An Angry Man

Nigel Scott was 40. He had been married for 15 years to the one true love of his life, Gloria. They'd met at college, had scandalised both of their families by shacking up together after their second date, but had then stunned everyone again by getting married just after graduation, both getting good, well paying jobs and eventually buying themselves a 'proper' home, after several small apartments.

A 'proper' home as in four bedrooms, gardens front and back and a two car garage. Ideal, they explained for when they decided to have children.

Gloria was also 40, had long blonde hair and was gorgeous. Well, Nigel thought so! So, sadly, did someone else. Or, to be more precise, so did more than somebody else.

One way that the sins of adulterers come to light in real life as well as works of fiction is that the poor, betrayed spouse accidentally discovers the love of his or her life fucking with someone else.

How it happened for Nigel was like this:-

Nigel had been working over regularly on a very important project for work. Gloria had not objected. In fact, she had sort of insisted that Nigel put the extra hours in.

It wasn't the extra money, though she admitted that would help, she felt, she told him, that because the project would bring about some socially beneficial results (virtually instant emergency houses for people who had been hit by fires, floods and tornado and hurricane damage) the sooner the project came to fruition, the better.

Nigel liked this as Gloria had never really expressed much of an interest in his work, a senior project manager at a multidisciplinary engineering solutions service provider.

That actually sounds much more complex than it was. Basically if you had any kind of major project that required some engineering input, MES would handle that for you, but at a handsome price.

One day Nigel's bosses called him in to a meeting. They told him that they had watched how he had grown and matured as an engineer in the ten years he had been with MES.

How it had not gone without notice that on at least several occasions he had managed to turn round the mistakes of some of his less able colleagues, saving the company many millions of Dollars.

They had decided that it was now time for Nigel to step up to the next level in the company's management structure, to become a director!

Grant Fieldstone, the company president said: "We know that it can't have been easy for you or your team, Nigel, these last several months. But especially for you!

"What with the UN Homelessness Council breathing down our necks, you put in way over and beyond the hours anyone could have reasonably expected you to put it.

"As a result, we are going to send you and your wife Gloria on a two week cruise. You'll start on a three week holiday as from now. The cruise is of the Caribbean. When you get back, you'll be in a new office in the director's floor. Your secretary Emma will be transferring with you.

"By the way, we know she has received help from counsellors after the death of her husband last year. We don't want you to break any confidences, you know that's not how we work, but how is she holding up?"

Nigel nodded. "She's not fully OK, not really, but she is doing so much better. But it'll take time. After all, it's not as if his death was expected, he was killed in a car wreck, as you'll recall."

They chatted, had a celebratory glass of wine and they insisted that Nigel left early to go home and tell his wife the good news.

He told Emma, his secretary of five years, what had transpired. She was genuinely thrilled by his news, which made him feel good. He was especially pleased by her reaction to the news that she was moving up the corporate ladder with him.

He packed his briefcase and went home.

He noticed that there was a car on the drive. The car was owned by Gloria's best friend ,Ruby Maxwell. Whilst he would have preferred to speak with Gloria in private, he didn't mind the fact that Ruby was there. Whilst Ruby was Gloria's best friend, her husband, Bob, was Nigel's best friend.

They'd met up as couples in the final year at college. Whilst Nigel and Gloria had decided not to start a family just yet, Ruby and Bob had twins, a boy and a girl, who were aged seven.

He parked his car in front of the garage, took his briefcase with him, locked his car up with the remote (nice, up-scale neighbourhood, but itinerant car thieves salivated for such easy pickings in suburbia) and walked in through the front door.

He turned right into the lounge of the house, only to find that his marriage had been over for some time, but nobody had had the decency to bother to tell him.

Ruby and Gloria were naked on the large sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace and were 69ing with a fury born of great passion and, he realised, much previous experience.

"What in the name of fuck are you two doing?" Shouted Nigel.

"Fuck!"

"Honey! It's not what you think!"

Nigel looked down at them, eyes burning coals of rage. "I mean, really? Husband catches wife with her mouth and her cunt involved in some adulterous lesbian sex and it's not what he thinks? Shit! You really are a stupid, fucked-up bitch, Gloria!"

Gloria has disentangled herself from Ruby, they both sat side-by-side on the rug. Gloria had tears in her eyes. "Please don't call me names, Nigel! Please! I'm sorry this happened, but please don't call me names!"

"Call you names?" said Nigel, an angry, sardonic edge to his voice. "You don't have the first idea of what I really want to call you and what I will be calling you!" He shook his head.

"Nigel," said Ruby. "It's not as if Gloria was cheating on you with a man. If she is with me, another woman, that doesn't count as cheating, does it? After all, if it did count as cheating, I wouldn't be here, with her, right?"

"No, you stupid slut!" shouted Nigel. "It isn't right! There was no get out clause in the marriage vows.

"No "forsake all others, expect for people of the same sex! Those vows were, to my mind, unbreakable. Cast iron guarantees of fidelity. Apparently, only as far as I was concerned."

