled and said, "Yes, we should talk. Or I should talk. There are things to say. Can I ask that you...let me finish? I have a lot to go through and a question to ask and I need to just blurt it all out, without interruption. If you ask questions, we'll go off topic and I'll never finish it."

I was a little taken aback by that, but ok, what the hell. I had nothing to lose.

"Sure. I promise to shut up til you are done. I have experience with that." I knew at the moment those words left my lips that it was a mistake. Apparently the bitterness on my part was not done. Deanna pulled back and her face clouded, but then she smiled in a brittle fashion and said, "I guess I deserved that."

"I'm sorry," I said, getting it in before she continued. "That was...inappropriate. I'll try and do better, but, you gotta understand where I am coming from here. Please, continue."

She nodded and I could see her pull herself back to business.

"Ok, well, you remember I told you I wouldn't let you go? That I'd be back in your life? That I'd mount a campaign to get you back?"

I nodded. Nothing else to say.

"Well, yeah. You haven't heard from me much over the last few months. I've been in therapy – you know the guy, Jim Vonnie. I know you've seen him a few times yourself"

I nodded again. Nothing for me to add to that, either.

"It's been a long hard slog for me to understand myself. I don't even think we got all the cobwebs out, but we did have a good airing in the corners. I think I know what happened now...no, that's not why we are here..."

She could see me shift uncomfortably. I honestly didn't want to revisit this right now, not being blind-sided.

"That's a conversation for another day. No, today is about me telling you I'm ready. I'm finally in a place where I can start getting you back."


There was silence for a second while I digested that, and the waitress brought our drinks and appetizers. We ate for a bit, and I could see as she ate how nervous Deanna was. She disguised it well, but you can't live with someone for fifteen years and not pick up on mannerisms. She ate with small bites, but fast, like she wanted to get it over with.

"What ma.." I started, and Deanna instantly raised her hand and went, "Nuh hu."

I fell silent and smiled at that. She used to do that all the time when we were married – If I tried again, I'd get it again, and she'd interrupt me constantly saying "Nuh uh" with that look that says "No, Shut up!" For the first time, I started to wonder at my own feelings. I had a wave of nostalgia and desire for times past and that was a first in the past few months. More food for thought later.

She pushed away her Shrimp on the Barbie and smiled at me. "Where were we? Oh yes. You and me again. Look, I told you I would be coming for you, and I am. I wanted you to know that. There are other things I need you to know. I don't know if I apologized to you...properly. From the depth of my heart. I treated you so badly and you did nothing to deserve it. I am so, so sorry for causing the hurt in you. The things you must have thought about yourself that simply were never true. I just... well."

She stopped and took another drink, gulping down the beer, avoiding looking at me.

Once her control was re-established, she said, "I have never asked you for forgiveness though. You may have noticed that. That's not because I don't want it, or I don't feel I need it; it's because I don't think I deserve it. What I did was unforgivable, and you should not forgive me, at least not easily. I need more penance than that. But what I do need from you is a chance."

I blinked at that, and was about to say something when the hand went up again. I looked at it, and decided to keep quiet.

"Look, I know I blew away any and all trust you had in me. I know that. And I know that trust is hard to earn and easy to destroy, and I also know that without a chance to rebuild it, I'm dead in the water. I want, no, I need an opportunity to prove to you that I am worthy of the risk of rebuilding trust between us. I know you don't have to give it to me. But I need to ask. Wait!" she said, as I drew breath again. I really needed to stick to my promise.

"The thing is, and I've been thinking a lot about this, and you'll see that in a bit, and your point in that text about what would I do to fix this, make it up to you, is something that's been on my mind. I mean, the immediate response to that is for me to ask 'what do you want me to do?' but that's a copout and puts all the responsibility for determining what would fix this on your shoulders. I've done enough of that, and it would just be more shit that's not fair, so your question to me really was what got this ball rolling. I have to come up with ideas to show you I'm worthy of a chance. Not you, but me. I made this happen, this is my responsibility. I recognize that."

She stopped to take a breath and glance at me, looking at my expression. Whatever she saw there, it was enough for her to plow on.

"Now, there's more. First, I have been meeting with a bunch of friends, who've been in the same situation as I have. We've been...supporting each other. Making suggestions and things. I have a plan here. I want to do something, and I need your permission and your cooperation – enthusiastic or not – to prove to you that I should be given another chance. I'm not asking you to just blindly do that. I want to do some things that are designed to show you why you should give me the chance to rebuild our lives together. It'll only be a few weekends, and I guarantee you, you won't regret it."

She blurted out that last line and then sat there, frozen, looking at me with a desperate longing, searching my face for what I was thinking.

I sat there, stunned. And the steaks arrived. I ate mine mechanically. I'm sure it tasted good but I really have no recollection of it. Of all the things she could have said, I wasn't expecting this.

I had no idea how to react to this. There was no sudden influx of feeling, one way or another. Nothing to guide me as to what I really wanted. Half way through the steak I put my fork down and said, "So, let me reiterate what you said, so I can be sure I understood it" – it's a common tactic that sales people do in order to be sure they've got an order right. She nodded, chewing on her steak.

"You want me to put aside my feelings about what happened, and allow you several weekends so you can, what, make it up to me? Make me understand how much you love me? Try and reignite that?"

"No, that's not it. Well, it would be great if that happened, but I think we both know there is too much damage for that to be realistic. No, what I want is to persuade you that I'm worth taking a risk on. Do you remember when we first started dating?" she said, suddenly changing direction.

I nodded dumbly since it seemed the thing to do.

"You remember how hard you worked to get me to go out with you? After that ridiculous night at the CroBar when we met? I remember telling you that us dating would not happen."

"Well, you were living with that idiot bar keeper at the time. The one that you were taking phone calls for, from women he was chatting up in the bar. I have no idea why you were still there," I said. "I never understood that, but whatever."




Long after the Game Ch. 01



"It doesn't really matter why I was still there Ryan. What matters is that you were tenacious. You wouldn't give up. You kept at me, asking me out and sending me flowers and things until I gave in. You kept at it to make me understand you were worth it. That, in a nutshell, is what I want to do here. If it helps, try and imagine that we never knew each other before. That I'm interested in you and I want to show you why we could be good together."

"Well, that's easy to say, but fifteen years Deanna. What happened. I mean come on..."

She sighed and said, "Ryan, I'm trying my best here. I'm grabbing at straws. Work with me."

I ate some more steak, thinking hard. Did I want to do this? Did I not? What did I feel towards Deanna now? I thought I knew, but this evening had been...confusing. I thought fast, but unfortunately, I ate faster. So I did what I always do in these situations. I fudged.

I finished the last bit of my steak and looked at Deanna. She hadn't eaten another bite and was just staring anxiously at me. "Come on Ryan. Give me a clue here. Cut me some slack," she said.

I rubbed my hands and face with the napkin, stretching it out. Petty, I know. Sue me.

I threw down the napkin and said, coolly "Well, that certainly is a lot to lay on me, Deanna. Not entirely sure what I think yet, to be honest. I'll give you this. It's not a yes, but it's not a no either. Let me think about it and get back to you, ok?"

She bit her lip. She'd evidently wanted a yes right there and then, but at least she wasn't getting a no.

"I guess I'll have to be happy with that then." She was evidently disappointed. "You do understand what a huge risk this is for me, Ryan? Reaching out like this? I know you could shut me down instantly, but I've been working towards this and I just want you to know why. I honestly need you. I need what you are, who you are, you are – or were – my partner, my friend, my lover. You and the kids were my everything. I can't give that up. I just can't. I need you in my life."

I just looked at her, and she could see me doing my best to restrain myself from saying anything hasty. I took a deep breath and said, "I understand. But you've got to understand where I am coming from. As you said, I did nothing wrong, but I'm paying for what you did every fuckin' day."

I hadn't meant to swear, but it just came out. She looked away.

"Deanna, I truly have no idea what I feel right now. I came, I listened, don't push it too hard, ok? Give me some time to think about it." For some reason I reached out and took her hand and squeezed it. 

"I understand this must have been hard. I've just been in a very...single person place, and I'm only now starting to come to terms with it. The kids are great, but you know how it is when holidays come around. We aren't a complete family and I'm sure it's worse for you, so you'll know what I'm talking about. I need to think about how this would impact me if said 'Sure' and, god forbid, it worked. Or didn't. It's a hell of an ask, and you know it. But I'm not dismissing it out of hand, ok? Be happy with that for now." 

Deanna looked back and squeezed my hand back. I could see a tear in her eye. And I also suddenly realized that, besides the kids, this was the first time a woman had touched me in over three months. And it was nice. 

SHIT.



Long after the Game Ch. 02



So, given all that, the next two days I had a hard time concentrating. I talked to people – I even talked to Paula. She knew which side was up and had figured it all out; what had happened with her mother was all over the Internet anyway. Saffron and Jamie were less in the loop, but it was nice to chat with her.

I showed her the text from Deanna, told her about our meeting, and then said. "So, child of fifteen, going on thirty, what do you think?"

Immediately Paula said, "You've got to give her that chance. I mean, face it dad, you aren't going to do any better and it's not like you are getting any younger. And I think I'm a bit of a one sided person to ask. Of course I want my parents back. If only so I don't have to share a bed with Mom when we all stay over at that apartment. Two beds? You know the last time we all went, I slept on the couch, just so I didn't have to listen to her snoring."

I snickered. I'd put up with it for years. Hearing Paula having to deal with it as well did make me chuckle.

"Yeah, fair comment. All of it, in fact. So, if I did go for this – not saying I'm going to – but it I did, you'd be ok with it? You might be called on to babysit."

She rolled her eyes in the way teenagers do. "Sure Dad, not like I'm not doing it a lot anyway. We need to talk about a payment schedule, you know? My friends get five dollars an hour for this service."

"I'll tell you what, Paula, you don't charge me, and I won't make you live with mom. How's that?"

She snorted and got up off the couch, picking up the kids' iPad as she went.

"One day I won't be here Dad. You need to make the time I'm here as best you can, while you still can. While you still remember anything."

Cheeky little shit. My god, I loved her.

*****

Two days later I had a council of war at the bar. I'd done a lot of that in the past couple of years. We even had our preferred booth, where no one could overhear our conversations.

Present was me, Simon, Jonathan Bruty and, amazingly, Solomon, who was in town. I hadn't known he was around till he called me.

He showed up late, with this girl in tow who was in full school uniform, and couldn't have been more than sixteen, although he did assure us later that she most assuredly was. She had red streaks in her hair, all done in ringlets. She had at least three piercings I could see, and the pleated skirt was pretty damn short.

Solomon saw us at the table, steered her over to us, said hi, then slapped her on the ass and said, "Go babe. See that movie. I'll call you when I need picking up."

She smiled nervously and went out of the bar, with at least twenty pairs of eyes helping her on her way. And she knew it, too.

Solomon pushed Simon along the booth and sat down. I nodded towards the rapidly exiting girlfriend and said, "Really Solomon?"

He laughed and then proved he had not suddenly got lots of new social skills, when he said, "Aw, she's cute. And she does ass to mouth and swallows."

Simon turned his head and rolled his eyes, murmuring, "Jesus" under his breath.

Jonathan snorted. I had forgot to warn him about Solomon and the way he can be.

I just sighed. "Solomon," I said, "TMI dude. Way too much fucking information."

Solomon just glanced back and me and said, with a depressing amount of accuracy, "Ah, fuck it old dude. You are just jealous anyway." 

"So what's this all about? You got someone we need to take down again? That was fun man." Solomon looked around as he picked up the beer list.

"I heard from Deanna. She wants another chance."

"Reeeeeallly? And you gonna give her one? Or maybe two or three?" snickered Solomon.

Simon turned to him and just said, "Dude," in a vaguely warning tone.

"Awww, come on. All of you have a huge pole up your ass. Lighten up a little," he replied.

I felt the need to try and drag the focus back on what I needed it to be.

"Look, I'm more interested in what you guys think. Here's the deal. She knows that trust gets rebuilt over time. And she knows she can't do that unless I let her back in. So what she's proposing is her 'doing things', for me, to convince me to at least give her a chance to rebuild that trust."

"What things?" asked Jonathan.

"I have no idea. She didn't go into details."

"Hmm," said Simon, "I can't say I'm enthusiastic about this, Ryan. I remember you crying desperately watching that video. Why would you do that to yourself again? Look man, you've finally got your shit together, you've moved on. Don't open that door again. There's fire behind it."

I looked at him. He was not wrong.

Jonathan was next, with his clipped way of speaking. 

"I honestly don't know what to recommend Ryan. On the one hand I, also, see you opening yourself up for more of the abuse you suffered. But on the other hand, if she's really contrite, well, it makes you the bigger man, and frankly, often the devil you know is better than one you don't." He shrugged and said, "I can see both sides. I don't know what to say. I can say I'll be around, whatever you decide. You are my friend."

I nodded to acknowledge the nice thing he said.

Solomon leaned back, taking a long sip of his just arrived beer.

"Dude. Are you getting laid?" he asked, point blank.

I was startled and frowned at him and said, "What the hell has that..."

"Yeah, thought not," he interrupted. "Look, what the fuck do you have to lose? You don't have to give her your heart. Go out, have a good time. Use and abuse her. If it works out, great. If not, well, you got laid and you've already overcome her once. You've got practice. I say go for it.. Just...hold your self off, until you get where she is going."

That was another way to look at it. I didn't say much for the rest of the evening, just got more and more blasted as the beers kept coming. The guys did their best to keep the conversation light, and stayed off the subject of Deanna. Solomon entertained us with stories of what his girlfriend – Tiffany – was into and we all felt incredibly bad for her, and for the fact that he was prepared to tell us this stuff, and, of course, we asked for more information. In detail. None of us were going to be able to look her in the eye when she showed up to pick up Solomon.

By eleven, I was pretty toasted and it was then that I made a snap decision and pulled out my phone, and texted Deanna. I didn't dare call; she'd know I was fubared, just like I knew she was nervous, and I didn't want her to think it was a snap decision because I was drunk, even though it absolutely was. At least I think it was. Looking back, I think I was heading this way all along.

The text went 'OK. I will do this. What happens next?'

I got one back almost immediately that said, 'You have no idea how happy you just made me. Dinner. Tomorrow. My place. 7.'

I texted back, 'Ok' and that was that. The die was cast. I just hoped to god that my hangover would be gone by then.

I knew I was putting myself in a place where some stuff would get stirred up – old feelings resurfaced, old resentments and anger reignited, but if I was completely honest with myself, I hadn't really moved forward in my personal life. I'd tried and not been successful, and if this is what was required to settle some of that – either way - so I really was able to move forward, then so be it.

*****

I showed up early. I knew where she lived; I'd picked up the kids a couple of times – but I'd never been inside.

The apartment complex was nice - very high end. Deanna was obviously doing ok. I knew that she did some kind of convention or conference planning. I didn't know exactly what, I just knew that on occasion she needed me to keep the kids for a weekend because she'd be at a conference, helping organize it.

I knew she also had a blog, about interior design. I have no idea if it was popular or not, but I read it every now and again. More out of idle curiosity than any burning desire to follow interior fashion. I wouldn't know a throw cushion from a pillow. I had a sneaking suspicion that no one else did either, and it was all just for show anyway.

So there I was, bottle in hand. Wondering what the hell was going to happen next.

And what I did, was, in a word, not much. Okay, its two words, then, not one. 

I knocked on the door, she opened it, looking a million dollars – again. I was summoned inside and I did have a small laugh as I gave the bottle to her.

Deanna said, "What's so funny?"

I had to be honest. "Oh, this situation. This place. You."

She seemed a little affronted. "What do you mean?"

"Well, look at you. You look like a million dollars, you smell great, dinner smells great, everything is just so. If we got back together, you know that wouldn't last more than a week."

Thankfully, she saw what I meant, and said, "Yeah, I guess I did push the boat out a bit. I'm sure I can go put on a goth costume if you prefer that?" 

She was referring to the night we met, at the Crobar in downtown Chicago. It was Halloween and she'd been decked out as a goth girl, while I'd been in full Roman Gladiator attire. I had to laugh at that too, and she looked quizzically at me again.

In response I said, "Yeah, you could still get away with that. Imagine me as a Gladiator now. No one wants to see that."

She just smiled gently and took the bottle into the small kitchen to uncork it.

Dinner was a favorite of mine. Deanna's chicken potpie was to be reckoned with, and as I spooned it into my mouth I did remember again how much I missed this.

We spoke of the kids, of our jobs, I explained what I was doing with the video game thing – how I'd met the guys I was working with. I could tell she wasn't thrilled about the risk I was taking, but she did at least shut up and offer me support. Then she explained to me what she did – how she'd fallen into helping organizing some of the girls at the car show at McCormick Place. She'd been living next to one of the girls who modeled there, and been invited to go check it out by this girl. When she was there, it became apparent that one of the organizers just hadn't shown up, and Deanna had volunteered to help take care of the girls and get them where they needed to be. The company who was supplying the girls and organizing this part of the show was impressed with her moxie – what a 1950's word. 'Moxie'. I did smile when she used that. They offered her a part time position working on various conferences. While they were based downtown, she could work from home, it was thirty bucks an hour and she was doing quite nicely from it. It meant she'd have to be at some conferences to help shepherd speakers and deal with hotel issues and all the rest of it – she did roll her eyes at what prima donnas some people were – and some of the conference subjects were tedious beyond measure. She said she'd been at some geology conference and just about every session had put her to sleep. But she was happy – it was interesting work, it was part time some of the time, and full time when a conference was impending, she earned enough and she met lots of different people.

I did privately wonder that she wasn't being hit on constantly at those kinds of events; I was well aware of the way people behaved away from home at conferences and there she was, looking all cute, being efficient and most of all, single. Then I thought, "Why the hell do I care?" And I realized that I did still care. Not in the burning anger of a wronged husband, but in a way that it did still matter to me. I suspected there would be a long bit of self-examination of my feelings after the night was done.

We did everything but dance around the reason I was here.

When we were done, I pushed the chair back, belched, and she rolled her eyes.

"Are you done? Cause you did look surprisingly like a pig, stuffing itself, with both trotters in the trough."

"Hey, you invited me," I said, with mock anger. "If you don't want me to enjoy the food, don't cook it."

"Yes. I guess we'd better start that conversation," she said. "Don't worry, it's not scary or anything. Well, it is for me. You've got nothing to worry about."

I just sat there, wondering what to say.

"Ok, so if you are in, here's how it works. I have several...tasks... to complete. A bunch of things to do for you. The first is tonight."

I shuffled in the chair uncomfortably. I could see where this was going, or I thought I could. Turns out I'm just an old perv.

"No, no...nothing like that. Still have a dirty mind I see," she said, grinning.

"Let me tell you about the first thing. The first thing is to give you my journals. Since...what happened, and I first saw Jim, I've been keeping a journal. Five or six sentences a day, about my day, my feelings and so on. It's supposed to be a chronicle of my journey of self-understanding. Jesus, that sounds pompous, doesn't it?"

I did smile back and nodded. "A bit."

"Yeah, I thought so too. It's cathartic though. Although hard to maintain every night. Anyway, I've tried my best to do it. There's a lot of stuff in there. Some days I had a lot to say. Ryan, I want you to read them."

There was a brief silence. Again, I had no real understanding of why. I was just about to ask it – and it must have been obvious on my face -, when Deanna said, "Why? Because it'll show you where I've been for the past eighteen months. What I've been doing, why, what my feelings are and all the rest of it. It's the best way I can show you how I've been trying to put my life – and self respect – back together again. I think it might give you some insight, and it'll almost certainly generate questions, and we can use that as a starting point for future conversations."

I could actually see her point. She got up and went into the other room, then came back with three notebooks and handed them to me. I leafed open one and found it full of her neat handwriting. 

I looked up and said, "Didn't do it electronically then?"

She shrugged and said, "Didn't have a laptop at the time. There's something about writing something down to make it permanent though..."

I looked at the books some more, and she said, "Some of the stuff in there may...upset you, Ryan. I'm not nasty or anything, but particularly at the beginning, there was a lot of anger towards you because of the way you ended it all. I'm sure you can understand that. It took me a while to really accept my part in it all. I knew what I'd done, but I wasn't ready to totally face the consequences of it. There's some...ranting, shall we say, that you won't like. But, please, understand, it's just indicative of how far I've come."

I put the book down on top of the other ones and said, as evenly as I could, "Ok. I understand. I have to read these. Then...?"

"Well, for a start, you'll be seeing a lot more of me. I want to see you at least twice a week. There's going to be stuff for us to talk about based on what's in those," she said, indicating the notebooks. "And once that's done, we are having a weekend, where I'm around all the time. I'm not going to go into too much detail on each thing, except for when it's time to do it. Right now, that's your homework. Get readin' "

I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Not what I'd expected of the evening at all, but that was ok. The prospect of sex with Deanna gave me the heebiee jeebies, if I was completely honest with myself, so that was ok. Although also a little disappointing, that she wasn't gagging for me. All so confusing.

The rest of the evening went pleasantly. She'd found a pavlova Russian desert, knowing it was one of my favorites. She'd definitely gone all out. And it was awesome. I had two helpings. So what? I'm a pig! She said so! If you are gonna get called one, might as well act like one, right?

I said goodnight at 10pm, gathered up the books, put my hand on her arm and kissed her on the cheek goodnight. I could feel her trembling as I did it. I think she was more nervous than I was, which in a deep-seated way, made me feel good.

