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Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 01

By: StangStar06



Hi Guys, Long story here. The next one will be shorter. But this one is so long that I broke it into three pieces. I'll be submitting one day for three days. This is also a very different story. But then I always say that, don't I. Well I read a lot of your comments on the last one and wanted to spice things up a bit. Some of you will probably hate the ending this time. I know in this type of story, as JPB once said they either divorce them or forgive em and stay together. Sometimes they divorce them and end up getting back together. This one's a little bit different. And no I didn't cop out and kill her off. 

I did try to spend some time fleshing the characters out and there are multiple threads and most of the characters aren't as black and white as usual. I hope you like it and find a lot of things to comment about. As usual, the credit for making this story readable goes to the great Barney-R. Who also prodded me a bit while I was consumed with finals and comps for this semester. Anyway, Here we go. SS06

* * * * * *

I was going to kick that boy's ass. Truthfully, Terry, my son was a good kid. He'd just turned 19 and finished his first year of college with grades that any parent could be proud of. Terry wasn't majoring in Liberal Arts or some other program that promised an easy degree and a fun time at college. He was an engineering major. He wanted to go into automotive manufacturing like his father. 

The apple definitely fell right below the tree in Terry's case. And that got me wondering yet again where Terry was. It would be just like him to have driven into town to see the car show instead of coming out here to the park to help me set up for the church picnic. 

This weekend was Founder's Weekend in our small Michigan town. There were special events going on all over the city and the parks surrounding. The funny thing about it was that you could do things all over town all day long, but you had to come to the main celebration this evening where they would give out any awards or prizes. Following the awards show there would be a concert and then fireworks. 

My hubby was running in the 10k race, and he was showing off his new 2015 Mustang GT in the car show. Terry was out late last night. He'd gotten home yesterday afternoon and after a quick nap had gone out to see his friends. Some of those same friends attended colleges away from home like Terry did, while others had stayed here to work or attend colleges in the area. 

I have no idea what time Terry had gotten home, but before I left the house this morning at 7:00 a.m. I'd poked my head into his room and told him to drag his ass over to the park to help me set up the grill before he did whatever he was going to do today. 

I had purposefully taken one of the early shifts at the picnic, so I wouldn't get stuck having to be on the cleanup squad. My goal was to get here early, unload the food, set up the grills, get them lit, and then turn everything over to the next shift. That way, I could go and watch my husband run the race. Then I could sit with him while we were at the car show. 

My phone rang and I answered it angrily, hoping it was Terry. 

"What? Where are you?" I growled into the phone. 

"Hi, Mom. I love you too," said Sherry my oldest daughter, with a heavy dose of sarcasm in her voice. 

"Sorry I bit your head off, Honey," I said. "Thanks for watching your sister. I thought that you were your brother. He was supposed to be here to help me set up." 

I spoke to Sherry for a few more moments and then got back to what I was doing. There were other women and a few men on the set up crew too. We all had and knew our jobs, so everything went relatively smoothly. 

Some of the guys had been there before I arrived, so there were already tables set up for me to put the food on as I unloaded it. The thing that pissed me off was that if Terry had been here, he could have been setting up the grills as I unloaded. 

That would have gotten us out of here earlier and given me more time with his dad. It would have also given him more time with his friends. I sighed and kept working, wondering why I had volunteered for this in the first place. 

* * * * * *

Greg

I backed my Mustang into the parking slot that I'd been assigned to. Almost immediately the car was surrounded by people. I'd only had the car for a few weeks and today was the first show I'd taken it to. 

It was really cool to drive a 2015 Mustang in 2014. I'd been one of a select few people who'd been allowed to buy the car early. We were supposed to be guinea pigs to help root out any problems in the car before it went on sale to the general public.

I looked at the clock in the dashboard and saw that I was running late. My intention had been to have been here a half-hour before. At the last minute, I'd decided to go ahead and install the more aggressive 3-D Carbon splitter I'd ordered from American Muscle. The splitter had been delivered yesterday, but my wife Donna somehow hadn't told me about it until this morning. I'd looked over the instructions while I ate breakfast and figured that I could do it in under an hour, and it made an already spectacular car, even better. 

So that got me here later than expected. Truthfully the splitter was probably overkill. Most of the people who would wander through here today had never seen the new body style. I knew that I was in for a lot of opinions today. Some of the people who saw the car would hate it. Others would love it. 

Ten years ago when the retro body style had come out, it was different. The S197 platform was loved immediately. There were very few who didn't fall in love with it on sight. And most of those people were owners of the outgoing body style. 

* I knew it would take a few years before some of them changed their minds about this body style, and some never would. I myself was torn. I still had a heavily modified 06 Mustang in my garage at home. I was thinking about giving it to my son Terry. 

It was a tough decision because Terry was still a bit of a hell raiser at times, and that car could be dangerous. It made over five hundred horsepower. It could be a recipe for Terry to get in trouble really quickly. 

As people gathered around and stared at the car I considered giving Terry the newer car. After all, it did kind of make sense. He was the younger generation, so maybe he should have the newer generation of the car. I'd had my 06 for almost ten years now and there were still things I wanted to do to it. 

As I grabbed my quick detailer spray from the trunk, people started asking me questions about the car. I fielded them as nicely as I could. "Thanks," I said to a couple of people who told me they loved it. 

"That's probably why I bought it, and you didn't," I said to a guy who said he hated it. For everyone else I just answered questions. 

"Beautiful car, Greg." I looked into the smiling face of Tara Conklin. Tara was probably the most beautiful woman in our town. She was the daughter of the town Sheriff. She was a three-time loser and also my wife's best friend. 

"Thanks Tar," I said. "Why are you running around in those tiny shorts? Still looking for husband number four?" 

"Are you applying for the job?" she smiled. 

"Donna would slit both of our throats," I said. 

"Donna's my best friend," she smiled. "I'd slit my own throat before I'd hurt her." 

We both laughed; Tara and I joked around all the time. She was like a sister to me. 

"I'm running the race in about an hour just like you are," she smiled. "But my dad and Mayor want me to help pick out people for some of the prizes, including the nicest car in the show. Of course, there are other judges, but you've got my vote. She spun on the toes of her running shoes and walked away. Even though I was happily married, I couldn't help watching Tara walk away from me. The woman was perfect. She was beautiful inside and out. 

But, at the same time, I was a married man, and I loved my wife. Maybe it was like the cars. At home in my garage was my old Mustang. It was from the last generation. It didn't have the cool independent rear suspension. It had fewer new electronic doodads. Its gas mileage wasn't quite as good. 

Here I was driving the latest and greatest most technologically advanced Mustang there was. It was a great car. But somehow there was something missing from it. It just seemed kind of plastic or artificial. Somehow this car was more sports car, and less muscle car. 

Tara, at 36 years old was ten years younger than me and twelve years younger than Donna. She's medium height and slender with beautiful, inky black hair and luminous blue eyes. Her breasts aren't huge, but on her tiny rib cage, they seem to stand out so much that they seem bigger than they are. 

Tara is a runner like me so her ass and legs are wonderfully shaped. Although she doesn't flaunt her beauty, men stare at her as she passes. Her terrible luck with love is just that. Her first husband joined the military and died shortly afterwards. It took more than five years before she tried again. After only a year of marital happiness following a few days of being engaged, he was killed by a drunk driver. Husband number three, was a B&C guy. That meant he liked to beat her and cheat on her. 

Her father, the Sheriff made short work of him. There are several men around town who are interested in Tara, including the town's mayor. But Tara doesn't seem to be interested any more. I guess it's like the song, "Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, oh my. Three times bitten so why the hell should I try?" 

On the other hand, my wife Donna was the love of my life. Donna is shorter than, and not as svelte as Tara. Okay, Donna is kind of blocky. She didn't start out that way. When I first met Donna in our mid twenties, she was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. I guess you could say that I did this to her. 

When we first met, Donna was tiny. She was always short but she was thin too. She's never had any boobs, but she had a tiny waist and a big ass. Donna could rock a pair of shorts in a way that would have made Daisy Duke cry. 

When we first got together, I could hardly keep my hands off of her. We fucked everywhere we could, and any time we could. And a short time after we got married, I put a baby in her stomach. My daughter Sherry grew up spoiled and happy. She married her childhood sweetheart a few years ago and has a wonderful life. 

Donna was an excellent mother. Her body never quite came back from the pregnancy. Her waist was a bit thicker, but she was still really sexy. After my son, Terry was born, the same thing happened. Tiny, thin Donna stayed kind of chunky. Her ass was no longer as springy or as round, and she had a tiny gut. However, I loved her still. 

After my daughter, Debby was born, it was clear that Donna was fat. It didn't matter to me. But we both figured that we'd reached our limit when it came to kids. Donna isn't what you'd call roly-poly fat, but she is clearly kind of a four by four. You could say that she was stocky. 

It doesn't matter to me, though. When she gets into bed and spreads her legs, I'm on her in a flash. It's a good thing for us that she went on the pill after Debby, or we'd probably have three or four more kids. 

Thinking about Donna has me wondering where she is as usual. Donna is easily distracted and is almost never on time. She's been that way since we first met. Sometimes it can really get on your nerves. 

* * * * * * 

Terry

One day was all it took. One pleasant summer day, tipped over the first domino and changed my life forever. Actually although the dominos would start falling that day, they had been set up the night before. 

I got home late the previous afternoon. I got in just in time to see my dad drive up in his new monster of a Mustang. The car was awesome. My dad and I spent some time bonding, and he let me drive it around for a bit while he got ready to wash and polish it for the car show that he was probably already at. 

I'd offered to stay home and help him prep the car, but he'd told me that it was my first night back, so he really understood that I wanted to see my friends. He's a great dad. If I was allowed to pick my Dad, I probably couldn't do any better. 

It was actually more like re-meeting my friends. When you're only nineteen being away from your friends for nine months is almost like ceasing to exist. Everything changes. Your friends become acquaintances. They move on with their lives as you move on with yours. 

I really didn't try to stay in touch with most of them. It was kind of a Que Sera Sera attitude on my part. 

There was one person that I'd maintained my relationship with. My girlfriend Kira, and I texted and called each other at least ten times a day, every day. We had been together for a year and as far as I was concerned, she was the best thing in my life. 

Everything I did in school, every accomplishment and every failure was for her. The main reason I worked so hard was for our future. Kira's mom worked her ass off every day waiting tables in a restaurant. When we turned eighteen Kira had joined her there. I was going to college for both of us.

The one thing I had done yesterday was to avoid telling Kira when I was coming home. She asked me every day, several times a day, in fact, when I was coming home. It was the same way at Christmas time. She had been waiting for me at my parents' house and had been the first one out of the door when I pulled up. 

My parents pretty much considered her their daughter. She also got along with both of my sisters. My older sister, Sherry liked her. And my younger sister, Debbie, idolized her. 

Her mom liked me too. She was always inviting me to dinner or treating Kira and me to dinners at the restaurant she worked in. 

However, this time I wanted to surprise Kira. I knew that she missed me as much as I missed her. So as soon as I left the house, I headed for Kira's house. As soon as her mom came to the door, I realized that something was off. Her mom was glad to see me, but very surprised. And her surprise wasn't a good surprise. It was like she was shocked to see me. 

She told me that Kira was out with ... friends. She offered to call her for me, so she could come home to see me. Something told me not to let her. I told her that I wanted to surprise Kira and begged her not to tell her that I was home. 

I drove into town. My Mustang wasn't as powerful as either one of my dads, but it still has a nice rumble to it that let everyone know that I was around. That was when I ran into my best friend Brad. 

I hung around with Brad for a while, and we talked about the Founder's celebration and what we were going to do. But he seemed on edge. So I asked him what the hell was going on. I told him if he wanted to hang out with someone else it was cool. He quickly told me that we would be friends forever, but he needed to tell me something. 

As soon as he told me, I got up and left him standing there. I didn't want to believe him, but I knew that Brad had no reason to lie to me. I drove to Kira's house. I turned off the lights and parked a couple of houses down the street. 

I played games on my phone and lost most of them because my head wasn't in any of them. I looked up expectantly every time a car passed by. It was after midnight when a sliver BMW pulled up in front of Kira's house. I switched my phone to video mode and watched Kira and the driver. Brad had been telling me the truth. 

She got out and headed for her porch. The driver got out and ran after her. I got really pissed as I saw him put his hand on her ass like he owned it. "When are we getting together again?" he asked. 

"It'll be a while," she said angrily. "You know that Terry will be home in a few days. The last thing I need is to have him see us together and start asking questions. Besides, isn't Lana due home any day now?"

"Yeah," he said. "But that's different. You already know what I have to put up with from her." 

"Look Jeff," said Kira angrily. "Don't call me, I'll call you. And if I call you at all it won't be until after the summer is over." 

"I get it," he smirked. "Gotta protect that meal ticket huh?" He walked back towards his open driver's seat. "Kira," he called to her. "You can call me if you two get into an argument too, you know?" Then he laughed and drove off. 

I sat there in my car seething with anger. I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. I decided to go up to her house and break up with her on the spot. I yanked on my door handle to open the door and saw another car driving up the street as I looked in my rear-view mirror. As the car drew closer, I noticed that it was a police car. I shut the door back and waited for it to drive by. 

As the car drove by me, it stopped. The driver got out and came over to me. I rolled down the window. "Hey Sheriff Conklin," I said, holding on to my temper. I tried to think of anything I had done wrong. 

"Hey Terry," he said with a smile on his face. "First night home and the first place ya went was to see that little gal a yours huh? Oh, to be young and in love." He shook his head as he said it. I knew that he was remembering the past. Seven years prior, when I was only twelve, the Sheriff had lost his wife. An eighteen wheeler loaded with those huge cement pipes that they use for drains, had taken a corner, and slipped on the icy road surface. Two of those pipes crushed several cars behind and beside the truck. The sheriff's wife had been driving one of them. 

I could see, by the way, he smiled that he was remembering some of the good times with her. I guess enough time had passed that he'd gotten over the pain and the memories no longer tended to be dominated by the way she'd passed. 

"Terry, I need you to do me a favor," he smiled. "When you go home, wake your dad up and tell him that I'm going to kick his ass in that 10K tomorrow. He doesn't know it yet, but the race is going to be age graded this year. This is my year!" 

"I'll tell him," I said. We both smiled. 

"You know that this is a form of psychological warfare, right?" he smirked. I nodded. My dad was 46 years old and ran like a fuckin' deer. I was on my high school track team, and my dad could outrun me. I had no doubt that he could also outrun our current high school track team and most of the guys on my college track team too. 

As the Sheriff got back into his car and pulled away, I rolled my window back up and started my engine. The loud sound of the Mustang's powerful exhaust system echoed through the block. I drove away at as slow a speed as I could manage to keep the sound down. I didn't want to let Kira know that I had been here. 

Talking to the Sheriff made me see some things. Life was simply too short to sweat the small things. Maybe having Kira cheat on me was a blessing in disguise. I'd spent the last nine months in torture. There were too many really pretty girls around my college. A lot of them expressed interest in me. I had always been honest and told them about how I was already attached to a woman back in my home town. Most of them took it really well. They complimented me on staying faithful and told me to please call them if I broke up with her. 

The hardest things though were when I got together to study with classmates. Some of those classmates were female, and I hit it off with a lot of them. This year, I would have no restrictions on what I could do and whom I could do it with. So maybe breaking up with Kira was a good thing. Maybe I should think in terms of broadening my horizons on the job front as well. Maybe next year, I would take a summer internship with one of the big manufacturing companies. My dad had offered to line something up for me, but I'd told him that I just wanted to relax over the summer. 


Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 01



I decided to just do that. I would just relax over the summer and have a good time. There was no need and no reason to make a big scene and confront Kira. She was a grown woman. She had the right to make her own choices. She could do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted. And I had the right to do the same. I actually felt a bit foolish.

I mean with all the opportunities, I'd had to meet someone at college; I'd stayed faithful to her. There weren't really very many guys our age around town. That asshole that Kira had taken up with, Jeff Fairenbrook was a couple of years older than us. His father owned a car dealership two towns over. He seemed to like his women a bit younger though. His fiancé, Lana, was one of the prettiest girls in our class. And also one of the smartest. She was in a pre-med program at the same college I attended. 

I had a couple of required classes with her. In fact, I had helped her with differential equations in one of the math classes that both engineering and pre-med students had to take. Lana was still as nice as she'd been in high school. And unfortunately she was totally faithful to that asshole. 

As I drove home, I debated, whether or not I should tell Lana. By the time I got home, I was even angrier than I'd been before. All kinds of things went through my head. I even thought about dating Lana to throw it in Kira's face. I had all sorts of bizarre dreams, but in the end, reason won out. 

After all, I was studying engineering. Engineers are critical thinkers. We're problem solvers. We have to look at a problem, examine the facts, come up with a solution, and look at the end results of that solution and any others. 

In this case, the facts were plain and simple. Kira did nothing legally wrong. Her only crimes were moral, and they were against me. So it was up to me to decide not only how we would go forward, but how I would. As I've mentioned, I felt foolish. I felt foolish because I had turned down opportunities to spend time with and possibly have sex with other women. I had done that because I loved Kira. What had happened in my absence had only served to prove that Kira didn't love me the same way. 

What had Jeff called me? Her, "meal ticket." I just decided that wasn't what I wanted to be. I still wanted to have a great life and marry someone whom I would love and spend the rest of my life with. It just wouldn't be Kira. And since she lacked the class to tell me that she had taken up with another guy while I was gone, I didn't feel obligated to let her know that we were done. 

So, as I woke up that bright and sunny Saturday morning, my mood was already altered. And even though I thought that I was fine, I wasn't. 

I vaguely remembered talking to my mom about helping her at the picnic. We were supposed to be delivering food that other people would cook and setting up the grills. I grabbed a couple of toaster waffles and some microwave bacon. One good thing about being home was that there was always food. 

I jumped into my Mustang and noticed that I needed to wash it. My sonic blue paint wasn't very hard to keep clean like my Dad's cars. But I still liked to keep her looking good. 

I revved up the engine and drove towards the park. Despite my decision to put my anger and the situation with Kira behind me, my first test arrived. As I got to the corner of my street, I noticed Kira's mom's ancient Chevy Malibu coming in the opposite direction. The car was stopped at a traffic light. I drove right past it, noticing that Kira, as usual, had her head down adjusting the radio station while she waited for the light to turn green.

As I passed her, the sound of my motor caused her to look up suddenly. I turned my head the other way avoiding eye contact and continued on as if I hadn't seen her. When I got to the corner. I made a sharp right turn, even though the freeway entrance was in the opposite direction. With my turn completed, I floored it. Fortunately, it wasn't a residential street. 

When I reached the other end it the street, I made a quick left drove a block and made another quick left. I floored it again and got to the next corner just in time to see Kira make a U-turn headed the way she'd seen me going. My phone rang then, and I just let it go to voicemail. 

Once Kira made it to the street where I'd turned, I waited for her to go down that street and then drove straight to the freeway and took that to the park as I had originally planned. As I drove, I was happy. I put some distance and some time between us. Knowing Kira as I did. I knew that if she had not seen me; she'd have driven to my house. If she didn't find me there, she'd go to town to the car show. She would either find me there or speak to my dad and find that I was helping my mom. Then she'd drive to the park and catch me there. 

This way, I could go to the park and help my mom and then go to the race to watch my dad and finally hang around at the car show. With cars all over town, avoiding her wouldn't be a problem. There was also the fact that I knew she was looking for me, but she had no idea that I was done with her. 

I got to the park in record time. I floored it and was doing over an hundred and forty on the long sweeping straights between my house and the park. With all kinds of people heading into town and the park, I knew that none of our town's five, count em ... Law enforcement officers would be on the freeway. And really that total was down to four, since I knew the Sheriff, himself would be getting ready to run in the 10k race. 

My car's usual rumble sounded more like an angry growl as I pulled into a parking spot in the big parking lot at the park entrance. One of the old timers there waved at me as I got out of the car. 

"God damn," he chirped. "That thing's as loud now as when your daddy drove it. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you was him turned young again. Ya look just like him; I swear. But you better git your britches in gear. Your mom's been cussing up a storm for the last half-hour or so about you not showing up to help her." 

"Thanks for the warning Mr. Richards," I said. Reed Richards had been the high school's science teacher for over forty years before he retired a couple of years ago. He'd been my dad's science teacher, my sister Sherry's, and mine too. His love for science was contagious, and I think that he was responsible for both my dad and indirectly, me, going into engineering. 

I headed for the picnic area at a brisk jog. When I rounded the copse of trees that served to block the winds from the picnic area and also provided shade during the hotter summer weather, what I saw slammed me into a stop. I felt as if I was having a heart attack. 

However, the closer I got, the worse it became. At first, I thought I was seeing things. I blinked several times, but it didn't go away. 

There she stood, my mother, the woman I had always loved and respected, with her hands down in a guy's pants while he felt around in hers. 

They were so busy that they didn't even realize that I was there until I was. They were both concentrating on the people in front of them who were working on the picnic. They didn't think that anyone could see them. And as far as the people in front of them went, they were correct. But I was coming up from behind them. 

"Get your fuckin' hands off of the whore!" I yelled. A man who was older than my father snatched his hands from my mom's panties and stepped away from her. 

"I ... I ...!," he stuttered.

"You what, asshole?" I yelled. My anger at Kira and everything else just boiled over at that moment. I punched the guy in the face as hard as I could. 

He staggered away from me holding his hands to his face. 

"I don't want to hurt you, kid!" he said.

"As if you could," I growled. "But I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to hurt you badly." 

As he tried to run away, I jumped forward and tackled him. I started beating the shit out of him. My father had sent me to martial arts classes from the time I could walk. After the third punch several men from the set-up crew pulled me off of him. They held me while he ran away. 

The men tried to calm me down, and my mother came over to me. "Terry, Honey, we need to talk about this," she said. 

"The only person I'm going to talk to is dad," I growled. "As soon as they let me go; that's where I'm going." 

"Terry, please, you can't do that," she whined. 

"I have nothing to say to you, whore," I snapped. "I have no respect left for you. Just get away from me." 

"Let him up," said one of the men. "Ralph is gone now. I don't know what he did or why the boy went after him. But it's over now. They can calm down now separately. Terry we're going to let you go. But don't go anywhere near Ralph until you calm down. Ralph may be old, but he can cause you a lot of problems."

Just as I got up, my problems got worse. As I tried to walk away, my mother trailed along behind me. "Terry, can we talk?" she whined. 

I walked almost back to my car with her trailing right behind me. "Terry, it was only a joke. You have to let me explain. Stop, Terry, talk to me. I can explain it." 

I turned so fast that she ran into me. "You don't have to explain shit to me, whore," I spat. "Explain it to Dad." 

"Terry, it was just a joke that got out of hand," she said. "If you tell your father, he will never understand it. Terry, I'll lose him." She was crying her eyes out. 

I tried to calm myself down. I tried to think and act in a very analytical manner. I sat down on a bench near where I parked. And looked at her. 

"Okay, explain it to me," I said. I tried to remain emotion free, but she was still the woman who had wiped my runny noses and made my favorite cocoa when I was a child. I wanted to believe her. However, at that moment, my trust in the female of the species was not at a very high level. 

"Well ... Uhm ... Ralph and I are old friends, and we always joke around. We uhm dated for a while before your father, and I met. And we've always joked about what things would be like if we had ... Uhm stayed together. And uhm ... For the past few years, we've patted each other on the butt ... Uhm your father knows about it. But this time it just got out of hand. It was kind of like a dare that neither one of us wanted to back down from. It just got out of hand."

I got up and pressed the button on my alarm. My Mustang's locks sprang open. 

"So we can keep this between us, right?" she asked. 

"I'm not four, mother," I spat. "I'm not stupid. I won't believe something just because an adult said it. That man is old enough to be my grandfather. That means he's old enough to be your father. You and dad got married when you were abut twenty years old. You expect me to believe that you were dating a guy that old before you met dad?" 

"You have to believe me," she said without looking at me. "It was a big secret. When Ralph and I broke up because of the age difference, your dad swooped in and swept me off of my feet. But I never fully got over Ralph."

I signed. "I grew up today, Mom," I said. "It's just like that old song about how growing up is hard to do. I guess the roughest part is discovering that one of the two people I trust most in the world is not worthy of my trust. I don't believe a fuckin' word of what you just said. There is no way dad would ever be okay with some guy putting his hands on you. Whether it was a joke or not. Dad has always treated you like you were made of gold, and now it turns out that you're just another ..."

"I'm still your mother young man," she snapped. "I will not be spoken to in that manner. You will ..."

"Before you go too much further, mother," I said with my voice dripping sarcasm. "What are you planning on doing to me? Are you going to spank me? And what if I decide not to tell him ... Are you going to take me out for ice cream? Ooh maybe we could go to McDonald's." 

"But Terry, it was just a mistake," she said. "It's not worth destroying our entire family over. If you tell your dad about this, he will never understand. We'll all lose. We don't deserve that. Your sisters don't deserve it. Your father certainly doesn't deserve it. All this can do is hurt them. Can't we just ...?" 

"Can't we just what, Mother?" I asked. "Forget that it happened? Forget that you're cheating on dad? Can't we just pretend that it never happened?" 

"Terry, you're blowing this way out of proportion," she said. "I have never cheated on your father. This was just some harmless fooling around. Don't try to make it more than it was. I would never ... not ever ..."

As I looked into her eyes, I knew she was lying and my anger became even worse. 

"Shut up, Mother," I snapped. "I'm going to give you a couple of days. I want dad and the girls to have a nice weekend. But Monday evening when dad comes home, we're all going to have a talk. If you're smart, you'll tell him before I do. It would be the right way to handle it. Leaving your son to tell his father that the woman he loves more than anyone on earth is cheating on him isn't something a parent should do to their child."

"Terry, it was a one-time thing. It was a mistake. I'm only human. I swear to you that I will spend the rest of my life ..." she began.

"Save it," I barked. "I can see that you think you can lie your way out of this, but ..."

"What lie," she asked.

"You started out telling me it was nothing," I said. "Then it became just a mistake. And you said that Dad knew about it. Then when I told you how ridiculous, it was you admitted that it had gotten out of hand. But you said it was just some fooling around. That was a lie too, and now you're telling me that it only happened once and somehow I don't believe that either. I don't believe a word out of your mouth, mother and I never will again. You have a couple of days before I talk to dad, but don't ever speak to me again." 

For most people, the argument with the person formerly known as their mother would have been the lowest point of the day. But as I got into my car and drove away, I saw Kira driving into the park. She was circling the park the way that I had, but had yet to make it to the area near the parking lot. I hung a quick180 and drove the long way around, circling the entire park just to avoid her. 

Dealing with one lying, cheating whore was bad enough. I didn't think I was ready for the bi-fecta. 

I headed back for town. I decided to go and watch my dad run his race. He could use someone to cheer him on, and I could use a calming influence. 

I drove quickly because I wanted to get there before the start of the race and ... Okay, why lie. I always drive fast. Whether I have a reason to or not. 

I got to the town square and looked around for my dad. I said hello to a lot of people who welcomed me back to town. I promised to call some of them, so we could hang out or do things during the summer. And others I just greeted, to be polite. Finally, near the starting line, I spotted my dad. He was chatting with the Sheriff and my aunt Tara. She wasn't really my aunt. But she'd been my mother's best friend for all my life. I made my way over to him. 

"Hey Dad," I said. "The sheriff told me to tell you that he was going to kick your ass in the race today." He looked over at the sheriff, who was standing right next to him and just smiled. 

"It's good to have you back, Terry," said my aunt Tara. Ever since I was a kid, I've had a crush on her. But then half of the guys in town did. Not only was she pretty, she was built like a brick shipyard. And she had one of those bodies that only get sexier over time. 

Before I could say anything else to my dad, a voice on the loudspeaker called the runners to the starting line. 

The sheriff playfully bumped my dad as if he was trying to knock him down. 

"Sixty eight seconds," smirked the sheriff. 

"Huh?" Said my dad. 

"The race is age graded, so you have to beat me by sixty eight seconds to win." The sheriff smiled. But, my dad smiled even more. 

A big group of guys toed the starting line, including some of my friends and some of the high school kids. The announcer gave them a bunch of instructions and then shot a gun. The runners all took off; there were about a hundred and fifty of them. The crowd whistled and cheered as they went by. The first few blocks of the race were along the town's main street. The last few blocks were the same only in reverse. Most of the crowd settled down to wait for the finish of the race. A 10k is just over six miles of running so it would be a little over a half an hour before even the fastest runners were back.

I decided that staying in the same place for any length of time was not in my best interest. So I started walking around. I also tried to blend in with the crowd. That way, it would be harder for Kira to find me. 

I ducked behind three guys. Two of them seemed familiar, but the other's face was obscured. But as soon as I heard his voice, I knew who it was and whom he was ranting about. I quickly hit the record button on my phone. 

