Rebirth

She still hadn't answered why. I had to wonder whether or not she actually knew! "And now that I know? What do you want to do now, Gwen? With our marriage?"

"What I want, I don't think is possible, Jack. You'd never go for it."

Of all the fucking... She had to be kidding me! I knew she wasn't, but it was such an outrageous idea that I could not wrap my head around it. "You want to keep things going as they are. You want to stay married to me and keep fucking Joe on the side."

"Well, maybe not so much on the side? If we're being honest-"

"No. No fucking way, Gwen. I don't know what internet craziness you've been reading, but that is not going to happen."

"We'd still have sex, too, Jack!" she insisted. "You're my husband, I want you to be happy!"

"But you'd rather be fucking Joe. All I get is a bunch of pity fucks for the rest of my life."

Desperate, my wife moved her chair closer to mine. "No, Jack, I wouldn't be fucking you out of pity or anything like that! It would be because I love you! I do still find you attractive, I still enjoy sex with you, too, it's just that... Joe, he... He fills a need in me that you don't. I need variety, and he gives me that! Just as you give me things that he can't!"

This was all giving me a headache, and that last comment was something I definitely did not want to hear!

"And if I decided to, to find someone else, Gwen? If I find someone who did for me what Joe does for you? Someone who gives me variety?" I could see a spark of jealousy already starting to form inside of her, and with gritted teeth, I continued to move forward with my argument. "For the sake of argument, would you be comfortable with that? Me fucking another woman?"

"No!" Her expression was one of open distaste for the idea, and it was clear that her stance was vehement.

"Why not?" I argued. "If you can fuck Joe, then why can't I fuck who I want? Why should I give you that sort of leeway in our marriage if you won't extend the same to me?!"

"Because it wouldn't be the same! Joe and I have known each other for years, Jack. There's history there! You know him, too! You're friends!"

"The hell we are!"

Gwen ignored that and kept going. "Someone you find off of the street or in some seedy bar, it wouldn't compare! You wouldn't have the history with her that I have with Joe. I wouldn't know her!"

Was she really so deluded that she couldn't see the selfishness?

"Anyway, you'd never do it. I know you, Jack. You're a one-woman kind of guy, you always have been."

That same heavy silence filled the room, a tension that neither one of us dared to break. My heart was heavier than I could have imagined. Because she was right! Even if Gwen did agree to my having an open relationship, I never would have slept with anyone else. But it also confirmed one other thing for me.

"You're right," I finally conceded, breaking the silence. "I wouldn't. And the person I thought I married wouldn't, either. But I guess she doesn't exist."

I stood up and pushed the chair gently back under the table. I could feel her eyes on me the whole time. "I'll be sleeping in the guest bedroom until we figure out what to do with the house."

A look of puzzlement crossed her features. "What do you mean 'what to do with the house'? And you can't be serious about sleeping in the guest room, Jack, we're husband and wife-"

"We're not," I told her simply. "Maybe we've got a piece of paper that says we are, but really?" I shrugged helplessly, letting the despair consume my soul again. "You might know me, but I don't know you. I have no idea who you are, Gwen. And we can always get a different piece of paper that says we aren't married."

Her face went deathly pale, and she staggered to her feet. She clutched at the edge of the table for support as she tried to round it the rest of the way towards me. It was clear that she hadn't expected me to take this route. "Divorce? No! Jack-"

"What? I already have a lawyer lined up." That was a bit of misleading statement considering that I hadn't even called the man yet, but I was acutely aware of his business card in my wallet. "I'll call him and get everything in motion. You should probably find one for yourself."

"Can't we try counseling, first? Or maybe the two of us going on a long vacation together, how about that?! Just the two of us, we can work things out!"

"How the hell are we going to work things out, Gwen?" I rounded on her, my jaw clenched against the self-hate boiling up in my guts again. "You've been lying to me the whole time we've been together. How can I trust anything you say or do anymore?! Even if you were willing to give up Joe, which by the way you're talking I can see you're not, how could I believe that you actually had without looking over my shoulder every minute to see if he's there? Hell, I don't know if I believe that he's the only one! You've spread your legs for him, so how many other guys have you had between your legs."