*****

I read her journals over the next four nights. I wasn't planning on it. I was determined that I would leave them for a while, sort out my feelings on it. I had things to do with the kids. Jamie was in first grade now and was having issues with adding tens and hundreds together – the M&M's came out for that evening's tutorial, let me tell you – Saffron was working on a paper on King Tut and Paula was trying to decide what science fair project to do. I kept telling her to do a study on how many people liked doing science fair projects, and poll her class, but she just looked at me with steady eyes – so like her mothers – and then went back to the iPad where she was looking up ideas on Pinterest.

That night, after they were in bed, I had a glass of Jamesons, pulled the books out, settled back on the couch, and off I went.

Deanna was right. I didn't much like some of the stuff she wrote, at least the early stuff. There was a LOT of anger in the earliest entries. Towards me, towards the jerk she'd been fucking, towards Crystal, towards herself, towards everyone. She was pissed at me over what I'd done, the fact that I'd put her in the situation where she was cheating at all (??!!??), her life now, not having the kids around, her financial situation. There wasn't much she wasn't bitching about. I was very cut by some of the very throw away justifications she'd used for what she'd done – I could see what she was doing, pushing responsibility onto me for imagined slights in her life and lack of sex or whatever, but it still, it sucked a bit. I was hurt. Melissa, her sister, who she was staying with, was particularly harsh with her. I was partly surprised – she was, after all, Deanna's sister – and partially not, because Melissa was harsh with everyone. Having discovered that Melissa had been serially cheated on by her dead ex – and was basically now an ex member of the human race, viewing us all with suspicion from on high -, I was not particularly surprised.

Deanna's mindset wasn't anything I was particularly surprised at, but it still was painful to read it.

But after a few entries, it started to settle down. The journals covered her life, and her feelings. Her life, well, it did suck. Living with her sister, being fired, none of our friends wanting anything to do with her, initially not having access to the kids, financially fucked. Yeah, it sucked. I didn't have that much sympathy though. She had brought it on herself. I was of two minds. The part of me that looked at her as my wife of over fifteen years ached for her. The part that was cheated on just shrugged and said, "So? Don't fuck around then".

After about a month, she got a job at Ross. It wasn't great, but she got by. She found a crap apartment and moved out of her sister's place. And the tone of the posts started to change. She was starting to look at what she'd done. I could see the therapy working as the anger and bitterness faded and she started to really examine both what she'd done, and why she'd done it.

The first thing I saw her examining was recognition of the what – how it had impacted her life and mine. She didn't really have a huge grasp of why, but she certainly delved into the what. 

There were various entries regarding her dating, and her feelings on it. I could tell she was doing it because she felt she had the chance, she'd already paid the price, might as well get out there and see what was there. See if she could find a replacement for me.

From what she wrote, it didn't sound like her experiments in that area went any better than mine had. Which was reassuring – and again, I questioned why that was my immediate response. In the end I just shrugged it off – no man likes the idea of another man going where he's been. That was my rational and I was sticking to it.

Then came some break-throughs in her understanding of what she'd done. She really started to get it – the impact of what she'd done, her responsibility for it. Honestly, while it was a break-through, the true understanding devastated her, or at least it seemed like it from her writing. She'd seen Crystal Riggs again – her friend she'd worked for, and who had been cheating left, right and center on her husband, Charlie. I'd caught her, used her to get information on what Deanna was up to and then threatened her to stop her cheating -, and Deanna was very bitter towards her, since she felt Crystal got off lightly, at least from her point of view. Looking back, she was probably right. I'd sentenced her to stop cheating and be nicer to her husband. Deanna got a divorce. There probably _was_ a lot of imbalance in that.




Long after the Game Ch. 02



Slowly she started to rebuild. She talked about me – about not blaming me for my reactions and what I'd done. Then it got really interesting, once she started examining what I was going through. Wondering where I was, what I was doing, who with, – wondering what my feelings were, did I blame myself, and so on. That's when she decided to make the video for me – the one she'd sent me with her talking to the therapist. She was absolutely despondent that she couldn't talk to me – she understood why, but she just wanted to try and make me feel better, as much as she was able to. To reassure me that it wasn't me who had done this or caused this – it was her and on her alone. 

Once she'd done that, the tone settled down even more – she talked about going to the car show and the new opportunity she'd grabbed with both hands. She talked about the blog she'd set up – she had been an interior designer after all, and if she wasn't doing it now, she was at least talking about it. She talked about her life, and she talked about her desire to be reunited with me, and wondering how to make that come about.

Then the divorce decree came through; that was a bad day for her. Or a bad week. It had been for me too. I remember sitting in the bar with Simon, Polly and Jonathan and just getting extremely fucked up. There's really no support or words that can make a day like that better. I don't even remember getting home. I remembered the hangover though.

Deanna had spent the night watching the Joy Luck Club, with two bottles of wine for company. It hadn't been great for her, either.

Over time, she started to reinvigorate herself. And the plans for our eventual reconciliation started to become her focus. She met some group of women on Craigslist, all of whom had done what Deanna had –well at least the cheating part - and they were helping her. I was grateful for that at least. Then I stopped reading and thought about the implications of that thought, and decided I didn't want to think about that very much.

When I finished the journals four days later, I really didn't know what to think. There was nothing particularly shocking in Deanna's journals – it was all as I'd have thought, if I spent anytime wondering about what she was doing. I couldn't tell how I felt once I read it – it confirmed that she was genuinely contrite and really was thinking about what she'd done and why. There were questions I had; you can't read something like that and not have questions – but there was no sudden epiphany that suddenly changed the way I thought about what happened, or about her. I did start to wonder what mindset she had hoped I would be in once I'd read these; I wasn't suddenly ready to forgive or forget – I still remembered sitting in a closet and crying my eyes out, watching a video of her and that fucking prick, and hearing the things she said. That hurt hadn't gone away. And she, presumably, would know that. So I did wonder what was going to follow reading these journals to make me change my mind.

An interesting aspect of the whole thing was that there was no clear resolution as to why she'd initially taken the offer. Why she'd jumped on his bed and spread for him. It was so outside of who I thought she was, and from her journal, she seemed to think the same thing. As much as I could tell from the journals, she'd done it because she could. It wasn't as if there was a large amount of dissatisfaction with her life. She made the point repeatedly that she loved her life with me, the kids and so on. As near as she could tell, she took the opportunity because she saw it to become someone different. To have a different dimension. It wasn't like what she had was not enough, this was just a way to add to who she was. And, of course, she has heard so much from Crystal about how she had cheated on Charlie and it had sounded exciting and fun and interesting and easy to get away with. I'd never know that she'd done it, but she would and she'd become a more rounded person, get some thrills out of it, and that was the extent of it. It was a split second, completely non-considered decision. It was there, she took it. It had nothing to do with her 'normal' life at all – it was not a reflection on it, or a lack in it, it was just an opportunity for her to be someone else for a bit and she took it. I did wonder about that, since the immediate question that came to mind was "why do you need to be someone else, when you've gone on and on about how you love what you are?", but that was a question for another day, when we were together in person. 

And then the dangerous sex thing happened and she discovered yet another dimension she never knew she had - and that's when things changed again. There was no way she was going to share that with me – how do you tell your husband that you've discovered that the chance of being discovered makes sex better for you without going into how you discovered that – and so that had perpetuated the affair longer than it should have. I did wryly smile at the "should have" part of the entry she'd written. I did wonder what the officially correct duration of an affair should be.

After having read them, the biggest conclusion I'd come to was that Deanna was absolutely contrite. She understood what she'd done – she still didn't really understand the depth of the impact on me, but what she had understood shook her to her core – as it should have. I got an insight into her life, and the fact that she desperately wanted me back, and had spent a lot of time and effort trying to work out the best way to make that happen.

I had questions about some of the things she'd written, and I also had determined that I needed to tell her about my feelings. About how I felt about the whole thing, both then and now. About how she's ripped my heart out and tossed it away without even giving a shit, or ever thinking about it. As I thought about it, tears started to come – I was right back in Madison, discovering her infidelity, and I spent twenty minutes just trying to control myself.

I knew then that she had an uphill climb ahead of her to get me to give her the chance to be able to do that to me again.

*****

Deanna asked the hostess if "Mr. Morrison was there yet", and was taken directly to his table. He rose as she sat down, asking for some water from the hostess.

Trey sat back down and took a sip of his wine he'd ordered.

"So, how'd it go?" he asked, without preamble, as Deanna ordered a coke from the waitress who was hovering nearby.

Deanna smiled at him. "Well, he's on board, insofar as there is a board to be on. We had dinner, I explained what I wanted to do, I gave him the journals, he read them, and he texted me to say 'ok'. I think I may have a shot here."

Trey forced a smile. "I'm glad for you. What's next in Operation Ryan?"

"Well, dinner twice a week, and in two weeks, a long family weekend. I've got it planned out – we are going to Minneapolis for the weekend. Go check out the Mall of America. I am renting a van, and we are driving. Being forced to be in the car together will be good."

Trey nodded slowly. He picked up his wine and swirled it around, studying it.

"I have an idea... do you...um...work out?"

Deanna gave him that sideways look that women do when asked something they don't think they should be asked.

"Err.. not that it's much of your business, but no," she replied, slightly coldly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it," said Trey, putting the wine down again. "I just had an idea. What if you – and Ryan – took up a sport together? Something with teams, where you have to play together? If you pick the right thing, where you both are starting from scratch, well... it's a chance to grow together. Doing something healthy, and doing it together...?" Trey's voice drifted off. Deanna was staring at him.

"What. A. Terrific. Idea." She said, admiringly. "I wonder what we should do? Racquetball?"

"I don't know enough about Ryan to advise. It's more a concept than an actual idea. But it'll get the two of you doing something together, get you more face time. I mean, it doesn't really matter what the sport is...as long as you start and grow together."

Deanna beamed some more. "It's brilliant. Trey, you are a genius."

She took a drink and then asked, a little timidly, "Did you do this, with your wife?"

"I tried. She wasn't that interested."

"What was the sport?"

Trey shifted uncomfortably in his chair and then looked at Deanna. "Well, my sport is golf. Not half bad, either. But what she chose...well, it was...."

He looked away and mumbled something. Deanna leaned in and said, "What?"

There was a pause where Trey shifted again, and wouldn't look Deanna in the eye.

"Table Tennis. OK? It was Table Tennis. It was a disaster."

Deanna did her best not to laugh, but a strangled snort came out.

"I played Table Tennis at college." She said, once she gained control of herself.

"And I'm sure it was a better experience than I had with my ex," replied Trey, attempting to reassert his dignity.

Deanna smiled again, sympathetically. "I still don't know why you guys didn't work out. You seem like a pretty awesome guy to me."

Trey smiled, gently and looked away again. "It just wasn't meant to be. What she wanted, I didn't, and vice versa. Lets order lunch," he said, changing the subject and picking up his menu, very deliberately ending that topic of conversation.

Deanna continued to look at him for a second, and then picked up her menu too.

*****

I sat, staring at her. I wasn't sure I'd actually heard what she'd just said, and had to ask her to repeat it.

We were out at Giordano's Pizza, sharing a deep dish. It's one of my weaknesses – I love their pizza and usually have one a week. The kids aren't that fussed about it, but as I tease them, they wouldn't know good pizza if they wore it on their clothes. As they pointed out, I often did. Sod them. They are some one else's children, I know it. Spawn of Satan, sent to test me.

Anyway, it was the first of the dinners that Deanna was insisting we have. She knew my favorites and arranged for us to eat here, knowing I would accept, just because it was an excuse to stuff myself.

What I didn't realize was it was a set up. 

We'd met, sat down, innocently talked about our week- she was going to be working on some conference for dentists, and it was apparently putting her to sleep – and then, when the pizza arrived, and I smelled it and made appreciative noises, she, oh, so innocently asked me if I was working out at all, and would I like to take up a sport with her?

I stopped dragging the first piece to my plate and looked at her and said, "Do I look like I'm working out? Who has the time? What sport? What are you talking about?"

She put down her knife and fork and said," Look, I just thought, we might take up a sport together. Start out together, so we are both the same level of ability. Do it together. It wouldn't hurt you to do some running around, or me either. We are both at an age where we could use some of that. We could do something team related, so we play together. Be a team. Work together. Perhaps, regain trust or something."

She smiled with that smile that indicates self-satisfaction at being clever. I finished dumping my pizza slice on my plate and realized that the reason we were here had nothing to do with me liking the place and every thing do with her trying to get me to look at myself in a negative fashion and agree. 

I started cutting the slice – Giordano's pizza is more like a pie than a pizza and a slice is about two inches thick – and asked, idly, what sport she had in mind.

Her answer was what I had to ask her to repeat. Because I could not have just heard her say "Table Tennis". Could I?

She said it again. I was not mistaken. She was obviously insane and I needed to have her committed.

"Um. No." was my witty and clever response. "There's no way I'm playing Ping Pong with you. That's just Not Going To Happen."

"Ok," she accepted, with a carefully bland face. "What should we do then?"

Goddamit. Out maneuvered. She'd managed to get my tacit acceptance, and the Table Tennis was a feint. Now I had to come up with something. Hmm. Lets go ridiculous, and see what happens.

"How about Frisbee Golf? I've always thought that looked fun?" I hazarded, expecting her to laugh and give me her real thoughts.

Deanna smirked and gave that face when you are contemplating something that's not your favorite, but you'll entertain it anyway. "I could get behind that," she said, after a minute's consideration.

This was getting out of hand. I didn't want to play Frisbee Golf with her. I didn't know if I wanted to play anything with her. In desperation I said, "Is this one of the 'Bunch of things'?", using that despised finger quotation marks thing when I said it.

She took a large mouthful of her pizza, chewed, swallowed and said thoughtfully, "No, it isn't. I was just looking at you and thinking, and someone – a friend – mentioned it was something he'd done with his wife – a way of doing something together. I just thought it might work out for us."

"A friend?" I couldn't stop myself asking, "what friend?"

Deanna looked at me, and took in my slightly belligerent attitude. I realized that I shouldn't have said anything – it made me look like I cared, and she had picked up on that. A very slight smile flitted across her face before she leaned forward and took one of my hands.

"It's fine. It's a male friend, who is...advising me. While I have that group of friends who have helped, they are all women. And I need a...guy's viewpoint. I need help understanding where you are coming from. And, to be honest, I need to know if the things I want to do will work and how I might make them more...effective."

"I see. And he does this for you, does he? Out of the goodness of his heart? Free and gratis?" Yeah, this wasn't going well. I wasn't as in control as I should have been. And that, in itself, was revealing in ways I didn't want to consider right then.

She could see where I was going and she scowled at me. "Ryan, if I wanted to sleep with him, I would. You don't own me."

That was a mistake and she could see it was the instant she said it, as I pulled my hand away from her. I pushed my plate away and got up to leave. "I've lost my appetite." I said, as I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair.

"No. Stop. Wait Ryan" said Deanna, standing and looking worried. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Please, don't go. Stay and at least finish the pizza. You know it's your favorite. Don't let my thoughtlessness destroy that."

I had my coat in hand and just looked at her, weighing up how I felt. I really wasn't hungry any more, but she did seem like she had things to say, and at least she was being honest with me. Even if I didn't like what she had to say.

I sat down, although I didn't go near the pizza.

"Fine." I said. I wasn't going to say anything else.

"I'm sorry,' she said again. "Look, he's just a friend. He's helping out. He's trying to find ways we can connect more. I'd have thought you'd appreciate that. There's nothing else there. You can meet him if you want."

I didn't like it, but she was right. I didn't own her. We'd both given up those rights in the divorce. I just looked at her.

"Ok, so Table Tennis is out. Frisbee Golf, I can live with that." she said, attempting to return the conversation to its original roots.

I kept looking at her, sucking on my teeth, trying to decide what to do.

What the fuck. I didn't care. She could fuck the entire 82nd airborne as far as I was concerned, and as long as I kept repeating that to myself, I'm pretty sure I'd believe it before long. I'm sure I would. 

But she was driving this little adventure, not me. I was ok as I was. What this little event proved was that her chances of getting to me were less than she thought they were, and I was ok in terms of my own personal armor. I could afford to let her have this, because it just reinforced that I didn't care, and that she still hadn't learned some of the lessons she needed to for us to move forward.

So given that, I had another piece of pizza. Waste not, want not and all that. And damn, it was good.

*****

So we did it. We played Frisbee Golf. And man, did I learn a lot.

The kids thought it was hilarious, of course. That there was an actual game around Frisbees. And it's golf. They came along to our first practice session. Deanna had found a local course – that was a surprise to me, that there were actual dedicated courses. Some where just normal golf courses, and some were temporary made around a normal park. But there were some dedicated courses. I was astounded. That there was enough interest to spend the time and money for prime real estate to play Frisbee Golf on just blew me away.

We all learned a lot – how you throw the Frisbees into a metal chain cage at about head height, how the rules are basically golf – you even tee off. That there are different types of Frisbee you use based on distance you are throwing, like using a different club in real golf. Throwing further, you want a heavier disc, with sharper edges, because it supposedly cuts through the air easier.

There's different throwing styles, stuff to learn about wind – wind affects a Frisbee more than it does a golf ball, even though it affects them too. There was a hell of a lot more to learn than I had thought.

We all went to the park to practice – Deanna, me, the kids, the whole shebang. And what was even more weird was how much fun we all had. I got hit about three times by the kids throwing Frisbees at me – deliberately, of course. Everyone laughed, we all gasped when Deanna got a hole in one – bitch. The kids got into it as well, and we held a mini tournament, right there and then. I won, natch. And it had nothing to do with nudging anyone else's arms while they were throwing, or anything like that. I don't care what anyone else says, I don't cheat. Much. Well, no more than the rest of them. Except Deanna, she was the champion at cheating, if you know what I mean. 

And what's even weirder was that after the couple of hours we spent, when it got dark, we were all tired! We'd just thrown a Frisbee around, but it's amazing how much it can take it out of you. Well, either that or we all desperately needed some exercise. Probably both. 

Predictably, Simon instantly got interested too, when I mentioned it to him and I told him to put away the credit card before he bought a solid gold Frisbee. I know he'd do it, too, and Polly would roll her eyes at me and berate me for not holding him back. I told him it was a family only thing, and that shut him up.

So, that was a thing – in the words of an old friend "Helluva thing!" Unexpected, but fun! And I wasn't blind to the fact that it meant I'd be with Deanna for two more hours a week – two times a week. Four more hours of enforced captivity. Sorry, togetherness. That's what I was told it was. I didn't fight it. I got in a few good shots at her with the Frisbee, and apologized afterwards, of course.

So, then came the weekend event she'd promised, and that's where I started to come a little unglued.



Long after the Game Ch. 03



"Right then ladies. Who gets the macchiato?" asked Deanna, holding up another Starbucks and peering at the name scribbled on it. There was a special ring of hell for those who wrote the names on cups at Starbucks, she decided, since she could neither read this one, nor the other one. The only one she could read spelled Deena, not Deanna. She sighed. It's not like it was rocket science.

The other women looked at each other and beamed. Not having to deal with Deanna's coffee was a definite plus, and from all reports, the Plan was working.

Deanna had called the team together, explained that things were going well, and called a celebratory meeting. Everyone immediately agreed when she suggested Starbucks, instead of her place. So they all ended up sitting at the Starbucks on Nightingale road, in Schaumburg. Even better was the fact that Deanna was buying.

Rhonda had gotten there just after lunch, and commandeered the couch section of the coffee shop, glaring at other people when they came to sit down. Eventually the others filtered in and took up spaces and they talked books until Deanna arrived, looking flustered.

"Sorry I'm late, ladies. Things to do. There was an emergency hotel situation with the conference I'm working on. The damn thing shut down, and we had to find places to stay for eleven delegates. All very tedious, I have to say." She smiled around at all the other women and then said brightly, "Let me get you a coffee or something. To say sorry."

No one was going to say no.

After the coffees were gotten, Deanna plunked herself down in the last free chair and looked around and said, "Right then. Update time. Good things are happening!"

"I'll drink to that," said Rhonda, raising her cup.

"Here here," answered Mae.

They all toasted.

"Right, give us the details. You...enjoyed him, yet?" asked Rhonda, smiling naughtily.

"You know that's not the plan yet. Get him comfortable, before the onslaught!" said Deanna, sipping her latte.

"Yeah, but if things are going well, no reason to wait, right? You have needs too," smirked Rhonda.

Deanna gave her a look.

"Trey came up with something. It really worked out."

Mae looked around and then asked, "He's not gracing us today?"

"No, I'll meet him later," Deanna brushed her off, brusquely.

Mae looked steadily at Deanna and had some thoughts she kept to herself.

"What was the idea?" asked Gina, speaking for the first time.

"Well," said Deanna, conspiratorially, "he suggested we take up a sport together. Something on the same team, that we have to practice together. Something neither of us had done before, so we are the same ability. Something the family can join in. So we took up...tada, Frisbee Golf."

There was a stunned silence for a moment, then Gina, struggling to get out her statement without laughing, said "Well, that sounds...original."

"I know it sounds stupid. But we had the best time. It was great. The entire family together, laughing, being silly. It was like old times. Which is the whole point of the exercise."

"That's certainly good to hear, " said Mae. "Are you thinking this is going to work? What's your feeling here?"

Deanna put down her drink and considered. "I've been taking it day to day, mostly. Not really thinking about it long term. Just trying to make sure each event and meeting is the best it can be. You are right though, I need to take a look at Ryan, talk to him, see if I can get a bead on his emotional state. It's so hard to know with him, even though he used to be so open. He's so guarded now. I thought we'd have more to talk about after the diaries, but apparently not"

"What was his reaction to reading those?" Gina wanted to know.

