Turning Towards Ohio

Since Jason had no job, he would never be able to fly out to bother me. And mom had already gotten Aunt Tilly not to call Bob. As for my parents, I was sure that a few years of them kissing Aunt Tilly's ass would get them back in her good graces. And Bob had always taken care of me, so fuck Aunt Tilly's money.

I called Bob then. I just needed to hear the sound of his voice. Even as he spoke to me I could hear the tension in his voice. I realized that it was dinner time where he was and he was probably in the middle of dinner with his clients. He had warned me about doing that back in the days when he traveled frequently for business. Having your wife call in the middle of discussing business tends to make the clients feel like you aren't in control of your own affairs. And if you can't control your home life, why the hell should they give you their business.

But Bob loved me, so he controlled his anger and listened to me patiently until he could get off of the phone. The man loved me. I was his entire world. I went back to sleep secure in the knowledge that my marriage was fine. I would do anything I had to do to keep it that way.

I slept through the night and refused to speak to my parents about what had happened. I spent the next day, my last full day in their house driving around town getting my last looks at the town I had grown up in. I planned on never returning there. Jason called me several times but I refused to take his calls. At the same time I called Bob several times and he didn't pick up the phone either.

There was one strange thing that happened. While I was in town, I had begun noticing the way people looked at me. News travels fast in a small town and it seemed that a lot of people knew what I had done.

I watched people carefully to see the way they looked at me. That sense of heightened awareness, was probably what made me notice him. I saw one of the guys that Bob worked with. I was pumping gas for the rental car and I saw him come out of the station. He wasn't looking at me, so I didn't call him over. He probably had family in the area too. It was a small world, or so I thought. Besides I couldn't remember the guy's name any way.

The next day, I flew home. While I was in the airport, waiting to board my plane, my phone rang. I was glad that I hadn't pitched it yet. I was planning on waiting until I got home to throw it away. That way if they managed to trace the phone's location it would seem like I lost it while shopping or something.

I expected the call to be from Jason trying one last time to get his hooks or his dick into me, after all he knew what I was leaving that day. But it was Bob. I could tell he missed me by the tension in his voice.

"Jane, we need to talk," he said. "What time does your plane get in?"

"We land at seven forty," I said. "I can be naked and in bed by about eight thirty."

"No, meet me at TRH at eight thirty. I'm driving as fast as I can," he said. "I may be a little late. I have to make one stop to pick something up."

As we hung up, I told Bob how much I loved him. He was too choked up to even answer but I knew he felt it too. He'd been showing me that love for twenty years. They'd been the best years of my life too. I was lost in a daze of love for my husband when I heard her loud assed voice.

"So now you just want to sneak out of town, huh?" she bellowed. I turned to see who was talking and whom she was talking to. I realized two things at the same time. The first was that she was one of the angriest looking women I had ever seen.

The second was that she was talking to me.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

Suddenly the anger in her eyes faded. "No, you don't. You don't know me at all. You only know him," she said pointing a short fat finger off to the side. I turned and saw Jason staring down at his feet. His shoulders were slumped and he was thoroughly cowed.

"But you're gonna regret coming back here and trying to hook up with him," she screamed. I wondered what the hell she was talking about. And while I was wondering, she swung at me. It was surreal.

We're adults, I thought. Adult women don't get into public brawls. But even as I thought it. Her short fat fist slammed into my eye. Then she reared back and caught me again in the lip.

I got my hands up and backed away. She continued to wail on me and kept screaming, "Leave Jason alone. He has a family."

Finally airport security grabbed her and pulled her off of me. They found out that I belonged there. I was waiting for my plane to take off. They escorted her and Jason out of the airport. They asked me if I wanted to press charges after hearing from the witnesses that I had never raised my hand to her. I declined, got on my plane, and flew home. I couldn't miss that flight. It was taking me back to Bob.

I wanted this nightmare to be over so I could go back to my plain old husband. I didn't need a fake war hero. I just wanted my plain old husband. Just plain Bob was all I needed.