"Fuckin' bitches, man," he said. "First I have to deal with Lana ... Or Doctor Lana as I call her. Doctor Lana believes that we have to wait until we get married to have sex. If I left things up to her, my balls would dry up before we did anything. But then while Doctor Lana is out of town studying, I found the perfect little skank. Her loser boyfriend is out of town at the same college that Doctor Lana goes to. It's the perfect set up. Whenever Lana is home on break, he is too. 

But now, fuckin' Kira cut me off because he's home for the summer. I had it all worked out. I figured that whenever he was busy with family shit, she could just come over and give me some. But she's talkin' like I'm supposed to wait until fall when he goes back to school. She's crazy. I found her. I can find another slut just as easily." 

"What if she breaks up with her boyfriend," asked his friend. 

"Not my problem, we are not like that," said Jeff. "Shit, I'd probably try to help her get back with him. It's not like I would ever marry a low-class skank like her. Dude, she's a waitress. I mean there's nothing wrong with being a waitress, but she's like a waitress-waitress. Ten years from now she'll be a dumpy single mother, like her mom, still working at that same old restaurant. And I'll be rich. I'll take over my dad's car dealership and be married to a hot doctor. Maybe you two will work for me." 

That was all I could take. My simmering anger boiled over. "You forgot about how ten years from now you'll still be an asshole," I said. Their heads whipped around, and Jeff's mouth dropped open. 

"Surely you remember me," I said. "I mean you were just talking about me, right?" 

"We were talking about someone different," said one of the Jeff's friends. 

"I don't know," I said. "I am or I was Kira's loser boyfriend." 

"So how the fuck is that our problem," asked Jeff. "You left town. She decided to give some pussy away. I took it. If you can't control your woman, it's not my fault or my problem." 

He started smiling at his two friends, and they all laughed. It was a really dumb thing to do because all that morning and the night before, I had been just barely holding my temper together. His snide quips were all it took for me to lose it. 

"You're right," I said. "You've got other problems; like picking your teeth up and getting my foot out of your ass." Before he even realized what had happened, I had punched him in the mouth so hard his head snapped backwards. 

He tried to hit me back, but I sidestepped his wild swing and snapped his head back again. This time he fell onto the ground, already woozy. "Get him!" He yelled to his friends. "Kick his ass!" 

"See ya later, Jeff," said one guy. He turned and left quickly. 

"He's my ride," said the other pointing at the first guy, then taking off after him.




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 01



I was just about to launch myself at Jeff again, when I was grabbed from behind. I turned angrily and saw that Andy Dalton one of the Sheriff's deputies had grabbed me. 

"Terry, let's take a little ride until you calm down," he said. Then he turned to Jeff. "You, get your ass up and come along with us too." I got the distinct impression that Andy didn't like Jeff. 

My luck that day was spectacular. I set new levels for Murphy's Law. So why did I expect things not to get worse? But I was wrong again and things went down another level. As Andy led us away from the crowd, towards his squad car, I heard the sound of a squeal coming from a feminine voice that I knew only too well. 

"Terry," yelled Kira, breaking through the crowd to get to us. "I've been driving all over town trying to get to you. But every place I've gone, I've gotten there too late. Why didn't you call me when you got home? I didn't know that you were coming home yet. I thought you had a couple of finals left. At least, that's what your text said." 

"I got home yesterday afternoon," I said, flatly. "I took a nap after that long drive and went to your house as soon as I woke up." 

"My mom told me that you came over," she said, smiling. "You should have called me. I'd have come home immediately. But it doesn't matter; we have the entire summer to spend together, starting now. You and I will not be separated until you go back to school in the fall." 

I looked at Andy and rolled my eyes. "Andy ... Take me to jail," I pleaded. 

"Terry, I'm not taking you to jail," he said. "I was there and I heard this asshole spouting off at the mouth. I've been in your shoes. I only wish that I had the chance you had. I'd probably have done the same thing. But I am a peace officer. It's my job to keep the peace; especially with all the tourists in town for the Founder's celebration. So you two stay away from each other. And if I hear about any more trouble between you two, I'll throw you both in jail until you're thirty."

"S' over, s' far as I'm concerned," mumbled Jeff. His rapidly swelling lip and quickly closing, swollen eye were impinging on his ability to speak correctly. 

"Terry, you go north, towards the finish line so you can see your dad lose to the Sheriff, and Asshole; you go south. Stay away from each other until you can act like adults," said Andy. 

"Andy my dad isn't going to lose," I said. 

"Yeah, kid, I know," he said quietly. "Your old man runs like a fuckin' deer. But I just wanted people to think I was loyal." He pulled me over to the side and spoke to me in a low voice. 

"Terry, I heard what that bastard was saying. You know about my story. You know how that sweet talking guy from out of town came blowing in and filled Patty's head with a bunch of non-sense. She left me and our kids and ran off with him. She came back about a month later, crying her eyes out and sorry as all get out. I was strong and had my pride. I told her to go back to where she'd been and never come back again. I only heard from her two more times. The first time she was in jail down in Chicago. They locked her up for solicitation and drug charges. They wanted me to come down there to pick her up. There was no way I wanted her around my kids, so I refused. The next time I heard from her again, was when they called me to come and identify her body. 

"It was the worst thing I ever had to do. Terry she looked like a different person. Her beautiful long hair was cut as short as a boy's. She was thin to the point of being emaciated. She had boob implants that were t least a couple of sizes too big for her. She also had hundreds maybe thousands of tattoos all over her body. She had our kids' names tattooed over and over up her arms from the shoulder to the wrist. She had my name tattooed all the way from her waist to her ankle down the side of one leg, just Andy with a little heart after it. It looked like she'd gotten it done every fucking day or at least every day that she could get to a tattoo shop. Then she had a huge heart done on her back that said I love Andy forever. And right above her lady parts, she had 'Andy's' tattooed there with an arrow pointing straight down. 

"As I looked at her dead, naked body all the hate went away, Terry. I wished with all of my heart that I had given her one more chance. If I had taken her back when she first came back she'd probably be alive right now, and my kids would have a mother. Everyone makes mistakes, Terry. We're all humans. One mistake doesn't have to ruin your entire life. Pride doesn't keep you warm at night. Pride doesn't hug you and tell you it loves you. My kids miss their mother every day, and I miss her too. I'd give anything to have her back. 

"You guys are young; you're both gonna make some mistakes; that's what growing up is all about. Take a lesson from what I did, okay?" 

"I'll give it a lot of thought, Andy," I said. "And thanks. You gave me something to think about." 

"Hey," said Jeff as I turned to walk away. "Like I said earlier, as far as I'm concerned it's over. I did something I probably shouldn't have done. You got back at me by busting my face up. We're even. And I know that you don't want to hear this, but think about this too. I may have done you a favor. Instead of making a mistake down the line and getting married to her, you found out what type of girl she is. I heard what Andy said too, but you weren't even gone for very long before we started." He held out his hand for me to shake. I shook his hand, and we both turned and went our separate ways. 

Well, he did anyway. I turned and stepped into a hug that I wasn't expecting. Before I got my bearings, there were two lips pressed eagerly against mine. I stood there like a rock. It had to be pretty embarrassing for her. She was going to town. She was moving her head back and forth while I stood there unmoving.

Finally, after noticing that I wasn't kissing her back, even a little, she stepped back and looked at me. 

"I've been following you around all over town. I kept trying to catch up with you. Why didn't you tell me you were coming home today?" she said. She'd already told me that. But like a lot of liars she thought that by repeating shit that she'd already said, it made it true. That way she could pile on even more lies and hopefully I would believe them too.

"I got home yesterday," I said. "I wanted to surprise you, but I was the one who got the surprise. I went to your house last night because I was dying to see you. Your mom told me that you were out with friends."

"Terry, I hate staying home alone. I miss you too much," she said. "So sometimes I go out with the girls and we ..." She stopped talking as I shook my head. 

"Look, Kira," I said. "We're both very young. We have a lot of life ahead of us. But as much as I wish it could be otherwise, I don't think that life will be together." 

Her face turned angry, and her eyes filled with tears. "You asshole," she screamed. "It hasn't even been three months since you came home for spring break. You're dumping me for some college girl aren't you? Well, you're going to regret it. Whatever she's doing for you, I can do better and ..."

"How do you feel?" I asked. She stopped ranting and looked at me. 

"How the hell do you think I feel?" she shouted. "I'm 19 years old. I've been in love with you since before I knew what love was. The day after I turned 18, I gave myself to you. I feel like shit. I feel like my heart is breaking in two. I'm dizzy and I just want to go off somewhere and cry." 

"Great," I said. 

"So it's not enough that you're breaking my heart, you want to hear how miserable I feel," she said. "I never thought that you were that kind of person Terry." 

"I'm not, Kira," I said. "There is no other woman. I have never cheated on you, not even once." Relief flooded her face. Her smile was like the sun coming out after a hard rain. 

"Then Terry why did you ..." 

"Because I wanted to show you how I feel right now," I said sadly. "I know about you and Jeff, and we're done." 

"Terry, No," I screamed. "You're making a big mistake. There's nothing between Jeff and me. We just went to a couple of parties. We were both lonely. He's engaged to Lana. She was away at college. She goes to the same school you do. We both just needed someone to talk to. I have never so much as kissed him. I swear it." 

"So he has never had his hands on your ass?" I asked. 

"Of course not," she said. "If anyone said that happened, they're just lying to break us up." 

"Boy, do I feel better," I said. I pulled out my phone and pressed play. Jeff's voice came through loud and clear. 

She heard everything he had said about her in front of his friends. 

"He ... He's lying, Terry. He just wants to seem like a big shot in front of his friends. None of that ever happened. Who do you believe ... that lying asshole or me?" she asked. 

I switched to my video files and pressed play again. 

Her eyes got huge as she watched herself getting out of Jeff's car. 

"It really looks like his hand is on your ass," I said. "And it really sounds like you're telling him that he's going to have to wait until I'm back at school for the two of you to pick things back up." 

"The video is faked," she said quietly. "Someone is working really hard to make me look bad. Where did you get it?" 

"I shot it myself on this same phone," I said. "You were chasing me all over the town because I just didn't want to see you. But look on the bright side. You and Jeff can get together and fuck each other's brains out all summer. You don't have to wait for me to go back to school."

I turned to leave and she followed me. "Terry, I'm sorry. It won't ever happen again," she said. "I swear it."

"Kira, I loved you with all my heart, but I could never trust anything you say. You've looked me straight in the eye and lied to me repeatedly in the last five minutes. I have no intention of spending my life wondering where my wife is or who she's with. Maybe this is a good thing. I'll have the whole summer to get over it, and then I can go back to school and find someone that I can love AND trust. Have a nice life." I walked away, leaving her standing there with tears running down her face. I could hear her sobs as I turned the corner and headed for the finish line of the race. 

* * * * * *

Donna

I was in shock. This couldn't be happening. My life was unraveling. I had no control over what was going to happen to me. I couldn't stop crying. Right after Terry had driven off I got in my car and drove home. I couldn't believe that my son had told me not ever to speak to him again. My own child, my flesh and blood, cast me out of his life.

Terry also called me a whore several times. I was still in shock that the little boy whose ouchies I bandaged and kissed had called me a whore to my face. The worst part about it was that he was right. I know that Terry's anger got the best of him. He was shocked at what he saw. He attacked Ralph Kramden like a wild man. Ralph is bigger and older than Terry, but it didn't seem to make a difference. 

No one in town would attack Ralph Kramden. He and Ed Norton were the toughest two guys in town twenty-five years ago. Even the police at the time were afraid of what could happen if the two of them went to war. They both had substantial gangs supporting them. 

However, I guess that was a different era. Now both of them were just two egotistical old men who still thought they were tough. Unfortunately for Ralph, my son didn't know his reputation. Terry just started beating on Ralph because he was pissed. If those men hadn't pulled Terry off of Ralph, who knows what he might've done. 

I had a lot to be sorry for. I couldn't afford to have the things I'd done come out. If even part of it came out I would lose Greg. And losing Greg would be the same thing as dying. 

After twenty-five years of living with him and loving him like he was a part of my very soul I was incapable of living without Greg. The man put three babies in me. I would walk through fire for him. And now our son was so angry at me that he wanted to pull my entire life down around me. 

I drove home. I forgot about where I was supposed to be and where I was supposed to go. I forgot about what I was supposed to do. I ran home. A wounded animal always goes to familiar ground. 

Walking through my house, I could barely stop crying. Every time I looked at a picture, it triggered memories. Those memories reminded me of what I was about to lose, and then I'd start crying again. 

The ringing of my phone gave me pause. I picked up the phone expecting to hear from a very angry husband. It was our oldest daughter, though. 

"Mom, where are you?" she asked. "We're at the race. Aren't you going to come down to see daddy run?" 

"Yeah sweetie, I'm on my way," I said. I wiped my tears and grabbed my car keys. My hope was that Terry had calmed down to the point where I could talk to him. All I wanted was a second chance. There was no reason for Terry to ruin my life and ruin our family. He and I both loved the same person. That person was his father and my husband. Neither one of us wanted to see him hurt. Terry had to listen to common sense. If it was a case where I didn't love his father, I could understand it. But I loved Greg more than life itself. I could see no future in which Greg, and I were not together. 

I got downtown a short time after the race had started. I was glad that my daughter had called me. I found her, her husband and our youngest daughter, Debbie, standing near the area where the race had started and would soon end. 

Looking at my daughters together was bizarre. Sherry was taller than me, but she looked just like me at her age. Sherry at twenty four had all of my facial features, and she shared my lack of boobage. 

Debbie, on the other hand, looked as if Greg had just spat her out. At thirteen years old, she was already as tall as Sherry and had the makings of a very impressive rack. Her legs were longer and shaped better than mine or Sherry's, and her butt wasn't as big as ours either. If they hadn't pulled her out of me, I'd have sworn that she was someone else's child, but I loved her with all of my heart just like the other two. 

My, son, feeling alone among all the women asked me if I knew where Terry was. My face must've given something away, because Sherry asked me what was going on. "Nothing," I said. "I'm just a little on edge about your dad running these things at his age. We're going to be fifty in a few years. And I see all of these things on TV about men having heart attacks and ... Well maybe it's time he gave up running in these things." 

They all started laughing at me. 

"Mom, you're the one who's always telling dad to go out and run," said Sherry. 

"I just do that when he gets out of sorts," I said. "Going out for a long slow run relaxes him. And lately I've been sending Deb out with him, just in case." 

Sherry was amazed. "Debs you can run?" she asked, as she poked her younger sister in the ribs, playfully. 

"Dad slows down for me," said Debbie. "But, yeah, I like to run too." 

"Maybe I should start running," said Sherry. "My ass is getting fatter by the year." 

"I love your ass," said Mark. "It's perfect." Sherry started smiling. 

I felt guilty then because I was the one who had started Debbie going out to run with Greg. If I needed to sneak someone in the house, I'd send Greg out for a run and send Debbie with him. At thirteen, she was old enough to figure out what was going on so it was best that she not be there. 

I began to realize that I was the cause of my own problems. My son had been very close to right when he called me a whore. 

The problem was that from a very early age, I'd had a very high sex drive. My own mother suffered from the same problem. The difference was that she found other ways to ... vent her needs. She never cheated on my father. I have no idea how she managed to handle it, but she did. 

I viewed it as Greg's fault because he was the one who unlocked it when he got my cherry. Greg was a pretty randy guy. He and I knew each other for most of our lives. We had never socialized growing up though because I was two years older than he was. 

We met at the state college that both of us attended. Mark was an engineering major and a budding genius. I was flunking out of math. Several of my friends who like me, were taking easier classes, referred me to Greg for help. Within a week, we were an item. Within two weeks neither of us were virgins any more. And for me, it was as if someone had just let a lion out of her cage. I simply couldn't get enough sex. 

I finished out the year at school, but my grades, like the year before were anything but stellar. As far as college was concerned, I was losing ground quickly. I was in my third year and had changed my major twice. Greg, though only finishing up his first year, had nearly as many credits as I had. And since he was taking far more difficult classes, it was even more impressive. I, with Greg's help, finally passed a college mathematics class. Greg had helped me with most of my homework, but he couldn't take the tests for me. I escaped general math with a respectable C. Greg had pre-tested out of algebra and had aced College Trig his first semester, and Calculus his second. 

Being at home that summer did nothing but bring us closer together. I can't remember a single day that Greg and I didn't have sex. Most of the time we did it multiple times a day. I couldn't get enough. My periods didn't slow us down. In fact, that was when Greg discovered that I liked anal sex nearly as much as vaginal sex. 

The biggest problem for us came when I told Greg that college simply wasn't for me. The two of us were so close that we told each other our deepest and most private thoughts. I told Greg that I was dropping out before I told my parents. I was offered a job as a cashier in the local Gas n Go, and decided to take it. 

My parents were upset at first. However, they soon realized that I was making the best possible choice for me and for them. They couldn't keep on throwing money into the college, when it was simply doing me no good. I think that we all realized by then too, that Greg and I were going to get married. It was only a case of when, not if. 

At the end of that first magical summer, we spent together Greg returned to college. He worked very hard. Even harder than before because as he told me on the phone every night, he was working for both of us and our future. I loved him so much, and I hated being away from him. 

Greg was a lot of things to me. Besides being my first lover, he was my first really serious boyfriend. Let's face it; I was cute. But I have never been beautiful. Over the years, I'd had a few boyfriends, but I usually went after them. I lost them all due to other girls being prettier, or other girls putting out. Greg was the first man actually to pursue me. Even though he was a couple of years younger, he came after me aggressively. 

I had no idea that we were dating until people started asking me about it. Greg was sneaky. While he was tutoring me in math, he would have me meet him in places that other students went to hang out. We'd meet at a cafe, and after explaining my homework to me and helping me to work the problems, he'd say, "I'm hungry, how about you?" 

People would see us together eating and start asking me about my date. Greg was handsome, and he had a really great personality too. He always told me how nice I looked. After a while, I started really enjoying the tutoring. But the first time he kissed me when he dropped me off was one of those watershed moments in my life. 

He pressed his lips against mine and closed his eyes. I was shocked at first, but quickly realized that it felt better than any kiss I had ever received from anyone in my life. It just felt right. Before I realized it I was kissing him back. I felt his tongue on my lips and opened them. I was so dizzy that I didn't remember where I was. Looking back on it, Greg really could have fucked me right there in the doorway to my dorm. I wouldn't have stopped him. In fact, I would have let him have anything he wanted. 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 01



I woke up the next morning and realized that I wanted Greg more than anything on the planet. I was lucky because he wanted me too. When he tutored me the next time, I was so distracted that I couldn't concentrate on the math problems. I was just waiting for the kissing to start. 

I had made sure that we would have plenty of time too. He wanted to go to another popular restaurant on campus. I convinced him that it would be cheaper and better, to pick up a pizza on his way to my dorm, and we could stay there. 

After we ate, we did do a few math problems but from then on I was ready. Once he saw that we weren't getting anywhere with the math, Greg sighed and told me that maybe I was burnt out and just needed a night off. I agreed. He looked really sad. I was hurt by his sadness, so I asked him what was wrong. 

"Well ... I don't know how to say this," he said. I feared what he would say next. 

I expected him to tell me that he couldn't tutor me anymore, because he had found someone who wanted to pay him for tutoring. Or that he found someone prettier, or someone with big tits. 

"I really like it when we spend the whole evening together," he said sadly. "I always miss you when I have to leave." 

I don't know if it was the honesty of his words or just the look of absolute sadness in his eyes, but I knew then that Greg and I were soul-mates. The next thing I knew we were kissing again. This time we were on the old sofa in my dorm's common area. I had simply launched myself at him and pushed him back until I was on top of him. We were sucking each other's tongues and had our arms wrapped around each other for dear life. 

His hands were rubbing my back, and it felt magical. We hadn't planned it, but it happened. I couldn't stop kissing him. His hands roamed my body, and I didn't care. All the things that my mother and Sunday school teachers had told me for my entire life went out the window. I didn't give a fuck about being a good girl. I just wanted to be Greg's girl. 

He tentatively touched one of my tiny boobs, and I pulled his hand away. Seeing his disappointment, I just smiled and pulled my sweater over my head. I took off my bra, and we were at it again. I couldn't believe he wanted to feel and lick my tiny boobs, but he did. And he kept saying things that just supercharged me. 

"When I told him that my tits were small, and he said they were "His," it was as if I was struck by a bolt of lightning. 

"Greg, it's not just my titties," I said thickly. "I'm yours; all of me."

He looked into my eyes and said one word. "Forever." I started kissing him even harder. There was no way he was getting out of that dorm without fucking me. My pussy was throbbing. I pulled his pants down, and he was all ready to go. His was the first real male penis that I had ever seen. But I was twenty years old. We both knew what to do, even though we had never done it. 

I heard from a lot of my friends that it hurt the first time, but it got better after that. In my case, it was good from the beginning. I took his penis and rubbed the head of it against my sopping wet pussy. The head was already between my inner lips, and I just pulled him slowly forward into me. I didn't feel anything tear. It felt just like a snap. My pussy was so tight that it had been hard pulling him into me. But once we passed that snap; it got a little easier. I opened my legs because I wanted him buried in me. I wanted the two of us as close together as we could possibly be. 

"Shit, this feel good," he said. I don't remember which one of us started moving first. But we started pushing and rubbing against each other. It started out as just me rubbing my pussy against his lower abdomen trying to push him further inside of me. And then he backed up. It pulled his dick out of me a little bit. I moaned because I wanted him in me. I had no idea that he was starting to slowly fuck me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him back inside of me. 

"No," I begged as if my life depended on it. "Don't take it out." He just smiled at me and backed off a little bit again. And then he pushed forward. I realized what he was doing and started to match his rhythm. It took a few moments of awkwardness, but then suddenly I realized how good that friction of his dick sliding in, and out of me felt.

Without warning, my first orgasm hit me, and I almost blacked out. "Oh shit, oh fuck," I moaned. "Do that to me again." We started pumping harder and faster, and I was in heaven. My legs flailed uselessly, and my arms pulled Greg against me as he pushed his pelvis against mine over and over again. We were covered in sweat, but unable to stop. When he leaned down and started kissing me as we fucked it added a whole new dimension. I became even more ravenous. 

To this day, Greg is still the only man I kiss, but that first night; we were out of control. My roommate came in. I heard her gasp of shock. She went into her room, so for me the problem was solved. Greg hesitated. "She's gone," I snapped. "Besides she already saw us. Stopping won't make any difference." 

I was hooked. Greg fucked me until he couldn't get it up, and I still wanted more. We ruined the sofa. There was a big spot of blood and bodily fluids on it. We bought a cover for it. After that Greg and I were insatiable. And we've been that way ever since. Whenever we're around each other, there is sexual tension. 

Our hands gravitate towards each other's body parts. I remember times during our thirties when we'd have a family movie night with our three kids. We'd have pizza and popcorn and soda and let the kids pick the movie. 

Greg and I would always take the sofa and let the kids have blankets and pillows on the floor. Once we got under the cover, I would put Greg's hands on my pussy. He knew what that meant. 

I've heard that for a lot of couples who've been married for a long time, that sex slows down after a few years. It did with us too. We don't do it as frequently, but it is more intense. Now that we're in our forties, approaching fifty, we only do it about four or five times a week. But they're five really good times. 

I used to worry about the fact that I'm not cute and thin any more. I have a belly, and my ass is huge. My tits are still tiny, and my legs are thick. But Greg still loves getting between them. 

I have mirrors on the walls of our bedroom, and sometimes I'm amazed at the looks on Greg's face as he fucks me. I don't think he even realizes that I can see him. I'll be there on my knees with my big fat ass in the air, with Greg pumping me from behind. The look on his face tells me that he loves fucking me, and more than that, he loves me. I can see my ass jiggling with each stroke and Greg slapping it and making it move as he pumps faster and harder. My pussy seems to clench at him, urging him on. I especially love it when he reaches forward and rubs my nipples. I usually have to bite the pillows to keep me from screaming in pleasure. In about five years when Debbie leaves for college, I'll be able to scream like I do now when she spends the night at a friend's house. All the neighbors will know that I'm getting fucked and loving it. 

Of course, my favorite times are the less intense ones. Greg and me, lying on our sides with him entering my pussy from behind. He holds one of my legs up and starts sawing away at me while he kisses me. I never want that to end. My body responds to Greg's to this day in ways that no one else on the planet can match. 

In fact, after we had Terry, we'd thought that we were done with kids. We had the perfect set, one of each. But just before Terry's sixth birthday, Greg's parents wanted to keep both kids for the weekend. They took them to Disney. Greg and I spent the whole weekend naked. All we did was eat, sleep, and fuck. It was like another honeymoon. 

I remember it like it was yesterday; I got out of bed to make us a sandwich, and Greg came up behind me in the kitchen. He rubbed his hands up and down my back and my nipples stood up. He was very gentle. 

"Donna, now," he smiled. "I need it bad. I feel like I'm gonna explode." I smiled at him. It was funny. We'd spent the entire morning fucking. We'd just stopped to eat. Surely he could go more than five minutes without me. 

"Greg, you don't have to ask," I told him. "Just take me. Anytime and every time you want it. Let's go back upstairs."

"I can't wait," he said. He pushed me down on my back on the kitchen floor. We'd been married for over ten years. We had two kids. We'd had sex literally thousands of times, but there was something about that one time. My pussy was literally dripping. Maybe it was my body recognizing and reacting to the look of absolute lust in my mate's eyes. But I knew what he wanted, and I gave it to him. I lay down on my kitchen floor, and Greg got on top of me. Even when he entered me, it felt different. Our mouths locked together, and we started. Within a few strokes, I was feeling the same desperation that he was. It was as if we just melted into one big blob of flesh. I couldn't tell where he ended, and I began. 

We came together and stayed there,p wrapped together in a tangle of arms and legs, covered in sweat and unable to stop kissing each other. My entire belly was warm and there was a pool of sticky sperm and body fluids leaking out of me. 

That was the best sex that Greg, and I have ever had. And I knew. I don't know how I knew, but I did. We just drifted off to sleep, wrapped in each other's arms in the middle of our kitchen floor. We woke up hours later, smelling really bad and still wrapped in each other's arms. 

"I love you," he said. 

"That's a good thing," I told him. "Because I love you too, and I'm pretty sure you just got me pregnant again." We both laughed, but a few weeks later the laughing stopped when I came back from my doctor's office. I've often told Debs that she was a special gift to us from her grandparents. Unfortunately, they never got to see her. Greg's parents traveled a lot. They had a big RV and were always taking trips. When they took the kids to Disney, they had flown. They decided that they liked flying a lot. And took several more trips that way. 

When I was five months pregnant with Debbie, they went on a trip that they never came back from. They died during a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Debbie was named after Greg's mom. Terry was already named after his dad. 

"Here they come!" someone shouted. 

I craned my neck and saw a lone figure running towards the finish line. As he came closer I could make out details better. 

"It's dad," said Debbie. He's wearing his favorite, yellow Asics running shirt. Not only could I not make out the shirt; I could barely see that it was yellow. I needed new glasses. 

As he got closer, I could see that Debbie was right. I was filled with pride as the crowd cheered my husband's efforts. 

He wasn't really even running hard and there was no one else coming. As the announcer identified Greg and told the crowd how old he was, the cheers grew even louder. Two cheerleaders held up a long piece of paper tape that Greg broke through and the crowd went nuts. We ran over to congratulate Greg and when he looked at me, there was nothing but love in his eyes. I hugged him as if I would never see him again. I knew then that Terry hadn't told Greg yet. 

"Honey, it's not like I went off to war," he told me. 

"I know, Greg, but I worry about you when you run these things," I gushed. 

"Then maybe we should sneak off so you can test my heart," he said. I knew then that things were fine between us. A man who'd been cheated on wouldn't want sex from the woman who'd cheated on him. 

"I told you years ago, that you didn't have to ask, it's yours," I whispered to him. "But aren't you exhausted after your race?" 

"Nah, but I could use something to eat. I'm starving," he said. 

"Okay," I said to the kids. "Why don't you three go over to the carnival in the town square and ride the rides ... Try to ... " I began.

"Okay, we're there," said Debbie before I could finish. "Daddy, next time I want to run in the race too." She hugged her father and grabbed Mark and Sherry's hands. "Let's go people. Those rides aren't going to ride themselves."

"Hey aren't you going to stay to get your award?" Someone asked Greg as we started walking towards the parking lot. 

"All the awards are given out at the pre-fireworks show tonight," I said. 

As we left the area, a stream of other runners was headed for the finish line. Greg beat the next runner by almost three minutes. There were three of the college guys steaming in looking exhausted. They were followed by the sheriff who like Greg looked pretty relaxed. Then came a group of the high school guys and some other runners. Following them was another group of high schoolers with a girl who was working really hard to stay with them. She was the first woman. 