"Well, it was weird. It was all very hesitant on his part. He asked a couple of questions about where I was when I was writing, what my mindset was, stuff like that. He asked questions about what I was thinking, but he didn't volunteer anything about what he was thinking."

"Did you ask?" persisted Gina.

"I tried, but Ryan has this...way, about him, where he can put of you asking questions he doesn't want to answer. It's quite aggravating when you realize later that you didn't get a clear answer to what you wanted to know, but at the time, you often don't realize he's doing it."

Deanna considered for a moment, and then said, "If I had to guess, befuddled and bemused is what he is right now. He's not resisting, per-se, but it's just happening to him, if you know what I mean. He's not that much of an active participant yet – wanting to do things. He's just sitting back and letting it all happen to him..."

"Well," said Gina thoughtfully, "that's certainly a drawback to the tack you've taken. I mean, you are the one trying to win him back and overcome your...indiscretions. It stands to reason he'd be at arms length. We knew that going in."

"I know. But I hadn't really thought about it in those terms till you just brought it up. I need to give him more choices – make him part of the decision making here."

The women all nodded, clearly agreeing with the assessment.

"How are you going to do that?" asked Mae.

"I have no idea," said Deanna, smiling at her exasperatedly. "The whole point of this approach kinda makes him making decisions moot. I guess I'll just have to find things that can be his decision and make him make them. Make him feel like he's more of a part of this."

Mae cleared her throat, and then said, hesitantly, "Deanna. I say this with the best will in the world, and with all the desire I can to see you two together again, but...have you considered the amount of manipulation going on here? It doesn't shout 'respect' that you are doing this in quite the way you are. Have you really thought about this?"

Deanna looked at Mae in surprise, as did the other women.

"Well, I've been upfront with him about what we are doing and why? I don't really understand what you mean? We all agreed on this plan?"

Again, Mae took a second before replying, considering what she was about to say. "Deanna, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Telling Ryan 'I want to go away with you to Minneapolis' is a far cry from saying to him 'I'm giving you no choice this is a carefully thought out plan to get you hooked on me again, and you get no choice in it.' I'll bet you didn't say that, did you?"

Deanna looked confused. "Are you saying we shouldn't do this? Let it go?" There was almost whining in her voice.

"No, I'm just...concerned. I think the 'what' of what you are doing is fine. It's a good plan. I'm just a little concerned about the why. The way you are talking about Ryan isn't the way a loving wife should talk. I think you are in danger of getting carried away with the what and the how and not enough of the why."

"I don't understand. We all know why I'm doing this. I want my husband back. I want my kids back. I want my life back. Surely, we all know that?"

Deanna looked in confusion at the other two women present, who echoed her face.

Mae decided that, on looking round at the faces presented to her, retreat was the better part of valor at that precise moment and just murmured, "Of course. I don't know what I was thinking."

Deanna, looked back at her, searching her face and looking for meaning, and after a couple more doubting looks, turned back to the other girls.

"Ok, so Minneapolis is a go. It's all set. Now we need to talk about Vegas. Because that's going to be tricky. Getting Ryan on board with the exhibitionist stuff is not going to be easy...but it's part of me now and any relationship we have going forward is going to need it. Here's what I'm thinking – Rhonda, double check it..."

*****

"...so yeah, that was fun," said Deanna, threading her way through the crowd, with Trey following slightly behind. She was clutching a large stuff Minion, from the Despicable Me movies. It was obviously a knock off, but she was clutching it tight anyway. "You honestly didn't have to go win this for me."

Trey stopped, and did an elaborate bow, complete with waving his hands in circles as he bowed. "For you, my lady, it was nothing."

Deanna stopped and looked him up and down, before bursting into laughter.

"Yeah, right, sir Galahad. Are you going to be throwing your cloak on the ground when it's wet too?"

Trey looked up in mock annoyance. "No, I'm going to push you into the puddle, ungrateful cur."

Deanna smiled and held out her hand, "Well, gallant knight, what she we do next? This fun fair was a good idea. I'm sure the family would have a great time here. They'd love the cotton candy, too."

"I'm sure they would," replied Trey. He looked around and said, "How about the do it yourself Ferris wheel? It looks a bit rickety, but it should hold out?"

Deanna looked over at it and then said, "Sure. Looks like a squeeze, but I'm sure that won't be a problem." She smiled mock vivaciously at him and wiggled her hips. "Come up and see me, big boy." She said, attempting to emulate Mae West.

"..Any..anytime.." Trey stumbled out, staring at her.

Minutes later they were seating in the Ferris wheel compartment. It was a small wheel, and there was just room for the two of them. The rest of the wheel was full of high school students, all busily making out.

Both Deanna and Trey looked around, somewhat embarrassed at being older and not making out like everyone else.

"So... lets talk about something. Anything." Said Deanna, a little desperately.

"It's funny," replied Trey, looking into the distance. "I was never allowed to come to these fairs when I was a kid."

"Really?" asked Deanna, looking over at him, fascinated. "Why not?"

"Dad didn't like them. Didn't like what he called the feebleness of the rides, didn't like the prices, didn't like the Carnies who run the place. Just flat out didn't like them at all."

"That's sad," said Deanna, after a while. They went all the way around in silence and then she said, shyly, "I loved them as a kid. I had my first sexual experience after a fun fair visit."

"Seriously?" exclaimed Trey, astonished she'd reveal something that personal.

"Yeah. Ronnie McCloud. First boob grab and ... well, finger insertion of my life. From another person." She said, primly and looking the other way so Trey couldn't see her embarrassment.

There was a beat of silence, and then Trey said, quietly, "Wow."

Then, hesitantly, Trey offered, "Mine was with Sheila Conroy. In the back of a Geo Storm. Late 90's it was. It was all fumbles, passion and total inexperience. I had no clue what I was doing. Still don't, according to the ex wife."

His bitterness was palpable.

"I'm sorry," said Deanna, gently. "I don't mean to open old wounds."

"No, it's fine," said Trey, when it clearly was not. "I'm over it now."

"Can I help?" asked Deanna. "Tell me about it? Unburden? Talking is good for the soul. Tell me about your life."

Trey looked over at her, and the wheel stopped moving, with them at the top of the arc, while people got off and on below them.

"Sure about that? It's a depressing story."

"Of course I'm sure," she said, softly. "I want to know. Please, let me in..."

"OK, well, don't say I didn't warn you. We were married about six years, and then..."

The carnival music carried on, and the wheel kept turning.

*****

It was a long week for me. Lots of meetings, lots of sitting in meetings listening to our guys talk – there were five of us now – and argue and jeeeze, I thought carpenters were bloody-minded but game developers? They take it all to a whole new level. But what was weird is that these guys could scream and yell at each other and call each other names, and then shrug and go out to lunch and talk about TV shows like nothing had happened. 

I'll never understand these creative types, but then I guess I don't have to. I just have to trust them. Which, frankly, is even harder.

Anyway. The weekend rolled around – it was a long weekend and although Monday was officially the day off, we'd decided to take Friday off as well. So I arrived home on Thursday night to find a) a strange van in my drive way, b) my kids bouncing off the walls, c) a bunch of packed bags in the foyer and d) my ex-wife, drinking one of my specialty Keurig coffee's, sitting at my kitchen table with Paula, looking at an iPad.

I just stopped and stared. Kids stopped moving and stared back, and Deanna looked up from whatever it was she was doing to the iPad.

"Ah. There you are. We were just thinking about sending out a search party."

"Nice to see you too. What, exactly, is going on?"

Deanna gave me a devastating smile. "Road trip. This is part two of operation Ryan. I did mention it."

"What?" I sputtered, intelligently. "I have things to do this weekend. I have important things going on. I can't just drop it at the last minute."

Deanna looked at Paula, who had a huge smile on her face, and was almost bursting at the seams with...something. I don't know. Teenage girls are a mystery to me. Always were, always will be.

"Will you just relax, Mr. Grumpy? I know for a fact that you do not have anything pressing going on this weekend. Operative double oh fifteen here has been on the case, and reporting back to D – that's me by the way – and we have it sorted. Clothes are packed, I rented a van. We are off the Mall of America."

Saffron came racing into the kitchen, screaming, as Jamie chased her. "Dad, dad, Jamie won't leave me alone, he keeps trying to tickle me!"

I grabbed Jamie as he edged passed and picked him up by his legs, upside down, held him up, so we were face to upside down face and said, "Son, is this true?"

He said something really fast, so I shook him and said, "Son, be honest now. Are you chasing your sister just so you can tickle her."

His upside down eyes were hard to read, but he nodded, hesitantly.

I put him down. "Good. That's what older sisters are for. Go get her."

"Daaaaaadddddd," screamed Saffron, in that multi-tone way that only pre-teen girls can manage, hitting notes that do not technically exist.

"Out of my hands Saffie. Serves you right for having a little brother."

They ran off again. I knew I'd pay for that later – there'd be something placed in my bed, or the sugar would get replaced with salt for my breakfast cereal or some such. My children are nothing if not inventive in the art of reactive revenge.

I went to the Keurig and got myself a coffee, sniffing at the fact that Deanna had managed to have the last of my caramel coffee escapes – my favorite. And hers too apparently. Hardy surprising at how terrible the coffee she made was. I never understood that when we were married. How can you fuck up coffee? You shake it out of the packet and into the filter, you fill it with water and that's it? How do you screw that up? Yet, she managed.

Another upside of her not living with us; I didn't have to share my good stuff.

"So, Agent Paula. Did you pack for me, or did The Master Controller here do it?" I asked Paula, nodding at Deanna, a little concerned that the answer might be yes. I was prepared to roll with somethings, but that would be a step too far.

"Relax Dad. Nothing embarrassing in there. Although I do think it's time to replace some of those tighty whities. They are getting nasty." 

I snorted some of the apple cider I'd just made out my nose. That is not the kind of thing a father wants his teenage daughter to be telling him.

"Well, that's a conversation for another day I think. Possibly several thousand from now." I said, looking at her sternly.

Saffron and Jamie came through the kitchen again. More screaming, only this time it was Saffron chasing Jamie.

Deanna was looking on with an expression I couldn't read. Like regret, pleasure and amusement, all rolled into one.

I sighed. "So, when are we leaving for this amazing shopping trip?"

I hated malls. Especially big ones. The older I got, the less I wanted to be around large groups of people. I've found that it doesn't matter how smart people are individually, when they get in groups of eight or more, IQ points drop dramatically.

I'm also not one for browsing. I know what I want. I do my research. Then I go out and I get it, and then I come home. That's shopping, Ryan style. Women? Well, lets just say that if at least ten different things aren't tried on, then how do you know you got the right one? Am I Right, Ladies?

But, like the lamb to the slaughter, I let myself be led.

Seriously though, I did sit there and think about it. Did I really want a long weekend, cooped up with the ex-wife and all the kids? How did it make me feel? I did feel somewhat ambushed, but then, I reasoned, if we'd not split up, this is something we'd be doing anyway. I had promised to let Deanna have her attempt, so what did I have to lose doing it? So I just let it go. It just wasn't worth the potential aggravation in being a pain in the ass about it.

So into the van we got. It was a nice van too. A Chrysler Town and Country, with leather seats and a 6 DVD TV thing in it.

And we drove to Minneapolis. All 12 hours of it. Complete with movies, singing, question asking; we always had this driving game we played of 'would you rather' - this was the first time Jamie was old enough to comprehend the questions and be a part of it.

There was a part of the trip where the kids were quiet in the back, following a long and spirited discussion of the likelihood of a fight between Pokemon and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'd learned that, apparently, "Pokemon Theories and Conspiracies" were an actual thing. God bless the Internet, it's such an enabler of educational discourse. 

I glanced back, Paula was on her iPad again, and both Saffron and Jamie were out of it, asleep in chairs, pushed back.

I glanced at Deanna, who was driving, intent on the road. I looked out the window and remembered a time in the past, when we'd been on this road before. It was just after we were married. We'd just taken off for a long weekend, very like this one. With no particular aim in mind, we'd headed west, along i90, to see what we could see. We'd passed Minneapolis, and taken a quick afternoon at The Mall of America, and then gone on to go see the faces in stone at Mount Rushmore. It had taken us two days to get there, going through the Badlands of North Dakota. We'd literally spent half an hour there, when we got there – at the time the closest you could get was a mile away – and shaken our heads sadly, and got back into the car and looked for something else to see. Don't get me wrong, it's an impressive accomplishment, but once you've seen it, you've seen it. You don't need to spend more than an hour there to see it.

We'd ended up going over the boarder to go see Devils tower, in Wyoming, which was worth the drive. You could literally climb it, rather than look at it, from a mile away.

Past times, and our current drive was causing a lot of nostalgia. Which, I'm sure, was the point.

I looked over at Deanna, who at that moment was studying me. She smiled at me and said, softly, "Remember the last time we were on this road?"

I nodded. Then smiled as I remember some of the other stuff we got up to. That was my first and last blowjob when driving. She'd deliberately edged me, so I didn't get to cum, and it had not been a good thing, when driving through traffic. Terrifically sexy, but not good in terms of us not driving into another car. We'd both agreed afterwards that it was great, we'd done it, it was fun, and we'd probably not do it again, at least, not like that.

She smiled back, with the same sort of smile. She remembered too. But we had kids in the car, so there wasn't going to be any discussion of, which was probably just as well. We both remembered – we had the shared history; that was all the moment needed.




Long after the Game Ch. 03



The entire weekend was fun, if I had to grudgingly admit it. We went to the mall, I managed to avoid almost any shopping. We did the Lego attraction; Jamie, Saffron and I did the Nickelodeon theme park in the middle, although I was convinced that is should have been a Charlie Brown theme park. When I'd gone to the Mall of America with Deanna I'd swear it had been a Charlie Brown theme park then. We did Sea Life Aquarium and Paula and Deanna went shopping and spent more than is humanly possible; Paula would be baby sitting for the rest of her life to pay back the advance she demanded from me to pay for it all.

The hotel worked out – we ended up having two rooms. Deanna stayed in one, with Paula and Saffron, and Jamie and I stayed in the other. On Saturday night, we went down to the hotel bar to have a drink together while Paula babysat, but it was mostly just small talk; no big subjects discussed. Thankfully.

Really, it was just like old times, except there wasn't the closeness or intimacy we'd previously enjoyed. I got the distinct impression that was the point though – to re-invoke familial feelings, and not jump on the whole "lets get naked" bandwagon.

It was smart. I could feel myself falling into patterns we'd had before. It was scarily easy in fact. I'd been without Deanna for over 18 months, and I'd learned to adjust. I still had a lot of thoughts about her – you can't have been married and have kids and not have a bucket full of memories that drag up at the drop of a hat – but I'd gone though the pain and – at least partially - come out the other side.

What was surprising was being back on the other side, and being re-introduced to our familial situation, and finding how much of it wasn't related to our individual feelings for each other. I could be comfortable around Deanna, be a co-parent with her, and everything that comes along with that, while having no romantic relationship with her at all. I was astonished at how much of the parent mode has no relationship to romantic mode. That's not to say that there weren't moments where, pre The Event, I wouldn't have smacked her ass and got a kiss, or threatened bodily retribution later that night for some imagined or manufactured slight, but there were less of those moments than you might think. Or, at least, it felt that way.

When we went down for a drink, I was quite nervous. Deana and I had never really had 'the conversation' regarding what she did. We'd never gone into it in much detail, beyond her video she sent to me. And I wasn't really ready to do so tonight. I still wasn't even sure of my own feelings. I'd tried, one drunken evening, to talk to Simon and Polly about it, but Simon had been sarcastic, and Polly vitriolic, and it was more about them expressing how annoyed they were than anyone really listening to me.

I knew that I could never just condone or 'get over' what she'd done. Our marriage, as it was, was over. There was no question about that, and I'd done what I needed to do for my own self worth. But now? Now the dust had settled? I'd gotten my life back on track, managed to keep my kids with me, and moved on. Mostly. I still hadn't really jump started the love life, and I was still a little puzzled at that. I'd tried, and just not been that interested. That couldn't be healthy.

Were there still left over feelings that had to be dealt with? If so, they weren't obvious ones. Did I want to pick up with Deanna again? Part of me did. She was a known quantity. I'd been happy – before I very much was not. She evidently wanted to pick it back up. She'd seen the value in what we had and was trying to reconnect. It was no effort for me. But the fear of being hurt again, that was there. As was my own self-respect, and lastly, a lack of trust. For almost anyone in fact.

In fact, the more I examined it, the more I saw how much the trust crack fault lines went out further than just the Land of Deanna. When she'd busted open that landmass, with her little earthquake, the damage had gone out far and wide. Maybe that's why my attempts at dating had just not worked out.

All this went through my mind as I sat in the hotel room, after having taken a shower, listening to Paula complaining about the state of her feet (My statement of "Well, if you will run around a mall all day in flip flops with wedges in them, what do you expect?" had been met with an eye roll, and a second stream of complaining. She was So Much Her Mother at times.) I'd dressed in the bathroom then just sat there, on the bed, listening to Paula bleat on and on, much like the teachers in the Charlie Brown cartoons, while Saffron and Jamie were in Deanna's room, watching some cartoon about a kid with fairy god parents.

Suddenly she stopped and looked at me.

"You ok Dad?"

I just looked at her, for a second, not saying anything, feeling nervous, miserable, like everyone had expectations of me that I had no hope of fulfilling, and wasn't sure I wanted to.

"Oh Dad..." Suddenly she was sitting next to me and I was wrapped up in her arms. "It ok... Dad... it's ok."

I wasn't crying. At all. Just wanted to point that out. Not even remotely. I was just... withdrawn.

She pulled away from me and looked at me. 

"It's all happening very fast, isn't it? Mom being back, us doing something like this? No one's even asked you what you want, have they?"

I didn't say anything again, not trusting myself to speak. Why is it my daughter doing this, and not anyone else?

"Dad, it's ok. If you don't want to go down and have a drink, stay here with me. We can watch a movie. Jamie and Saffie are fine in the other room. Don't let her little plan pressure you."

I have never been more proud of my daughter than right then. 

"I'm ok Paula. I'll survive. I'm just...not even sure what I think or want some of the time, you know?" I managed to croak out.

"I love you Dad. Whatever you want, it's fine by me," she replied.

I just smiled back and got up, one last check in the mirror to ensure I hadn't peed down my chino's, or tucked my jacket into the back of them.

"Off into the wild blue yonder," I murmured.

"Pixar movie?" asked Paula on the bed, tilting her head.

"Philistine!" I snorted at her. "Look it up!"

All that pride fled.

As it was, it was an anti climax.

Deanna was waiting in the hotel bar, a red wine in front of her and a beer waiting for me. She brightened with a smile as I sat down. She was dressed conservatively, but classily. Like she always did.

"There you are. I was about to send out a rescue party."

I grimaced and said, "It takes more than a days shopping to put down this hunter."

She patted my hand and said, huskily, "I'm sure it does. I have a good idea what does..."

I involuntarily started and moved my hand away. That was a warning shot across the bows.

Deanna noticed and said, quickly, "That was a joke, Ryan. While I would not be averse to a little bedroom play, we have kids to consider here, and I don't think either one of us is really ready for that. That time will come."

She stopped, looked more closely at me, and then said, "And I can see you are worried. Don't worry Ryan. I'm not here to propose to you, nor am I here to cross-examine you. Or me for that matter. They'll come a time for that, but not now. Now, lets just enjoy an evening of company and stuff, ok? No one needs to bare their soul – or anything else – tonight. Take the pressure off yourself."

With that somewhat reassuring statement, she turned the conversation to another area, that of conference development, where she went on and on about how hard it was to make girls show up for conferences on time. Apparently women who are paid to be pretty don't tend to imagine they are paid for anything else, like being anywhere on time for example.

It was a pleasant night, as I said earlier. We talked, had a few laughs, a little reminiscing, staying very far away from the danger areas. At the very least, it proved we could be in the same space for a prolonged time and I'd not want to kill her, which was a step above where I'd been for the most of the past 18 months.

I did at one point ask her about the people who were helping her.

"Who are these guys? How did you meet them?"

"You won't really believe it. Jim – our therapist? Remember him? – talked about a support network. I mean, all I had that the time was Melissa, and she's...well, I love my sister, but she's not supportive of anyone. You know what I mean. Way too damaged. Crystal wouldn't speak to me, although honestly, what she'd have to say that I could keep a straight face to, I don't know. So I went looking. I found them on Craigslist, of all things."

"Seriously? What did their ad look like?"

"Oh it was titled something like "Post Cheater Support network' or something like that. They made it plain in the ad that it was women only, and not dedicated to just going out to find more people to fuck. I mean, you take that risk right? Like some AA groups are really about finding more effective ways to hide your drinking? I did worry a bit. But I called them, talked to Mae, who started the group, and met them and, well, we meet once a week or so. Talk about all sorts of stuff, with the whole recovery thing mixed in. It's like a social club where everyone is tied together because of what they did."

"Is it helpful?" I wanted to know, fascinated.

"Oh god yes. Hugely. I don't feel alone. There are people who I can talk to who don't judge me, because they've all done the same thing, if not worse."

And she told me about all the personalities in the group, who was who, what they did and so on. I felt quite the voyeur when she was done.

The next day we drove home, although I do think the enforced Karaoke in the car was too much. I hate singing in public, and they all know that, which is why I think it was a concerted effort to embarrass Dad. I got my own back though. I was very windy that day, due to the breakfast burrito I had that morning, and I made sure the electric window controls were deactivated, so one but me could raise or lower windows. Vengeance was mine!

