Objects in the Mirror

"You'll get as much as you want, tonight," she smirked. "If you're good today. This way I know you'll be on your best behavior." I frowned and folded my arms across my chest.

"No pouting," she said smiling. "That's not good behavior and I don't give bad little boys any pussy."

"Bad little boys just take it," I said, grabbing her and throwing her across my lap. I swatted her round little butt a couple of times, rubbing her ass at the end of each stroke. With each stroke her legs opened a bit more. On the last stroke my fingers lingered and grazed her vagina. My fingers came away wet.

Her eyes appeared to have glazed over and she looked at me as if she was expecting me to continue. "You...you're not going to stop now are you?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "We have to go out for our run."

"Not me," she smirked. "Market, then hair dresser."

"But I need you to run with me," I whined.

"No you don't," she said. "I slow you down. You just like watching my ass in those tiny shorts."

"I do love those shorts," I gushed. "But I love what's in them even more." I took another playful swat at her ass.

* * * * * *

Alex

We had driven nearly the entire night. We had checked into one of the motels on the edge of town. Despite the terrible conditions, I had to admit that I was very excited. In my mind I saw this weekend as a chance to put my family back together. My daughter usually never mentioned her father on the rare occasions that we spoke. But when she'd called me a few days ago, she'd let it slip that he'd be at the town's Labor Day picnic and celebration. Of course he would. Dale always did love the car show they had as part of the festivities.

I remember him staring for hours at those cars when we were younger. Dale was always fascinated by Mustangs. I remember so many things about those years, now. I remember when Dale and Bryan stopped competing for me. Bryan was getting all of the sex he wanted from Ellie. He walked around with a smug look on his face as if he was rubbing it in Dale's face. I kind of expected Dale to go after Ellie's sister, Arlene.

In fact, I asked him about it.

"Why would I do that?" he asked me as if I was making no sense.

"Well, she's pretty. And she has really big tits," I said. He just sat there scratching his head.

"Alex, I've been crazy about you, since before I even knew why I liked girls," he said. "There are lots of girls in the world. But there's only one you. I'm actually glad that Bryan found Ellie. That means that I don't have to share you anymore. You're kind of special, you know?" I could tell that he meant every God damned word of it. I felt even worse, then because I had given or let Bryan take my cherry a few months before that when I turned eighteen. Dale had never pushed me for sex and in that moment I realized why. For Bryan, I had only been a target. I was just sex, but Dale loved me.

It's funny how now in my late forties I realize that I knew more about life and love when I was eighteen than I do after almost half a century of life. What I really hope is that this weekend gives me a chance to get back what I so foolishly gave away.

When I look at my life now, I realize that I don't have one. I don't have even half of what I gave up to get...nothing. I live in a rented apartment. I work very hard at a job that requires no skill and has no opportunity for any type of advancement. The man in my life is married to someone else and shows his affection for me, by letting other men fuck me in front of him. My daughter barely speaks to me and blames me for the destruction of our family. She looks at me as if I'm toxically stupid. She never gives me any type of information on her father. In fact no one does. When he broke his leg two years ago, I didn't find out about it until he'd recovered.

More than anything else, I knew that I'd been stupid. I also knew that I didn't deserve a chance to make things better. I did not deserve forgiveness. But more than anything else in life, I wanted it. I prayed for it. I hoped for it. I had dreams about my husband forgiving me and I would do anything to make that happen.

When I think about what I wanted my life to be like when I turned fifty, I was nowhere close. I dreamed of sitting on the porch of a cabin in front of a lake, with a man who worshipped me. I saw barbecues and grand kids running around for me to spoil. I saw us traveling and seeing places together, I saw it all. I think the thing that was most important though, the thing I miss the most in my life right now is the love.

A few years ago, there had obviously been something wrong with me. I can see it now, but I didn't then. Call it a midlife crisis. Call it the change or menopause or empty nest syndrome. Call it abject stupidity or any of the other three million names that we use when a woman makes a really stupid decision. My greatest hope is that it's not too late to fix it.

