She's Cheating on You

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

It has been a little while between stories for me; the past several months have been a roller coaster of so many things happening in real life that I almost feel like a character in one of my stories based on some of the drama. I've been betrayed by someone who I didn't understand was a true narcissist, struggled to find focus in my businesses, been fighting a huge case of burn out and with that associated hormonal crash, been fighting off severe depression. The thing that has held me together has been my wife and kids, they have been my rock and without them I would likely have just disappeared into obscurity. So a big thank you to my family!

I mention this, because so many of us fight with things like this in our lives, my drama's are by no mean unique, and from time to time, I work some of these themes into my stories. Yes, sometimes their over dramatic, but writing is therapy for me, so I often go over the top. To those of you who leave comments and message me privately about how my stories have helped you, thank you, I appreciate it.

Now, lets take a look at this story. This one 'She's Cheating on You', is one that I have been sitting on for a long time. Like 'Bed and Breakfast' I wrote the original draft early in my decision to start writing, it was a draft story I completed before 'On the Mend' and has been sitting in the low digits of now over 85 story concepts that I have drafted, am writing, is going through the editing process or are published.

The concept and theme for this story is nothing new for the Loving Wives category, there are all the usual tropes of love and betrayal, but in this one, I want to explore the concept of love further. Not the usual romantic love that we see in our stories, though that is there, but what about unconditional love, where you love the person despite their words and actions. I hope to touch on the topics of loving another person, despite what they have or have not done. Our two main characters are where I am looking to explore this.

Some of you will like it, some of you won't, some of you won't agree with what I position here, and that's fine. I'm writing fiction, not real life.

I would also like to thank TexDom and Miket0422, both of you have provided valuable input over the long development of this story, thank you!

I hope this is the start of me getting back into publishing some of my work and that you enjoy the tale.

[:::: She's Cheating on You ::::]

"You know she's cheating on you?" Shona, of whom I would easily describe as my closest friend in the world, asked me. Her steely blue eyes were locked onto my face and not giving me any real avenue of escape from her statement.

In the moments following her blatant blurting out of something to ruin my day, I wasn't sure where to look. We were sitting on the back deck at her place. I sat unsure of what to say or really how to respond. The question she asked me moments ago didn't quite come out of nowhere, but it was unexpected and caught me somewhat off guard. Until she asked, I had been having a relaxing afternoon. But the question incipiently written in her gaze also hid a unique form of agony on her beautiful face that only the two of us could understand at her having to utter those words.

After a couple of moments of avoiding her stare, I looked at Shona and held her gaze briefly, trying to wish the last thirty seconds could be rewound. I knew Shona wouldn't have thrown down the gauntlet of challenge unless she had a reason. I felt the muscles in my shoulders tense, and I averted my gaze to look up at the cool grey winter sky. For us native coast dwellers here in Byron Bay, Australia, it was the coldest time of the year. A chilly breeze blew in off the ocean as the two of us sat on her back patio, dressed in warm jumpers and drinking hot chocolate in the late afternoon.

The moment continued to stretch as I studiously avoided looking at her and contemplated the clouds. I noted it was likely we would get a shower or two, perhaps some good rain in the next few hours from how the clouds were moving. Sighing, I picked up my half-empty mug of hot chocolate as I watched cloud formations move, changing their shapes briefly, letting up a glimpse of the blue sky beyond peak through now and then, but would disappear. I took a deep breath, the sunny sky like my happiness, now felt out of reach.

Try as I might, contemplating the weather could not distract me from Shona's uncomfortable words. Still holding the mug in my hands with its warm sweet flavour, I stopped gazing at the clouds and looked over at Maddie, my eight-year-old daughter, who at that moment was gleefully pushing her half-brother, Greg, on the swing in Shona's backyard.

The moment moved to become what must have been a couple of minutes, neither of us had said anything else and I knew Shona was waiting for me to process my thoughts. She had known I had suspicions that something was wrong for a while now; excuses and snarky comments had me wondering about my wife. The time away, diminished lovemaking and even more than a few angry words that had me sleeping in the spare bedroom a few times over the last few months had me morose and moody to everyone.

