The Dream Wife

"Anyway, I decided that I'm letting the hate go, Holly. We'll never be friends, but I'm going to try and move on and forget you. I will always be there for you where the kids are concerned. And, God, this is hard, I hope this guy, your new husband Bill, I hope he can give you what I couldn't."

It was almost over and he was still alive. He hadn't been sure his heart wouldn't stop beating at some point, but he had survived. He took a deep breath and stood up and stepped out of the booth.

"That's all, Holly. I just wanted to tell you that. Have a good life."

Before he could walk away, she laid her hand down on his and it stopped him as if he'd been hit with a taser. It was the first touch they had shared in nearly two years.

"Sit down Dan."

He was torn. Part of him wanted to run like hell away from her and the other half wanted to leap on her and tear her clothes off. The tears had stopped but she had a look like she was coming back from her closest friend's funeral.

'I listened to you. Will you listen to me? I've got to tell you some things...and they'll hurt you more than you've already been hurt. But you deserve the truth. And I hope – it will help you move on."

He couldn't help thinking, "Jesus Christ, you're going to hurt me MORE than you've already hurt me. Is that even possible?"

But he slid back into the booth. He saw something on her face he had never seen the day she had told him she was throwing him out, or in any of the days since. He couldn't tell what it was, but something was moving under that strong, placid exterior.

"We never had this talk and I should have. It wasn't right to leave it like I did, but that...that was part of our entire problem."

He had no idea what she was talking about or what was coming, but he knew it wasn't going to be good. She looked like she was taking deep breaths to gather her strength to lay whatever verbal bomb on him that she was getting ready to lob.

Finally she said it.

"You say you loved me and still love me. The thing is...I never loved you...not like that."

Somehow she was able to keep looking into his eyes.

"Never?"

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Even knowing what he now knew, he couldn't make himself believe it.

"Not even at the beginning?"

Now she finally broke her gaze and stared at the table for a minute, but eventually she lifted her gaze back to him.

"I liked you. I really liked you. You remember, I was dating Dave and Bob when you entered the picture, when we met at that Chamber of Commerce mixer that Saturday night."

He remembered. He had been 26, working at another insurance agency while he got the experience to launch his own. He'd come close to marriage twice, but it hadn't worked out and they had split before it got too serious. He was 26 and horny and just looking to see if he'd be able to hook up with anyone when he'd agreed to go to the Chamber of Commerce party at the big Bell South tower in downtown Jacksonville that Saturday night.

He wasn't bad looking and he'd had pretty good luck at hitting the nightspots so he figured he might luck out that night. But he'd never expected to see the vision that greeted his eyes, standing with a group of other women near the cash bar. She was dressed in something sheer and light blue and even through the fabric he could see she was unbelievably stacked. It didn't hurt that he'd always been a sucker for big tits. And she had them. She wasn't too tall, or short. Just right. Blonde with California surfer girl good looks and that fantastic body.

He started moving in that direction, wondering what type of line he could use in making this cold call. He'd always been good at breaking the ice in business situations, and not too bad socially, but he wanted to make sure he made a good first impression. Whether or not he went home with her tonight, he was determined he was going to see her again. The only problem he had was hiding the growing erection that stubbornly kept rising up despite his efforts to calm down.

He walked past her to the bar, standing only a couple of feet away and pretended to wait for a bartender to get free but he listened as inconspicuously as possible to the conversation she was having with two other women.

"The son of a bitch told me he was moving in with her this weekend. After we dated for two years and were only a few weeks away from announcing our engagement."

Her words were angry and bitter.

"I didn't even know he was seeing anybody."

"I thought you guys had decided to see other people?"

"That was just because I thought he was getting cold feet, felt like he was being rushed to the altar, and I wanted to give him a little line before I reeled him in," she said with a short laugh. "I dated Bob, Bob Henry, over at Regional Life, and I still see him from time to time, but Dave never even told me he was dating that bitch. Not until this Monday when he dropped that goddamned bomb on me."

"That was cold."

