Too Close for Comfort B

I did see poor Veronica go over to try to talk to him. I saw the teacher go over to him as well. But then, everyone who wanted meat from the grill had to go over to him. Boy; was I becoming jealous. I wisely stayed away from Grant myself. I knew that we were becoming like magnets. If Grant and I were around each other for too long we ended up fucking.

I wanted the party to be a success, but if Grant made eye contact with me and gave me a nod, we would end up in the house or anywhere private that we could find and he could have whatever he wanted. I started to tingle just thinking about it.

At about 8p.m. the sun was going down and the party started to wind down. There were very few people left and most of them were packing up and leaving. I started packing away food and putting things away.

I noticed Grant bringing down some of Lilly's things from her room to put them by the garage. He was driving her to the college in the morning so she could begin getting her dorm room ready. She wanted to spend some time getting used to the area as well. That way she would already be acclimated when her classes started the following week.

It was strange to think of myself as an old fat woman who would someday soon be a grandmother. My youngest child was going away to college.

I looked around to see who was left. Perhaps if we got lucky the stragglers would leave and Lilly would go out to visit her friends one last time.

Then I remembered that Rose was home. Maybe she would go out too. If not Grant and I could go out for a drive. I hadn't been fucked in a car in forever. Well ... not by Grant anyway. And in a worse-case scenario, Rose was a full grown woman. She was twenty two years old. She had to know what sex was and that her father and I did it.

After about twenty more minutes of putting things away, I noticed that the same group of people was still there and everyone of us was nervous. Veronica was still there, although I couldn't fathom why. Both of my daughters were there, but then they lived there. And the teacher was there as well. Maybe she needed a ride.

We all seemed to gravitate towards the center of the deck and the table there.

"Grant, Dahlia, we need to talk," said Veronica.

"Sure, Honey," I said. "Can we go somewhere else, or wait for my daughters and this lady to give us some privacy?"

"I'm not sure about the lady, but I'm pretty sure we need your daughters here for this," said Veronica.

"And I'm pretty sure she should probably be here too," said Lilly pointing at the woman.

"Okay," said Grant. "I guess we all have things we need to talk about. I'll go first."

"No, I think I should," said Veronica. She paused and then looked at me.

"Dahlia, over the last year or so we've become friends, so this is hard for me to say," she said. "I hoped that you would come to like me and I think that you have, but it's time for the truth. I only used the fact that your marriage was falling apart because of what you did when you went to Jamaica with my aunt Glenda and Mary for my own ends. But I want to get married more than anything else in this world, no matter what anyone has to..."

"Veronica, I do like you," I said. "You've become more than a friend to me. You're almost like a third daughter to me, but you're not marrying Grant. He and I are back together. In fact we're almost better than we were before in some respects. So Honey, that's why I invited all of those young men to the party; I hoped that you'd pick one of them because Grant..."

"Dahlia, I'm not in love with Grant," she said. "I never was. Grant ... I loved dating him, but both he and I knew what was going on the whole time. Well he didn't know all of it. I dated Grant because I needed to feel what it's like to have people look at me and think that I'm beautiful. I needed to experience that whole conventional romance thing for once in my life." She sighed.

"Veronica you need to get over that lack of confidence, Honey," I said. "You're probably the most beautiful woman, I've ever met. Any man in the world would probably throw himself at you and..."

"And I'd move out of the way and let him land flat on his ass on the ground," she said. "Dahlia, I'm not interested in any man. And I know that I'm pretty. It's been a problem for me my whole life."

"Okay, I'm confused," I said. "Just what the hell were you doing with my husband then?"

"Getting to know him and being his friend," she said. "I gave him someone to talk to without pressure. I gave him someone to keep him from being lonely while he was away from the woman he loves."

"So, who the hell do you want to marry?" I asked.

"Uhm..." she began. She seemed nervous and Grant took her hand to calm her down.

"Me, Mom," said Rose suddenly. "Veronica and I have been together since halfway through my first year at college. I came up with the idea of her hooking up with Daddy to help keep the guys from hitting on her at work. It also helped to keep Daddy sane after what you did to him. And after you kept on doing it."

To say that I was shocked was an understatement. "Grant did you know about this?" I asked.