*****

Deanna looked up at the sky as she walked out of the movie theater, there was a slight bite in the air, and it looked like rain. She was without her umbrella and so she turned up the collar on hair coat in fear of it starting to spit.

They were outside of the AMC 21 movie theaters on Illinois St, having just walked out of the evening showing of Foster Fight, a comedy about three children fighting each other to be adopted by the parents who had taken them in temporarily.

"You didn't find that the least bit...well, stupid?" asked Trey, walking out the door behind her.

"What? It all fit together? Everything was tied up nicely, everyone got what they deserved, what more do you want?" she replied, slightly impatiently.


"Well, the premise was just a bit silly, and the resolution was unbelievable? The couple just happen to win the lottery so they can adopted all three at once? C'mon. That kind of thing just doesn't happen."

Deanna sighed. "You sound just like Ryan. That's exactly what he would have said."

She didn't seem the grimace Trey had as he said, "Yes, I'm sure he would."

Deanna chuckled and said, "Don't be so threatened. So you guys all think the same. Whoop de doo. All guys are retarded when it comes to complex stories about emotions. It's a well-known fact. You all just want beer, an ez boy chair, a big TV and to get laid a lot. The idea that emotions might actually mean something doesn't enter into your tiny brains."

Trey regarded her for a second with fake revulsion on his face.

"You know, just for that, you need a spanking. Big brutish man spank spouty woman!" and he mimed an ape, finishing up with finding something in his hair, and then eating it.

Deanna was amused. "Promises, promises!" she said, without thinking, wiggling her eye brows as she said it.

Trey stopped his ape miming and just looked at her and said, quietly, "If you insist..."

Deanna looked at him for a second, then tore her eyes away and searched the road for a taxi.

After looking for a second, she saw one and waved at it, which did a U turn and then pulled up. She would have driven but it was a workday, and she'd been at an office on Clark and Addison all day, arguing with a committee about an activity she had planned and she tended to not drive in Chicago during the day if she could avoid it. Parking fee's alone would break you. 

As the taxi pulled up, she looked back at Trey.

"Fancy a night cap? I still want to go over what you think about how to best be at Ryan's office? I just don't feel quite right about it yet. I don't know how I should behave around his co-workers? Am I the busy mother, professionally distant, the life partner of the boss, what?"

Trey sighed internally and then said, "Ok, one. Lets go to that bar on Clark? The one with all the whiskeys? The Duke of Perth I think? And as for working... well, I think professional distance..."

His voice dipped as he climbed in the other side of the cab, and the doors slammed closed and it pulled away.

*****

When I showed up for work on Monday, I was early. I unlocked the office doors, wandered in, set down my backpack in my office and trundled into the small kitchenette the office space afforded. The office itself was small – a conference room, three offices, an open area, two toilets (that we shared with the outfit next door, a CPA group) and a reception area. It wasn't much, but it was cheap, and it was enough for what we needed. The one thing I had sprung for was to have some of the dry wall opened, and all the walls were now sound proofed. That had happened after the first week of us moving in. Listening to the caterwauling that the two coders had been playing – at maximum volume – had made that a necessity.

Currently there was the two guys I was partnering with, who had chosen to share an office, there were two interns in the open area – we'd just hired one User Interface guy the week before -, one texture artist and we had a sound guy, on short term contract, in the other office. And then there was me. We had enough space in the open area for four more people – when the sound guy was done, he'd be gone and the office would open up for an art director, and possibly a design director. We'd need one more art guy, and then I think we'd be where needed to be to put the game out as it was envisioned.

I finished making the coffee – we'd inherited a big industrial coffee maker and I was vacillating about whether to buy a Keurig for the office. They were good, but the way these guys drank coffee and soda, it would be expensive. I was still trying to work out a way to make it so they wouldn't raid my good stuff.

As I walked back into my office, I could hear a commotion at the front, in the reception area, so I mooched out there, sipping the piping hot and DAMN strong coffee that I'd screwed up. It was almost as bad as Deanna's.

And I stopped dead at the tableau in the reception area.

My two partners, Deke and Kevin, where standing in the front, staring at Deanna, who was sitting behind the receptionist desk. She was in business attire and was saying, "...and so, you boys will be my charges for a couple of weeks. Now, do you have any kind of sign in sheet... ahh, Ryan. There you are."

She was brisk, businesslike and just on a roll.

"If that's coffee, I'll definitely have one. Now, I'm going to need a laptop out there, and a phone. This chair isn't great, but it'll have to do I guess. What?"

She was looking expectantly at me. I was saying anything, just staring. Kevin and Deke were shuffling nervously, looking at each other, her and me.

"Deanna, if I may, can I have a word with you in my office?" My voice was steady and firm and I was the Boss. This was my office and there was no way I was squeaking anything out. 

I just turned and walked back to my office, not bothering to look to see if she was following.

I entered, put down the coffee carefully, sat down in my nice mesh chair and looked at Deanna, standing on the other side of the table. She did look good, I have to admit. Her hair was up, there was some makeup. She even looked taller. I guessed it was heels.

"So?" I began.

She just smiled at me, with slight a condescending expression and that forced patience people use when talking to someone who should understand what they are saying, but obviously do not. Deanna had this down to an art. I'd been on the receiving end of for most of our marriage when she felt I was being stupid or slow for the sake of it. 

"It's one of my...penances, Ryan. I work for you for a couple of weeks. Help you along. Show you I can be helpful. You remember? Sure you do. We discussed this."

There was a slight upturn at the end of the statement, the kind made by people when they are dismissing even the need to talk about something further.

It's funny, not being married to her really highlighted that I'd just accepted all this in the past – being made to feel like I was 85 and slightly forgetful. Not any more. It was Monday morning, I'd not had any significant coffee yet, and this was my office, and not hers.

"You can wipe that superior expression off your face Deanna, we aren't married any more and I don't have to take this shit. This is my office. You can't come in here and be condescending to me. If you can't act with some respect, then, with no respect what so ever, get out. Are we clear?" I didn't quite bark it, but it was close.

Her superior attitude vanished in an instance, and she dropped into the chair in front of me.

"Sorry Ryan. Just...got a little...never mind. Sorry. Yes, it's your office. I understand. I didn't mean to..."

While she was falling over herself to apologize, I looked at her. Really looked. I didn't recall her saying she was going to show up but honestly, that didn't mean she hadn't. I wasn't paying that much attention to her future intentions, to be honest. I'd have to deal with that. If we were going to make it, I needed to at least give her that respect and attention. Wait, "if we were going to make it?" What? 

"OK," I said, less gruffly, and cutting into her stumbling attempts at an apology. "So, what exactly are you going to do for us? I mean, you don't know the first thing about video games?"

She gave me the megawatt smile, and I knew I was about to get a prepared speech.

"Well, yes, quite. I don't know crap about video games, and honestly, I'm not that bothered by it. BUT, I do know how to organize, and how to run an office, and all the rest of it. You may be getting by now, but that's only because you haven't had a decent admin working for you. You do now. You'll be surprised at what I can achieve. You just have to let me. Lets look at it as...one more reason you might want to trust me?"

I began to see where this was going. If I trusted her in the office, well, that might well rub off in other ways. It was quite obvious where this was going. But, it was also done without anything being hidden. She was quite open about it, what it was for. It was another one of those "what do I have to lose?" moments. And frankly, I couldn't see anything at all to lose. Even if she only answered the phones and got our office snacks, it was better than we had now.

It disturbed me a bit that I was accepting all this intrusion into my world, mainly because it was a "what do I have to lose" question rather than "do I want this" question, but on the other hand, it was Monday morning and I'd not even had coffee yet, and this was more of a Friday afternoon and a bottle of Jameson kind of question to pursue.

She was looking at me expectantly, so I took a swig of coffee, to give me time to think and look like I was contemplating every angle. It was a mistake. The coffee was DAMN hot and I spit it all over the desk.




Long after the Game Ch. 03



Deanna's eyes twinkled, and I saw her nose scrunch up in an effort not to laugh. She was adorable when she did that. She knew I'd already made up my mind.

Dabbing at my jacket and shirt, I sent her a dirty look, that she knew damn well I didn't mean, and then said, "Fine. If that's what it takes. Whatever. Make yourself useful. Go look at the kitchen and see what you think we need. Make me a list and give it to me and I'll give you some petty cash and the Costco card."

She coughed. "Laptop?"

I gestured outside the office at the open area. "There should be a MacBook Air out there somewhere. We have three around here. Talk to Deke and get him to set you up on the network, and give you an email and access to the Google docs we use. There's an iPad in there somewhere, if you want to look at the game."

She smiled again, and said, "It's going to be nice working with you Ryan. You'll see. And cheap for you too. I'm free. In all sorts of ways..."

And she rose, in cloud of perfume, sexual innuendo and competence. Quite a weird combination.

*****

And she did come through. It took about three days for her to ask for a key, because she hated waiting outside for me to arrive. There was no chance of the other guys arriving before me, but her? She showed up with Krispy Kremes, or bagels, or coffee cake. She knew the way – okay one way - to a man's heart was through his stomach, and made fast friends with everyone in the office in about four heartbeats.

And it was better with her around. I mean, it really was, hard as that is to admit. She played our game – such as it was – on the iPad and had some comments about it. Not the least of which was "Why hadn't I shown this to Jamie yet?" which was a valid comment. The thing is, we are all perfectionists. We wanted it to be perfect before we showed it to anyone, and she showed us that, well, that wasn't ok. We needed to show it to people before we went down the rabbit hole with graphics and shaders and sounds and user interfaces and all the other stupid bullshit bingo jargon words they use when making games.

And she was right. When I took it home and showed it to Jamie, he played it for a bit, and then was quite scathing about a few of the design choices we'd made, and, in that typical kid way, made it quite clear what "sucked" and what didn't. It was good feedback and frankly, I'm ashamed that I didn't think of doing it first.

She started looking at the competition – games like what we were making and played some of those, and then offered comments. Some were good, some were bad. It got to the point though, where she was sitting in design meetings, and not just taking notes (which was awesome), but throwing in comments and ideas, along with everyone else. And what's more, everyone was taking her seriously.

Then there was the office. Suddenly it was clean. Not in a "the waste baskets are empty" way, but the kitchen area was suddenly wiped down. Washing up got done. Phones got answered. There were pastries around in the morning. The fridge, which should never be opened under any circumstances (Dirk Gently has that right), was cleaned out. We even got different lunches brought in.

And that wasn't the end of it. By the end of the two weeks, we actually had interviews from some websites and magazines. That was a surprise. I hadn't really thought much about drumming up pre-release buzz, but she did. She looked at gaming websites and such, and then contacted them, and asked if they'd be interested in talking to us. I didn't do much of the talking, but I sat in with the guys as they did, and it was good. People started to follow our twitter feed, which meant we actually had to put something on it.

We'd set up a website early on, with a blog, but had not really put anything on it; now, at Deanna's urging, we did. We did a weekly developers blog, and people seemed to dig it. Our lead programmer even got invited to some podcast thing.

It was weird. Having a receptionist / PR girl / girl Friday actually made us feel... legitimate. Like we were a real company.

I began to see that even when Deanna left us – she'd made it clear that she could do two weeks, but after that she had a 'real job' (as she put it) to get back to – that we'd probably have to find someone else to fill her shoes; it was just that necessary, even though I'd not seen the need before.

And that wasn't counting the personal stuff. 

At one point, she came into my office, closed the door, peeled open her blouse, tweaked her nipples at me, closed up the blouse and flounced out saying, "Just keeping you interested, big boy." Loud enough that the whole office heard it. I was not expecting that, and didn't really know how to react. Well, my body did, but my brain certainly didn't.

I just sat there, with a cup of coffee on it's way to my mouth and, I'm ashamed to say, a hard on in my pants. What? C'mon, it'd been months for me. Hell, her grandmother could have done the same thing with pretty much the same result at that point.

We had dinner together eight times over the two weeks, four of them either at her place or mine, with the whole family. At one point, she even came to mine and cooked dinner for us.

I did have words with Paula, since apparently Deanna now had a key to my house, and that was one step too far. When I realized, I asked for it back. Deanna gave it to me with a pout, but I just wasn't having that. I wasn't asked, and this was My place. I didn't ask for a key to hers, and I didn't think it was ok her having a key to mine. And Paula and I had words about how far she'd already gone. I was relatively ok with most it, but she had to know there were limits, and this was one of them.

The family dinners were nice, to be honest. Again, it was easy to fall into old habits, and again I marveled at how much being co-parents hadn't much to do with being lovers. At least in our case.

And then she kissed me, and it all changed again.

It was the last meal, at her place. She'd made scallops over linguine with white wine sauce, and it was very good. She knew it was a favorite of mine. The kids were in her den, watching TV and I was helping clean up, picking up the plates from the table. I had both hands full and she caught me, as I turned from the table.

She just grabbed me and gave me a full on heavy-duty kiss. Both her hands were on my head and she went at it. I was a bit taken a back, but you know... when someone wants to kiss you and you've not kissed anyone in sooo long...

So yeah, we kissed. She put a lot into it, I could tell.

There was no prolonged analysis afterwards, she just stepped back, smiled and said, "God, I've waited long enough to do that. Sorry, had to get you when you couldn't get away...Just as good as I remember."

I stood there, and didn't know what to say, desperately trying to keep the first retort off my lips. The instant response was, "But not good enough to stop you jumping into the sack with that other guy." And while I wanted to say it, I didn't. I still don't know why. Maybe I was growing up or getting past it, or whatever. But it was still the first response that came to mind, so I can't be over it that much, can I? It was all filed away for conversation with the guys later.

The rest of the evening she just carried on as though nothing had happened, and I just sat there, watching TV and not seeing anything on it, trying to figure out what my next move should be. If any at all.

And then the week was up. And other stuff happened instead.

*****

"Oh. My. God," state Deanna, emphasizing each word with a clearly indicated period after each word. "Are you sure about this, Rhonda?"

Rhonda smiled at Deanna, looking over the dress she'd just walked out of the changing room in. The smile just got wider, and turned into a wicked grin.

"Oh yes. Think you can wear this?"

"Well, I wouldn't be caught dead in something like this normally. I mean it's so...well, not to put too fine a point on it, slutty!"

"Exactly," replied Rhonda, eyeing her up and down. She got up and came over and adjusted the front, literally picking up one of Deanna's breasts and moving it.

"Rhonda!" squealed Deanna.

"Oh get off your high horse. You are wearing this dress. You hardly get to sound so straight laced. Besides, the woman running the store right now is quite convinced we are lesbians anyway. Might as well give her a show. Want to smooch a bit? Really give her something to think about?

"RHONDA!" reacted Deanna even more hotly.

Rhonda chuckled, and stood back, looking at Deanna. "OK, well, if that doesn't get him excited, I think he might be dead. All we need now are some fuck me pumps, a nipple chain to go between your tits, some body glitter and some slutty lipstick and you are good to go. Hell, even I'd do you."

*****

"I'm sorry, I'm not too late am I?" said Deanna, breathlessly, as she sat down at the table in the Applebee's. It was raining outside, and she was slightly steaming from the hot air in the bar area.

Trey smiled indulgently at her and said, "No, not at all."

"Sorry. Ryan and the team went over the new bug database this evening, and I was trying to get them to understand how to use it. For a bunch of techies, they sure don't seem to get basic organizational structure."

"Well," said Trey, trying to get her off the subject, "You are here now. So, what's your fancy? We still have an hour of happy hour left. Want to see how happy we can get?"

Deanna laughed and said, "I'll have five bucks of happiness please."

"Coming right up, miss." Trey signaled the waiter, quite missing the scowl that went over Deanna's face after he said the word 'miss'. She didn't like being reminded of that fact.

"Two margarita's please. Patron, the silver stuff. On the rocks," he looked enquiringly at Deanna who nodded at him. The waiter left and Trey said, "I thought so. Needed to be sure though."

"So, what's on the agenda for tonight?" asked Deanna.

"I thought..." said Trey, hesitantly, "I thought...we might talk about something else? Rather than the Plan? Just for tonight?"

Deanna gave a slight nod and said, "Sure, just... I just want to go over the plan for Vegas, one more time? Rhonda and I got together and we made some changes, and I wanted to run them by you, make sure we aren't going off in a bad direction. You know there is some risk in this – there are going to be reminders and I need to know what the indicators are to back off if I have to. I need to see it in him if I push too far. Please?"

Trey did his best to keep his annoyance off his face, and nodded. "Sure, ok."

"That's what I'm here for, after all" he said, quietly, and Deanna totally missed the sarcasm in his voice.

"I know, I know..." Deanna looked at him sympathetically. "It's always Ryan this or The Kids that. So what did you want to talk about?"

"I dunno," Trey said, playing with his napkin. "Life, truth, the pursuit of happiness? Failing that, big TV's and Boobs?"

Deanna choked on the water she was taking a sip off, and coughed, and looked at Trey.

"Boobs?" she said, enquiringly, a sly smile playing around the edge of her mouth.

"Well yeah. Boobs. That's a great conversation starter for any guy. For example, do you think hers are real?" he said, nodding surreptitiously at the couple two tables away. There was a younger woman with a much older man, in a suit. And she was on display – a low plunging neckline, revealing a lot of cleavage.

Deanna glanced over, trying to be un-obvious. Then her eye's flicked back to Trey. "Fake. Definitely. And she's not as young as she's trying to portray either. See how they push up? She's not wearing a support bra under that top, and without the push up of the support bra, the breasts wouldn't push up like that. Which means over the muscle implants."

Trey looked her, open mouthed. Then he closed it and said, "See, around you, I learn all sorts of things. How are you an expert on fake boobs, anyway? Your's aren't, aren't they?"

Deanna smiled and said, "No, all real here. No, a lot of the models have them. They talk about them and compare them all the time. Even to the point of whipping them out to compare in a mirror."

Now it was Trey's turn to choke on his water.

"Really? Seriously?" he said, eyes wide, wiping his mouth.

"Yeah," chuckled Deanna. 

"Down boy, stop panting. I don't see the fuss about boobs anyway. I mean, aren't these enough?" she said, putting both hands under hers and hefting them up.

"Deanna!" hissed Trey, frantically looking around, "You'll get us kicked out."

Deanna laughed and let her breasts fall. "Well, you asked for it, big boy. And if this gets you all hot and bothered, wait till you see the dress I have...Now, are we going to get something to eat or what?"



Long after the Game Ch. 04



It was Friday – and I'd barely realized it was – and I rolled into work a little late. Deanna was there already. It was her last day, as I recalled. There were Krispy Kremes on the front counter, and she had her headset on and was chatting to someone on Skype as I walked in. I noticed that several of the donuts were missing – so obviously the other guys were in – and she gave me a big smile, and, holding her mouth over the mike, said "Morning Bossman. Sorry, gotta take this. It's about a conference job next week."

I just nodded back, took a crème filled donut (my favorite!) and wandered into the office, noting she had an overnight bag by her desk. I didn't ask why.

An hour went past quite, and at 10am, Deanna stuck her head around the door of my office, where I was playing the latest build of the game and sucking terribly at taking out the third level boss monster. I was taking notes, and the major one being "Need to tighten up the graphics on level 3". I was sure I'd heard that statement somewhere before, but it seemed appropriate, so....

"Ready to go?" she enquired, with a smile.

I put down the iPad I was holding and said, puzzled, "Go? Go where? We don't have any meetings I don't know about, do we?"

"No, Ryan. I asked you to keep this weekend free, and from your diary, it looks like you have, yes?"

To be honest, I'd totally forgotten that she'd asked. But, on the other hand, I wasn't going to be doing squat anyway. Besides beers with the guys, fixing the wireless keypad for the garage that was acting up and maybe throwing that damn Frisbee around, I had zero plans anyway. I frowned thinking that. I was being lethargic; I needed to do something about that. Next weekend.

So, it was no loss – whatever she wanted to do, I'd be free to do it. I nodded, "Of course. I keep my promises!" I said, taking full advantage of the opportunity to look like I had my shit together and quite ignoring the fact that could be considered a slam against her. Thankfully it passed her by.

"Good. We are all good to go. We have to stop by your place first. But we have plenty of time."

"Plenty of time for what?" I asked. This sounded like more than a simple day out somewhere.

"It's ok, I've taken care of everything. And... you just wait and see Mister. Get your stuff together, we need to be on our way."

She withdrew and I sat there for a moment, nostalgia washing over me yet again. She'd done things like this before. She took me to New Orleans in Louisiana for my thirtieth birthday, for Mardi Gras, as a surprise. I'd known she had planned something, but literally hadn't known where we going till we got to the airport and we got on a plane. I remembered that trip. She'd worn this backless dress – daring for her – and been handed several beads for it, even though she'd not been showing her tits, like everyone else. Back in happier times.

I pulled myself together, stuffed my laptop in my backpack, along with the iPad, shut down my desktop, grabbed my coat and shuffled out the office, where I noticed everyone else had also left early. At 10am. That would be a conversation starter on Monday, I thought.

We left her car in the parking lot and took mine – tucking her case into the trunk - and were back at my house in half an hour – despite my pleas I was no further to understanding what was going to be happening. However, on opening the door I discovered my overnight case, all packed and sitting on the floor. I looked at it, at Deanna, and at Paula, who stood in the doorway, arms crossed, grinning like an idiot.

"You kids have fun now," she said.

I just looked at her and then at Deanna, and said, "So... kids?"

She knew what I meant and said, confidently, "My sister. Yeah, I know, not your favorite person, but she'll do fine with the brood. Look at it this way, she can spend some of her money on them for a change."

I looked back at Paula, who nodded vigorously.

"Et tu Brute?" I said, with hooded eyes, doing my best to seem pathetic. It wasn't difficult.