But a few minutes later when Greg and I had just reached my car, I heard a cheer go up. The crowd was screaming for Tara. That was one of the things I hated about Tara. She was my best friend, but she was so God Damned beautiful that people went gaga over her and gave her credit for things she hadn't earned. 

"And here comes the first woman," said the announcer. Tara was probably the third woman across the line. But with her long legs, big boobs and pretty hair, the announcer was probably already in love with her. 

I got Greg into my car, and we drove home. His hands were already in my pants, and I realized that Terry had done me a favor. If I had done anything with Ralph and hadn't had time to go home and clean myself up, Greg might've been sticking his fingers inside of a used pussy. 

* * * * * *

Terry

As I passed by the town square, headed for the car show and my dad, a voice called my name. 

I had parked in the lot behind the courthouse where everyone parked for the big events in town. 

"Terry, what the hell is wrong with you," yelled a female voice behind me.

I turned and saw Kira's mom coming towards me. 

"My daughter is distraught. She's crying her eyes out. I thought you, and she were in love. What happened to all of that talk about the two of you getting married? And I thought you were a nice boy. I tried to warn her. You men are all the God Damned same. You get what you want then you just throw a girl to the side while you go after another one. You ran off to college and met some whore up there and came back here to dump Kira, didn't you? Well mister you're gonna ..." She stopped suddenly. 

Her whole tone and demeanor changed. "Terry, Honey, you look like shit. Are you okay? Here sit down on this bench and talk to me. Terry your hand is bleeding. You've been fighting too, haven't you?" I just nodded my head. It was all coming out. The anger I had felt since seeing Kira and seeing that asshole Jeff, the night before was finally dissipating. And with it a flood of emotions. 

"Terry why were you fighting?" she asked. I just pulled out my phone and played the conversation between Jeff and his friends. Her eyes got huge. 

"Oh Shit," she said. "Terry I am so sorry for the things I said. I had no idea that was going on. No wonder your face looks like that. You probably won't believe this. But I kind of know how you feel. You probably know that I'm a single mom. I raised Kira on my own because her father just took off with some girl who was fresh out of high school. He left us before Kira was even a year-old. So I know some of what you're feeling."

"I feel so empty," I said. "And so angry. I loved her so much. I always thought that we were going to get married and have a great life, like ..." I stopped. I was going to say like my parents, but I realized that we would have been more like my parents than I wanted. Both my Dad and I chose women who cheat. There must be something in our genes that makes us magnets for whores. 

"Terry, I'm gonna talk to that daughter of mine," she said angrily. "There has to be something wrong with her. But I want you to think about something too. You two are very young. You went away to college, and Kira was stuck here. She probably just got lonely. I don't think she loves the asshole. I think she just missed you and went about getting over her loneliness the wrong way. Maybe in time you two can get past this. Don't give up on her. If you really love her, maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive her."

Terry, I have an idea," she said. "I know that you're thinking that if you did forgive her, it would only happen again next year, right? Well if you really love my little girl, I have an idea ..." 

She was smiling at me. "Oh, I see you're interested," she said. 

In reality, I was wondering what the fuck made her think that I would ever get back with Kira. She had to be nuts. Women are crazy. Did she think that I was like one of those abused women on Jerry Springer? She thought that I was like one of those women whose boyfriends cheat on them over and over again, and they keep taking them back because they think that they love them. In reality, those women are just masochists. I'm not like that at all. There was no future for Kira and me. At least none where we were together. 

"Kira is working at the restaurant with me now," she began. "She's always going on about saving her money to help pay for your wedding and put something down on a house ..." Her words cut me even deeper. She noticed it. 

"Terry, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to hurt you again. Those things can still happen. Look my idea was that the two of you save up some money over the summer, and you take her back to school with you. Maybe you could go up early, and she could find a job in the area around your school. Kira ain't great with the books. That's your part. But the two of you could be together, and this would never happen again. Look I've gotta get back to work before my boss fires my ass. But you think about it, okay?" 

She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me and then took off for the restaurant, down the street. 

I sat there on that bench and thought about it. I had no idea how my dad would see things. He might decide that being married for more than twenty years and raising three kids together was different from my situation. Maybe my mom had been telling the truth ... Well no! I caught her in too many lies already. However, maybe for the sake of our family, Dad would choose to forgive her. 

But I couldn't. Even at my age I had my own belief system. My parents raised me to make my own mind up about things. My sisters and I grew up being given the facts and being allowed to make our own decisions about things. 

My parents let us make our own minds up about things like church and almost everything else. My mom went to church every Sunday. My dad went every once in a while. 

Mom sang in the choir, volunteered for church projects, and sometimes taught Sunday school classes. Dad did a long run on the hills outside of town most Sundays during the spring, summer, and fall. He rested for a while and then spent the bulk of his Sunday, washing his Mustang, and watching football and NASCAR. 

Dad worked five days a week and if the plant got behind he'd have to do a few Saturdays here and there. Mom has never worked outside of home. As I looked back at them, I realized two things. The first was that I had taken my values from what I believed I saw in my parents. I believed that I had seen a couple who loved each other deeply. When I was a child, I had loved my parents with a devotion that approached worship. As I grew older and started to look at women, I wondered why my mom and dad were together. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. But she's just that. She's a mom. My mom's not like the moms on TV. TV moms are always hot and sexy. Most of them are more attractive than their teenaged daughters. On TV, the husbands are the ones who are fat or dumpy looking, and it makes you wonder why this hot woman is with that guy. 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 01



If you don't understand what I'm saying, look at King of Queens, Modern Family, or shit even the Flintstones and you'll get it. But real life isn't like that. My dad works fifty hours a week and brings home great money as an engineer. He runs every day and works out with weights in our home gym. He looks great for his age. I've often wondered what he sees in my mom. 

My mom has a wonderful personality ... Well I thought she did until this morning. She's bubbly and always smiling. But she's a mom. Her face is okay. But she's short and thick with almost no boobs and a huge ass. You see women like that in the supermarket every day. And my dad must be deficient in some way because he acts like she's a God Damned supermodel. He's always kissing her and rubbing all over that big old ass when he thinks no one is watching them. 

They are totally devoted to each other. Dad has shown me pictures of mom when she was younger. She was thin and cute, but no raving beauty. I would probably have dated her, but I wouldn't have married her. Dad tells me that mom lost her body having us kids. I think that she should have worked out and dieted harder after the pregnancies. I think that mom figured there was no need to bust her ass trying to look good when she already had my dad. 

But now I realize that I was wrong. Like most kids, I idolized my parents, and I wanted what they had. The problem is that they don't really have what I thought they had. And my parents are not the people I thought they were. 

I idolize my dad. However, he has one glaring flaw. He's stupid when it comes to women. Apparently, I inherited that from him, but I'm smart enough to see my mistake. Dad isn't so I have to help him. 

My mom, on the other hand, is just a snake. She goes to church every God Damned Sunday, but breaks all the rules the rest of the time. She has cheated on my dad. She lies like a fucking rug. And she obviously fucks around on him. She gives me all of that bullshit about how much she loves him, when she clearly doesn't. If she did why would she do something that would cause him so much pain when he finds out?

For all of my life, this woman has lectured me, daily. "Do the right thing, Terry," she always says. "Don't lie, Terry," she says. "Terry, don't cheat," she says. "Terry, be good," she says. Well, Fuck her. 

My problem now is deciding whether or not to tell my dad. I know that if I tell him, it is going to hurt him badly. Mom claims she'll quit. But I know she won't. She reminds me of my friends who get caught smoking weed by the sheriff and his deputies. If they get a warning, they lie to the Sheriff's face. "Oh I swear I'll quit," they say. "This won't happen again, ever, Sheriff." 

They usually smoke it again by the next day, the next week at the latest. 

But, if the Sheriff gives them a big assed fine and reports them to their parents, it's a different story. They have to pay off that fine, which means they lose money. They usually get their car taken away, and they lose a lot of their freedom. That makes a lot of them quit for real. It just isn't worth it to smoke it when they consider all the things they can lose. 

That's probably what will happen with my mom. If I let her slide, she'll be fucking bums behind the garage in a couple of weeks. And that was another thing. The guy she was with ... He was a fuckin' troglodyte. This guy was not Bad Pitt. He was short and fat and old and ugly. The only thing he had in common with Brad is the pits. Brad has his Pitts in his last name. This guy had pits ... More like craters really ... All over his God Damned face. She may as well be fucking homeless guys. 

So the best thing for my dad would be for me to tell him. It will hurt him at first, but then it's up to him to decide what he wants to do. He can choose to take her back, or throw her ass to the curb. But he has to know. 

And speaking of Brads ... I have to find my friend Brad and thank him for telling me about Kira. I know that it was hard for him. But I'm better off knowing what she was doing, than marrying some skank that I could never trust. 

That made me realize that besides telling my dad, I had another job to do. I decided to let my Dad have his Saturday. I wanted him to have a great day under his belt maybe even a great weekend. Let him win his race. Let him get an award at the car show and enjoy a big picnic with his family. I could get him alone Sunday evening while we washed the cars or even Monday after work to tell him. 

However, there was someone else who needed to know, sooner. I got into my car and drove out of town. The place I was going was only a few miles past my family's house. After only a few moments on the freeway, I found myself wondering how my dad had handled it for so many years. It was difficult for me to keep the car under a hundred. 

I actually missed the exit. I was going too fast to make it up the ramp safely. So I went to the next exit and wound my way through the streets. 

I found the house by tips from a guy at the gas station nearby. There were very few houses out this far from the town. I pulled up in front of the house and went up to the front door. 

A man about my dad's age came to the door. "Good afternoon Mr. Turner," I said. "I'm Terry Matthews. Is Lana home?" 

"Your father is Greg Matthews, right?" he asked. "He's a hell of an engineer. Wait ... You helped Lana with her math a couple of months ago, didn't you? I've heard good things about you young man. Lana is upstairs; I'll send her down." 

"Mr. Turner, could you stay with us?" I asked. "This isn't a social call." He just nodded but had a confused look on his face. 

A few moments later, Lana came down the stairs. Her father ushered us into a room that looked like an office. It had paneled walls, deep carpets, and old leather furniture. 

"Hi Terry," said Lana. "I got a B on my final. That got me an A in the class. I owe you one." 

"You probably won't feel that way in a few minutes," I said. "Look, I'm not here to rehash college memories, Lana. I have some bad news for you. I don't really want to be the one who has to tell you, but I would want to know. In fact, less than twenty-four hours ago, someone told me."

"Someone told you what," she asked. 

"Lana while we were at school, Jeff was cheating on you," I said slowly. 

Her eyes flashed with anger. "He what," she hissed. 

"Look, I know you guys are engaged and ..." I began. 

"We were engaged," she said. "But if he was cheating we're done. How do you know this is true?" 

I showed her the video and then played the audio tape for her. I was surprised that she didn't get angrier. 

"Thanks, Terry," she said. "His ass is grass." 

"So young man; is this how you move into my daughter's life," asked her father. 

"No sir," I said. "Like I said, twenty-four hours ago, someone told me what Jeff was doing, I had to tell Lana. She deserves better." 

"Why would they tell you," he asked. 

"I was going to marry the woman he was cheating with," I said. "I guess I'm as much of a victim as Lana was." 

"Maybe the two of you can console each other," he smirked. Lana took my arm and led me out of the house. 

"Thanks again, Terry," said Lana. "My dad really likes you. He hated Jeff. I guess he'll be happy that I'm going to kick him to the curb. Do ya wanna ...?" 

"Lana, you're a great girl, and you're beautiful inside and out. However, I really loved Kira. It's going to be a while before I'm ready to date again." 

"It's unusual for a guy to admit something like that," she smiled. "I guess I need some time to let Jeff filter out of my system too. But to tell you the truth. He was a distraction that I really don't need. Studying medicine is a full-time job. I think HE was far more into the relationship than I was. However, I could always use another friend." 

"You've got one," I said as she pulled me in for a hug. 

"See ya later friend," she said. "I have a phone call to make." 

I headed back to town to find my family. 

* * * * * *

Kira

I couldn't stop crying. I also couldn't believe that Terry had dumped me. I just sat in my room all afternoon. I cried; I looked at all of our photos and started crying again. All of our plans were gone. Everything we wanted to do. Terry was going to be a great engineer. When I remember some of the things, he told me I felt like such a fool. 

"Kira, it's up to you," he always said. "You're my life. If you want to leave town once we graduate, that's fine." Terry knew that I hated living in this small assed town. I was torn between staying here and moving into one of those nice big houses like Terry and his family lived in, and moving to a bigger town. 

What a fool I'd been. The biggest factor of my stupidity was the fact that I really hadn't been THAT lonely. Terry called me several times a day, and we constantly texted each other. I hadn't even realized that I was that lonely until Jeff came around and started telling me that he understood how lonely I was. He was also telling me how pretty he thought I was lately. 'LATELY,' he'd said. Did that mean that I was Quasimodo before now? Or just that with Lana out of town, I was comparatively prettier. 

After hearing the things he'd said about me on Terry's phone, I realized that Jeff had just been using me for sex. It was the same-old story; the spoiled rich boy goes out slumming. He fucks the town's poor girl and then marries someone else. If he had gotten me pregnant, it would be one of those lifetime movies. He didn't give a damn about me. We weren't friends. He'd just wanted some easy pussy, and I was it. 

What an asshole. Lana was making him wait until they were married to have sex with him. Good for her. She was so pretty that she could control him and dictate her terms. He had to go along with them or lose her. But since she wasn't putting out. He just decided that he could fuck me. And just fuck up my life in the process. 

The worst part about it was the pain in Terry's eyes. Terry loved me. I hurt him really badly. I wanted with all of my heart to fix things between us. But even if I could fix things, they would never be the same. The level of intimacy that Terry and I felt would never be restored. He was the first person I ever met who shared his deepest most intimate thoughts with me. I had been the only one who knew his doubts and his fears. Only I knew how nervous he'd been when taking the placement tests to determine his levels for which math and English classes he needed to take. Only I knew that Terry's devotion to studying his martial arts was simply to make him stronger at something because unlike his dad, he wasn't really an athlete. 

Terry also thought that he wasn't enough like his dad. That was one of his deepest most worrisome problems. The people on his mom's side of the family were all flakes, he often said. They seemed all to end up in the hospital with a bunch of bizarre medical problems, or else they ended up in jail. He thought that he had too many of her genes. 

My phone ringing beside me, ended my ruminations abruptly. 

I picked up the phone after noticing my mom's number on the caller ID. 

"How are you feeling," she asked. 

"Awful," I said. 

"We'll go ahead and have a good cry," she said. "Cry yourself dry, and then get your awful ass over here by three to start the afternoon shift. Jenny called in and with all of the tourists in town, we're really busy." 

"Mom, are you serious?" I asked. "I just got dumped by the only man I've ever loved. I'm heartbroken. I don't think anyone in this town feels as bad as I do right now. You've told me for years about how bad it was for you when ... Shit, I can't call him my dad because I never met him ... Anyway you told me that you felt like dying. So you, more than anyone else has to know how I feel." 

She sighed and started talking again. 

"Yeah, baby, but you're wrong. There is someone who feels worse than you do. I'm pretty sure Terry does. And your case is different from mine. I was blindsided by a man that I loved with all my heart. He just ran off and left me only days after I gave birth to his child." She paused and sighed again. 

"I love you Kira. You're my whole world. But you were wrong as hell. You caused this. And you didn't just ruin your own life; you ruined his too. That boy was as shiny and bright as a new penny. I went running down the street after him. I was gonna tear him a new asshole for mistreating my baby. But he played me, that tape and that video ..." She paused for a second and I could just imagine her shaking her head. 

"No mom wants to see her daughter acting like a slut in public," she said. "That asshole had his hands all over your ass like it belonged to him, and you just stood there like you didn't care who saw it. I taught you better than that. We're not rich, Kira. But we're not trashy either." 

"But Mom, it didn't mean any ..." I began. 

"Shut up, stupid," she hissed. "It meant everything. It meant the end of your relationship with the nicest boy in town. It meant the end of your chance to have a nice life and maybe get the fuck out of this small town. I wanted a great life for you, Honey. I wanted to see you happy. I wanted to see you with a man who would love you and stay with you. I wanted some grand kids to spoil. 

As bad as you think you feel, you should see Terry. He's been fighting in the streets, and the look in his eyes tells me that boy has crossed over into crazy. He will never be the same. You took something from him, Kira. Maybe to you, it meant nothing. Maybe you just look at it like you just gave some other guy some pussy. It's not like you're gonna run out, right? But Terry lost a chunk of his soul, Honey. He will never again be as open or as trusting as he was with you. Even when ... And I do mean WHEN he meets another girl. It's gonna take him a while ever to trust her. And even then, he'll always be on the lookout for the knife in his back." 

I started crying into the phone then. But as sad as I was, I was angry too. "I'm gonna get him back," I declared. 

"Nope, ya won't," she said. "A man's brain is built on pride and ego and comfort. All the rest of that shit; knowledge, tools, sports and fuckin' would fit inside of the head of a pin. You hurt him, baby. It was a big blow to his ego. His pride won't let him take you back. A few months down the line, the two of you might end up fucking. But it won't be like it was before. There won't be any love involved on his part. It will be his ego trying to prove that he's over you. 

Maybe you'll believe that you've got him back. And who knows, it has happened a time or two. Maybe you will get him back. But the odds against it are so long that I wouldn't bet on it." 

Neither of us spoke for a while. 

"See you at three," she said and then hung up. As I put the phone down, I felt even worse. But I didn't really have time to wallow in my sorrow before it rang again. I picked it up, thinking that it was my mom again. I figured she had found someone else to cover for Jenny, so I could go out and find Terry. 

"You fuckin' bitch," he growled. "You ruined my life." I immediately realized that it wasn't Terry. "I'm gonna kill that motherfucker. You tell him that. I told him that it was over, and we were even. He had no reason to tell Lana. Now she dumped me. I lost the prettiest girl in town over your skanky ass. Why can't he see that you are just an easy fuck? It didn't mean anything to anyone except him. You ain't pretty, and you're not special. You aren't worth the breeze from one of Lana's farts ..." 

"Jeff, I ... " I tried, but, he continued to rant. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. 

"That motherfucker is gonna need that engineering degree," he screamed. "That way, he'll be smart enough to figure out a way to get his fucking teeth back in ..." I hung up the phone. 

I was too angry even to cry anymore. The whole situation was ridiculous. For a couple of crappy sex sessions, I was losing everything. I ... God damn it, I was popular. My phone rang yet again and this time I didn't recognize the number. 

"Hello," I said tentatively. 

"Hi," she said. The voice was deep and scratchy. It kind of made me think of that ancient movie star, Lauren Bacall. 

"This is Lana," she said. "I guess you know why I'm calling you. I'm not going to make threats or any of those juvenile things; I just wanted you to know that I know what you did. Jeffery isn't much, but he was mine, and you knew it, right?" 

"Yeah but y ..." I began. I felt like shit. 

"No buts necessary," she said. "The funny thing is that Jeffery isn't worth nearly what you lost. He will never be as much of a man as Terry is right now. I even thought about doing something really stupid today. To get back at Jeff, I was going to give Terry my virginity." She heard my sharp intake of breath. 

"Unfortunately, your boyfriend has a lot more class than you ever will. He turned me down, flat. He didn't even want a date. The poor thing said he needed time to get over you. You don't deserve him. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I know. I probably won't be seeing you. We don't go to the same places or travel in the same circles, so, Bye!" 

"Fuck!" I screamed. If I was Amish, I would have just been shunned. 

Lana's family was involved in everything that went on in our small town. Lana's mother planned almost every event. And Lana herself had a hand in everything that the younger crowd did. If you wanted to be popular, or even if you just wanted to be included, you had to be on her good side or at least not on her bad side. 

If Lana or any of her friends threw a party, I would not only not be invited, I would be turned away. Even if Lana didn't hold the party herself, most people would be afraid to invite me for fear of upsetting her. If I held my own party, no one would attend it. They'd be worried about being seen as choosing me over Lana. 

I hated that bitch. Her polite talk and sexy voice had just covered up her anger behind a facade of manners and gentility. I may as well leave town. I was a full-fledged pariah. 

* * * * * *

Greg

It always happens at the worst possible time. I think when people from the future look back on our time, they'll think that we were like characters in one of those old sci-fi movies where aliens come from another planet and take over our minds. These small aliens have total control of most of the people on the planet. We spend most of our time serving them, catering to them and answering their call. The worst part about it is that we actually crave them. We pay money to have them. It can be the middle of the night, and we can be in the midst of a sound peaceful sleep, but when the master calls we answer. We at least look. 

These are not lizard-like creatures from a galaxy far away. They come from here on earth. They have unusual names like Android, Samsung and iPhone, and they subjugate our will. 

And so it was with me. I was just about to get some very rare, if you're a parent, afternoon delight, when my master summoned my attention. I was pissed. Donna was down on her knees in front of me. She was just about to pull little me free from my pants, when my phone went off. 

"Shit," I whined. 

"You should see the look on your face, Honey," laughed Donna. 

"But, I was ... We were ..." I sputtered. 

"Greg, we're married," she laughed. "We love each other. We belong to each other. I'll give you as many blow jobs as you want, whenever you want. And you can spend the rest of your life fucking me, if that's what you want. Now answer your phone. It might be important." 

"It's the Sheriff's office," I said. "The old coot probably just wants to whine about me destroying his ass in that race today." 

"Hello," I said. "He what? ... Is he okay? I'll be right down. Andy, do I need to get a lawyer?" 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 02



 Here's the second part

* * * * * *

Kira

It was no big deal. That was what I had originally thought. I'm not stupid. When I first slept with ... Well we didn't exactly sleep so let's call it what it was. When I first had sex with Jeff. I knew there was a chance that I might get caught or that Terry might someday hear about it. But there were lots of couples in our town where they weren't married and one of or both of the partners tried someone else out during a break or while they were separated. 

Most of those couples argued about it and then got back together. I figured that Terry, and I would be no different. With Terry away at school, I had no one to talk to except my mom. A big reason why it started was that I just wanted to go out and do something sometimes. I had only a few close friends and most of them were either married, taking care of babies already, working, or in college. Jeff, who was going through the same type of enforced separation that I was, understood my plight. We ended up having sex. It wasn't romantic, there were no feelings attached; it was purely physical. I also have no memory or understanding of how it happened. 

We had gone out and there were other people with us. Jeff bought me a drink. We danced a lot and it felt good. Later He had awakened me and told me that we needed to go. I, thanks to Terry, hadn't been a virgin. But I had no idea why I'd had sex with Jeff. I didn't love him. I wasn't attracted to him, but I had done it. I figured that Terry would never find out. And decided that it would never happen again. I tried to look at what had happened as just the price I paid for the benefit of not being lonely anymore.

There was something else that I thought I might get from the relationship, if you can call it that, with Jeff. I thought that by hanging out with him, I might meet people, and become more popular. Because of where we lived and my mother's job and single mother status, I had always been looked down on. Hanging out with Jeff was supposed to elevate my status. Looking back on things, hanging with Jeff elevated my status to the basement. 

Instead of being looked at as the poor girl, I was now looked at as the whore girl. Even people who liked me and treated me well because I was Terry's girlfriend, now refused to talk to me. And that wasn't because of anything Terry had done. I was pretty sure that Lana had already blackballed me. 

Once I got to the restaurant, I realized at that point that work was a smart move. On the one hand, I no longer had the time just to sit around and cry my eyes out. And on the other, I got to hear all of the gossip about things that were going on in town. 

For instance, I heard that Terry had been in four fights, that day alone. He had fought Jeff two times and had pretty much beaten the crap out of Jeff. They had been sent to jail but released a short time later. 

My mom hinted to me that Terry was fighting over me, and it proved that he still loved me and there was a chance that we might be able to work things out. "Honey just give him some time and some space," she said. "He'll come around. Of course, you have to be ready. And he's probably going to treat you like a stranger for a long time. 

I figured that I could get him back, and I intended to. Terry like everyone else in that tiny assed town was a product of his upbringing. Terry was kind, considerate, and as faithful as the day is long. My plan was to give him some time to get over things, become friends again, and catch him at a weak point. It might take me all summer, but Terry was going to end up in my bed again. And this time it would be different, at least for him. 

Most men will fuck a snake if someone holds the head for them. All I needed to do was watch Terry. I would also make sure that he saw me from time to time. And if I caught him when he was weak and horny, or after he had forgiven me ... He'd be snake bitten. 

I know that most people would consider what I was planning to do, a heinous thing. I was also smart enough to know that it wouldn't work on every man. But I knew it would work on Terry. My plan was that I was going to trap Terry into marrying me. And like I said, it is a terrible thing to do. And it didn't work on my own father. My mom didn't actually try to get pregnant. She'd just been young, dumb, and in love. 

When she turned up pregnant, my dad had bolted for greener pastures. But Terry was raised to take responsibility for things that he did. Terry was also brought up in a loving family, and I knew that he wanted that for himself too. It was all he ever talked about. We were going to have three kids, just like his parents did. He always told me they got the order and the numbers wrong though. 

He wanted to have two boys and then a girl. That way, the boys would have each other to play with growing up. And then they could watch out for their little sister and give hell to anyone who messed with her. 

I remember lying in the soft grass near the lake wrapped in a blanket with Terry's arms around me. I could almost see those kids as he talked about them. I could see our house when he talked about it too. And I always told him I'd try real hard to get the order and the numbers right, but he had a lot to do with it too. He'd get me so worked up that I was always tempted to pull the condom off and have him go at me again, just so we could get started. 

It was funny but even as young as we were; it felt as if we had been together forever. I have never felt as complete as I did in those days only a few months ago, when Terry and I had just made love. 

In contrast, the times with Jeff, just made me fell cheap and sweaty. We never bothered to talk afterwards. We just got as far away from each other as we could, as quickly as we could. There was no kissing and embracing with Jeff. It just stick it in, then grunt, grunt, squirt ... see ya. 

Terry had to understand that there was a difference. I was so busy daydreaming that I had failed to realize that the last customer had gone. Almost everyone in town was heading down to the big barbecue and picnic. 

They were all trying to go early to get great seats on the shore for the fireworks. 

"Kira, if you want, you can go home, Honey," said my mom. "Earl and I are gonna hang around just in case a few customers show up after the fireworks." 

I was almost sure that my mom and Earl, the owner of the restaurant, were fucking. Earl was married, but his wife was an alcoholic who was drunk or high most of the time. When she was sober it was worse. Then she had a stick so far up her ass that hats didn't sit completely on top of her head. She always acted like her last name was Hilton or Buffet instead of Terwilliger. I was sure that she wasn't giving Earl any pussy and hadn't in years. My mom was also pretty God damned cheerful sometimes after working really long shifts.

I don't think they did it often. Earl was the kind of man who felt guilty about almost everything. But I was pretty sure it had happened and might even happen right then if I got my ass out of there. 

Thinking about them having sex, reminded me of Terry. I could probably go down to the park and watch him. Once I realized that, thoughts of my mom trying to lift Earl's voluminous gut, so she could suck his dick, faded into the ether. 

I drove my mom's car home the way that Terry drove his Mustang. I was probably on two wheels going around most of the corners. I got home and changed into my tightest jeans, and one of Terry's jerseys from when he played high school football. 

I tied my hair up in a loose ponytail, so it would look casual. I didn't do full makeup. I just enhanced my eyes and put on a little bit of lipstick. Then I headed for the park. 

I got there and looked around for Terry. I saw his family there, and the pain started again. Terry's mom and dad were together. They always were; they still loved each other after all of those years. They were also still hot for each other. Terry's sisters were there too. And from out of nowhere, Terry and his brother came over with drinks for all of them. 

They were all so happy. And it was real. They just enjoyed being together. And Mark was fully accepted, even though he had married into the family. I had always had fun when I was with them too. Shit, I remember having to try to squeeze in time to be with Terry, because his mom and the girls always grabbed me as soon as I came over and started me doing whatever they were doing. I felt as if I was one of them. They treated me as if I was. 

Nothing mattered to them. They didn't care where I lived. They didn't care what my mom did for a living or who my father was. I always felt like I was a part of that family, and my mom did too. 

Suddenly, I realized exactly how badly I had fucked up. Family mattered so much to Terry, and in his mind, he and I were a thing. I was part of his family. And he wanted what his mom and dad had for us. 

And he was going to have it too. No matter what I had to do, this little speed bump on the way to our happiness was not going to derail us. 

I was happily watching my future husband and our future family, while trying to imagine what they were saying, when a bulldozer entered the Garden of Eden. 

Lana sauntered over to Terry and his family. She was wearing a beautiful, knee length, white lace sun dress. She said hello to everyone and then settled in right next to Terry. When they sat down at the beginning of the announcements, she didn't go back to her friends and family. She stayed with Terry's family. She sat between Terry and his little sister Debbie. 

Debbie, who was clearly in awe of Lana, offered her a drink of whatever she had in her cup. Lana accepted it and took a sip from Debbie's straw. A few moments later, she was sharing Terry's drink and the two of them were talking about everything going on up on the stage. 

