Blindsided

I did. Then I was done and collapsed on the bed. I could have relaxed and fallen asleep except Karen had other ideas. She climbed on top of me facing my cock and sucked it in.

I opened my eyes and saw that Karen's pussy was inches from my face. She was cleaning and licking all our combined juices from my cock to my knees. As she finished she turned again and we snuggled.

We did eventually go to her tiny apartment. We did bring some of her stuff to my place. A few days later we took some of my stuff to her place. By the time the next week ended we had set a routine for ourselves. Monday and Tuesday we slept at my place. Wednesday we slept at her place. Thursday and Friday we were back at my place and we decided to spend the weekend looking for a place where we could be together with all our stuff every night.

We had been exclusive for three weeks when I began to notice something was off. The mating was still every day and sometimes every night, and something had changed.

I asked what was up and Karen blew it off.

School, a test coming, a paper due soon, a phone call from her sister were all given as reasons she was off. They just didn't sound like the truth. My mind started wondering if there could be another guy in her life. I couldn't see when he would have had time to insinuate himself into our lives. We were at school every day. We usually ate lunch together on campus. We slept together every night. She never took a night out with the girls. We went out with her friends on some weekends but it was we, not just her. I was stuck in the dark. The way my mind works I started thinking I was about to be blindsided.

One Friday afternoon my cell buzzed while I was in class. I walked outside and answered. It was Karen.

"Pete, I'll meet you at home later, OK?"

"What's up?"

"After class I have something I have to do. I'll just be a little later than we planned so I'll get home a little late, that's all."

She sounded stressed and like there was more to be said.

"Honey, what's going on?"

"Nothing. I'll be fine by the time I get home. I just have something I need to do. I've got to go now. See you at home. I love you."

Now I was worried. She hadn't said I love you over the phone before. She had never kept something from me before. Rather than sit in class and think about being somewhere else I decided to become Sherlock Holmes. I knew where Karen's class was and it wasn't very far, so I went there. Not in the class but nearby. I sat where I wasn't obvious and could see both doors to the room. At 3:50pm on my watch the doors opened and all the students came out. The last one out was Karen. She walked alone. I followed. She walked across campus to the health center and she went in. I wondered if she was pregnant. I wondered if she was sick. I became sick worrying about what was going on in the health center. At 5:15pm she walked out of the health center. I was a hundred yards away and I could see that she had been crying. I wanted to run to her but knew she would know I had followed her. I raced to my truck and went home.

At about six she came into our apartment. I was cooking dinner, actually I was microwaving the leftover Italian from the night before. She came in, came to me kissed me hello and headed to the bathroom. I watched her and wondered what was going on. In the two months we had been together she had never closed the bathroom door. She walked into the bathroom and shut the door!

Ten minutes later she came out. I put dinner on the table and we ate. In silence.

As I picked up the plates I said, "OK. Time for the mystery to end. What's going on?"

"Nothing. There is no reason for you to be worried. Nothing is going on."

"OK. I may not be a psych major but something is bothering you. I'm your guy. I can't be here for you in the dark as well as I can be here for you when I know what's up."

"Can't you mind your own business for once?" She yelled. I'd never heard her yell before. I backed off with my hands up. I surrendered. For the rest of the evening I looked like I was studying. She sat on the bed and watched TV. In the two months we had been together the TV had been on once before.

At ten she went in the bathroom, left the door open, peed, and came out. She undressed for bed and got in, pulling the covers up near her chin. I closed the books I wasn't reading and took off my clothes. I slid into bed and up against her warm body. As soon as I touched my body against hers she burst into tears. I held her and she cried. Her body shook with the force of her tears. She stayed in my arms, crying, until she fell asleep. I may have fallen asleep at some point, but I don't think so. During the night, as she slept, Karen cried a few times. I held on to her through the night.