I have nothing to lose by trying though. What's the worst thing that can happen? I can try to get Dale to forgive me and take me back and he can say, no. Then I'll be miserable. But I'm already miserable so how much worse can it be?

Okay, it can be much worse. Right now, I'm miserable but at least I have hope. At least I have something to dream about that makes the misery bearable.

I had left the motel room for two reasons. The first was to find something to eat. I walked down the aisles of a huge new superstore that hadn't been here when I lived in this town. The second reason I'd left the motel room was to get away from Bryan. He was trying to turn this trip back home into just another fuck trip. He used any excuse or any situation to try to inject some newness into a situation that had gone on for far too long.

It's really ironic that I only ended up with Bryan in the first place because I was bored with plain old married sex. I wanted excitement and spice in the bedroom. But after doing and trying almost everything there was to do, I now find myself more bored than ever. In fact I crave the one thing that's missing from all of the sex I got. That would be feeling. Feeling like what I'm doing is more than just letting some asshole who doesn't know or care to know my God damned name, hump me until he cums and I go.

Sometimes, I hate Bryan for conning me into this. Now that it's too late to take back some of the things we said and did, I realize that Bryan did all of this for his own selfish reasons. It's the same old story. He broke his airplane and now he wants Dale's. He blew me off for Ellie until she got sick. Then he suddenly decided that he needed to share me with Dale. The only thing that was different was that this time, Dale said, "no."

That alone should have told me something. Dale isn't like that. He'd normally do anything he could to help anyone, especially Bryan. It took me far too long to realize that Dale loved me too much to ever share me. It took me far too long to realize that like Bryan, I was trying to have my cake and eat it too. I just hoped that enough time had passed that Dale would at least talk to me. And if Dale did, my daughter, Karen, might as well.

I was thrown from my thoughts by the impact. The cart that I'd grabbed when I came into the store, simply because it seemed right, had slammed into another woman's cart.

Her elfin face immediately erupted in a smile. "Sorry, I wasn't paying any attention to where I was going," she said.

"Me neither," I replied.

"I have so much stuff to get, that I don't know where to start," she said.

"I have no idea of what I want," I supplied. She was tinier than I am. She was wearing yoga pants and had the body to make them look good. Her boobs rocketed away from her rib cage and while not overly large, there was enough jiggle there to keep any guy happy. Her round little butt and curvy hips made the yoga pants almost obscene. But the thing that most people probably noticed first about her was the explosion of red curls that fell almost to her waist. Only a slight crinkling around her eyes gave any clue to her possible age. She could have been anywhere from her late twenties to my age and probably appealed to men from both age groups.

"Are you having a special dinner?" she asked.

"What I really want is just to sit down and have a nice conversation with my husband and daughter," I said. "That would be the most special thing possible. I really don't need much to make things special."

"Well you're ahead of me," she said. "I spent years on a man who wasn't worth half of the tears I cried over him. He was always telling me how much he loved me and how hot I was. Then he'd go out and spend his entire paycheck on liquor or get caught fucking some other woman. The smartest thing I ever did was refusing to marry him. But now I live with a man that I'd marry in an instant, but he never mentions it, because he got burned once. Today I get to meet his grown up daughter, who will be comparing everything I do to her sainted mother. I don't stand a chance. The only thing I can do is to try to make things as pleasant as possible and not give her any ammunition to use against me."

"Holy shit, that sucks," I said.

"Tell me about it!" she smiled. "But, I can't say I blame her. It has to be hard as hell seeing your father with another woman. I guess it's only human nature to want to break them up. I just have to keep myself from doing anything stupid enough to give her a reason."

As we walked down the aisles of the store next to each other, we became friends of a sort. We traded ideas about things to cook and the holidays and men, back and forth. When it was time for us to part, I gave her my phone number so she could call me to talk. Since I was seriously considering moving back to town, it might be good to start out with a new friend.

The problems started as we left the store. I noticed Bryan walking towards me. He didn't seem to be interested in me at all though. His eyes were riveted to Anne's rapidly receding form and I recognized the look in them.