It should have been me, sitting next to Terry. As the announcements continued and the awards were given out, Terry's family cheered loudly for every person on the stage. Of course, they cheered the loudest when Terry's dad went up on stage to get his award for his car as the best stock vehicle in the show, and again for the best modern muscle car. 

When they gave out the awards for the race, the announcer had Terry's dad just stay on the stage. Terry's dad got a trophy for first place overall. He got another for first master, which is what they call runners who are over forty. He also got first place in his age group. 

Terry's mom got an award along with the rest of the set up crew. She kissed her husband right on the stage, and the crowd went wild. That bitch Lana was there hugging Terry's mom and dad just like she was one of them. And when she sat back down, she sat even closer to Terry. It was as if the bitch was determined to fuck him right there in front of the entire town. I was seething with anger. White-hot tears seared my cheeks as I got up and ran to my car. I opened the door for that bitch. Now she had stepped across the threshold and was stealing my fucking life. 

* * * * * *

Greg

Monday came and with it the end of the weekend. The beginning of the new week brought the beginning of the rest of my life. On Sunday, I had gathered my thoughts and figured out what I had to do next. 

I went out for a run while Donna was at church. She had a meeting after the services with the rest of the volunteers to discuss, both the successes of the Founder's day festivities and their next project. I was glad she did because it gave me the opportunity not only to go out for a run, but to think. 

Had Donna stayed home, I would have had to cancel my run, and I felt weird if I didn't get my run in. I had been pretending that I had back and leg pain to avoid intimacy with Donna. The odd thing about it is that I had never been one of those who believe in things like intuition. However, watching my son on that video, I had known that he wasn't lying. I was also sure that Donna; my wife of over twenty years had been cheating on me. 

Finding out forced me to pull my head out of my ass. For more than twenty years, I existed inside of a cocoon of mindless bliss. I'd thought that I had a great life with a woman I loved, and now I knew that what I thought was love had been mostly a fantasy. But it had felt so real. I truly believed that some of my life had to be genuine. The problem was that by nature, engineers are problem solvers. We wear many hats during the completion of our assignments. 

I had to start out by becoming like a detective. I needed to gather the facts and the evidence to prove or disprove those facts. Then once the situation had been revealed, I had to switch hats. I had to become an analyst. I had to discern which of those facts, and which parts of the situation were worth saving and, which needed to be killed off or allowed to expire. Then switching hats again, I would become a skilled surgeon and cut those parts that were too diseased out of my life. Finally, I would have to become a nurse and heal myself and the parts of my life that were worth saving. There were other hats to wear sometimes, but those were the main items of haberdashery to don. 

Another great skill that engineers develop is delegation. We learn to subcontract the tasks that we are not skilled enough or insulated enough to handle ourselves. So bright and early Monday morning, the first thing on my list was to make several phone calls. The first was to a divorce lawyer. I purposefully chose one from out of town. I didn't want anyone in town even to suspect what was going on until I was ready to proceed. I also hired a very good PI with a theatrical bent and a very friendly nature. My last hire would probably come as a shock to some people, but I hired a good forensic accountant. 

I hired the accountant because accountants are money experts. They know more about rooting out secret income streams than anyone else does. And if they're that good at finding hidden money, they must also be good at devising ways to hide it and protect it. If I got proof that Donna had been cheating on me, my intention would be to divorce her. I was already looking at her as if she was some strange exotic animal instead of the woman I had loved for the last twenty some-odd years and raised three children with. 

I was running the long game; I knew that rooting out the information I wanted would take weeks or months, not hours or days. So I had to steel myself for the long run. It was really a good thing too because I was crazy about Donna, and I had to wean myself away from that. The good thing about it was that I could do it slowly and over time. So I didn't suffer, the way that Terry was. 

There were times when I ached for him. He reminded me so much of myself. What he was going through with Kira was so much worse. The funny part of the situation for me was that Terry, though he suffered so much more than I had, was also better off in any number of ways; the first being that he wasn't married to Kira, and they had only been together for less than a couple of years. A year to a 19-year-old is still only roughly five percent of their life. For a man in his forties, twenty years like Donna and I had been together was 50% of mine. I literally didn't know how to live without her. However, I intended to learn how, if it became necessary. 

Another reason why things should have been easier for Terry was that he didn't have any kids with Kira. There was nothing to tie the two of them together. He was able just to walk away from her as easily as turning off a light switch, and it was pretty much what he had done. 

Yet another reason was the instant upgrade factor. I have no idea how it happened, but my son seemed to have had the misfortune of having the prettiest girl in town just fall into his lap. Terry was suddenly besieged with invitations to parties that he had never known existed. And Lana was startlingly beautiful. She was also friendly, outgoing and very popular. Kira was a cute girl. She reminded me in some ways of a younger version of Donna. But Lana; she was on another level. She reminded me of what Tara must've looked like when younger.

At home, I became the consummate actor. I pretended that everything was normal. After the first few weeks when I could no longer pull off the back injury, I even returned to having sex with Donna. Our sex life was different though; where before it was always more intimate and romantic, it had morphed into something different. Lately, I've had to do more acting to make sure that Donna is still unaware. I guess the first few times she could chalk it up to me being extra horny after weeks of going without. 

It fed her ego to think that I wanted to fuck her so badly that I was just out of control. But I think she began to notice that the romance and emotional connections that we usually got from sex were missing. She began trying to slow me down and get me to kiss her and caress her more. The problem was that I no longer felt that way about her. I was no longer making love to the woman I loved; I was just fucking the town whore. 

Like I said, it had taken a while. It was a couple of months, not weeks for the picture to emerge. By then, the accountant figured out a brilliant way for me to divert and hide income. My lawyer had come up with the best possible scenario for my divorce, if it was necessary. The only thing keeping me in a holding pattern was the PI. She was actually the most expensive of the three, and she was worth it. 

She lived in a nearby suburb and for the past few weeks had commuted to our town. She'd printed up a bunch of flyers for a new home improvement company and was wandering all over town talking to people about improving their homes. She actually had a real contractor whom she would subcontract any work that she sold to. However, her main mission, unlike most PIs who hide in the shadows and take pictures, was to make herself a part of the community and get people to open up and talk to her. 

She was friendly and pretty, just the opposite of all the TV detectives. Because of that, and the fact that she was never pushy, she could gain the confidence of the people she spoke to. She ate lunch in the same restaurant every day, always complaining about how many miles she thought she'd walked that day. Before the first month was over, she could do things that I couldn't do. 

She could walk into the restaurant in town at lunchtime and just smile at one of the waitresses, and they'd order for her. They already knew what she wanted. Sometimes as soon as she stepped in the cook would start making her sandwich. Several of the regulars would move over to her table to sit with her. There were a couple of guys who were always volunteering to rub her feet for her. 

Over time, while trying to impress her, they began to spill little secrets that I never could have gotten out of them. It took her less than two months to get the entire story. The funny part was that very few of the people she'd spoken to, actually knew the entire picture. It was like a puzzle game. There were a lot of pieces and each person only knew their own piece. They had no idea how all the pieces fit together, nor did they know the scope of the entire picture. 

When she gave me the report, and her sympathies, she told me that she had everything I needed. There were lots and lots of recordings. There were photos and there were videos. There were motel records and lots of other information. She even drew up a timeline for me. Once she had the proof she needed, she had actually gone out and videotaped some of the meetings. She couldn't or didn't get video or photos from inside of the rooms. That simply wasn't possible in the real world unless you had unlimited funds or a motel employee who could be bribed. 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 02



I didn't have the money to have her put cameras in every room. And trying to bribe one of the motel employees would more than likely have tipped off the people we were trying to get evidence on. 

However, the photos and videos that she did get were damning enough. Why would my loving wife be going into a motel room in the middle of the day with three men? Why would she come out, while still pulling her clothes on and head for home like a bat out of hell two hours later? 

Why were men that I never met, visiting her in my house? That was the worst because the PI actually got some footage there in my home. It erased all doubt. For months while the information was being gathered, I had been in denial. 

I guess, I found a way to be more efficient, as engineers often do. I was combining the classic stages of grief. I combined denial and bargaining into one stage. I guess you could call it "denargaining." 

I kept hoping I was wrong and that Terry had simply misunderstood what he had seen. But at the same time, I hoped that if it was true. Let it only be something simple or trivial. Let what Terry saw, just two people mutually fondling each other be as far as it went. 

The PI's bill was far less than I expected. She had actually subtracted any revenue she'd generated from selling decks and other home improvements from my costs. And she sold a lot of decks and room additions to lonely men in town. 

Her last words to me before she left were that I needed to have a serious talk with my wife. And that if I wanted to stay married to her, I should just turn the entire file over to my lawyer without reading it. She was sure that if I saw it, read the information, listened to the tapes, or watched the videos, that Donna and I were done. 

I thought about that. For two days, the file sat in my car. And then on a day that normally wasn't busy ... one of those days that I would normally have stayed home, I went through the entire file as dispassionately as I could. 

The file was very professional and also very thorough. By the time I had finished it, there were tears running down my cheeks. The PI with her usual degree of thought made several suggestions. One of them had my heart beating in my chest so hard that I was sure my colleagues in the next office could hear it. 

I had to hold things together long enough to get one last bit of information. I gathered what I needed that weekend at a family picnic at our cabin overlooking a nearby lake. 

As usual, of late, Lana was with us. But she invited a few other girls and a couple of Terry's friends too. We grilled, and sailed and swam for two days. During that time, I got a chance really to take a look at how things were. I didn't look at how I wanted things to be; I looked at how they were. 

I was in love with and broken hearted about a woman who clearly had never been the woman I thought she was. Perhaps I didn't have the reasons why, but Donna had never been faithful to me. 

It's a weird trick that our minds play on us, but we tend to look at the things we own or that belong to us in a much more favorable light than those we don't have and probably never will. 

When I look at my Mustangs, I tend to idealize them. However, when I look at a Lambo or a Ferrari, I minimize them and rationalize them. When someone asks me why I need my cars to go as fast as they do, my answers are glib or sarcastic. More than once I've told someone that if they don't own one, they'll never understand it. 

On the other hand, when you hear that a Ferrari does 0 - 60 a full second faster than my cars, my answer is usually something like, "Yeah but that car cost ten times what my car does just for that second. And who wants to spend ten grand on a brake job."

For years now, I had been doing the same thing to Donna. I was still seeing her as the cute, slim, bubbly, innocent, girl that I had married. But twenty years later, she had morphed into a plain, fat, sleazy, lying, skank. 

The only thing good about the years I had wasted on Donna, were our kids. Sherry scared the living shit out of me. She looked and acted so much like Donna did at her age that I began to watch her more closely, wondering if she had already begun cheating on Mark. 

Terry, on the other hand, wore his heart in his sleeve. He somehow did not inherit my ability to compartmentalize and move on. The boy had the prettiest girl in town throwing herself at him and jumping through hoops, but he couldn't seem to get past an okay looking waitress, who was probably cut from the same cloth as his whorish mother. 

The thing I felt the worst about was that I couldn't tell him that I knew. I had to wait until the time was right. But it would only be a few more days. The relationship between Terry and Donna was scary. Donna was all over herself trying to rebuild the bridges between them. But Terry wasn't having it. 

That left only the light of my heart. Debbie was the one of my kids that I spent the least amount of time with, but felt the closest to. She was the only one of the kids who was interested in running, and she was fast. Debbie at thirteen could keep up with Terry and could actually beat him over longer distances. She also had that thing that a lot of people attributed to me. When we ran we were enjoying ourselves, and it showed. Neither of us looked as if we were in pain when we ran. We smiled, because it was fun to us. 

One thing I did learn from Terry though, was that I should probably be prepared for a long dry spell. I had overheard Terry talking to some of his friends, and the subject of sex had come up. Lana intended on going to the alter as a virgin. She also intended to wait until she graduated and went to med school to marry. So someone was in for a long wait before getting between those well sculpted legs. However, from looking at her, I had the feeling that it would be worth it. 

But Terry insisted that they were only friends, and they were helping each other get over being cheated on. His intention was to start playing the field back at school. He wanted to find someone totally new. I was sure that my son was making a mistake. He also wisely avoided further confrontations with Jeff. 

Jeff was the biggest fool of them all. He began hanging with and fooling around with some of the girls in the trailer park on the edge of town. He'd made sure to tell everyone who would listen that it had been he who'd dumped Lana. He told them that he had no intention of wasting his youth waiting for Lana to have sex with him. He simply didn't date girls who didn't put out. 

Before mid-summer had passed, there were rumors that Jeff had gotten two or three of the trailer park's inhabitants pregnant. One of them was a fat forty-year-old woman. Jeff claimed that the forty-year-old had used her eighteen-year-old daughter to get him drunk enough to have sex with her. When he woke up the next morning, with a splitting headache, and lying next to a woman who was old enough to be his mother and weighing almost twice what he did, he had run screaming into the early morning. Several weeks later, she had shown up at his father's car lot, demanding to know where he was and clutching a positive pregnancy test in her claw. 

The only person in our town who looked as forlorn as Terry was Kira. She was always alone and she always looked as if the world had simply stopped spinning. My heart went out to her. I made it a point to always be polite to her and always tell her the truth. 

She always asked me about Terry. "Physically, he's fine," I always said. "Emotionally, he may never get over you. Maybe, he'll just have to learn to deal with it. You're a tough act to follow, Kira." 

"He's got Lana," she would sob. "She's a lot prettier than me." 

"To whom," I always asked. "I don't think Terry thinks so. They're only friends." 

I wondered too about my future. At 46, I was still young enough, and still had time enough to find someone new to spend the rest of my life with. I was only a little more than halfway through my life. But the thought of finding someone else made me want to vomit. I hated the thought of dating, and church socials, and e-harmony ads. It would be easier to find a new car to love and devote all of my time and money to. Maybe I could be one of those grand fathers who traveled a lot and babysat his grandchildren. 

During that time, I was getting my fill of sex. Donna and I were going at it like newlyweds. I was trying things with her that was kinkier than normal for us, but still not too far from there. The sex act itself was different too. I imagined Donna, not as my wife of many years, but as some fat hooker that I had picked up on the street and could use any way I chose, because I was the one paying for it. 

I kissed her more when we were just standing around. But they were just pecks or kisses on the cheek as opposed to the full-on romantic kisses that were common between us before. I guess the increased volume made up for the lessening of intensity. During sex, I simply didn't kiss her any more. I was too busy fucking her as hard as I could and slapping her on that fat ass. 

I can still remember the shocked look on her face from last week, just after we got done. We were lying there, and she rolled over to me. "I know what's going on, Gregory," she said. 

I was guarded and ready for an argument. "What," I asked. 

"The last time we fucked that hard was when we were trying to make Debbie," she smirked. "I'm forty-eight years old, Honey. You're trying to get me pregnant again. I think you could have done it too, but I had my tubes tied after Debs was born remember? Is this one of those ... Guy getting older things?" 

"One of those what," I said, trying not to laugh. 

"You know when you guys get older you start to wonder whether or not you're still virile enough to get a woman pregnant? Some of you guys start to lose your hair, and you do stupid things like getting hair implants or buying a sports car. Some of you have an affair and end up getting some girl pregnant. They call it a midlife crisis. Only in your case, you're trying to get ME pregnant. You've also been a little bit rougher lately and some of the things you've wanted me to do are pretty nasty," she said. 

"I'm ... " I began. 

"Don't say you're sorry," she said. "You are doing exactly what I would want you to do. I would much rather have you work your kinks out with me than with some young slut. You aren't losing your hair, and your Mustangs are the only cars you're interested in, so we're fine. I almost wish I could give you another baby. But in a few years, we'd both resent it. When we're in our fifties and sixties, I want us to travel and see the world. In five years, Debbie will be in college, and Terry will be done and working. Who knows, maybe he'll have married Lana. Can you imagine how great his life will be? Our son, a successful engineer, married to a doctor. They'll be rich." 

I smiled at the thought. In the end that really is all that most parents want for their kids. We want them to lead full and happy lives. 

"Debbie will be in college and calling you constantly for money," she continued. "But we would be able to take weekend trips or even cruises and you could start using up some of that vacation time you have squirreled away. But another baby would only prolong and complicate our lives. So do you really want to spend another eighteen to twenty years before we can start enjoying our time? I don't want to spend the rest of my life with a baby, Greg. I want to spend it with you."

I almost believed her. In a lot of ways she reminded me of Terry's girlfriend Kira. Kira made a mistake too. And she was miserable about it. Terry was miserable too. The difference was that while Terry had immediately severed ties with Kira. There was nothing keeping them together except for the fact that they liked each other. Either one of them could have left the relationship at any time. In a way, they both had. Kira had decided on her own that the relationship wouldn't be an exclusive one when she started sleeping with Jeff. Terry had simply decided that he didn't want to be a part of that type of relationship. 

I wish that I had the same type of freedom, but it was good that I didn't. My children had to be protected. 

When the news I had been waiting for came in, it sent me into shock. All of my plans suddenly changed. I had imagined that I would have Donna served and move into an apartment that I already rented. I figured that I would have a talk with the kids to explain to them what was going on and in the cases of the older children, why it was happening. 

The problem was that I was a human being. I had feelings and emotions that simply overwhelmed me. I was left wondering about my life and even my place in the world. I wasn't even sure who I was or what I was because I certainly wasn't the man I'd been the day before. 

I called in sick and stayed home from work. I didn't shave. I didn't even go out to run. I didn't do anything. I just sat out on my deck and stared at the world. 

Donna had no idea what was going on. I knew that she was getting antsy. She had no idea, whether to go out on the pretense of some household errand or to try to figure out why I'd stayed home. 

I knew that Donna was cheating on me. She had stopped at first, but once she got the idea that Terry wasn't going to rat her out; she went right back to what she'd been doing. By that time, she was back on her usual schedule. 

It was just before noon. She was due at the motel on the outskirts of town. She came and sat down beside me. 

"Greg, Honey, what's wrong?" she asked. "You've never in over twenty years, called in sick if you weren't really sick." 

"I just didn't feel like going today. I'll go back tomorrow," I said. I didn't turn to look at her as she spoke because I wasn't sure, how long I could keep control without hitting her.

It was all going wrong. I intended to confront her at the motel with her lover or lovers and embarrass her and them. I intended to make the whole thing as public as possible. The men that she had been with who were married deserved to lose their marriages and to fare terribly in their divorces, and Donna did too. 

But somehow, in the cold light of day, none of it mattered anymore. The drama and confrontation were petty. Embarrassing her and her lovers was petty and childish. 

"Greg, Sherry, and Mark are coming over for dinner tonight. They want to have a serious talk. Sherry wants to have a baby. Mark thinks they should wait a few more years until they're financially able to support a child without any problems. He's worried about their health insurance and having some savings in the case of an emergency," she said. 

I didn't say anything, and she sat down next to me. "What do you think about it, Greg," she asked. 

I was so awash with confusion that I had no idea what to say. I was totally screwed up in a way that I had never been before at any point in my entire life. I felt love. I felt the very deepest, most tender love that I could ever muster. At the same time, my body and mind were burning with a hatred so intense that the devil would have been afraid of me. Besides those two conflicting emotions, I felt a sense of confusion. I had no idea what to say to her. 

She leaned over and touched my shoulder. She'd done it so many times over the past twenty-odd years that it was like second nature to her. It was the contact that did it. It was as if her skin touching mine lit a fuse, and my temperature rose beyond my ability to control it. 

"Greg, what do you ...?" she began. 

"Why the fuck are you asking me?" I screamed. "I think you should ask her God damned FATHER! If you even know who he is!" 

The fury of my response shocked her. She was confused and then searched my face for the meaning behind my words. 

"Greg you're her father," she said. "What do you ...?" 

I got up and went into the house. I went into the office and grabbed my briefcase. I pulled out the reports that I had received the night before. 

I slammed them down on the counter in front of her. I didn't say a word. She looked at the reports. At first, she looked at the graphs and the numbers. She clearly didn't understand it. Then the text from the reports explained it all. Her eyes widened in shock. 

"This is clearly wrong," she said quietly. "How can I be their mother, if you're not their father? Someone at the lab made a mistake. It happens all the time. Wait, look at this ... They got this one right. You are clearly Debbie's father. We'll get this fixed, Honey. Who else could be our kids' father? The reports don't even say that. This is clearly wrong." 

"So, let's say it is wrong and they reverse it," I said. "Wouldn't that mean that I was Sherry and Terry's father and not Debbie's?" 

"Uhm ... I don't know how any of this works," she said. 

"Maybe one of the men you've been fucking for all of these years is her father. Or maybe one or two of them are Sherry and Terry's fathers," I said. 

She just looked at me and burst out in tears. "Greg, we have to talk about this, Honey," she said. "I'm so sorry. It ..." 

"Just not sorry enough to quit, right?" I spat. "Back a couple of months ago, when Terry caught you, most people would have viewed it as a warning sign and gave it up. Not you, huh?" 

"I couldn't just stop," she said. "I needed time to ..." 

"You had a choice and clearly our marriage and our family were not the top priority," I said. 

"What the hell are you talking about?" she screamed. "Our family is the most important thing in my life. I'm no worse than you, dragging our son out to that God damned garage to work on cars all the time. What about you forcing my baby, our youngest child, to run all of those miles with you. We've both made mistakes Greg. We need to sit down and talk about this ..." 

"You know I had intended to do this differently," I said. "I had intended to embarrass you and your lovers in that sleazy motel you go to on Wednesdays. I was going to have a few of their wives with me, like they do in those Internet divorce stories. But, that would have just turned this into a circus. And I just want all of this shit over. Just get your clothes and get the fuck out of my house. You want us to talk? Get a lawyer. My intention was to give you the house, but the fact is that you don't deserve it. I wanted us to have joint custody and for me to have unlimited visitation rights. But I need my lawyer to draw this up differently." 

"You have a lawyer?" she sobbed. "How long have you known? That bastard Terry! He told you didn't he?"

"Terry didn't tell me anything. I've known for months. I hired a PI that got me all kinds of information on you and what you've been doing. I know pretty much all of it. I know that you started cheating on me before we were ever married. And now I have proof that you cheated on me while we were married. 

I was sure already that we couldn't be together anymore, but finding out that my kids aren't even MY kids is just the icing on the cake. I'm trying very hard to remain in control right now, so just get out," I said. 

"Greg, we need to talk," she said. She looked as if all of the air had left her lungs. She appeared to having difficulty breathing. "I do love you. You just don't understand this. I can explain it all." 

"GET OUT," I screamed. 

"But wh ... where will I go?" she asked. 

"You've been sleeping with four or five guys," I said. "I'm sure one of them will put you up for the night."

"I'll go to Tara's," she said. "If you need me or you just want to talk, that's where I'll be." 

I sat there on the sofa as she ran up the stairs. I could hear her throwing clothes into a bag and then the sound of her coming back down the stairs. She slowed her steps as she got to the bottom of the stairway. I had my eyes as tightly shut as I could get them. I felt her presence near me and thought that she was going to say good-bye. 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 02



My eyes flew open as she gently kissed me on my cheek. 

"Get away from me," I screamed angrily. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that?" 

"I have never left this house without kissing you good-bye," she said. "And I'm not going to start now. Look at you. You have tears streaming out of your eyes like a river. You don't even want me to leave. Let's just sit down together and talk about this. You're too angry and too hurt to make a rational decision right now and ... I ..." 

"Donna, if you don't leave right now, I might hurt you," I said through clenched teeth. 

"Fine ... be an asshole," she spat. "You have the right to be hurt. I deserve to have you angry at me. But when you calm down and begin to think about something other than your hurt feelings and ego, call me at Tara's. And tell the kids that I'm visiting Tara because she doesn't feel well. They don't deserve to be hurt and confused by all of this." 

"I'm going to tell them the truth," I said. "There have been too many lies around here, and they deserve to know the truth. Once this gets into the court system, and our divorce begins, it will be public knowledge anyway. I want them prepared for any possible fall out. The best way to do that is to tell them the truth." 

"Greg, are you out of your fucking mind!" she screamed. "Who said anything about the court system? We're NOT getting a DIVORCE. I know you're pissed at me, but this is carrying things too far. We've been together too long for that. I gave you the best years of my life. I don't know how to live without you. Okay, I fucked some guys. But you're the only man I have ever loved. I am willing to take a polygraph. I had no idea that Sherry and Terry weren't yours. I would have aborted them ..." She suddenly stopped talking as she saw the look in my eyes. "What's wrong now?" 

She turned and looked behind her, to see our daughter Sherry standing there with her eyes wide open in shock. 

Sherry ran back out the door she had just walked in. 

"See what you did," screamed Donna. 

"I didn't do shit," I smiled. "But thanks. You've made my job a lot easier. I only have to tell Debbie now. And Donna, you never gave me anything. Wait ... let me amend that. I won't know until my STD screenings come back. But as far as the rest of it. You didn't give ME the best years of your life. I earned them by busting my ass to keep food in our bellies and a roof over our heads. Did you ever once ask for or want anything that I didn't give you?" 

"Yes," she hissed. "I just asked you for a second chance, and you keep talking all this bullshit about a divorce that is never going to happen. I read the papers, you know. I know what happens in a divorce. No one wins. I'll get the house and custody of the kids. You'll have to pay me alimony based on how long we've been together, which is a very long fucking time. You'll be miserable, and you won't have money for expensive car parts. Your best possible option is for us to settle this and move on with our lives." 

She stared into my eyes. "And then there's the fact that divorced men are always miserable. Any woman can go out and find a man. You're going to become some cranky, pissed off old man who lives alone and hates everyone. You'll spend all of your time drinking and wishing you didn't do this. The years that we've been together will seem like a fairy tale. You'll go over them in your mind, over and over, wishing you'd never found out." 

"As I was saying," I cut in. "I never had the best years of your life. I had to share them with a bunch of other guys. The difference is that I was the one who paid for all of it and supported you. So right now I feel like I've been cheated. I was cheated out of a wife who was faithful to me. I was cheated out of a family ..." 

"Don't you ever say that shit again!" she screamed. "We have a great family. And no matter who knocked me up, you are the only father those kids have ever known. None of this is their fault. And I don't understand why you just don't see how much I love you and always have. It was only sex for God's sake. And you always got more than your share. Look at your married friends. They're lucky if they get it twice a week. How often do we have sex?" 

"I'd estimate that YOU do it every time McDonald's sells a hamburger," I spat. "And getting back to your earlier statements about how miserable I'm going to be. You're wrong. Our divorce is not going to go the way you think it will. For one thing, with my evidence against you, getting the divorce will be a lot easier than you think. I would hate to do it, Donna, but if I have to, I will drag your name through every fuckin' mud puddle in the God Damned state. When I'm done with things, you won't be allowed to walk on the same side of the street as a church, let alone volunteer for anything. 

"My original plan was for us to have a quiet non-public divorce. I was going to give you the house in exchange for liberal visitation rights, and your promise that you wouldn't bring any of your men to the house anymore. That would give you a few years to get your life together and then when Debbie goes to college, we could sell the house and split the proceeds 50/50." 

"Are you insane?" she asked. "Where would you live? I don't want us living apart. And you keep talking about custody of Debs. What about the other kids? What about Sherry wanting to have a baby? How do we handle our grand kids? We need to sit down and discuss this rationally." 

"Okay, here's rational," I said. "What I described to you, was the old plan. When I got the DNA reports yesterday and looked at them, it threw me into a depression. My new plan is completely different. I'm going for custody of Debbie. That means I'll be keeping the house. It's in my name anyway. Your name has never been on the mortgage, because you've never had a job. If you care so much about me and the kids, you could just sign the papers when they're served, and we can call it a day. You go your way, and I'll go mine. If you don't things are going to turn into a shit storm." 

"But what will I do?" she asked. 

"Get the guys you've been fucking to all pony up some money to take care of you," I said. "For the past twenty years, they've been fucking you for free, while I paid for everything. The alternative, is that I name them all in our divorce, have them all DNA tested to find out who got you pregnant and sue all of them, for breaking up our marriage and for taking care of their kids for twenty years." 

"Greg, that would destroy a lot of families," she said. "It would tear the town apart." 

"So, I guess you have some thinking to do," I said. "I won't hold you up." I pointed towards the door. 

* * * * * *

Donna

I still had my car. I stopped off at Starbucks, and my credit cards still worked. I bought coffee for Tara and myself. It would be almost like the old days when we used to shop together and hang out. I had helped Tara through all three of her recoveries from her marriages; she owed me at least helping me prevent the ending of mine. 

I pulled up in front of Tara's house. It was a while since I'd seen or spoken to her. It was odd. We had been very close all through the winter, and then she had suddenly disappeared. I figured that either she'd been swamped with work or ... Shit ... Tara was working on husband number four. And I knew just who it had to be. The mayor has been crazy about Tara for years. She'd always said that he wasn't her type, but she had allowed him to accompany her to several of the town's functions during the winter. 

