February won't Suck Again

Like almost everybody else here, I have read the excellent February Sucks by George Anderson. This story must be a real teaser to all writers, because like many of us, I too felt the need to write my own ending. I sent a message to George Anderson asking for his permission to write this alternate ending, but I received no answer. I took the liberty of publishing it anyway and I wish to thank him for his writing. If he ever writes me to refuse my request, I will comply and remove the story right away.

If you're craving for a BTB story where the husband destroys everybody's lives, then I suggest you stop reading here. You will NOT be satisfied. And it will save you the painful trouble of leaving me a disparaging comment.

This story contains no explicit depiction of sex. Why? Because I find long descriptions of sexual acts very boring to write. Plus, there are authors on this site who do a much better job than me on that topic. Also, all characters others than those introduced by George Anderson are the product of my imagination, and any resemblance to existing people is purely coincidental.

I have left George Anderson's story unchanged, until the point where Jim gets to his hotel after that fateful Friday evening. This is where my story begins (in bold: the last paragraph I kept from the initial George Anderson's story. The rest is mine).

If you are still with me, enjoy!

My anger cooled as I walked the block and a half to the hotel. It was replaced by the deepest sadness I had ever known. Linda and I were supposed to be making this walk together, holding hands, chaffing our friends about what they were going to get up to once they got to their rooms, and being chaffed in our turn. She was supposed to be holding my arm that way she does, and pushing her face into my coat sleeve when the conversation got too risqué. Instead, I was alone. Alone, I rode the elevator, trying not to remember what Linda and I had gotten up to in other hotel elevators.

I hesitated when I got in front of the room door. I had no way of knowing where Linda and LaButtshit had decided to end up for their night, and I didn't really feel like going through yet another embarrassing moment, like walking in on them in the hotel room I had rented. I pressed my ear against the door, but I could not hear anything. I opened the door slowly, and was relieved to see that at least, they were not in our room. Well, MY room, I should say.

I sat in the armchair, still stunned by what had just happened. What I needed the most at that very moment was a beer, or a shot of Jack Daniel's. Or both. I had never been much of a drinker, but that was not your usual evening, to say the least. There was a small fridge in the room, but it was a convenience fridge and not a room bar. Nothing to drink. Since there was no other choice, I gave myself a kick in the ass and went down to the hotel bar.

I sat at the bar and got my beer and shot. The shot went down fast, and the burning sensation in my throat gave me a welcome break from the burning sensation in my guts. Well, a very temporary break, but still...

I could not help re-playing some of the shit Dee threw at me while at the bar. 'Linda hasn't left you. She'll come home to you tomorrow, and you'll have plenty of other special nights together. But she is spending tonight with Marc.' Like a mother would speak to her child: 'You can play with your little cars tomorrow, but tonight you have to go to bed early.' That had been so condescending, but also infantilizing and humiliating. I think I hated Dee even more than Linda in that moment.

The bar was unusually crowded, especially for a hotel bar. I noticed that the part of the bar where I sat could not be seen from the hotel lobby. That was a good thing, since I did not want my ex-friends to see me when they got back.

Part of me was expecting them to come and check on me, but it seemed that they had decided to enjoy the rest of their evening at the club. That came as a relief. That was a bunch of people I hoped I would never have the bad luck of stumbling into again. The good thing was that they were mostly Linda's friends, and since Linda would be my ex-wife in a near future, chances were good that they would be out of my life as well.

As I milked my beer, I started thinking about a short-term plan. One thing for sure, I would not sleep in my bed at home. I would not sleep again in that bed, that was a certainty. And I did not want to be there the next day if and when Linda arrived with LavAsswipe after their wonderful night. My first idea was to go to a motel, but since this room upstairs had already been paid for, why not use it. I would just have to leave before the others the next day, even if only not to have to face them in the lobby.

I would call Mrs. Porter to tell her not to feed the kids because I would pick them up and bring them to their favorite restaurant for a nice breakfast. Then I would bring them to my parents' for the rest of the day and ask them to take care of them. I would pretend that Linda and I had to go out of town for the day because a friend of hers had an accident. Well, I would forge something around that storyline. And then, I would park in my street, far from the house, and wait until Linda had arrived and until I was sure that LaShitface was gone. And then, showdown!

