Just Once: Conclusion

Just Once… If You Don't Mind? Conclusion

Kalimaxos wrote the story: Just Once . . . If You Don't Mind? As an open ended story and with the invitation to readers to come up with an ending to his story. He also states: "You don't need my permission." Accepting his challenge, I offer this story as a possible conclusion to his original. All characters are over the age of 18.

He concludes his story:

When I finish reading it, I noticed Leslie was at the kitchen island filling her glass again.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"I will be," I replied.

She nodded and came back with the bottle and filled her glass. Sitting next to me this time, she refilled my glass and turned to look at me with those doe-like eyes.

"So, Rick? What do we do?"

End of story by Kalimaxos

* * * * *

I turned to her and said, "Let me explain. An hour ago if you would have asked me, 'Are you OK?' I would have said, 'No.' But things have changed. I know you did not come here for this, so I'll give you an opportunity to back out. Are you willing to listen to me for a while?"

"I won't say that I have nothing better to do, because, if you would ask me, I have an idea of something way better that we could do together. But I understand you've just been dumped on and maybe right now you need a sympathetic ear even more than you need a wet pussy. So let it all hang out, and if it gets so bad that I don't want to hear any more, I'll just excuse myself and go home. Fair enough?" she asked.

"Fair enough," I answered. "And if you stick around to the bitter end, I will answer your question, 'What do we do?'

"Before I retired from the Army I was an intelligence officer. That means I gathered information, assimilated it, tried to make sense of it, and finally determined a course of action based on my understanding of the data and information. Up until an hour ago, I had practically no data to work with. My wife left without so much as saying good-bye. I could not contact her by means of her phone or text messages. All I knew was that she was heading down to South America with the rest of her surgical team. I did have her itinerary.

"But in the last hour I have talked with her briefly over the phone to discover that she is shacked up with Trey. You have come and given me additional information including that it is your understanding and her understanding that I may have sex with you while she is gone to kind of make up for the fact that she will be fucking Trey for six weeks.

"And I also have the letter from her that you gave me in which she tried to argue the point that she deserves this but that at the end of the six weeks we can get back together again and live happily ever after because she still loves me. Well, that's kind of a crude summary, but my point is: Before I did not have much information to go on at all, and now I have information. Now I can begin analyzing that information. Eventually I should be able to make some informed decisions on the basis of that information and my understanding of it. Then I can take action.

"So I'm afraid, in answer to your question: 'What do we do?' I'm going to have to say that I really appreciate your coming over here and giving me all the information that you have given me. And words cannot adequately describe how honored I am that you would be willing to have sex with me. You are an extremely attractive woman and you have demonstrated that you are kind and thoughtful as well. But the information I have about you is only a small part of all the information that I have to consider. And if I make a decision based on only part of the information in front of me, I will most likely make a mistake.

"So what we are going to do is this: You are going to go back home with the understanding that you are not the problem. There is nothing wrong with you at all. But before I make any decisions I am going to have to study the data -- all of the data - before I decide how I will act based on the facts before me.

"When I think my head is clear and I am seeing the full picture, I will formulate a plan of action, and you will be the first person I talk to. Thank you so much for your friendship. It really means a lot to me right now."

I stood up and she did, too. I moved to her and drew her to myself, giving her a hug. I don't know how she took it, but it was meant to be a hug I would give a friend who had helped me out in my time of need. I walked her home. She had locked her doors but had left lights on inside the house. When I was sure she was safely inside I went back home to think.

I went to bed early but did not sleep all that well. Fortunately, I was able to compartmentalize. I had plenty to do at work and I concentrated on the job at hand. But as soon as there was a break, my thoughts went to Marcy and what I considered to be the destruction of our marriage.

But the most pressing issue was what to do with the Nielsens. In two days I had that sorted out. I did not want to turn them down while eating their steak. I invited them over for pie-a-la-mode. I bought two pies at a good bakery -- peach and cherry -- and some high quality vanilla ice cream. They came over at about eight in the evening. This time she was wearing a miniskirt and a dress shirt tied under her breasts. On her feet was a pair of three inch wedge sandals. The soles of the sandals were wide enough that she could navigate the yard without much difficulty.

We began by making small talk as we ate -- the weather, the local baseball team, the new pizzeria that just opened up -- things like that. But eventually I had to get to it.

I opened up, "I spent 24 years in the Army before I retired and got the consulting job I have now. I spent a lot of time away from home. The worst or longest deployments were in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. Those days were very difficult for my wife and I did not always appreciate how difficult they were for her.

"They were difficult for me, too. You've seen my wife. She is an attractive woman. I appreciated that about her. Many people consider men like myself when they are gone away from their wives for long periods of time to turn into horndogs, chasing every skirt they can find, and fucking just about any female who does not fight them off.

