Don't Stop Believing

"I thought those guys were all in jail," I said as I turned and went into the bedroom. I grabbed my favorite old T-shirt from a drawer and my robe and a pair of boxers and went into the bathroom to take a shower before going to bed. While I was in the shower, I heard the bathroom door open. I grabbed the handle of the shower door and held it. After a few seconds, she tried to open the door and couldn't. She laughed and went back out. As I came out of the shower, I couldn't find my T-shirt. I figured that I must have dropped it somewhere on my way to the shower.

I went back into the bedroom to get another T-shirt and saw June wearing it. She got off of the bed and walked towards me.

"If you want your shirt all you have to do is take it off of me," she said. "Here, I'll help." She lifted the shirt over her head and stood there naked.

"Damn," she said looking at my crotch. "You must really want this shirt. Or do you just want what's in it?"

I turned away and got another shirt from the drawer. "Dell, where are you going?" she asked loudly.

Our house is a three bedroom house. Back then both of our kids slept in one room still. The last bedroom was their playroom until they were old enough to have separate bedrooms. That was the first night that I slept on the couch and June was not happy about it. She watched me leave the bedroom, figuring that I'd be back in a while.

It was almost midnight when she turned the lights on in the living room and found me on the couch covered by a blanket.

"Why are you sleeping down here?" she asked.

"Look June, you won," I said. "I've dropped the divorce. You get to hold onto what's left of our marriage. But it's a hollow victory. Neither of us can afford to keep the divorce going and neither of us can afford to live anywhere else. I'm also not going to give up seeing my kids every day. But that doesn't mean that I have to give up all of my pride. I will not sleep with a woman who cheated on me."

"Dell, I was RAPED," she hissed. "When are you going to get that into your head?"

"I've told you repeatedly, I'm not holding that against you," I said. "But you sat there that last afternoon calmly chatting with your supposed rapist. That takes a lot of the credence out of your case. You then conspired with your rapist to drug me so you could then rape ME, right? Does that really sound like the actions of a person who'd been traumatized by something?"

"What were you thinking...those guys raped me and I wasn't really hurt by it. So I guess I'll go rape Dell now?" She just stood there with her mouth open.

"And then to get the drugs you invited him...yep invited him into our home so you could have sex with him. I know it was just supposed to be a hand-job, but you gave him a blow job too didn't you?" She nodded her head angrily.

"Please remember June, I saw it," I said. "Did he ask you for the blow job or did you just do it because you wanted to?" She didn't say anything.

"So I guess you sucking another guy's dick, isn't cheating either huh?" She didn't say a word.

"After that, I don't remember you fighting him off when he pushed you down onto your back on the same floor that our kids play on. But if you tell me you did, I'll have to believe you. It just didn't look like it and I don't remember you saying no once. It even looked to me like you spread your own legs for him, but again that's just the way it looked to me." She started crying.

"Dell, none of that matters. We're back together and we'll get over this. It's just going to take time."

"Well during that time," I began. "For your own good you should get a VD screening. Those guys fucked everything that moved so you could probably be walking around with a really nasty set of diseases right now. I'm sure that whoever you fuck next would really appreciate it if you're clean."

"What the hell did you mean by that?" she yelled.

"June, keep your fucking voice down," I hissed. "My kids are asleep."

"Why are you treating me like I'm some whore?" she asked quietly. "This isn't like you."

"You mean this isn't the way I used to be," I said. "You changed all of that. Do you know what it does to a man to watch the woman he loves more than life itself willingly fuck another man? My heart broke that afternoon June and I don't see any way of putting it back together. You can force me to stay in this sham of a marriage, but it won't ever be what it was."

"Our marriage isn't a sham," she hissed. "We're married because we love each other. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you don't love me?" I didn't say anything.

"Dell, half of the people out there right now that are married can't stand each other. You and I are each other's whole world. You already know that the first time, I had no control over what happened. The second time I was so horny and I had been without it for so long, I didn't have much choice then either. You could have prevented it by..."

"Don't try to dump this on me," I said. "I keep telling you, I'm not blaming you for the first time. How many times do I have to say it...?"

"But the first time was the bad one," she said. "The first time I got used by three guys. The second time there was only that one guy with the tiny little dick and he barely got it in me and..." she stopped talking and shook her head.

"I just don't get it. If you weren't going to divorce me after the first time, surely you can see that the second time was even less reason to divorce me. Dell, you hadn't made love to me in more than a month and I..."

"The first time..." I interrupted. "...Wasn't the worst June. I watched both of them. The first time you were clearly knocked out. Yep, they fucked you. But you had no involvement in it. You just laid there while they did it. As you said, as you came out of it, you pushed them off of you and came home. I was pissed, June; but not at you. I was pissed at them. I wanted to fuck them up. I wanted to hurt all of them. But I couldn't do it until you came to me and told me what they'd done. But somehow that never happened, so I started to think that maybe you liked it. Or that at least it was no big deal to you. It really hurt our relationship, June. It bothered me enough that I stopped having sex with you. Part of it was me being SOS and the other part..."

"What's SOS?" she asked.