I wonder if Tara hadn't helped the winter thaw by heating up the mayor's bed. I rang her doorbell, and she came to the door. She invited me in but didn't seem glad to see me. 

We chatted for a few minutes, and I noticed that she really wasn't herself. 

"Tara, can I crash here for a while?" I asked. 

"Why," she asked. "Is your house being painted or something?" 

"More like or something," I said. "Greg threw me out. But it's only temporary. We're having a disagreement." 

"What type of disagreement," she asked. I decided to go ahead and tell her. She had told me about her husband cheating on her, and I had helped her through that. Before this thing could be put back together I would probably need her support, so I might as well be honest with her. 

"I made some mistakes during our marriage," I began. "I've cheated on Greg. I've cheated on him the whole time that we were together. Anyway, Greg found out. I don't think he understands any of it. He hasn't even let me explain to him why it happened. He doesn't believe that I love him more than anything on earth. It also turns out that two of our kids aren't biologically his. I had no idea of that until he showed me the DNA tests he had done." 

Tara smiled for the first time since I'd walked into her house. "Good," she said suddenly. "Finally." 

"Finally what," I asked. 

"I don't have to pretend anymore," she said. 

I had the feeling that this was the tipping point. If this was one of those lifetime movies, his would be the part where Tara told me that she's been in love with me forever. 

"No, Donna," she said. "You can't stay with me! Have you wondered why I haven't called you or been around you lately?" 

"Well until today, I hadn't really thought about it," I said honestly. 

"Greg isn't the only person you betrayed," she said. "I know everything, Donna. I know that you used me to hide your cheating. You always told Greg that you were visiting me and a lot of those times you were out fucking some bum, weren't you? Greg is one of the nicest guys in town, Donna. You were blessed to have him. But it wasn't enough for you was it?" 

"Tara, I never asked you to cover for me," I said. "Sure, I told Greg that I was visiting you sometimes, but it never hurt you. And it didn't hurt him. How the hell did you find out about this anyway? Who told you, Greg or Terry?" 

"Neither one of them," she said. "I found out on my own. Just like I found out that you screwed Jason didn't you? And probably Bobby too, right?" 

I nodded my head. "You may as well throw in Sam too, but that was before the two of you were married," I said. "Tara, I'm really sorry, but I was jealous of you. You've always been so beautiful. Except for Greg, no one ever looked at me twice. And look at us now. You're thirty-six and gorgeous. You can have any guy in town. I'm forty eight and getting fatter every year. The only man I have ever loved no longer wants to have anything to do with me." 

"Why the hell would you ever be jealous of me?" she asked. "I can't take credit for how I look. It was just the luck of the draw. I was always jealous of you. You have a beautiful home. A husband who worshiped the ground you slimed over and three great kids. You have everything any woman would want, including me. I've been married three times, and none of them worked. 

"Sam and I got married, and he joined the military shortly afterwards. The truth is he joined up to get away from me. Bobby's car accident was no accident; he was drunk as a skunk. We were having problems. And everyone in town knows that I tried my ass off to stay married to Jason. I even kept quiet about him beating the crap out of me. He'd probably still be beating me if my dad hadn't found out. And I didn't even love Jason. I just wanted to be married so badly that I put up with it. 

"You had it all, Donna. You fucked it all away. What are you going to do when you're old and lonely? You know what you're going to miss most? It's not going to be nights on the town or dumb ass parties and ceremonies. You're going to miss those winter nights in front of that big assed fireplace, when the two of you used to snuggle up on that couch, and he rubbed your feet. I was always so jealous of you. I cannot believe you fucked that up." 

"It's not over yet, Tara," I said. "I'm not letting him go without a fight." 

"Well good luck fighting," she said. "But as much as we were friends, I'm one of the single women here in town that is hoping you can't patch things up." 

I checked into a motel and hated it. There's a really big difference between being in one of these places for a few hours and having to live in one. I called Greg that evening, and he wouldn't speak to me. He did put Debbie on the phone, and I got to talk to her. 

Apparently, Debbie was the only one who didn't know what I had done. I could hear Greg, Terry and Sherry's voices in the background having a very heated discussion. Although I couldn't make out their words, it was obvious what the topic of discussion had to be. I decided to give Greg the space he needed and some time. 

After a couple of days, locked in that motel room, I needed to get out. I remembered my volunteer church group had a meeting that afternoon. I decided to go, just to see some familiar faces. It was a colossal mistake. For one thing, Tara was there. And even though she didn't mention my situation, her seeming disdain for my presence was notable. 

About halfway into the meeting, when we had just opened the floor for new business, she knocked on the door. She stepped into the room, and every eye was drawn to her. She was tall and slim and blond. Her shoes probably cost as much as a good used car does. And the legs that extended upwards from those shoes were worth even more. 

She smiled as she approached us and then looked around the table before her eyes settled on me. I thought that perhaps she was a representative of some charity that needed our help. 

"Donna Martin," she asked. I nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. "I need proof. It's protocol." 

My curiosity got the better of me, so I showed her my driver's license. 

"Thank you so much," she smiled. She cracked her gum and smiled, revealing the whitest teeth I had ever seen. The woman could have been a model or a movie star. She handed me a file folder, and I took it wondering what the hell it was. The woman mesmerized everyone at the table. 

"You've been served," she said softly. And turned to leave. 

"I have no idea what that means," said one of the men at the table. "But I wanna be served too!" 

I looked at the first page and knew immediately what had happened. Greg was pushing for his divorce. I slumped back into my seat, and the tears began to flow. 

I knew it was time for me to get into the fight. I spent the rest of the afternoon finding a lawyer. I spent the evening trying to speak to Greg, who wouldn't take my calls. I went to my daughter's house, hoping to enlist her help. 

I knocked on the door several times and although both, her and Mark's cars were in the driveway; no one answered. Finally, Mark came to the door. He couldn't look me in the eye. 

"Donna, she doesn't want to see you," he said. 

"Mark, I'm still the same person I was a few days ago," I told him. 

"Maybe you are, Donna," he said. "But a few days ago, we didn't know the kind of person you were. Sherry is confused and hurt. She no longer knows who she is. It's bad enough that you lied to her for her entire life. The same way you lied to poor Greg, but she was at your house to ask you something about cooking and heard you telling Greg that you would have aborted both her and Terry. Donna, you're not the woman, we thought you were. What kind of woman, doesn't know who the fathers of her children are? What kind of monster says that she would have killed her own children under any circumstance?" 

"The kind of woman who loved her husband more than life itself," I spat. 

"Yet you cheated on him since before you were even married," he said. "Do you have any idea of how badly you've hurt him? How badly you've hurt all of us? Go away Donna." 

He closed the door and left me standing there. I went back to my shitty motel room and sat on the lumpy bed, thinking. I missed my comfortable home and my big, soft, comfortable bed. But more than anything else I missed Greg. 

I missed his smile when he looked at me. I missed his furtive looks, when the kids were around, and he was planning something naughty. Greg was awful at being sneaky. And I think they always knew when he would slip up beside me and while standing with our sides pressed together, he'd grab a big handful of booty. 

Some people are glass is half-empty types. Others are glass is half-full types. My Greg is a completely different paradigm. He's an 'if we took what we have in this glass and put it in a smaller one, it would be running over the sides' type. 

And that was what he had always done with me. When I was younger, he proudly crowed about me being the cutest girl in the county. Sure, I was never beautiful, like Tara or my son, Terry's new-found friend Lana. But I had that country girl with chipmunk cheeks kind of cuteness. Greg had also played up my lack of attributes, by bragging about how slim and sexy I was. 

After Sherry was born and my figure filled out a bit, he praised my still slim but curvy body and noted that my slightly thicker legs, were the sexiest around. After Terry was born, Greg decided that he liked short curvy girls. He was the first person in our town to point out that even a dog likes a little bit of meat on its bones. Then after Debbie was born, and I began complaining about my size, I began to notice that Greg seemed to have developed an inability to keep his hands off of my ass. He started giving me what we're supposed to be foot massages that always seemed to end up with him pulling my panties down and massaging and then licking my ass and eventually fucking me doggy style. He usually spent about thirty seconds on my feet, a couple of minutes on my thick legs and a half-hour or so on my ass. 

Of course, that lead to renewed interest in anal sex. Fortunately, we had always occasionally done it, so he wasn't surprised at how easy it was to get his dick inside of my ass. That should have served as a warning for me, but it didn't. 

And now when I was at the lowest point of my life, I was alone. Over the years, men had come and gone. Some used me for years at a time and others only once. But when those things ended, I never missed any of them. It was only sex. But after only a few days without Greg, l felt as if my life was over. 

I also wondered that would become of our family. Sherry was clearly so hurt and so angry that she didn't even want to speak to me. Terry already wrote me out of his life. Of my three children, the only one I had a chance to salvage a relationship with was Debbie. 

My lawyer had asked me several questions when we sat down and had our talk. One of them was what I would consider a total win in the divorce. Then he asked me what I could live with. Then finally he asked what I would consider an abject loss. 

My answers were telling. I told him that a win would be for us to emerge from this with Greg and my family back together and happy again. As much as I hated to admit it, I could live with my kids hating my guts and Greg, and I managing to stay together. Even if it was a case where we were only together because he refused to surrender custody of Debbie. I knew that Greg loved me and with any amount of regular contact between us, I could get him back. An abject loss for me would be living my life without Greg. 

"You need to re-assess your goals," he told me. "I can help you to secure your finances going forward. I can help you fight for custody of your younger daughter..."

"Why only Debbie," I interrupted. 

"Two reasons," he said in a very emotionless voice. "The first is that the older two are over eighteen. They can do whatever they please no matter what you want. The second is because as you pointed out, they are not your husband's children, so he really has no rights as far as they're concerned." 

I sighed and nodded. 

"But the most important thing for you to remember is that my functionality is to assist you with the legal system and the laws and practices that govern the marriage termination procedure. I can put you into situations that will force you and your husband together for short periods of time, but I can't force him to take you back. It's the same-old song and dance. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 02



It was just before 8 pm when my phone rang. I jumped off of the bed and ran across the room hoping it was Greg or at least one of the kids calling me. 

"Hello ... Greg," I said into the phone. 

"Uh ... Actually it's Tony Thompson, uhm your divorce attorney," he said. "I've met with your husband's lawyer, and we've scheduled a brief meeting for tomorrow. It will give us a chance to talk and lay our cards on the table, so to speak. How does one p.m. in my office, sound to you?" 

"Will Greg be there?" I asked. 

"I insisted on it," he said. 

As I hung up the phone, I jumped back into the cheap bed. I needed to get to sleep as soon as possible. I set the alarm on my phone to wake me at 6 a.m. 

That way, I could have an early breakfast and head to the mall. I needed to buy an outfit that would knock my husband's socks off. Then I'd get my hair and makeup done and maybe a massage. The massage would open my pores and makes my skin look younger. I needed to look like a million bucks when I walked in, fashionably late. I had to get there after Greg did, so I could make an entrance. Greg loves me, but I had to do everything in my power to make him want me back. 

I guess that sounds easy considering the fact that Greg has loved me for more than twenty years and is currently as broken up about losing me as I am about losing him. But the reality is that I need to make myself look enticing enough that he can forget the terrible things I did. And that would be asking a lot, especially since I'm no longer a spring chicken by any means. 

My night was spent chasing sleep that came in fits and starts. I kept imagining that every single woman in town and half of the married ones were after Greg. I saw myself at the rear of a line of women a mile or longer just to get to ask him to go out with me. 

Greg sat on a stool and spoke to each woman for five or six seconds and gave them either the thumbs-up sign or a thumbs-down. That was his way of narrowing the ridiculously long line down to the few he would actually date. I dreamed that it took me more than a year to get to the front of the line, and just when I got there, the woman ahead of me was his last woman for the day. He told the rest of us to come back the next day, and that he would have short dates with the women, he had selected that day. 

He also told us that the woman who was directly in front of me reminded him of someone special. I smiled because she looked like me, she was built like me, and she acted ... Like me. 

I came back the very next day and took my place in line. I was so nervous and so ready that I could barely contain myself. But Greg never showed up. We waited for hours, grumbling and cursing, until he finally arrived. He had a huge smile on his face. The one that was usually reserved for two things, the first was cumming in my ass, and the second was the announcement of some new Mustang modification. 

He took one look at me, and the smile got even bigger. 

"Hi," he said. I felt warm all over. "You're the one," he said. My knees started knocking. "I want you to be the first," he continued, "To congratulate me. I'm marrying the woman who was in line right in front of you." 

In yet another similar dream. My Greg had decided to marry the little bitch that had served me with the divorce papers. She sat there furiously cracking her gum, while I cried my eyes out. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. I just drank several cups of coffee to calm myself down. Rationally, I knew that what I had dreamed about was only a bad dream. But it reminded me that I needed to tread very carefully because I was on dangerous ground. One misstep and I could lose everything that I had worked so hard for. 

One of the things that I really wondered about was the change in the relationship between Greg and my two oldest children. Finding out that he had raised other men's children had to be devastating, especially when Debbie being biologically his child only proved that he was definitely virile enough to get me pregnant. It would probably have been easier to swallow if it had turned out that he was incapable of siring children. This way, it just made me seem like even more of a whore.

The morning was not exactly uneventful. I walked into the mall as soon as the guards opened the doors. I walked into my favorite women's clothing store and asked the woman behind the counter to bring me several of the outfits they had in the window. 

"Which ones," she asked. I pointed out two pants outfits and a dress. She shook her head. 

"We don't have any of those in your size," she said. I pointed at my fourth choice. She shook her head again. As I was raising my hand to point at my next choice, she just pulled my hand down and told me not to bother. Nothing in their window would fit me. She pulled me back inside of the store. 

"Look ma'am," she said. "Time passes us all by. The stuff you were looking at in that window are light breezy summer outfits designed for fresh younger girls and women. You know ... They're designed to make men think that they can see under the clothes, when they really can't. 

The main purpose of wearing clothes like that is to help a girl get a man." She smiled and looked at me. I think her eyes settled on the big diamond ring on my left hand. 

"Women like us don't need outfits like that. We've already got our men. We need clothes that are protective." She said. 

"I don't need clothes to protect me," I spat. 

"No, Honey," she said. "I meant our clothes protect the men from seeing what our lithe beautiful bodies have turned into. If they could really see what we have under these clothes, no man would ever get married again." 

"You need something in black that covers you from neck to toe," she said. 

I thanked her for her time and moved on to the next clothing store. The woman who ran that store informed me that she got a lot of her business from the first store I'd been to. 

"That bitch used to be a nun," she said. "She wasn't happy though because she wasn't gettin' nun, if you know what I mean. She only hooked up with the church because she played for the all girls team. I'll hook you up with the kind of gear a man wants to see Ya in." 

She brought me several outfits to try on. "These are just what you need," she said. 

I tried on the first outfit. It consisted of lime green booty shorts and an orange halter top. I looked in the mirror and almost threw up looking at myself. The shorts were so tight in the front that my camel toe seemed to be lit up. There was no back in the shorts. My ass was hanging out for all to see. My gut bulged out from under the halter top and my lack of endowment up top made it so loose that it was constantly flapping open and showing anyone who was interested, what I didn't have. 

When I asked for a different outfit to try on she handed me pink booty shorts and a sheer white halter top that was so tight it looked like a see-through bra. I gave them back to her and headed for a different store. In the third store, I finally found an outfit with a skirt that fit well and showed off my curves without making me look like a stripper. It was conservative enough that it would be great for a number of occasions and colorful enough to look good without appearing either too dowdy, too clowny, or too whorey. It was perfect. 

The stylist was another problem. She ended up chopping off the hair on one side of my head. She gave me some sort of asymmetrical Bob, that might've been cute on a figure skater, but I had asked for her only to trim my split ends. Greg loved my hair soft, long, and natural. I complained so much that she didn't charge me for the cut. I told the makeup artist to make me beautiful. 

"Do I look like a special effects wizard?" she snapped. "Shit, it's the same thing every day. Women come in here and expect me to perform miracles. Why don't I ever get a sane request? Why, just once can't one of these women come in here and ask me just to show them how to put on their makeup correctly. Nope. All I get is make me look like a fuckin' Goddess. Make me look like Kim God Damned Kardashian. That's it ... I quit. Fuck this job! I'm going back to the Seven Eleven!" She threw all of her makeup tubes on the floor and then took off the smock she'd been wearing and walked out the door. 

Every head in the place was staring at me. "Well this is awkward," I said. I decided just to go home and put on my own makeup. 

"Where are you going, Honey," asked a very big, very feminine man. He had a thick beard and a shaved head. "Don't let that bitch scare you. She just used you in her one woman Off Broadway drama. She'd been thinking of quitting for a long time, and we got paid yesterday. She just needed a way out and figured you were it. You're really no uglier than most of the older women we get in here. In fact, you look younger than most of the women your age. My mom is sixty, just like you, and she'd love to have skin as smooth as yours. You ..." 

"I'm only forty eight," I spat. He looked at my face closely, and his brow wrinkled as he concentrated. 

"Are you sure?" he asked. I turned and walked out of the shop. I went home and did my own makeup. I figured that the new haircut would be enough of a change. Besides, Greg had loved my face enough to marry it, so there had to be something that he liked about it. 

It was a twenty-minute drive from the motel to my lawyer's office. I left ten minutes before the appointment. I breezed in to the angry eyes of my lawyer and shocked approval from Greg. Of course, his lawyer was confused. He'd never seen me before so the changes were lost on him. 

"Wow, you look awesome," gushed Greg. "We may have to amend the divorce papers." 

"May I speak with my client, briefly, before we begin," asked my lawyer. 

Greg and his lawyer nodded their heads and began looking at their documents. My lawyer escorted me out of the conference room we'd been in. 

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded. 

"Making sure that Greg sees what he's trying to walk away from," I told him. 

"Don't do things like this without telling me first, please," he said. "You're going to ruin this divorce." 

"Ruining the divorce means we wouldn't get one, right?" I smirked. "That's what I was aiming for." 

"Ruining the divorce means you'd walk away without a pot to piss in," he said. "I want you to walk away comfortable so you can easily pay me." 

We went back into the conference room, where Greg and his lawyer waited. 

"What are you asking for in this procedure," asked Greg's lawyer. He didn't wait to be introduced or follow any type of protocol; he just attacked. 

"I want more than anything else that there not be a procedure," I said. "I want for my husband and I to sit down and talk this out the way we always do when we disagree." 

"You're out of your fuckin' mind," he said. "I've seen his evidence and it makes me want to divorce you, and I'm not even married to you." 

"The court isn't interested in whether or not you want to divorce her," said my lawyer. "We're going to petition the court for counseling sessions." 

"Big mistake," said Greg's lawyer. "My client wants this over quickly. We've been trying to play nice because my client would like to limit the danger to families in the community and my client's young daughter in particular." 

"What are you offering," my lawyer asked. 

"Two years of spousal support and liberal visitation rights with the youngest child," said Greg's attorney. "If she signs the papers immediately my client is willing to pay moving costs for her to move into the house or apartment of her choice that is appropriate to her new situation, and to continue payments on her car." 

"You're on drugs," spat my lawyer. "The initial settlement gave my client the home and custody of the youngest child." 

"The situation has eroded further since then," said Greg's attorney. 

"So ya dug up more dirt on my client," said my attorney. "It makes no difference. Most of what you have there isn't admissible in court." 

"Most of what we have is no longer necessary," smirked Greg's guy. "The DNA alone proves infidelity, and it dates back to very early in the relationship." 

The lawyers dickered and attacked each other while Greg and I just sat there. Finally, Greg had put up with all he could stand. 

"We're getting nowhere," he said. "I love you Donna. That's what makes this so hard. Especially when you came in here all dolled up. However, the fact is that we don't have a marriage anymore. All of what made us special is gone." 

"But Greg, I love you too," I said. "We can start from there and rebuild the rest." 

"No Donna, we can't," he said. "In order for us to start, we need more than just love. We need to have trust and respect too. And I can't trust you anymore and you clearly never respected me." 

"But Greg," I whined. 

"Donna both of us love this little town," he said. "I would hate to tear this town apart in our divorce, but I will, if I have to." He looked me straight in the eye, and I knew that he wasn't lying. 

"Donna, I am ready to turn our divorce public if I have to. I will serve and name every single one of the men in that file. Over the years, there are nineteen men involved in this case. Seven out of those nine men are married. Sixteen of those nineteen men have children living at home. I am prepared to sue every one of those men for actions leading to the destruction of our marriage. I am also prepared to have all nineteen of them DNA tested to determine which of them are Sherry and Terry's biological fathers. Then I can sue them to recover the monies spent raising their kids. 

Doing that will destroy a lot of families and when the details come out, your reputation in this town will be destroyed. Your days of volunteering for the church and the community groups will be over with. I don't think anyone would even sit near you in the church, let alone work with you on projects." 

"But Greg, this isn't fair," I said. "Why do I have to give up everything that's important in my life? Why are you unwilling to work this out?" 

"Because there's nothing to work out," he said. "We were never married. You started cheating on me before we ever made it to the church. And I refuse to continue being the patsy. You have all of these guys all over town fucking you whenever and wherever they please, and I'm the one paying to support you. Not only you, but their kids; don't I deserve something for that? I deserve to go ahead and try to start my life over, while I'm still young enough to make something with someone else. Who knows, maybe I should just become a pissed off old bachelor who doesn't trust women." 

"Greg, this isn't the answer," I said. "We should be together." 

"That's what I wanted," he said. "But it isn't what I got. So I just have to make something out of what I have left. I don't even know why you did this. I haven't got a clue. Was it something I did, or didn't do? Is my dick too small for you? Do you need wild, crazy shit that I can't do done to you? Why Donna?" He looked angry and confused. He needed to know why this had all happened. 

"Without you, Honey, it would never have happened," I said. He looked confused. 

"Do you remember how things were when we first met? I was shy and had a really low opinion of myself. But you saw something in me, Greg. You treated me like I was the hottest, most special girl we knew. That boosted my confidence and made me feel really special. I got addicted to the way you made me feel. I became addicted to you, Greg. And when we first started having sex, it was strange, because I didn't want to do it. 

I wanted to stay my mom and dad's pure little princess. A couple of my girlfriends had told me that if you turned a boy down, he'd just find another girl who'd give him what he wanted. So I had two choices, I could please my parents, and do what I always swore I would. I could stay a virgin until I got married. The problem with that choice was that if my girlfriends were right, I would lose you to some whore who would probably fuck you on your first date. 

There was no way I was going to lose you to some whore. Besides, I was sure that we were going to be married someday anyway. So it didn't really matter if we started doing it before we got married or afterwards. 

And don't get me wrong, Greg, you were always good to me. You acted like a gentleman. But every time we kissed, every time you touched me, I could tell ... I knew you wanted more. You needed more. And when you wanted it, the decision was already made; you were going to get it. I was going to give it to you. I was going to give it to you just as easily as some whore would. And I knew what those girls were like. My father was a preacher remember. I saw those girls all the time. They wore short skirts and tight blouses to show off their boobs. But you didn't want them; you wanted me, and I was yours. You just had to claim me. 

Our kisses became more intense, and your hands wandered all over my puny body and tiny tits. I could feel your heart beating faster, but I never pushed your hands away. Truthfully, I loved the way you made me feel. My heart beat faster too. 

But as intense as those kisses were they were nothing compared to the first time you entered me. I was prepared for the pain, but it never came. There was a little snap between my legs. And then you stopped and waited. The look on your face ... You were so concerned about me. That was the moment that my love for you peaked. It has never, ever waned. 

I suddenly felt warm inside and very full, and I wanted you. I told you that we would be doing a lot of that, and I meant it. The next day I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror. I wanted to see if there was anything about me that was outwardly different. Were my boobs any bigger? Were my legs a little longer? Was my ass rounder or fatter? It was actually no to all of those. 

I also didn't seem more a worldly look in my eyes, and my walk was pretty much the same. There was no difference between the me of that day and my counterpart that had given up the pussy the day before. Not one person that I knew could see the difference. But there was one. There was a very big difference. Your dick going into me was like lighting a fuse and that fire has been burning ever since. 

In the very first days, I wanted it so badly that I could barely stand to be away from you. I'm sure you remember night after night of us clawing and tearing at each other like animals. I didn't want to go to restaurants. I didn't want to go to movies. I just wanted to fuck. I couldn't get enough. It was frustrating sometimes, because you could only go for an hour or so before you were spent and falling asleep. And I wanted so much more. 

I lived for falling asleep in your arms; nothing could ever match that. It's still that way today. That's why these past few nights that we've been apart have been hell on me. 

Anyway, the solution to my issue came a few months later. I love this little town, and I know that you do too. We have more than enough money to move away. We could have been in any large city of our choice years ago. 

Back in those days, there were gangs in our town. They weren't like big organized crime gangs, but they were beginning to make waves against each other. One of the gangs was run by Ralph Kramden, the other by a guy named Ed Norton. They hated each other. 

Skirmishes between the gangs were escalating. People were getting hurt. I remembered studying detente in school. It was the US and the Soviets coming together for peace talks. I wondered if something like that was possible between the two gangs here in town. 

The gangs didn't bother ordinary citizens. They only attacked each other. But they were becoming more and more brazen every day. Of course, none of it really registered with you. You were only home on the weekends. You were working your ass off during the week, at college. 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 02



The gangs also didn't rob anyone; they were more interested in things like Canadian cigarettes. If you remember, back then everyone smoked. We all knew that it was a bad thing, but nearly everyone did it. You didn't because you were a runner even then. But when they started raising the price on cigarettes, everyone took notice of it. A pack of smokes went from seventy-five cents to two dollars, seemingly overnight. 

What the gangs did was buy the same brands of cigarettes in bulk, in Canada and then sell them here. And the average Joe, who needed his smokes, was definitely willing to buy the same cigarettes from the gangs at a much lesser cost than he was paying in the stores. 

For the gangs, bootleg cigarettes were a huge money maker. They fought over territory and businesses all the time. It was becoming unsafe for the average Joe, because he could step out to go to the store and get caught in the crossfire between the members of one gang and another. 

My uncle worked in a grocery store that Ed Norton, frequently visited. My dad knew Ralph Kramden very well. In a strange turn of events, I solved the problem the fall that I was twenty years old, and you left me at home to go to college. 

As I'd said, you awakened something in me when we started having sex. I love what we did, but I had begun to realize that I needed everything you could give me ... And more. During the week, I was constantly horny. I screwed your brains out every weekend and sent you back to school all fucked out. 

But one Monday morning, bright and early, I went to my uncle's grocery store. I was looking at the pork chops in the meat display, because that was what my mom had sent me to the grocery store to get. 

I noticed that my uncle had come into the area, and his eyes were huge. He looked right past me, and I heard him ask, 'What can I get you, Mr. Norton?' 

"Pork Chops," I said. I had only heard him ask what he could get for me. So I'd missed out on the Mr. Norton part. 

"Hell yeah," snapped a deep voice from behind me. Without straightening up, I turned my head to see who had spoken. There was a large, older man standing behind me, staring at my ass. 

I quickly straightened up and wished that I had chosen to wear something other than the tight and tiny shorts that I had worn that day. 

My face turned a bright shade of red as I looked at him. But he was very nice to me. He even put my pork chops on his tab. He offered me a ride home, and I accepted because I wanted to talk to him about how the gang situation was tearing up our town. 

Maybe it was that low growling voice. Maybe it was just some sort of animal magnetism, but he got me into bed in a nearby motel room. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. Like I told you I was always horny, but sex was something that only you and I did. 

I had to think about it. In fact, I thought about it while he fucked me. Somehow, I recognized that what I had done with Norton was just different from what you and I did. In the first place, I had worn him out, yet he had never gotten me to cum. I ended up faking it just to get him to stop. 

And after we were done, he had the weirdest look on his face. He listened to everything I had to say, and in principle, he agreed with me on the gang thing. The problem was that he couldn't afford to look weak. But he told me he would put out some feelers to Kramden to see if they could work something out. 

So there I was a twenty-year-old girl, who had until recently been a virgin, who'd just talked one of the biggest gangsters in our town into trying to reduce the violence on the street. This guy had guys and girls all over town working for him, but I had convinced him. I also had his phone number, and I was pretty sure that he wanted more of what he'd gotten. 

I was torn up in knots. On one hand, I felt guilty about having sex with someone other than you, yet on the other; it hadn't really felt like sex. Sex was me cumming over and over again with you kissing me and giving me the warm feeling in my pussy and my guts. Sex was me losing control and thrusting my pelvis against yours until we both exploded, and you filled me up with hot, sticky sperm. Sex made me dizzy and made my heart almost burst with love for you, Greg. 

I felt none of that with him. All I felt was some old man humping me while trying to avoid hyperventilating. It was almost embarrassing for him, because I was usually bored when he was giving me all he had. And on top of that, there was all of the good I could do for our town. 