She just smiled back. "Veni Vidi Vici," was her response. Damn me getting her to learn to read on Asterix books. I knew one day it would come back to haunt me.

I wasn't thrilled about Paula having gone through my smalls to pack them - again – they were looking a little thread-bare these days, as she had indicated last time, but what guy has the time to go underwear shopping anyway? If you do, then you go to Target, you grab the nearest pack of tightie whities, and you get the hell out of dodge. Assuming you can look the checkout girl in the eye. I never can.

With a sigh, I picked up the bag, hefted my laptop backpack and looked at Deanna and said, quietly, "this better be good for all this abuse I am getting from my children..." 

She heard me and smiled even broader. 

"Oh it will be. Trust me."

The smile froze as I just looked at her, when she said those last two words, but I didn't say anything, just keeping the stare for a second and then, grabbing the overnight bag, I turned to go.

As I left, I said, over my shoulder, "Get something for me from your Aunt. And make it expensive! She can afford it! A new Mustang, perhaps? Make sure it's a V8."

*****

We arrived at O'Hare at midday, and the moment of truth arrived. It wasn't going to be international, since no one had mentioned a passport. I had my suspicions, which were confirmed when we checked in at the United gate for Las Vegas.

As we were standing in line, I looked over at Deanna, who was doing her best impression of calm, relaxed, and seasoned traveller. She glanced back and at me and gave a tight smile.

"Really?" I said, indicating the departure board title with my head.

"C'mon. Live a little. We've got some catching up to do."

That was a disturbing – was disturbing the right word? Exciting, perhaps? - thought and one I wasn't prepared to think about right then.

We got on the plane and settled in, first class. I was glad I'd charged the iPad, since this wasn't one of the newer planes with power sockets. Once we were settled I turned to Deanna and said, "So...are there plans then? Things we are going to be doing?"

She looked at me, I could see a sparkle in her eye I'd not seen in...well years. Except the time she'd been... no, wasn't going to think about that either.

She put her finger up to my lips and just said, "Ssssh. Order a beer. We're on vacation." Then, with a mysterious grin, she pulled out some headphones from her backpack, and plugged them into her iPhone, indicating the conversation was over. I knew where we were going, but not a clue what we were going to do when we got there. And this was obviously the way she'd planned it.

She managed to doze on the flight. I didn't. I pretended to play Candy Crush Saga and failed miserably. Level 169 was currently kicking my ass and I made no progress on it the entire flight. My head was full of questions. Were we going to be intimate? How many rooms were booked? How many beds?

The thing is, to be honest, I'd not really been that engaged with the whole "I'm coming back for you" thing. The practical upshot of me saying "Well, you want me back, you work it out" was that I was not really involved – everything was happening to and for me, I wasn't instigating any of it, nor was any great emotion at the events themselves required on my part. I just sat back and enjoyed it. I didn't have to care, or really do anything at all. I just got in the boat and let someone else paddle, while I stared at the sunset. I'd known this all along, and done a great job of actively not thinking about it, but here I was, beer in hand, in a metal tube, forty thousand feet up, traveling at four hundred miles an hour, with time to think about it.

It was good and all – there's no doubt about it – but I wasn't actually challenged to have any feelings about it at all, beyond, yeah, this is nice. Deanna was so careful not to put any pressure on me, to not risk me being a flight risk and telling her to fuck off, that the result was I didn't actually have much of a feeling one way or the other about wanting her back or not.

Part of me, though, was saying, "why should I?" I was the one cheated on. I was the one who picked up the family and kept us going after embarrassing the cheating bitch. Why should I have to be putting in any effort? And, while even I realized that was a pretty nasty way to live, it was still somewhat true.

But it comes at the cost of me deliberately not putting in any effort; not having any skin in the game. This was nice, but the fact was I didn't have to care one way or another, or make effort #1. I was still protecting myself and not actively opening myself up to the experience. I wasn't keeping up my side of this...well, bargain wasn't the word. I wasn't sure what was, but I was sure I wasn't hefting my side of it. I certainly wasn't examining any feelings I had on the matter.

I was pretty sure they were there, bubbling away. I was still irrationally –or maybe it was rationally- angry at times. I was still depressed when something happened that reminded me of a particular event in the spiral down. I was obviously not over it, which made my aloofness to the whole experience a little puzzling.

I'd deliberately not been thinking about my emotional responses the whole time she'd been re-courting me. Perhaps it was a self defense mechanism. Perhaps, worryingly, I truly was over her and past it all, and the main feeling was indifference.

I had no real idea and the concept of us sharing a bed did make me at least start to think about it. Where were we going? Was I truly leaning towards rekindling our relationship? Did I even care that much? What did I really think? I couldn't even get to the big question, the key one – could I be in love and together with Deanna again? I could, however, face a more immediate question, namely, should I have another beer? She did say we were on vacation.

In the end I didn't resolve anything, and didn't make any real progress in clearing level 169 of Candy Crush, but I did have three Stella's and felt no pain, and that was something. At least I pretended it was.

What would be would be. I was resolute and confident in this piece of sterling wisdom, mainly because it meant I didn't have to do anything at all. I liked sound bites like that.

It took us three hours to get to Vegas and once we did, we did all the inevitable stuff. Standing in line waiting for luggage, the interminable wait for a cab. McCarran Airport really is a dump – designed to get as many people in and out as fast as possible, on their way to the gaming tables. It's a bit disconcerting to see slot machines in the airport lounges, but hey, this is Vegas. Welcome to consumer America.

Eventually, we pulled in at the Luxor Casino and resort. For those that have never been there, the Luxor is a massive pyramid hotel, about 40 stories high. It's jet black and there's a casino in the middle, along with a couple of theaters and a coupe of show halls. Currently they had an exhibition about the Titanic and another one about plasticized cadavers. Those who lost big at the poker tables and couldn't pay, I imagined.

At night the hotel has little white lights that march up the edges of the pyramid and a massive light that goes up vertically at the top.

I'd never stayed at the Luxor before – the times I'd been to Vegas before it had been a case of finding the cheapest place, because all we were going to do was pass out there.

Deanna went and stood in line to get our room keys, while I guarded the luggage and marveled, yet again, at the edifices man can make when he thinks he's going to get some money out of someone else. It really is magnificent what mankind can achieve if he sets his mind to it. It's just a shame that 90% of the time, it only happens if some one can see a profit in it. We only went to the moon because we couldn't let the Russians get there first.

Deanna came back, smiling broadly and off we went into those weird elevators that go at an angle. If you think about it, elevators have to do that in a pyramid – all the rooms are on the outside of the pyramid, and the interior is basically empty.

We were on the 34th floor, and it was weird, walking along a corridor one side of which just went out into the great empty expanse of the interior of the hotel. At 34 stories up, you could just climb over the 3 foot wall on the interior edge and jump straight down to the floor of the hotel. One hell of a place for a suicide. You'd make one huge splash when you hit the bottom.

Deanna made a great show of opening the door to our room and boom, suddenly it was the moment of truth. How many beds? I was unaccountably – or maybe very accountably - nervous for a second.

I shook it off and walked in. We had a suite! Two rooms – a living area with couch and table and small desk, and a room in the back with a large king sized bed.

I looked at the bed, not saying anything. Deanna came in the room behind me, and she didn't say anything either for a moment, then filled it with, "Well, look, obviously I want to get you into bed. But if you really don't want to, the couch has a pull out bed. I can sleep there."

I looked back at her and then the bed, and murmured something that wasn't actually intelligible. Whatever I said, well, it sounded good to me.

Deanna came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me – the most intimate thing anyone besides my kids had done in almost two years – and just breathed, holding me. It was a strange tableau, I thought, if anyone else was watching. Me, standing there, arms at my sides, staring at a bed, and her behind me, arms wrapped around me, trying to mold herself to my body. Me offering no intimacy and her offering it all.

After a moment, she said, "It's going to be OK Ryan. Really. Go with the flow. It'll be great."

She was managing to keep her spirits up, and for that I was grateful, because I was all over the place.

She released me and said brightly, "Right, lets dump our luggage and go down and have a drink. We are on vacation!"

So we did that. We went downstairs, and she seemed to know exactly where she was going. She led me out of the hotel, across a walk way over the very big streets they have in Vegas, and into the New York New York hotel across the strip. I just followed along, trying to sort out how I felt.

She led me into an Irish bar in the New York New York casino, called Nine Fine Irishman. It was right up my alley, I have to say. Massive wood covered walls, with a huge bar area, and, well, it was just the kind of place I could spend all afternoon. I literally just stopped – taking it all in - when we walked in, and Deanna walked a bit ahead of me, suddenly realizing I wasn't behind her.

She looked back at me and smiled and said, "Yeah, I thought it would be your thing. Lets get a drink."

She gestured to a table that – I shit you not – actually had a beer pump built into it. In fact, it had two. You could just top your drink up out of this thing and it worked out how much you'd had and what the cost was.

So that's what we did. 

As we sat down, Deanna put her bag on the table, signaled for two glasses and then, once we got them, said, "Let me serve you, my lord."

Something in my eyes must have alerted her that there was too much happening.

She finished pouring and then just sat there, looking at me, sympathy evident in her eyes. "It's all too much, isn't it?"

I took a long draft, and just nodded, not knowing what to say.

She pursed her lips, and then said, "Look, Ryan. Obviously this... this is something I'm doing here. It's something I need to do, for you. I'm not trying to make up... well, for... well perhaps I am. But either way, I'm trying to make new memories with you. Something that's us. Not anyone else. New experiences. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

I just nodded dumbly again, and then, thinking I should contribute to the conversation, I said, "So what's the plan? Is there one?"

Deanna took a drink herself and then smiled at me, mischievously. "Sure there is. Tonight, we go to the LAX nightclub, in the Luxor. It's the bar at the top of the pyramid. Amazing views, the whole nine yards. Yes... I know..."

I had raised a hand and was about to open my mouth to protest, but Deanna overrode me.

"I know night clubs are not your favorite thing. But trust me. Tonight will be an experience you will never forget. Go with it... please? I want to do something with you I will never do with anyone else. Please..?" Trust me. She asked me to trust her. And I did. But I didn't. I mean, I could, but I couldn't – or maybe I should, but maybe I shouldn't. This was troubling. 

I sat there, staring at her. In the end I shrugged. What the hell did I care? And I took another drink to mask the fact that yeah, I did care. And I wondered why.

We sat for another hour, and I managed to do in three more full sized beers. Which on top of the three I'd had on the plane, meant I was ready for bed.

Deanna knew this and guided us back to the hotel room, where I flaked out unceremoniously for three hours.

When I awoke, the sun had gone down and it was dark, and I could hear Deanna humming in the other room. For a second, I was transported back eighteen months – Deanna hummed when she was preparing herself for an event – when she was happy, had things under control and things were going the way they were supposed to. She usually hummed bad eighties songs – stuff from Journey or some hair band. I recognized what she was humming now as The Final Countdown.

I yawned theatrically, and sat up on the bed. I was still dressed, but now I just felt sticky, as you do after a long journey and then too much beer. My head, thankfully – and surprisingly -, was clear.

There was a tap on the door and it opened, and just Deanna's head poked through. "Come on lazy head. We have dinner and then the club. It's just past 9 now. Take a shower, shave and get some clothes on. Paula packed some stuff for you."

With that, the door closed and I got out of bed and stretched the Greek God body I possessed – well, almost. In my head. And walked over to my suitcase, to see what horrors Paula had selected for me to wear.

Thankfully, she'd done a good job. My black button up shirt, black pants, shoes, socks, and the least nasty underwear I owned. Plus a black tux jacket, which I'd only bought as a joke, but found went with a ton of stuff.

I showered, did all the ablution stuff, and noted the scent of perfume in the air and the fact that the shower had been used, and all of Deanna's stuff was laid out neatly.

I dressed, noting again that I needed to get back to the gym, and then went into the living area of the suite, and stopped dead.

Deanna was there, but not any Deanna I'd ever seen before.

Her hair was long, silky, but also teased, so it had more body. Not quite the large hair of the 80's, but certainly reminiscent of it. Her makeup was flawless – even more than usual; it was classy and elegant. Bright red lipstick, some rouge, some eye shadow, eyebrows trimmed and flawlessly laid in. Long earrings, a choker, the whole nine yards.

She stood and pirouetted and said, "You like?"

The dress... wow, the dress. It was short, tight at the hips, coming down to about mid thigh. But the top part.. well, the dress was split down the front, and I mean split. All the way down to her navel. It gathered on either side, so you couldn't see her breasts, but if she lent left or right, the split would move and a breast would heave into view. It showed off all the cleavage she had, and I knew I'd spend all night wondering if a full tit would drop out or not. It was white, and as such, you knew she wasn't wearing much underneath. She had on white stockings – tights? She could see my gaze and pulled up the dress a little – they were thigh highs. You couldn't wear garters with this dress because it was too tight in the thigh and it would show through.




Long after the Game Ch. 04



I noticed she had on a pendant – it was a long pendant, that came down to right between her breasts, with something small and flashy on it, to draw attention, and it was finished off with white stiletto four-inch heels.

I literally did not know what to say - she looked like a nineties' porn star, but classier. I opened my mouth to say something and nothing came out.

"OK," she said, "Yeah, I can imagine this is a bit of a surprise. So, here's the deal. I want to make new memories with you. But there is a new part of me. Something I discovered. We've never really talked about it, but we should. I don't know how much you know of...what happened. But I found that I really get off in...potentially discoverable situations."

She waited for me to respond. Clearly, this was not a conversation she was relishing, and it could go sideways for her based on my response. But she was having it, and I felt that deserved some respect.

"Yeah, I was aware."

She looked down, and was obviously embarrassed. "Well, regardless of how it was discovered ... it's part of me now. And... I want it to be something we do together. Something we explore together. I am monumentally sorry that we didn't find this together. I will carry the shame of that till I die. But it's there and... well, you deserve better. You deserve to be the recipient of this. And well..."

She drifted off. I went over and picked up a glass and filled it with water at the tap, taking big gulps. Drinking early in the day dehydrates you drastically. Plus it gave me something to do while I tried to digest this. I knew, intellectually, that this day would be coming. Deanna had been putting on the full court press and so her setting us up for getting in the sack was inevitable. But, even with knowing it was coming, I was unprepared. But how do you be prepared to get back in the sack with your ex wife, who betrayed you completely, and in doing so, discovered a turn on switch that you had nothing to do with. There was no manual for that and I was at sea.

I gestured to Deanna and said, "Let's sit down for moment." 

Deanna looked at her watch worriedly and said, "We have reservations at the Camelot Steakhouse in half an hour...?"

"Deanna," I growled, "Sit. Down."

She sat, anxiously.

"Look Deanna, this is going mighty fast. This..." I gestured at her outfit, "this night club, your.... expectations. You never asked me what I want. You just seem to assume I'm going to climb back on the boat and then just bounce all over the rapids, and I... well, I'm just not sure. You seem to think we are just going to jump back in the sack and it'll all be great, and you'll get your jollies and..."

"Hush, baby..." said Deanna, leaning forward and putting her fingers on my lips. She smiled at me – properly, for once, not that bright and brittle one she'd be using a lot recently. "It's ok. I know its going fast. I don't know how to throttle this though. You've not exactly been full of feedback so far, you know?"

I just looked at her.

"Yeah, I get it. You aren't even sure where you are emotionally. I understand. I did something pretty fucking terrible and we've never really talked about it. The thing is, Ryan, I don't even know where to start that conversation. Besides saying sorry a million times, I don't know what to say. I guess, I was taking the cue from you. I need to show you, not just talk about it. You know? This is me trying to show you. I want to do things only with you. Not with anyone else. I know how I arrived at this hurt you terribly, and I cannot say I'm sorry enough. Not for getting caught, but for doing it. I betrayed everything I hold dear and important and I was so full of hubris that I thought it would never get back to me. I've learned since that that's never true."

She stopped and looked down.

"I don't know what else to do, Ryan. I need to show you that you are the most important person in my life. That all I want is you and our life back. There are new dimensions to me, but I need to work that into our...new relationship. You know? Please? Meet me half way?"

I just sat there, staring at her. I thought about our lives together. I thought about the hurt I've been through. Then I thought about what Solomon had said about my dry spell. And I thought "What the fuck. I can't be hurt any more than I already have been."

"OK. Let's do this. If it goes too far, I reserve the right to stop it, ok? But... sure, ok. Go on then, lets live dangerously."

Deanna's wide smile reached her eyes – she gave me the smile that a wife gives her husband when he's made her happiest. The one that goes right through you and is only for you.

"You won't regret this," she breathed at me.

"The outfit though... that's a bit....?" I said, trying not to be rude about it but not letting it go, either.

"Oh this? This is about you. This is about me teasing other people and you knowing it's just for you. The thing is, this is Vegas. We know no one here. I can go out and wear this and not give a crap what any one thinks because we are so far from anyone who matters. It's about titillation and fun, and I want you to be as hard for me as I am wet for you by the end of the night, ok? Just for you. So don't be surprised if there's a little flashing going on. Alright? Just a warning..."

And so we went out. And heads turned everywhere we went. We went to dinner and instead of sitting across from each other, she insisted we sat next to each other. And she had her hands in my pants almost immediately after sitting down, and had my fingers up her dress, where I found she had no panties on.

She kept leaning forward, almost daring a breast to come free. Occasionally I looked around and there were never less than four or five pairs of eyes, willing it to happen. Some of them were women, too.

I made eye contact with one guy, and he gave me a thumbs up and nodded at Deanna and then sighed, theatrically. His wife, sitting opposite him, looked around, spied Deanna, eyes narrowed, and then she swung around back to her husband. I made a point of not looking over there again. He wasn't getting laid tonight, I was sure.

At one point Deanna pushed her fingers into herself, then sucked on them, then ate some lobster and smiled sweetly at me and whispered, "Well, it might taste like fish, but I think I taste better. Want to try?" and offered me her fingers. And, I'm ashamed to say – oh who am I kidding? I'm not ashamed at all - I sucked on them. And enjoyed it. A lot.

As we were walking out of the steakhouse, we walked into an assload of younger girlies, all dolled up and wearing the same - or less - than versions of what Deanna was, although slightly less slutty. I couldn't see a guy around and was wondering what was up until I noticed that the restaurant was right next to the venue for the Thunder from Down Under. Not, as I joked to Deanna, a show featuring farting Australians, but, in fact, their version of the Chippendales. Disgusting if you ask me. All those guys cavorting in next to nothing, flexing their pec's for women to scream over. Just not right in any way. Obviously. No, I'm not a hypocrite at all. All guys will back me up on this.

I was happy to note that Deanna got some admiring glances even from this audience. One girl even came up to ask her where she got the dress. To be honest, even I wanted to know that.

We went and played craps for twenty minutes after dinner. Deanna, doing her best to line up for Slut of the Year, vanished for a minute, then came back and insisted on rubbing the dice before I threw them out, grinning and winking at me the whole time. By then I knew what she'd done – she'd gone and rubbed her hand all over her pussy and come back and coated the dice. I honestly had no idea she had this kind of mind. We'd been married years and I'd never seen any thing like it. It did make me wonder what she'd been doing for the past eighteen months, to be honest. Her diaries said one thing but this... this was pretty wow.

And then it was time for the nightclub. It was almost midnight by the time we got up there – having forked over a hefty fee to get in, to a guy who had his eyes out on storks when he got a load of what Deanna was wearing.

The view from the club was breathtaking, although the view next to me was pretty outstanding too. It was weird, being there with the woman who had had my kids, who I'd been through thick and thin with, yet her dressed – and behaving – in a way that I'd never even dreamed of, let alone expected. But this was one hell of a ride, no question, and I wasn't getting off it, despite other people's attempts to get me to.

Guys hit on Deanna, even with me right there. One guy wanted to 'dance' with her, and she was demure, and just said "No". He hung around until eventually I was forced to explain what stalking was, and nodded at the bouncers.

Even then, when I went to the bathroom, I came back to find a couple doing their best to cozy up with her. She was laughing and drinking a drink and doing every freaking thing a woman does with body language to convey that she is interested. It was outrageous flirting and the couple was not pleased when I came back and literally just pushed myself between Deanna and the guy, with my back to him.

Deanna, to her credit, threw her arms around me and made kissy face and told me, "I'm so glad your back honey. We have unfinished business." Which was nice.

But other than that, most people just kept their distance and made do with the floorshow. And she put that on, in spades. We danced and she allowed the skirt part of the dress she was wearing to ride up a little. With it being so tight around the thighs, it tended to do that anyway. So everyone got to see she was wearing thigh highs.

It was all a new experience for me. While I've always thought Deanna was hot, I've never been with the most obviously hot and slutty woman in the room before. I could feel the gazes on my collar – ranging from "Lucky Man" to "What does he have that I don't?" to" How do I get me one of those?"

It took a few drinks, but I finally relaxed into it – Deanna was obviously out of her mind, but it was pretty sexy, and what the hell did it cost me? If only Solomon could see us now.

The only bad part was the bouncer wagging his finger at us, when Deanna was groping my groin in the corner. He walked past, glanced at us, stopped, did a double take and just looked at us and then wagged his finger.

I looked at Deanna and she looked at me, grinning wildly. She put her arms around me and breathed in my ear, "I am so wet, I'm going to leave a stain on these chairs."

I just looked back at her, adjusted my crouch and said, "Time to get out of here?"

She tilted her head and gave me the most porn filled smile and said, "lead on, my pussy awaits."

