In for a Penny, In for a Pounding

She texted me every day. I love you Rob Twice a day, every day.

When August came, Penny's daily texts became more insistent. One Saturday, which was a week before school started, she called over and over again for three hours. I had turned my ringer off after the first three calls. But the vibration kept going and finally, my friend Bill told me to just answer the fucking bitch. (Yeah, they all knew the hell I was going through that summer. Funny thing about tragedy, it brings out the best in your friends)

"What Penny?" I answered angrily.

"Rob, I broke it off with Davie. Can we please get back together?"

"Penny, you chose him over me. There is no we."

I hung up.

What can I say? I was young. The world is black and white at 23. The other thing was, in spite of my averageness, I was proud. As far as I was concerned, we were in a relationship and she had no right to be in another one, whether it pre-dated mine or not. Our entire relationship was a lie. Sure, I had been first to get pretty much anything sexual from her, but he got her parents.

She still texted me every day though. I love you Rob Twice a day, every morning and every night. I had friends at college still, they told me about her. They never saw her with any other guys and she shot down anyone they saw hitting on her. She even had a fucking college sweatshirt with my picture on it that said 'Rob's Girl', which I had never seen, but apparently she wore it all the time once the Fall weather kicked in.

"You really should just bite the bullet bro." my friend Bill said to me one Friday night over beers and pool. In early August, he had been right with me that I needed to stay away from her, but lately, he had been telling me I was clearly never going to be over her and she was the right girl for me.

I was my usual cheerful self. (sarcasm, I don't know how my friends put up with my pouty, negative self) "What the fuck are you talking about Bill?"

"Jesus dude, you sulk like a little bitch. Just go make up with her or get over her. It's fucking painful watching you sometimes."

I glared at him. He was right. "Tomorrow, I've been drinking." And went back to taking a shot.

"Tonight." He said and then my three buds grabbed me and threw a few bills on the bar to pay the tab and hauled me into Jerod's car. Jeff and Jerod were my best friends since middle school and Bill had been my best friend since kindergarten. I protested the entire drive to the dormitories.

They dragged me outside the car, stole my shoes off my feet and told me her room number and drove off, leaving me there pissed. Angry pissed, not drunk pissed (for my British friends).

I went into the lobby and signed in and they buzzed up. It was like a scene from some sappy girl movie, all her little friends came down with her and she ran past them and went for a hug, crying her eyes out. "I love you Rob, only you. I'll never hurt you again."

And God help me, I believed her, and all these fucking romantics started awing and cheering and it was about to make me hurl. So, I said, "Please get me out of here." And we went for a walk outside. Me in my socks and fully dressed for the chill. Until I relinquished my heavy jacket to her, she was wearing a tank top and pajama pants and slippers.

I won't say we were right back together. The sex didn't wait too long because she wanted it and missed it more than I did. But, within a week, our sex life was insane again and by December, she was invited to Christmas at my parents' house. February, I bought her diamond necklace as a pre-engagement present. I refused to propose until I got to meet her parents.

Spring Break, I drove her home and met her parents. The reception was not warm, to put it mildly. But they knew she was in love and there was really not a lot they could do about it. If they cut her off, she would have nowhere to turn but to me. Ironically, her older brother loved me, and we ended up becoming good friends. He was never a fan of Davie.

I asked her dad for permission to marry her, a very outdated idea, but I figured I had one shot at this whole engagement proposal thing and I wanted to make it as romantic as possible. I had asked him for a private conversation, so we were alone in his study.

"What if I say no? Will you walk away?"

"I'll just keep asking until you say yes, or we decide your approval isn't important anymore."

"I don't like you, but you have balls."

"I'll probably grow on you, and I'd like to keep them. I have no intention of marrying her until we decide where we will live. I can do what I do anywhere, so can she. We can't afford to fly up every weekend, or down if we moved here. So, I'm considering Philadelphia, which should put us at a good distance to drive to her home or mine."

"I should have my Master's degree by the end of next year, but I am committed to my current employer for another three years to pay for it. I am hoping that we can find her a starting position within an hour of my work for the first three years and move to Philadelphia after my commitment is done. Meanwhile, a five-hour drive won't kill us if it isn't every weekend."

