King of Hearts

As I looked at him, my panties were already getting wet and all thoughts of his marriage, his wife and even his kid just vanished. I could feel the nervousness coming off of him too. Almost involuntarily my hand reached for his the way we always used to. His hand quickly moved away and he stepped back as we noticed that Sally was there with her mouth open in shock.

"Christina, I guess we need to talk," he said with a slight smile playing at his lips. "Why don't you come up to my office?"

He didn't need to tell me twice. I smoothed out my skirt, licked my lips and headed up the stairs. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I'd unbuttoned three more buttons on my blouse and pushed my shoulders back to make my tits more obvious. I wished that I hadn't worn a bra. My tits probably didn't look as impressive as Angela's but he'd never complained about them in the past. When we got to the top of the stairs I knew exactly where to go. I'd been up here several times when he wasn't around. I'd even been in his office once or twice.

He sat behind his desk and pointed towards the chair right in front of it for me. I wondered if this was some kind of role playing thing. I decided to play along.

"So is everything fine between us?" he asked. "Are we okay?" I was immediately on alert. What the hell was he asking me?

"I guess so," I said.

"Do you like working here?" he asked.

"I guess," I said. "I really have nothing to compare it to. It's my first time ever having a job and it's only for the winter. In another three months or so, we'll be gone." I noticed that he looked concerned at that.

In my mind I grabbed onto that. He didn't want me to leave. Maybe he was trying to ease into things. Maybe he just needed to know how I felt before he did anything. Since he was a business owner, he had to be careful about things like sexual harassment. I stuck out my chest a little bit more. I also inched up my skirt and spread my legs apart until I was sure he could see my panties. I couldn't have been more obvious if I'd worn a sign that said, "Fuck me."

"Are you having any problems on the job?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Everyone has been really nice to me."

"Good," he said. "If you do have any problems, please let me know." Then he looked at his watch. "Well Christina, I have to be out at the new sight in a little bit and I'm sure you have some work to do too. It was good having a chance to talk to you. When you get downstairs, tell Sally to take those damned sunglasses off. She's not Marlena Dietrich."

I went into shock. That was it? This was the big reunion with the man I loved? He'd treated me just like any other employee. I stood up and headed for the door of his office and I was sure I heard him breathe a sigh of relief. It was the same sigh he used to do when the inspectors left and we'd gotten a permit. It was the sound a person makes when they've made it through something they knew they had to do but weren't looking forward to.

As I stumbled down the stairs, my eyes filled with tears. I just didn't want to be here anymore. I wanted to leave that building. I wanted to leave that city. I wanted to leave that fucking state. Hell I wasn't even sure I wanted to be on earth anymore.

For almost four fucking years, I'd dreamed and hoped for a chance to talk to that man again. I had at least fifty different scenarios of how that meeting was supposed to go. Most of them involved him fucking my brains out and telling me how much he still loved me too. But none of them involved him talking to me for less than two minutes and then brooming me out of his fucking office, like someone sweeping a dog turd off of their lawn.

As I got to the bottom of the stairs I was already crying. Sally took one look at me and stood up. "He told me to tell you to take your sunglasses off," I whined. Even as Sally tried to reach out to me, I realized that I couldn't stay there. I headed for the door. I just needed to get out of there.

I didn't make it. Just as I reached the door, she walked in. It should be illegal for any woman to look that fucking good, that early in the morning. Her curly blonde hair was pulled back with some kind of fancy hair tie. A couple of errant strands had escaped imprisonment in the tie and framed her face. They made her look like she'd missed them when she put her hair up, but the overall effect was really sexy.

She had on a white silk blouse that must've cost a fucking fortune. It was buttoned all the way up to her chin, but somehow instead of hiding her boobs it only made them stand out even more. That fucking blouse just made you wonder how big her boobs were. And the thing about it was that it was sexy without being slutty. Here I was with my blouse opened all the way down to my fucking navel and she came off as far sexier than I was but you couldn't see a thing.

