Hi folks,

First off, I want to say thanks for all of the wonderful e-mails I got about last month's Story (Falling in and out of Love). I was really glad to see that a lot of you understood what I was going for. This one is a different animal though. I hope that the story is worth at least what you've paid to read it. For those of you who don't like this one, just e-mail me, tell me what you didn't like and I'll send you a refund. Thanks to the legendary Barney-R for editing this one while on vacation. Any goof ups you find were probably things I changed when i went back over it after he was done. SS06

I heard the buzzing from my cellphone and immediately came awake. I quickly silenced it and left our bedroom to get rid of the call before it awakened my sleeping husband.

I crept through the house and down the stairs to our living room where my voice wouldn't carry back to Steve, even if he did wake up. There on the stairs in my darkened living room, I let out my fury once and for all.

"God damn it Rick," I hissed. "I told you that it was over. Don't you understand English? It was never meant to be a permanent thing. I told you from the very beginning, that as soon as Steve graduated and our life went back to normal, you and I were done! You were there at his graduation last week. I was kind enough to give you one for the road, Monday? Now stop calling me..." I paused to listen to his whining for a second, but my fury only increased. Deep down inside, I was flattered by the way he felt, but I simply didn't return his feelings. I was despite all of the evidence to the contrary, a one man woman. I loved my husband like there was no tomorrow.

"You won't say shit, asshole. You have just as much to lose as I do. You're married too. And Georgia would take you to the cleaners. On some level I will miss it," I said. "Yes Rick you have the biggest dick I've ever had, but you already know that. It's over, don't call me anymore. No not even one more time. It has to end. So I'm ending it!"

I went into shock as the lamp on my living room suddenly flashed on. I looked into the biggest softest brown eyes I had ever seen. I knew every line and fleck of those eyes. Those eyes and the heart connected to them were what made me fall in love with Steve ten years before when I was only twenty years old.

I had been so intent on quickly getting out of bed and out of our room before Steve heard my phone that I hadn't noticed that he was no longer in our bed.

I could hear the sound of Rick pleading with me over the phone as it fell from my fingers and landed on the hardwood floor just below me. The screen of the fragile device cracked, but it still functioned and Rick continued to whine and plead. The ten foot distance between me and the chair my husband sat in suddenly seemed like an unreachable distance.

My heart was beating so loudly in my chest that I was sure he could hear it across the room. My husband's pain was evident in those same soft brown eyes. They seemed to be getting wetter with each passing second, but I knew he wouldn't cry in front of me.

The silence was deafening and it seemed to stretch for hours although I know that only a few seconds had elapsed since the light came on.

"My body takes a while to adjust from the midnight shift," he said. "I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to wake you or keep you up too. I came down here to play some games on my iPad.

His voice was tortured, but as he spoke he gained strength. Those first few words, delivered in a halting cadence were just his way of stalling for time. After ten years together, I knew him. Logic would take over next.

"I have the day off tomorrow," he said. "Actually I have the next two days off. I'm going to throw some clothes on and take my Mustang out for a drive. Maybe I'll stop off for breakfast. Then I'll be home. It's just after midnight. I'll try not to come back before 8am...

"But Steve, Honey, please don't leave we need to talk..." I whined. He held his hand up as if gesturing for me to shut the fuck up.

"I'm not leaving," he spat. "I'm giving you time to pack your shit. When I get back in the morning, I'll be tired, I'll go to sleep ... Just like I do after any other midnight shift. If you're here ... I'll hurt you ... BADLY.

"But Sweetheart, I have to explain this to you," I whined. "I'm sorry. You have to let me explain...

He walked straight to me and for the first time since I had known my sweet and gentle husband, I was afraid. I really believed that he was going to hit me. But he didn't even touch me as he bounded right by me and up the stairs. A few moments later ... barely long enough for me to begin to cry he was rushing past me in the other direction. The front door opened and slammed again and he was gone. I heard the hellish sound of his Mustang's exhaust system growing softer as he drove away.