"Scared of Syphilis," I smirked. "And the other part was that after seeing you with three guys and not objecting to it. I just started to feel like you don't belong to me anymore. From the first time we met, I've always felt that you belonged to me alone. I lost that feeling when you didn't tell me about what happened. Secrets don't help a marriage, June, they tear it apart."

"I'm sorry, Honey," she said. "I'm still all yours. I guess I just didn't see it that way. And you're stupid for seeing it that way too. You said it yourself; it wasn't something I was looking for. Those guys didn't have sex with me, they used me and..."

"And that's why the second time was worse," I said. "Because the first time, you were lying there on the bed, you were out of it. But the second time you were awake, you were alert, you were active and the worst part of all was that when he put his dick in you, you started fucking him back. You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him in deeper, the same way you do with me. You started pumping your hips and..."

"Shut up," she screamed, putting her hands over her ears so she couldn't hear me. "Just shut up, you don't understand anything."

For a while neither of us said a word. The only sound in the room was the sound of her quietly crying.

"I understand that all of this love you talk about doesn't mean a God damned thing," I said. "I understand that anyone with a dick, no matter how big it is or how small it is can have you. All they have to do is wait for a while. And it doesn't have to be very long either. I understand that as bad as they say men are, you're worse June. I've loved you for ten fucking years. I dated you. I married you. I take care of you. I made two babies with you. And none of that matters a fucking bit. As soon as your pussy tingles you're going to fill it with whatever is available and you'll do anything you have to do to get it filled."

"If it involves drugging me with something that might possibly kill me, it doesn't matter, right June? As long as you get a dick between your legs, the end justified the means, right? I mean when exactly did you become a doctor? How did you know how much of that drug to give me or what it would do to me? You could have killed me, June. And in the end you really didn't need to try to drug me. The whole point in getting the drug was to get you fucked, right? Why not just fuck the guy from next door and be done with it? After you got your sex with him, getting the drug would have been academic anyway, right?"

"No, you've got this all wrong," she said. The glassy look in her eyes almost made me think she was having some kind of episode. Her speech was becoming slurred and manic.

"You're twisting this all around to make it seem like what I did was wrong," she said.

"June, we're married and we supposedly love each other, right?" I asked.

"Yes," she snapped. "I already told you that."

"So, we're married and we love each other. Isn't it wrong for one of us to have sex with someone else? Wouldn't it be a case of breaking our marital vows?" I asked.

"Well, yes in a narrow sense, but..." she began. "Okay I was wrong. But I've already told you I was wrong but..."

"Dell, why don't you just go out and have sex with some other woman and then we'll be even," she said.

"Is that what you want me to do?" I asked.

"No," she said crying again. "But if that's what it takes to put this behind us, and make us even I'll..."

"I don't want to get even," I said.

"You don't?" she smiled.

"I wanted to get OUT," I hissed. "But you wouldn't let me walk away with my pride. You wouldn't let me have a divorce so now we're stuck together. We can't really afford a divorce anyway. We just don't have the money between us to maintain two households and still take care of our kids. So again, we're stuck together, June. But from now on this won't be a marriage of love between two people who want to be together. This is a union of two people where one of them doesn't want to be there. So, we'll share a house, we'll share expenses, we'll share the responsibility for raising our kids, but that's all we'll share. We won't be sharing a bed or anything else except just existing, or make that co-existing."

"But that's not what I want," she said. "I don't want that at all. That's not..."

"In the words of Mick Jagger," I said. "You can't always get what you want." She slowly turned and walked back to our bedroom with tears running down her face. As the days stretched on, I could tell that June had the idea that if she had enough time, I'd get over all of it. She figured that with us being forced to live together, eventually everything would be fine.

In a way June was right. Everything was fine. I chose to look at things from the bright side. Even if I'd gotten the divorce, the likelihood was that I wouldn't have gotten custody of my kids. I probably also wouldn't have gotten my house. I was still living in the same house with my kids. I got to see them every day and was even more involved with their lives as they grew up. I coached sports teams for both of them. I participated in school events and field trips. I helped them and their friends with a lot of homework. In short, I was still a very involved dad. The only thing about it was that to get those boons, I had to live in a house with June.

As the years slowly passed, things between us had their ebbs and flows. There were times when a casual observer couldn't tell that we were anything different from other married couples. The only people who did notice were people who'd known us since the beginning. Those people were shocked because June and I seemed to change over-night. We went from hugging and kissing each other constantly and not being able to keep our hands off of each other to barely speaking.

At school events like plays or recitals, there were times when we both attended and didn't even bother to sit together. At home, it was far worse. I often ate with my children and June did too, but we rarely all sat at the table together and when we did June and I both spoke to the children but not each other.

June's moods rose and fell like a sine wave graph. She went through periods where she did everything she could to get us back together. During those periods, she cooked my favorite meals and tried to entice me back into bed with her. She also went through periods where she gave up on us. During those periods, she was depressed and irritable. There were very few people who really knew how bad things were between us; and fewer still who knew why. June told those few people that it was my fault that our marriage was the way it was. She'd made a few mistakes and I simply couldn't get over them.