She had on a pair of jeans that someone must have painted on her. The waist in those jeans nipped in so far that there was simply no way you could get that tiny waistline over her ass. The whole outfit just suggested down home, southern girl, but I'd be willing to bet that just the tailoring on those jeans, to make them fit that way, cost more than my entire wardrobe.

The only thing out of place was those five or six inch heels. Those tall assed shoes made it almost look like she floated across the floor rather than walked. They also, added a good four or five inches, to her Liliputian height.

She was holding onto the hand of a two year old girl. At the sight of that child, I almost fell on the floor. It was as if hands clutched at my stomach and tried to rip my guts out. Over the years that we were together I'd spent literally hundreds of hours staring into Ray's eyes and the contours of his face.

That child clearly had Ray's eyes. And though the contours of her tiny face were very feminine and very small, I saw Ray there as well. He was in every aspect of that child's face. There were small traces of her mother as well. Her hair was a shade or two lighter than Ray's and a shade or two darker than her mother's. But it had the same messy curls that her mom's hair did. That made me hate Angela even more, because those curls and that hair were obviously natural.

There was simply no way that Ray would ever need a DNA test. Nor would he ever be able to convince anyone with a brain that the little girl I was looking at wasn't his. That child was almost like Ray's female clone.

As Angela helped the little girl over the step and into the building they hadn't noticed me yet. "Dada," said the child. I'm not sure if Ray was behind me or if the child was simply commenting that this was her father's building. But that one two syllabled word was like a punch to my stomach.

That child should have been mine. Though, I'd never laid eyes on her, I knew it then. That child would have been mine, if only... That child could have been mine, but I...

It all became clear then. I'd been a God damned fool in more ways than one. A sob left my throat. It was the sound of a tortured soul who realizes all at once that she and only she is responsible for her own demise.

Angels looked up at me then. In an instant whatever baby talk conversation that she'd been having with her daughter faded as concern for me...genuine concern for me took over.

"Did you and Ray talk?" she asked. I just nodded.

"You can't have talked for very long," she said. "Christina and I, were only a couple of minutes behind him when we..."

"That's about how long we talked," I said tearfully.

"I'm going to kill him," she hissed. Almost as if on cue, Ray trotted down the stairs clutching a laptop. He looked up and saw Angela and I realized that the game was over. There were no more hands left to play. Ray would never be mine again.

From the first second that their eyes met, he lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. His smile broadened, the worry lines on his face stretched out. It was almost as if he'd been holding his breath and her showing up let him breathe again.

It was just as miraculous on her part. I swear to God that as soon as she saw him, her hair got even shinier and I'm sure her nipples popped, because I could suddenly see them. Then she remembered what we'd been talking about.

"Ray, Honey, did you talk to Christina?" she asked as he lifted her off of her feet and kissed her.

"Mm hm," he said. "It was a good one too. Gotta go."

"Dada, talk 'a me," chimed in the tiny version. She thought that her mother wanted her father to talk to her.

Ray scooped her up in his arms and she giggled and cooed. He smothered her in kisses and rocked her from side to side. Then he gently placed her on the ground and was out the door. Scant seconds later, I heard the sound of his powerful engine starting up and pulling off.

Over the span of a few seconds, the tiny tableau that had played itself out in front of me, had plunged a dagger into my heart. I ached. I hurt in places that I never thought it was possible for me to hurt.

I had just seen what my God damned life was supposed to be like. I'd just seen all of the things that I wanted in life dangled in front of me. It was like holding a lottery ticket for the Powerball and having all of the numbers, except that the last number is off by one.

"Sally," she said. "Can you watch Christi for me? Christina and I are going for a ride."

I followed her out to her car. She expertly drove the powerful Mustang around the neighbor, whipping around corners until she found what she was looking for.

We stopped in front of a small park. We got out of the car and sat down on a bench.

"What were you hoping would happen today?" she asked.

I just looked at her. I wondered why she'd ask me that and what she hoped to gain from my answer.

"Well, I guess I just wanted to talk to him," I began. "I mean we were friends and we were so close and I just wondered if maybe we could be friends again. Maybe I wanted some answers. He just disappeared with no warning."