I have never been a vengeful guy. When stuck in an uncomfortable situation, I would always try to get out of it quickly, and never look back. Revisiting a painful situation was not my forte, and this included seeking revenge. I have always preferred putting my energy into easing my own pain rather than into causing more pain to others. I would not seek revenge on Linda, or even on LaForeskin. And I had no intention of being aggressive or to threaten her in any way to end up doing jail time. But I intended to make it clear that the choice she had made tonight was the initial step toward the unstoppable process of ending our marriage and radically altering our family life. And I would make clear to the rest of the planet that this had been HER doing.

In a sense, I would be the good guy, again, come to think of it. I would allow her to pursue her relationship with LaNutsack, or even have sex with whomever she wanted. But if her kink was to have all the sex she wanted while poor little cucky Jim was waiting for her at home without making a fuss, she was in for a big disappointment.

I was so much absorbed in my own thoughts that I never noticed that person walking in my direction.

"Jim Tobin, Oh My God, is this you?!" asked a very pleasant feminine voice behind me.

I turned around. It took me one or two seconds to recognize her.

"Carolyn St.James!? Wow! How long has it been? 10 years?!"

"Jim, I am with clients here, they are about to leave. I will just say goodbye to them, and I'll be right here! Gimme a minute."

I watched her go back to a table where two middle-aged women and one older gentleman had stood up and were putting their coats on. She chatted with them a bit and shook hands with them.

Carolyn was my college best buddy Adam's sister. She was a knockout at the time we turned 20, and she was even more of a knockout ten years after. As I recalled, she was maybe a year older than me.

"How have you been, Jim? I'm so glad to see you!" she said, coming back. She waved the bartender for a glass of Chardonnay, and I discreetly signaled said bartender to put everything on my tab.

"Pretty good, actually! I was finally able to make it to full-fledge University professor. I even had a student a few years ago who didn't fall asleep in my Partial Differential Equations class. Am I good or am I good?"

She laughed. The sound of her laughing was soothing. Given my current predicament, managing to make a beautiful woman laugh was a balm. I remembered Carolyn kindly making fun of Adam and me because we were good in mathematics, when she hated that with all the cells in her body. Adam and I used to be science nuts, and she had always been much more of a humanities person.

She told me she was now a representative for a communications firm, and she had come town to meet with local clients for a major contract. She was driving back home the next day.

She talked to me about her life. I had no idea she was divorced, since I had not spoken with Adam in more than 6 months. She told me she had been married for 3 years to a seemingly great guy with whom she had a 2-year-old boy. They had had a very normal and quiet couple and family life, until they had been awakened by a police raid at their home at 6 AM on a Thursday morning two months before. The police had found some child porn in her husband's computer and all evidence that he was a cyber pedophile. He was accused of child luring. She had filed for divorce right away. She told me everything had been capped two weeks before.

I had heard about that disgusting individual at the time. It was in the news. But I had never made the connection with Carolyn. I was dumbfounded. She was crying. The pain and the shame were still hurting. I hugged her.

"What about you Jim? What brings you here alone on a Friday evening? Last I heard from you, you were still living in this area with your wife and your kid?"

"Make it kids, with an S, now. Emma is six and Tommy is four."

"Congratulations!" she raised her glass.

"As for Linda, well, it used to be fantastic. Until, what, an hour ago? Now, it's above complicated, at best," I said, sighing.

Her face took the shape of a question mark. I proceeded to tell her the events of the evening. With each new tidbit, I could see her jaw dropping dangerously to the floor.

"And no, I assure you, as crazy or unbelievable as the story may sound, I am not pulling your leg or making up a story to be pitied," I said.

"What are you gonna do? Are you gonna get a divorce?" she asked.

"I dunno. Probably. Right now, I don't know how I feel. I'm not even angry. I just feel like I'm in an out-of-time or an out-of-space zone. Like the Nexus in Generations."