"Who was that?" he asked as he reached me.

I wondered if he realized how obvious he was. "Just a new friend," I said cautiously.

"We can always use new friends," he mumbled. "Do you have a way to contact her?"

"Why do you care?" I snapped. "Are you tired of me already?"

"Oh, Alex, don't act like you don't understand the game. That woman is no threat to us. It's only going to be sex."

"Bryan, do you realize how stupid you sound?" I asked. "Remember what you told Dale. You told him that what went on between us was no threat to my marriage, because it was only sex. But Dale didn't take it that way and that's why..."

"And that's why you dragged me back to this tiny assed town to try to get him to forgive us," he snapped. "We didn't do anything wrong. He's the selfish one. He's the one who acted like he owned you and didn't want to share. Hasn't he heard that Lincoln freed the slaves a long time ago? Instead of us crawling back here, he should be crawling to us. We're right. He's wrong."

For the first time I realized that Bryan really didn't have a clue of what was going on. He still viewed things with the morals of a spoiled eight year old.

"But I'll make a deal with you," he smirked. As I looked at his smiling face, I felt a sense of dread. I was sure that he'd want me to do something that I wouldn't be comfortable with.

"You call your new friend and get her to hang out with us," he said. "I'll go and talk to Dale and try to smooth things over. I'll do whatever it takes to get him to sit down and talk with us."

"You go first," I said, not trusting him. "After we talk to Dale, I'll call Anne."

"Deal!" he said loudly. As we headed back to the motel I felt that sense of dread returning. I also felt guilty. I was selling Anne out for a chance to get back with my husband. I know it was wrong, but I'd do it without the slightest hesitation. If I had to chose between hurting a woman who had never done me wrong and even the slightest chance of merely talking to Dale, Anne would lose every time.

"I'll go now," he said. "Stay by the phone. I'll probably call you soon with good news."

As he walked out of the motel room, my feeling of dread dissipated. It was replaced with a feeling of elation and a feeling of anxiety at the same time. It had been three years since I saw him. Did he still look the same? I had picked up three or twenty pounds. Would he still love me the way I love him? Would he be willing to put the past behind us and start again? I was too excited to do anything. If we did talk I'd be willing to swear to him that if he forgave me I'd become the perfect wife for him again. I'd swear on my life that no other man would ever touch me for the rest of my life.

I rushed into the bathroom to bathe and make myself ready. I needed to be as pretty as possible. I wanted Dale to take one look at me and want me back. I took a long bath and thought about all of the good times that we'd had together and the things we'd talked about. We'd been a perfect family, but even then, even before things had blown up when my daughter had left the nest, I'd felt that something was missing. Perhaps what I'd missed was the excitement of having those two guys competing for me. I think, in the back of my mind, I felt kind of cheated by the fact that there had never been any kind of true resolution of the conflict between them. It was so great having two best friends trying to outdo each other to earn my favors. Maybe, when I'd gotten older, I'd wanted to relive that excitement, but it had gone terribly wrong.

I lost track of time sitting there in the tub, thinking about my past. I thought about what I had done wrong and how I'd fix it, if given the chance. I thought about what I wanted out of life and how I wanted my life to be from then on. I realized that although there hadn't been any more competition between the two men, there was already a clear winner and I had picked the wrong man. If given a chance to rectify my mistake, I'd jump on it with both feet. The objects in my mirror seemed to be getting closer and closer. I could almost reach out and touch them.

I was just about to get out of the tub anyway, when my phone rang. I picked up the phone and heard my daughter's voice.

"Hey, Mom," she said. "Are you enjoying your holiday?"

"I'm more nervous than you could ever imagine," I said.

"Me too," she said excitedly.

"Maybe we should get together and talk about it," I said. She laughed at that.

"That's easy to say when you're almost 800 miles away," she laughed. "I'm not sure how I'd feel if you were closer though."

"Karen, I'm in town, Honey," I said excitedly. I swear I heard crickets chirping in the sudden silence over the line.

