The Humper Game Pt. 07 Ch. 08

Author's note:

This is, in all its seven parts and their many chapters, one very, very long story. If long stories bother you, I suggest you read something else.

No part of this story is written so as to stand on its own. I strongly suggest that you start with the beginning of Part 1 and read sequentially—giving up at any point you choose, of course.

All sexual activity portrayed anywhere in this story involves only people at least eighteen years old.

This entire story is posted only on literotica.com. Any other public posting without my permission in writing is a violation of my copyright.

The other matter was murkier and not so happy, certainly not in the short run.

We got a call from Jenny, right after her birthday, asking fairly urgently to come and see us for a few days, right away—that very weekend. In one way, this felt a lot like Barbara's request three years earlier, and we both were pretty sure that somehow it involved Jesse. But, well, a lot of Jenny's history led us to think this wasn't likely to be such a positive experience. On the other hand, we weren't facing anything like the week when Barbara had visited us.

"Jenny, of course we'd love to see you!" I told her, after Ellen and I took a minute for some nonverbal communication. "I hope the couch will be OK. This one's not a fold-up bed, either, and it's pretty short."

"Phil, if I need to sleep on the floor again, with or without cushions, that will be OK. I really need to talk some things through with you. Both of you, Ellen, but you know it's because of Phil I'm asking to do it."

"I know," Ellen said. "Most of the friends who want to talk to us want Phil, really. But they're not excluding me, honestly. Phil doesn't want to believe the kind of impression he makes on people, but we've all seen it."

Jenny apparently found it easier than we did to get off work—at least, I hoped she wasn't just going off without leave. She came down on Friday afternoon, and was going back on Monday afternoon. I went and picked her up, taking the rest of the day off. I didn't ask about anything but the trip and a little about her work. Ellen had everything ready for cooking dinner by the time we got there, and it was chosen to be a quick one to fix.

But when we got in the door and got her things put down, she pulled me into a long hug. She gave me a very brief kiss. Ellen got a hug, too, not quite as long, and a kiss on the cheek. Jenny wasn't crying, but it felt to me like she was just managing not to.

"Is there time to tell us what this is about, before we get dinner all ready?" I said. "I don't mean all the details, just the subject."

"I was going to ask if we could, please. I'm afraid it still will take longer than we want, to say enough and to get to a stopping point, though.

"Ellen, you weren't there, but I know you heard the basics later. Phil, I'm sure you remember the second night of sex ed, when I came knocking on Sam's door."

"Of course I do! Vividly!"

"I was so unhappy and wrought up I was ready to die. You and Sam brought me in, and without any questions or hesitation you comforted me and also arranged for me to be your partner too. Both of you. And then, just two weeks later, I dumped you with no good reason and no warning. Completely disregarding what you had done for me two weeks earlier. How you had treated me. You let me come in, you let me take you away from Sam, you interrupted Bella Lanigan in the middle of having sex, and you insisted loud enough that they put me in with you as a second partner. And I ignored all that and tried to hurt you as much as I could." Jenny was clearly about to cry, by this time. Ellen looked very surprised and then curious at the reference to Bella, but didn't say anything.

I said, "All that's true enough, except the 'no good reason' part. And you confessed and apologized, and I forgave you, if you remember."

"Well, this is a little like that, I guess. And I know the comfort you gave me then isn't available, but somehow it's not quite as hard on me this time. I won't start off saying, 'You think I'm attractive, don't you?' And in view of what I was just saying, it's really no worse than I deserve."

She took a moment to breathe deeply before she went on. Trying not to cry, I was sure. But while she plainly was hurting, she wasn't frantic the way she had been that night, so it probably really wasn't as bad. But maybe that only meant she'd had time to get used to it.

"Anyway, this time I'm the one dumped without warning. You remember, almost two years ago Jesse and I talked—on the phone—and it seemed we had straightened things out. And the few times since that I got to go see him, to be with him, it seemed we were back on track. But it had been a while. Schedules just didn't work out. And I'd finally arranged to take time off, to go see him this weekend. Plane tickets and everything.