I collapsed on the stairway and just started crying.

"Is he coming over here?" asked Rick's now shrill voice, from the still active phone. "Oh boy, I really fucked up didn't I?" I hung the phone up wondering why I'd answered it in the first place.

I ignored the phone. All I could think about was that my marriage was over. I thought abut trivial things. So many should have, could have and would have scenarios went through my mind as the tears fell.

I should have never cheated on him. I should have let him get me pregnant when he first wanted a baby. If we had kids I'd have an extra hold on him. Steve would never leave his children. He loved kids in general. But our kids ... They would have owned his heart even more than I did.

I could have spent the rest of my life being the best wife possible for him. That had been my intention after all. The fling with Rick ... And that was all it was ... A fling. A momentary scratch for a tiny itch that I could have lived with. It had meant nothing. It had meant less than nothing.

Fuck ... Who was I kidding? The fling with Rick meant that I was lying here on the fucking stairwell crying my eyes out while my husband put as much distance between us as he could. It meant that I had no idea about the future of my marriage.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving Steve. I'd already loved him for the past ten years of it. Not a day went by that I didn't thank the gods that he married me. I loved the man with all of my heart and soul. I couldn't so much as look at a picture of him without smiling.

Stevie was my everything. He was tall and slim with a boyish charm that made him seem a lot younger than we were. I had to admit that he carried the years better than I did. We seemed to be total opposites. He had light, dishwater blond hair and beautiful brown eyes to my dark brown hair and light grey eyes. He always talked about my eyes they were his favorite things about me; he claimed. At least that was what he told everyone else. But in private, Steve loved my ass.

That was one of the things that told me he loved me. My body was average at best. I'd had a tough time becoming comfortable in my skin. My boobs are a generous C cup, but it was my ass that drew men to me. Long before I knew what a Kardashian was, I could have been one.

I used to dress in long flowing skirts to hide my ass. It was Steve who told me how sexy it was. I had always noticed that a lot of older men got funny looks on their faces around me, but I'd never known why. I had always hated my ass.

In some ways I blamed my mom. I had her shape. She was happy with it. My daddy couldn't keep his hands off of her. I used to feel sorry for her when I was growing up. I'd come into a room and find them lying on couch, or sitting together and he'd be grabbing and squeezing her ass. As soon as they saw me she'd quickly push him away or he'd look up at me and move his hands.

To be truthful, when I was very young, I was embarrassed by it. None of my friends had parents who were constantly feeling on each other. They all had parents who were polite to each other, but that was it. Their parents were just like the ones in our story books. I was the one who ended up with the crazy parents.

As I got older, I realized that I was the lucky one. My parents, even into my teens, were so in love with each other that they still did things together. They REALLY loved each other.

I on the other hand was an awkward girl. I was uncomfortable with my body. I wanted to be a waifish slip of a girl like a lot of my friends. I also loved that athletic but busty look that a lot of the cheerleaders had.

I met Steve when I was twenty. He was a business major and I was just attending college. I had no idea what I wanted to do. And after two years of wasting my parents' money with barely middling grades, I was still taking a lot of liberal arts classes.

I was sitting at a table at the student center with my best friend Liz when I first saw him. Liz was a tall skinny girl with big glasses and no boobs. But somehow she exuded sex. I think it was because a lot of guys saw her long legs and imagined those legs wrapped around them. The fact that she has no boobs had never occurred to her.

She also had a friendly outgoing nature and a bright, sunny personality. She could get away with things that would mortifying other people. So when she stood up and left me at the table in mid sentence, I was unaware of her plans.

When she returned to our table dragging a man behind her, I was sure that she was in the process of making yet another conquest.

As she forced him into a seat, I laughed. "Ya got another one huh, Lizzie?" I said.

"Nope," she said. "This one is yours."

A shock went through my entire body. I was a healthy, normal 20 year old woman, but other than a terrible incident a year earlier when I lost my virginity to another friend's cousin in a basement sleepover party, I had never had much to do with men. I remember my embarrassment when I heard her brother and the cousin talking the next morning while the girls were all asleep.