She laughed at that one. I remembered the whole St.James family were big Star Trek fans.

"I understand," she said. "Well, no I don't, actually. I can't say I understand. I can only imagine what kind of shock that must be."

"You know, how about not thinking about it and talking about something else?" I suggested. "I'll deal with it tomorrow."

Carolyn had always been a good person, very compassionate... and tactful enough to change the subject. After renewing our drinks, she started to give me all the gossip about our hometown and about Adam's life that had been on overdrive since he moved to the West Coast with his wife and kids a few months before. She truly managed to make me laugh, and to temporarily forget the events of earlier that evening.

After another drink, the conversation became more flirtatious. I could see the characteristic glimmer in her eyes. Showing me the tattoo she had at the top right of her back came in handy as a perfect excuse to make me slightly lower the zipper of her dress. I complimented her on the tattoo, then on her back, as I examined it while she was leaning towards me, with her hand on my thigh. Up on my thigh. Touching the back of such a beautiful and sexy woman would have turned on any red-blooded creature. She must have felt my hard-on.

"Not that I wouldn't love it, but I'm afraid this is not the ideal place to look at the lower part of your tattoo," I said, with a lustful grin.

"Perhaps your room would prove to be a more appropriate... venue?" she suggested, with a wink. She had always loved exaggerating on the vocabulary. I gave her a quick kiss. I gave my room number to the bartender to close the tab and we made our way to my room.

Strangely, I was not really thinking of Linda at that moment. Yep, Carolyn was that hot. I knew I was about to have one of the greatest sexual times of my life, but for some reason I did not see it as revenge sex at the time. I was with a woman that I had lusted after for a few years when I was in college, and tonight she was free, available, and interested. And knowing Linda's strong feelings about fairness, I felt that in some sort of twisted way, she had given me a free get-out-of-jail ticket.

The hostilities started as soon as we were in the elevator. We started to kiss like there was no tomorrow. I discovered that Carolyn was not only a stunning woman, she was also the epitome of sensuality and sex drive. We barely made it to my room before we started stripping.

The first go was pure sexual energy, and after a 10-minute break, we started again, only that second time it was much more sensual and tender lovemaking. We cuddled and fondled for another half hour before she fell asleep, in my arms. There was no awkwardness, as is often the case after having had sex with a stranger. But then, she was no stranger: she was a friend.

My last thought before falling asleep was for Linda. I still wanted to strangle her for what she had done. When she had left me in the bar earlier that evening, it had felt like my life was totally destroyed. But with Carolyn sleeping beside me, it felt like a part of it was working again.

***

It was 9:15 when I woke up on Saturday morning, with Carolyn's beautiful hands caressing my chest. She was smiling.

"Hello sexy one, slept well?"

"Yeah," I answered. "I never thought that an evening that had started as a nightmare could finish in such perfect bliss."

"Well, you're gonna have to give me proper thanks for this, dude," she said, with a deliciously mischievous grin.

And we got at it, again.

"Jim, that was outstanding! My ex-husband never made love to me like this. Well, come to think of it, since he apparently preferred teenage boys..." she said, sarcastically.

There was nothing intelligent to reply to this. I just kissed her and held her in my arms.

After I had a quick shower, Carolyn finally got up and dressed, saying that she would take a shower in her room before hitting the road. We had of course exchanged our contact information. She said she would have to come over many times over the coming months, and that she would love to see me again. The feeling and the interest were mutual.

She was about to leave, and I was hugging her when we heard a card activating the lock, and then the door opened.

'Oh... geez... Linda!' I thought. 'Off course, silly, she has the other card to open the door.'

Linda got in with a crisp 'business as usual' attitude. When she saw Carolyn and me, her swagger dimmed somewhat; in fact, she came close to losing it.

"What is going on here? What the hell..." she started yelling, but interrupted herself, and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to regain some sort of composure. I guess she had realized that venturing in that direction at that precise moment would make her sound like a total hypocrite. Carolyn stepped in.

"Nice to see you again, Linda. We met at my brother's wedding, remember? I'm Adam St.James's sister, Carolyn," she said, extending a hand.

