Chapter 3

Finally Mike just blurted out "I have to go to Honolulu. The office there is a real mess and Frank asked me to go over there and straighten things out. It's going to take several months." Mary stared at Mike with her mouth hanging open "When the hell did you find this out and when are you leaving?"

"I have plane reservations for early Monday morning and I'll need you or Sean to take me to the airport."

Mary just stood there with her mouth literally hanging open. What in the fuck did he just say? "Did you just say that you are leaving for Hawaii Monday morning? Where in all holy hell did that just come from?" Mary staggered over to the kitchen table a plopped into the nearest chair. Gasping, she said, "could you please just start over and explain what is going on." Mike told Mary about the job in Hawaii and how his boss had told him that he was the only one to go there and fix all that was going wrong. Not being totally stupid, he didn't tell her that he had volunteered. "Mike, how can you go off and leave me here alone with the kids, what will I do? It's not fair. You can't go!" Mary's voice kept getting stronger and louder with each syllable. "You are not leaving me here by myself." She shouted angrily. Slamming his fist on the table, Mike shouted back. "You're not here by yourself, god dammit, you're buddy Sean is here. The way you two are such buddy buddy all the time, you will never even miss me except when you want a fucking baby sitter." More quietly, he said, "just get over it Mary, I'm going, it's my job. You will be just fine without me." Wearily, Mike stood and walked into the bedroom where he began packing his clothes into a suitcase from the closet. That night, Mary kept distance between them in bed, but that didn't seem strange to him since they had been sleeping just like that for more months than he could remember. The next morning and for the rest of the weekend, the chill coming from Mary was almost thick enough to slice with a knife. Mike spent his time with the children, playing and explaining why he had to leave for a while but that he loved them and would come home again when the job was done. They all cried a little but in the end they accepted his leaving as necessary. Mary and Mike only spoke to each other when absolutely necessary. Monday morning came all to soon and since as it turned out, neither Mary nor Sean seemed to have any spare time, Mike took a cab to the airport. Mary was still so angry with him that she didn't even get out of bed until after he left. No goodbye hug or kiss for him. But Mike had to be honest. She hadn't shown him any real affection for a long, long time.

Later that same morning, Mary sat quietly out on the back patio. She was feeling a little sad but couldn't put her finger on exactly why. "Well he's gone. I didn't even get out of bed and say goodbye. Why didn't I? I was awake and I heard him moving around before he left. Why couldn't I have taken him to the airport? I could have spent those last minutes with him. I do care about him and I do honestly love him." Then it dawned on her again as it had so many times in the last several month. "Do I honestly love him? Would he honestly believe that I still love him with all my heart if he knew about Sean and me? If I can't be honest with him, at least I should be honest with myself." Then Mary started crying softly, hugging her self and thinking. "Do I still love my husband? I don't know. I know that I love what I have with Sean. The sex is really good, boy, can he really ring my bell. Is Sean a better lover than Mike? Damn, it's been so long since Mike has made love to me. I can't even remember the last time." Mary suddenly realized why she was a little sad. "I miss Mike!" She was actually surprised with that revelation. "Why do I miss him already? He just left this morning." For the first time in months she was thinking about her relationship with her husband. "We haven't been close for a long time now. We are just two people living in the same house. He hasn't kissed me or hugged me in so long and again I still can't remember when we last made love. I can remember all to well the last several times Sean and I fucked. Why can't I remember anything like that about Mike, after all, he is my husband?" Over the next several months, Mary would find herself having this same conversation with herself time and again. She would ask herself questions such as

"Do I still love Mike?

Does Mike still love me?

Has Mike had an affair or any flings?

Do I love Sean?

Does Sean really love me?

Is what Sean and I have just GREAT sex?

What happened to the GREAT sex Mike and I used to have?

When did Mike and I drift apart?

When he comes home, what will happen?"

The one question that seemed to bother her most was

"Has Mike had sex with another woman since their marriage?"

That question really pissed her off and seemed to leave a deep ache in her heart. But the one thing that Mary was sure of in her heart was the Mike was being faithful to her. Mary was just to selfish to ask herself what she was going to do about her longtime affair with Sean and what the affair had done and was still doing to her marriage to Mike. She refused to even think about much less consider the damage that would be caused to Mike, the children, her parents, Mike's parents, their friends, etc, etc. Whenever she thought about Sean, the only things that came to mind were the really excellent sex and the delicious feeling of putting something over on Mike. That seemed to be one of the things that made sex with Sean so intense and delicious.