"You've put a bit of thought into this." He smiled. "You aren't a bad guy Rob. I still don't like you. If you have a daughter one day, you'll understand."

He sighed and held his hand up when I started to say something. "I'm going to give you some advice, because my daughter is happier with you than she ever was with David."

"First, let her mom keep her delusion that her baby is a virgin on her wedding night."

He laughed when he saw my eyes open a bit. "Relax, you didn't say anything. I knew it when she came home for the winter in her freshman year. Just keep it out of my house until you are married."

I nodded.

"Second, make your proposal epic. She will remember it for the rest of her life. You will end up revisiting the place where you do it, so make it someplace you want to return to with her."

"Finally, she's my baby Rob. She always will be. I was the first man in her life and I will love her with my dying breath. Don't hurt my baby."

"You have my permission to make my daughter happy for the rest of her life." He grinned at me and gave me a dad hug. "Don't count on her mom to come around until the wedding plans begin. She hates you."

And her mom did hate me until we threw her and my mom together for invitations and plans. I took my father-in-law's advice and kept her mom in the dark about our sex life. I actually went insane on the proposal. Her brother helped me a lot with the details. He was only a year older than Penny, so he knew all of her people.

I took her to Central Park on July 4^th weekend, where all of her closest friends from high school and college, at least that I could get together, showed up to witness it. I'm not really a big romantic, at least not on the surface. But I learned a few dance steps with my buddies and their girlfriends and wives and we flash mobbed her. It was not easy to coordinate dance moves in two different states, but we managed to bring her girlfriends into it and I got her to cry her eyes out. Her dad told me later that I did a great job and the video went viral for fifteen seconds.

After the first three years, we moved to a suburb of Philly. Rob Jr was one and Brittany Alexis was in her belly when we settled on a beautiful four-bedroom, three bath home with a nice fenced back yard. We invited people from both hometowns for a home-warming party and threw family parties and friend parties several times a year. We would visit each of our hometowns once a month.

All this probably seems mundane. I bet your saying, "Rob, TMI, why the fuck do I care how often you visited your folks, get to the part where the cheating whore became a slut."

It's coming, soon, hang in there.

The main point is, we had it. We had the dream. The wife, the kids, the house, the job, the family support. The friends who we hung out with, their kids played with our kids. We had work friendships and neighbors over for barbecues in the summer. We ran our kids to extracurricular events. We left town two weekends a month. We both had full time jobs when this all happened.

And we loved each other. All the original Davie shit wasn't even in my mind anymore. I trusted Penny with my life. Why wouldn't I? Our sex life was incredible. I knew from guys I talked to about married sex lives, and believe me, we were way above the average. I told her so, and appreciated her. We held hands all the time. We kissed in public without blinking an eye. Anyone who saw us together would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were in love.

Eleven years we were married, when the fateful day arrived. Rob, Jr and Brittany Alexis were now the older siblings to Teresa Megan and Courtney Danielle. Little Courtney was out of diapers. Penny was teaching middle school. I was a division manager. We had great money. We had new cars every five years. We were hardly ever apart except at work.

Okay, here it is, the moment my life changed forever. Thank you for your patience.

It was summer, and Penny had taken the kids up to New York to stay with her parents for a couple of weeks. She didn't work summers beyond some planning that she could do anywhere. I came up on the weekends and stayed home Monday through Thursday nights.

It was a Thursday night and I had worked late, basically because it didn't matter. Nobody would be home waiting for me, so I usually worked late Monday through Thursday, so I could cut out early Friday and beat some of the traffic. So, imagine my surprise when I pulled up to my house and Penny's car was there in the drive. Not only that, but Billy's car was behind hers and there was a strange BMW I'd never seen on the street in front of our house.

Suddenly, a night of heating up a Hot Pocket and watching a random movie on Amazon Prime was off the menu. My cock was twitching at the sight of her car. I practically ran to the door, opened it up and saw a trail of her clothes, like bread crumbs, leading me to our bedroom. I was so excited I didn't even notice the additional clothes that weren't hers at the time. Nor, at first, did I compute that Bill's car was here and he was not sitting in the living room or dining room.