She looked over at me. Our faces were so close together that I could make out every detail of hers. I could see why Ray loved her so much. Her eyes were so blue that they made the sky seem to be a different color. And her skin was so smooth that it seemed as if she didn't have any pores. It wasn't makeup. She seemed to be one of those women who don't use any type of concealer or foundation. She just literally dabbed on some lipstick and eyeliner the rest was all up to nature.

"Christina, if we're going to get through this. You need to be honest," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I was beginning to become angry. "I have been honest with you."

"Christina, you didn't come down here to talk to him about you guys being friends," she said. And I noticed that there was a bit of bite in her voice. Her whole steel magnolias genteel southern belle charm was fading. "You came down here to try to take my husband away from me and his daughter," she said. "You know it and I know it. Since you've gotten here, I've put you in a position where the two of you would be in contact. I've been as nice to you as I possibly could have been."

"Why HAVE you done that?" I asked. "What kind of woman lets another woman have a go at her husband? Are you some kind of swinger? Or are you just tired of Ray? Is this some kind of thing where you can get him to give you a divorce so you can go back with your family and be free of the city guy now that you've had your fill of him?" I was so angry I could have strangled her.

She tilted her head back and laughed. The tone of her laugh was so crystal clear that you could have broken each syllable off in chunks. Then she suddenly stopped laughing and looked at me. It was as if I was looking at a different person.

"Ray and I will be together forever," she said. "The only reason you were able to get anywhere near him was because I allowed it. Right now you could be still rotting your ass off in that jail cell, or I could have had you sent back to Michigan to rot your ass off in a frozen jail cell. The reason I let you take a run at him, as you put it, is the same reason I do everything else. It's the same reason I went through nine months of having my body bloated and lumpy to give him a child. It's the same reason that I'm probably going to do it again so he can have a son. Don't get me wrong, Christina, I love my daughter. But I love her more than anything on earth except for one thing. I love her father more than anything on earth. When your kids are grown and gone, your husband is still there."

"Then why?" I asked.

"Because HE may not know it, but Ray needed to face you. HE needed to talk to you. And Christina you need closure here too. Ray may in his own way be afraid of you. But you have your head stuck so far up your own ass that you can't move on. You're locked in a holding pattern and..."

I didn't want to cry in front of this woman, but it was hard fighting off the tears. Ray had loved me and I was sure that he still did. She didn't understand any of this. It was all between Ray and me. It was none of her fucking business.

"He promised me that we'd be together and he just left," I screamed. "He left me alone for no reason. He just ran away like a coward when things got rough and..."

I don't know how she did it. I have never seen anyone move that fast. That tiny little woman slapped the shit out of me.

"Get up," she screamed trying to kick her shoes off. "Say it again. Call my husband a coward again. I fucking dare you."

We just sat there glaring at each other and then she got herself to her senses.

"Christina, I'm sorry," she gushed. "But you can't go around insulting a woman's husband and expect her to just do nothing. I lost my temper and I'm really sorry, but Honey I think you have the wrong idea here."

"Angela, you weren't there," I said. "So how do you know what happened?"

"Because I was the one who put him back together again after what you did to him," she spat. "I'm the one who had to slowly help him learn to trust people. Do you know how bad it is on a girl's ego to get used to having guys that she has no interest in following her all over the place, but the one man that she wants never makes a move on her?"

"When he got here, you had him so fucked up that he didn't date period. My dad invited him to Hallo's Christmas party, like he does all of our contractors and business partners. My brother had to beg him to go. That was where I first saw him. I changed the seating chart so I could sit next to him. There were a bunch of guys who all wanted to dance with me. Half of them just wanted to fuck me and the other half just wanted a better job with the company or wanted us to hire them. That does wonders for your ego too. I'm either a piece of meat or a chance at career advancement. Anyway, Ray didn't dance with anyone, not even just to be polite. There were a lot of women looking at him but he never asked even one of them. He didn't even talk to them."

