Chapter 1

I knew the marriage I had thought was happy and as close to perfect as one could be was over as soon as I heard that phrase come out of Sylvia's mouth. You guys know the one I am talking about.

"Honey, we need to talk." Sylvia said to me that fateful Wednesday afternoon as soon as I entered the living room upon my return from work.

She was sitting in the overstuffed arm chair in the living room that she had dragged from its usual place in the living room arrangement so that it was facing my recliner with about six feet between the two. She was still wearing the clothes she had worn to work minus her shoes.

I turned, walked down the hall to our kitchen, and grabbed myself a beer. My mind was going a mile a second with all sorts of ideas as to what my loving wife of the past eleven years had to talk about. The most prevalent one being she was going to tell me she had an affair and if she said that; our marriage was done.

She had that unhappy mixed with pissed look on her face I am sure every husband the world over has seen on his wife's face at one time or another. I forced a smile when I was beside her then bent down and tried to give her our customary kiss that we'd shared every day since we'd first lived together and throughout our marriage. She turned her head and my kiss landed on her cheek.

I sat on the couch instead of my recliner and the look of shock that appeared on Syl's face showed me that my plan to upset her plan had worked. She started to rise from the chair but I motioned for her to stay where she was. I took a big gulp of my beer before I told her I was ready to listen to her talk.

"Don, you know I love you and don't want to hurt you; but I'm bored with our sex life and I think we need to do something to spice it up. I think we need to have an open marriage. We can date other people and tell each other about it afterwards. It will be new, exciting, and bring us closer together.

"Please honey; don't look at me like that. It'll be great, I promise. It's only sex for God's sake, it's not like we'll stop loving each other.

"Donald, please tell me what you're thinking." Syl said to me with a look of apprehension mixed with hope.

To be honest, I did not know what to say because I was in so much shock. This was the first I had heard of her being bored with our sex life. I knew that after twelve years of having sex together, we both knew what and how the other liked what we did together when we had sex; and I had tried to be spontaneous and change things up, but she had never complained. I always did everything I needed to so that she came every time we made love and I knew she was not a good enough actress to be faking her orgasms.

I knew her expressions, her sounds, the way her vaginal walls contracted and relaxed when she came and knew she could not fake those things. I knew the one time she did fake an orgasm because she wanted me to finish quicker than normal, but never let on that I knew.

I also knew the way my wife thought and the things she was saying now would never have crossed her mind on their own. I also knew I could not come straight out and ask her where she got these idiotic ideas. I did not want to be with other women, though I had fantasied about it, and definitely did not want her to be with other men or to hear about her experiences with them. That was one fantasy I had never had and the very idea made me sick to my stomach.

I took a deep breath as I bent down and sat my beer on the floor at my feet before I looked at the woman I had loved for the last fifteen years. Memories from all of those mostly happy years came flooding into my head and I sat back and let them roll along.

I remembered the party where we had first met at the beginning of our sophomore year in college; the one a friend had dragged me to as had a friend of Syl's, the fact that we had talked the whole night away, and how we each seemed to know we had found our life partner which led to our dating, and the way we seemed to always be together whenever we were not in class or asleep in our dorm rooms.

The heavy petting and other things we had done with each other's bodies short of intercourse because she wanted to be a virgin on her wedding night. Graduation, finding jobs in the same small town, moving in together to save us both money, the night she had abandoned her wish to remain a virgin, and given her cherry to me. The year of living in sin as both her parents and mine termed the most joyous and adventuresome time of our lives.

Learning about each other and sex together, how to please each other, what we liked or did not like. Our wedding, honeymoon, buying the house we were currently living in, advancing in both our careers; all of those joyous memories rushing across the movie screen I had inside my head.

The hard, painful memories came along right behind the good ones unbidden, but endured because they were as much a part of the life I knew would be over unless I could derail the train I saw rushing toward me.

Our trying to conceive, the tests that determined I was sterile, the crying we had both shared from the news.

I remembered the death of her parents in a plane crash while they were on their way to Las Vegas for the first time and the memorial service with only pictures of them because the fire after the crash consumed everything except the metal pieces of the plane and the metal in the cargo aboard it.

After the movie had ended in my head; a plan, however hasty, began to emerge from the chaos that remained inside my brain.

"Why haven't you said anything before now, Syl? Can we talk about other things we can try to spice up our sex life? How about role playing? Can we try that?

"The possibilities for role playing are only limited by our imaginations and you know how big my imagination is. Cheerleader and football player, or housewife and repairman, or even street walker and john; see Syl, I thought of those three off the top of my head. We can try anything you want without including other people. Please, tell me we can do anything else except an open marriage." I begged and pleaded with her as I watched the confusion, anger, and finally determination flow across her face.

"No, we're going to do it my way. Ronnie said you'd try and talk me out of it, but my mind is made up. We have an open marriage and that's the end of the discussion." Syl told me in the stern tone she got when she was determined and I knew three things at that moment.

One): I knew who had put the idea of an open marriage in her head. Veronica Blake, nicknamed Ronnie, was a co-worker of Syl's and a well-known slut in our town who seemed to be proud to be one.