The smack caught me off guard. Gwen had gone from panicked to furious in the blink of an eye, and despite her small stature, the blow left my cheek ringing.

"I am not some whore!" she screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "There's been no one else. You and Joe, that's it! You can be angry, Jack. You can hate me now for hurting you if you want, I won't blame you!" A sharp-nailed finger was jabbed at me. "But you do not call me a slut like that!"

She had struck me! She had actually hit me! She had come from an abusive home, and she had sworn many times over the years that she would never be like the person who had abused her the worst. I stared at her in astonishment before my lips started to curl. The gloves were now off.

"Cheating on your spouse and then hitting them? Guess there's something of your father in you, after all, Gwen."

My wife choked a hard sob and doubled over as though I had punched her in the gut. It was a cheap shot, I admit. Her father had been an abusive adulterer; she'd told me all about it. The expression of horror that crossed her face showed that I'd made a solid hit, although I didn't feel too good about it. A low keening wail began to slip between her lips.

That's when I heard a soft cough from the living room. It made me close my eyes and take a deep breath. Gwen had texted that she wasn't alone last night.

"He's still here, isn't he?"

Gwen gave no ground, simply folding her arms across her torso again. Her whispered reply was razor-sharp. "Yeah. Joe's still here. He came back for me last night. Unlike my husband."

The devil appeared in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He still looked spooked, but it was with a surprising amount of calmness that he spoke. "Gwen, honey, this isn't going well. I think you'd better let me talk to Jack for a bit."

I stared incredulously at him. "What the fuck makes me think I want to hear anything you have to say?!"

"Do you still love Gwen, Jack?"

It was a question that left me fuming. "Yes," I admitted, "I do. At least I love the Gwen I thought I had married."

"She's still the same person, Jack. She's still your wife, she's still the woman who loves you." He spread his hands wide in some grand philosophical gesture. "You're just learning more about her. And she's learning more about you. It's not pretty for either of you, but you still love each other. And that's why you'll want to hear what I have to say, Jack."

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised that Gwen had been carrying on with Joe for so long. True, neither of us could be considered much better than average in the looks department, but he was always a slick talker. He managed to sound so sincere, so genuine in everything that he said!

I found myself checked again. I looked to where Gwen was standing to the left of me, then back at Joe on my right. My instincts screamed at me to flee that room immediately, that nothing good was going to come of more discussion and that I was going to end up all the worse for it! But another part of me was not ready to give in, yet. Eight years of having Gwen in my life, eight good years... Was that something that I could throw away?

I backed up and leaned against the kitchen counter. "Alright, Joe -" I waved at him - "the floor is yours. Convince me not to go through with a divorce."

Gwen sat down again, crossing one leg over the other and keeping her arms folded against her chest defensively. Joe nodded and cleared his throat. Instead of sitting, he leaned against the doorframe that lead back into the living room.

"You say that you love Gwen, Jack," he began, "but what is it about her that you love?"

"A million different things." It wasn't that hard a question; it was one I'd often asked myself, a sort of self-check to make sure that I wasn't taking her for granted. "Where do I start? The way she laughs? Her eyes? Those were the first thing that attracted me to her. The way she looks when she sleeps next to me, like she finally feels safe. Her taste in music. How she sings in the shower off key on purpose. We watch the same sorts of movies. I take her to the clubs even though I don't like dancing; I like watching her dance, how she gets her whole body into it as though the music is possessing her. She doesn't get jealous of my female coworkers or friends, unlike the two girlfriends I had before her."

I wasn't going to mention the first girlfriend; that was a separate pain all on its own.

"What else? She lets me play D&D every Saturday weekend afternoon without a fuss, and..." The thought stalled. I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I am so fucking stupid. That's why you didn't want to join the gaming group, isn't it, Joe? It wasn't because you preferred Pathfinder, it was because that's when you and Gwen were meeting up, wasn't it?"