"Nope, but it makes sense," he said. He held out his arms and both Rose and Veronica hugged him.

"So you're okay with this?" I asked. "They lied to us. They used us. They betrayed our trust. Veronica betrayed us in the worst possible way."

"Uhm, Mom, wouldn't what YOU did, be considered the worst possible way? And you kept doing it," said Rose.

"Okay, fuck it," I said. "The two of you are old enough to do whatever you want. I'm so happy that Grant has forgiven me that I don't really care about anything else. So you two have each other, I have my hubby back and..."

"I don't think so Mom," said Lilly.

"Lilly, Sweetheart, please don't tell me that you have a crush on your own Daddy?" I said in horror.

"Of course not, Mom," she said. "That would be gross. But you don't deserve, Daddy."

"Lilly, Sweetie, all of this adult talk is above your pay grade," I said. I knew that Lilly was Grant's favorite and she loved him too, but I really needed her to shut up. All that talk about what I did, or didn't deserve, might start Grant to thinking about things.

"Mom, was I too young for people to make fun of me because you couldn't keep your legs closed?" she asked. "Did you know that I saw you once? There I was studying with a friend of mine, when we saw you going into a motel with her father."

I was horrified that my daughter had known what was going on.

"And come on mom, I'm not stupid. I'm not blind. But I'd have had to be not to see the kind of pain Daddy went through. So like most kids I did some snooping around. I know all about your divorce agreement and the sacrifice Daddy made. He gave up four years of happiness for Rosie and me." She shook her head.

"But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough that you had risked destroying our family. Somehow you got another chance," she said. "You got four years to become the best wife and mother in the world and win Daddy back. And what did you do?" she asked. She was getting angrier by the moment.

"You became the town whore and a joke," she spat. "All of that sneaking around in cheap motels never fooled anyone except yourself. You were becoming an embarrassment, even Grandma, even your own mother wrote you off. I had to do something to keep us all from becoming a laughing stock. So I turned to the only person who could help us..."

"Who the hell is that?" I asked incredulously.

"Amy," she said.

"Who the fuck is Amy," I asked and what did she do?"

"I'm Amy," said the tiny woman with the beautiful green eyes and the incredible hair.

"Amy made you stop acting like a whore," said Lilly.

"Bullshit!" I yelled at my own daughter. "I stopped sleeping around because Grant forgave me and started making love to me again. Do you know what I think of this crap you're telling me? Do you know what I call it?"

"Revenge," said the tiny woman. "That's what I call it."

"Revenge for what?" I asked. "I've never met you before in my life. What the hell do you need revenge for?"

"Not for me Dahlia," she said. "For Grant. You broke his heart."

"Grant is happy again," I said. "Aren't you Honey."

"I'm ecstatic, Sugar lump," he said.

"We're back together again and doing fine," I said. "None of this Bullshit matters. I have my husband back."

"What makes you believe that?" asked Amy.

"We're closer than ever," I said.

"What makes you believe that?" asked Amy again. "Please don't tell me it's because you're having a lot of sex."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"It's simple," she said. "I told him to fuck your brains out."

Suddenly I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. "Why would you do that?" I asked.

"Three reasons," she said. "As Lilly said. You were becoming an embarrassment to everyone with your sneaking around and screwing every man with a swinging dick. The best way to get you to stop was to give you what you wanted at home so you didn't have to go out to find it. The second reason was to help Grant get over you. He loved you so much and for so long. There was this place in his heart that would have always belonged to you. If he had stayed away from you he'd have always remembered you fondly. You would always have been that special woman that he lost. Twenty years from now you would still be special to him. This way he just remembers you as some chick he used to fuck. He actually fucked all of the special right out of you. You mean next to nothing to him now."

"But Grant isn't like that," I screamed. "He knows that making love is a special thing. It's a union of two souls who love each other and..."

"Yada yada yada," she laughed. "And that's another reason for all of this. What was the first thing you and every other cheater always say, Dahlia? You ran that same old story about how, "It was only sex with the other men. And you and he made love, right? Well, clearly you don't know the difference, because for the last few months Grant has just been fucking you. There's been no love involved. It was only sex Dahlia."