But everyone knew I was a lover, not a fighter, and would avoid confrontation as much as possible. It wasn't that I was always everyone's doormat. I'd stand up for myself and those around me when needed, but if it was my own personal problem, I tended to procrastinate and hope it went away rather than deal with it if I could help it.

I again heaved a large sigh watching Maddie and Greg play, beginning to feel emotions I had been denying for months swell within my chest. A knot of stress that I had been feeling for a while suddenly made itself known as an ache and I swallowed hard.

Again, I looked back to Shona, and I could see the pained expression on her face. I know she would not have wanted to start anything, However, at the same time, if there was someone in this world that had my back, it was her.

As I let my gaze settle back on her, I couldn't find the right words to say, and as I watched, Shona hesitantly pulled an envelope out of her bag beside her. It was one of those giant bags that mothers all around the world carry to have everything they need for their kids.

"I'm sorry, Hun, I can't think of a kinder way to say it, but Bridget is cheating on you," she told me again. Shona held the envelope a moment. It was A3 in size and looked heavy. I got another look combining pity and pain, but she sighed, committed to her course of action. She moved slowly, placing the envelope on the table in front of her, her left hand now resting on it. "It's all here. I have been debating this in my mind all afternoon, but you need to know what is going on. Do you want me to give it to you now or later?"

Again, the pain behind her eyes showed through. She was not enjoying this one bit and had to see the despair on my face. What was hurting her was that, with the exception of a few months, she had been my closest friend for most of my life and knew me better than anyone.

My name is Timothy Other. Of course, everyone calls me Tim. I was, I thought, until a moment ago, fooling myself that I was happily married to Bridget. However, looking at the envelope Shona had just produced, I knew it contained the truth that my marriage wasn't that happy or healthy. As I reviewed the last few months, hell, looking back, let's call it the last year. There was nothing overt I could put my finger on, but I always doubted Bridget's fidelity. I sighed expressively, looking at the envelope Shona had her hand on. Having a cheating wife was, unfortunately, a scenario that had happened to me before.

Again we sat, nothing was said as I stared at the pile of bad news under Shona's hand. I didn't want it to be true, but the look on Shona's face told me that everything in the envelope would hurt.

"How Shona?" I asked, my voice cracking slightly as I fingered the cup containing about a third of a hot chocolate that was now going cold quickly.

"Rick," she said quickly and simply.

Rick was Shona's husband, a hotshot family lawyer with quite a few connections around Byron Bay and northern New South Wales as well as up into Queensland to boot. Rick and I had an interesting relationship. We both loved Shona and would do anything for her. Despite our history, or likely more because of the history between Shona and me, Rick had also become a good friend over the years.

We both continued to stare at the envelope. If what I suspected was true and in the envelope that Shona had, then Bridget and I were done, and Rick was a better friend than I thought. Either that, or he was perhaps, at last, putting the screws to me for being so friendly with his wife.

For a few more moments, I stared at the envelope under Shona's hand and felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

I don't think I can go through this again, I was thinking.

"Tim, you're not going to be alone," Shona said. She always had a pretty good idea of what I was feeling. But it went both ways, and I could see she held back the words 'this time.' With everything we had been through, both of us were only twenty-five. Going through a second divorce before I was thirty was going to hurt regardless.

The gaps in conversation were large as she gave me space to process what was happening. For the third time, neither of us said anything until Maddie came up carrying one-year-old Greg.

"Mum, I think Greg needs a nappy change. He stinks!" Her nose wrinkled, and a smell told us a very ripe nappy was indeed wrapped around the toddler. My daughter was an eight-going on eighteen-year-old girl and was currently in the habit of narrating everything she did.