"It is true that some guys are that way when they are away from home. But not all are that way. This may be too much information, but Leslie has shared some very personal information about the two of you, so I feel that I may safely share information about myself with you. I dealt with the loneliness not by chasing after any and all available women, but by masturbating and fantasizing about my wife. Yes, sometimes I would look at a girly magazine or a lingerie catalog, but in my fantasy I would picture my wife in the provocative clothing and think about all the sexy things I would like to do with her -- things like taking her to night clubs where she would be dressed to kill and spending the evening dancing with her, admiring her beauty and playing with her body until the two of us could not stand it any more and then going home or to a hotel room and having wild and crazy sex until we were exhausted. Or going to a beach where people wore skimpy swimwear but hers was the skimpiest of all and it drove both of us wild with lust until we had to fuck.

"The bottom line is that I did not really share any of this information with my wife. And it seems she has concluded that I would love nothing better than relieving my sexual desires by spending time with you. I have no doubt that for the man who is single or who holds no special desire to remain faithful to his wife, you would absolutely rock his world.

"But I have intentionally nurtured my fantasy and masturbation life in order to stay faithful to my wife. I say to my own shame that I have not been as faithful as I wanted to be. But having been gone on six months deployments and a year deployment, I can tell you that the six weeks of Marcy being gone I can and I will remain faithful to her. And I will do that no matter what she is doing because -- as she herself said in her letter, 'Two wrongs don't make a right.'

"I understand that the two of you have a slightly different set of values or a different take on how you honor your marriage vows. I am not judging you. I am happy for you. You seem to have your act together much better than Marcy and I. But right now, even with her permission, I cannot have sex with someone other than her. I just can't. I almost wish I could because Leslie is such an attractive woman. But for the time being I couldn't live with myself. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I hope you'll forgive me. I really do value the friendship that Leslie showed me the other night when she came over to the house right after my devastating telephone call. Her being there for me and listening to me really helped."

We finished our pie and washed it down with military grade coffee, moving to small talk again. They left with both of them offering a, "Well, if you ever change your mind . . ." and "If there's anything we can do to help we're here for you. We understand you're going through a lot."

Work kept me busy, but I still tossed the situation around in my mind during the waking hours when I was not at work. Some of the most difficult conversations I had were with the kids. They knew that Marcy was gone to South America on a medical trip, but would call asking about how she was doing and I could tell them nothing. She was not communicating with me at all and evidently not with them either. I did not tell them about her sleeping arrangements. If they found that out, it would not be from me.

In spite of the visual stimulation I received from the lovely Leslie who stopped by every day just to say, "Hi," the first two weeks Marcy was gone I had no interest in sexual thoughts or sexual release. The third week was an eye opener. I thought I felt the urge to rub one out, but when I tried to fantasize about Marcy my thoughts were always interrupted by mental images of her in the arms of Trey. If I tried to picture her in a bikini at a beach, she would be there with Trey. If I wanted to picture her in a little black dress dancing with me at a night club, the image my mind conjured up was of Marcie dancing in the arms of Trey.

This lasted for about two weeks and then I switched my imaging techniques. I did not want to picture Leslie or some woman that I knew or who was real, but I was able to conjure up the image of a composite of a couple girls I knew in high school and what that girl might be like now, and finally I had an image to which I could masturbate and get some relief. Of course, the unintended consequence was that Marcy became more and more removed from my sexual desires.

Although there certainly was no need, as Marcy requested, one week before she was scheduled to arrive back into town (you'll notice I did not write, ". . .arrive at home,") I got myself tested for STDs. If I would have picked up a disease it would have been from her from before she left. That would have been a significant piece of information. But the results did come back clean. I would take them with me when I went to the hotel to meet her in the lobby. I did not want to be the one to be accused of destroying my marriage because I refused these simple requests of Marcy.

From the beginning of the third week on, I started jotting down notes of all the things that crossed my mind concerning our situation. Three days before she was scheduled to arrive I began to compile those notes into a letter that I would give to her when I gave her the results of the STD test.

Her flight was due to arrive on Saturday at 2:12 in the afternoon. I had no way of telling whether it was on time, early or late. But using the 2:12 time, trying my best to follow Marcy's instructions I arrived at the Hotel parking lot at 3:55. I parked my pick-up truck and waited in the parking lot until 4:10. I got out of the truck, phone in hand, looking at the time. I entered the doors to the hotel lobby at exactly 4:12. She was there, seated in a stuffed chair facing the door as I entered. She got up quickly and walked toward me. Her walk was tentative. I could not read her facial expression. It was not hostile. It was not surprised. It was not joyful. It was like she did not know what to expect. I would guess that my facial expression matched hers pretty well.

I reached out my hand as if to shake hers. She extended her hand toward me but did not stop coming toward me, nor I toward her and our handshake turned into a hug. At almost the same time we both said, "It's good to see you. How are you?" We broke off our hug and each let out a gentle chuckle at our mirrored greeting.

She did not immediately say, "Come up to my room," which would have made things awkward. So instead I pointed to a couple of chairs over in the corner of the lobby that were unoccupied and were at an angle where two people could sit in them and talk to one another.