When she woke up at about six in the morning she was still in my arms. She opened her eyes and looked up into my face. Her eyes filled with tears and a few slid down her cheeks but she didn't speak. I was worried about what could be causing this meltdown and I guessed my safest course was to stay quiet and wait.

Her face was against my chest with her forehead touching my collarbone. Without moving she could look up at my face. She looked at me for a long time, then closed her eyes. Sometime after eight she opened them again and looked up at me. I didn't speak.

"I need to pee," she said softly.

I unwound my arms and pulled back the covers to let her get up. She went into the bathroom and I listened as she peed. When she came back to bed she snuggled against me again.

Softly she said, "I love being in your arms."

"I love holding you." I whispered, not because I thought someone else would hear but because it seemed like this was a quiet time.

Time passed and I wondered if she was going back to sleep. Her eyes were closed. She spoke without opening her eyes.

"I will miss everything about this."

"This? What this are you going to miss?"

"All of this. Living with you. Being held by you. School. All of this."

"If you're going to miss it you're leaving me, school, our apartment. Do I get to know when and why?"

"Finals are in the next two weeks. The day after school is done I have to go."

My heart felt like something unseen was crushing it. I still didn't understand what was going on. I was having trouble staying calm. I was having trouble waiting for Karen to tell me what I wanted and didn't want to know.

Karen's hands ran slowly over the skin of my chest. Her eyes closed and she kissed my chest. It was a soft gentle kiss that lasted a few seconds. It confused me even more. 'If she can snuggle with me and kiss me that way why is she leaving me?'

Near the bed I could see the alarm clock. When Karen spoke again I happened to be looking at the clock. 10:44am.

"I know you want to know everything. I know part of me wants to tell you everything. I talked with my sister and my Mom yesterday. My sister says I should tell you everything. Mom says you're young and it's better for you if I just leave."

"What did your Dad say?"

"I didn't talk to him. Mom said she would tell him."

"Have you ever seen me mad?"

"No."

"Look at me."

Her eyes opened and she looked at my face. Tears started to flow.

"I'm mad. I'm not raising my voice or throwing things but you can trust me, I'm mad. I have loved you every day since we became a couple on the last day of mid-terms. I am prepared to take you home with me for the summer. I am prepared to love you as my life partner, my wife, for the rest of my life and yours. That's not true. I was prepared to do all that. Now, I'm just mad and disappointed."

"You want me to be your wife?"

"At the back of the top drawer over there, behind all my socks is a small velvet box with a set of rings in it. They were my grandmother's rings. I was going to give them to you and ask you to wear them every day for the rest of our lives. What does that tell you?"

"You love me." Her eyes closed and she held on tighter. The tears still fell down her cheeks and wet the hairs on my chest.

"You're leaving me and you won't even tell me why. All I can make that mean is that you don't love me enough to share your life with me. If that's true I want you out of here today."

Karen sat up and opened her eyes wide.

"You're tossing me out!"

"Yes. I'll help you pack. I'll even pay for two nights at a hotel so you can find somewhere else to live, but make no mistake, you are gone!"

"I thought you just said you love me."

"You announced you are leaving me. Knowing that you are leaving my life I couldn't live with you for a week, much less the two weeks until graduation. That would be killing me slowly. I have often said I would rather die in a car crash than sick in a hospital for months. You tell me you are leaving and you want to sleep in our bed every night until you walk out the door? You are cruel."

Karen climbed into my lap and put her arms around my neck. I took hold of her arms and pushed her away. She landed on the floor next to the bed.

"I'll tell you everything! It won't change anything! I still have to go."

"I get no input. I have no say in this at all. You are cruel and I don't even know you!" I took a big breath. "Don't tell me anything. Just get out. I thought you loved me. I was obviously wrong. I just got blindsided again. Thanks a lot."

I got off the bed and went to the closet. I got the suitcases out and put them open on the bed. Karen was sitting on the floor crying. I started packing everything of hers into the suitcases. In seconds I realized that of all the stuff in our apartment well over half was hers. I put her stuff back and put her suitcases back in the closet. She hadn't even looked up.

