6-4=3

When the flowers came, I was floored. I knew that they were from B, but I had no clue why he sent me flowers. His letter that day made me cry. He told me that he hadn't sent the flowers because I was a mother. He knew that I didn't have any kids yet. But he'd sent them because of the type of mother he was sure that I'd someday become. It was strange, a man whom I'd never actually met in person, who at that time had no clue of what I even looked like, understood my feelings and needs far better than the asshole I slept with every night.

I started to wonder then about Ryan and whether or not he really loved me. It took a few weeks after that, but that was when I hired the investigators and found out about Ryan's latest affair.

I read the letter again and saved it. I no longer had to worry about Ryan finding any of my emails on the computer. In my mind, even though the papers hadn't been signed, I was already a free woman. How did that stupid saying go? Today was the first day of the rest of my life.

I checked my messenger and saw that B was online. I clicked on his name on my list and sent a message.

"Hey, thanks for the card," I typed. "You always know just what to say." I waited for a few moments before his reply came back.

"You're welcome. Have a good day," was his typed answer. Somehow that struck me as weird. We normally chatted for hours sometimes. And if he was busy at work, he'd let me know. This was overly brusque for him. I wonder if I'd done something to piss him off. As I thought about it, I came up with two different possibilities. Perhaps he was some kind of weirdo who only got off on talking to married women or women who were unavailable. Now that I'd told him I was getting a divorce, he found me less attractive. The second reason was that maybe he really was busy, but if that was the case he should have just said so like he usually does. His off and on behavior was making me think that maybe all men ran hot and cold like Ryan did.

I quickly typed my phone number and told him to call me as soon as he got the message. I wasn't expecting him to actually call me. I figured that if he didn't want anything more to do with me, he'd never call, but if he was really busy he wouldn't be able to call until later. Either way I was done playing games with men.

For some reason it was like an electric shock when the phone rang within seconds of me typing the message. I didn't recognize the number so I was very tentative as I picked it up.

"Melanie?" he asked shyly. "It's Ben."

His voice was deeper than I expected and he seemed to sound sadder than I expected as well. I guess from the flowers and the cards, I expected a pretty happy guy. It just goes to show you that you can't always tell things from the way people write.

"Hi Ben," I said.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "We've never actually spoken to each other before."

"Ben, I'm kind of pissed at you," I said. I tried to keep my voice neutral because I didn't want to piss him off and he seemed kind of fragile.

"What did I do?" he asked.

"Ben, for the last year or so that we've been writing you've become pretty important to me. I guess I've come to expect for you to be supportive and have my back on things. I told you yesterday about me catching that asshole husband of mine and filing for a divorce. You're the only person I've told so far. I haven't even told my parents because I want to handle this on my own like a grown up," I said.

"Then this morning you sent me that beautiful card and message and I expected even more for you to help me through this but you just seemed to want to blow me off. What gives?"

"Melanie, I'm really sorry," he said. His voice had somehow gotten even sadder. He sounded like he'd just found out that the Mayans were right and we'd all be dead in about a month.

"Melanie, I know you're upset about your divorce and..."

I cut him off. "Ben, please don't do that," I said. "Please don't tell me that you know how I feel. Don't say that it's a really bad thing but I need to rub some dirt on it and get back in the game. Don't tell me that life goes on for everyone else while I'm getting a divorce. Just please don't pretend that you have any idea of how bad I'm feeling right now. I expect so much more from you than that."

For a very long time he didn't say a word. He just let me vent. Then he said the words that made me feel like absolute shit. In a very quiet voice he told me.

"Melanie, I really do know how you feel. I caught my wife yesterday having sex with four men, two of whom are long term friends of mine. I haven't confronted her yet, but I don't see a future for us either. I've just been walking around in a fog trying to make logical decisions on how to proceed. I feel like my heart has just been torn out. I guess I really believed all of that crap she's told me over the years about how much she loves me."

I was absolutely stunned. He sounded as if he was on the verge of crying and just barely holding it together. Everything he said made me feel even worse. He'd been truly blindsided and had to actually watch her. If he treated her half as nice as he'd treated me, the woman had to be a fool.