"So Ya got some pussy last night huh, Bobby? I told you, I love it when my sister has these sleepovers. It's like shooting fish in a barrel," said one. I recognized the voice as belonging to the brother of the girl who hosted the party.

"Dude it wasn't that great," said the guy who had just taken my virginity. "She didn't know how to fuck. She just laid there like a rock. I think she cried. Then this morning I noticed that there was blood all over my white silk boxers. I didn't know she was a cherry. Now the bitch will be following me all over town moping about how I belong to her because she gave me such a special fucking gift. And I'm not sure you know this, but dude her ass is HUGE. I was scared to flip her over and try to get some Doggie. I thought I might fall into that ass and without a safety rope and some spotlights, I wasn't sure I could find my way out."

Luckily, they thought that I, like the other girls, was still asleep. As soon as they left, I got dressed, woke the hostess, thanked her for inviting me, and left, citing an early hair appointment. I never went back to her house again. I also stayed as far away from men as I could.

"What do you mean, mine?" I asked Liz.

"Every time I see this guy, he's staring at you," she said.

"Okay, I have a big butt," I said angrily. "I can't help it. I've tried dieting, it doesn't help. It's really rude to..." I suddenly noticed both the mortified look on Steve's face and Lizzie's laughter.

"Shut up, stupid," she smiled. "You're making a fool of yourself. He stares at your face, Dummy," she hissed. "I think he likes you, for real."

I turned and looked at Steve and that was it. Those big, soft brown eyes took over my heart. I was his from that moment on and he had no idea.

"You have the most beautiful gr-gr-gray eyes," he stuttered. "And your hair is always so..."

"Me?" I asked in shock. I thought it was some kind of joke.

He shyly nodded his head.

"Okay, asshole, which fraternity are you pledging?" I asked. He ran away so quickly that Carl Lewis couldn't have caught him.

Needless to say, our first meeting wasn't spectacular. It took a few more meetings before we had our first date, but we got together. And once we were together, it was obvious to everyone around us that we were in love. Things moved so quickly that we were married within a year of that first awkward meeting.

And I blossomed inside of that same year. Somehow, knowing that Steve found me beautiful and sexy, made me feel that way. Knowing that Steve loved my ass, meant good bye to long flowing skirts and hello to short tight skirts that showed it off.

As I look back on it now, with Steve I had become like my mother. Steve was always touching me and I loved it. But, shit, I felt him up too, constantly. Steve is my everything and marriage didn't change it at all.

My parents were always telling me that Steve was a great husband. Anything I wanted he worked his ass off and got for me. That was the problem. Steve was working his ass off but it just wasn't enough. He decided to go back to school and get into some aspect of the medical field to give us more financial stability.

We talked about it and Steve thought that the best way or us to go would be for him to pull some money out of his 401K plan to cover his school and our living expenses while he was in school. That way we wouldn't have a mountain of college loans to pay off when he was done.

Steve worked his ass off and graduated with honors. At his graduation ceremony, while accepting an award for his excellent grades, Steve's speech praised ME for always being there for him and helping him while he struggled learning and adjusting to his new field of study. And now only three weeks after his graduation, we were in trouble.

I barely had the energy to get myself off of the stairs, but I went up and packed a bag. I took several outfits and my makeup and personal items but no more. I was willing to give Steve a couple of days ... Maybe three, to calm down; but no more. We needed to talk about this and there was no way I could be without him for any longer than that.

Steve

I drove away into the night. I was only on the freeway for abut five minutes. It was a good thing too. I was nowhere near emotionally stable enough to drive fast. And the last thing I needed at that moment was to wrap my car around a tree. I could just see myself being rolled into my own ER on a gurney.

It would be too embarrassing to have some of my coworkers X-ray me. I could see it now. They would do the normal trauma protocol; a mobile chest X-ray to ensure that my lungs were functioning and that there were no PEs. They could also check for rib fractures and other pathology. They would also do a mobile pelvic X-ray to check for non-extremity lower body injuries. If I had any head trauma, I would be scheduled for a CT of my brain. Then I would be thoroughly checked over and have X-rays of any extremities or other less major injuries.