By the time I got off of the plane, my eye and my lip were both swollen. I knew that by the morning I would have one hell of a shiner. I didn't care. I would just tell Bob that I had gotten into a fight with a woman while I was in the airport.

I grabbed my bags and ducked into a rest room at the airport. I did as much as I could with my makeup and headed for the restaurant with my bags still in my car.

I hoped that the problems with Bob's back were healed because what I wanted most was a night of loving sex with my husband, the man I loved above all others.

I knew why Bob had picked Texas Road House. It was the same restaurant that he had proposed to me in. It was the same restaurant that I had told him I was pregnant in. It just seemed like all of our significant events had happened there.

I sat down at a table and told the waitress that I would wait for my husband to arrive before we ordered.

Bob arrived about twenty minutes later. We'd been married for about twenty years so I knew that man like the back of my hand and there was something off about him. I had seen Bob happy, I'd seen him angry, and I'd even seen him sad. I had seen him resigned, victorious, chagrined, hurt, smug, irritated, and too many other moods to name.

As Bob walked towards me, his mood changed with every step. I saw happiness. I also saw anger. I saw sadness and resignation all written deeply on his face.

As he sat down, I thought I had figured it out. A wife knows these things. Everything going on with us started when Bob had to go on that fucking trip. Bob had his ass on his shoulders because his Boss had made him go out of town. Bob felt like he was being passed over for some of the younger engineers who had more modern training. My husband after working for the same company for eighteen years had quit his fucking job.

"Honey, don't worry about it," I said. "We have more than enough money to live off of until you find another job. I'm with you 100 percent."

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked.

"I'm talking about you quitting your job, Honey," I said.

He looked at me as if I had just eaten my fill at the stupid truck. "I didn't quit," he said. "I got a transfer. I'm moving out of state."

"Without talking to me?" I screamed. "I love my house. I love my job. I love my life. I don't want to move!"

* * * * * *

Bob

Ordinarily, I never would have spoken to Jane the way I did. But Callie had infected me. She made me feel special. She made me feel better, bigger, and more full of life than I had been ... EVER.

"Then it's a good thing that you aren't going with me," I told Jane. Her eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped. That was when I noticed that her lip was swollen and her eye was swollen nearly shut.

"Who whipped your ass?" I asked. "I guess Jason has a temper, huh?"

"What do you mean, I'm not going with you?" She asked ignoring my other questions.

"I've already filed for divorce," I said. I placed a copy of the papers on the table in front of her. She just looked at them as if they were poisonous and she didn't want to touch them.

Her brain was working as quickly as it was capable of doing. "I knew that old bitch couldn't keep her mouth shut. Why can't she just die?" she hissed.

"Why can't who just die?" I asked.

"Aunt Tilly," she spat. "I know that ancient whore told you. You have to believe me. She's senile. She snuck over to the side of the house to smoke a cigarette, because with her high blood pressure, she isn't supposed to smoke.

"All she saw was me hugging an old friend that I haven't seen in decades. I just ran into him when I got into town, it was a chance meeting, and my parents didn't think it was that big a deal. My parents love you, Bob. If anything had been going on they would have given me hell and called you.

I love you, Bob. I'd never do anything to jeopardize what we have."

She was so passionate that I really wanted to believe her.

"You believe me don't you, Honey?" she asked. The tone of desperation in her voice tugged at my heart strings. I thought back about how comfortable our life was and how lonely I would be without her.

I knew that she had learned her lesson. I also knew that Jane understood that a bird in the hand is better than all of the fantasies she could imagine. I was sure there would be no more Jason's for her. And we did have a daughter together.

There was also the fact that I could use this to get all of the pussy I wanted from her. All I'd have to do is ask her how she happened to run into Jason on the side of Aunt Tilly's house and she'd be on her back with her legs spread before you could say cheese and crackers.

"I believe you Janie," I smiled. She smiled back at me and reached for my hand across the table. It was a move that we'd both done so many times it became almost automatic. We stretched towards the person we loved hoping they felt the same way we did and knowing that touch would reinforce any words, glances or emotions that we were trying to convey. I'm sure she could almost feel my hand on hers. I'm also sure that she longed for the intimacy of that touch to underscore my statement that I believed her and that everything was going to be fine.