When you got home that weekend, you didn't notice any difference, but I did. Being with Norton had made me realize exactly how much I loved you. If anything, we had even more sex then. But I had been thinking, and I had a plan. Before you and I got together on Sunday, while I was in church, and you were out running as usual, I stood with my father as he shook hands with his entire congregation after the services were over. That was when I first met Ralph Kramden. 

My meetings with Ralph went in a different direction. He saw me as a sweet and unassuming young girl. That was probably because I had no tits and not much ass either. It took me a couple of weeks to get into bed with him, and it was about like I expected. He was a married man who considered himself blessed to get some young almost untouched pussy. 

Both he and Norton had been married for many years and had kids. You could call their wives a lot of things. They were both very beautiful. They both had very good taste in clothes. They were both very classy women. But neither of them could be called fresh, and neither of them was anywhere near tight. 

So both men saw me as a breath of fresh air. It was pure serendipity, and something that couldn't last for very long. I was like a rare, yet inexpensive sexual treat. 

I was also in my tri-sexual phase too. That means I would try anything sexual. So when I started whispering to both men about a three way, they were both interested. Of course, it had to be done on the down low, and both men insisted that the third party not be anyone in their circles. It's kind of hard to maintain discipline among your troops when you've both been inside of the same woman at the same time. 

So on the day that it went down, we all met up in the spare apartment in the back of my dad's church. It was the same room where we sometimes housed visiting ministers or displaced families. 

We got together in the dark. Both of them either trusted me or saw no reason for me to try to hurt them, so they went along with it. It was exciting being fucked by two guys at the same time. We started out with me sucking Mr. Kramden while Norton ate my pussy. Then Ralph fucked me while I sucked Norton's dick. We switched several times until they were both spent, but that was only the warm up. Neither one of the got to fuck my ass. That was because you hadn't done that yet, Honey. Over the course of my entire life, I have never allowed any man to do anything to me that you haven't done first. 

So if a guy wanted to try something, like cumming in my face, I had to let you do it to me first. But while we lay there spent, we were just getting started. While they were wheezing and trying to catch their breath, I brought up the problem of regular people getting caught in the crossfire between the gangs. 

"I already told you I'd put out feelers to Kramden," said Norton. "I like living here. I don't want to see the town get torn up either, but at the same time, I'm not gonna send my guys out there to be cut up like hamburger, if Kramden's guys are out for blood." 

"I have the same problem," said Kramden. "Besides, we ain't never met. How was I supposed to know it was really you?" They suddenly realized who each other was and the talks started in earnest. Over the next few days, they worked out a pretty good agreement and a truce. After that whenever something happened, or they needed to work something out, we always had piece talks. Nope, I didn't mean "peace talks." Basically, I gave them a piece, and they talked. 

Honey, it went on for a couple of years before there was a problem. The problem was Joe Frances. Joe knew what was going on. And even though, he was an old classmate of mine, and I thought, a friend. Joe wanted in, he was married, and the bloom was off of the rose. He wasn't getting what he needed at home and wanted to branch out. I was going to be his branch. 

He convinced me that if I didn't give him, what Kramden and Norton were getting, he would tell you. I reminded him that if I told either one of them, he would disappear, never to be heard from again. He told me that if anything happened to him, a friend of his had an envelope that would let everything out in the open. Not only would everyone in town know, but Kramden and Norton would end up divorced, and implicated in his disappearance. And as icing on the cake, I would still lose you. I had no choice. I didn't mix Joe in with Kramden and Norton because he was afraid of them. But I did start giving Joe a piece, once or twice a month. 

It was about that time or a little bit later, you and I had been married for about a year, that I discovered that I was pregnant. I had no doubt that you were the father. You were the only one who got to fuck me without a condom, and I was on the pill at the same time. There was no way that anyone else could have been the father. 

I was just as sure a couple of years later, when Terry came along. By then there were several more possible fathers but once again, there was no way he could have been anyone's but yours; it made no sense. 

Over the past few years, I've begun to slow down and to be honest with the exception of you, Ralph, Ed, and Joe who'd married again to his third wife and still wants me on the side; no one really even looks at me. I'm not exactly a hot chick anymore. I've turned into more of a comfortable fuck than a hot, tight, fresh young girl. But through all of this, Greg, I have never loved anyone except you. No man that I have ever met or had sex with, has ever been a threat to what we have. 

I swear to you on my mother and father's graves that I had no idea that Terry and Sherry weren't yours. As bad as it seems, I'd have aborted them if I'd known. I have no interest in having anyone's children except yours." 

I looked him in the eye, and his expression was hard to read. But it gave me an idea. 

"Greg, I know that the kids are a big part of your anger," I said. "And I know what I said earlier about us living for ourselves and us traveling, but if the kids are the problem, I owe you two more children. I'm sure you've seen the story in the news about the sixty five-year-old woman having quadruplets. I'll have my tubes untied, and you can knock me up two more times." 

He just shook his head. I smiled at him. I had noticed that he couldn't take his eyes off of me. I flipped my hair out of my eyes, and it settled back in place. I was sure that things were going well. 

"God, it felt good to get that off my chest," I said. "I feel as if the weight of the world was off of my shoulders." 

My lawyer beside me was just staring at me. Greg's lawyer was too. Greg, on the other hand, couldn't meet my gaze. 

"I think that if we just talk, like we just did, we can probably do without the counseling," I said. "I've heard that sessions with a shrink are expensive." It was then that I noticed the tears running down Greg's cheeks. He wiped his face with his sleeve and then stood up. 

He whispered something just out of range of my hearing and nodded at his lawyer. 

"We'll be in touch," said Greg's attorney. Then they both turned and walked out of the office. 

"I think that went well," I said to my attorney. For a long time neither of us said anything. It was so quiet in his office that you could hear a cricket from outside chirping. 

"Over the years, I've done hundreds of divorces," he said. "Divorce cases are never pleasant. Maybe that's why they're so God Damned expensive. However, in all of that time, I have never met a psychopath, like you. You seem just to spin the rules as you go along. You seem to have a reason for everything. The only reason I'm not quitting right now, is because it would be unethical for me to abandon the case when it is so close to ending. Doing so would only prolong that poor man's pain and ..."

"What the hell do you mean his pain?" I screeched. "He wanted to know what happened. I told him. I told him that I loved him and only him. I told him that when we got together, he got me started with sex. I needed more than he could give me, so I used my needs to help the town that both of us love. It's over now. I'm quitting. We can cancel the divorce and move on." 

"But ..." he said raising a finger. 

"But my ass," I snapped. "Did you not hear me explain to him that I had no idea the kids weren't his?" 

"But ..." He began again.

"Did you not fucking hear me offer to get my tubes untied and have two more babies at my age?" I said. "I know the man. I've been in love with him for twenty-plus years. I know him better than anyone on the planet."

"Did you not hear what he said to his lawyer, just before he left," asked my attorney. 

"I couldn't make it out," I said. "He probably told his lawyer that he needed some time to think about things. He'll think about it for a couple of days, and then he'll call me; you watch." 

"That wasn't what he said," said my lawyer. 

"Alright smart ass. What did he say?" I asked. 

"He said he'd been married to you and loved you for all of these years, but he never really knew you at all," said my lawyer.



Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion



Kira

"Get the fuck away from me," In most cases, my gaze alone would have been enough to scare most people away from me without a single word being necessary. But Jeff's supercilious grin reminded me of both his amusement at my attempts to be hard, and the fact that he wasn't most cases. 

"Kira, I need to talk to you," he smiled, shifting his grin to another level. That smile would have melted most girls. But not me, I knew the monster that lurked behind it. 

He sat down at a table and picked up a menu. "Hmm," he said. "What looks good to eat in this shit hole?" 

"What the fuck do you want, Jeff?" I growled. 

"Wow, so much talk about fucking," he said. "Most people would think that you wanted me back." 

"Never in life," I said calmly. The bastard was trying to rile me up. He was trying to control my emotions to lure me into doing something that he wanted. 

"I'm not THAT big of an idiot," I said. "I know you want something from me. And whatever you want is totally irrelevant to me." 

"I want my God damned girlfriend back," he hissed. "It's embarrassing. She's chasing your ex all over town. She has even started making cow eyes at him. From talking to some of her friends, I've learned that she started out just trying to make me jealous. She just wanted to rub it in my fuckin' face that she had dumped me. But the more time she spends with your idiot boyfriend the worse it gets. Do you realize that her parents like him? People all over town think THEY make a good couple. They have a bright future, people claim. He works on machines; she works on people. It's a weird type of symmetry." 

"You sound jealous," I laughed. "How does it feel to have someone take one of your toys away? Or did you really love her as much as you claimed? I really hope so. I hope that you can feel just a little bit of what I'm feeling." 

"Hardly," he smirked. "But I see another case where the two of us should join together to get what we both want. You want your fucking boyfriend back, and I want Lana back for however short a time that it lasts." 

"I see no reason ever to believe you again, asshole," I hissed. "Look what happened last time I listened to you. I lost the only person that made my life bearable. And you did it just for the hell of it. You didn't miss Lana. You just saw me as easy pussy. Lana wasn't giving it to you, so you just went after the dumb old trailer park girl. And I was so weak ... I missed Terry so much that I fell for it. But my eyes are open now. I know that there are snakes in the grass so I have to bear the path in front of me so I don't get bitten again. I'm sure you put something in that drink.

And don't think I don't remember the things you said about me. Terry played that tape for me. Your own words have condemned you. Now get the fuck out of here or order something." 

"Fuck you," he spat. "I'll get her back without you. And I'll make sure that asshole boyfriend of yours doesn't even pay you any attention." 

"Out of idle curiosity," I said. "You don't really love Lana. I don't think you love anyone except for yourself. So why do you want her back so badly?" 

"That's an easy one," he smirked, "The bitch dumped me. No one dumps me. I'm the dumper not the dumpee. I need her back so I can dump HER." Then he walked away. I wanted to laugh, but I was in so much pain. 

I never believed in metaphysical concepts. But the one thing that this entire situation told me was that losing Terry was going to kill me. I know my pain was emotional in origin, but it had spread and become physical. I ached all over. My broken heart had metastasized. It spread to my physical body the way cancer spreads. I was sure that if I didn't get Terry back I was going to die. It probably wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen. 

I was also sure that Lana didn't really love Terry. She just wanted him because HE didn't want HER. It was like a magpie going after a shiny rock. Eventually, Terry would forgive me. I just hoped he wouldn't wait until I was dead. 

Every time I saw him with Lana draped all over him, it took another piece of my soul. 

* * * * * *

Greg

After the after lunch meeting with Donna and her lawyer, I decided to never have another after lunch meeting. If I'd thought that reading the report from the PI had been awful, hearing from Donna's own lips, the things she had done and her stupid reasons for destroying our life together, and our family had been worse. 

I don't know what I expected. There really is no good reason for cheating on your spouse. The funny thing about it is that I searched my mind and my heart to try to find one. However, that was before the meeting. That was before hearing how selfish her reasons were. 

And that bullshit about how she had done it to save the town was utterly ridiculous. She made it seem as if she was some sort of super heroine. Maybe she ran around in see through booty shorts, masquerading as "Golden Pussy." She uses her magic vagina to solve crimes and right the wrongs of society. 

Without even realizing it, she had told us why she really did it. She'd said it herself, I was away at school, and she was horny. She also needed more than she thought that I could give her. Not that she'd actually tried telling me about it. When she was twenty, I was an eighteen-year old college student. They don't make enough pussy to keep an eighteen-year-old down. 

And if she was going to cheat on me, at least she should have upgraded. She should have gone for a guy with something that I couldn't give her. I'd still have been angry, but I could have at least seen the logic of her cheating on me with a guy who had a foot-long dick. Or if I was really old, and she had the chance at some hot young stud. But Donna gave me the impression that it didn't matter who the guy had been or what he had. She was a dick seeking missile, and any dick would do. 

My job was to drag my ass home from college in the weekends to service her. During the week, she got someone else to fill in. 

The thing I didn't understand was why she married me in the first place. Why take our wedding vows if she had no intention of keeping them? Why put herself in a position where she had to lie over and over again, every day for more than twenty years? 

I decided to think about something else. I had abruptly left the meeting before I could even tell Donna and her attorney about my plans. I'd had to get out of there because I wasn't sure how long I was going to be able to hold onto my lunch. Everything she said brought food further and further up my esophagus. One or two more words would have brought about projectile vomiting on a large scale. 

But listening to her, brought about something more than the need to vomit. It brought forth the need to retreat and think. Some like to think, while lying on couch or lying on a beach. Others find solace in people watching or while gardening. 

I did my best thinking while driving. I took the older car out this time. That car had a manual transmission and a lot more horsepower. I didn't need the modern independent rear suspension, or the silky-smooth automatic transmission. I wanted to shift the gears myself and enjoy the feeling of being a part of the mechanical workings of the car. 

As I drove, locked in the interplay of shifting and working the pedals, I let all of my problems slide away. I thought about everything. I tried to examine the problem from all sides. I thought about Debbie. I wondered what made her my daughter, when her two older siblings were someone else's children. 

I examined my feelings for her and found them almost identical to my feelings for the other two. My love for Debbie was unique, but no stronger than my love for Sherry or Terry. They were all my children. The only thing different about Debbie was that she, and I shared a love for running. But Terry and I shared an almost religious devotion to Mustangs. And Sherry and I loved very spicy foods while the rest of the family hated them. 

Were we still a family? I had no idea. That was one of those things we would have to talk about. 

And Terry, I thought about him a lot during this time. I really needed to have a talk with my son. Terry was still my son. He'd never had another father, so I would do the job until he told me that I couldn't. 

I saw a lot of anger in Terry. He hated Donna for what she'd done to our family. And finding out that he wasn't my biological child had caused him to hate her even more. Terry had a huge capacity to hate. I really believed that a lot of his hatred was just his reaction to what had happened to him and Kira. 

And speaking of Kira, I really needed to talk to that girl. Kira was the only person in town who was as miserable as I was. She walked around town like a fuckin' zombie, crying her eyes out every time she saw Terry with Lana. 

The funny thing was that despite having the prettiest girl in town throwing herself at him, Terry still loved Kira. He was angry as hell at her, but the love was still there. I could tell because while everyone, we ran into was cooing about how cute he and Lana looked together, I could tell in the way that only a parent can that he was wishing he was with someone else. 

As I rounded a bend and noticed that the border to Ohio was coming up and with it the beginnings of Ohio's toll roads, I quickly exited the freeway and got back on going north towards home. 

Driving back, I wondered about the status of my family. How would the kids handle the news? I had two ideas about how to handle things between Donna and I. Neither of them involved forgiving her and remaining married to her. 

When I got back into town after driving for almost two hours, I knew exactly what I had to do. I drove straight to Debbie's school and picked her up. She was grinning from ear to ear at all of her friends staring at the Mustang. I guess they were used to Donna's car. 

We stopped off for ice cream on the way home, and I broke the news to her. At 13, she was amazingly bright and very mature for her age. 

"Debs, your mom and I both love you very much," I said. "But she and I are facing some problems, and it just seems that the problems are bad enough that we can't be together anymore." If I expected tears, I was pleasantly surprised. 

"You caught her, huh?" she said between licks of her ice cream cone. 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"You caught Mom and Mr. Norton," she said matter of factly. 

"You knew!" I said in surprise. "Honey, why didn't you say something?" 

"Because I love you, Daddy," she said timidly. "Mommy told me that if I ever told anyone, it would break our family apart, and it would hurt you badly and it would be all my fault." 

"Well Mommy was wrong," I said. "It's not going to break up our family, at least not all of us. And it's not your fault at all. You did nothing wrong. It's just the way things are sometimes. Sometimes we need different things. Sometimes we all see things differently. And right now Mommy and Daddy are seeing things very differently." 

"I know how this works, Daddy," she said. "I have some friends whose parents are divorced. They hardly ever see their fathers, and their fathers and mothers argue a lot. And they all hate their mother's new boyfriends. Whenever they do see their fathers, they great presents. But after a while, the visits get farther apart, and the presents don't matter." 

My eyes were beginning to fill up with tears. 

"Their mothers become angrier and some of them go through a lot of boyfriends. I have a couple of friends whose mother's boyfriends look at them funny," she continued. 

"Well none of that is going to happen to you," I said. "Just watch. I have a plan. I've got two plans as a matter of fact." 

I called the house to see if Terry was there. I spoke to him for a few moments and then called Sherry to ask her to come over to the house. I toId Mark to bring her because she was still really upset. 

A few moments after we got to the house, Sherry and Mark arrived. Sherry was so broken up that she couldn't even look me in the eyes. Her eyes were red from crying, and Mark didn't look happy either. 

"I'm sorry guys, but things are going to have to change around here," I said. As soon as I said it, Sherry started wailing. The doorbell rang at exactly that moment. Terry looked outside. 

"Oh Shit," he said. "It's Lana, Sir." I looked at him strangely. 

"Okay, I'll get rid of her," he said. 

"Terry, let her in. And you can do me a favor. Take her out for a drive, and take Debs with you. It'll give me a chance to talk to Sherry for a while, okay?" I said. "She seems to be handling this worse than you are." 

"Well ... Honestly, sir, I've had longer to process most of it," he said. I looked at him strangely again. "I'm sorry sir," he said. "I should have told you when I first found out, but ..." 

"Your mom told you that it would destroy our family and hurt me badly, right?" I said. He just nodded. I nodded back. "We'll have our own talk, later Terry. I have more to talk about with you than with your sisters. Actually, I don't really have to talk to Debs any more at all." 

Terry nodded and opened the door for Lana. Her bright, movie star-like smile lit up the room. "Lana, we're going for a drive," gushed Debbie to her role model. 

"Terry," I called out as I threw him the keys. "Keep it under a hundred." 

"You're letting me drive the beast?" he grinned. I shook my head. 

"Of course not," I said. "You're driving the new Mustang." I thought he would fall over where he stood. 

"Sir, I won't get a scratch on it," he said. 

"Lana what kind of ice cream do you like," asked Debbie quietly. 

"Terry just have fun with it," I said. "And your sister has already had ice cream." 

"Daaaayaaaaaad," whined Debbie. "You know I'm depressed." I laughed as they went out the door. 

"Okay," I said as the door closed. 

"I already know," said Sherry. "You want us to stop coming around here for a while. You need time to get over things so you want us to give you some space, especially if Mom doesn't get the house in the divorce. I hate her for what she did to us. I didn't know anything about it so why do I have to be punished. This sucks! She sluts around and I suffer for it. I'm not going to just take it in the teeth like Terry is. What's my going-away present? Do I get to drive the other Mustang? Well, you screwed up, because I can't drive a stick. And the same way that you're throwing me away, I'm throwing her away. That woman is no longer welcome in my house and ..."

"Are you finished?" I yelled at her. She stopped ranting for a second and stuck her lip out. 

"Hell NO," she yelled even louder. "I'm just getting started." Mark looked embarrassed. I reached into my pocket and got my other set of keys. 

"Mark, take the other Mustang for a drive," I said, throwing him the keys. 

"Sherry, we need to talk so you're ..." I began. 

"I am going to get this off of my chest," she said. "When you look at me, you look at me differently now. You've always said that I was just like mom. You've always said that I was her spittin' image just twenty-two years younger. So you think I'm a slut too ... Don't you? Well ..." 

"Sherry, shut up!" I said. "You're making a fool out of yourself!" 

"I don't have to do anything you say anymore," she hissed. "You called me over here to throw me away and tell me that you're not my father. So ..."

"I'll be back in an hour," said Mark timidly, as he closed the door. 

"I'm glad Mark is gone," I said. 

"Why, so you can try out the younger version of your favorite whore?" she hissed. "I'm not like her, so ..." 

I crossed the floor while she was still screaming and grabbed her by both hands. "Let go of me," she screamed. 

I sat down on the couch and pulled her over to me. "RAPE!" she screamed as I pulled her down so she was lying across my knees. I raised my hand and brought it flat down on her ass as hard as I could. She screamed even louder. I slammed my hand on her ass ten or twelve more times and every time her screams decreased in volume until she was just whimpering and begging me to stop. Then I flipped her over, wrapped my arms around her, and kissed her on her cheeks and forehead, like I did when she was a little girl, and I had to spank her. 

"You can't spank me," she sobbed. "I'm a grown ass woman. And ..." 

"I just did," I smirked. 

"And my ass hurts," she whined. She snuggled her face into my chest and wrapped her arms around me. 

"You deserved it," I said softly. 

"You can't go around spanking grown ass women," she whined. 

"Not even when they're throwing a temper tantrum like a child?" I asked. 

"Not even then," she said louder. Some of the anger was coming back into her voice. "Especially when they're not YOUR child!" 

I flipped her back over and swatted her ass again even harder. "No, Daddy," she screamed. 

I raised my hand but stopped short. As my hand hung in the air, she looked up at it. 

"Sorry," she said timidly. "I didn't mean to say that." 

"You didn't mean to say what?" I asked. 

"I know you're not my father," she said. The tears rolling down her cheeks were coming furiously, and it wasn't from the spanking. I raised my hand suddenly and bought it down even harder. 

"Says who?" I told her. "I rubbed your mother's stomach for nine months and talked to you as if you were already out here. Back then they still let fathers in the delivery room. I was there ..." She looked up at me. 

"I almost passed out," I said smiling. "But I was there. I changed your diapers. You peed on me; I want you to know. Your first steps were to me. Your first words were Da da. I bandaged your ouchies. I taught you to ride a bike. I helped you with your homework. I was there for every event in your God damned life, Sherry. I paid for your wedding AND your honeymoon. I gave you away at that same wedding young lady. If I'm not your father, Sherry ... Who is?" 

This time she flipped herself over and hugged me to her as if she was afraid I was going to vanish in a puff of smoke. "Oh Daddy, I'm so sorry," she whined. "But I was so afraid and so angry ... Not at you, but ... Ohhh you know!" 

"I know, Honey," I said. "That's why I called all of you together. There've been too many secrets and too much lying going on. I wanted to let everyone know what's going on, because we are going to have some changes around here." 

"Like what, Daddy," she smiled. 

"Well for one thing, your mom and I are done," I said. 

"No duh," she smirked. 

"I intend to fight for custody of Debbie," I said. "And that's where you come in." 

"Daddy, I'm twenty two," she deadpanned. "You don't have to fight for custody of me, unless you're fighting Mark. And I love you with all of my heart, but I think I'm staying with him." 

At that moment, Mark came back in the house. He put the keys down on the counter. 

"Is it safe to come back in now?" he asked. We just stared at him. He'd been gone less than fifteen minutes. 

"I just waited for all the screaming to stop," he said sheepishly. "I've never heard a motor that loud or that powerful. When I started it up, the whole car vibrated. I was thrilled and ... A little scared. Then I remembered that I can't drive a stick either." 

"We hugged it out," she said. "Daddy's going to divorce her." 

"And if I'm going to get custody, I'm going to need to show a stable home life for the next three years or so," I said. "So I was hoping that I could pay Sherry to pick Debbie up from school every day and start dinner. I just don't like the idea of Debbie coming home to an empty house. I'll still help her with her homework and all of that jazz ..." 

"Daddy, I could help her with ..." Sherry interrupted. 

"I like doing it," I said. "Besides, Honey, you're awful at math and your spelling sucks." 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion



"Uhm what did, she call you," asked Mark. 

"Oh shut up," spat Sherry. She got up from my lap and moaned in pain. She rubbed her ass and Mark's eyes bugged out. 

"What happened to your butt," he asked. 

"I got a spanking," she whined. She reached into her pocket and pulled out some change. She counted out fifty cents and handed it to him. 

"No way Jose," he said. "There were two parts to our bet. You owe me a dollar." 

I discussed my intentions with them, including both possible scenarios and what each would mean to them and my fears for Terry and Debbie as well. I told them that Debbie had also known what was going on and as much as I'd tried to shield her from the ugliness of the situation she'd probably known before any of us. 

A short time later Terry and Debbie came in. He handed me the keys with a big smile on his face. "I love that car, sir," he said. 

"Terry, I spanked your sister tonight," I told him. He looked at me in confusion. He looked across the floor at Sherry. She just nodded, and absent mindedly rubbed her ass. 

"What did I? ... I should have told you, Sir," he said. He looked awful. 

"No Terry, you did what you thought was right in a situation that no kid should ever be forced into. The only thing I'm upset about is that you've suddenly started calling me 'SIR,' and being extra polite. When in your life have I ever been anything other than 'Dad?" 

"I just thought that maybe ... With everything that's come out ..." His voice trailed off. 

"Terry don't think about it," I said. "Nothing has changed. You are still every bit as much my son as you were last week. Some bad things have happened to us, but we'll make it through them. I refuse to allow us to think, feel or act like victims because of something that none of us chose. It's going to be different in some ways. I've already spoken to Sherry and Mark about it, but I intend for the five of us to make it through this. At the same time, I don' expect any of you to abandon your mother just because she, and I won't be together any more. She's going to need your love and understanding even more now. I'm going to be talking to her and her lawyer over the next few days to try to work things out so this transition is as painless as possible for all of us. 

Later, that evening after Debbie was asleep and Terry was in his room playing some weird video game I called her. 

"Greg, Honey, I'm so glad you called," she cried. "After the way you left the meeting, I wasn't sure we would ever talk again. I miss you so much. We can work this out. I know we can. Do you want me to come over to the house, so we can talk in person? I need to see you so badly, Honey. I just need to look at you and ..." 

"Donna, I need something from you," I said. 

"Greg, are you coming over here?" she asked. "Is this a booty call? You don't have to act weird about it, you know. Half of my divorced friends are still screwing their husbands occasionally after the divorce. I want you too, baby. I want you bad right now. It's still yours. No matter how angry you are at me ... It'll be really good baby, I prom ..." 

"Donna, listen to yourself," I hissed. "You sound like some whore who's trying to convince her John to pick her over all the others. That isn't why I called you. However, before we get to that, you've been out of the house for a little over a week now ... Aren't you worried about the kids at all?" 

"No, I'm not," she said. "Why should I be? You're like Super Dad. There's no way you'd ever let them even be unhappy, let alone let something happen to them. Two of our kids are adults, and Debbie lives in a tween's world of ice cream, cookies, computer gadgets, and clothes. Her only boundaries are the limits of her daddy's love which for her is endless. I am the one in trouble here. My church group held a meeting, and somehow they all forgot to invite me or notify me about it. I should be upset, but I just don't give a fuck. 

I started laughing. 

"I really don't care about my clubs or volunteering, Greg. I may not have shown it, but I've always had my priorities straight. YOU are my priority, Greg. You're my life. I'd pick you over even our kids if it came down to it. But in time, they'll get over this. I'm not sure we will if we don't start trying to fix things. Laugh if you must, but those old biddies and even the entire church congregation can all go to hell. Only you matter." 

"That wasn't what I found funny," I said. "You said nothing mattered. Not the church group, or volunteering, or your friends, or even our kids. You said you didn't give a fuck. Isn't that the very heart of irony, Donna? Because if you didn't give a fuck ... If you hadn't given so many fucks to so many men over the years ... We wouldn't be talking over the God Damned phone right now. We would probably be snuggled up in our warm comfortable bed together right now." I heard her sharp intake of air, and a small whine as my words struck home. 

"But you did, Donna. You gave a fuck. You gave a lot of fucks to so many men that I'm not sure even you remember them all. You gave so many fucks that two of your children may never even know who their fathers are. So yeah, Donna, none of it matters. Our kids don't matter. The church doesn't matter. Your friends don't matter. Nothing matters except getting another dick crammed up in that hole, you call a pussy. But you missed one Donna ... you see ... Despite what you claim, I don't matter either, Donna. If I did ... If I mattered even one little bit, maybe you would have thought about how much it would hurt me if I ever found out what you were doing." I could hear her sobbing over the phone.

"And Donna, those kids DO fucking matter. Sure Sherry is an adult. She almost went crazy. I had to spank her adult ass tonight to shock her into realizing that I am still her father, no matter who dumped their sperm into your diseased cunt at the time. Terry is an adult, Donna. He's a strong young man and I'm more proud of him every day. But he lost the love of his life, AND his fucking mother at the same time. How strong can he be? And while you lay your guilt on him and let him carry the load for what you did, he finds out that he may be losing his father too, Donna. I'm not going to let either of those kids lose me. I'm going to make it as if none of this ever happened for both of them. And you also laid your bullshit on Debbie, Donna you laid all of that shit on a thirteen-year-old girl ... It's not that the kids don't matter is it Donna. You've just written them off because you know they hate you. But you won't get off that easily. I spent part of the evening telling them that they need to keep you in their lives; it's going to be tough going for a while, but you will at least attempt it. Do you understand me?" 

"Yes, I do," she said tearfully. "And thank you, Honey for that. I do want to be a part of their lives. I just didn't know how to do it after all of this. But you didn't have to ask me to do that. I'm your wife. I love you. I love you more than you will ever know." 