"After a while it was noticeable that he was just sitting at the table talking to my brother and my dad. He did speak to a couple of other men about plumbing or contracting. They told a few jokes, he has the most magical laugh Christina," she said. "Towards the end of the evening he did get out onto the dance floor. He danced with my mom. That was how I learned to handle him. My mom had sat there in front of him with my dad for a while. I guess he began to associate the two of them together. Then when she decided that she wanted to dance and my dad was too tired. She just said, "Okay I'll dance with Raymond then."

"My dad had begun to offer him more and more lucrative contracts, but he still hadn't gotten the full contract to do all of our buildings yet and he wanted it badly, so he wasn't going to rock the boat by saying no. My mom basically blindsided him. And that's what I did. Ray didn't even have a building let alone an accountant. He was keeping all of his records in notebooks, when he did actually keep records. He was just paying guys out of his pocket and not even keeping tabs on what he was giving them. His taxes were a nightmare. My brother told him that he needed to hire an accountant. And until he could get one, he could probably get me to at least start setting up some kind of system for him. I charged him dinner. At first we ate out. Then we started eating in. Then I started inviting him to have dinner at home with my family. You've probably heard that my mom loved him from the beginning. My dad liked him too. He thought that Ray was a great self-made business man. He often told my brothers that he wished they were more like Ray."

"My brothers are great managers, but they lack the fire to create or to establish. Ray came out of nowhere and used his skills to fill a void in the area. There are plumbers in this area who've been in business for decades. Before Ray came along we had probably about forty or fifty plumbers and companies working with us. The problem for us was that there were no standards, they all did each house on an individual basis so no two houses were alike. Ray does all of the designs for the plumbing systems off of template on the computer. He can tell from the blueprints exactly how much money the piping and fixtures will cost and approximately how long it will take. His crews go in while the walls are being put up so there's no need to drill or cut into the walls after the construction is complete to fit the plumbing in."

"He also keeps full records on every house we've ever done, so later on the homeowner can call us if there's a plumbing problem and we can tell them over the phone what size of type of pipe was used anywhere in their house. We can also go out and trouble shoot or repair any plumbing problems they have and we often offer them a discount."

"But you didn't come here to talk about our business," she said. "It took a while for me to make the jump from accountant to girlfriend," she said. For months people talked about us as if we were a couple when we really weren't. At least we weren't in his mind. My Dad was also against us. He liked Ray as a business man. But he didn't think anyone was good enough for his little girl. And Ray didn't seem to know that he needed me either. But I very slowly moved forward. And even that was difficult. Sometimes I'd move two steps forward only to have him jump back three steps. But through it all we talked a lot. So I know what went on between the two of you. And I probably have a clearer view of it than you do."

"I doubt that," I said.

"Okay, so tell me what happened?" she said.

"I met Ray in college," I began.

"Nope, you started a relationship with him when you were both in college," she corrected. "You'd been in school with him since middle school. The two of you were just in different cliques."

"Yes," I said realizing that she really did know a little bit about us. "Well Ray and I when we met in college, just decided to do something else with our lives. We didn't want to be just like everyone else and..."

"And that also isn't really true Christina," she said. "The two of you were both going through rough times in your lives but your reasons for abandoning college were completely different. You, came from a very loving family, but you wanted to be an individual. You looked around and saw everyone and you wanted to stand out and make your own rules. You considered most of society to simply be like lemmings. You were running away from society and the mainstream and groups, correct?"

"Well yeah," I said smiling. "That's it exactly."

"Christina, Ray had just gone through a very traumatic experience. He'd come from a loving family too, but he'd lost both of his parents in a very short period of time. College for him seemed too impersonal. Every student on a large campus has that feeling of NOT being an individual. They identify you by your student ID number. Ray wasn't running away from a group, he was looking for a new family and for a while the club became that family. But then things changed. Being with the club, and especially you helped to heal the rift in him and he looked at the club differently. Christina he wanted a family, but he wanted a real family. And he wanted that with you. He loved you something awful. All that man wanted was to settle down with you and make you happy."