Strikes

Strikes

Just a short quirky little flash tale of a married couple having a conversation...

Many thanks to those who offered comments and constructive criticism on my previous stories.For those who want to say this or that would never happen, remember this is my universe, a place where nearly anything can, and often does, happen.At least on paper...

Please refer to my profile for more on my personal policy regarding comments, feedback, follows, etc.(Yes, I DO moderate comments)And please remember, this is a work of fiction, not a docu-drama...

...

It was about 6:30 pm when I finally pulled up to the old two-story house that had been in my family for four generations. It had been a very productive day in the field and I felt like I got a lot accomplished. I was more than ready for a good home-cooked meal and a quiet evening with Terri, my wife of 20 years.

I had it made, I thought, as I decompressed from the day's work. Sure, working a farm is hard, but the rewards more than made up for it. On top of that, I had the best wife a man could want. Terri was a lovely girl, always so warm, friendly and loving. Sure, she had her moments, like we all do, and she tended to be a bit too trusting sometimes. And a bit ditzy now and then. But she was my partner -- my rock -- and I wouldn't trade her for anything.

I walked in and instantly detected the odor of freshly-cooked meat loaf and knew I was in for a treat. Terri loved to cook, and she had a way of making even the most mundane dish taste delicious. I glanced at the mail on the small table next to the door.

Most were for "Occupant" or "Resident" -- garbage and advertisements for this or that. A couple were addressed to Bill and Terri Carson -- my wife and I -- and I knew they were the standard bills we always got this time of month. I walked into the kitchen to see Terri pulling the hot meat loaf out of the oven and I ran over to help her.

She thanked me for taking it, and I put it on the table. Afterward, I went into the first floor bathroom and washed up. By the time I got back, she had the rest of our dinner waiting for us on the table.

"This smells delicious, honey," I said as I sat down.

"It's not much, just meat loaf," she said. "I put in some mild chili peppers and mushrooms in it. I hope you like it."

"I'm sure I'll love it," I told her. She put a nice helping on my plate before piling on the mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy. I couldn't help myself. I looked at her and smiled. She definitely knew the way to my heart. She sat down and put some food on her plate.

"So, how was your day?" I asked. She nodded after she took a bite of her food.

"Okay," she said. "Finally sold the old Jennings place." Terri had started working at a real estate office in town about ten years ago. She wanted to contribute something to the family after the twins were old enough to walk to and from the bus stop.

Now they were both gone. Dan, our son, had received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point and Lisa, our daughter, was at the University of Washington, studying to be a veterinarian.

Between Terri's work and the revenue from the farm, we did quite well. Our goal was to retire at 60 and take a nice, long cruise. Maybe in the Caribbean. We hadn't decided yet. I looked at Terri. Our lives together had so far been wonderful, but I noticed that she had become a bit moody over the last couple months. Tonight, she was even more pensive than usual.

"You okay, dear?" I asked. "You seem a bit preoccupied."

"I think we need to talk, after dinner," she said quietly.

"Okay," I said. "Maybe after we eat, we can retire to the back porch." That's where we usually went when we wanted to smoke and consume some adult beverages. We had long ago agreed not to smoke inside the house.

"That sounds like a good idea," she said. We finished our dinner and I wondered what was bothering her. I helped her put everything away, then grabbed a beer and poured her a glass of wine. We went out back and I offered her a cigarette, which she readily accepted. After lighting up, I sat down on the porch swing as she sat in a chair next to the bistro set.

"So, what's on your mind?" I asked.

"Bill, please promise me that you'll hear me out completely," she said. "I'm so torn and I'm afraid you'll hate me when this is all over. Please just let me finish before you say anything, and promise me you won't get mad."

"Alright," I said. "I'll listen. What's on your mind?"

"Bill, you know that I love you more than anything, right?" she asked. I was starting to get a bit worried, but I encouraged her to continue.

"Of course," I said. "You've put up with me and living on this farm for 20 years, so that's got to mean something, right?" I jokingly asked. She smiled, but the smile didn't last long.

"You know you're the only man I have ever been with in my whole life," she said.

"And you're the only woman I've ever been with," I told her. "What's this all about? You're starting to scare me."

"I guess I should just come on out and say it," she said. "I'm thinking about taking a lover before I get too old. We'll both be 40 in just under two years and I'd like to know what it's like to experience another man."