Linda refused it, but that did not stop Carolyn.

"Meeting Jim in the bar downstairs last night was un unexpected pleasure. And yes, we had sex. And yes, it was great. The last few months were a nightmare for me, and that kind of evening with a real man like Jim was just what I needed. Jim told me the story of what you did last night. I hope you had fun, and I guess I must thank you for the hall pass that you gave him. I've known Jim for years and I knew he was a gentleman and a fun guy. Now, I know of another exceptional talent that he has! You're a very lucky woman indeed, Linda," Carolyn said, with perfect composure.

I tried to hide the blush I had started to feel on my face. Carolyn gave me a peck on the cheek, said goodbye to Linda and me, and left. Linda remained speechless for a few seconds. She sat on the loveseat, her face void of expression.

My ego had now reached the upper limit of the atmosphere. I finally turned to my wife.

"Linda, I am a little surprised to see you here. I thought you'd be going home directly," I said, trying an indirect approach to get some information about the night before without looking too much interested.

"I wanted to pick up my things here. And possibly yours. I had no idea where you had ended up," she said, trying to sound as casual as possible, but her lips were trembling.

"Well, it appears that this detail was abysmally low in your priority list last night," I said sarcastically.

She sat on the armchair. "Jim, please understand that I..."

"Stop, Linda. We'll talk about that later. First thing is to leave here and go get the kids. And frankly, I don't really feel like talking to you at this time. Now, is LavAsshole waiting for you down in the lobby? Cause I don't want to come face to face with that miserable primate."

"No. I got here by cab," she said, definitely less shining than when she had entered the room.

I was glad to not see anyone we knew when I checked out. We drove in silence to our house.

"I thought you wanted to drop by Mrs. Porter to get the kids?" Linda asked.

"I want you to go there yourself. So you will take your car. Phil and Jane are supposed to pick up their kids as well. I don't want to see those two, ever again," I said.

Linda was starting to realize that the aftermath of her wild evening would not be the walk in the park she had expected.

When she got back with the kids, I had a pot of coffee brewed and I was having breakfast with the paper. The kids went to play in their rooms and Linda sat with me with a cup of coffee.

"My phone went dead last night. I recharged it in the car, on my way to Mrs. Porter. I had a few messages from Dee and Jane. They wanted to know if I was ok."

I did not react. I listened intently but pretended to be undisturbed in my reading of the news.

"They told me you said you would divorce me."

I folded the newspaper and was about to start delivering the speech that I had rehearsed while she was gone picking up the kids, when said kids got in the kitchen saying they wanted some juice.

"We'll talk about it tonight, Linda. When the kids are in bed."

And as the kids were out of earshot, I could not help rubbing it in: "Unless of course his excellency Sir LaValliere has other plans and decides to pick you up for the evening. He is ENTITLED to the favors of the woman of his choice, isn't he? Perhaps I should negotiate with him for some time with you? I would certainly not dare disturb his important schedule or be an obstacle to him fulfilling his superior needs."

Linda was furious. But she worked hard to keep her composure. And just like it is common between the two of us when we are angry, she too raised the language level. I guess that kind of sarcasm was our way of showing anger without getting violent.

"May I remind you that you spent the night fornicating with a bomb? I think you waived your right to despise my actions, my dear darling." Her voice was soft as velvet, but her eyes were like machine guns.

I did not want this to escalate, not with the kids in the next room.

"Linda, Carolyn was my second choice last night. My first choice was you. But someone else showed up and you decided he was your new first choice. In other words, I had chosen you, but you chose him. That's the story of last night. So if you think there is more to say about it, I'll be glad to hear it, but we'll wait until the kids are asleep tonight."

She had lost some of her self-confidence. Good. She would stew for the rest of the day.

***

One of the many things I hate about winter is that we just cannot do yard work or work outside the house. An afternoon spent outside would have been welcome. It was March 1st, but there was still some light snow and the temperature was near freezing. Even though February was over, Mother Nature felt the need to remind us that she could not care less about the calendar.