"It was awful," he continued. "Four guys, how do you compete with that? She must have been laughing at me the whole time that we've been married. And the worst part was after having sex with four men, she really thought that I'd want to touch her when I got home. I had to hide in my garage to avoid her."

"Ben, why didn't you say anything?" I said. He surprised me even more then.

"Mel, you're already feeling badly enough about your divorce. I didn't want to drag you down with me," he said.

"Ben, what are you doing right now?" I asked.

"I have a meeting with my lawyer in about two hours," he said.

"Good," I said. "Drive downtown and meet me on the River Walk. I'll meet you right in front of the plaza in thirty minutes."

"But..." he began.

"But nothing," I said. "You've already seen pictures of me so you know what I look like. Be there!"

My heart told me that I was doing the right thing. However, the rational side of my brain had all kinds of caveats about what I was doing. He could be an ax murderer, I thought. But then I remembered that there'd be hundreds of people there, so I should be safe. Call it intuition, but I had a feeling about this. It felt good.

A half an hour later, I sat down on a bench in front of the river to watch the waves go by. I had on a light fall jacket and a cream colored sweater over a pair of jeans. As soon as I sat down a man approached me. He had on raggedy clothes and he looked as if he hadn't shaved. I guess that maybe the pain of losing his wife had just made him say, "Fuck it. I don't care what I look like anymore."

On the other hand, I'd felt like that yesterday but today for some reason, I wanted to look good. As the guy got closer to me, he held out his hand and started talking. The first words from his mouth carried a strong stench of liquor. Oh Ben, I thought. Don't let that bitch turn you into a drunk. She's not worth it.

"Ya got any change, lady? I haven't eaten in over a month," said the man, moving ever closer to me. He twisted his head side to side and noticed that there weren't many people near us. His demeanor changed and became more menacing.

"What do you have in that purse?" he sneered.

"Nothing that concerns you, so move on," said a deep voice from behind him. The man who'd spoken was tall and thin but very muscular. He walked quickly and closed the distance between himself and the man very rapidly.

"Sorry Melanie," he said. "I had to park about a block away. I wanted to be in a parking structure not on the street. My baby tends to be kind of tempting."

The older man in front of me took one look at the man speaking and we moved in opposite directions. He moved away from Ben as quickly as he could. I took the other route. I threw myself at him and hugged him as hard as I could. He wrapped his arms around me and patted me on the back. He gently rubbed his hands over my upper back trying to comfort me.

I smiled as I realized that he'd thought that I'd hugged him because I'd been afraid of the homeless guy. I let him continue to think so, but the truth was that from the first second I'd looked into those deep brown eyes, I'd been hooked. He looked so sad and so hopeless that I just wanted to cheer him up. I wanted to be the person that made him smile and turned him back into the cheerful person who'd emailed me for the past year or so.

When he wrapped those muscular arms around me, it felt good. It felt like I belonged in those arms, close to that chest. He gave me something I'd never felt with Ryan. I felt safe, I felt cared for. It felt like Ben would jump in front of a truck to save me. Ryan would probably just yell for me to get out of the way...after he'd moved out of danger himself.

We sat down on the bench and my hands just found his. All of a sudden, I realized that I had a completely new set of problems. As I looked at his face over and over again, I found myself wanting to kiss him. The longer we sat there, the stronger the urge got.

The internet and psychologists are teaming up to ruin the world. They are the two biggest repositories of bizarre and useless information on the planet. One of the things I remember reading was that a woman can tell within seconds of meeting a man if there's even the possibility that she's ever going to sleep with him.

As soon as I looked into Ben's eyes, I knew that we were going to have sex. It was only a matter of when and where. I had never, in all of the years that I'd been married to Ryan, ever cheated on him, even when I met famous actors or sports figures who did advertising for my father's company. But I knew that I wanted Ben from the instant I saw those eyes.

One glance and I was a cheater. I didn't care that we weren't actually divorced or anything else. All I thought about was my primal urge for sex. I'd actually never had one before, so its intensity was shocking to me. I smiled as I rubbed the palm of his hands with my fingers. Some of my girlfriends in college had always told me that was one of those signals. I didn't know shit about signals but I wished I hadn't worn this heavy sweater. I was pretty sure my nipples were standing up like the nose cones of two tiny missiles and he was missing it.