"Fucking bastard. She probably blew him on the first date. Men, they're nothing but penises with little brains attached to the other end. And it's not as if I didn't blow him. Jesus Christ, I thought I was going to kill him a few times, he came so hard."

Another woman chimed in, "Yeah, they're nothing but walking penises. Oh, course, that's why we keep them around."

All of the women laughed except the gorgeous blonde. She looked so angry she was about to cry.

There were so many people milling around that Dan thought he had managed to eavesdrop without discovery and now he slid down the bar which covered an entire side of the room. Finally, he got the attention of a bartender, one of those college kids that made money on the side at events like this. The kid came over and said, "What'll you have, sir?"

Dan brought out a $50 bill and pressed it into the kid's hand.

"It's yours if you can tell me or find out what the blonde in blue with the big tits is drinking."

The kid looked down the bar and then smiled.

"Good taste man. If I wasn't working I'd be trying to tap that myself. I haven't waited on her but let me ask a couple of the guys."

He came back a minute later and said, "Rum and coke with one cherry. Howie said he heard her saying she'd love to have a bunch of the cherries, but they all go to her ass."

Dan grinned and handed him another $20, telling him what he wanted.

"I noticed your drink is dying," he said, stepping in front of the blonde and between her and her two girlfriends who had stopped talking for a minute and were prospecting the crowd with their eyes for likely walking penises.

She looked at him in surprise for a moment and then she saw the drink he was holding out to her. There was a blank look on her face and then a slow, delicious smile grew on her face. There were a dozen cherries bobbing in the dark fluid.

"I apologize, but I thought it was worth finding out what you were drinking and one of the bartenders told me you loved cherries but that they all go to your ass."

The smile flickered. She was obviously trying to fight it.

"Excuse me for saying this, and I don't mean to get too personal, but with that ass, you could eat a whole bushel of these things and it wouldn't hurt at all."

She lowered her eyes and blushed for a moment, then raised them and started at him in a frankly appraising manner, from head to toe and stopping for a second at the bulge in his pants that he just couldn't get to go down.

"You went to all that trouble, doing that detective work, just to buy me a drink? Why would I be worth all that effort?'

He extended the drink to her and after a brief pause she reached out to grab it, their fingers touching as he gave her the glass.

"Please tell me you're not one of those gorgeous women who insist on having their egos stroked all the time. You've got to know you're the most beautiful woman in this place. I haven't been able to take my eyes off you since the first second I saw you."

She glanced back down at his crotch and he felt himself getting harder and more obvious.

"Is that a pet snake you smuggled in here, or are you just glad to see me," and she giggled.

"I hope I can show you sometime just how glad I am to see you," Dan said, seeing something in her eyes that told him he was going to get very lucky, very soon.

He came back from the past with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. How could something so good wind up so bad.

"I liked Bob, the insurance guy I was dating, but really loved Dave. You remember I told you how close we'd come to getting married and that I had really loved him. But when he moved in with somebody else I was jealous. When I met you at that party, I was really turned on. You were hot. And I loved the fucking we did that first night after the party. But I started going out with you hot and heavy to make Dave jealous.

"He got more involved with the girl he was living with and so you and I dated more and the more we dated, the more I liked you. You were sweet and kind and the sex was incredible. But again, you know I always loved sex. I was a hot slut. And you always loved that about me."

She looked down again and said without looking at him, "Then one day, he called me and told me he had fallen in love with her and was going to marry her. So I threw myself into me and you. It was fun. You treated me like a princess. Nobody ever really treated me like that before.

"A few months later he married her. And then you remember those two weeks you had to go to New York for that training session when you were getting ready to open your own agency. Well, Dave called me out of the blue one day and said he'd had a fight with Mary, the girl he had married. It was a fight over me, in fact, and he came by my house.

"We wound up in bed. No excuses. You and I weren't married yet, but by that time we were exclusive. Anyway, you thought we were, but honestly, to me you were just a guy I was dating because my heart was broken. Long story short, I fucked Dave the entire two weeks you were gone."

She met his eyes again.