"Wait, what?" I asked. "Are you saying you want to have sex with another man? And you want me to just accept it?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying," she told me. "It's no reflection on you or anything, and it doesn't have to change anything between us. I'll still love you just as much as I do now. It's just, well, I want to experience this just one time in my life before, you know, the change."

"What, don't I please you enough?" I asked. "Is there something I'm doing wrong?"

"No, no," she said. "You're a wonderful lover. It's just that I've never been able to, you know, have anything to compare you to. It's like, driving a Ford pickup all your life and one day getting a chance to drive something else, like a sporty sedan. Like I said, it doesn't mean anything, and it doesn't have to change anything between us."

"I really don't think I like your comparison," I told her. "And for your information, it already HAS changed things between us."

"I guess maybe I didn't use the right phrase," she said. "Please don't take this the wrong way."

"So, have you done it yet?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Have you decided who you want to do this with?" I asked.

"No, not at all," she said. "It's just something I've been thinking seriously about lately."

"You didn't just come up with this all by yourself. Who put this silly notion in your head, Terri?" I asked, fighting to keep calm. I wanted to punch a hole in the wall, but I knew that would only drive Terri further away. I needed to get more information. And I needed to get Terri to smell the coffee.

"Well, Marie Cunningham, you know her, she works in my office," Terri said. "We sometimes go out for lunch and stuff, and she told me that it was something I really needed to do to validate myself. And she said if you really love me you'd let me have this. That's why I wanted to talk to you. She said it really wouldn't be cheating if I got your permission first."

"Really? Marie Cunningham? Brunette, about five foot, nothing, in her early 30s, dresses like a teeny bopper? That Marie Cunningham?" I asked.

"Yeah," Terri said. "You know her?"

"I've met her a few times at your office, but I can't say that I know her very well personally," I said. "From what I've heard, she's been divorced two times in the last six years. And she's working on her third divorce."

"I don't know about all that," Terri said, somewhat surprised. "I know she's been divorced at least once."

"Word down at the Wagon Wheel is that she's been quite friendly with a whole bunch of guys," I said. "Her husband is pretty suspicious and from what I hear, he's getting ready to file for divorce."

"I didn't know all that," Terri said. I decided to change tactics and try to get her to realize the grave mistake she was making.

"Tell me something, dear," I said. "How long have we known each other?"

"I don't know," she said. "About 30 years, maybe a bit more."

"And we've been together ever since our freshman year in high school, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, something like that," she said.

"In all that time, have you ever known me to be someone who would accept something like this?" I asked her. She shook her head.

"Well, no, not really," she said.

"So what makes you think I'd be willing to do so now, after all these years?" I asked her.

"Well, Marie says," Terri began before I cut her off.

"Forget Marie," I said. "Marie's an idiot. I want to hear what YOU think. Let me put it to you this way. What would you do if I came home one day and said, 'hi, dear, you know I love you, but I really need to go have sex with another woman to validate myself,' huh? Would you put up with that?"

"Oh hell no," she said. "I'd kick your ass..."

"So, why should it be any different now?" I asked. She looked at me, shocked.

"Oh my God," she said. "I never thought of that."

"You remember my grandparents?" I asked her. My grandparents died in 2001, a couple years after their 80^th wedding anniversary. By then, they were just a bit over 100 years old and well-known in the area. In 1999, the family threw the mother of all anniversary parties for the two of them at the assisted living facility where they lived.

"Yeah, I remember," she said.

"You remember their 80^th anniversary party?" I asked. "You and I were talking marriage at the time, remember that?"

"I do," she said with a smile.

"I know I've told you this before, but I'll tell you again just in case you forgot," I said. "I asked Grandpa what the secret to their marriage was. He told me a story I'll never forget. Back when they got married, a lot of folks in these parts still used horse and buggy to get around. That was in 1919, right after the First World War.

"Grandpa told me that after their wedding, he put Grandma in the buggy and left the church. They got a couple miles or so down the road and the horse fell down. 'That's one,' Grandpa said. He got the horse back up and they kept going on down the road. A couple miles further, the horse falls down again. 'That's two,' Grandpa said.

"They kept going and about the time they were pulling into the house, the horse falls down yet again. 'That's three,' Grandpa said. He got out of the buggy, pulled his rifle from the back and shot the horse, dead as a door nail. Right out there, as a matter of fact," I said, pointing to the driveway.