"But first off, I haven't spoken to your Aunt Tilly since she called to thank me for her Christmas present," I said. "And secondly, I'm not the one who accused you of doing something with Jason. And I absolutely believe you when you say you only saw him once. It was a chance meeting and all you did was to hug him..."

I reached into my jacket pocket and threw twenty folded pages of messages that I'd copied from her Facebook page and printed on the table.

"What's this sweetheart?" she asked.

"Read some of it," I said. She picked up the first page and her eyes got huge.

"Jason, my first love. My one and only true love. I'm leaving for the airport now. I can't wait to see you and be with you again," I quoted from memory.

"It isn't what it sounds like," she spat quickly. "That's taken totally out of context. It's sarcastic. It's just two old friends pulling each other's chains that's all."

I put my phone on the table and pressed play. The video of her and Jason in the motel started up. Tears rolled down her eyes.

"Bob, I know that we can..." she began.

"No, we can't," I said. "I split all of the cash and investments between us fifty/fifty. I'm also giving you the house which is the bulk of our assets. In exchange for the house, I'm not paying you any alimony or support. I will however continue to pay for our daughter's tuition and expenses. She's over eighteen. She can decide which one of us she wants to spend her summers with or split time between us."

Her head dropped to the table and she began sobbing loudly. I stood up and patted her gently on the back of her head.

"I'll leave it up to you to explain to our daughter why this happened. But tell her the truth, because if you don't, I'll show her the videos. The one where you just let Jason fuck you on the side of Aunt Tilly's house with your parents and relatives only a few yards away, really captures the essence of the type of slut you've become." I walked out of the restaurant immune to her sobs and tears for the first time since we met. It had been an emotional day. I decided to catch a nap in a motel overnight and head for Arizona in the morning. I was ready to move on, but there was still something bothering me.

* * * * * *

Jane

For the price of what was probably the worst sex I've ever had, I've lost everything. A man who only lied to me again and again, cost me the man who had loved me since the first day he set eyes on me. Seeing the Facebook posts was really bad. Bob had been able to read all of those terrible things I said about him. I guess I always knew that none of them were true. I only said er ... wrote those things because Jason had me heated up. I was expecting passion and adventure. I thought I'd have a little fling to lift me out of the boredom of my boring life.

I needed to find a way to convince Bob that it wasn't as bad as it seemed. He couldn't throw away everything we had built together over twenty years for one incident of madness ... could he?

He'd told me that he would stay in a hotel overnight and leave in the morning. He was being crafty though. He never mentioned where he was moving to. I wondered at first why he wouldn't stay in our home for his last night here. I suspected that he didn't want to be in the same house with me. That meant that I might be able to get him back.

After twenty years of fucking the same man four or five times a week, I know how to turn him on. I could...

Suddenly it hit me. Bob had known all along what was going on. That was why he'd stopped having sex with me just before the trip. When I got into our ... now my house, I almost started crying again.

Bob had already moved most of his things out. He had prepared for this all along. He had just given me enough rope to hang myself.

* * * * * *

Bob

I woke up early the next morning, not nearly as confident as I was the night before. I didn't know whether to go back home and work things out with Jane, maybe we could get counseling. Or to just head straight to Arizona and my new job so I could start building a new life. That gets me back to where I was at the beginning of this story. My Mustang all fired up and ready to plunge down one of two possible paths all I had to do was to let her know which of them I chose.

And then I saw it there on the seat next to me. A handwritten note scrawled in a surprisingly elegant script.

She'd written, "I didn't want to say this in front of you. I know I only asked for the time we had together, but I lied, Bobby. I think I've loved you ever since you stopped for me and the more time we spent together, the more I hoped for.

I'm sure that though I felt my love returned, I was just imagining it and you'll go off on your grand adventure alone. If so, do so knowing that our brief interlude has been the highest high point of my thirty seven years. I will never regret a second of it, and it will live forever in my memory as I replay it over and over during the next phase of my hellish existence.