After the first few years, many of her friends suggested that perhaps we should get a divorce. They asked what the point to both of us suffering was. June would become irate at the suggestion and on more than one occasion, she simply got up after screaming at the person and left. June was sure that we'd make it through our difficulties. She told everyone who would listen to her that we were put on the earth for each other and that it might take time but we'd get back together.

She had several different theories about this. One of them was the fact that we had to spend so much time together raising our kids that eventually the anger would go away and that would only leave the love. Another of her theories was that once the kids were gone, it would only be the two of us and the simple fact that most people bond to prevent loneliness, would bring us back together. She also had the theory that once we retired, we'd be back together and everything would be like it was before but stronger because we'd gone through adversity.

June was always saying things like, "Anything worth having is worth waiting for." She didn't say it around me though after the first time. We'd attended a party at her sister's place. May had invited both of us separately. June had arrived and I'd showed up later because I really didn't want to disappoint May. When I did show up, I sought out May and gave her a nice bottle of wine to thank her for inviting me and started to mingle.

I didn't seek out June which started some tongues to wagging. Some of those tongues knew the deal between June and I and started asking why we didn't just give up. "Great question," I snapped.

"Anything worth having is worth waiting for," retorted June.

"Except apparently sex for you," I said before my mind got in gear. I hadn't meant to embarrass June, but suddenly everyone there knew why June and I weren't really together and they knew the basics of who'd done what.

I guess we both handled it differently. In June's mind, her blocking the divorce had been a good thing. She had found a way to continue living with me. She had kept her family together and we were raising healthy and happy children. The one thing that bothered her was the fact that I had never forgiven what she considered to be a minor incident, but she was sure that I would. As the years went on, she became more and more confident that we'd get back together. After all, I had never loved anyone except her. I later on found out that June had shared the fact that she'd caught me jacking off to pictures, not of some movie star, but her, with several of her friends. Every time she thought about it, it made her even more certain that eventually we'd get back together.

In my mind, I saw myself as a prisoner. I took it one day at a time. Every new day got me closer to the day that the doors of my prison would swing wide open and I'd be free to go on with my life. I kept every aspect of my life outside of our home separate from June. For instance, when I got the promotion a year into the imprisonment to manager; I never told June. I got a large raise and split my direct deposit so that the exact amount of my previous salary went into my checking account and the rest into a savings account that June didn't know about. We filed our taxes separately so June had no idea of how much I made.

Three years later when I became plant manager, I did the same thing. My timing was excellent though because with the end of my prison sentence looming closer daily, I found out that I was eligible for the regional manger's position that was going to be opening up very soon and I was a shoe in for it.

I have to admit that over the years, as my kids grew, my love for June never seemed to fade. It sounds crazy but I loved her as much as I ever did, I simply couldn't be with her after what she'd done. In a lot of cases it was that love that made me do things I never would have done otherwise. When June's doctor diagnosed her with an ovarian cyst and scheduled her for surgery, we became a couple again in the blink of an eye. I took days off of work to go to the hospital with her. I was there during the surgery. And I stayed in the hospital with her every day that she was there following the surgery. The cyst was found to be non-cancerous and June would have only a slight disruption in her ability to bear children.

The doctor was very happy to tell us that since June had told him that we wanted at least one more child. He did tell us during her last day in the hospital that since I was thirty eight and June would soon be forty, if we were planning another one, we should go ahead and do it. That, of course, set June to smiling.

The doctor told us that June would be bedridden for at least ten days after her return home. He gave me a complete list of everything I needed to do to ensure her rapid recovery. For those ten days, I even slept next to her in bed. Every one of the mornings following those ten nights in bed with her, I awoke with June's thick legs wrapped around me and her hands in my boxers. I knew that nothing would become of it. The doctor had told June that she couldn't have sex for at least a month after the surgery.

"When he clears me, or maybe even a few days beforehand," she hissed. "I'll make sure that you won't have the energy to walk for a while and your dick is going to be fucked raw."

I just smiled at her. As soon as June was cleared to get out of bed, I returned to sleeping on the couch. She tried to make me think that she'd had a relapse, but a quick visit to the doctor proved that she was fine.

There were, over the years, other times when June and I slept together. Any time that she was sick, I took care of her. After all, I did love her and she was the mother of my kids. When I was sick, I never told her. We looked at things differently. June loved being sick. I think she tried for colds and the flu just to get me into her bed. She really believed that if we went to bed together, we'd sooner or later go back to having sex and put things behind us.

I looked at it differently. I believed that if I was very nice to June, it would bring out whatever love she had for me and maybe that love or just simple guilt might make her set me free.

At any rate, neither of us got what we wanted. As far as sex went, I really didn't have an idea of what June was doing until a few months before Todd was scheduled to go to college. But I was doing myself and I was still doing myself to images of June. Somehow, I still had my head wrapped around her and I couldn't get free. Of course, by then I'd separated June into two entities. There was the pre-cheating June that I loved with all my heart and the cheating June that I needed more than anything else to get away from.

June was so desperate that she went to any lengths to tease me or arouse me. If my shower went on too long, June would come into the bathroom and look around the room for pictures. Sometimes she'd strip in front of me and get into the shower. I would simply get out.