The whole thing would be too embarrassing. It was easier to just drive slowly. Luckily I was working a lot of midnight shifts, so I knew which places were still open.

I pulled into a small cafe that had the best breakfast menu I knew. I got some coffee and sat down in a booth to watch the world go by.

As I sipped my coffee, I wondered how the hell I got into the situation I was in. What the hell had I done wrong? I couldn't see it happening because Rick was more attractive than I was. Shit, he was over forty with a beer gut and a big assed bald spot. There had to be another reason.

Maybe he was into a bunch of kinky sex shit that blew my vanilla skills out of the water. He probably had Sarah cumming over and over again until she was screaming out his name and begging him to stop.

I guess I should have thought about fighting for my woman and all of those other macho things, but at that moment all I felt was hurt, betrayed and less-than.

"Never saw Ya here this early, Honey," said the waitress refilling my cup. "Going home early to that wife you're always bragging about?"

I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that the wife I was always bragging about was cheating on me. So I just nodded.

"Wow, you look like hell, Honey," she said. "Rough night in the ER?"

"The roughest ever," I lied. "Multi car pile-up. Lots of injuries. I can't wait to get home. I just wanted to stop off and relax a bit first. It's not good to take your work stresses home with you."

"You are a very smart and considerate man," she smiled. "And you're cute too. Your wife is soooooo lucky."

"Yeah," I thought as she stepped away to take care of another customer. She's so lucky that she's cheating on me with my older fatter neighbor.

I left the cafe and decided to drive downtown to the river. I'd never seen the big boats passing at night or in the early morning and I thought it might be calming enough to help me think.

Just as I started the car, my phone rang. Since the Mustang's sync system was linked to my phone, I saw on the console display that it was Sarah. I didn't answer it. I waited for the call to go to voicemail. A few minutes later she called again. Before I had gotten downtown she'd called me three more times. I wasn't interested in anything she had to say.

The downtown area was mostly deserted. I parked on the street and walked over to the River walk. As I watched the river, it had a calming effect on me. My heart wasn't racing despite all of the coffee and I felt a lot calmer.

I breathed in and took in the fresh smell of the river in the early morning. Then I blew out a long breath and just let it go. I tried to let all of my tension and pain go with it.

Then I thought about my situation, and I laughed. It wasn't the end of the world. I was still healthy. I had a great job that I loved. I had my dream car. I wasn't diagnosed with cancer or any other fatal disease. I wasn't going to jail. The woman I had chosen to live with had chosen someone else. Realistically, it had happened at the best possible point in my life.

I was only thirty years old. I could find someone else and I would be choosier next time. There was still time for me to have a family with my next wife. And best of all, at this point in my life, because of the career change we didn't have SHIT!

I smiled evilly just thinking about it. We had barely any savings left. We had no equity in the house because we had taken out an equity loan to help with my college costs. And I had pulled money out of my 401k plan. There was probably only a couple of thousand dollars left in it. If I went for a no fault divorce, I could just write her a check for half of everything and walk away.

I could probably leave my job at the hospital and train at one of the other facilities I'd had clinical rotations at during school. That would make me unemployed, although I could probably get a sign on bonus at most of them to cover my expenses while training for a new job. If it worked out the way I saw it, I could have the whole thing over in a couple of weeks.

It seemed strange to stand there in front of the river planning my exit from a ten year marriage. Sarah had been the woman of my dreams for the past ten years, but I was ready to throw her away that quickly.

Maybe I was in shock. Perhaps a wiser thing to do would be to give this some time. My phone rang yet again as I stood there. She wasn't giving up easily. I smiled. Maybe if she had fought this hard to stay faithful to me, there would still be a future for us.