Eight hours later, Mike walked through the open air terminal in Honolulu, Hawaii. "My god, the air is so fresh and clean and look at all these people, they all look so happy and excited." After gathering his bags, Mike took a taxi to the long-term resident hotel where he would be hanging his hat for the next several months. As he was putting his clothing away, he heard a knocking at the door. "Who could that be? I don't know anyone that would want to see me here. Hell I don't know anyone here at all." Opening the door, he saw a very attractive brown skinned woman. That was all he could notice as she pushed past him into his apartment. "Hey, you must be Mike. I'm Kelli, your new secretary, driver, guide and main person Friday. So how ya doing?" She said all that in a single rush without taking a single breath. Mike couldn't help but notice how her perfect breasts heaved a little while she took some rapid breaths. "Hi Kelli, yes I'm Mike and I'm doing fine so far as I just arrived here in Honolulu."

"Frank, your boss, called me and told me to meet you at the airport but I guess I missed you but I knew you were staying here so I just hustled over here. I'm supposed to take you to dinner tonight and then I'll be picking you up in the morning to take you to work. I'll be doing that until you can get your own car to drive." From that point on for the entire time that Mike was in Hawaii, Kelli was all those things to him and many times even more than that. She was a thoroughly delightful, attractive and honest woman. Mike felt that having Kelli as his secretary and everything else was a true blessing and she was a major contributing factor in his success in his new position.

Six months later, Mike sat at his desk on the last day of his assignment in Honolulu. The job had been hard, very hard and routinely at the beginning worked 70, 80 and even 90 hours a week, although that had slowed in the end to an easy 40 to 60 hours each week in the end. Frank in their last phone conversation had crowed about what a great job Mike had done and how happy the CEO was with his performance. Frank assured Mike that there would be a large bonus and probably an equally large raise when he returned home. But work wasn't all that happened to Mike in the last six months. Slowly as he became more accustomed to his duties in his new job, Mike began a slow change in his own personality. He became more confident in himself and because of that he began to interact more easily with everyone around him. Kelli had made it her crusade to make sure that every spare minute of Mike's time was spent learning the islands and the lifestyle that no mainlanders could ever begin to understand and appreciate. She also introduced him to the main form of entertainment in Hawaii. Going to the beach was the most common way of fun for families and singles alike and Mike took to it like, pardon the pun, a fish to water. Swimming, fishing, surfing, partying, it all happened at the beaches. One day about a month after Mike had come to the islands, he and Kelli with some friends of hers were just hanging at the beach. Kelli looked at Mike and said "Mike, can I ask you a personal question?" Answering her "you can ask me any question you want but I pick the ones I want to answer."

"You talk a lot about your kids but you don't hardly mention your wife and I was curious about why."

"Kelli, I don't talk much about my wife because, well, there's really not much to say. We are not close and haven't been that way for a couple of years now." Mike's face seemed to harden and his expression became harder to read. "Mary and I seemed to lose interest somewhere and I'm not sure just exactly when and how it happened. I only speak to her about once a week and then we just talk about the kids and daily household stuff. Sometimes she talks about her job but the conversations are fairly short and I think that she is just as glad to hang up as I am since we don't have much else to say."

"Well how about the old fashioned stuff like saying I love you or miss you and even maybe some good phone sex." Kelli asked. "Kelli, that's a little personal but I can't remember the last time I heard Mary say I love you or show me any kind of affection. I sure haven't heard anything like that since I came to the islands. Before I left the mainland, we were really just roommates. If we didn't have the kids, I'm sure that one of us would have split long before now. Anyway, Mary and her buddy, Sean seem to enjoy each other's company much more than she enjoys mine." Kelli got a strange look on her face, looked at Mike and suddenly changed the subject. Next thing, everyone was telling stories about the trouble some of them got into when they were younger and single. There was a lot of laughing and good-natured ribbing but Mike noticed that Kelli didn't have much to say. She sat off to one side and he could tell she was doing some serious thinking about something. Later that evening, Mike was dropping Kelli off at her apartment. "Mike, do you want to come up for a minute. I can put some coffee on if you like. There's something I'd like to talk with you about." Mike had come to know Kelli fairly well in the short time they had known each other so he had learned to be a little cautious about her famous "something I'd like to talk about" sessions. But he really had nothing better to do. It was the weekend and for a change he had no plans to work until Monday. "OK Kelli, I'll come up but if the shit gets to deep, I'm going to run for home as quick as I can."