But on the off chance that you feel the same as I do, if you could truly love a country girl with no titties, turn that horse towards Ohio."

It was signed, "Love, Your Callie." And it included directions to her uncle's place.

It was strange, when I read her words, although they were beautifully written and correctly spelled, I imagined them with that thick southern accent.

In less time than it took to tell about it, my foot hit the gas and my Mustang shot up the ramp. In four seconds I was doing sixty mph. In eight I was nearing a hundred and then jerking the wheel not straight ahead towards Arizona, I'd get there eventually. I also wasn't turning towards what used to be home. I was turning towards my future. I was turning towards love. I was turning towards Ohio.

* * * * * *

Epilogue

Bob

I'd been driving up and down dirt roads for over an hour. I didn't want to even think about what all of that dirt and whatever was mixed into it was doing to my undercarriage.

The people I ran into seemed to be a little different. Perhaps it was the fact that I had Michigan plates on the Mustang. I pulled into the third shitty, unmarked little road I'd seen in the last hour. An old man with a decided limp, came out waving his hands for me to shut the engine down. I think he was worried about me scaring the shit out of his chickens or stampeding his entire herd of cattle ... both of them.

I lowered the window and he gave me a good look. While he was scrutinizing me, I was looking at him. He was the second person I'd run into in less than twenty four hours who had both a fresh shiner and a fat lip.

"Did you get into a fight, old timer?" I asked. I really didn't care. I was just trying to make conversation.

"Just git what ya came fer and go!" he said angrily. "Drive down this road and make a left at the fork in the road. That's the front way inta my property, now git."

I started the car and backed out of his driveway as quietly as I could. I had a feeling the old boy was a little off. As he turned to walk away I began to wonder about his limp. It seemed as if he held onto his nuts every time he tried to take a step.

Right after I made the left turn I saw a person standing beside the road. She wore the shortest tightest shorts I had ever seen and she was bending over trying to take something out of a cheap suitcase. As I pulled up near her, she didn't straighten up. She just looked over her shoulder and gave me a shit eating grin.

"See somethin' ya lahk?" she drawled.

"Maybe," I said.

"You wouldn't happen to be staring at my ass now would 'ja?" she asked.

"Why not?" I asked. "Since it does belong to me. Along with the rest of you. You signed that note by saying you were "My Callie."

I got out of the car and she straightened up and launched herself at me. She wrapped those long legs around me and started kissing me.

"What the heyell took ya so long?" she asked.

"I met Jane at a restaurant last night to settle things," I said. "Then I was too tired to drive so I slept in a motel. First thing this morning, I read your note and came after you."

"I couldn't sleep without ya next ta me," she said. "I used a lil bit a the money ya left me ta buy gas and coffee and I drove straight here. I pulled in, in the middle of the naht and slept in the truck until mah lecherous old uncle woke me up a few hours ago." She continued smiling at me and giving me little kisses every so often, but she never let me go.

"He told me ta get mah ass in the kitchen and make us breakfast. The whole tahm that Ah was cooking he was lickin' his lips and it was not about the eggs and bacon.

"After the eatin' was over he tol' me we needed ta have a tawk. I agreed. Honey, I had no idea whether or not you was comin' for me. Ah mean, I hoped, but Ah wasn't for sure. Any hoo, he tol' me that if'n I wanted ta stay here ah had ta earn my keep by takin' care a the duties of a wife. Ah was gonna give the old buzzard the truck, since it ain't mahn anyway and pay him rent outta the money ya gimme, but that wasn't what he had in mind.

He tried ta slip his hand inta my jeans so I had learn him some manners. I tol' him ta move his hand and he wouldn't so I popped him one. That's how his lip got fat.

He told me I had spunk and said somethin' about how he lahked it rough too. I thank he thought ah was jokin' he reached fer my titties and I told him that ah belonged ta someone else. He wouldn't listen until I put my foot up aside his stones.

He was all ears then. Ah tol' him how we met. Ah tol' him ah was in love for real and he just laughed. He said ah wouldn't never see ya agin and the only thing Ah'd have ta remember ya by was some dried up spunk in mah panties. Then he tried to touch me agin'