"But when I called to tell him when I was going to get there, he said, 'Don't bother coming. I've got a girlfriend here now, we're living together.' Then he just said goodbye and cut the connection."

Ellen went over to her and held her. "Oh, Jenny, how awful. I'm so sorry! It doesn't sound like there's anything we can do to help you with Jesse. And you're right, Phil can't take you to bed to comfort you this time. But we both love you! And you know Phil finds you attractive, and he's not the only guy who does by any means. I know that doesn't help much, right now. There's not much we can do except listen, and tell you that—well, that it may be that losing Jesse is the best thing that could happen to you, on the evidence. Even though it hurts a lot right now."

Jenny cried on her shoulder for a couple of long minutes. Finally she said, "You're right, of course. Better to find out this way that he's been cheating on me, for quite a while it seems, than to live with him and maybe be married, and then find out he had someone else all along. Way better." She cried some more.

"Ellen, should I get dinner, or should I try to comfort Jenny and let you?"

Ellen kind of turned and handed Jenny off to me, and went over to the stove. I held her a moment, and then said, "Unless I hear an objection from one of you, I'm going to sit down and hold Jenny in my lap while you do that. We can talk or not. And if I get turned on, I'll keep it to myself, OK?"

Ellen said, "Perfect! That may help."

Jenny looked from one of us to the other. "Are you both sure that's OK? Would you?" I thought she was asking Ellen more than me, though.

I said, "I'm not flirting with you. You understand, I'll try to treat you as though you're five or six years old—like the Davidsons' daughter Hannah, when we last saw her. No kisses, no fondling. I'm pretty sure I can restrain myself, whatever I feel like. If you get to the point where it's turning you on or something somehow, just say so and go sit in a chair."

Ellen said, "Or if it's not a comfort in some other way, say so and go to a chair. For Phil's sake, I'm glad I'm here, but I could trust him even if I weren't. With anything at all."

So we did it that way. I led Jenny by the hand the three steps or so to my place at the table, pulled out the chair, sat, and guided her into my lap. She leaned her head against me, and started crying again, but more quietly this time. After a while, she stopped crying and sat up more.

"Phil, I was wrong, two or three years ago. I told Ellen you probably weren't the nicest man in the world, and I was wrong. You probably are. I think I'll be OK if I sit by myself, now, and it would be smarter. But thank you, both of you." She got up and sat in front of her place setting. "I really was out of my mind, like Linda said. And you two are better off for it, and I probably really am too, hard as it is to feel like it. Thank you. I wanted to come while I had the couple of days off scheduled anyway, and I knew if I tried to tell you over the phone I'd just wallow in it, and be ready to kill myself by the time we disconnected. Maggie Brown said, if anyone else at all had caught her that time, she probably would have wound up killing herself in the end, but that you put her back together. I know just what she meant.

"So what's up for the weekend, besides my problems? You probably had plans for tonight, that I've trashed."

Ellen and I looked at each other. I said, "We get together with some other folks, mostly from church, for a potluck, with a Bible study afterward. It's not something we can't miss. People do."

Jenny looked at me, then at Ellen. "Ellen, what isn't he telling me?"

She looked a little worried. "He's unhappy about it, but the group doesn't really have a formal leader, and he's kind of been pushed into that role. But it's OK. Really."

"And rather than take me to this, you're going to stay home with me for dinner, and miss leading this study?"

I said, "It probably will be good for them."

Ellen said, "I doubt it. They'll probably just talk without actually thinking about the text."

Jenny said, "And what time does this all happen? Normally, I mean."

Jenny had gotten in well before dinnertime, and even with talking through her problems that much we weren't really running late. I said, "About now we'd be trying to get our dish ready to go. In theory it starts at six-thirty—just over half an hour from now. But it kind of tends to start when enough people are there. I keep meaning to bring up 1 Corinthians 11. This isn't communion as such, as we do things today, but what it says applies to this, too." I thought about explaining that more, but I really was working on not burying people in details they didn't want or need—the way I just had. "It's just, um, I really feel that will be another step toward my being in charge, and I think that would be a bad thing.