"Karen...uh, Karen?" I said. "Are you still there?"

"Mom, why are you here?" she asked. From the sound of her voice, it was as if my visiting was the worst thing in the world. I felt like I was her four hundred pound, snaggle toothed aunt showing up at a beauty pageant, wearing a thong. But then to save me from embarrassment, my call waiting tone chimed in.

"Karen, I have another call," I said. I was amazed at the tension between us.

"Is this Alex Evans?" asked a voice.

"Who wants to know?" I asked.

"My name is Clara Barton. I'm a nurse at the local hospital and we had a man brought in this afternoon. He's in pretty bad shape and wanted us to contact you. His name is Bryan Jones."

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"Are you his wife?" she asked.

"Not exactly," I said "But..."

"Then I can't exactly give you any information," she snapped. "But you should probably get over here. He's going into surgery in a few minutes."

* * * * * *

Bryan

Things couldn't have been better. As usual I got the best end of the deal. I had no idea why my luck never seemed to run out. I guess it's like they say good things happen to good people. But then I have to admit that the saying isn't always true for everyone. If you want to be successful you have to be willing to put yourself out there and ask for what you want. In some cases you have to extend yourself and take what you want. Most people just aren't willing to do the work. Most people don't have the audacity to take the risks. They're simply too afraid to risk offending someone.

Me, on the other hand; not so much. I really couldn't be bothered to even partially give a fuck about offending someone else's delicate sensibilities. Other people's senses of morals, fairness and manners aren't even a blip on my radar. If I had to have one of those moral creeds mine would be the one they had in that Vin Diesel movie, "The Chronicles of Riddick." The Necromongers believe that you keep what you kill, and so do I. It has done me no harm up to this point in my life, so why change.

In fact for most of my life it's kept me happy, fat and sitting pretty. When my best friend, Dale and I used to play with our toys, I learned a lot about people. If I broke mine, I'd simply whine and mope until he either shared his, or gave it to me. Dale, like most people didn't want to see his best friend unhappy, so he gave in every time. Every God damned time. The man must've been related to Mother Theresa. I'm telling the boy had to have been a saint. If it had been me, I'd have let my little ass whine and cry all day. I'd have taken the time to educate me on the dynamics of water balance in the human body. I'd have looked deeply into my little eyes and said, "The more you cry; the less you pee." And that would have been that; but not Dale. After a while it got to the point where my toys were for learning what not to do and Dale's were for sharing.

When we got older, the sharing thing continued. And nowhere was it more obvious than when it came to Alexandra. During high school, the three of us were a trio. We did everything together. We even went to our prom together. I got the first dance with her and Dale got the last one. We all turned 18 a few months after that. From talking to Dale the way that best friends do, I realized that the two of us saw things with Alex differently. Dale had her up on some kind of pedestal, but to me she was just a girl.

Dale got a job between high school and college, so for a lot of that summer, he worked during the day. That threw Alex and me together a lot of the time while Dale was working. As usual, I seized the opportunity and got her cherry. She made me swear not to ever tell Dale, because she didn't want him hurt. Actually, I think she just liked playing the two of us against each other. And she knew that if Dale found out about it, he'd step down. He would have refused to have anything further to do with her, because he'd have thought that the two of us had something special going.

Actually, nothing could have been further from the truth. Dale had always seen Alex as someone special. I just saw her as someone I could fuck. She was okay looking and built okay, but nothing special. Most guys seem to have an innate sense of which girls we can get. And I had always known that when the time came, I could get Alex to give up those panties.

So one afternoon, while poor Dale was slaving away doing all of the shit jobs at the local home depot, I got between his dream girls thighs and became a man. After that, instead of considering Alex as just a girl, she became more than that. She became practice. Once again Alex was just Alex. She wasn't some hot chick or a mind blowing fuck, she was just practice. I think that was when Alex started to realize what was going on. She realized then that between the two of us, Dale treated her like a princess and I could care less. It was way too late by then, but she cut me off. But soon after that I met Ellie and her sister, so it didn't matter. They were better looking and built better anyway.