February Sucks: Same Old Me (2of4)

This is PART 2 OF 4 of a derivative work and alternate ending of GeorgeAnderson's story "February Sucks!" GeorgeAnderson is the author and sole owner of February Sucks and the characters he created. He no longer responds to requests for permission to create alternate versions or conclusions, of which there are now hundreds posted in Literotica's Loving Wives category. The original version can be read here:

https://literotica.com/s/february-sucks

WARNING: This is a LONG story. The four parts add up to 93,000 words, and very little of it is new or innovative. There's no BTB or RAAC. Readers familiar with "February Sucks" will find their patience tested. If you don't want to read it, STOP and go do something better with your life. And please, don't rate the story as one-star because it's too long and you didn't want to be bothered.

WARNING #2: If you've already read my story "C is for Cookie," you'll find that I've repeated myself a lot. That story has its roots in this one, and I've said most of the same things. I've got other stories in other categories where you'll find better variety.

The story continues with Jim's having left his children, Emma and Tommy, with Linda's parents.

***

I stood up and made for the door. "I thought I knew your daughter. After ten years of marriage and two kids, I really thought I did. I was WRONG. If this is how she is, I never knew her at all. Maybe you don't really know her either. Consider that." I knelt down and hugged my kids goodbye for the last time in what might be a long time.

***

I barely remember the drive back home. It was quiet, mercifully quiet. I stopped for lunch at some point, I guess. I didn't taste it. I couldn't even tell you what it was. Not Wendy's, anyway. I did make some calls. There was the marriage counselor Pete suggested; they had an opening that Thursday, which I booked. L.W.'s office was closed, but I called his personal number and told him it was an emergency. He agreed to meet me at four. Linda hadn't been in touch with him, and he had no idea what had happened. I told him that if Linda called him, he could tell her that I had been in touch with him, that I was safe, and that I did not want to talk to her. Nothing else. He sounded very worried when we hung up.

The next call was almost an hour later. I pulled over because my brain had been running around in the same unhealthy circles and looking for aspects of this whole thing that I hadn't examined. I didn't want to make this call, but there was something I had yet to hear, and I needed to hear it.

"Jim!"

"Rosie."

"I was there when you called Andy last night. I heard some of it. He told me the rest. Are you all right?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, no, of course not. I mean... Oh, I'm sorry, Jim. I'm so, so sorry."

"You're not going to tell me I should be HAPPY for her?"

"No. God, no, I'm not. Honestly, I don't know what got into Helen when she said that. Or Jane, or Dee, and least of all Linda."

"Yeah. Well. I understand you might not have been part of the hen party that was cheering her on."

"I was not, no. I didn't think it was right, the way she was treating you. And then when you came back to the table... well, I hardly know what to say."

"Did all you guys REALLY think that I'd be like 'Well, I'm kinda disappointed that I'm going home alone tonight, sure, but at least Linda's happy. I only hope she gets fucked real good by an incredible man, and I'm sure she'll tell me all about it whenever she gets back. We'll have other nights, no biggie.' Did you seriously think that's what I would fucking say?"

"NO. Oh, god, is that what we sounded like to you?"

"YES."

"God. No. No. No. Where did you get... oh, no. Is that what Dee said?"

"Pretty much."

"God. That's... that's just monstrous. Right in front of you. And Linda didn't even, like, ask. I mean, if you guys had like an open marriage or something, but no, that's not you. That's not you at all, is it?"

"Nope. We've all talked about this kind of thing, right? Cheating kills the marriage. One and done. That's what we've all said to each other, and we've all agreed, haven't we? We've said that kind of thing many times. So I really don't understand how the ladies in our little group suddenly decided that we're a swingers' club. And I REALLY don't understand how I'm supposed to be on board with it."

"I... I can't explain that. We were all just kind of starstruck, I guess. The other girls more than me. When I saw what was really happening, I mean, after the dancing, I got kind of uneasy. But even the dancing was too much for you, wasn't it?"

"Linda said she would only dance with me last night, because it was our special night to reconnect. She turned Dave down when he asked her, remember? That made me feel a little zing of pride, I'm not ashamed to admit it. So, yes, the dancing was a slap in the face. I was more than a little queasy about it. I don't suppose you guys noticed, you were all watching her."