Shona stood and picked up her bag without saying anything, plucking Greg from Maddie's arms. She briefly gave me a look, and after a moment's hesitation, she picked the envelope back up, nodding her head to Maddie before catching my eye again. I nodded in reply. Maddie didn't need to see what was in there.

Within the next couple of breaths, Maddie quickly shifted herself into my lap and hugged me and then an air-kiss as Shona took her son in to get a fresh nappy.

"Are you okay Dad?" Maddie asked. "I mean, you don't look all right. What were you and Mum just talking about." A thought occurred to her based on the look on my face, one I just could not hide. "You're not fighting again like when I was little, are you?"

The thought paled my daughter. For as long as she could remember, her Mum and I have not been a couple, but in her mind, we have always been best friends. But a few years ago, she asked why we weren't together if we loved each other as much as we told her. Shona and I had been telling Maddie more and more as she grew up, but she was obviously worried after hearing a few stories recently that Shona and I might have been fighting.

You see, Shona and I were once married. We met in year three at school, and we were pretty much best friends within a week. Friends led to dating when the hormones kicked in, then, without us thinking about the consequences, a teenage pregnancy. Our parents were appalled but supported us. We were young and thought the right thing to do was get married, so we did right after Maddie was born.

It turned out we never should have.

Yes, Shona and I were best friends, but being married to each other wasn't the right fit for our friendship. I will admit after having Maddie and getting married, the love was there, the sex was great, and on the outside, we were a young couple in love. But a litany of little things piled up that ended up breaking us. No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't be married to each other.

One of the things that broke us is I am a software programmer and gamer. I had started my first business at sixteen, was married with a child at eighteen, and I was working huge eighty-to-ninety-hour weeks all that time.

I gave what time I could to Shona and Maddie, but it just wasn't enough for her. As I said, it was the little things. Most people don't have the stress of children and work until they are in their twenties, sometimes thirties. Shona and I had both at only eighteen years old.

While they supported us outwardly, neither of our parents thought we would make it and made us both sign a prenup before we married. Mine because my parents were giving me start-up cash, Shona's because when I failed at my business, they didn't want their daughter tied up in it.

The business did all right. It didn't fail. But within two years, I created a new business and folded the first one into it, creating Other Gaming. Today, even in my mid-twenties, I have a staff of fifty in three different countries. This includes programmers, testers, marketers, and more than a few admin staff. Overall Other Gaming turns over about one hundred and eighty million a year in revenue through a series of mostly free games that have microtransactions built into them. Microtransactions are where you buy things in the game if you want to get ahead quicker than anyone else. You can buy additional resources, time or bonuses. Our profits are modest compared to some of the gaming companies out there, but it's nothing to sneeze at, and we're yet to have a financial quarter that our investors dislike.

Anyway, back in those early days, Shona and I loved our baby, we were best friends, and we had amazing sex, but ultimately, the only way I can describe it was that we just weren't in love with each other in that soulmate way. As I mentioned before, it was the little things that broke us, things that you overlook when you are truly in love with your spouse. If you're not, it drives you insane. The path to the destruction of our marriage was always going to happen. With myself tied up in the business, I wasn't there like I should have been, which resulted in Shona helping our demise much more quickly. Though perhaps the speed of destruction also saved our friendship.

Everything was building up as we fought against each other over the housework, my time at work and Maddie. On the work front, one day, I had a late meeting with a couple of my investors, and I forgot to tell Shona about it. That same day, Shona never told me she wanted me to come to a meeting at Maddie's day-care, so when I got home, she was pissed, but I had no idea why. We yelled at each other for almost half an hour, the end result had Shona storming out of the house, telling me to make my own dinner shouting, "be a 'fucking' responsible parent and look after our daughter".

She then proceeded to call some girlfriends, got blind stinking drunk, waking up the next morning in the bed of some random guy that had picked her up at the bar they were at.

To Shona's credit, she never lied to me or tried to hide what she did through her tears and regret. She came home the next day, upset and contrite. But as a young guy, as she told me what she did, my entire world crashed around me as my best friend and wife emasculated me.