I got my two suitcases and in ten minutes I was packed. I closed the suitcases and put them by the door.

Karen held her face in her hands and kept crying. I went to her, picked her up from the floor and put her in bed. She looked up at me and then at my suitcases by the door.

"It's easier for me to go. I couldn't live here without you anyway. I will avoid seeing you at school, because I couldn't handle it. I don't expect a phone call because you've communicated quite well that you have nothing to say to me. If I can graduate without being here the next two weeks I'm leaving and going home."

I walked to the door, opened it and walked out with my suitcases. As I turned to close the door Karen blocked the way. She was standing on our front porch naked, crying and shaking.

"Pete, I love you. I wanted to spare you. Instead I hurt you now instead of later. Please come back inside and let me explain. I was wrong to leave you out of this. Wrong and stupid."

I carried the suitcases the five steps to my truck. Karen followed. I noticed three men on a balcony across the street watching her. I locked the suitcases in the truck, turned and took her by the arm back into the apartment.

"When you're finished turning the knife in my wound I'm walking out the door and out of your life."

"Please sit down."

I sat on a kitchen chair. She sat on the other one. She made no effort to cover herself. Mad as I was I still loved seeing her body and I wanted something she said to matter.

"Three weeks ago we were in bed and I felt a pain in my tit. I couldn't feel a lump or anything but I did feel a pain. I went in to the health center and they did a mammogram. When I got the results they said they wanted to do a biopsy on a clouded area of my right breast. They thought it might be a precancerous growth. A week later they wanted a biopsy of my lymph nodes. I have cancer."

"You went through all this without telling me?"

"In my family women don't tell men about feminine problems. My Mom has had three lumpectomies and my Dad doesn't know anything except she had a cyst removed. I reverted to family thinking instead of realizing I could share it with you."

"Tell me about the cancer."

"As far as they can tell it hasn't spread from my right breast. They won't know for sure until the surgery. I am going home to Iowa and it's all arranged. They are going to cut off my breasts."

"A radical?"

"Not unless they find a reason to go that far. The two doctors here seem to think that may not be necessary. My sister, the nurse, says they say that and then, once you're on the table they take everything but your ribs."

"Can I ask a personal question?"

"Yes."

"What does any of this have to do with you leaving me?"

"No man wants a woman who is no longer a woman."

"Sometimes I am amazed at you. Remember our first day together? I told you then that it wasn't your tits that attracted me to you. I'm not who you still think I am! So they cut off your tits. Will that stop you from having dinner? Can you still dance? Watch a sunset? Cook? Run a business?"

"I just won't be a woman anymore."

"Bullshit!"

"You aren't changing DNA. You want to go back to Iowa and live fifty years thinking that if you had kept your tits I'd still love you, then go! I'll go to Idaho and live on my farm and grow old loving a woman more attached to her tits than I ever was!"

"What else can I do?"

"Finally, you ask for my opinion. Here's what I would recommend, if I had any say in the matter. Let's enjoy the next two weeks and I'll go back to Iowa with you for the surgery. If we can transfer the surgery to a hospital in Idaho I'd prefer that. Then I can work the farm and take care of you. I would recommend we get married twice. Once in Iowa and once in Idaho. My folks can't leave the farm at this time of year. I'd recommend we order food from Mr. Tsu and stay in bed all weekend with a lot of that time spent playing with your giant tits and wonderful nipples. I'd recommend that you invite me between your legs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'd recommend that we publish a wedding announcement in the University newspaper. That is what I'd recommend, If someone had asked."

"You still want me?"

"You can still ask?"

"I'm sorry." She stood up and went to the phone. She hit a speed dial number and handed the phone to me. I held it up to my ear.

"Hunan Palace. Mr. Tsu speaking. May I help you?"

Blindsided again.