"Jane noticed. When she stopped you from cutting in, I could see you weren't happy."

"That's putting it mildly. I doubt I'll ever be happy again."

"Don't say that."

"Why the fuck not? What I say and how I feel isn't up to anyone but me. It certainly isn't up to my former circle of friends to tell me how I'm ALLOWED to feel."

"That's true. I mean, okay, your feelings are valid, all right? I'm just... I don't know. I don't know what to say. I'm just trying to be encouraging, that's all."

"Well, honestly, that's kind of why I'm calling."

"It is?"

"There's something I need to hear, Rose. I'm calling to ask you, as a friend, to say it. And you have to mean it, Okay? If you can't, I'll talk to someone else."

"Name it, Jim."

"I need to hear a woman say, out loud, that there's nothing wrong with me, and that I don't deserve this. That I'm an attractive, worthy man, and I'm not worth dumping. I'm not hitting on you or anything, I just... need to know I'm not disgusting."

"Oh! Oh God. Oh, Jim. Oh you poor, dear man. No, no, there's nothing wrong with you. You're a good man, and a dear friend. And as a woman, I'm telling you that any woman would be lucky to have you, okay? Lucky beyond measure. You're a catch, and don't you dare think otherwise! We all think so. You don't deserve to be treated like this. Linda is an idiot, okay? She's a selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate fool. She has no right to take you for granted like this. None. Nothing about this is okay. It's just cruel. It's senseless, and it's cruel."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

"Thank you, Rose. I really, really needed to hear that. It seemed for a while that all the women I know were telling me 'Fuck Your Stupid Hurt Feelings,' and 'Get Over Yourself, Get With The Program, You Loser!' You know, because my wife is finally getting fucked by a REAL man, and Hooray, good for her!"

"Jim... it was not okay. It wasn't. It isn't. I only hope you can see your way past this somehow. It would be a terrible shame for you guys to lose your marriage because of this."

"The marriage was over the moment she dropped my hand and took his, Rosie. All the rest is just the aftermath. I know what kind of woman she is now. She's the kind of woman who'd do this kind of thing without a second thought. She proved it beyond all doubt, right in front of everybody. She belongs to whichever random stud wants to just TAKE her."

Rosie let out something between a gasp and a sob.

"Jim. Oh God. Jim. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?"

"When Linda calls around looking for me, tell her she fucked up. She fucked as far up as there is to fuck. That fuck is in orbit. That fuck is on its fucking way to fucking Mars. Tell her that when you pass on the message I left with Andy."

"Oh, I will, Jim. I'll say that to her face. Not just her. We all fucked up. God. We actually made fun of you for being jealous, didn't we? I'm so, so, sorry. That was inappropriate, and you were right to feel that way."

"Thank you. I needed to know I'm not crazy. I needed a break from hearing that I'm a terrible person for being upset. And I needed to know that I'm acceptable as a man. So thank you."

"God, how you must feel right now. Oh Jim. You feel rejected, don't you? Abandoned. Forsaken. Of course you do. Of course. God damn that Dee. God damn Linda. Shit. This is the very least I can do. God. Where are you? Are you home now?"

"No, and I won't be. I'm in the wind, like I told Andy. If Linda calls you looking for me, you don't know where I am, and I don't want her to know, either."

"I see. Well... good luck. I'd like to talk to you again. Soon. Call me anytime, and I do mean anytime, okay? Two o'clock in the morning, whatever."

"Well, I won't do that to you, Rosie, but I appreciate the offer. My best to Andy. Have a good afternoon."

"You, too."

"I'll try."

I hung up. That went better than I'd hoped.

***

I was almost all the way home before I remembered that I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be anywhere near where Linda might look for me. So I made for the part of town where L.W.'s office was, by the county courthouse. I was early, and I didn't have anything to do but wait. Around three-thirty, my phone started blowing up.

At first, it was Linda calling me. I felt the urge to pick up, but fuck her. I let it go to voicemail. She called again. And again. Then I began swiping my phone to hang up rather than answer. That should have sent the message that I wasn't talking to her. Then she started texting me.

Jim, please talk to me. Where are you? I need to talk to you. I need to know you're alright. Please. Please pick up the phone. Please call me. Please come home.