"Then you came back and Dave made up with Mary. I had no reason to tell you what had happened because I didn't see that I'd done anything wrong. And then, a month later, I found out I was pregnant with Becky. When you found out, you said we had to get married and wouldn't take no for an answer, even though I tried to talk you out of it. You remember, I tried to tell you we didn't need to get married. Having a baby out of wedlock wasn't a terrible thing anymore.

"But you were so excited and so happy. And Dave was back with Mary and he told me what we'd had was just a fling, that Mary was the woman he was going to spend his life with. I didn't have a man I loved and I could tell that you loved me and loved the idea of having a baby and starting a family. So I told myself that we could have a good life together, even if I didn't love you."

Dan remembered those days and how happy he had been to learn that this gorgeous woman who made his bed ignite every night was going to have his baby.

The realization blossomed like a nuclear bomb going off in his mind. He knew why she wouldn't look him in the eye.

"Don't tell me...don't you fucking tell me..."

When she looked up there were tears glistening in her eyes.

"Yes. I had her tested after she was born. I never told you. I had Dave tested too. He didn't want to, but I told him I'd take him to court and hit him with a child support bill for the next 18 years if he refused, but if he let me test him, I'd never tell you and you'd think you were the father. And...Dave was her biological father."

Dan shot to his feet, slid out of booth and tried to stop himself from backhanding her.

"You bitch. You miserable bitch. I really thought I could forgive you after everything you had done. I said to myself there was nothing else you could do to hurt me. But I was so wrong. You took my daughter away from me, you motherfucking bitch. And I'm sure that Bob isn't mine either. God damn you to hell."

He walked past her, shrugging off her hands as she attempted to grab him and ignoring her calls to stop and listen to her. The cold night air was bracing as he stepped outside. It felt good to be cold. He had lost his wife and his kids and he was about to lose his new wife and at nearly 40 years of age, he was going to find himself alone as he had never been in his life.

He slid into his restored Mustang and turned the key in the ignition, preparing to tear out of the parking lot. Only a glance up into the rear view mirror stopped him from killing his ex-wife. She stood behind the car, arms folded over her chest, as if daring him to back over her.

He rolled the driver's side window down.

"Get the fuck away from my car, Holly. I swear to God, I will kill you, I will back straight over you if you don't move your ass."

"I'm not moving. If you kill me, how are you ever going to face Bob and Becky?"

He opened the door and was moving toward her before he even knew what he was doing, leaving the car idling in neutral.

"If I have to, I'll knock you out and just dump your unconscious body somewhere out of the way."

She flinched but didn't back up.

"I know I hurt you, Dan, but I told you it was going to hurt. But trust me, come back with me and let me finish. I think you'll be glad you did; at least, I hope you will. No matter what, you've got to let me finish. If you want to make your marriage to Caroline work, you have to hear this."

"How the fuck is telling me my kids aren't mine, and then there's probably worse coming although I can't imagine what could be worse, going to help me save my marriage?"

He stopped in front of her and she reached out to grab his hand in both of hers.

"Please."

He followed her back into the Shoney's aware of the nervous looks they were getting from waitresses and manager. He wondered if they had called the cops.

"It's okay, we just – got into a little squabble. It's all over now."

When they sat back in the booth, he said so softly that no one else could hear, "What else could you possibly say to hurt me more?"

She ignored him, saying, "I said that Dave was Becky's biological father. You're her FATHER. She doesn't know and Dave doesn't know. No one does, except you and me – and Bill. No one else ever will know. And when you get over being hurt, you'll realize it doesn't make a difference. Do you love her any less, knowing?"

He blinked and said automatically, "No, of course not. But, is Bob mine?"

"Yes. After we married I didn't have sex with anybody else – for years.

"There's that at least."

"Don't be a smartass. I did try to make it work for us. You were a great husband. But.."

"But what. What did I do wrong Holly. I thought our sex life was smoking. It sure seemed like you were trying to fuck my brains out every time we fell into bed. Why did you have to go out looking for strange?'

She shook her head and then reached out to touch him again. He wanted to push her away, but this was the question that had torn his guts out for two years and he was willing to put up with her touch if she would just for once tell him the truth.