I knew that I was tired and cranky. It was getting near morning and my body was beginning to tell me that I would need to sleep soon. It was my weekend off and we'd made all kinds of plans including a party Saturday night at the home of one of our neighbors.

I also knew that over the next few weeks I'd have the task of explaining why we broke up to everyone we knew. I wondered if Sarah would show up at the party. I wondered if Rick would.

Just thinking the bastard's name brought my anger back. Rick's wife Georgia would be devastated. They'd been married for so long and they had three kids. Georgia, like me didn't deserve what was happening to her. She had so much invested in her life with Rick. I doubted that she would divorce him. Things would be rough for them for a while, but they had three kids and they had been together for so long. She deserved so much better.

It just seemed so unfair. I had done nothing wrong, but I was the one who ended up losing it all. I had to find a way to make that asshole pay.

As the sun came up, my phone rang yet again. I didn't need to look at the screen to see who it was. The small chirping sound a few moments later told me that I had yet another message waiting for me.

I looked at my watch and saw that I had about an hour left before I could go home. I drove to the Meijer's store near my house. They were open 24 hours so I bought some fresh fruits and vegetables. I needed to make sure that I ate well, since I'd be on my own. I also picked upup few nice steaks that I could throw on the grill some evenings when I got home, instead of cooking.

The shopping had burned up more than the hour and it was well past the time I said I'd be home. As I pulled into my driveway ... I'd thought MY driveway and it suddenly dawned on me that it was MY driveway. It was no longer OURS. There no longer was an US. For the first time in my life I was ALONE.

I grabbed my bags and went into MY house. Once I got onside and started to put away MY food, I noticed two things. The first was that almost everything I had bought was already in the refrigerator. Sarah had clearly bought the exact same fruits and vegetables the previous day. When I checked the freezer, I noticed that she'd even bought steaks.

The second thing I noticed was that the phone was ringing. I picked it up wondering who would be calling me at 8:30 in the fucking morning. Suddenly it dawned on me. Whoever was calling was probably calling for Sarah. I wonder if it was one of her lovers. I wondered how many she had.

"Hello," I said, my voice sounded as if I had died the day before.

"Steve, Baby, I love you, did you read the note yet? Can I pleeeeeeease come home so we can talk? I am sooooooo sorry, you have to let me explain this and..." I hung up the phone while she blathered on.

I grabbed a Honeycrisp Apple from the refrigerator and had it with some of my favorite Canadian MAple turkey breast. I brewed a cup of strong tea and sat down to watch the news on TV. The phone rang again and I picked it up and turned it off. After finishing my snack I got into MY bed. Almost as soon as MY ass hit the sheets, I leaped back out of the bed, staring at it as if it was a vat of acid. How the fuck did I know whether or not that whore had brought any of her legions of lovers over and slept in that fucking bed?

I quickly ran down the hall to the guest room. I almost got into that bed, but at the last second I realized that the bitch was ruthless. She probably knew that I would know that she'd fucked Rick or whomever else she was doing in the house. So she probably figured that I would know if she did it in our bed. So to throw me off the track, she'd fucked them in the guest room. I was sure that I saw cooties multiplying on the seemingly clean sheets and comforter.

I was exhausted as I went down the stairs and into the den. As soon as I looked at the sofa in there, I knew there were cooties there too. I went into the living room and just before I sat down on the sofa in there I saw her note. I left it there, realizing I couldn't sleep on that sofa either.

I thought about taking some pillows and a blanket and sleeping in the bathtub. But as much time as the bitch spent in there, I wouldn't put it past her to have fucked someone in there as well.

I went out to the driveway with a pillow and a blanket and put the seat all the way down in my Mustang. I let the windows down about a third of the way for fresh air and went to sleep. I was exhausted anyway.

When I woke up, it was late afternoon. I felt numb. I got out of my car to find Sarah sitting on the porch while reading a book.

"Steve, Honey, why did you sleep in your car?" she asked.

"I didn't know how many of the beds and sofas in the house that you fucked your lovers on," I spat. She looked as if I had punched her.