I got five or ten messages just like that, which I didn't respond to. She could see that I'd read them. She persisted with variations of that for a while, then began changing it up.

I love you. I need you to know that. I love you, and only you. You are my husband, and there will never be another man for me, not like that. I've come home to you just like I said I would, just like I always will. You are my home and my heart. Please, please, please know that. I know that you're hurt. I know that you're angry. If you would just talk to me, I know we can work it out. I know we can work through it. There's nothing we can't get past if we do it together. Please talk to me. Please. I'm begging you.

Funny. The words "I'm sorry" never seemed to appear in any of those texts, or the next dozen after that. No admission of wrongdoing. No guilt. No apology. God Damn You, Linda.

After any number of such messages, they got shorter and more to the point:

I just need to know you're okay. I know you're angry and you don't want to talk to me. I understand. I don't blame you. Just say something, anything, to let me know you're okay.

Of course, because this is all about what YOU want. This is about what YOU need. Fuck what I want. Fuck what I need.

Nothing about the kids. She must have gotten her mother's message, so she had to have known where they were. She probably hadn't talked to them yet. Trying to get a handle on me was probably her priority.

If you're upset with me, that's fine. Yell at me all you want. I'm sure you need to. Go ahead, I can take it. I probably deserve it. I need to hear it. You need to let it out. We can make up later, but please, you can't just ignore me like this.

Like you ignored me when you ran off with the Asshole, Linda? Is that what I can't do?

Her messages slowed down after that, and I figured she must be making other calls and messaging other people, trying to figure out where I was. Never mind her, it was time for me to meet with L.W.

***

L.W. was a family friend from my Granddad's time. Despite being mostly retired, he was still sharp as a tack, wise as Sophocles, and tough as nails when it came to anything our family needed. The dear old man greeted me warmly and escorted me into his office, a cozy, old-fashioned place of leather furniture and shelves upon shelves of books. I sat down, drank a sip of his brandy, and told him the whole sorry tale. He sat and thought a moment, and hummed a bit of a tune.

"All the girls he does please, and my love he has stolen away," he finally said.

"Huh?" I responded. He was used to that from us younger family members, and just smiled.

"You remember the old song about the man on the flying trapeze? It's about a guy whose girl ran away with the guy from the circus. It's more than a hundred years old by now. What's happened to you is, quite literally, a Very Old Song. Ordinary fellows like us have been abandoned by our mates for flashier specimens of masculinity since the days of the gladiators. The poor man who went to the circus never did get his girl back."

"So why do women go along with this stuff? Why do they let it happen?"

"You remember when that golfing celebrity, Tiger Woods, got himself into such a mess some fifteen years ago? He had a beautiful trophy wife, a fashion model of some fame, and he cheated on her like it was going out of style. I remember watching an interview with one of his paramours. Her brief affair ended her own marriage, and left her a single mom with a son of about six. Mr. Woods couldn't remember her, even when shown her picture. At least, that's what he said. After all that, this woman still said that Mr. Woods was a good man. Even after all she'd lost because of it, she didn't seem to have any regret for her affair with him." The old man paused and shook his head. "Has Linda said she's sorry she did it?"

"No. To be honest, I haven't given her a chance to say much of anything. She only got home maybe an hour ago. She spent all last night with him and probably most of the day today. She only started calling me and sending me messages a half hour ago, but no, the word 'Sorry' wasn't in any of them."

"That's to be expected. Right now, she's probably sorry you're hurting, and perhaps she's afraid for her marriage, but odds are she's proud of herself, and wants to stay that way. You probably don't watch those trashy tell-all talk shows on daytime television. That's just as well, they turn your brains to mush. But you can pick up hints about women's behavior there that you wouldn't get anywhere else. Not from what they say, of course, and certainly not from what the 'great experts' say, but from what they actually do. One of the more common scenarios is a woman who had an affair or a one-nighter with a famous person. And you know what? They may have had great careers, children and grandchildren, whatever, but the crowning achievement of their lives is getting chosen by Mr. Whoever and being used by him for a night or three. You can see it's true, not because they say it, but because for their one time in front of a big audience, that's what they want to talk about. With very rare exceptions, married or not, they're glad they did it. It's something that they think sets them apart from the ordinary, and they don't want to give that up, or have to regret it."