I took the stairs two at a time, nearly falling from the disorientation of doing that while running, when I reached the top of the stairs and heard THAT sound.

Yes, THAT sound. The sound of bedsprings bouncing and a headboard tapping the wall and a woman's voice moaning as a man's voice grunted out his attempt at dirty sex talk.

Oh, I had become a master of dirty sex talk. When I discovered how much my Penny loved being called my little slut, we experimented and I had a long list of vocabulary words that were acceptable. Fuzzy oyster was not on the list. In fact, there was an equally long list of unacceptable words that I learned never to use.

So, when I heard, "Take...my...fuckmeat...in...that...nasty...skank...hole" I knew it wasn't a recording of my voice. Fuckmeat, nasty and skankhole were off the approved list.

Besides, we didn't make recordings. We didn't need them. We were live action whenever we could manage the time to do so. Additionally, I knew that voice even though it was grunted, not spoken. I felt like I had been punched instantly to every inch of my body. It hurt so bad, I stood there with my hand on the door for far too long.

"Damn you Bill, just fuck me and get it over with."

I opened the door and behind the veil of redness that consumed me, I saw my best friend there on the bed with my wife. They looked up at me. "Rob—" Penny began in an exasperated voice that sounded like she was about to tell me for the fiftieth time how to use the remote control.

What I failed to notice, as I charged towards Bill prepared to rip his head from his neck, were the other men in the room. I wasn't blind. Their relevance just evaded me at the moment. Two pairs of hands reached for me, but somehow couldn't get a grip on my arms before my right fist was driving into Bill's chin so hard, it literally lifted him out of my wife and sent him practically flying off the bed where his head was unlucky enough to smash into the window.

"Rob!" She screamed then.

Two guys I didn't know grabbed me then and I took notice of the room beyond my wife for the first time since stepping inside. There really wasn't any conscious thought to what happened. It was like an out of body experience, I could see it, but I couldn't comprehend it.

"Oh God! No! Rob Stop! Do not hurt him!"

I've heard about adrenaline rushes before, but I suppose this was the first time I had truly experienced one. The guy who I didn't recognize on my right arm was bigger than me, the one on the left was about my size. Somehow, I yanked my arm so hard, that over two hundred pounds of right guy lost his balance going forward. That gave me the freedom to punch left guy in the face.

With left guy stunned for a second, I pushed him back into the door, grabbed him by the throat and slammed his head into the door repetitively. I guess I had done enough when he slumped to the floor, leaving a blood stain on the door behind him. But he bought right guy enough time to kidney punch me and amidst the screams from Penny, I heard him say, "Fuck Penny, he's stronger than he looks!"

I managed to get a shot in from my elbow to his head and glared at Penny... That was when she said those words, "Please don't do this to us."

Right guy was done playing, I guess. He looked at me with pity and then punched me in the face so hard, that my adrenaline rush was over. Blackness overtook me. And nothing else mattered.

*************************************************

I woke up tied to a chair in my bedroom. I'm not sure how much time had passed, but it was dark outside. It had only been around dusk when I got home.

"He's awake." A voice said.

My eyes slowly opened, and I felt nauseous. My vision was blurred at first and I wondered if I had suffered a concussion. As the focus slowly restored to my eyes, I started screaming bloody murder. Unfortunately, the gag in my mouth kept my shouts of rage from making any sense to the people staring back at me.

"Please stop this now." I heard Penny demand. "I don't want him hurt anymore."

I heard a chilling laugh, but my eyes were focused on my naked wife. Bill looked a bit woozy, as he sat next to her, both naked, both sitting against the headboard of our bed as if it was inconsequential. "Rob, this was never supposed to happen." Bill sighed, a deep look of regret and pity in his eyes.

"You have a lot of questions Rob." A voice came from the side and walked slowly into my vision. It was the left guy, the one I had slammed into the door until he fell. "You are a lot tougher than anyone thought." He laughed, rubbing his swollen jaw.

"Go ahead Penny, tell him." The guy smiled malevolently, stepping back beside the bed.

Penny started crying, tears dripping down her face in streams. "Rob, you were never supposed to know. I love you. I love you more than life itself. If you leave me, you may as well kill me."