Without thinking I verbally lashed out at her, calling her a whore and a slut. Shona recoiled for a moment and then retorted, her voice dripping with venom, called me a pathetic nerd and deadbeat dad that was never there for her or our daughter.

The moment the insults left her lips, she knew it was a mistake. She was the one who stormed out and slept with someone else, we both knew I didn't truly mean what I said, But her reaction and implied malice was like an arrow in the heart. Regardless of anything, I had been her best friend for as long as either of us could recall and she knew that.

"Tim, I..." she tried to say, her hands held to her mouth in horror.

I looked mournfully at her, held up my hand, then just turned and walked away.

I immediately moved into the spare bedroom. Over the next few months, I'm sure our screaming matches could likely be heard in the neighbourhood over. Of course, I was hurt so I started divorce for adultery, citing the prenup.

After being served at home while I was at work, Shona didn't go the usual route of counselling.

Over the next few weeks, she was alternately contrite, asking for forgiveness and when I wouldn't tell her I forgave her, she would become upset and yell at me, calling me a wimp and pathetic in bed and the worst mistake of her life any time we were in a room for more than thirty seconds before breaking down crying.

The only time we didn't argue happened around Maddie, and even then, it was tense.

In the end, it was our parents who all but said, 'We told you so', intervening that helped us. They called a truce bringing us back to ourselves. I got home one evening to all four of them in the lounge room, Shona crying and upset as both our mothers talked to her in hushed tones. After both fathers took me aside and gave me a little bit of 'what for' even while understanding that I was the aggrieved party, we ended up in intervention between the six of us.

They laid it on thick and made us both feel guilty. For three hours, they blasted us, each in turn. When later they left us alone to talk, neither Shona nor I said anything for fifteen minutes, but once we started talking, everything broke away, including the pain and the anguish.

Even with her cheating on me, which had hurt both of us, for the first time we talked without screaming at each other. I believed her when she explained that she would never have done it if she wasn't drunk and pissed off.

"I am so sorry Tim," Shona told me, wiping tears away from her eyes. "I never meant to hurt you like this. I should never have left that night, never have..."

"Never had done what I did," she said after taking a deep breath. "I disrespected you badly, and I was stupid and even worse when I took my anger at myself out on you for the cheating I did."

I smiled sadly.

"And I am sorry, it hurt Shona, it still does. You're my closest friend, I should have forgiven you."

Shona reached up and touched my cheek sadly.

"Thank you Tim, but where does this leave us?" she asked.

We talked further over the next few hours. We agreed that if we were to be friends and rebuild our trust in each other that we could no longer be married. For the first time in months, she cried in my arms.

Though we never made love or slept in the same bed again. Over the next few days, we spent a lot of time together. We agreed co-parenting as friends, as opposed to husband and wife, was the right way to go.

The divorce went through over the course of the next eighteen months, and slowly Shona and I became best friends again. We chose to bury the bitterness, so on the ashes of our marriage we found we were as close as we once were, if not closer, slowly opening up to trust each other, confiding in each other like when we first started dating.

We shared hugs and even the occasional chaste kiss, but our romantic love disappeared with our divorce.

Was I sad, yes. I still loved Shona with all my heart. But I would rather have her as my friend and in my life, then both of us destroy each other while being married and unable to trust.

Bridget and I started dating a little less than a year after the divorce, a week after Maddie's fourth birthday. Bridget worked with Shona at the time, which is how we met. Bridget had been hinting at a date for months once it was obvious Shona and I were done. When I didn't ask her out, she took the initiative to ask me. I inquired with Shona if she was all right with me dating Bridget. She hesitatingly gave me her approval, but I could see it hurt her that I was dating.

After the first few dates, I often found Shona on my doorstep with Maddie the next day and inevitably I would tell her about mine and Bridget's time together. She was a true friend and never outwardly judged in those early days, and she made sure she threw her full support behind me even as tears were welling in the corner of her eyes.