"Sorry. I got sidetracked. The study part starts at seven-thirty."

"Is there any reason we can't take what Ellen's fixing as your share, and go?"

I looked at her. "Jenny, are you sure this is something you'd be comfortable doing?"

"I'd love to go meet your friends. We need to talk about me, yes, but you know what the situation is, now, and I hope we'll manage to find time to talk. I have some ideas, I really want to run them by you. You're not scheduled to the max, are you?"

"We go running in the morning. There's church all Sunday morning. Otherwise, the weekend should be open. It's possible that one of us will get called in to work for a while, but that's rare. I thought you might enjoy an afternoon at the museum, one day—either Saturday or Sunday."

"Will what Ellen's fixing survive and be edible, if we take it? You didn't really answer."

Ellen said, "Phil, she means it. Get out the medium casserole dish. This will be smaller than what we usually take, but that should be fine. We tell people to come even if they can't bring anything." That last was for Jenny's benefit—obviously I knew it.

So we got it packed up. I sliced some bread, and got out a stick of butter and a plate for it, to have a little more to contribute. Ellen put half of our cookies into a resealable bag, too. I would just have to find time to make more bread and cookies, sometime Saturday. Our vegetable went into the fridge, in a smaller dish. We headed out. The church was fairly close, far enough that we often drove, but close enough that it felt silly to me when we did. With three of us, the casserole dish and all, and chilly weather with a chance of rain in the forecast, we didn't walk this time. I wasn't crazy about walking home after dark anyway.

As we got ready and went, Jenny asked how Ellen was feeling, beginning with saying how good she looked. Ellen wouldn't be showing for a while, though her breasts were a little enlarged and tender. Her morning sickness wasn't too bad—she hadn't ever actually thrown up—but she was more than ready for that to be over. She was backing off some on her workouts, and worrying that motherhood was going to be the end of trying to do gymnastics—because when would she find the time to commit to it every day? She was a little leery of doing a lot of the gymnastics moves, during pregnancy—thinking about the baby, OK, but at this stage really mostly about nausea. She got tired easily, too.

We were still running, and she planned to keep that up as long as possible, but at some point we would have to stop running at the same time, once childcare became an issue if not sooner. At this point, she was running a bit slower, trying to run more gently, on both her own account and the baby's—though that would be more of an issue later. I was still nowhere near keeping up with her, though.

We got there before most people arrived. Ellen put our entree into the microwave to warm up a little, and we added our other things to the serving table, such as it was. The group used the church's plates and tableware, which someone else had already gotten out. We introduced Jenny, repeatedly, as an old friend who was visiting for the weekend. Some questions were asked that prompted her to say clearly that she wasn't a believer, but that didn't affect the warm welcome she received. Usually about a dozen were present, or a few more, and this week proved to be no exception.

Conversation over food was varied. Jenny was asked about where she lived and what she did for a living, but there were other discussions going on too. After a while, people collected dishes and rinsed and scraped them, then ran them through the dishwasher. The formal discussion began once that was done and the dishes were out and drying.

The group had recently begun working through the gospel of John, and we had come to the fourth chapter, to the account of Jesus' discussion with a Samaritan woman. This was a passage familiar to everyone there—less so to Jenny than to most—but it isn't by any means a straightforward one. Over time, my function in this group, or one of my functions, had come to be trying to keep the discussion on track and rooted in the text—no easy thing in this case.

Jenny didn't take part much, but I was pleased that she twice asked questions of people who were heading off into some far-fetched speculations, questions that injected some reality back into the discussion. I thought, though, that she kind of pulled back into herself as we talked about the two verses speaking of the woman's sexual history. But she was clearly listening once we were past those.

A few minutes before nine, we wrapped up the discussion and took half an hour to share requests for prayer and then pray. Jenny surprised me. She said, "I have some personal issues right now, and I don't want to go into detail, but I really would like you to pray for me to make good decisions and then follow through on them. I haven't done that very well with those things in the past." As we went around and prayed, Jenny didn't participate, but Ellen and a couple of other people prayed as she had asked. And I knew several people would make a point of praying during the following week, at least—and probably ask Ellen and me for updates, after a while.