She had been trying to appear calm and confident, but seeing what I thought of her had clearly unhinged her.

"There are no lovers," she said sadly. "You know about Rick, and I wouldn't call him a lover. There was no love involved. And I NEVER brought him into our home. I would never risk hurting you, Steve. I love you. I just made a mistake. What kind of woman do you think I am?"

I yawned and looked at her. "Too easy," I said. "Why are you here?"

"Steve we need to talk about this," she said. "If we don't talk it out, we'll never get back together."

"What the fuck makes you think that I want to get back together?" I asked.

"Steve, you love me," she said. "I love you too. We belong together. We can get over this. It's really not what you think. It's pretty stupid and it really doesn't mean anything."

"Yeah, it kind of does," I said. "It means that our marriage is over. It means we won't be growing old together or having kids together. But after our divorce you can do whatever the fuck you want. Actually, I'm done with you now. You can do whatever you want, now."

"You're blowing this whole thing out of proportion," she said. "Can't I just explain it to you?"

"Why?" I asked. "Maybe you need closure or something. I don't. Maybe you need to explain why this happened so you can blame shift it until it's my fault. I don't need to know the hows or the whys. I don't give a bubbly fart about why you cheated on me and destroyed what I thought was a good marriage. The only thing that matters now is that we're done!"

"Well..." she said. "I can see you're still too bitter to talk. I'll be back tomorrow."

"Don't bother," I said. "I'm sure it'll take longer than that."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's going to take a while for you to get over this too," she said.

"I'm not going to get over it," I said. "I was talking about how long it's going to take for me to find a lawyer to start the divorce and get the papers ready."

She started laughing at that. "You're not going to divorce me," she laughed. "You're hurt and angry and confused, but you still love me. And I have to admit that on thinking about it, I was wrong as hell and very selfish. But I love you just as much as you love me and I swear to you that it will never happen again."

I turned to go inside of the house. And she leaned over and kissed the side of my neck. I pushed her away so hard she almost fell off of the porch. Then I closed the door and put the chain on it. The first thing Monday morning I'd get all of the locks changed.

I went up the stairs and took a shower. I dressed in my favorite old cargo shorts and a Mustang Alley T-shirt. I went out in the back onto our deck and looked around at the yard. If Sarah had been here, she'd have been all over my ass about cutting the grass. If she had her way I would probably cut the fuckin' grass every two days. She loved to sit out here on the deck or spend time in the hot tub. She had landscaped the shit out of our yard. Even I had to admit it was beautiful.

We often had breakfast or dinner out on that deck and we were...

"Steve is the hot tub ready? I am definitely going to be taking advantage of that tonight so you and Rick had better get all of your God Damned car talk over before we get in!" screamed a voice over the fence separating my yard from the next one.

I looked over and a head popped up over the six foot privacy fence between our yards. It was Georgia, the wife of the asshole who'd fucked Sarah. Georgia at forty-five years old was probably one of the friendliest, most outgoing women I knew. She was equal parts mom and neighborhood cop, but there was just something about her that was beyond either. Georgia was a miracle on two legs.

She could come over on a day when you just felt like shit and have you end up thinking it was the best day of your life.

"Huh?" I said.

"Remember, this evening is the neighborhood barbecue?" she said. "Sarah volunteered your hot tub for after dinner drop by usage. I will be one of those dropping by for usage."

She looked over at me and just beamed. "Too many midnight shifts Huh, Stevie?" she asked. "I used to be a nurse, remember? I know what it's like. Before you know it you'll have a day shift position. Just hang in there, Honey."

I had forgotten about the barbecue. But the idea of being around people and actually thinking about something other than how pissed I was at Sarah sounded good.

I jumped in my Mustang and drove over to the neighborhood Kroger store. It was closer than Meijers and their prices were better.

I bought a bouquet of roses and a couple of bottles of wine. I drove home, grabbed a couple of nice steaks and then went over to the neighbor across the street's house. Brian and his wife Alicia were really nice. I could smell the meat on the grill before I got into their yard.