"No," I screamed. "I love him so much. And he loves me. The dates. The presents. He has to feel it too. I've never loved anyone except Grant."

"Good," said Grant. "Now you know how I felt. Now you know what it's like to have the person you love rip your heart out."

"Grant, we can make this work," I said. "The past few months have proven that."

"The house will be on the market next week," he said. "According to our arrangement, as soon as Lilly moves out of the house, we're divorced. I'll be leaving tomorrow to take her up to school and I won't be back. The financial arrangements have already been made. We'll sell the house and split the proceeds as agreed on. Goodbye Dahl."

Even as they stood there in front of me their hands reached for each other the way that Grant and I used to. When he kissed her it was gentle and loving. He kissed her as if she was the most precious thing in the world. I was shattered. He had been right. I could feel things the way he had now. I didn't feel confident or sexy or loved at all. I felt fat and bloated. I felt used and betrayed.

Grant had just used me for months. I would never have thought he had that kind of cruelty in him. But I guess he learned it from me. He had hurt me far worse than I hurt him. My cheating on him had never been planned. I had never intended to hurt him. The first time in Jamaica I had been drugged. The other times I had been coerced. Once I got back here, I only started because Grant wouldn't touch me. He treated me like some kind of diseased whore.

I loved him so much but my body had betrayed me. Grant on the other hand had set out to hurt me. He used my love for him to set me up. I remember pouring out my heart to him and telling him over and over now much I loved him. He had never said it back and I know why now. It was easy for him to get over me because he loved her now. I later found out that most of those "business trips," had been spent with her.

I had no idea about their history, or how they met. But they obviously had a connection strong enough to rival ours. Getting rid of her would be difficult. And something in the way she looked at him told me that she would fight to keep him. I also got the impression that they had been bonded by shared experiences that were very strong and would be hard to overcome.

I couldn't tell if Grant really loved her as much as it seemed, or if he was only pretending to love her to teach me a lesson. I seriously hoped it was the latter but it didn't seem so.

There was nothing more to say. Grant didn't even stay at the house that night. He left with Amy. Lilly left for college the next morning. She splits her time home between us. I moved into a small apartment, alone after the house was sold. Grant and Amy bought a place out in the suburbs with a lot of land around it. It's beautiful, I've been told. I've never been invited there.

In the worst possible revenge ever, Amy got pregnant soon after they were married. She gave Grant a son. They claim to be happy, but I think Grant is just pretending to be happy to spite me. Deep down inside, I'm sure he still loves me And every time he fucks her, he's thinking of me.

As far as Amy is concerned, I can't stand that little bitch and every time I see her, there's a fight. Grant somehow pulled a fast one. He gave me half of the market value of our house and gave the house to Rose and Veronica. We kind of alternate holidays with them.

Rose and Veronica adopted a child together. A two year old boy who plays with Grant's son Dylan a lot.

I've tried to move on, the way that everyone else seems to have. But it's hard. I have a terrible reputation in town now and when you add to that the fact that I got depressed again and handled my depression the same way I always do, I ate. I now weigh as you can see close to four hundred pounds and not even Grant finds me sexy. Because of my depression, I lost my job. Veronica herself had to fire me. I was late for work or simply didn't show up too many times. Most of the time that I was there I didn't do much. I guess she really had no choice. I blame that on Grant too.

Lilly recently graduated from college and is about to marry a really nice boy that she met there. It's no surprise that he's a lot like a younger version of her father. And that doctor is why we're here. For the past couple of years, Grant and I can't be in the same room together without getting into an argument. We can't seem to sit in the same room together for more than five minutes without some kind of shit starting.

My daughter's wedding isn't the kind of event that either one of us can miss and we don't want to make a scene at the wedding. My daughter in law, Veronica, made the appointment for us in hopes that you can help us to at least be civil with each other. Do you think you can help us?

I looked at Grant and then at the therapist. She was sound asleep.

"I knew I should have gone first," said Grant. "You put her to sleep with all of your whining."

"Fuck you, Grant," I hissed.

"No thanks," he quipped. "Don't you have syphilis?"

Like I said, the two of us can't be in a room together without some shit starting.

The End.