So we left. And had sex in the elevator. She knew there were cameras and she didn't care. The elevator took exactly 62 seconds to reach the floor of the casino and she had my dick out and was impaled on it almost instantly. I was as hard as steel and she was both wet and hot. And tight. I could see her face reflected in the chrome doors of the elevator, eyes screwed up, moaning softly. I watched the floor numbers go down and managed to extract myself before it hit zero, but was still zipping up when the doors opened. Well, trying to push that steel cock back into my pants and do it up, anyway. Deanna did at least stand in front of me as I desperately adjusted myself trying not to zip my dick up in the zipper of my pants. I've seen Something About Mary and I didn't want to make that mistake.

We went straight to the other bank of elevators, the ones that go to the rooms, and up we went, to the 34th floor, where I proceeded to do her again, with her bent over the little wall that stopped people falling into the casino. I figured we got two for one there – potentially being seen AND fear of death from falling!

Honestly though, I didn't last that long. I was hot, she was hot, I hadn't had it for months and she was wet, very willing and just wanted it. We hadn't had sex that hot in years, if ever. 

I blew my load in two minutes of pumping and she straightened up and turned and just kissed me. She was just lost in lust and it did pass through my brain that at that precise moment, it may not have mattered who was fucking her. It was the environment and everything that went into it that was doing it for her, not me necessarily.

Quickly, to mark the moment, I dragged out my phone and got a picture of her, disheveled, and wearing the dress, one boob threatening to tumble out, with a magnificent smile on her face. I then forwarded the picture to my email, because I've learned that trying to get a photo off an Apple iPhone without dicking around with iCloud is a nightmare. Simpler to send it to your email using a draft email, and you can pick it up on your PC later easily.

Anyway, we tumbled into our room, and it went on. She went down on me with a passion, and I was hard as a rock again in about seven minutes flat. Another record.

She threw all the drapes open, and I was ok with that, because we were on the 34th floor and there were not other hotels looking in on us, so why not.

And then we fucked. Well, we did. We had, as Michael Douglas called it, in Basic Instinct, "the fuck of the century". It went on and on, and for some reason I lasted for almost two hours. I even got Deanna's ass, finally. She'd come complete with lube and almost begged me for it. I went easy; I know it can be painful and I didn't want to hurt her, but after a few minutes, she was pushing back on me.

We did every position we could imagine. I ate her, she sucked me, we kissed and made out – she even licked her juices from my face. She talked dirty, on occasion... now I look back on it, it was like every porno movie you've ever seen, made real. It should have felt tawdry and sleazy and I suppose it was, but it didn't feel that way at the time.

I had her over the couch, on the bed, pushed up against the door, on the bathroom counters... everything we could think of. She particularly liked me doing her from behind when she was facing the mirror, so she could see herself getting banged, and see me at the same time. Making eye contact when doing it doggy style is not something you get to do every day.

The second time I exploded, she insisted I do it on her face, with her tongue out, telling me, "Give me that cum. I want that cum, I want to taste it. Blast it on my face." So I obliged. I did not kiss her afterwards though. I have some limits. I know some guys get off it, but it's a line for me personally.

We slept for about four hours, and I woke to her sucking my dick, something that had never happened in the past for me, and I suspected might never happen again. But I got that bucket list item checked off.

She was going at it with enthusiasm, stopping only to look me in the eye and say, "Got a third time in you, lover?" and not waiting for an answer, went back to it. My body betrayed me, or at the very least, didn't ask permission, and boom, there it was, instant stiffy. I'm sorry, I challenge any man to not get an erection when being awoken that way, by an obviously hot woman who can't get enough of your dick. Right. Thought so.

And we did it again. Slower this time. I mean, by now, she must have been getting sore, right? I know I was starting to chafe a little. But it was nice. We chose positions where we could look at each other while we screwed. She wanted to be done up against the windows, but we couldn't because the windows have such a slant on the, being the side of a pyramid and all. This time I ended up blasting what little load I had left into her in the missionary position. I ended up clambering off and trying to stretch a muscle in my thigh which was cramping up. I looked back and saw her, scooping my cum out of her puffy pussy, and licking it off her hands. She locked eyes with me and said, "I've so missed you. And learning about doing this with you."

I just smiled back and said, "Glad to be of service."

We barely left the room the next day. We slept in, got room service brunch, then went back to New York New York to do the roller coaster, and back to Nine Fine Irish man, where we lubricated ourselves for another evening.

That evening, on Saturday, we had another nice meal. This time French, at Andre's in the Monte Carlo hotel. Afterwards we had cognac and a cigar – well I had a cigar anyway – in the lounge bar, where we pretended to be British Aristocrats, and people watched.

Thankfully, Deanna was less 90's porn star and more classy mom that night. I don't think I had another night like the one before in me. We did talk about fantasies though.

"So, I know we talked about it before. When we were married..." Deanna coughed a bit on her Courvoisier VSOP, "Sorry. That phrase. It's like the title to a book. Anyway, I know we talked then, but what about now? What about after last night? I mean... I was a bit wild..? Did it...totally change your view of me?"

I considered my response, taking a deep sniff of the brandy, and then taking a drag on the illegal Cohiba cigar I was smoking. I was doing my best impression of a deep, grown up man I could. I could tell she wasn't impressed.

"I don't think it changed it that much. Added something, for sure. A new dimension, something like that. It's not like I hadn't already seen it though. I knew it was there."

She looked away at that. After a minute she asked, in a very quiet voice, "So... where are we, do you think? We've gotten back on that horse now, so to speak. What are you thinking? I can never tell any more."

I gave her a lop sided smile and said, "Occupational hazard I'm afraid. I was hurt and I don't wear it on my sleeve any more."

She nodded and said, "Yeah, the therapist said that would be a likely result of my..." she swallowed and finished, "affair."

"Look, I dunno Deanna. Last night was... well, awesome. No question. The phrase, 'a good time was had by all' certainly applies. But we have bigger problems than that. We have a car that has been badly damaged. One good screw doesn't fix it."

Deanna's face slowly fell, and then she muttered, "I'll bet you've been waiting all day to use that."

"I'm not saying there is no future Deanna," I said, gently, putting my glass down and leaning forward. "I'm just saying I don't think that trust is rebuilt that easily, you know?"

Deanna pulled one leg up onto the chair, and wrapped her arms around it and put her chin on her knee.

"I know. I know. When I started out on this, I told you that I knew trust wouldn't return quickly. I'm just trying to give you a reason to even try, you know? Give you a reason to want to even try," she said, not looking at me.

"I get it Deanna. I really do. But after what happened...well, you can't really blame me for being a bit standoffish, can you? I'm here aren't I? We are doing this, together. Some people would have bet that we would never be here, doing this, having these drinks and stuff. Hell, I am one of the people who would have made that bet."

Deanna sniffed. "I know. You are right, it's just... so hard. We've been apart so long and I've been thinking about you so much. I just want to pass go and collect two hundred dollars, you know?"

She thought for a moment and then brightened and said, "But you are right. I shouldn't push. We've done more than I imagined we would have already. You know, the girls said we had to redefine our relationship. That the one we had is broken and gone and now we have to build a new one. I'm trying. I hope you notice it?"

I smiled and picked up the glass and took a small sip and said, "Sure I have."

"Good," she replied, "so are you going to try too?"

And that was the sixty four thousand dollar question, wasn't it?




Long after the Game Ch. 04



*****

"Sooo....?"

The question was asked in that very knowing way that women have, when they already know the answer, but it's juicy and they want you to spill anyway.

Deanna blushed and stammered out, "It was...pretty great, actually. He went with it. I honestly didn't know if he would, but he did. And oh my god. I saw stars, you know?"

"Better than that other guy?" asked Rhonda, bluntly.

Deanna looked sharply at her, but thought for a second. It was a legitimate question.

"Oh definitely. That was all about discovery. This is about...knowing what you want. We did some other stuff. Your suggestion about dressing up, Rhonda. I think it was so out of character for me, it forced him to sit up and take notice. And, to be honest, it was damn slutty. I loved it. I couldn't be like that all the time, for sure, but once in a while, where no one knows me? I could go for that. It got me all warmed up for Ryan, that's for sure. Well, more warmed up."

They were sitting in the coffee shop, as usual. All armed with lattes, and Trey was hovering on the outskirts. It was obvious he wasn't thrilled to be there, but it was obvious he was paying attention. Only Mae noticed his wince when Deanna made her declaration about her evening.

"We spent all night doing it. Some of the hottest sex I've ever had, to be honest. And then again next day. I'm still sore, to be frank with you girls. Oh, sorry Trey," she said, noticing Trey and his discomfort.

"Frank sex talk a bit much for you, Trey boy?" asked Rhonda, with a smirk. Trey just looked at her and then looked away, not trusting himself to respond.

"So, ok, you got laid, introduced him to a new you. What's the verdict?" asked Mae, leaning forward and curious.

"I really don't know Mae. I just don't. Yeah, he was into it – he's not been laid in forever I'm sure and it was on a plate. I did ask him about how he felt and he just... avoided the issue. I don't know if I am getting through or what. I thought I'd know more, you know? The history we have, knowing each other. Even working for him for those two weeks... he's just a lot more closed than he used to be. I still don't really know for sure where I stand. But he's not told me to get lost, and we have a standing dinner date. It's just so...frustrating, you know? I hoped I'd be a lot further along by now."

Gina put her hand on Deanna's arm and said, "Steady there girl. We've – you've – been at this a couple of months. It takes a lot longer to overcome what happened for a man. You know what you want, he has to come to that by himself."

"I know, Gina... I just...want this to be done. Decided. Get us on our way."

"You are totally task based, you know that?" stated Trey, suddenly.

"I'm sorry?" asked Deanna, puzzled.

"Well, it's all about getting things done, isn't it? It's not about how he feels, it's about, here's Task A. This is what I want to happen, now how do I get it done, with you. Maybe that's part of the problem? You are approaching this like it's a bunch of tasks, and it's not. It's time. It's effort. It's showing him that you are dependable. It's not about grand gestures, although they have their place. It's about the daily grind. It's about being there, day in, day out. Doing the little things. You just want to pay the fine and go home, but it's not like that."

There was silence to this outburst, and Deanna looked wildly at the other women.

"Is he right? Am I going about this all wrong?"

The other girls avoided looking at each other till Mae said, thoughtfully, "Well, he may be. But what else can you do? You made it clear that you are not expecting to just be totally forgiven, right? That you don't expect trust to suddenly just spring up again, yes?


Deanna nodded at Mae, close to tears. Rhonda got up and sat on the arm of the chair Deanna was sitting in, rubbing her arms.

"Look, I didn't mean to bring everyone down. I'm just trying to be realistic here. You did something pretty terrible Deanna. It's not going to be okay over night. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try or that what you are doing is wrong. I just think your expectations might be a little high is all." Trey was doing his best to smooth it over a bit.

"He's right, Deanna. I gotta agree," said Gina. Rhonda nodded sympathetically. "Take it slow, I mean, look at it this way, he's not told you to get lost. That door hasn't been closed, and it so easily could be."

Deanna nodded, somewhat mollified. "Yeah, I guess. I just wanna....get on with life, you know? Get back that close family feeling."

"I know," said Gina, "I know."

"Hey, after the last thing, maybe things will turn around. It's a pretty big gesture, after all."

There was silence for a moment, where everyone was lost in their thoughts, sipping coffee and looking at nothing in particular.

In an attempt to brighten up the proceedings, Mae said, "So, what's everyone doing tonight? Dinner anyone?"

"Can't. Got a hot date," grinned Rhonda.

Gina sighed and said, "I have 30 short stories to grade. Wish I could." Gina was a community college teacher, teaching English and cultural studies.

"Trey and I are heading out to the Insurance Award Ball tonight. It's a charity event. It was the first place we went when we tried dating. It seems the least I can do for all the help he's given. Plus, the food was out of this world," intoned Deanna, her face brightening.

Mae reacted to that news with a scowl.

"Yes, and we'd better get going if we are going to get changed and get there," said Trey, looking at his watch and getting up.

Everyone stood up at once, apart from Mae.

"Deanna, can I speak with you for a second?" she said, quietly.

Deanna looked at her, then glanced at Trey and said, "Go, I'll catch up in a second."

"What's up Mae?" she asked, sitting back down again.

"Are you sure this dinner thing is a good idea, Deanna?"

"What? It's just dinner. He needs a date, so I'm going along. It's not like it is a date. I'm just...an escort. Although not that sort," she chuckled.

"No, I mean, Trey has been helpful, but... I just... what would Ryan say, if he knew?"

"Knew what? I went out to a charity awards event? It's not a big deal Mae. He'd totally understand. I did it before, when we were married. Well, once, anyway. We are divorced, he doesn't get to dictate my life." Deanna was puzzled by Mae's attitude.

"Of course you are right, Deanna. I just think... this could be seen in other ways."

Deanna snorted. "It's just a charity event Mae. I'm not going to sleep with the guy. Started down that path once and no, not going to happen. He's just a friend. A helpful friend. And he deserves my time."

"Of course," repeated Mae, clearly disengaging. "Have a nice night Deanna."

*****

I was having dinner with Paula about a week after getting back from Las Vegas. Saffron was at a sleepover and Jamie was next door. They had a pool and I'd sent him to swimming lessons and he was now officially a fish. He spent every moment he wasn't playing video games in the pool next door. Which was fine by me. The next door neighbors, Bob and Tommy –a gay married couple– had a teenage daughter was also both a good baby sitter as well as a licensed life guard. She was going to be a hottie later in life, and I think Jamie was quite taken with her. For his age. I couldn't help but smile – he was a chip off the old block. He may be adopted, but some genes are carried through the soul.

Anyway, Paula and I had gotten some Giordano's pizza, and after a few non flattering comments from my eldest born about waist lines and me acting like a pig with my snout firmly in the food, while we were watching the latest episode of Person of Interest, she dropped a bomb of a question on me. 

"So, Dad," she said, dripping a large dollop of pizza pie into her mouth – as I said before, anyone who's ever had Chicago deep dish pizza will know that that is how you have to eat it. 

"How was Las Vegas? Get your nasty on with Mom?"

It was said so casually, and I literally choked on the piece I was chewing. Your oldest child should not be asking you about your sex life, particularly not if it's she's a girl and you are not. Not in my life, anyway.

I paused the TV and bugged my eyes at Paula, and she smiled and chewed, and then said, "C'mon Dad. You've been way less of a bear since you went away. It was obviously what those Brits call a 'dirty weekend'. Just kinda curious about where all this is going?"

"Well, " I said, trying desperately to figure out how to respond to this, "firstly, don't talk with your mouth full. And secondly, that's a good question. Honestly? I don't know."

"Well, we know what she wants, right?"

I nodded, chewing some more. The pizza was there. It was daring me. What are you gonna do? Pizza can't be allowed to get away with sassing you.

"You know Paula, I know we talked a bit when I... your mom and I broke up. You know what happened. I don't really think we've talked much about what you thought? Of her? Of what she did?"

Paula shrugged and said, "Well, it sucked. She blew our family apart. What she did was unforgivable. I mean, there's no other way to look at it."

"Well, I dunno Paula. She betrayed me, not you."

"No she didn't Dad. She betrayed all of us. This whole family. What she did split us apart. How can you sit there and say she didn't fuck with all of us?"

I frowned at her, for the bad language and she rolled her eyes.

"C'mon Dad. I'm fifteen. It's not like I've never heard the word. The world is out there, and people use it all the time. Get over it."

"But seriously, what she did was shitty. There's no other word for it. Should you forgive her? I dunno. Kinda up to you. From where I sit... well, she's mom. It would be great for us to be a family again, although how you'd trust her, I don't know."

I was astounded. This was all coming out of Paula, matter of factly. No histrionics, just stated as though she was talking about homework. What surprised me most though, was the fact that there was no plea's for "you can trust her now" or anything else. It was pure pragmatism and blunt pragmatism at that.

"I...ok then," I said, not knowing what else to say really. I eyed her doubtfully, not entirely sure I was copasetic with everything she'd said. It was all too neat and tidy and too along my own lines.

I needn't have worried. 

"We definitely had a better time all together though. And you have to admit, the trip to Minnesota was like old times, right? And it's not like you've been exactly perfect, Dad, throughout all this either."

"I...what?" I asked, piece of pizza on it's way to mouth and now forgotten.

"Oh come on Dad. You seriously think you can pull the shenanigans you did with the video screen at the ball game and it not come back on us? I, for one, could have done without that. And so could Saffron. I had to deck three different people for making smart assed remarks at school, and I know Saffron had issues too. Of course everyone knew about it. And we had to deal. I'm glad you had your fun and inflicted some pain on Mom, but you really weren't thinking about us at the time, were you? So yeah, we could have done without that. So don't sit there imagining you are whiter than white Dad. Cause you're not."

And she then just took another bite of pizza. I sat there, staring at her. The worst part was, she was right. All of it. I hadn't thought about her and Saffron and Jamie at all. I was just hurting and had reacted. I'd congratulated myself at the time for how clever I was, and how much hurt I'd inflicted on Deanna, never thinking about the impact to others I loved.

She noticed me staring and said, "It's ok Dad. I figured you hadn't thought about it. Just wanted you to know. It's all okay. I'd rather be here than with Mom, cause I don't know how I'd look at her every day and not be pretty disgusted. Saffron and Jamie just want us to be a family again, in case you are interested."

"I'm... sorry, Paula. I honestly didn't think. You are right and I'm sorry."

Paula put down the pizza piece and smiled and then scooted over to me, and snuggled up to me. "It's ok Dad. Really. It's all sorted now. If you want Mom back, we are good with that. I just want you to know it's nice to have one parent who understands a vow. I'm sure I can get over it with Mom over time, and it's nice having her around. So, whatever you want, we'll roll with it. Just so you know."

I honestly didn't know what to do at that point. I put my arm around Paula, and unpaused the TV and hoped that she didn't see the tears on my face. Whatever decisions I had to make, I had to consider the kids .

Then she spoilt it by nudging me and saying, coyly, "So, was it good then Dad? Clean out the old pipes?" And I spit out the pizza I was chewing and just couldn't stop laughing.

*****

It was a Thursday. I remember that quite distinctly. I was trying to figure out how to pay for a Quality Assurance group to start testing the game – it's one thing to have some friends and family play it, but it's another thing entirely to have a professional group on it, trying to break it or hack it. That takes expertise and, of course, money. We'd budgeted for some, but now that I'd done the research it was apparent our budget was woefully insufficient. I was trying to figure out if I could hire just one QA manager, then use cheap students and people from Craigslist, and if that would give me what I needed, or if I was fooling myself.

I was actually on a Skype call with one of the guys I'd been negotiating with when I became aware there was a man standing over me. I glanced him over – it was a surprise, but except for the two weeks Deanna was at the front desk, people who wanted to talk to us would often wander in, and look around till they found someone to ask. Obviously the guys were out at lunch or whatever it was they were doing, and this guy had found me. My office door was open, after all.

However, after giving him he once over, I did decide this was something out of the ordinary. He was breathing hard, his teeth were clenched, as were his hands, when I glanced down at them, and the expression on his face, well, lets just say the words "Charitable" wouldn't spring to mind.

He looked pissed. I had no idea why. I wondered if we owed him money.

"Can I help you?" I inquired, trying to smile while wondering if I should get up and come out from my desk? No. He looks pissed about something. Better to have the space between us. In case he does something and I have to...um.. run, or something.

"You're Ryan right?" he said, forcing the words out. He was tall, sandy hair, and the most intense blue eyes I've ever seen.

Doing my best to disarm the situation I smiled wider and said, "Depends, do we owe you money? If so, no, definitely not. Ryan left for...Argentina. Yeah. About a year ago. He loves it there. Wants to travel around. On foot. By himself. Something about 'living off the land'? You want to go there and look for him."

I was doing my best to not be intimidated or get this guy angrier than he already was. He looked me over intently for a few more seconds, and then it just all seemed to collapse in on itself. The anger passed, he pursed his lips and just crashed into the chair in front of my desk. He was still staring at me, but the aggressive stance was gone. It wasn't replaced by a friendly demeanor, but at least I didn't feel like I was in a fight or flight situation anymore, so there was that.

There were a couple more moments, where I could see this mystery man groping for what to say next. He finally settled on, "You're an asshole, you know?"


For the second time in as many minutes I was taken aback.

"Excuse me?" I said, trying not to be angry, but not doing a great job of it.

"An asshole. Like I said. She takes you to fucking Vegas, runs your company for you, all sorts of things, and what do you do? You take it for fucking granted." He snarled that last line.

Things were starting to drop into place. I suddenly realized who this man was. This was her secret weapon. Her 'advisor'. The one she's mentioned but not gone into detail on. At the time I hadn't pushed for details, since I was still holding my wall up. I simply didn't want to get into the details of her life; who she was seeing, what she was doing, beyond that which I had to in order to be a co-parent with her. Her coming to me was her idea, and I was watching it from the outside.

As all this went through my mind, the question arose, 'where are we now?', which the answer of which would inform how I reacted to this guy. I got the impression from Deanna more and more that she wanted to know too. It was never asked outright, and there were no deeply suggestive looks where I was given the time to compose an answer, but it was there, hovering. I knew it, and I was deliberately not thinking about it because I just didn't know what to think. I'm good at that – procrastination and avoidance. You may have noticed that. I wonder if the Bears will suck again this year? Probably.

I opened my mouth to say something. Nothing came out. I closed it again, then after a second said, "I'm presuming we are talking about Deanna here, yes? Just to clarify? Wouldn't want to go off half cocked."

The guy nodded miserably, staring fixedly at one of the stupid desk toys I have. Magnetic balls. One of the guys had made it look like a helix.