Without any apologies on his part, he nodded. "Four or five hours of alone time. Almost every Saturday afternoon. It wasn't just sex, Jack. We went out on dates while you were gone. But we're getting off track here, Jack. We're talking about what it is about Gwen that you love."

I struggled to digest this latest revelation. Did anyone in the gaming group know what was going on? The group that I gamed with was one of those rare ones that had maintained a steady cohesion over the years despite people coming and going as they did. Anyone of the twenty or so people that had been or were still in it might have known about Joe and Gwen and simply not said anything.

I also struggled to answer Joe's prompting. What else did I love about Gwen?

My answer was softly spoken, and I couldn't look at either of them as I told them.

"I love that she was always there for me." Gwen made a small sound as if someone was stepping on her foot. "I loved that I could be there for her. I loved that she trusted me and that I trusted her. We could tell each other anything! Anything at all. We never fought. We'd get angry at each other sometimes, sure, and I know we'd stretch each other's patience. But we never really, actually... fought. We could talk. We could be honest with one another."

I took a deep breath. "I had trust issues for the longest time before I met Gwen. With her? They all seemed to go away. I trusted her." God, how forlorn I must have looked! "I trusted you, Gwen."

My wife re-entered the conversation. Most of her anger seemed to have been spent, and, like me, there was a sense of defeat in the set of her shoulders. "We wanted to tell you, Jack," she admitted meekly. "We didn't talk about you, but we did talk about... well, telling you. We didn't know how to go about it without hurting you. We were afraid it would humiliate you and leave you, well, like this! And after so long, we stopped worrying about it and... Well, we hoped for the best."

"There were a couple of close calls over the years." Joe had the balls to grin sheepishly at me. "A couple of times you stayed home sick or gaming was unexpectedly canceled. The one time, I was stuck in your closet for a couple of hours while the two of you had sex!"

I really didn't need THAT much honestly. The number of times Gwen and I must have had sex just hours after Joe had already fucked her flashed through my mind. He must have realized it by the way I glared at him, forcing him to drop his grin and his gaze.

"You know the sad part, Gwen?" I asked, facing her and looking her in the eye. "If you and Joe had told me about this early on, if you had come to me when we first got together and been honest about all of this?" Surprisingly, I laughed at this point. Not in amusement, no, but it sort of burst out. "I might have actually gone for it! No, seriously, I've always thought that I'm pretty open-minded. You've talked me into some kinky stuff over the years, you could probably have gotten me to join in on what you've had going on easily enough. Shit, a three-way! You and the two of us! Why the hell not? A Gwen sandwich between a slice of Joe and a slice of Jack!"

"But you LIED to me."

Like pulling an arrow out of my chest, the pain was greater than when it first hit. "You lied to me for eight fucking years. And here's the kicker, Gwen. If you had come clean to me about the affair last week, I'd have considered counseling. If you had confessed to me instead of my finding out by accident? I'd have given it a go! There'd have been a lot of talking, mind you! And how Joe here figures into the picture would have to be addressed. But, no, the only reason I found out is by accident. If it weren't for that, you'd still be lying to me, Gwen. And I can't... I can't go on with our marriage knowing that."

Joe stood up straight, his face serious. "But don't you want to know why, Jack?"

"It doesn't matter!"

"Yes, it does!" he shouted back. "To me, it does! To Gwen, it does! Why else do you think I'm fighting for you two to stay married?! I love her enough to share her because she loves us both. Her happiness rests with not just me, but with both of us! If you leave her, you'll be hurting her worse than she ever hurt you!"

I doubted that very much! But my emotions were on a rollercoaster. I was bouncing back and forth between anger and depression at every word, and I was starting to feel sick to my stomach again. It meant so much to them! What about me?!

"OK, then! You want me to ask why, Joe? Again? Fine!" At some point I had stopped leaned back against the counter and had crossed the floor several feet. Joe was an arm's length away. I was closer still to Gwen, so I turned my ire-fueled question to her.

"If you love Joe so much and have known him for so much longer, why the fuck did you marry me instead of him?"

That wasn't the question that either of them expected, and it showed in how they glanced nervously at each other. Gwen rose to the challenge, though.