"So, I'm really sorry about your divorce," he said. He shook his head and looked away from me. It was so cute. He was obviously the shy type. That was probably why his whore of a wife had thought she could cheat on him. I wondered what it was that he didn't have. He was kind and considerate. He's good looking. He owns his own business and he's successful enough that she doesn't have to work. There must be something wrong with HER. Maybe there's just a type of person out there who simply needs to cheat. It could be the hidden gene on the human DNA strand that they've yet to discover the purpose for. When they finally mapped human DNA, they missed the cheating gene.

"Ben, let's not talk about old news or bad news," I said. "Let's just enjoy ourselves talking and looking at the river. Let's watch the boats go by and forget about the unpleasantness and lawyers for just a little while. Let's have lunch. Can we do that?"

He nodded his head and smiled. "We're friends right?" I asked. He nodded again. "So you help me through my divorce and I'll help you through yours. That way we don't have to go through this alone. I think the loneliness and that feeling of failure are the worst parts."

Over the next few weeks as my divorce dragged on and on and on, Ben became my source of strength. He was a lot stronger than I ever would have imagined. In his business dealings he'd learned to be ruthless and aggressive when he had to and he could do that with the best of them, but away from business he was still the same quiet shy man I'd first met that day at the river.

* * * * * *

Sandy

I woke up the next morning after crying myself to sleep. I felt awful. I knew that Ben loved that stupid fucking car. I don't even know why I'd gone crazy like that. He also hadn't reacted the way I'd expected, but he'd reacted in a way that was pretty consistent with the way he did things. He'd let me have my little tantrum and walked away to let me cool down. This was actually Ben's house. He'd already paid off his mortgage before I ever met him. But when I told him he couldn't sleep with me, he just taken the blanket and went to the guest room or the sofa. That was an example of how much that goofball loved me.

I decided to go and find him and apologize. I know that stupid car is important to him but he's important to me. And I want to be important to him. I'd gotten myself ready for him. I'd thought about it all day. I could accept it if he didn't want to have sex with me, although that had never happened in the entirety of our marriage. But I couldn't accept that he didn't want to even cuddle with me. I could get sex anywhere. I'm not a raving beauty, but I'm a really good fuck. Every guy I've been with tells me that. Like I said, I can get sex anywhere, but I need Ben for the love part. And after a day of being used, I needed to be loved last night.

Ben had no idea of what I was doing or how important it was. Betty was one of my best friends. She loved Greg more than anything. She'd told me a while ago that she was sure that Greg was going to leave her. I'd invited Greg to lunch one day to talk to him. He'd told me that Betty was probably right. He was tired of her. She couldn't cook, she looked like hell all of the time and she just laid there like a rock in bed on the few times a year that she actually graced him enough to let him fuck her. Those times were usually on Christmas and his birthday. She didn't ever have to go out and buy him a present, he'd told me. She just gave him the same old thing that she'd had forever between her legs. She just smiled and acted like it was something special.

And while they were doing it she whined and constantly asked him when he'd be done. He couldn't take it anymore. He figured it would be better for both of them to just walk away. They didn't have any kids and he'd be willing to pay her alimony for a reasonable amount of time while she got her life together, but he was pretty much through.

Somehow I convinced him to give Betty another chance and to give her long enough to change. And through a series of conversations and incidents, I ended up screwing him. It was just supposed to be a one-time thing. Then it morphed into a regular thing because we both needed it. I needed it because I'd gotten used to being roughly handled and I guess I kind of liked it. I didn't like it as much as what I got from Ben. There was actually no comparison, but every once in while you want a hamburger, even when you're eating steak every night. Nick had come along because he'd seen Greg going into my house too many times when Ben wasn't home. He'd decided that he wanted his piece too. There was nothing wrong with Nick's marriage, he just wanted a little bit of pussy on the side.