"Well, Grandpa said, Grandma wasn't too happy, and started raising all kinds of hate and discontent. Grandpa said he just looked at her, smiled, and said, 'that's one.' You know, I don't ever recall ever hearing so much as a cross word between them the whole time I knew them," I said. I looked at Terri and saw her eyes were wide with fear.

"Right now, you've got two strikes against you," I told her. "The first is for even listening to that dipstick Marie in the first place. The second is for thinking I'd actually go along with this cockamamie idea of yours. Even though you haven't done the deed yet, there's some who'd say I should leave you out there in the driveway, the same way Grandpa left that horse."

"You mean, you'd actually kill me?" Terri asked, shocked.

"No, but it'd be tempting," I said. "The truth is, I still love you, even as ditzy and gullible as you can be sometimes, and I have a lot of years invested in you."

"You think I'm ditzy?" she asked in a small voice.

"Sometimes," I said. "You remember that little incident with the sandwich?" Terri usually made my lunch and one day, several years ago, she made a sandwich for me. Except she forgot to put anything on the bread. Imagine my surprise when I pulled out two clean slices of bread with nothing on them. When I got home that night, she asked me if I liked my lunch and I told her it was great, but I'd never had a "jammed" sandwich before. She swore she made me a bologna and cheese sandwich, and felt like an idiot when I told her that I found two slices of bread jammed together.

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?" she asked with a smile.

"No, I'm not," I told her, laughing.

"So, what do we do now?" she asked.

"That's up to you," I said. "You're a smart girl. You've raised two good kids. You figure it out. I've never told you what to do before and I'm not going to start now. Just know this. I absolutely will not be your cuckold and I will not be disrespected. Think of it this way. You're in the bottom of the ninth inning, and you have two strikes against you. Where we go from here depends on what you do. Now if you don't mind, I need to get up early in the morning to head back up to the north 40, so I'm going to bed." I stubbed out my cigarette and headed upstairs.

...

Epilogue (Three months later):

I stopped the combine, climbed out and walked to my pickup. It was lunchtime and I looked forward to enjoying my meal in the comfort of my air-conditioned cab. When I got in, however, I realized I had left my lunch at the house.

Crap, I thought. Now I'll have to waste at least a half hour going back to get it. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a cloud of dust heading in my direction. I looked and saw it was Terri's SUV heading toward me.

She pulled up next to my truck and got out. I noticed the skimpy jean cutoffs and smiled. Even after all these years, she still looked good to me, and I loved looking at her well-toned legs. She came over to me and gave me an open-mouthed kiss.

"Hey, cowboy," she said. "You left your lunch at the house so I thought I'd bring it out to you."

"Well, thanks," I said. "I was just fixin' to head back to get it."

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

"Not at all," I told her. She opened the side door of her SUV and we got in the back, where she had packed a picnic lunch. As we ate, I thought back over the previous three months.

After our discussion, she told Marie to stick her idea in her ear. Not long after that, Marie's husband caught her doing the nasty with one of her many boyfriends and dropped divorce papers on her so fast it made her head spin. Terri apologized profusely to me the day after our little talk, first with words, hugs and kisses, then with a spectacular meal and finally with a scorching hot striptease and a wild night of mind-blowing sex.

I know there are some who say I should've kicked her ass to the curb for even entertaining the ideas Marie put in her head. But the fact is that I just can't turn off more than two decades of love like that. It might have been different if she had actually acted on her desires, but she didn't.

And the truth is that I really don't give a damn what other people think. It's my life and my marriage and I know I'd be miserable without her. It'd be like cutting off my own arm or leg.

Terri stayed at the real estate company for a couple months and sold several pieces of property that netted her some very nice commissions. After looking over our finances, she realized we had enough between all of our accounts to retire comfortably if we chose, so she quit her job and became a stay-at-home wife. Sometimes, she even spent her days with me in the fields. I have to admit, I enjoyed having her with me. After we ate, she pulled out a can of whipped cream.

"This is for our dessert," she said with a wicked smile. I looked in the basket, but didn't see anything to put it on.

"So, what's for dessert?" I asked. "I don't see anything in the basket." She whipped off her short t-shirt, revealing her bare breasts, then pulled her shorts and panties over her legs, exposing a freshly-shaved pussy. Leaning back, she spread her legs for me and smiled.

"This," she said, spreading her lower lips with her fingers. "If you want it..."

"Hot damn," I said, smiling. "I always knew you were the best cook in the county. You just hit a home run with that. Now, give me that can of whipped cream..."