"Yeah, yeah," I spat. "You'd climb the highest mountain for me and swim the deepest ocean ... As long as you could do it with a dick in your mouth, and your legs spread. But talking to the kids isn't what I need you to do. What I need you to do is to give me as complete a list as possible of every guy in our town and the surrounding areas that you've slept with. You don't have to give it to me. You can give it to my lawyer." 

"Greg you can't fight that many men," she said. 

"Trust me," I said. "I have no intention of fighting anyone. And, I have no reason to. You can either give me the list voluntarily, or I'll petition the court and have you forced to on the grounds of establishing paternity of the kids and ..." 

"Greg, can't we just settle this between us, or ... Can't we please just let it go. I swear it will never happen again. This could tear this whole town apart." 

"I'll have my lawyer request it then from yours," I said. "I'll have him write up the ..." 

"I'll do it," she cried. "But can we try to keep this private?" 

"Yeah, I can see how much you care about me Donna," I said. "It's okay for me to become some kind of town joke, but you don't want anyone else to be embarrassed because they got busted for fucking the town whore." 

"That's not it at all," she said. "I love you Greg. More than life itself. But these people have wives and families. I don't want a bunch of innocent people to suffer for my weakness." 

"So your own children and husband are the only ones who are supposed to suffer, huh?" I asked. "I'd say Fuck you, Donna, but too many people already have." 

* * * * * *

Sally

I looked across the restaurant and spotted two people among the chaos of the late lunch crowd. The first glance was at Earl, the rapidly aging fifty something year old manager of the place. Earl didn't own the restaurant. He was the cook and manager. An older couple, who had retired to Florida, owned it, and we sent all the profits to them. They rarely ventured beyond the sun belt. In the ten plus years that I had worked here, I had seen them twice. I doubt that they even knew my name. 

Earl was looking particularly fetching that day in an unshaven, beer-bellied, greasy T-shirt sort of way. Maybe it was just the fact that all the estrogen, testosterone, and general family love being thrown around the restaurant on that lazy, hot summer day made me want to throw off some hormones of my own. 

Earl's wife, Connie, had stopped by that morning and promptly caused a scene. The woman Earl had hired to take care of her was nowhere to be seen. It appeared that Connie had gotten out of her bed, grabbed the keys and come looking for Earl again. She clearly stopped off to purchase liquor and smelled like a brewery. 

She had come into the restaurant screaming about it being their anniversary, and she wanted her present. She had barfed in the middle of the floor and several customers had left. 

While Earl tried to calm her down she'd grabbed a butter knife from one of the tables and started slashing at the air preventing Earl and everyone else from getting to her. Earl told me to make the call, so I'd called the sheriff's department. Andy arrived ten minutes later. It was probably the longest ten minutes of Earl's life. 

Connie cursed and screamed at everyone she saw. Her vitriol was so toxic that several customers left the restaurant. She was practically foaming at the mouth as she cursed and hissed. The only thing she didn't do was shit on the floor. Earl tried to keep everyone calm, but the damage to the lunch crowd was already done. 

Andy had seen it all before. He walked in, said "Hi," to Earl and me then turned to Connie. 

"Connie, are we going to do this the hard way or ..." Andy began. He leaped backwards quickly as the butter knife slashed viciously at the area his face had just occupied. 

"All righty then," he said. Andy pulled his taser from his belt and fired it, rendering Connie a twitching lump on the floor. He calmly walked over to her and pulled two zip ties out of his pocket. 

"Sally can ya get me a couple of towels?" he asked. I ran to the linen cupboard and got him two of our best towels. 

Andy almost gently wrapped the towels around Connie's wrists, and then zip-tied her wrists together. He repeated the procedure on her ankles, just as the EMS truck pulled up. Andy let the paramedics remove the barbs from the taser. They looked up at him and nodded. 

"She's fine," said one. "Her heartbeat and vitals are strong and steady. She'll be a little shaken up when she wakes up ... Uh, she's going to sleep for a few hours cuz I gave her something to knock her the fuck out. I don't need a repeat of that other time." 

On one of the previous occasions after being tasered, Connie had awakened and grabbed a large salt shaker that had fallen to the floor beside her. She hit one of the ambulance attendants so hard that she'd split his forehead open and given him a concussion. 

"Should we take her home or to the hospital, Andy," asked the driver. 

Andy shook his head. "I'm sorry Earl," he said. "But the knife is a whole new element. She ain't gettin' any better. In fact, she's gettin' worse. This is a public place. There are families with kids in and out of here all the time. I'm gonna have to send her to Pecan. You can sign her out of there and into the rehab facility of your choice after 72 hours, but she needs professional help." Earl just nodded. 

Pecan referred to the Pecan Mental Health and Substance Abuse Clinic. It was thirty miles outside of town. They were equipped to handle violent and uncontrollable offenders. 

After they took Connie away, we had gotten back to business. It took a while, but our customer volume increased back to normal levels. Earl would as usual, note the wasted food and lost revenue as a power outage on his logs for the couple that owned the restaurant. If they asked he'd just tell them that the power outage had shut down the air conditioning and plunged the restaurant into darkness. Most of the customers left. It took almost an hour to get the power back on. Since we did have several legitimate power outages and brown outs during the hot summer months, they wouldn't question it. 

So now, looking across the restaurant at Earl, with his scruffy beard, and his greasy apron, still trying to keep the customers happy after the morning he'd had, he looked pretty good to me. I thought he deserved a mid-week pick me up and so did I. 

Sometimes I wonder; I mean if you look at all the rules of society and morality, sleeping with a married man is just wrong. I guess it makes me some kind of slut. However, it's the same old song and dance. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And when you look at it, who does it hurt if I give Earl the occasional quickie? 

It's not like Connie will ever know or care. Nor is it the case where I have someone at home to be hurt. As sad as it seems, Earl is the closest thing I've ever had to any kind of happy ever after. And I guess he sees me as the brightest spot in an otherwise shitty existence. So later on, I'll suggest to Earl that I'll handle the clean up after the dinner rush, so he can go out to Pecan, also known as the nut house, to check on Connie. And maybe he could stop back here to make sure I closed up everything with the proper care. He knows what that means. 

That brings me to the second person I need to look at. Of the two this one, my daughter, Kira is far more important. I know that what she did was wrong. It seems especially wrong to me, because what she did to Terry, was exactly what her sperm donor did to me. That was partially why I felt so bad for the boy. While he was telling me what happened, the look of outright despair in his eyes reminded me of exactly how I'd felt myself. I couldn't believe that any daughter of mine could be so thoughtless and so cruel to someone who loved her as much as he obviously did. 

But at the same time, no mother wants to see her child suffer. And that's what Kira has been doing the whole God Damned summer. I've lost count of the number of times I've come home to find her crying her eyes out. 

I've urged the girl to move on with her life, shit I even arranged a couple of dates for her and made her go on them. The first boy brought her back home after only a half hour. The second one took an hour. They were supposed to go to a movie. He later told me that everything they saw or talked about just made her cry. They passed a blue car; it wasn't even a Mustang, but it started her to thinking about Terry's blue Mustang. After he got her calmed down, he tried to keep the subjects open and neutral. 

He told her that after taking a year off to work and earn more money, he was going to start college in the fall. He'd be leaving in a month ... That was all it took. She started blubbering about Terry leaving at about the same time. 

He told her that she didn't have to worry because he'd heard that Terry wasn't coming back. The word around town was that Terry was going to take a summer internship next summer and who knew, maybe he'd never come back so she wouldn't have to ever see him again. He'd thought, wrongly of course, that the idea of never seeing Terry again, after their break up, might appeal to Kira. He was of course wrong. 

All I could do was to reassure Kira that things would get better, but shit, summer was almost over, and they hadn't improved at all. I'd heard that Terry was dating that Lana girl. And as sad as I was for Kira, I was happy that he had bounced back and had bounced back high enough to date the town princess. All I needed now was a bit of happiness for my daughter. 

She was learning a tough lesson, but it was one she'd caused herself. I was secretly thrilled when she'd started dating Terry. He was probably the nicest kid in town. He just wasn't the type of guy who'd ever hurt Kira. And more than that, he seemed almost to worship her. He treated her the way every mother wanted to see their daughter treated. He also had a good head on his shoulders and a bright future. He also didn't mind or notice that my Kira, as sweet as she is, just isn't made for college. 

I loved watching the two of them, sitting on my back porch, talking about their future. When they sat there, holding hands, I was often silently, urging him to kiss her. I was sure that they'd already done more. But just seeing the two of them sitting there, with stars in their eyes gave me hope that true love was out there for all of us. I just didn't want Kira to end up like me. 

And that bastard Jeff. Just listening to the things he said about her, made me hate him even more. Whenever he and his friends came into the restaurant, I always sent one of the other waitresses over to serve him. He had a lot of his daddy's money, so he tipped well. It wasn't hard to get someone to serve him. I was sure he had sweet talked my gullible daughter out of her panties and out of her future with a boy who really loved her. 

Now in the aftermath, Jeff was dating several other girls; Lana had dumped him, and my Kira was miserable. The only good to come out of it was that from what I've heard, Terry had kicked Jeff's ass twice, before moving on with his life. 

"Sally," called a voice over my shoulder. 

"The specials are posted on the wall over the jukebox," I said. I turned and looked into the bluest eyes I have ever seen. It was Terry's father, Greg. I saw where Terry got his charm from. The man was ... I don't know how to describe him. He wasn't the pretty-boy type. Nor was he the dangerous, bad-boy type. He was just ... He was just the kind of guy that most women want to wake up next to. He was the kind of guy that on those mornings when you really don't want to get up, would surprise you with the worst breakfast that you've ever had. But you'd eat every morsel of it because you just knew he'd put his heart and soul and all of his love into it and brought it to you in bed. 

Just seeing him, reminded me of how special his son was and where those qualities came from. Being this close to him, made me want to kick my daughter's ass for what she had thrown away. 

"Sally, I wanted to thank you for talking to Terry that morning during the break up," he said. "You really helped to calm him down." 

"I'm sorry I had to," I said. "Believe me, I know what he was feeling. I'm glad he bounced back and moved on. He's a good kid. He deserves it." 

"He hasn't," he said. "He's miserable." 

"I heard that he was dating Lana," I said. 

"That's what everyone in town thinks," he said. "The reality is that Lana is dating him. She's pretty and makes sure they're seen together all over the town. I make him go when she comes over because he works so God Damned hard in school that he deserves some time off when he's home, but I know Terry, and he is slowly sinking into a depression." 




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion



"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "Is there anything I can do?" I thought he might want me to give Terry one of those "trust me; it gets better in time," talks. 

"Yep," he said. "I have a plan that isn't going to make any sense. It might work and it might not, but I've only got three weeks before Terry goes back to school and fucks up his career." 

"Why is going back to school going to ruin his career," I asked. 

"Because last year he aced all of his classes," he said. "He aced them all because he wasn't trying to show off or prove anything, he was working as hard as he could because he had a goal. His goal was to have the best life he could with Kira. He was working for HER. If he goes back to school depressed and with nothing to work for, he'll flunk out. And Lana, God bless her, as pretty as she is, she does nothing for him. She may as well be his sister. They don't even kiss." 

"So what do you want from me?" I asked. 

"I want you not to call the police on me," he smiled. His smile was ... God, I wish he wasn't such a goody two shoes. I knew that Greg wasn't the kind of man who would ever cheat on that wife of his. If he was, my panties would already be down around my ankles. 

"Why would I call the police on you?" I asked nervously. 

"Because I'm gonna probably make your daughter cry," he said. "But believe me, it's necessary. And in the end, maybe we'll all be happy." I looked in his eyes and saw no sign of deceit. For some reason, I trusted him. 

"She's been crying all summer," I said. "One more time won't hurt her." 

* * * * * *

Kira

I hated working in the restaurant. The only good thing about it was that my mom let me work the shifts I wanted. I spent most of my time going to places that I knew Terry would be. I avoided running into him and his girlfriend, but some of her friends ... Maybe disciples is a better word, had known me, and pointed me out to her. She'd smiled and waved to me, without Terry seeing me or knowing I was there. Then she had wrapped his arm around her and pulled him into a hug. I knew she blamed me for what Jeff and I did. She enjoyed rubbing the fact that she had taken Terry from me, in my face. We both knew that she'd gotten the better end of the deal. 

I had no choice. I needed to see Terry. If I couldn't be with him, I needed at least to see him. 

I put a glass of water and a menu on the table before I even knew who I was serving. 

"Hello slut," he said. I was horrified. I couldn't believe that Terry's father would talk to me like that. He had treated me like one of his daughters while Terry and I were together. 

"So now that you've ruined my son's life, how many guys are you fucking?" he asked. 

"None," I hissed, very close to tears. I looked around, and no one could hear us. I looked over at my mother, and she looked away from me. 

"Come on," he leered. "A hot young thing like you ... You must be ..." 

"I'm not," I yelled. "I made a mistake and I'm paying for it. I spend all of my time alone. I hate my life. I feel like I lost the one person in the world who cared about me, twice. First, he went away to that fucking school and left me here all alone. I know what goes on at those colleges. I've seen the movies and heard all the God Damned stories. I know there are all of those hot girls up there. And Jeff told me that Terry was probably ... And he said that no one would ever find out ... I missed him so much ... I just wanted to be hugged ... And he put ... He put something in ... But after it was over ... " I was babbling and crying, and he grabbed my arm and took me out of the restaurant. 

He just let me rant and blubber as he drove. 

"Why are you treating me like this?" I asked. "I ... I know I messed up. I ruined the best thing I ever had in my life. Why can't you just let me suffer in peace? I thought you were a nice man." 

"Because I want to make sure you get what you really deserve," he smiled. "Kira, do you think that Jeff took advantage of your weakened emotional state or do you think he caused it? I mean, I know that you and Terry, we're texting each other and on the phone and Skype constantly. So think about it, when would Terry have had enough time to go out with any of those girls Jeff mentioned? He got a 4.0 in all his engineering classes. From talking to him, he never had so much as one date the whole time he was away. He loved you, Kira. He was busting his ass up there for you and the future you two were always talking about." 

"I know," I cried. "I know ... I know ... I know. But I just missed him so much that I couldn't stand it. And Jeff ... I should kill that bastard. He ruined my entire life and thinks it's funny. He came to me to help him get Lana back, but I refused. I just told him to fuck off and ..."

"Okay," he said. "I believe you. Kira is it possible that Jeff put something in your food or your drinks?"

"I don't know," I said. "Before that first night, I had never drank alcohol, so I have no idea what it tasted like or what I would feel like." He just shook his head. Then he hugged me. I melted into his arms and started crying. 

"Stop crying, Honey," he said. "You're gonna have to get a lot tougher than that if you're gonna get what's coming to you." 

"What's coming to me?" I asked. "Are you going to keep beating me up about this? I already feel bad enough." 

"No Kira," he said. "I'm gonna help you get my son back." 

* * * * * *

Donna

The next time I saw Greg, he looked better. He looked stronger. That bothered me. I love the man. I want him healthy and happy, but the best thing in the world for Greg ... Is me. I didn't want him to get stronger because the stronger he got, the more he would start to think that he didn't need me. 

As he passed two sets of papers across the desk to my lawyer, I could see that he'd been busy. "Let's just discuss the one of those where you and I stay together," I said. "I'm not interested in the other one."

"We may as well leave then," snapped Greg. "I've already told you that there is no plan like that." I was surprised by the manner in his voice. I was even more surprised that he was serious. 

"This is unacceptable," said my lawyer, as he read the documents. "No judge will force her to take this." 

"No one is forcing anyone to do anything anymore," said Greg. "She's going to sign it, and then she's going to help me with the rest of my plan, because as always, Donna wants to save the town. The difference is she saved the town one dick at a time. I'm going to get them all together." 

Greg was just being cruel. He was trying to use my own words against me. 

"But there's no support mentioned here," sputtered her lawyer. "How is she supposed to live? How is she supposed to ..." 

"Pay you, right," smiled Greg. 

"There are two files in front of you," said Greg. "In the first, I go for an annulment ..." 

"What," screamed my lawyer. "This is unheard of! You've been married for more than twenty years. You have children together. You can't get an annulment." 

"What does an annulment mean?" I asked. 

"It means that there was never a marriage," smirked Greg. "It means that legally, it never happened. You and I are both single instead of being divorced." 

"That makes me seem like some kind of slut," I said. "A forty eight-year-old women, with three kids from different fathers who was never married. Shit, all I need is a trailer park to live in, and I could be on Jerry Springer." 

"In an annulment, there would be no need to split the assets," said Greg's lawyer. "Your youngest child would be a complication, unless you willingly gave custody to Greg."

I laughed long and hard. "Why the hell would I do that?" I laughed. "I love Debbie. And right now she's my strongest bargaining chip. I've told you once before, Greg is Super Dad. There is no way he's going to walk away from that little girl. So if I get custody, I get Greg." 

"True, but you would be destroying the town you love so much," said Greg. "Donna, I don't care if we get the annulment or the divorce. Either way, we're done. And either way you have to make a decision. I want Debbie. You can visit her every week, but she lives with me in the house I bought and paid for. It's in her best interest to stay in the house she's grown up in and continue in her same school, with her friends." 

"Well, why can't I stay there too, while you let me work towards earning your trust and your love back?" I asked. 

"Because I hate the ground you fuckin' slither over," hissed Greg. "I just want you out of my life. I also refuse to pay you for cheating on me and ruining my life. You will be taken care of, only not by me." 

"What exactly does that mean," asked my lawyer. 

"We'll be having meetings with all the men on the list that Donna gave us. Donna will be helping us to convince them to do the right thing," said Greg. "In the event that they balk or don't comply with my plans, I'm ready to go public with the whole thing." 

Fear clutched my heart, and I realized that I wouldn't be able to show my face anywhere in the state. Lots of families would be destroyed, and our sleepy, friendly little town would never be the same. 

"Do the kids know that you're blackmailing me?" I asked. 

"The kids are surprised that I'm not murdering you," he spat. 

"I'll help you," I said. I took the pen off of the table and signed both documents. I felt as if I was tearing a chunk out of my heart with every stroke of the pen. 

"Greg, this isn't over," I said. "You love me. You still do. We made three babies together. Maybe biologically only one of them is yours, but we made love so often and so intensely that they all should have been. It may take months, or years, or even decades, but in the end ... It'll be the same old song and dance. You and I will be back in the same house together, in the same bed, every God damned night. Mark my words." I got up and left the room before the tears started. 

The next night I was back there. Greg and his lawyer called all the men on my list together. His lawyer had sat there and explained what was going on. There were some surprising names on the list, including the town's very married minister, Andy, the sheriff's deputy and even the Mayor. Tara's father, the sheriff wasn't on the list, but he was there to help keep the peace and also to help maintain the secrecy of the event. Unfortunately, Tara was also there. She was there to help keep the records and to serve as a notary to legalize any papers that were signed. 

Most of the men were embarrassed. Greg and his lawyer explained to them that their time of being embarrassed was over. They were all in the situation together. They had all done the same things. 

For a very long time all the men there had at one time or another shared in my favors. And for all of that time, Greg was the one paying for it. It was time for them all to ante up and pay for their share. There was also an issue with the paternity of two of my children. Greg asked for a vote on one of his two plans concerning the kids. He could either DNA test every man there and find out who Sherry and Terry's fathers were, or they could all pay into a lump sum fund to give each child a onetime lump-sum payment. 

Most of the men chose to remain anonymous and pay into the funds. It was far cheaper and would be far less damaging to their reputations than to have their wives and families discover that they had another child with a woman they weren't married to. 

Then came the worst part of the meeting, each man had a ten minute meeting scheduled to discuss their finances, and how much they owed. Greg had decided that paying me roughly forty thousand dollars a year for five years was fair. Checking the state's guidelines, it was slightly more than I would have received in a divorce settlement. And it was also approximately the same time that I would have received alimony for. 

Forty thousand dollars a year divided among twenty men meant that each man would have to pay me about two thousand dollars a year. Some would pay more and others less. That was the point of the meetings to have each one sign an agreement promising to pay. If any of them went back on the deal, Greg would let it all out and ruin all of their lives. 

I died as each man talked about why they did it. 

"How was I supposed to resist her," asked one. "There's just something so nasty about fuckin' a chick that looks like somebody's mom. It's like you're doing the nastiest shit possible on a woman who should be off limits." 

"Would you want your wife doing it," asked the lawyer. 

"My wife's not a whore," spat the man indignantly. 

"Well ... If you weren't married, would you want to be with her," asked the lawyer. 

"Of course not," said the man. "Nobody wants to be the guy who's married to the whore." 

"Hell no," said another. "She ain't good looking at all. But she's got that big old ass. And bent over the bitch is irresistible." 

"I just wanted some easy pussy with no complications," said another guy. "That's all a chick like that is good for. I've never had a conversation with her. She couldn't talk with her mouth full anyway. But what would you even say to someone like that." 

By the time we'd been through them all it had taken just over three hours to get twenty some odd promises to pay and hear their opinions of me. I was crying my eyes out, and no one cared. Even my former best friend, Tara, felt no sympathy for me.  

I hadn't spoken to Tara in weeks. Our last conversation had been the one when she found out that I had cheated with all three of her husbands. But this was worse. Tara had told the minister, that although she would keep her promise not to reveal what had gone on at the meeting to anyone, but she would no longer be attending church services while he ran the church. She had also told the Mayor that he no longer needed to bother asking her to attend town functions with her. 

He begged her to forgive him, to no avail. I didn't even bother trying to talk to her. She kept looking at me like she would jump down my throat if I said one word to her. It seemed as if she'd gone from being my best friend in the world to hating me. After Greg, she was the one I would miss the most. 

It was pretty hard on Greg too. Most of the men thought he was some sort of moron because I had gotten away with it for so long. They acted as if he was stupid for marrying a woman like me. The saddest of all of the reactions though was when the men were friends of Greg's. Just suffice it to say that my husband would be seeking new fishing buddies and new golf partners too. Greg had also been friends with Andy for more than fifteen years. It was a shame that I had ruined that. Those friendships were just another way that Greg lost something because of what I'd done. 

When the smoke cleared and the last of the men was gone, only the five of us were left. Greg's lawyer was packing his briefcase and talking about how badly he needed to go home and hug his wife. 

The sheriff patted Greg on the back and told him that it would take time, but he'd get over it. He told Greg that it was all for the best. Greg had the time to find someone better. He reminded Greg of his promise. 

"They're all going to pay Greg," he said. "So keep your promise and don't talk about this with anyone." 

"I gave my word," said Greg. "And MY word still means something." The sheriff nodded his head and left. 

"Honey, can we talk," I asked. 

"No, Donna we can't," he said. "I don't think we'll ever talk again, unless it's about your visitation with Debbie." He looked as if he was going to both cry and vomit at the same time. He was really down on himself, and I would have done anything to cheer him up. 

"But Greg," I whined. 

"Donna just stay the fuck away from me," he spat. 

"Greg, I'd like to talk to you, if you have the time," said Tara. I smiled because I was sure that Tara was going to go to bat for me. 

* * * * * *

Greg

I don't remember ever feeling this bad in my life. It seemed as if everything I had hoped for and worked towards was a lie. It was like I'd been building a house on a foundation of sand and the sand had shifted. My house had fallen down around me, so all I could do was to pick up the pieces, salvage what I could and move on. 

"A penny for your thoughts," she said, drawing me out of those thoughts. I looked at those crystalline eyes and saw so many things hidden in their depths. I saw obvious intelligence. I saw compassion. I saw curiosity and concern. But more than anything else I saw worry. 

"I'm not sure my thoughts are worth that much," I said. It was true. I didn't have actual thoughts. There was so much going through my mind, but it was mostly disjointed feelings, partial thoughts, glimpses of the past, and anger about hopes for a future that would clearly never come to pass. 

The one thing I could actually articulate was pain. It was an emotional pain so severe that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but then since my worst enemy was the woman who had sworn to love me and be faithful to me ... Okay I changed my mind. That bitch could have all of it. 

"Okay, I'll start then," she said. Her voice was breaking even as she spoke. I had never heard Tara's voice sound anything but cheerful, so it was surprising. 

"Greg, I am sooooo sorry," she said. "I only hope that someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me. The only excuse I can offer is going to sound really stupid, but it's the honest to God truth. I really didn't know. I know that doesn't make what I did any better but ... I never ..."

She was almost in tears. As bad as I felt. I could see that Tara for some reason felt at least equally bad. 

"Tara, I've had a rough day," I said. "I'm probably a bit slow on the uptake because my thoughts and emotions are in a state of flux. So could you possibly tell me what you're apologizing for? I mean if you were out there screwing half of the town with Donna, that's not my business. You're a single woman and you're not married to me so you have no reason to apologize ..." 

The look of outright horror on her face told me everything I needed to know. I was completely wrong about what I'd suggested. Not that I'd ever thought that Tara would do something like that, but after finding out that I'd been married to the town slut for over twenty years, nothing would surprise me anymore. Still the thought of Tara even saying fuck, let alone doing it made me smile. Tara was so innocent seeming that the thought of her with her legs spread just didn't seem realistic. 

Sure, her legs were beautiful, as was the rest of her. But Tara just seemed to be too oure for normal human needs. Of course that made no sense. She was a living, breathing human being. She shit, pissed and farted, just like the rest of us. She had been married three times. So at least three men had been in that pure angelic pussy, but thinking about it just seemed wrong.

But then, maybe that was just me, clinging again to an outmoded form of morality. I was still stupid enough to believe that people who loved each other, only had sex with each other. And I'd been thick enough to believe for more than twenty God Damned years that my wife felt the same way.

Why didn't I know? How the hell had she fooled me for all of those years?

"No Greg," she said riveting my concentration back on our conversation. "I ... I... Would never! I couldn't ever do ... I mean I'm physically capable of ... No ... I don't think ... Well you know what I mean. I didn't do what you said."

"Then what are you apaologizing for, Sweetheart," I asked, noticing that her eyes got huge when I called her sweetheart. 

"Well ... Uhm, it took me a while to figure it out," she said. "But some of those times ... When she was ... She used me!"




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion



"She what!" I said loudly. "Did she force you or ... Are you ... Uhm?"

If it was possible, those huge innocent eyes got even bigger. "Noooooo! Not like that," she said. "I mean she used me as a ... an ... Oh what do you call it? She would tell me that she was out buying something for you and it was a surprise. So if you called I was supposed to tell you that we had been shopping or doing something together. But Greg, I really didn't know. I guess I'm just stupid!" 

"Tara, you're not stupid," I said. "You're just trusting. You take people at their word. I think that you don't lie, so you assume that no one else does either. None of this is your fault. You two have been friends for more than ten years. Why wouldn't you believe her?" 

"But I should have known," she said. "My dad is the friggin' sheriff. I should have at least a little bit of detective in me. All of the signs were there. She was always out claiming to buy you things that I never saw you with. I'm just dumb."

"So what does that make me?" I asked. "I never saw it either at the time. But now thinking back on it, I never looked for it. Tara, you know how guys are. You've been married. As long as we're getting our sex regularly, we're happy. And I was getting it more than regularly. Any time we were alone, we were all over each other. I ..."

I realized that talking about being married had struck a nerve with Tara. "Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to ..."

"I know," she said, without meeting my gaze. "I'm just overly sensitive when it comes to marriage. I'm a three time loser. The womn in town call me Liz Taylor."

"See," I said. "I agree with them." She put her hand over her mouth in shock. 

"I thought we were friends, Greg," she said. 

"Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in the world. You have those same incredible eyes and that beautiful black hair," I said. 

"Greg, they call me Liz Taylor because I've been married so many times," she said. "It's not a compliment."

"But none of those were your fault," I said. "And you've only been divorced once, and he was a real asshole. You just have bad luck with men. But don't worry. You'll get it right next time." 

"I would love to believe that," she said. "So are we okay?" 

"Of course we are," I said. "We were never not okay. Besides, I have to stay on good terms with you. That way, your father continues to overlook my speeding."

She just laughed and shook her head as she headed back to work. I wondered how it was going to be for both her and the Mayor, having to work together after what had been revealed by this situation. The one thing you cuod count on was that I wouldn't be voting for the bastard again. 

I looked up as a burger, made just the way I like, was placed in front of me. The plate was also nearly running over with fries. I looked up to find Sally's smiling face beaming at me.

"I don't know what you did yesterday," she began. "But my Kira is smiling again. She wouldn't tell me what you guys talked about. But she said you gave her ... Hope!" 

Hope. It sounded so good. It was something I wanted to be able to make good on when it came to Kira. It was also something I had run out of when it came to my own situation. I had no hope left. Perhaps, I hoped that people weren't laughing at me behind my back. I hoped that they wouldn't make fun of my youngest daughter, or think that she was anything like her mother. I hoped that my oldest children and I could get past things with our relationship intact, even thought our family would never be, could never be the same. 