"Because you give me things he can't, Jack. I need stability. I need security. I need to be able to come home to someone I know is going to be there for me, someone who takes care of me and that I take care of. I need someone I can have a family with. That's you, Jack. It's always been you."

"And what does Joe here give you, Gwen?" Did the words sound as harsh as I thought they were? "What does he give you that I can't?"

"He... Joe makes me feel wild and free. Like there's no one else in the world but me and him." She raised her chin defiantly. "But as much as I love him, Jack, he'd make a terrible father. And I want kids. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday. When we're ready."

She might as well have slapped me again. With a two-by-four. Because when she said 'we're ready,' I could tell that she wasn't talking about me and her.

"You... It's... " I honestly could not form a coherent thought for several seconds! I knew what 'flabbergasted' meant, but this was the first time I experienced it! "You were going to let me... You were going to have Joe's kids and pass them off as mine?"

She shrank down into herself, suddenly unsure of herself. "They might have been his. They might have been yours! I wouldn't care which of you was actually the father, Jack, I'd love them either way. But you would be a better father to them than him."

Joe chimed in. "And you would be! I mean, look at me! I'm a freelance writer. My work takes me all over the place sometimes. I can't afford my own place, I live paycheck to paycheck, my car is always on its last legs. And I like it that way! But I do want kids. I've always wanted to have kids, but I know I'd be a shit father.

"Do you have any idea how humiliating that is for me, Jack? To stand here and admit that you're the better man? We wouldn't ever know for sure if they were my kids or yours, Jack. Maybe some would be yours and some would be mine. It wouldn't matter! I'd accept they were mine, you would think they were yours, and, hey, no one need be any wiser for it. I'd know they were being taken care of by a great guy who could be a real father to them."

Too much was too much. "I can't believe the two of you. I really can't. This is insane! First, the two of you carry on an affair behind my back. Then you try to guilt me for being the bad guy when I find out. Then you tell me that I'm boring-"

"That's not what I said!" my wife protested.

"And now you're telling me that you were going to trick me into raising another man's children because he's too fucking lazy to do it himself! What, were the two of you going to waltz off and enjoy yourselves, live your carefree lives while you left me rocking the damned cradle?! This just, this can not be happening!"

Their protests were so vehement as to nearly drown each other out.

"Jack, dude, no! Gwen and I weren't thinking that! You don't fucking get it!"

"Oh, God, Jack, that's not what we want! Please, try to understand!"

I took another deep calming breath to steady myself. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't discern my own emotional state anymore. Shock was setting in again. I had expected to hear things that I didn't want to hear, but the last part simply broke me.

"OK," I stalled, thinking frantically through the whirling confusion in my brain. I was anything but OK. I was feeling dizzy and had to drag myself back to the counter to support myself. A headache wracked my brain, making it harder to think. I stared out of the window over the sink and thought of how beautiful a day it looked to be outside.

"OK," I repeated. Swallowing the bile, I managed to turn myself around to look at Gwen. She had sat back down. Her knees were hugged to her chest and her arms wrapped about them. Her narrow chin rested on her knees as she stared at me.

God, she was beautiful. Looking at her, I could remember all the good times we had together. Drinking at the bars, going shopping together, spending rainy Sundays inside reading and cuddling, chatting about what movies were coming up that we wanted to see... There had been wild, passionate nights that had left us breathless and sore the next morning, and there had been sweet gentle touching that, while not outright sex, had been just as good.

I remembered holding her in my arms as she told me about her abusive father, letting her cry all night long when the bad dreams came.

I remembered my wife holding my hands as I told her about my attempt to take my life when I was a teenager, explaining how badly my first girlfriend had broken my heart. And her swearing that she would never do that to me.

I remembered yesterday when she said loved me. That she didn't mean to hurt me.

"Two questions," I proposed. The words came out fast. "Two things to ask before we go any further."

Unsteadily, I walked over to Gwen and took her one hand gently. I could feel her small fingers trembling. Her emotions were just as mixed as mine. The two of us, unstable as our lives crumbled around us. "Gwen, you said you love me. That you've always loved me. Is that true?"