Once everything was packed up or put away, tidied, and swept, we locked up and all headed for our homes.

As I'd thought, the couch was just too short for Jenny, or most any adult, to sleep on. She decided that a sleeping bag on the floor was all she needed. If at some point the floor got too hard, she would get the cushions off the couch and one of the chairs. This really brought back memories, highly emotional ones, for both of us, and we both were committed to letting them remain no more than memories. I thought that we probably should start looking for an inexpensive cot or an air mattress, though.

We discussed our schedule for the morning. Jenny wanted to go run with us, so we would have to get up extra early. I did my taekwondo workout before we went to bed. The girls talked quietly while I did that, and I never learned what was said. They both got changed for the night, too.

When I was done and had cleaned up a little, Jenny told me, "I saw that video Ellen took back on your honeymoon, and I was amazed at what you did, how fast you moved. Kind of intellectually, I knew you had to be training hard to do what you did, but I'm even more amazed watching you now."

"It's a good thing I have Ellen to give me a kick in the pants when I need it. I think without her I wouldn't even be getting up to run, any more."

Ellen said, "Lazybones! No, actually he hasn't come up with a suitable running partner yet, and it's been a year! Neither have I, but I'm a little more self-motivated about this than Phil is. If you can run with him in the morning, he'll enjoy it a lot, and we'll both be grateful. We were both really lucky at the university."

I said, "You came here to talk, but for us it's kind of late already. Can we talk at breakfast and afterward, tomorrow?"

"Phil, here I am intruding on your life and your schedule, and you ask me for permission? Can I buy breakfast for us, takeout of some kind, on the way back from running?"

I looked at Ellen, who didn't give me any help. "Jenny, the thought is kind, but honestly, I'd rather come home and fix it after Ellen and I take our shower. I like cooking, and someone won't let me do my share any more."

"Phil, that's not true! Jenny, I make him let me fix most of the dinners, but he's still teaching me, too. It's just that he thinks of his share as being almost all of it."

"That brings up another thing, though. This isn't the beginning of sex ed week, but still, here you are, kind of partnerless against your will, and there may be noises from adjoining rooms. Probably including from the shower in the morning. Is that going to be too hard on you?" I wasn't eager for a weekend with no sex, but I was prepared to do that if Jenny really needed it.

Jenny took a moment to consider this. "On the one hand, here I am imposing on you. Again! And you're married, so you belong together—even more than Sam and you did then—and you've always done your best for me, in every way. I'm really thinking of Phil, but both of you! And on the other hand, if you remember that time you're bringing up, I said being in Sam's room with the two of you in bed making love would be way different—and way better!—than being by myself, with sounds of enjoyment from all around. And I meant it! Totally! And OK, that time you and Sam both meant more than that just letting me be there with you—but I said what I did first, and I meant it!

"Anyway, I'm pretty sure that being here, with you two in the next room, will be lots better than being alone at home, right now, no matter how much I can hear what you're doing. It was hard at home, but it wasn't because I was longing for sex, it was because I was hurt so badly. And every minute I'm here with you, you remind me that a bunch of people really care about me. Don't waste even a minute's worry or hesitation about doing something together behind closed doors."

We both hugged her, then went in the bathroom and did our teeth. Ellen went out to the bedroom and got into her nightgown, while I used the toilet, and then we switched. I talked to Jenny for a minute or two when I was ready, before Ellen emerged. We both hugged and kissed Jenny, and then left her the bathroom and went off to bed.

I took two minutes or so to explain to Ellen how I had interrupted Bella Lanigan when she was in the middle of sex with her husband. "From something later, I'm really sure she meant to hang up the phone, and thought she had," I said. "She was distracted." Ellen laughed and hugged me, and then said, "Well, it's your turn now. Jenny's in the other room, but she's not waiting for you to get back to her, this time. So get moving with me." There wasn't much noise, though. Pregnancy was leaving Ellen tired, and she didn't want more than a quickie.