I'd drop all of them in an instant if it ever threatened my marriage and they all knew that, but what I did helped Betty and it had never hurt Ben. In fact, all it did was made me crave what Ben and I did more. Perhaps that was why I was so pissed last night. The guys had gotten me all worked up and I needed my husband to turn that keyed up ready to fuck feeling into another spectacular orgasm. The guys wound me up, Ben gave me a release. I love my husband, I tolerated the guys. They weren't using me and I wasn't using them. We used each other. Eventually it would run its course. The first five or six years that Ben and I had been married, I was totally faithful to him. I could be again if I had to be. That was why I was cutting Greg off totally. He'd gotten stupid and was talking like we were in love or something. The only man I had ever loved was Ben and Greg knew that.

As I got out of the bed and wandered down the hall, I looked in both guest rooms and Ben wasn't in either of them. I checked the sofa and he wasn't there either. Finally, I checked the garage and his stupid fucking Mustang was gone. Ben had done another shocking thing. He'd actually gone to work without kissing me goodbye. If I'd thought that I was depressed before, I was really upset now.

I called his cell phone and it rang a few times and then went to voice mail. I tried calling his office and his secretary told me he was out of the office. He was probably meeting a client. I tired the cell again and he still didn't pick up the phone. Ben always took my calls. I figured that he was probably still upset with me. And he had a reason to be. Ben worked hard supporting us and giving us a great lifestyle. I can still remember the hurt in his eyes when he walked away from me last night. "You were always more important than the car," he'd said.

And I guess I knew that. I guess I also knew that the car was just his hobby. I was jealous of it. It was the same way some guys were about playing golf. If they stop sinking their putts they get pissed at everyone, but they're really upset because they're not performing as well as they think they should. Ben wasn't angry at me. He hadn't yelled at me or done anything. He was just sad because his favorite toy had a problem. I was the one who'd blown it out of proportion. I was jealous of a stupid car.

I needed to figure out some way of making it up to him. I needed to find a way to let him know that I loved him so much that when he was spending time with that stupid car instead of me, it drove me out of my mind. I made myself breakfast and started to eat. The phone rang and I literally dove for it.

"Hi, Honey," I squealed. I was so excited to talk to him and have the chance to tell him I was sorry.

"Wow, if I knew I'd get that kind of response I'd call you more often." I was crushed.

"Oh... hello Betty," I said. It was as if I was a balloon and all of the air had gone out of me.

"Wow, we went from Hi Honey to hello Betty in under 3 seconds," she said. "Your husband's frigging Mustang isn't that fast. It's good to see that my best friend is glad to hear from me."

"I'm sorry Betty," I said. "I'm not feeling well."

"You were feeling fine, when you thought I was Ben," she said. "Sand, can I come over to talk?"

"Of course," I said. "Why would you even ask?"

"Because this is going to be a bad one," she said.

"Who cares," I said. "Come on over."

Twenty minutes later, Betty knocked on my door. She came in when I opened it for her and gave me a hug. Betty looked shood. For those of you who don't know that term, shood is a combination of shitty and good. She looked good because she had on make-up and was dressed nicely. But she had lines around her face and a dour expression on it too. I could tell something was bothering her.

"What's wrong Betty?" I asked.

"How do you do it?" she asked. "How the hell have you managed to stay in love for so God damned long? Even after all of this time, you sit there on the edge of your seat like a fucking puppy just waiting for Ben to be with you. You love that man like he's the only man on a planet of women and you have to make sure he stays with you. The only thing that's worse than you is him. Half of the women in the neighborhood would kill you for Ben. You've never seen the way he looks at you. Even when we're having one of those neighborhood get-togethers and he's standing there with the guys, when they're talking about football and cars and all of those other boring things he's looking to see what you're doing. And it's the weirdest fucking thing. Sandy every time he sees you, he smiles."

"The two of you have been married for at least as long as the rest of us, but every time he sees you, he smiles like he's just discovered gold or something. It must be great to be loved that fucking much. A lot of people who consider themselves your friends, including me, would love to have you develop cancer or get hit by a bus. There would probably be open fighting to get to be the one to console Ben over your death. But that's not what I came here to tell you. "