"Oh stop the dramatics." Left guy said with exasperation in his voice. "I will be happy to tell him if you can't."

Penny sighed. "Rob, this is going to destroy you. I can't do it. I can't be the one to tell you that your wife is garbage." She started sobbing and ran naked from the room. Bill went to follow her, and Left guy shoved him back onto the bed.

"She can leave, you need to be here to verify what I tell your best buddy, Rob." Left guy sneered.

Bill looked ready to kill left guy and I have a feeling he could have, but right guy, the brute was standing there too and he looked pretty pissed with his black eye.

Left guy glared at me. "Think back about oh, fourteen years ago. Your junior year in college. You took something from me."

I had no clue who this fuck head was, but I was ready to kill everyone in the room. If I wasn't tied up and had a gun that is. My head was still foggy, but I couldn't recognize this guy at all. He looked at me for a sign that I knew what he was talking about and didn't find it, so he tsk'd his tongue three times.

"I'm the guy who loved her before you ruined her Rob."

Recognition finally came. I had never seen his picture, nor heard his voice, but I knew the name "DMMVD?" I asked around the gag.

"Very good Rob. You must be pissed at me right now. You won't hate me so much soon. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that you thank me when this is all over."

I shouted profanities into the gag that basically sounded like MFFFGGGMAASDDFSDF.

"I want you to know something Rob. And I mean this with all sincerity. I don't hate you. I respect you in fact. When you found out about me, you broke up with that cheating, lying whore. If only you had held to your principles..." He sighed. There was no sincerity in his voice, it was all quite theatrical, as if it had been rehearsed, in its delivery if not the precise words.

"We did break up every school year. We agreed that a long distance relationship would prove unrealistic. So those first few years, when you were seeing her at college, I didn't care. I was a little upset that you took the virginity that belonged to me, but you didn't know. I couldn't really blame you for that. I blame the lying cunt for that."

He saw the anger flare in my eyes at him calling my wife a cunt and he laughed mirthlessly.

"But, when she chose you over me—and Rob, she sadly never chose me. I moved on. I didn't hold a grudge. I wasn't thrilled, but I was wealthy, handsome, popular. I married well and lived... well, we will see if I get to happily ever after. I mean, who didn't think that you and Penny had that? And look at us now."

He looked over at Bill and shook his head. "The tangled webs we weave, huh Bill?" He laughed that cruel laugh again and Bill just sat there, clearly anguished.

"I suppose the best place to start is the beginning, don't you agree Rob? You see, what got us here was that summer when Penny left me. Well, the Fall after it to be exact. I think the first two summers she lived with her sexual emptiness. She certainly didn't fuck me, and I don't think she was the kind to go out for a bit on the side, but who knows in retrospect, perhaps a good question for your beloved wife after I leave.

The summer she broke up with me though. Well, you two were broken up and she wasn't sure her daily 'I love you' texts were going to get you back. So, she fucked me. She was incapable of going that long summer without sex. Oh, she made it through mid-July, but it got to be too much. Mind you, I was no longer a virgin. She certainly wasn't anymore. We had safe sex. We were a couple for all intents and purposes, in fact, we were still supposed to get married after graduation at that point. So, we kept it from her family, but we got away often to have sex.

Then, she broke up with me. She told me she loved you and had to try to get you back. I would have laughed, had it not hurt so bad. Imagine it Rob. Imagine Penny walking up here after all this time and telling you, 'sorry Rob, I love someone else.' Damn, that would hurt wouldn't it? And it did hurt. But I got over it, Rob, I truly did. This isn't about vengeance on you. I meant what I said, I respect you.

I'm a doctor Rob. A highly respected physician in my field. My field of expertise is OB/GYN. I have made some incredible break throughs in fertility studies. Don't roll your eyes Rob, there is a reason for me telling you this, I'm not trying to impress you with my resume.

You know Judy Carthright. Your kids get together with hers several times a year. Well, doctor-client confidentiality, let's not get into my relationship with her, beyond the fact that I've been to her house Rob. And I saw this lovely picture of a bunch of kids playing together and she told me who's they were. She was a little shy to tell me at first, knowing my history with Penny, but seriously Rob, that didn't bother me at all.