Would You, Have You?

After dinner we were sitting on the couch together. Kari was leaning into me and broached the subject that had been waiting there to discuss. "How was your dinner date last night?"

"It went great. Dinner was good and we had time to catch up on what was happening in our lives. My date left around midnight. Are you okay with this?"

"Not really, but I didn't come by to check in on you like the last time. I trusted what you told me and waited to ask you about it until now. It took everything I had to not come by or call you. I'm not sure I can handle much more of this. Can we stop playing around here and get back to just us? I want you to know that I am really trying here."

"I know you are Kari. I am not trying to be mean to you. I needed for you to understand how important trust is to a relationship. I am not capable of being with someone if I can't trust them. I don't do that in my business relationships and I won't do that in my personal life either. Trust is the most important thing for me."

"I want you to trust me, Tommy. I know I burned that bridge with my previous actions. I also want you to know that I have changed. I'm very aware of what I did and how that destroyed our marriage. I will do what I can to continue to build trust in our relationship. I just can't do that if we aren't working at this together."

"Kari, I will let you in on a secret. My "dates" that I have been on were with a waitress at the restaurant. Leslie is in a monogamous relationship with her girlfriend and has no intention of being with any man including myself. Leslie and I went to watch the band that both of us enjoyed, but it was music her partner didn't like. I had told Leslie that I needed her help to build trust in my relationship with you. The dinner on Monday night included her partner as a thank you for helping me with you. I wasn't really going on a date to replace you. It was a test for your to see how badly we need trust in our relationship."

"That's mean! I was sitting there worrying about what was going on and you were purposely letting me suffer."

"Kari, that is how I would have felt every time I left the house based upon your previous actions. I wanted you to see that I need to be able to do my work and have you here alone without needing to look over my shoulder to see if our issues were going to creep up again. The only difference between what you did and what I did is that I was completely honest with you about what was going to occur on my dates. I didn't have that openness with yours."

"I see what you are saying. It hurts though that you felt you had to test me in that way."

"If you had responded differently than what you did, I knew that we wouldn't have a chance to be together. If you will have me, I want to give us a second chance. I want to take it slowly though and build into this. I don't want to jump right back into a marriage but build towards it if we can make this work. Are you okay with that?"

"Completely. I am going to make myself very hard to leave, though. Are you okay with that?"

"Completely."

Epilogue

Kari and I continued to build on our relationship. Over time we were able to get back to the point where trust wasn't an issue. Kari and I remarried just under a year from the time we recommitted to each other. Kari joined with me in running the restaurant and traveled with me on my out of town trips. It was like a mini-vacation for us and made the trips that much more enjoyable. That was the case up until we had our first kid. Sam was born less than a year from our 1 re-anniversary. Kari stayed home with Sam and our second kid, Emma.

Uncle Sal is fully retired and the restaurant is now mine to run as I see fit. I didn't make many changes as Uncle Sal did a great job of staying up with the times. This would be a great restaurant for my kids to run someday, if that was something they wanted.

Kari and I are very happy together and only celebrate our 2nd marriage anniversary. The first one stands as a reminder of how close we were to spend the years apart. It is good to have that reminder.