"Can we move over to those two chairs?" I asked.

She nodded and we moved to them and sat down. "Marcy," I said, "I have tried to follow all of your instructions to the letter because I so much want to make this work."

She interrupted me. "I know. I saw you drive in and park almost fifteen minutes ago and then stay in your truck until you would walk through the doors precisely two hours after the time my flight was scheduled to arrive. It was cute," she said as she gave me a slight smile, "but I didn't really mean to word my instructions in such a way that you feel you have to walk on egg shells around me."

I continued, "As you asked, here is the lab report on my blood work for STDs. You will see that I am clean and I can assure you that I have not had sex with any person since the time I had this blood work done. I would swear to it if you want me to." I handed her an envelope with the results of the lab tests inside.

"What is making me nervous and apprehensive is what comes next, because I will be asking you to allow us to deviate slightly from the rest of your plan which was, as I remember it, to go up to your room at this point.

"Please allow me to explain. I really appreciate the letter that you wrote to me and that Leslie gave to me when she first came to the house. It gave me your explanation concerning what you were doing. The first time I read it I spotted things that had you told them to me in a conversation, I would have argued with. But I couldn't argue with a letter. And I could read it again and again. And I could read it sentence by sentence. In doing so I gained great insights into myself and our life together.

"Marcy, Marcy, we have done a terrible job of communicating with one another! There were things in that letter that if I would have had those insights earlier in our life together, and would have studied them over carefully the way I did your letter, I would have changed my ways and we would have been much closer as husband and wife, much closer as a family and much happier with our lives.

"So I have done for you what you did for me. I consider your letter to be a precious gift. I have now written you a letter. I hope you can receive it as a gift. You might think, without looking at it that in my letter I have tried to refute everything you have said in your letter. That would not be accurate at all. I will acknowledge that much in your letter is spot on. There are other things in your letter that force me to ask for your forgiveness.

"So please, please! do not take the fact that I am not ready to go to your room with you as a rejection of you. Instead, please take this letter I have written to you as a heartfelt gift to you. Read it and reread it until you are sure you understand what I have written. And then we can talk, on the basis of our letters to one another in an attempt to build an intimacy we never really had. Can you do that for me. Please?"

She took the second envelope from me. She seemed almost relieved as she told me, "I can do this for you. But then what?"

"I put that at the end of the letter," I said, "because there are a number of options, whichever works best for you." We did another hug. Maybe it could be best described as a brother/sister hug. She turned to go to her room. I went out to my truck, hit a pizza place on the way home, and waited. I did not know what her reaction would be.

* * * * *

The letter.

At this point in the narration, the story is more easily told from Marcy's point of view. Marcy writes:

I took the letter upstairs with me to my room. I felt like I had dodged a bullet. It was a thick envelope -- obviously a longer letter than mine. In spite of what he said and the way he said it, I figured the letter would tell me that my way of thinking was all wrong and then he would express his opinion with an explanation why he was right. Nevertheless, I had taken the letter from him, and by doing so I left him with the impression that I would read it. Having done so, I felt an obligation to read it at least once. Besides, I had nothing better to do.

My Dearest Marcy,

Where do I begin? Maybe with the telephone call to your room in Bogota where you told me, "I need to do this before I get old." Or in your letter, "I need a vacation from us."

When I first read your letter and remembered your statement over the telephone I thought you were acting very selfishly. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that your selfishness is nothing compared to mine.

How so? I realized I am an adrenaline junkie. And there are few jobs that give a person that adrenaline rush. Firefighters get it fighting a dangerous fire. Police get it when they face a dangerous situation, and serving in the military can give one an adrenaline rush. Piloting a helicopter on a dangerous mission, to be specific, gave me an adrenaline rush. I lived for those. They are, to a large degree, what kept me in the military -- and what kept me away from my wife and away from my children.

Yes, it is nice to describe my service in the military as being for God, country, and loved ones, but many times my service was rendered so that I could continue to experience my adrenaline high.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that hardly anyone is completely altruistic in his motivations. I stayed in the army for selfish reasons. You certainly deserve to do something for yourself after giving so much of yourself to being a wife and raising a family.

Which brings me to my second point. You are right, I never gave you the credit you deserved for doing the work of both father and mother when I was away on deployment. I can remember times I treated you almost with arrogance, as though my job was important and difficult and you had it easy staying stateside and taking care of the kids. That the kids turned out as well as they have is a testimonial to your unselfish and unwavering dedication to them. The two of them growing up to become productive human beings overshadows anything I have accomplished in the military.

But I need to get to the elephant in the room. You have told me that some of the flirting and sexual innuendo that goes on between members of your surgical team is a way of letting off steam. I understand that. People who have fought together in the military feel something akin to that. Talk to a veteran who has experienced combat and if he is willing to open up to you he will tell you how experiencing a time when his unit was under fire and they did not know whether they would survive or not, binds those men together (if they survive) in a bond that may not be sexual but in many ways is closer than their bond to their wife.