Deployment Pt. 03

"ITS NOT FAIR! You rip my heart out. TWICE! You let that asshole take my place, SIT IN MY CHAIR, and when you're done with him you drop your steaming pile of shit onto my lap?"

She was still mute, but I was on a roll. 5 years of getting shit on was coming out, and I couldn't stop it any more than she could. It was a runaway train.

"You fucked him. You 'fell in love with him' as you conveniently put it. You chose him over me. That was your fuck up, not mine!"

She finally found her voice, as soft as it was. "I never chose him over you. I WANTED you to forgive me and give us a chance. I was ready to give him up. If you'd come at any time to tell me that you wanted to be with me, I would have left him."

Instead of cooling the hot anger, this only enflamed it more. "BULLSHIT! You gave me some sanctimonious speech about accepting that dipshit as a part of your life and not making an ass of myself. YOU CHOSE HIM! You chose him over me the moment you opened your legs!"

With that she broke out in sobs. That's when I noticed the waiter from the restaurant standing in the doorway.

"Umm, sir, are you going to pay for the pizza?" The nervous kid said. He looked to be the same age as Savannah. I grabbed my wallet and fished out $25. "Keep the change kid." I mumbled. The kid grabbed his new found treasure and thanked me. My bill couldn't have been any more than $12, so he was pretty happy with his tip.

"I'm so sorry Jace." I flinched when she called me Jace, but I made no correction. She was already shaking violently with loud sobs. I felt bad for her, but I couldn't reach out and comfort her.

"Look Alicia. What's done is done. We can't go back. All we can do is move forward and be the best parents that we can be. " She nodded in agreement and placed her head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her as she cried into my shirt.

"How am I ever gonna get over you?"

"I don't know Alicia. I am pretty awesome." She looked up at me and broke into a tearful laughter.

"You know, we can always be friends with benefits. I haven't had sex in a little bit." She tried to make a seductive face, but with all of the tears and the snot, it was a failure.

"Well, now that you've gotten all of the BAD ideas out of the way, why don't we try to be friends? Hmm?"

I was rewarded with another smile. "Friends. It'll take some work, but I can manage that. As long as I can call you Jace."

"Hell, it hasn't stopped you yet. "

We walked to our cars with my arm around her shoulders.

EPILOGUE

We sat in the audience at our daughter's graduation, just as she sat at mine's years ago. To my left was the mother of my kid and my very dear friend. To her left was her fiancé, Tom. He was an okay guy. He was a little older than us and relatively wealthy. He had two kids from a previous marriage that were in college.

To my right was my beautiful wife, Sarah. I met her while doing security upgrades to her boss' building. She was my point of contact. Over the week that it took me to do the upgrades, she was with me every day. It actually got to the point where she didn't get her own work done because she was with me so much. We dated for 7 months before she moved into my new house. 3 months later we were engaged. 6 months after that, she was my wife.

To say that Alicia had a problem with Sarah would be an understatement. She treated Sarah with even less respect than I treated "Mr. Mike". Eventually, she realized that Sarah was here to stay and she backed off.

That's when she started dating. I guess there was a part of her that was still holding on to the faint hope that we would find a way back to each other. I'm not going to lie. There were a few close calls. But I couldn't give her my heart again. Both of us had changed so much that I'm not sure we could've made it work anyway.

I finally realized that while I could trust her as a friend, I couldn't make myself trust her as a wife. That ship had sailed. I did have a fondness of her. Hell, I actually loved her. But the Jason and Alicia Morrison that stood at the pier before I went on that fateful cruise were gone. 10 years of life has made us who we are today.

Savannah's name was called and she strut out on the stage. The audience erupted. Surrounded by my family and Alicia's family, who made the trip for this momentous occasion, we roared with thunderous cheers and applause until our lungs were sore. With a big smile, she grabbed her diploma and waved at us.

THE END