The two women had stood up and both put on their slacks and their tops. "Didn't it turn you on, when you saw us together?" asked Ruby, hesitantly.

"No!" said Nigel, an note of obvious distress in his voice. "It didn't!"

Ruby swallowed. "But I thought it was a fantasy of all men to see their woman with another woman?"

Nigel shook his head in disgust. "Not me. Certainly not my wife with another woman. No."

The two women sat on two loungers, facing him as he paced about the room.

After several seconds of painful, charged silence, Gloria spoke. "Can't we get past this, Nigel?"

He shook his head, sadly. "I don't see how. After all, your disrespect for me is so great and terrible that I can't see any way through this."

"What do you mean, Nigel? Disrespect? What way? What disrespect?"

He shook his head again, this time there was pain in his voice. "You and Ruby were fucking just now. Where where you fucking?"

Gloria shook her head, uncertainly. "Well, we were in our lounge."

"No," said Nigel, distress now tingeing his outrage. When we were first married, we bought a large sheepskin rug that we really could not afford, but we loved it so much that we bought it, anyway. I seem to remember we went for a month of hamburger helper and noodles, but it was worth it, we thought.

"When we got the rug home, we put it in the living room of our tiny first apartment. We Christened that rug, buy making beautiful love on it. And after that, it was our special, magical place to make love on, so warm, so comfortable. And every time we moved home, we re-Christened that rug by making love on it.

"It was a special secret thing between us. Just for us. When people came and praised our rug, a special unspoken message of our secret would pass between us."

He looked at her and she saw the deep, irreparable hurt that she had done him by her thoughtless, selfish actions.

He spoke in a little over a whisper. "But the magic has gone from that sheepskin rug, Gloria. Whenever I see that rug now, it will not be our secret place for making love on. Now, instead it will be where you betrayed me with your lover."

Both women had tears in their eyes.

He spoke next to Ruby. "Ruby, I thought you were my friend as well as Gloria's friend. Looks like I was wrong, there. Any way, what do you think your husband Bob would say about this affair of yours, should I tell him?"

She looked up at Nigel. She shrugged her shoulders. "He... Bob... already... knows."

"What?" Shouted Nigel. How... I mean... and he never had the decency to tell me? How does he know, and I didn't?"

Ruby continued, haltingly. "Like you, he accidentally found out about our affair. We begged him not to tell you, we knew it would break your heart. So he told us that if we allowed him to join us for some... fun... that he wouldn't tell you. So that's what we did. We do threesomes with Bob, because he was blackmailing us."

Nigel shook his head. "Gloria, you and Ruby really are fucked up in the head, you know that? You and Ruby told me that it didn't matter you cheating on me with each other, as you were women, so that didn't count! But, Gloria, now it turns out you were cheating on me with another man, as well as with a woman! So... please tell me how that doesn't count as cheating, either?"

Gloria looked at him, sadly: "Because we were only with Bob to stop him from telling you about our... relationship. I... I... couldn't risk you being hurt, Nigel! I couldn't do that. So I let him have me to stop you finding out from him."

Nigel looked at both of them. "But I have found out, and now I am hurting, because you ripped my heart out and stomped it into the ground. I'm just grateful we never had kids."

At this point, Gloria began to sob, she was soon joined by Ruby.

They cuddled each other, but somehow, Nigel failed to notice this, or either no longer cared. "Nigel! Shouted Ruby. "Whatever you do, don't do anything to hurt Bob! I know he's a bastard, a piece of scum, but please don't attack him. Please! He's not worth going to jail for!"

Nigel nodded, absently. "Thank you, Ruby. I was thinking about getting my shit together to pay my ex-best friend Bob a visit, but you are right. Why spend jail time over a worthless shit like him?"

He went upstairs, sent a text message from his mobile phone, packed a suitcase and walked back down with it.

"I am leaving you, Gloria. We have no marriage. It's dead. You killed it.

We'll let the lawyers sort things out. And before you think of screwing me over by emptying bank accounts or whatever, I have instructed my attorney to instigate divorce proceedings, now.

"Remember! We did both sign a pre-nup. The divorce will be for irreconcilable differences. Not on adultery. After all, what man would want the world to know his wife made him a cuckold with another woman and his so-called best friend?"

Two weeks later, Nigel and his secretary, Emma, were enjoying the Caribbean cruise, together. There was nothing sexual in it. Nigel had explained what had happened to Grant and he had readily agreed to change the booking to two adjacent cabins.

Emma had agreed to help her boss out by accompanying him on the cruise. She had known Gloria very well and had been shocked at what she had done. She knew Nigel was hurting and wanted to do her level best (excluding anything sexual. Yet!) to help him get over the tremendous hurt he had undergone.

It was too early for Emma to even think about another man in her life, but when, or if, she ever did, she knew she wanted Nigel to be head of the list. Or even, perhaps, the sole name on it? Still, there was plenty of time for her to make her move.