"Something to tell their children, eh?" I said bitterly.

"No, not their children," L. W. chuckled. "Their grandchildren. They don't want their children to go and do likewise, but they'll want their grandchildren to know they had a life, way back when."

The old man turned serious. "You want to know about your options are for a divorce. They aren't good, for either of you. I assume you're both still working where you were, making roughly the same money?" I nodded. "Then you likely won't have to pay much in alimony, but they'll stick you for child support. She'll get primary custody, and use of the marital residence, but you'll still pay half the mortgage. You can eventually claim half the equity when it sells, or she buys you out. I'm assuming she won't be able to do that, so you'll be on the hook. What do you have in savings?"

"We were pinching pennies to save for a bigger home, so there's some money there." My sadness deepened as I thought about the house we'd been working toward, where we would raise our children and grow old together.

"That will be split evenly. As you can see, the net result is you'll both be hurting financially for quite a while, unless one of you remarries for money or wins the lottery." He sighed. "As your attorney, I'll draw papers for you if you ask me to. As your family friend, I won't file them for at least ninety days. That's a standard cooling-off period, and you need one. You need to figure out what there is in your life that you'd give anything to preserve or protect. I know that used to be Linda; now you need something, or better yet someone, to live for. Find that, and let that guide your actions."

What did I have to live for? That was easy: Emma and Tommy. I would give anything, and do anything, to preserve and protect them. How did I do that? What did it look like? Hell if I knew. I'd want them to stay in the house and not be uprooted, but I didn't want to give the whole thing to Linda for the next fifteen years, either... wait a minute.

"What if we don't have to sell the house? What if we could, I don't know, give it to the kids?"

"Intriguing. You know, I think I've heard of something like that before. A divorcing couple set up a living trust for their children, naming themselves as trustees and their minor children as beneficiaries. They transferred ownership of the home and furnishings to the trust, so it no longer counted as marital property and didn't have to be included in the division of assets. They shared custody of the children so no one paid child support, and they were able to agree on a schedule for each of them occupying the house at various times when the other wasn't there. They preserved the household while dissolving the marriage."

"That's exactly the kind of thing I'd want to do."

"I'll get to work on it. I can have a draft of the documents ready in a few days. There are some pitfalls. You'll lose the homesteading exemption on your taxes, which is substantial, and you'll both be liable for the mortgage and upkeep of an asset you'd control, but would no longer technically own. But you do effectively hold on to the equity and the use of the residence, along with Emma and Tommy, of course. They'd have legal rights to the value of the property when they came of age. You'll still get burned, on paper, but not as badly as you would if you were forced to sell the property or buy each other out. In practical terms, nothing much would change."

"Perfect."

"There's a catch. You have to be in complete agreement. If Linda contests any part of this, or if the process becomes adversarial, it simply cannot happen. You'll need to maintain a good, healthy relationship with each other- if not as man and wife, then at least as partners in parenting."

"I understand. We're probably a long way from that right now."

"Well, I'll draw it up. There isn't any hurry. I'll draft the divorce papers as a joint petition, too, but I'm still going to put the ninety day hold on them. That's a good thing. What you need is time."

Time. God. Yes, I needed the time, and the space, but it would be time spent reliving the images of Linda giving herself to the Asshole over and over again, unbidden thoughts I couldn't banish. Time spent wondering what my future was going to look like, especially my relationship with Emma and Tommy. Time spent worrying about money, my career, and my self-worth. Time spent wondering if I was ever going to get laid again, and if so, when, and with who? I had to have the time, yes, if for no other reason than to calm myself and wear down the broken, jagged edges of this thing, but it felt like something to endure. Time is not my fucking friend.

I told him about my plans for the marriage counselor on Thursday, and he agreed that it was an excellent idea. He told me he'd have the papers ready by Wednesday so I could bring them to that meeting. I asked about Dave and Dee, and he referred me to another lawyer for that. He wasn't interested in handling anything adversarial at his age. He asked after my mother and I honestly told him that things had been awkward between us for the last few years, which he said was a shame, and I shouldn't be too hard on her. She is my mother, after all. I conceded his point and promised to call her and let her in on what was going on in my life.