I'd found out a short time ago, that the judge had decided not to allow the annulment. He didn't have enough experience with the annulment concept to rule. He'd done some research and although he agreed, after reviewing the file and my evidence that Donna had married me under false pretenses. That was based on the fact that she'd been cheating on me since before we were married. But after twenty years, he thought that a divorce made more sense from a legal point of view. 

Since Donna had agreed to the terms we'd set down in the settlement agreement, he saw no need to rule any further and had signed off on the divorce. In six months, it would be final and I'd be something I neither wanted nor sought to be; a free man. 

But there was still one more thing I needed to do before I could settle down for my happily ever after romance with my cars. 

* * * * * *

Kira

I looked at the face of my future father. He couldn't look at me. His face had immediately reddened and he looked away. 

"My boobs aren't big," I said. "I mean ... I'm not flat-chested but ..."

"Uhm ... can we talk about something else?" he asked. "Are you ready? I mean ... I know you're brave enough for this ... But are you tough enough for what might ... Or could happen?" 

I laughed. He had no idea. "I don't have to be brave," I smiled. "I already know what the alternative is. I've spent the last month and a half experiencing what life without him is like. This is nothing compared to that."

He nodded. We got into one of his cars. It was the same one that he'd had on display at the Founder's weekend car show. We drove in silence, both of us lost in our thoughts. 

"What are you thinking about?" he asked. 

"How good it's going to be to have things back to normal. And how grateful I am to you for believing in me and giving me this chance," I said. "What are you thinking about?"

"What the hell we're going to do for plan B if this doesn't work," he said. "Terry needs you in his life. One of us may as well be happy." He put his foot on the gas and suddenly the car jumped forward as if we'd been shot out of a cannon. I was pushed backwards into my seat like there was a hand on my chest pushing me back into the expensive leather. 

I wondered what he meant. He seemed to be trying to mask his anger as he'd said it. I looked at him and saw something I never expected to see. He was as torn up as I was about something. We were although I had never seen it before, kindred spirits. That only made his helping me even more special. I wonder if I would have had the grace, while tormented by my own struggles o try to help someone else. 

In that moment, knew where most of the qualities that I loved about Terry had come from. 

I didn't have time to dwell on them though because we were almost at the park. We drove a bit until we saw Terry's sonic blue Mustang. 

"Okay, Honey, good luck," he said. "I'll be close by, watching. I'll pull you out if things get sticky. You can do this." I nodded showing more confidence than I felt. 

A short distance away I saw them. The queen was in situ. Her court fluttered around her. There were at least six other girls there. All of them wearing clothing very similar to what she wore and trying very much to act the way she did. The girls were the prettiest girls from some of the best families in town. Some were still in high school while others were in college. Of course with the girls came, men. There were a lot of them nearby. Several of them were tossing a football around. 

A bit further away, were several couples lying on the grass nearby. They weren't a part of the court ... But oh how they wanted to be. All of their attention was focused laser-like on Lana's every movement. 

Lana, of course, pretended not to notice that she was the center of all of this rapt attention. Her focus, was on something, the one thing that didn't belong to her. She was concentrating on Terry. 

My Terry. This was it. This was the reason I was out here in the park in a top so tight that you could see every pimple on my nipples and shorts so tiny I may as well have been wearing a pair of blue jean panties. It was like his dad had said. I needed to do something to shock him enough to make his decision. Did he still love me enough to make the right choice? 

What I'd done had been terrible, but it was a mistake. Did he love me enough to overlook it, or were we done. His dad really believed that Jeff had given me more than just alcohol. 

Thinking about it, Terry's dad was either the biggest genius, or the biggest moron I knew. Terry had called me everything except a child of God. He'd called me a whore, a skank and a slut. I just didn't see how dressing like a slut would get him back. 

A wolf whistle cut through the air as I walked past the impromptu picnic. Several of the unoccupied guys looked at me and a couple started to follow me. One of them stepped in front of me. 

"Hey baby, what do I have to do to get between those legs?" asked a guy I had never seen before. 

"Die and come back as someone else," I quipped, moving around him. His friends started laughing at him and even Lana noticed it. Before I knew it, she had gotten up and was heading, with a couple of her girls, in my direction. 

"Hello, Kira," said Lana. Her voice was controlled and almost warm sounding. She made it seem as if we were old friends. She didn't exude any type of threat or menace. This wasn't one of those 'mean girl' situations like they have in the movies. 

"Hi," I said nervously. 

"I was sure that I'd made myself very clear about you being welcome at any of my events," she said. From the smile on her face, anyone passing by would have thought that she had just complimented me on my outfit or some other pleasant thing. And her words were phrased in such a way that it seemed as if she was telling me that I was welcome. 

From behind me, one of the guys who'd been trying to talk to me spoke up. "Well day'um!" he said with an exaggerated accent. "Excuse us your lady ship. We were not aware that you owned this park. We'll just be on our merry way." He grabbed me by my arm and started pulling me. 

"Shit, nobody told us the fuckin' queen was in the park," said another of the guys. I looked around for Terry's dad's car. This was going bad quickly. 

"She isn't going anywhere with you!" The voice was calm, but there was an undercurrent of menace in it. I looked up and saw Terry beside Lana and he was pissed. I couldn't tell if he was pissed at me or the guys. 

"Wait ... Let me get this straight," said one of the guys. "Your girlfriend thinks she owns the Damned park. And you think you own all of the women?" 

"Not all of them, just her," said Terry pointing at me. 

"Terry, let her go," said Lana. 

"Yeah, Terry, let her go," smirked one of the guys. "She'll be fine with us. You go back and sit with the qu ..."

I had seen Terry in tournaments and competitions. I'd seen him practicing kicks and punches and blocks until sweat poured off of him. I had seen him strike punching bags so hard that the walls of his dad's garage shook. But I had never seen him strike a person in real life. While Lana and the guys had been talking Terry had been moving slowly and constantly closer to me. When the guy who'd spoken last crossed between Terry and I to say what he'd tried to say, he made a mistake. 

Terry who was already angry, saw it as an aggressive movement. He saw it as the guy putting himself between Terry and me. Too many bad things had happened to Terry that summer. I didn't know about most of them until much later. But Terry had lost me, or so he thought. He had lost our hopes for a future and a family. What I didn't know was that he had also for all intents and purposes lost his mother. And his family had been changed forever. 

The anger that had been bubbling near the surface all summer errupted. Terry leaped from the ground into some kind of spin. He spun halfway around in mid air and his right leg shot out and slammed into the side of the guy's head. Terry landed lightly on his feet and looked at the other two guys. They looked down at their stunned friend and took a step backwards. 

They didn't know whether to attack Terry in defense of their friend or to run so they didn't get flattened along with him. Before they could make up their minds, four hundred and sixty two horsepower and four screaming Good Year super car radials further destabilized the situation. 

The Mustang screeched to a stop right beside me. "Terry, don't hit anyone else. Get your ass into this car, NOW!" Yelled his father from inside of the growling car. 

Terry as usual did what his dad told him and approached the car. "Get in the back," his dad yelled. Terry looked puzzled but pushed the seat forward and crawled into the tiny rear compartment. I almost laughed as he tried to get comfortable with his knees on his chest and his head bent low. 

"Come on Kira, we don't have all day," he smirked at me. I sat down in the comfortable and luxurious leather seat and smiled. 

"Dad, why is she coming with us?" whined Terry. 

"Because I'm psychic," spat his dad. "All fathers are."

"But what does that have to do with ..." began Terry. 

"You love her and you know it," said his dad as he took one of the sharp corners in the park so quickly it felt as if we were on two wheels. 

"No I don't," said Terry, stubbornly. "Your psychic mojo is off."

"Remember last week? The day of the big rainstorm?" questioned his dad. 

"Yeah," said Terry. "Lana and I were going swimming. You should see those hooters in a bikini," he was obviously taking a pot shot at me. I just smiled and leaned over between the seats and stared at him. 

"What are you staring at?" he hissed at me. 

"You," I smiled. 

"Well, stop. I'll be back with Lana in just a few minutes," he spat. 

"Why?" I asked. "You loooooooooooove me." 

"Says who?" he hissed. "I was perfectly fine with Lana. She's the prettiest girl in town and she doesn't dress like a ..."

"Terence!" said his dad. 

"Dad your psychic powers suck. I don't love her anymore. Okay, I did. But that was before she ... I just don't anymore. Maybe your psychic gift is the ability to look into the past. We don't call that psychic. We call it history."

"As I was saying, before we started discussing Lana's hooters," said Terry's dad. "The day of the rain storm, I was running around the house closing windows to keep the storm out. While I was in your room ... You know, the one you left to go staring at Lana's hooters. You left your photo album open on your computer. Funny isn't it? You have hundreds of pictures on that computer. 

I saw one or two of me and your sisters. There was even one of your mom, which surprises me. I don't remember any pictures of Lana or her magical hooters. So either the hooters aren't that magical to you, or you have a secret Lana's hooters folder hidden on the computer somewhere. 

A funny thing though ... There must've been a couple of hundred pictures of Kira in a slide show. Anything you want to say?" 

"Nope," said Terry clamping his lips shut. 

"Terry do you remember the first breath you ever took?" asked his dad. 

"Of course not," said Terry. "No one does." 

"I do," said his father.

"Bullshit," said Terry. "Oops ... Sorry dad, but no one remembers their first breath. Most of us don't remember much before we first started school ... You're makin' this ..."

"Terry are you sure you're going to be an engineer?" asked his dad. "You're a little slow on the uptake ..."

"Dad, I'm trying to follow your conversation, analyze it because I can't tell when you're joking and when you're not and avoid getting cooties from Kira at the same time. It's a bit tough," said Terry. 

"Okay," smirked his Dad. "I'll slow down. But you let me know when I can take the training wheels off. As I was saying I remember YOUR first breath son. In fact, when the doctor smacked you on the ass to start you breathing, I almost hit him back. I know you Terry. No one knows you as well as I do with the possible exceptions of your mother and ..." he pointed at me.

"I know when you're happy. I can feel it when you're sad or upset. So I know that you don't have any feelings for Lana, magical hooters or not. And I also know ..." he continued. 

"Okay, big whoop," spat Terry. "I love her. I always have. That does not make you the world's greatest detective. The whole damned town knows that. But I'm getting over it. Just like you're getting over mom. I'm moving in with my life."

"Terry, the situations are completely different," said his dad. "I wish I could give your mom a second chance. But what she did went on for too long. And her reasons were completely different. I would give anything to be in your shoes. You haven't smiled one time since the two of you broke up. I know you've been trying to get over her, son. But it doesn't seem to be working."

"I don't see it that way," snapped Terry. "Look at the way she's dressed." 

"She's wearing that for you, dummy," said his dad. "I told her to wear it."

"Why did you want her to dress like a ..." began Terry. 

"Slut," I said. 

"Okay, we're here," said his dad. 

"We're where?" asked Terry as his dad pulled the car over. He opened the electronic locks and got out of the car. 

I got out too. Terry got out and tried to stretch his sore muscles from the tight confines of the Mustang's back seat. 

"Where are we, Dad?" asked Terry looking around. 

Suddenly, the door locks on the Mustang clicked locked. The big engine started and his dad shouted over the sound. 

"It's about five miles back to your car, Terry. That should give you two time for a nice long talk," he shouted. Then he drove away. 

"We may as well start walking," said Terry. 

"Do you want me to walk on the other side of the road and maybe fifty feet or so behind you?" I asked. "That way no one will see you walking with the whore."

Terry took off his shirt, he had a T-shirt under it. He handed me the shirt. 

He noticed the tears that I tried to wipe away, before I got to them.

"You hate seeing my body so badly that you can't stand it huh?" I hissed. "I'm sorry I don't have big fake tits like your girlfriend. My mom and I aren't rich. So I have to just deal with what I have." I started walking and he caught up with me. 

He grabbed me by my hand and stopped me. "Let go of me, Terry," I said. "Or are you going to beat me up, too?" He dropped my hand.

"Kira," he said in shock. "I have never ... I could never hurt you."

"Bullshit!" I said. "What do you think that ignoring me the whole summer did?" I started crying then. I just couldn't hold the tears or my anger back. "And you called me a wh ... whore, Terry. You just tore my heart out. And I watched you all friggin summer ... While I sat around crying you went everywhere with your new girlfriend. I hope ... I hope the two of you are happy, Terry. Because you're killing me. One piece at a time, little by little."

"She's not my girlfriend," he said. "She's just a friend. We're just helping each other get over what you two ..."

"It wasn't us two, Terry," I hissed. "Like your dad said, for an engineer, you seem to be a little slow. Jeff, is very good at what he does. He started out by telling me about all of those girls that you were around up at school and how pretty they all were. And I began to worry. He kept coming into the restaurant and he would always tell me about how worried he was about what Lana was doing up at school. He'd always say that you were probably doing it too. 

Then he started telling me how, the two of us should hang out. He said it wasn't like we'd be dating or anything. It would just be two friends who were left alone helping each other over a rough time. Terry, I'm not like you. I'm the poor girl from the trailer park. I don't have a lot of friends to hang out with, so I didn't see any harm. You were my first boyfriend Terry. You were my first everything. So when you left me. As much as I knew that you were just going to school, I had doubts. I wondered about you with all of those pretty girls around. "

"You shouldn't have," he spat. "I never went on one Damned date. While you were back here dating that asshole Jeff, I was working my ass off for US. US, KIRA! Not me. US! You and me Kira. And our future! Besides, how the hell was I supposed to date anyone? I was always on the phone, or Skype, or texting YOU!" He was so close to me that I could feel him. I could feel his anger.




Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion



"I know that, Terry, but you weren't here and I missed you so much that I got stupid. If I could do it all over again ... But I know I can't. And when it finally happened, he gave me liquor. And ..."

"Kira ... You don't drink," snapped Terry. "You never have. Remember you told me about all of the alcoholics in your family. That was partially why you and your mom moved here ..."

"I know Terry, but he told me it was a very weak drink and I should just taste it. Everyone at the table was drinking it. Terry it tasted awful at first. It tasted like ... Like medicine. But the more I tasted it, the better it got. And I sort of lost consciousness after that. I remember waking up and Jeff was on top of me. I felt awful Terry. He dropped me off at home as if nothing had happened. But the next time I saw him, he was just different. He was smirking and had just turned into an asshole. 

I told him that I didn't want to hang out with him anymore. And that was when I knew that I had been played. He told me that he'd never wanted to hang out with me in the first place. He'd just wanted some pussy. 

So I told him that he should be happy because he'd gotten it. So he could leave me alone. He told me that we had a good thing going and that it would be terrible if you somehow found out about it. So I "went out" with him two or three more times before you came home and caught us. That was what I was trying to explain to you. And the conversation you heard between us was just that. He was trying to get me to continue things while you were home. I refused. I was hoping that I could figure something out over the summer so I wouldn't have to ever see him again and ..."

"I've figured something out," Terry hissed. "I'm going to kick his ass and he ..."

I grabbed his arm. "Terry, you already did that ... Twice!" I said. "You almost went to jail the second time. You only have three weeks left before you head back to school. You have your whole future ahead of you ... I'm not worth you ..."

"I always thought my whole future was beside me," he mumbled. Just hearing him say that brought tears to my eyes again. I just kept walking beside him thinking about how badly what I had done must have hurt him. After having the chance to get my part of what had happened out, I felt much better. I also realized exactly how much I loved him. 

I loved him enought to notice that Terry had gotten into three fights over me. Terry didn't even like to fight. He was more of the walk away type. But he had a hair trigger when it came to me. I was more of a liability to him than anything else. 

"Terry, thanks for letting me get my part of this out," I said. "I didn't want you to go back to school thinking that I had just randomly cheated on you. Or that I loved anyone on this planet more than I love you. I want you to go back up to school and work your butt off this year just like you did last year. But this time you have to do for yourself, okay. And while you're up there ... " my voice broke and I started crying. 

"While you're up there ... If you meet some cute, smart girl and you hit it off with her ... Go for it, Terry. More than anything else, I want you to be happy."

"Are you done?" he asked. He sounded angry. 

"No," I said. "I'm keeping this shirt." We walked along in silence again for a while. This time he ended the lull in the conversation. 

"So why did you come out dressed like such a slut today?" he asked. "Since you've decided that you're done with me, were you already looking for someone else?" 

"You were the one who said we were done," I said quietly. "I don't blame you after all of this. You spent the entire summer with Lana, getting over me. After what I did, it shouldn't have taken you that long to move on. But if you have to know, your dad told me to dress like this." 

"My dad told you to go around flashing your ass at other guys?" he screamed in disbelief. He actually stopped walking and just stood in the road. 

"Terry don't be an idiot," I said. "I wouldn't dress like this for anyone else. Your dad figured that if I dressed like this and you saw me, you'd freak out, which would prove that you still cared for me. It was all to get YOUR attention, Dummy."

"So my dad cooked up this whole scheme for you?" he asked. 

"Terry, he did it for you," I said. "Your dad thinks that you've been miserable without me. He knows already that I've spent the entire summer crying over you and miss fake tits." 

"Why are you so sure her tits are fake?" he asked. "And why are you smiling?" 

"Because all the way until the middle of our junior year of high school, her boobs were no bigger than mine and they were saggy. Then she was out of school, "sick," for three weeks with, "mono," and she came back with much bigger boobs. Who gets bigger boobs from mono, Terry? And the second reason I'm smiling is because you didn't know they were fake."

"So I'm a dummy when it comes to fake boobs," he said. "Sue me."

"No, Honey," I said. "It means you haven't seen them uncovered or felt them. And that's a good thing."

"Since you're done with me, why do you care if I've seen them?" he asked. 

"Terry, I'll never be done with you," I said quietly. "I just don't want to force you to try to forgive what I did. I want you to be happy." 

He took my hand then and held it as we walked. I felt as if my heart would explode. "I can't believe my dad," he said. 

"Terry, don't be upset at him. If he told me to walk down the street naked to get you to notice me, I'd have done it," I said. "I'd do anything for you." 

"I'd do anything for you too, Kira," he said. And he kissed me. It was the softest most gently kiss and I never wanted it to end. 

"My dad is amazing," he said. 

"Yep, he's psychic," I said. 

"Kira you don't understand," he said. Then I noticed that Terry was crying too. 

"Terry what's wrong?" I asked. "Terry don't cry. I'll do whatever you want. If you want me to leave you alone, I swear I will. If you want me back, I'm yours forever and I won't make another mistake." 

"Of course I want you back," he said. "I'm just thinking about my dad. Kira he went out of his way to help get the two of us back together, when he's miserable himself." It all came out then. He told me why he'd been so angry all summer. He told me about his mother and how she'd cheated on his father since before Terry was even born. He told me about how he, and his older sister Sherry turned out not to be his dad's biological children. He told me how his dad told them that it didn't make a difference and that things were not going to change between them. He told me about his dad divorcing his mother and how depressed his dad was. They had been married for more than twenty years. Terry and I had been together for less than two years, so his dad had to feel a lot worse than we did. But he'd still been able to put us first. I started crying too. 

I told Terry that I wouldn't tell anyone what he'd just told me. "If anyone finds out it'll be because Lana told them," I said. 

"Why would I tell Lana?" he asked. "She doesn't know any of this. We were barely friends." 

"Bullshit," I snapped. "She was all over you all summer, you liar!" 

"So how do you know that?" he smiled. "Were you spying on me?" 

"No, but I did watch the two of you a few times," I said. "I saw her rubbing those things all over you." 

"So how many times did you follow us around?" he smirked. 

"Maybe three," I said. 

"Which three?" he asked. 

"It's not important," I said. "What's important is that you're giving me another chance."

"It's not like I had a choice," he said. "I was miserable without you. And I really do believe that asshole got you drunk. But just out of curiosity which three times?" 

"I never said three TIMES," I said. 

"Okay so which three days?" he asked. He squeezed my hand. "You can tell me Kira. I love you."

"June," I said. "July and most of this month too." His mouth dropped open in shock.

"You followed us around the whole summer?" he asked. I just nodded. 

"I love you too, Terry," I said. "If I couldn't be with you, at least I could see you."

The sound of the car's loud exhaust cut off Terry's reply. 

"I gave up," yelled Terry's dad. "It's been like forever. How long does it take two healthy young people to cover five friggin' miles? I'm as old as dirt and I can run five miles in a half hour. At least you haven't killed each other. Get in the car." 

"We weren't exactly running, Dad," said Terry. "I am definitely taking the front seat this time." 

"Why can't we share the back seat?" I asked. 

"We're going to be together forever," said Terry. "I can handle the stress of being separated from you by three feet for a few minutes, Kira. But I can't handle being folded in half like that again. You're smaller than I am. You can handle it."

"Oh boy," said his dad. "We're back together again! This calls for a celebration. Burgers are on me!" 

A short time later, we pulled up in front of the restaurant that I'd spent most of my life in. We sat down at one of my mom's tables. 

"Hi Mom," I said, cheefully. 

"Who are you?" she asked. "What did you do with my depressed daughter?" 

"We just set things back to the way they're supposed to be," said Terry's dad. 

"You guys are back together?" she asked looking at Terry. "You're totally okay?"

"I am now," said Terry. "I was miserable without her. And it was partially my fault. I left her alone. At least I had something to keep me busy, with my classes and projects. I'm never leaving her again."

"But Terry, Honey you have to go back to school," said my mom. "I kind of like the idea of the two of you having a future where you can go and live anywhere you want. There's a huge world out there. You two don't have to stay in this little town or even this state."

"I kind of like the idea of them staying together though," said Terry's dad. "He told me about the talk you had when this first started. You had a great idea and I recently came into some money so we can make it happen." 

He quickly explained how Terry was going back to school, but I was going with him. He had enough money, from some kind of settlement, that we could get an apartment together. There was enough money that I could also decide what I wanted to do. I could either stay home and keep the house for Terry. Or I could get a job. Or ... His suggestion was that I go to the junior college near Terry's school. I could take a general education program and transfer to Terry's school after two years. Or I could even get into a certificate program and find a career. But whatever I decided to do, Terry and I could do it together. 

"I love you, Dad," I said. "When Terry and I get married, we're naming our first child, Greg!" 

"What if it's a girl?" he asked. 

"She'll be the first girl name Greg in our family," I quipped. 

* * * * * *

Donna

A month after I signed the divorce papers, I was pissed. I was still settling into the over-priced condo I was renting. I was paying eight hundred dollars a month. So twenty five percent of my settlement money was accounted for. Utilities and insurance moved me north of thirty percent. And I hadn't even accounted for food or clothing. There was also the fact that I would only get the money for five years. I had fifty nine months more before I would be completely on my own. 

I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Actually I needed to figure out what I should do while I figured out how to get my life back. 

I was angry. I was bitter and I was surprised. My heart was broken. My family hated me and my marriage was over. My best friend would no longer even speak to me. But somehow, the part of this all that flummoxed me the most was that no one knew about it. 

Out of the roughly six hundred people in our small town, only the twenty men I had slept with, the sheriff, Greg, Tara and our lawyers knew anything about my time as the town whore. 

And for the good of the town, we were all sworn to secrecy. Everyone one in town thought that Greg and I divorced because we had just grown apart over the years. I had even been invited back to the church volunteer group for a while. The reverend asked me to quit though. I guess he was trying to atone for sleeping with me and didn't need the temptation or the memories that having me around brought out. 

I agreed, because I had other things I wanted to do with my time. But this morning, I heard something that really pissed me off. The entire town seemed to be buzzing over the fact that true love had won out in the end. My son, under his father's machinations had made up with his cheating ex-girlfriend. Part of the money that Greg had coerced from the men I slept with had gone to Terry and the rest to Sherry. Terry's money was spent renting a place for the next three years for himself and Kira to live in. 

The whole fucking town thought it was the most romantic thing ever. They all thought that Greg was paying for it since they had no idea where the money had come from. 

They all believed that Greg was just being generous while trying to get over the break up of our marriage. Some of them thought that Greg was trying to lure me back by doing a lot of nice things. I think they thought that I wwaste one who wanted the divorce. I mean it seemed logical to assume that, since I was the one who had moved out of our house and left my thirteen year old daughter with her father. 

I believe they thought that I was having one of those mid life crisis desires to change my life. They talked about them on all of those daytime women's shows. Most of them thought that sooner or later I would come to my senses. But there were a few of the women in town that had their hearts set on getting Greg before I could get him back. Those conniving bitches smiled at my face while planning on sticking a knife in my fucking back. 

I could always tell which ones they were too. They always asked me questions about Greg and what he liked. More than once I told them that he liked having his dick sucked before fucking my ass. A couple of them smiled and thanked me. 

But the thing that really burnt my toast was the fact that my husband could convince his son to give that trailer park vixen that he was in love with, a second chance, but he couldn't give me one. Apparently second chances and true love was for other people, but not for us. 

I went a little bit crazy thinking about it. People all over town were telling me that they knew that Kira and Terry would end up together. They told me how she had stalked him all summer. 

I decided to take a page from her book. But there were other people I had to stalk as well. I tried constantly to strike up a conversation with my daughter, Sherry. I ran into her so many times at the grocery store that she started shopping somewhere else. 

Another thing that was very frustrating for me was my visitations with Debbie. I had a whole speech worked out to explain why her father and I were no longer together. My intention was to tell her that I still loved her father but that he and I needed some time apart so we could be in love again the way we were at the beginning. 

But as soon as I started she cut me off and told me that her daddy and I were not together because I was doing the nasty with Mr. Norton. 

The visit went downhill from there. She constantly looked at her watch. The visit was full of long silences and embarrassing questions. I did ask her if perhaps we could have dinner with her daddy for one of our visits.

"Why would I do that?" she asked. 

"Because you'd be doing Mommy a huge favor," I said. 

"Why would I do that?" she asked again. 

"Because you love mommy, and you want her to be happy," I said.

"Is Mommy unhappy?" she asked in a tone too mature to be only thirteen. "Because Mommy was the one who ruined our family and made daddy unhappy."

"Debbie, why did you even show up for this visit?" I asked her.

"Daddy told me I had to," she said. "If I'm a good girl until it's over, I get an iPhone like his and Terry's. Is it over yet?"

The next week I showed up and it was even worse. First off, our visitations were held at the house. I still called it my house. I had agreed to them being held there in the hope that I would run into Greg. But even from the first visit, it was clear that Debbie was thirteen and could be left alone for at least short periods of time. And my daughter was a con artist where her father was concerned. She had him convinced that she needed him far more than she actually did. She had always been her daddy's baby. And now she milked it to the hilt. But then Greg had always been super dad. He had somehow managed to make each one of our kids believe that they were his favorite. He treated them all differently. 

According to everything I've read about parenting, Greg did it wrong. You're supposed to treat all of your kids the same. Greg, had Sherry convinced that she was his princess. She had only to ask and whatever she wanted materialized. Sherry loved Greg so much that I often felt threatened by it. 

Terry was the chip off the old block. He and Greg shared a love for sports. They competed in different sports and supportd each other by going to each other's races and tournaments. Terry was not a runner, but he always went to watch his dad run. Greg on the other hand followed Terry's martial arts career from his first lessons all the way until the present. Greg had never missed a tournament, belting ceremony, or test, from the time Terry took his first lessons. I think they resented me even more now that they knew where I had been and what I'd been doing during the ones that I missed. And of course they shared that love of Mustangs that superceded anything else in life.

And Debbie, was the baby. All she had to do was to climb up on Greg's lap and say Daddy I want ... And it was hers. The difference between being the baby and being a princess was a very subtle one that I could never figure out. I think the princess got everything she wanted on the spot. The baby got everything she wanted but she had to do something in exchange. That way you couldn't say she was spoiled. And she got the idea that she had to work for what she got. Like in this case, she had to put up with me to get her iPhone. 

After that my visits trailed off until they became a rare occurance. Debbie and I both knew where we stood. It was a game between us. When she stood to gain something, she would call me up and ask if I was coming to visit her. I would say yes and we would agree on a time. I would show up early so I could see Greg, before he scurried off to avoid me.

For the first year or so, Greg looked as handsome as ever, but kind of withdrawn. I could tell that he was trying to get over me. It took him almost a year before he went out on a date. And then I started to hear around town that Greg was going out with this woman or that one. The bitches in our town had, by some unspoken agreement, or maybe it was just good manners waited until he was ready to date again before they all pounced on him. But it was clearly open season on my husband for every available woman in town except me.

I actually liked what was happening. Greg had a lot of first dates, but as much as the women hinted and begged, there were very few, almost no second dates. Some of those whores even tried to fuck him on those first dates. I guess they figured that was why the others hadn't been successful. I even heard some of the women in my condo complex discussing it. One of them reminded the others that Greg had been married and he was used to getting regular pussy from his woman, so a prude stood no chance.  

The woman doing all of the talking was actually one of my divorced former friends. She told them about how sometimes she and her ex-husband had come to visit Greg and I. She told them how on some occasions, Greg and I would excuse ourselves for a few minutes and come back smelling of sex and looking a little rumpled.