Two): By her tone, it would be a waste of effort to argue anymore with Syl that evening.

Three): Unless I could somehow change her mind before she went too far, my marriage was over, the length of time before it was official being the only unknown factor.

Syl was wrong about one thing; our discussion was not over until I had my say. I stood up quickly and did not care that I had spilt my beer onto the carpet when I inadvertently kicked it. I walked around to stand behind my recliner so that I could look at Sylvia face to face.

"Okay Syl, I know your mind is made up, but I'm going to try and change it. I listened to what you had to say; now it's your turn to listen to what I have to say. I don't want an open marriage, don't want you giving yourself to other men, and hope you're willing to accept the consequences of what you're about to do." I said to her as evenly as I could though I wanted to scream and yell at her.

"But Don..." She started to say before I held up my hand in the universal signal of stop.

"I wasn't done talking, Syl. You'll get your chance when I'm finished. I'm telling you point blank I don't want you to do whatever it is you're planning to do. If you're so bound and determined to go through with this, I get to make the rules.

"Rule Number One: You will not at any time have your "dates" in this house. If they come here to pick you up and you're not ready, they can wait on the porch or in their car.

"Rule Number Two: You will not spend one red cent of our money for anything when it comes to your "dating". If the clothes you have now aren't sexy enough, let whoever doesn't think they are buy you ones they do think are sexier. Same goes with panties, lingerie, jewelry, shoes, perfume, or whatever.

"The first time I find out you've spent our money on anything related to your "dating"; one of us will be out of this house, probably me, and the one left can see how well they can pay the bills on their own.

"Rule Number Three and it's the biggest and most important: I don't want to hear about what you do on your "dates". I don't want to hear about who the men or women are, where the two or however many of you there are go, and I definitely don't want to hear about the sex you may have with someone else.

"Why do you look so shocked, Syl? I don't know what you may want to try to spice up "your" sex life. How do I know if you're bi-curious or not? How do I know if you're interested in giving yourself to two men or more at the same time or not? Hell, until a few minutes ago, I didn't know you were unhappy with our sex life."

"I didn't say I was unhappy with it, I said I was bored with it. I think we're in a rut and want to change it up. I'm not doing this for me, but for us. Ronnie says it really turns Rick on when she goes out on a date and then comes back and tells him about all the naughty things she'd done. She says that they fuck like rabbits when she gets home and if it's on a Friday or Saturday night, they may not get to sleep until its daylight or later.

"Are you sure you want to keep Rule Number Three?" Syl asked me in her sexiest voice, which in the past, had led me to change my mind and see things her way; but didn't sway me that day.

"Yes, I want to keep Rule Number Three, Sylvia. You break it or any of the other two and I'm out of here; out of the house, out of the marriage, and out of your life.

"I don't care what Ronnie says, I'm not Rick. I don't want to hear about your spiced up sex life, don't want to see you in action with other men, and I'll say it again, don't want you doing this. Now our discussion is over. I'm going out and I suggest you think about what you're going to do. Remember, there will be consequences if you go through with whatever you're planning." I said to her loudly as my anger overpowered my control of it.

I ignored her pleas for me to stop as I walked out of the living room and to the connecting door to the garage, jumped in my car, and left. I drove to the neighborhood bar and nursed a couple of beers for the next hour while I stewed in my anger then languished in my pain trying to find some solution to the mess Syl had put me in.

I knew talking more about it would only make Syl dig her heels in even more than they already were so I decided action was the only option left. No, I was not thinking of physically restraining her, I was thinking more along the lines of sweeping her off of her feet, something I had not actually had to do to win her heart those fifteen years ago.

All the floral shops were closed when I left the bar and the floral department of our local supermarket was my only option, but I managed to find a half dozen yellow roses, Syl's favorites, that were in good shape to take home with me as my first salvo in turning her around.

Syl was sitting on the couch with her cell phone in her lap and wads of tissue lying beside her on the couch and on the floor at her feet. Her eyes were red and her face was puffy and I knew she had been crying, probably for most of the time I was gone. Her face brightened briefly when she saw the vase with the roses in my hands only to be replaced with anger in the next nanosecond.

"Ronnie told me you'd try to get me to change my mind with gifts and false affections. It's not going to work, Don. No matter what you do between now and then, I'm going on my date Friday night. You might as well take those straight to the trash because I don't want them."

With my last plan of salvation shot down in flames by her words and attitude, I did not even try to control the rage that sprang up within me. I threw the vase as hard as I could in her direction, but high enough that she would have had to been taller than her actual 5'6" height for it to hit her if she did happen to stand at that moment. It was only luck that it spun upside down right when it was passing over her and spilled the roses and water onto her.

"FALSE AFFECTIONS! FALSE AFFECTIONS! I HAVE NEVER SHOWN YOU FALSE AFFECTIONS THE ENTIRE TIME I'VE KNOWN YOU, SYL! YOUR FRIEND IS LEADING YOU DOWN A DANGEROUS PATH AND I WON'T HESITATE TO TELL YOU I TOLD YOU SO WHEN THE REAL SHIT HITS THE FAN!