"So, you are...? Her 'friend', yes? Her secret weapon. The advisor?"

Another nod. He still didn't meet my eyes.

"Can I ask, what's your interest in all this? Why are you here?"

At that, his eyes yanked up, blazing for a moment.

"Because you're an asshole. Someone needs to tell you that."

I sat back a bit, thinking hard, trying to work out what this guy's horse in the race was. I mean, he was acting like....oh...fuck.

I could see that he could see something crawl across my face. His blazing eyes retreated again.

"You have feelings for her." I said it softly, as statement, not a threat.

He leaned forward, slowly, hands clasped together, staring again at another toy on my desk.

"She's....I...look, I know. I know she's all hung up on you. You are all she talks about. There's no room for anyone else. But there she is for you. Trying so hard."

He turned his eyes to me and they were haunted.

"You told her she had to work out how to get back in your graces. Well, here she is, doing exactly that. Single minded to the last. She has a plan and by god, she's going to stick to it."

I rubbed my face with my hand, thinking "oh shit". I could feel the end of day stubble.

"Well, what are we going to do about that?" I asked, metaphorically.

Metaphorical or no, he answered anyway. "Someone needs to point it out to you, you know? You are treating it as a joke. She's waiting for you, for a sign, for forgiveness. She can't forgive herself until you do. But she won't ask. She doesn't think she deserves that. But you just sit there, taking everything she's giving you, all amusement and joy. Take take take." There was bitterness in his voice.

"Someone just needs to tell you what an asshole you are being."

Abruptly he stood up, hands in fists by his side, as they had been when he came in.

He shook his head, looked at me, snarled, and almost ran out the door.

I just sat there, more than a little stunned at the whole chain of events.

I had some major thinking to do, that was for sure. And some things to find out. And I had a good idea of how to do it. More sneaking around though. I honestly thought I was done with that. I should have been a spy. Yeah. I would have made a great one. Me and Ilya Kuryakin. Radios in the shoes. What would that be now? Twitter in the fingernail? MAN, I've got to get control of that sidetracking thing...



Long after the Game Ch. 05



"...and then the guy just left, you know?" I went to take another sip of my beer and realized the glass was empty. I looked at it a second time, suspiciously, since I had no memory of finishing it. With these friends, you never knew if you did actually finish it, or someone else 'helped' you.

I looked at Simon and Polly, who was still nursing a glass of white wine that must, by now, be room temperature. I was sitting on their couch. I'd called Simon, needing to talk about this latest event, and he'd said to come over. He'd, and I quote, 'Call the Scooby Gang so we could unmask that troublesome ghost". Sometimes his metaphors don't quite work.

Anyway, I'd been sitting there, after arriving and being handed a beer and told to sit and spill out what happened. I'd made noises about waiting for the guys to arrive and been told to sit down, drink the beer and spill, since they'd rather hear it twice. Then they could give me their 'considered' opinion. Terrific.

The doorbell rang. Simon got up to answer it, and I waved the empty glass at him, hopefully.

I looked at Polly, who was now dipping her finger in the wine and rubbing it around the top of the wineglass, like people do when they are trying to make it ring. She obviously wasn't good at it, because I couldn't hear a damn thing.

She was nodding, like she understood something and suddenly said, "Hmmm...."

Most enlightening.

The room bustled as Simon, Jonathan and Solomon entered the room.

"I was called. I am here," Jonathan pronounced. He watched too many Richard Curtis movies. "I picked up Solomon on the way." He explained as I glanced at Solomon.

He nodded and sat down in the love sofa on the other side of the coffee table. We were sitting in the front room of Simon's house – it has no TV, just a fireplace and three couches, all facing each other, in a U shape, next to the fire.

"'tsup homie," said Solomon, flipping his head at me.

"Homie is goooood," I replied, doing my best to do a surfer imitation. 

Solomon got a pained expression on his face. "No dude. Just...no. Don't do that."

Simon looked around as Jonathan seated himself as well. He noticed the empty glass and said, "I'll get them in, then," and strolled off, with intent.

Solomon noticed what Polly was doing with the wine glass.

"Hey Polly. Hey, you know why wine glasses have stems? So you can hold the glass by the stem and not change the temperature of the wine with the heat from your hands. How's it going?"

Polly stopped the rotation of her finger and stared at Solomon, and after a second, replied coolly, "Hello Solomon, Jonathan".

Polly honestly didn't know how to take Solomon. Jonathan was a known quantity, but Solomon – he went off on tangents she couldn't follow. He was an unknown in her life, and she worried about that.

Simon reappeared with beers in bottles. No glasses for the riff raff.

We all took a long deep draft, almost in unison. We almost made the same sighing noise at the end of it. It was awkward.

"So.....what's occurring? What's the event man? You finally dip your wick then?" asked Solomon, tactful diplomat that he is.

"Ok, well, to bring you up to date..."

I explained the events of the day. Again. Simon and Polly just sat and listened, for a second time. I thought it weird that no one asked any questions. I'm obviously a gifted storyteller, I thought.

At the end a second, time, I was dry AGAIN. And this time I just held out the glass and said, "More beer, Kemosabe". 

More was forthcoming, and once Simon was sitting again, I looked at everyone and, everyone suddenly spoke at once.

"So this dude..." started Solomon, while Simon dropped in with, "What do you think..."

Jonathan opened with, "Well, I imagine..." and Polly jumped in with, "This is bullshit."

It was Polly's statement that stopped everyone else; they just stopped talking and stared at her.

"Well, it is," she said, somewhat defensively.

"I agree," I said, agreeing. Obviously.

Everyone switched their attention back to me.

There was silence for a second, then Simon, hesitantly, said, "You think she's....again?"

There was another very pregnant silence as I looked down at my beer.

"Honestly, I have no idea what to think. I just... well, there's something going on here, obviously. Or she's got one hell of a stalker. I just... I don't see it in her eyes, you know?"

"You didn't last time," hazarded Jonathan, carefully.

I didn't take offence. "True," I said, "But I wasn't looking. Now I am. You HAVE to believe I am. Constantly. I just don't see it in her. There are no secrets. Nothing held back, no hesitations or evasions. I have no fucking clue. This guy could be a stalker for all I know."

"How do you feel about it?" asked Solomon cagily, leaning back and sipping his beer slowly.

"Well, as you can imagine, I'm not thrilled," I started.

"No, I mean, about everything. I mean, you've fucked, right?" Faces were made at him and he observed and said, "Sorry, 'Made Love'", using his fingers to make quotation marks.

"Well... not that it's any of your business, but yes. That was what Vegas was all about."

"The dress was certainly awesome," Solomon dropped into the conversation.

"Yes...wait, what? How do you know...?" I was confused. I hadn't told anyone about the dress, or shown them the one picture I took.

"Dude," scoffed Solomon, "your email password is a joke, you know that? That pic? Pretty awesome though. I mean, that's hoooooot."

My eye's bugged out and my eyebrows shot up.

"You did fucking WHAT? You hacked my email?"

"It's what I do, Ryan. You should know that by now," said Solomon, nonchalantly taking a swig of a beer.

I stood up, incensed. "You fucking..." My finger was shaking at him and I couldn't even think of what to say next.

Jonathan stood up and gently put a hand on my shoulder. "Ryan, get a grip. He's an asshole, but you knew that. And that dress was pretty awesome."

I turned and looked at Jonathan, and stared at him. "You've seen it too?"

Simon said, "He sent it to all of us. Sorry man." At least he had the decency to look away. I sat down, shakily.

"I have no idea what got into her, man. Although I can guess, by the end of the evening. Was it any good?" asked Solomon, genuinely interested, and totally oblivious to how pissed off I was.

"A gentlemen never tells," I tried to say haughtily, failing miserably.

"Are there any gentlemen in here? I don't know I've ever met one?" inquired Polly, sarcastically, looking around at the men present.

"Thank you," I replied sarcastically. "It was good. Interesting. I got...included, in her new....desires."

"Oooh, public sex? Do tell!" exclaimed Simon, before being elbowed in the ribs by Polly.

"Seriously though dude, what do think about all this? I mean, if she's shtupping this guy, do you care? Is there a new relationship here? Rekindling the marriage? What are we looking at here? Closing the book, righteous vengeance, what?"

It was the sixty four thousand dollar question, and one I'd been asking myself the entire drive up to Simon's house.

"I have... no idea. That's the thing. The last few weeks have been great. We've reconnected, been a family, been intimate, but I can't.... I don't... I dunno what I feel right now. So many feelings swirling around. Being with her is easy, you know? It's like a comfortable coat. I know it, it knows me, it fits, it protects me from rain... I dunno."

There was another silence.

"So, what's the next step?" asked Jonathan.

"More information I guess. Again.."

Jonathan snorted – something I didn't know he was capable of. "We should start out own private detective agency. This little group does so much of this."

"How you gonna do it?" asked Simon.

"I have an idea...." 

*****

I was sitting in the corner, nursing my Apple Spice Cider at Starbucks. A Trenta size. I've got no idea why Starbucks insists on using stupid Italian words to describe their cup sizes, instead of the simple small, medium or large. I suspect it's something to do with Seattle and Hipsters. And yet again I was going off on a mental tangent when I had something important to do or think about.

I refocused my efforts and scanned the room, looking for my prey. I didn't know what she looked like, but I knew she'd be looking around for me. Well, not me exactly. I had shown a little...creativity, with the truth. Yeah, I lied a bit. So sue me.

I knew she was an older lady, and she said she'd be in the plush seats in the middle of the Starbucks. And if she was on time, she should be here now.

So I pushed up off the seat and went wandering. And I saw her. It was definitely her. Sitting, coffee in hand, looking around interestedly at the surrounding people, eyes spending a lot of time on the 30 something women in the place.

She'd even kept the other chair clear, which was nice of her. So I dropped into it, trying not to spill what remained of my apple cider.

She looked at me and shook her head, and said with a frown, "I hope you don't mind awfully, but I'm expecting a friend and I was saving that seat for her."

"Yeah, she's not going to show I'm afraid Mae. I'm sorry to have brought you here under false pretenses, but I didn't know how else to do it. I'm Ryan by the way. I'm sure you know who I am."

She blinked, too a sip and then said, carefully, "I see."

"I doubt you do Mae, but I'm here to talk to you. Just you, not the entire crowd. It took me a while going through Craigslist ads to find your little group. Thankfully Deanna has been very open about you guys, and your little support group, so I knew what to look for."

She said, "I see," again, then smiled self-consciously.

"I'm not here to rant or rave and I have no issues with you guys. I think you probably provide a necessary service. I just need to talk to you. And just you, that's why I asked it to be only you. I was being honest when I said I wasn't ready to meet the whole gang. I really didn't know how else to do it."

Mae sat back and looked at me over her bifocals. "Ok, well, you could have just asked. I have to say I don't like your methods very much, but we are here now. What do you want to talk about? How can I help, Ryan?"

She was appraising me, I could see it. You don't get to have been a good salesman like I used to be without seeing that look a lot. It was ok, I had nothing to hide. I hoped.

"Well, I just need to know some stuff. Look, Deanna has been very forthcoming and open about you guys and what you've been doing for her. She's been very honest."

And then a beat later, I couldn't help adding, "Now."

"I'm aware of all the planning and the stuff you guys cooked up for me. Thanks for Vegas by the way, that was pretty awesome. Unexpected, but awesome. I think we both needed that."

I was pleased to see a little blush on Mae and that very slight naughty schoolgirl smile. It was a little strange seeing it on someone like Mae, of advancing years, but then, I reflected, she was part of this group too. She'd done someone bad at some point, so she was probably no stranger to lustful sex.

"But while I'm grateful for all you've done for Deanna, the support and so on, there are some questions I have that Deanna cannot answer, because she wouldn't understand why I am asking."

At that, Mae's little private smile went away, and was replaced with a guarded look. Which meant she had something to guard against. She knew something and she didn't want to tell me. Which, in turn, meant there was something to know.

I sighed internally. Whatever it was that Mae thought she knew, I needed to know, and I needed to figure out a way to get her to tell me. I had a mental coin flip – some bullshit cooked up on the spur of the moment, or the truth?

What the hell. The truth. The coin was doubled sided anyway.

"Look Mae, here's the thing. Some guy came to see me the other day. And he had a lot to say about Deanna..." Her guarded look went up a notch. Paydirt.

"I don't know where Deanna and I stand, to be totally honest. I'm being honest with you here, because it seems to me that Deanna probably has been, and I think I should give you the same courtesy. The fact is, I've not committed to this new relationship totally, and I don't know why. But I think you do. I need you to help me understand whatever it is that is bothering me. I need your help to work out what to do, Mae. Will you help me, please?"

Mae sat there, staring at me. God knows what mental turmoil was going on in her head. And then, hesitantly, she started to speak.

*****

I sat down with a glass of Jameson – the gold reserve; the very good stuff – and wondered what I was supposed to do next.

I'd gotten home about an hour earlier, to Paula's consternation ("Where have you been? What are we supposed to be doing out for dinner? Don't you care about us at all??" was the greeting I got, with her voice screeching up on the last two words.)

Eventually I got her to calm down with the promise of pizza – there seemed to be a lot of that going on recently, I'd have to watch that. Oh, who am I kidding? – and we'd eaten, and for some reason, I'd lit an actual fire in the fire place. The house I'd bought had a fireplace and Jamie was turning into a firebug. He and Saffron wanted to know how to build them so they'd lite easily, and what went into them. He even volunteered to clean it out the next morning, which is good, because I hated doing that. He was both a water bug and a firebug. It was very confusing.

I was a little unsure of his motivation, but I'll take the cleaning, thanks.

So I sat and stared into the flames and wondered what to do, what the best course of action was.

And since I hadn't put the kids to bed, and because I actually needed some solitude to think, the little bastards wouldn't give it to me.

They were running around and then there was a scream, and some half hearted crying, and I waited to hear what Paula would do, and then realized she was in her room with headphones on – smart girl – and then I'd had two children run in and shout "Daddy, Daddy!" both at the top of their voices, and both then tried to explain to me how nasty the other was being, and all over the top of each other, forcing each to raise their voices and... it was too much.

"Stop!" I yelled, forcefully. Too forcefully, truth be told. Just because I was lost didn't mean I could stop being Daddy, or be mean.

"Sorry kids," I said to the two shivering, wide-eyed children before me. "Look, I can't hear with both of you going on at once. What happened?"

Jamie immediately went into a prolonged rant about Saffron, how she was mean and never nice and never let him play with her toys and on and on. He said nothing specific, which in my experience means he's guilty as sin, but he can't admit that, so he has to have something to complain about his sister to balance out her legitimate complaints about him. 

When he ran down, Saffron said, simply, "He pushed me down, Daddy. It hurt. I got a booboo on my leg. And he wouldn't say sorry, so I can't forgive him."

She turned to Jamie and said, "Those are the rules. You have to say sorry, so I can forgive you. That's how it works. Then we can play."

Jamie said, sulkily, "sorry", in a low voice and suddenly I knew everything. I knew what had been going on over the past few months, why, what it meant, what my behavior was about, and what that meant. I knew exactly what I had to do, and why.

Literally everything was settled in my head in an instant. I'd never had that happen before, but it had happened. I knew what had to happen next, and how I could move forward, with Deanna and with my life in general.

Now I just had to do it.

*****

"...Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, dear Treeeeyyyy, happy birthday to you!"

Deanna smiled as the singing trailed away, and the wait staff dispersed to other duties. They were sitting in Morton's steakhouse, in Rosemont, and had just finished a great steak together.

The wait staff had brought out a little cup cake with a candle in it and sung to Trey, sitting opposite her, to his obvious embarrassment and consternation. He smiled, in that false way that people do when they just want the ground to open up and swallow them, but have look like they are thankful for what is being done to them.

He sighed as the wait staff vanished and said to Deanna, "Seriously? I'm not thirteen you know."

"I know," she said, in that mommy way some women have when they are talking down to people. "But you have to have the full experience."

"Well, thanks. Can we get out of here now?"

"No! Not until you've eaten your cupcake! Plus, I have a little something for you..."

"Deanna!" Trey exclaimed, exasperatedly.

"Here. Shut up and be grateful." She fished a small, brightly wrapped package out of her bag and passed it over. "Go on. Open it."

Hesitantly, Trey started to open it, pausing only to protest again, and then stop when he saw Deanna's arched eye.

When the package was open, it turned out to be a 42mm stainless steel Apple Watch, with steel mesh band. 

"Holy crap!" exclaimed Trey. "These things are like seven hundred bucks! What the hell Deanna?"

Deanna just smiled indulgently at him, and said, "The advice you've given me? Worth it. And just the company. It's been...really great hanging with you. Just wanted to give you a token of appreciation. I noticed you have an iPhone but that crappy watch, so I thought, why not?"

Impulsively, she pushed her chair about, got up, walked around the table and gave him a kiss. A small one, on the lips, and stopped, and just looked into his eyes.

"Thank you Trey, and happy birthday."

*****

It was two weeks later. A Wednesday. It was a bright sunny day, for once. I remember it distinctly. I remember wondering in the morning if I should have brought an umbrella, because when I left in the morning, it was cloudy and slightly threatening. But by midday, it had entirely cleared up.

I don't know why I'm mentioning the weather. Such a stupid thing to be thinking about.

I hadn't seen that much of Deanna – a few dinners, once on a Saturday where we'd all played Frisbee Golf. She said she'd been working.

Anyway, Deanna poked her head around my office door at 1pm and said, "Come on, we have to go!"

I was all "WTF, woman?" – mentally, I could never get away with saying that in real life – and looked at her all puzzled and she said, "You're the boss, in case you hadn't noticed. Oh and you haven't hired an intern to take my place. You know you need one. Do I need to find one for you?"

I recovered my voice and said, "I know I'm the boss. Why am I leaving, exactly?"

"You have an afternoon appointment. With me. Come on, get your stuff. We don't have that long."

"Um, where?"

"It's a surprise."

"I hate surprises."

"You'll like this one. C'mon. Be the boss. Take the afternoon off. Live a little."

The last time she'd said that, we'd ended up in Las Vegas – I still got a little thrill out of the wanton memory – so yeah, what the hell. I only had an afternoon of arguing with a couple of contractors to look forward to anyway.

I stopped in with the guys and explained I was taking off early, and the nodded and then I, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist for them. I've never met people who can be in the zone more than Deke and Kevin. 

And we went outside, and I found Deanna standing by a white Tesla S series! I couldn't quite believe it. 

"This is NEVER yours?" I asked, admiring it.

"No," she grinned, "belongs to my boss. I had to talk her into letting me borrow it. I have to have it back by eight. Come on, get in."

I was guided around the side and she opened the back door, and I looked at her, quizzically. 

"Come on, my lord, your chariot awaits! And no, you aren't driving it. I had a hard enough time getting permission for me to drive it. If you had any idea what it took to get her to agree...well, lets just say my wardrobe is going to look good on another women for a while."




Long after the Game Ch. 05



I got in, wondering what the ride would be like. I've always wanted to drive one those things.

It was like a rocket on silk. I mean, this thing just took off... Deanna always had a heavy right foot, but I could only assume her right foot had been replaced by Thors Hammer, at the speed this thing took off. Silently, too. And smooth. Oh so smooth.

The dashboard was like something you'd get on the Starship Enterprise. I kept expecting her to call down to Scotty, to ask for more power or to warned there were Romulans in the vicinity and to keep the shields up. It was awesome.

She kept up a chatter all the way. It was weird, sitting in the back while my wife acted as chauffer, in a car I desperately wanted to drive myself. But then my life is always disjointed that way.

We headed into the city on I-88, then onto 290, past the toll section. I kept trying to ask her where we were going and she put me off artfully. She kept giving me obvious hints, then when I thought I'd got it, shouting, "No! Guess again!" and giving me completely contradictory clues.

Eventually I noticed we downtown, and heading north, up Clark. Past the Bally's health club, where, when I was young, prior to meeting Deanna, I'd been working out downtown and some guy had exposed himself to me in the shower. He'd turned around, full mast, so to speak, and said, "What do you think of that then?" and I'd left. Immediately. I was still covered in soap, but I was clean. I would do. Anything to get out of that place, right then.

I started to get misgivings when we passed Belmont, and positive palpitations when we went past Roscoe. And there it was, on the corner of Addison and Clark. 1060, West Addison, an address made famous in the Blues Brothers. Because that's where Wrigley field was, home of the Chicago Cubs, named because they were supposed to be the baseball version of the Chicago Bears.

Where it had all started, when I'd been directed to watch a baseball game – the cross-town classic – that had my wife and her lover on the big screen, groping each other. This was not a place I wanted to be, nor memories I wanted to have.

Deanna glanced back at me and saw my face.

"Ryan," she said, in measured tones, "please. This is something I need to finish. I need to complete the tasks. This is the last one. Please, if you ever trusted me, if our years together meant something, please, let me do this one last thing. For my own sanity, and for yours. Please, go with me on this. I categorically state that you won't be harmed here, or insulted, or upset. Just... please. Let me do this."

"Do what specifically, Deanna?"

"Just wait a little longer, and you'll see."

This was so not where I wanted to be. I had a suspicion of what she was up to, and this was not something I wanted. Not at all. But if it was what I thought it was, then I could see she would.

With a huge amount of control, and no small amount of internal mental wrestling, I decided to go with it. She had earned that amount of small trust, I knew.

"Ok. But here's my conditions. The moment I feel like I don't want to be there, I'm gone, ok?"