"I was in real estate. I saw strange men every day. That meant men were hitting on me every day. You know I've always been catnip to guys. I guess it's the tits and ass. And for a long time I tried to push them away, even though a lot of time I got home so wet I had to change my panties before you got home because I knew you'd think I'd been having sex.

"But, some of these guys – I liked them. I really liked them. They reminded me of you, and don't tell me that if I had been married at the party that night that you wouldn't have still hit on me and did your best to fuck me before the night was over. I know you too well."

"Alright, maybe I would have. I wasn't a saint. But why did you start?'

She took a deep breath and then let it out.

"The truth?"

"Please."

"Because I didn't love you. I never had. We had a marriage, but it was a marriage of convenience. You got hot sex and two kids you love out of it and I got the same thing. I always thought you probably were knocking off a piece or two when you said you were at work. I knew you loved the kids, but I told myself you felt the same way about me that I felt about you. You were in love with my tits and ass – and my pussy of course.

"And why did that make it right to .."

"Duh, you weren't listening? I didn't love you. Having sex with a strange guy wouldn't be betraying you, or cheating, because it would just be good clean fun. It wouldn't hurt me and I was sure that in the long run it wouldn't hurt you. But I still hadn't done anything.

"After awhile, I figured, I'm never going know what it's like to love a man again, or at least I hadn't since Dave. I really didn't think you loved me, that way. And I got to feeling...deprived, I guess. I knew other wives, even our friends, loved their husbands. They joked about them, sometimes they cheated on them, but they loved them. And I didn't have that.

"Then one day, a guy I'd known in college stopped in at the realty office. He was gorgeous. I'd always wanted him in college, but it never worked out because he was always hot and heavy with someone when I was available or the other way around. He started putting the moves on me, asked me to have lunch with him and I said yes. And a few lunches later he came by the office and told me he wanted me to go to a motel room with him that afternoon. Just for a few hours, just to scratch an itch we'd both had for years.

"I remember looking at him and being so horny I could scream. And then I looked at my desk and it had the picture of you with Becky and baby Bob on it. And then I realized it was like looking at a picture of a roommate I was living with, a hot and sexy roommate, but just a guy I was living with.

"And for just a second I hated you. I hadn't been the one who wanted to get married. You had practically forced me into it. And now I was stuck with a guy I didn't really love and to make things worse, I couldn't have sex with this dreamy guy I'd wanted for years. It was all your damned fault.

"I decided that day that if I couldn't have a man I loved, I could sure as hell have all the sex I wanted, and so I went to the motel with him and we fucked each other's brains out and it was as good as I thought it would be. And when I got home I thought I'd feel guilty, but I didn't. We had sex that night. It was great too. So I figured I really could have my cake and eat it too. Life was good."

She looked at Dan and said, "that was how it started."

He tried to absorb her words and found himself understanding at least a little bit, even though he didn't like it.

"But, it didn't bother you at all, all those years of lying to me?'

'oh, of course, after awhile it got to me. I knew I was lying to you and I figured your pride would be hurt if nothing else if you knew I'd been sleeping around. I knew I was being selfish. I knew I was betraying you. I knew that from the very first day.

"But I knew you loved the kids and if we broke up you'd lose them. And I tried not to deprive you of sex, ever. We had a pretty good sex life, didn't we? So, it was convenient, being married to you. And I told myself there were probably millions of marriages like ours where people had good lives together but went outside for excitement."

"So what happened?

"What I should have expected, Dan. As long as it was one-night stands, it wasn't hard to walk away from those guys. And I was careful. Condoms and I picked guys I was pretty sure weren't hounds. But, then I started really liking some of these guys and it turned into long term relationships. And I started developing feelings for some of them.

"Finally, I met Sam and we ran together for nearly a year before I realized that I loved him. Loved him the way I had loved Dave years before. And I didn't want to live without him, and without love in my life. I knew you'd find out sooner or later. I decided the kindest thing I could do was tell you I had met somebody else and get a divorce. I never wanted you to find out about all the cheating I did before."