Deanna flashed a smile into the rearview mirror, as she turned into the official parking lot (Where, I noticed, it was a forty dollar parking fee. FORTY FUCKING DOLLARS. Jesus Christ, I should be staying the night with a hotel room thrown in for that cost! Or at the very least a free blowjob!) and said, "Thanks Honey. Trust me, it's going to be ok. You'll see."

So we parked, taking note of where we parked; this was a Tesla, and I wanted to be sure she'd get it back, and into the park we went. We had great seats, behind the infield on the home side. We got the obligatory beer and hotdog – you cannot go to a ball game in America (and particularly not Wrigley field) and not get a beer and a hotdog. It's against the law, in fact, so I understand. And went and sat down. I couldn't help but notice these seats were no where near where the dick shiner she'd had her affair with had his season tickets, thank god.

So the game went on, they were playing the Cleveland Indians, and it was a slow game. Hell, all baseball games are slow games. I always found them quite tedious. I'm aware that there is a lot of strategy involved in how it's played, but frankly, it's slow, boring and not a lot happens. It's one of the reasons why team sport games are just not my thing. 

But it was sunny, there was beer, hotdogs, and I had a pretty woman with me, that I was sure would put out if I asked her to, even if I didn't ask. It was weird, being at the location where we had destroyed each other's lives, her with her cheating and me with exposing it so publicly. I'd actually never been to Wrigley field in years, so it was strange to be there after all that had happened there.

I was pretty sure that one of two things was going to happen. Either she was going to push me into another high-risk sex situation, or...exactly what did happened at the bottom of the 5th inning.

While the teams changed sides, up came the inevitable ads and other little animations on the electronic billboards, and then... came the message.

There was Deanna, in a pre-recorded message, sixty foot high on the electronic jumbotron. The real life Deanna grabbed my hand and held on tightly.

"Hi there," the sixty foot Deanna intoned, as the crowd quieted down. "Some of you may know my face. A couple of years ago, my husband caught me cheating with someone at one of these games. Someone hacked the display systems here, and put up my face and that of my accomplice. So the whole world knew what I'd done. And I'm here to apologize, on the big screen, where my life was shown to the world, to my husband. I disrespected you, and our family, and I was insane to have done so. I have no excuse, I can only ask you to forgive me. I am as repentant as I can be, and just wish I could put this behind me, but only you can do that, Ryan. You are the only man I've ever loved. Please, Forgive me."

There was a roar as the crowd surged up and started clapping. Some even stood up.

I was expecting there to be a camera on us, shown on the screen, but there wasn't, which was a wise move. Because if I'd said no, well, I'd have been ripped limb from limb by this crowd.

As it was, about thirty seconds, someone recognized Deanna, and by extension me, and people started turning round, and filming us with phone cameras.

Deanna looked at me and gave a brave little smile. She was so nervous, I could tell.

"Are you... ok?" she asked. Or yelled, rather, since it was so loud.

I looked at her sympathetically, and nodded, then yelled back, "Can we go somewhere? Just talk, you and I?"

She smiled wider, and nodded, and up we got, dropping our garbage in a bin on the way out.

Since we left early, we got out of the parking lot easily, and traffic was somewhat light.

We ended up at a bar on Lincoln, called Irish Eyes. It had been an old hangout of Deanna's, years ago. She'd dated the bar keep there, but he was a major league asshole, cheating on her incessantly, and she'd kicked him to the curb. It was somewhat ironic for the conversation we were about to have.

So there we were, another beer in front of me, a diet coke for her, since she was driving.

And it was time, for the conversation we'd both been avoiding.

"So, um, yeah. Now you know why you had to trust me. It was...something I had to do."

"I get it, Deanna, I honestly do. I have no idea how you persuaded them though. That GM guy at Wrigley field was pisssssed at me. How did you do it?"

She shrugged. "Well, a five thousand dollar donation to the 'cubs on the move' charity, for a start, plus I had to arrange for some of the models I use for the conventions to show up at a party they are throwing later this year. All standard stuff, really. Throw enough pretty girls at a problem and it usually gets solved."

"Jesus. Five grand? That's a lot."

"Well," she said, taking my hand in hers across the table, "I had to do it. I explained to you about how I had those tasks set, to make you at least want to try and trust me. There were the diaries, our family playing Frisbee golf together, there was me working for you, the trip to Vegas, and finally, this. I had to get at you on all fronts. The last one was about me humiliating myself in front of everyone. It had to be big to be sure you got the point, and well, it seemed fitting."

We both took a drink, and then the question came.

"So. How am I doing? Where do we go from here, Ryan?"

I sucked on my teeth, then took her hands in mine, and said what needed to be said.

"Deanna, I'm grateful for everything you've done. It's been nothing short of amazing. I mean, seriously, all you've done, the strength of character you've shown... I should be amazed and in some ways I am, and in some ways I'm not. This just goes to show that you are the women I thought you were."

Now the hard part.

"But, there is no future for us."

I'd laid it out there. I heard her gasp and clench my hands.

"What? But..."

"Deanna... Deanna... please. Let me explain. There is no future for us. But there is a future for you."

"I...I don't..." she was shaking and gasping and pulled her hands away from me.

"Take a drink Deanna. Let me explain it."

She did so and I launched into it.

"The thing is, I've been holding back, and you know it. You've been very careful to avoid pushing me. Even with that message, you asked me to forgive you, not take you back. That's quite telling. But that's what all this is about Deanna. You think it's about getting me to trust you again, with the end game of our lives returning to some semblance of what they were. But they can't. That life is gone now. It was smashed, beyond repair. I'm not going to labor how or why – we both know that. But it IS gone. There are no white picket fences to come back to."

Deanna looked down and said, in a very small voice, "I know." 

Then she looked up, and said, more forcefully, "But the therapist, James, said we could forge a new relationship. Make a new one, not the same as the old one."

"Yes, he said the same to me, when I went to see him the few times I did. But it's not as simple as that Deanna. There's more you need to understand though."

I took a deep breath and plowed on.

"The thing is, I think you've lost sight of 'the why' of what you are doing. You are so focused on trying to get us back together, because that's what you decided you had to do in the height of the emotion, when we...split up." I tried to put it as diplomatically as possible. Saying "When I dumped your cheating ass" wouldn't have helped anyone at that precise moment.

"You are so focused on how to get us back in the same place, with me wanting to trust you, you haven't really considered if that's where I want to be. Or, even if that's where you want to be either. You think you do, because you had a life you loved, even if it wasn't enough to stop you from doing what you did. But the reality is that both of us have moved on in a way. You have you little support group to help, your job, and a life. You've made the best out of what you have, and it's been great. You've expanded your life, become more than you were, and that's great. No, seriously, it is. I'm impressed and proud."

I took another deep breath.

"And then there's Trey."

She looked puzzled. "What about Trey? I told you about him. He's my...secret weapon."

"No, Deanna, he's your secret crush."

"WHAT?" she screeched. "No he ISN'T? How can you think that?"

"How can I think that? Deanna, how many times have you had dinner with him in the past two months?"

I could see her actually trying to work it out, in a desperate attempt to put me in my place and disprove my statement. Eventually she came to a conclusion.

"About...fifteen, I think. Give or take a few."

"Right. Fifteen. How many times have we had dinner?"

She paled when I asked that. I could see that when she was working out the number of dinners with Trey, this had already occurred to her.

"About...ten," she said, in a very small voice.

"Right. Ten. Ok, so one third more with Trey."

"But we didn't do anything Ryan. You HAVE to believe me. It was strictly platonic," she spoke fast, desperately.

"Oh I'm sure it was, sort of. On your side. I had a visit from Trey a few weeks ago. I've been trying to work out what to do about this for a while. Todays event, well, it kinda pushed it all into the fore, you know?"

"What??" she said, astonished yet again.

"Yeah, he came to see me, in my office. Had a nice little rant about me not being grateful enough about what you'd been doing for me. The man is one hundred percent in love with you Deanna. Can't you see that?"

She stared at the table, with that stunned expression people have when a truth they'd never suspected is revealed to them.

"In...love? With me?" she whispered.

"Oh yes. And what's more, I think you are more than a bit sweet on him, too."

She looked sharply at me and said, "No, he's just a friend. He's been very... helpful."

"A friend who you went to dinner at a charity event with, yes? At five hundred dollars a plate. You never even asked me, Deanna."

"I was just trying to be nice. Our first date was at the dinner, the year before."

"Our First date! Listen to you Deanna. If that was your first date, what was the evening you spent with him, all dolled up and dancing all night?" I wasn't trying to be a dick, but I had to get through to her.

"I was... I..." she was starting to get it.

"Deanna," I said, softly. "I'm not pissed. I'm not angry. The thing is, I've held myself back from all this a fair bit. I had no idea why I was doing it, but it's because I'm terrified of being hurt again. I needed my armor, and it turns out I was right to do so. I'm not even that mad at you, to be honest. I don't really think you are even aware of what you've been doing, or your own thinking. I think you've been so focused on this whole set of tasks, you haven't even been thinking about your life beyond it."

I stopped and took a drink. I was parched. Talking too much sucks. As did everything about this situation.

"I honestly believe you thought that you were doing everything you said you were. I don't think anything physical happened with him. I get that you were focused on us. But there are more than just physical affairs. Last time it was all sex, right? No feeling? This time it's all feeling and no sex. This time it's emotional, no sexual. Yet. I dare say you'd have got there in the end. But this time, I also don't think you even realize what you were doing, which is why I'm not pissed off or ripping anyone's lives apart. Been there, done that, got the Tshirt."

But I think you were doing all of this – with me - for different reasons than you thought you were. My armchair psychologist take on this is that what you really need is forgiveness, from me. You can't go forward without it. Look at what's happened. Until today at Wrigley, you hadn't even asked me for forgiveness – you even talked about it in your video and your diaries, and you've mentioned it several times. You said it was because you didn't think you deserved it, but that wasn't it at all, was it? What you needed was to believe that you deserved it and for me to offer it, without you having to ask. Because then it's meant. It's deserved. And that's what you need, and that's what all this has been about, at root. And today, you realized I was ready to give forgiveness and your asking for it as you did was really letting me have the chance to offer it."

I took another drink. Deanna just sat there, staring at me.

"Oh I dare say on some level you'd like our life as it was back. I would too. But it's not there to have back. I would never trust you the way I did before, I'm sorry to say. And that's probably more my problem than yours, because I think you probably are trust worthy now. You've learned the cost of what you did, and I think you'd know that going in now. But...I just can't see it."

There was silence for a moment, and then she said, "All that... stuff, with Trey. How do you know?"

"I met Mae."

She looked up at me, a scowl on her face. "Mae told you all those things?"

"Don't blame her, Deanna. She wants what's best for you. That's one canny old bird. She picks up on way more than you think. She told me how much you talk about me, us, our family. But she also pointed out how much time you are spending with Trey. And when he came to see me and pounded on my desk... well. The thing is Deanna, people don't just fall in love with you by sitting next to you at the movies. They have to have something to fall in love with. And you gave it to him. That denotes closeness... and this was all going on when you were supposed to be giving all your attention to us. But, in reality Trey – not me- became your best male friend. Deanna, maybe our history makes it impossible to really start anew and we know we can't go back. We do love each other. I know that. And we have so much history and we have the kids. And we are so sexually compatible. But we aren't perfect for each other. What happened did happen and neither of us can ever completely forget it. We are better than we were and I am so glad that you tried and that we developed A new relationship. But its not – it can't be – THE new relationship wither of us needs. WE both deserve to have it all, and neither of us can be it ALL for each other any more. And your very close friendship with Trey, that grew as you tried to be it ALL for me, shows that as much as anything. 

More silence. She took a drink of diet coke, still looking down at the table, more to have something to do with her hands than anything I think.

"I love you Ryan," she said softly.

"I know Deanna. I love you too. But we are done romantically. And I think you know it too. But like I said, I think you have a future. And I think you need to go and find it. Find out if Trey can be "IT ALL" for you. We will always be here, me and the kids. We aren't going anywhere, and if the past couple of months have proved, we can at least get along now, and be co-parents. We can be friends."

She looked up from the table and met my eyes. She had tears streaming down her face.

"I will always love you. But... I think you may be right. When I look at all you've said...I dunno what to think. But you are right. I'm so sorry for hurting you again Ryan. I would never do that intentionally, please, you have to believe that."

"I know Deanna," I said softly. I was more upset at seeing her cry than I was about my feelings. "I know. And it's ok. You didn't hurt me. You helped me. I am better able to deal with what happened and move on. And if I don't have my wife back, I do have my friend back and our family is in a better place. I'm not in the state where I was the last time. Ok? I'm still around, and so are the kids, and nothing has changed in that regard. You are still welcome for dinner any time, and I hope we are welcome at yours."

I got a slim, tearful smile.

"And Deanna? For what it's worth, you are forgiven. I don't really think you need it, but for what it's worth, I'm not going to hold onto the bitterness and bile. I need to go forward too. So I hope it's what you need. You have the forgiveness you need, for whatever you need it for."

Deanna jumped up, came round the table, and hugged me, hard. I got one last kiss, and she left.

And I drank my beer and realized that, once again, I was in the city, alone, with no ride home. And I cried. Silently. For me, this time.

Oh well, time for Uber I guess.

*****

Trey scowled with annoyance at the insistent ringing of the doorbell. He was at a tricky part with the recipe in front of him. He had to watch the bread mix rise and judge when it was high enough before pushing it into the oven to bake. He'd been experimenting with adding sugars and honey to the mix, to give a slightly sweet bread.




Long after the Game Ch. 05



The door bell rang again and he threw down the kitchen towel he'd been wiping his hands on and yelled, as he walked to the front door, "Ok, ok! I'm coming."

He threw open the door, ready to remonstrate with the delivery guy he assumed it was, to see Deanna standing in his door, staring at him, shivering. She'd obviously been crying.

"Deanna... what...? What happened? Are you ok?"

Deanna just stared at him, partly sobbing.

"Come in... let me get you something..." he said, at a loss to understand her state.

"Wait." She said. Then she stepped in and kissed him. A full on, heavy duty kiss, with tongues. The kind one lover gives another. Trey was unprepared, but it didn't take him long to warm to it, and kiss her right back.

They broke away when both ran out of air. Both where heaving, breathing in deeply, staring at each other.

"I had to be sure..." murmured Deanna, still looking Trey in the eyes.

"I...never... I never thought I'd get the chance," said Trey, with slightly watering eyes.

"Come in, please..."

He ushered Deanna inside, and the door closed.

*****

So that's the story, pretty much. She left. I don't know exactly where she went – although I can throw a couple of guesses around. I stayed and finished the beer. I should have eaten but I had no appetite. I did think about Uber, but in the end I decided to take the L train down town and then take an Amtrak out to Naperville, just to give me time to think. One thing I did know was I didn't hold anything against Deanna, not this time.

To some degree, I was also still second guessing myself. I kept asking why I didn't feel the way she did? Why didn't I respond the way I should have done? After all, she did everything right. As far as you can in that kind of situation. While I had my epiphany, it didn't stop me asking why I felt the way I did.

But I didn't want or need it, particularly not with what I'd learned about her liaisons with Trey, innocent as they appeared on the surface. I still don't quite understand it. I know how I feel but I'm damned if I know why, exactly. It just...wasn't there. There was a lot there, don't get me wrong. Just not that "I need to spend the rest of my life with you" spark. It had been, and now it wasn't. 

But what it did do was set me free. All the second guessing, all the wondering what I did wrong, all of it, it wasn't exactly gone, but it wasn't top of my list of worries about my life any more. It was just...lifted a bit. Enough for me to get on with my life. 

Once she left, it felt like I had been waiting for something and I didn't have that feeling any more. I didn't want her to just go out of my life entirely; we shared too much history and, of course, the kids, and I did still love her. But just not in that "you are my entire life" way.

I guess I got even more damaged than I had thought. I've spent a lot of time wondering if the fault was with me – after all – she did try her damndest. I think that, on reflection, I was too damaged. I had recovered enough to carry on life, but not enough to enjoy it – to cut loose and really be what it should be. And it took this to actually get me there.

Anyway, practical upshot was that she got married to Trey, just over a year later. Paula was her maid of honor. I didn't really talk much to Deanna about it – we had dinner a few times over the next few months, but the subjects we talked about were always light and airy stuff. She took me out to Mortons to tell me she was getting married. She didn't ask me if it was OK – she didn't need to anyway – but I could tell she was a bit anxious that I wouldn't take it badly or throw a fit or anything. I just smiled, told her to be happy, and to not fuck around on Trey. She wasn't happy about that, but fuck her opinion on that. We talked a bit about how things would change, and that was that. 

Paula wouldn't shut up though. You'd have thought she was the one getting married from all the earache she gave me about it. And who bought her bridesmaid dress? You guessed it. It was ok though. I made her earn it. She's my new front of house girl, after school and on weekends, when we work then. She does ok, but I can tell it's only going to be temporary, which will be fine because I'm not ok with how much time the new artist guy on the team is spending out there, or the looks he gives her. I keep dropping hints about shotguns and first person shooter games, but all he does is go on and on about the latest H&K 9mm he's just bought, totally missing the point. Need to be a bit stronger with the hinting I think. Like "I will kill you if you mess with my girl. Now get back to work." That should hit the right mark, I think.

Paula was beside herself when she heard me having "discussions" with Derek, the art lead we hired. I got a lecture on something called "White Knighting", the importance of a woman making her own way in the world, the importance of her earning 'her own money', so it can be spent on what she wants, how she's her own woman blah blah blah blah. I tuned out about ten minutes in, although I did perk up when she started in on the 'earning her own money' bit. I made some comment about, if she was 'earning her own money' now, when I might see rent forth coming? I may as well have suggested she have sex with her grandfather, the way she went off. Her mother's daughter, through and through.

I mentioned it to Deanna, later, at one of our semi-regular dinners and she smiled at me softly, reached out and put her hand on my chin, shook her head and said, "You are such a great dad, you poor, deluded fool. You have no clue what is coming, do you?"

Then, after a second, she realized what she had said, and went white and moved the hand to her mouth and stumbled out, "Oh Ryan, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

Gruffly, I answered, "It's ok. I know what you meant." And I did. We couldn't keep rehashing the past, and she couldn't be constantly watching her verbiage because of it. The past was dead, along with the marriage and neither one of us needs to be constantly reminded.

So anyway, because Paula was in it, I got to hear all about the wedding and then I got an invite. Yeah, I'm not that stupid. I didn't go. I spent that week drunk as skunk on a trip to Hawaii, sitting at one of those bars that's in the pool, where I was the ONLY person who got up and got out of the pool to go to the bathroom, I noticed. Deanna took the kids the entire week up to and the day of her wedding. I thought that was the best wedding gift I could give her. And me, for that matter.

I've met her guy a couple of times, beyond our initial meeting. He insisted that I meet him for a drink shortly after Deanna and I finally resolved it all, to apologize. It was awkward and more for him than for me, but we got through it and at least I could be around him when I had to. I try not to because no man likes to see his ex all over another man - too many memories for that. Deanna and I still have semi regular dinners to talk about the kids, but they don't happen as often as they once did, and I think that's probably appropriate. The kids still live with me – most of the time -, but they all spend a fair amount of time over at Chez Morrison, and I don't make a fuss about it. She's their mother too.

Simon and Polly continued to be my rock. Polly gave me a ton of shit about my decision, and kept on every time I saw her until I finally lost it, and told her I'd take Simon out with Solomon and get him a laid a few times, then she could forgive him as well. She shut up after that, and while she never apologized, I did get a bit more empathy.

Oh, one other thing happened. That TV Thing they were going to make of my story? Turns out that the last gesture Deanna made got televised and of course interest picked up again. That Hollywood production company – Heinz baked beans or whatever they were named - called and asked if they could include the resolution, with appropriate changes of course. Can't have the fictional story end on a downer, so they made 'us' make up instead. Whatever. I could give a shit.

Apparently it had come out of 'turnaround' and some exec had liked it and it was being signed and I had to sign a bunch more stuff, and sign away rights to overseas markets or something. I got another check, which is always welcome (hey, if you want to send one, I'll take that, too) and this time I thought I'd try and do something a bit nice, so I insisted Deanna was cut in on it. I got a couple of hundred K and Deanna got a hundred k, and everyone was happy.

They asked me about casting and I did point out that George Clooney was probably appropriate to play me. I got raised eyebrows over that, and then someone suggested over Skype that they get Rowan Atkinson, because 'that would be nearer reality'. I had to go and look up who that was. That English guy who plays Mr. Bean. Very amusing, I'm sure. Fuckers. I'll get mine. I'll go to the premier (do they have premiers for TV movies?) and get drunk and cause a scene. Or get Solomon to hack in and put up hard-core porno on the screen or something.

Either way though, the game is coming out soon. I have to go to some big thing in LA called E3 – some video game expo. Can't say I'm looking forward to it.

But one thing I did do was pull out EHarmony and update the entry, and sent out a few emails. See if I can't get a few dates. I'm a divorcee, with a risky startup venture, and three kids who make me tear my hair out – and I don't have that much left, as I get older. But I'm sane, I'm not stupid and what the hell – stranger things have happened, right?

So yeah. This is the year of the Find Ryan a Girlfriend project. That might fall back into the secondary objective of Just Get Ryan Laid, but that's ok. Life is what you make of it. And I want a margarita. With Patron.



Ok, that's it for Ryan and Deanna. Ryan and Deanna's story is done, however Ryan is not. There will be more with Ryan in it, because not only do I love writing Ryan, I have an idea for him. Besides, doesn't Ryan deserve to get his? You guys may have to wait a bit – I have Ingrams stories to complete – but Ryan will be back one day.