It was a typical Sunday morning and I was right on schedule. A typical Fall Sunday morning was as close to heaven as I could get. My schedule was pretty much chiseled in stone. I got up and went out for a run to start with.

The runs in the fall are completely different. For one thing the air, though colder, is crisper and fresher. The fall scenery in Michigan is outstanding. All sorts of trees have their leaves spontaneously combust into a plethora of shades and colors that are dizzying in intensity and unrivaled in their beauty.

Tourists come from all over the country to take in the fall colors and see the beauty of those leaves. And I got to ignore it and stomp over all of those leaves for free.

Maybe after seeing it for over fifty years, I had become immune to the beauty of it all. Or maybe I was just a pissed off, lonely old man who was too locked up in himself to enjoy it.

At any rate, the fall runs were a time to think. With no races to train for, I could just run easily and let my mood, my thoughts and the music on my iPod dictate the pace.

After the run, I went home to a hearty breakfast and several chores around the house. Usually those chores included checking on my Mustang that was snugly ensconced in her heated Garage under a car cover. God, I loved that car.

Anyway, following that, I spent the day with football and NASCAR on my 72" flatscreen.

I was done with my shower and my breakfast. I was just settling in for the checking on the car part of the morning when it happened. Someone knocked on my door.

My first thought was to ignore it, hoping they would go away.

But the knocking only increased in intensity. Then it got worse.

"Gary, I know you're in there," she said. Her voice was familiar, but I couldn't put a name with it. She obviously knew me though, since she'd used my name.

I sighed heavily, hoping that I could get rid of her quickly and get back to my relaxing Sunday.

I opened the door to find one of the people in the world that I least expected to see standing on my porch.

"What?" I asked angrily.

"Oh My," she said. "You look far better than I expected. You've toned up. And shorter hair suits you." She walked past me and into my living room without being invited.

As she passed by me, I couldn't help but notice how good she smelled. She walked over to my sofa and took off her coat. She placed it on the sofa next to her. She was a very feminine woman. Some would call her the girly girl type.

Her waves of thick red hair were mixed in with a few waves of gray here and there, that she had decided not to color. The look made me think of fire and ice. Her hair was much like her personality. She'd always been a very fiery and emotional woman. But if you pissed her off or threatened someone she cared about, her warmth disappeared.

The last time I'd seen her, she hadn't even had so much as a smile for me. That was despite the fact that her husband had been my lifetime best friend.

This time she wore a thick woolen sweater over some sort of T-shirt. I was sure that there was an industrial strength bra under there, restraining her large breasts. She wore only yoga pants and tennis shoes on her lower limbs. She looked as if she had just come from some sort of exercise class and had just thrown her warm coat over her workout gear.

The look was very becoming on her. As she stood and looked around my living room, I noticed her body. The short but well formed legs tapered upwards to wide hips and an absolutely incredible ass.

Her tummy was just a bit thick, but for a woman of her age, who'd already borne a child, it was expected. It wasn't like she had rolls of fat or a beer belly. She was just no longer in that fitness model class.

She turned suddenly and caught me staring at her. I truly believe trying to see if I stared at her body was the primary reason for her looking at the pictures scattered around my living room.

"No family pictures?" she threw out.

"No family," I returned angrily. Her face went through a host of emotions as she watched me.

"Gary you have two..." she began.

"No, I don't," I spat. "She got them in the divorce."

"Bullshit!" she said. The profanity seemed strange coming from her beautiful lips. Her slight southern accent lengthened each syllable.

"She cried to them, the same way she cried to me. No one knew there was a problem until afterwards. And by then your kids had no idea how to handle the situation. You had made your position pretty clear from the beginning. They were either on her side or yours. And you refusing to accept phone calls and sending back all of their letters and even Christmas cards, unopened, pretty much made it clear that you weren't going to change your mind," she said. "They miss you a lot."

"They've still got her," I said.

"What do you expect them to do?" she asked. "It's not like they can just throw her out in the cold. And you probably don't know this and probably care even less, that she has a lot of health problems, right now."

"And?" I said, looking straight at her.

"Gary, the two of you were together for more than twenty years," she said. "Is there no hope that you can at least try to be civil to her?"

"None at all," I spat.

"Oh well," she said. "It looks like I'm about to lose a friend."

"You lost me as a friend a long time ago," I said. "When you took her side in our divorce, you gave me your ice queen routine pretty thoroughly. Even after I..."

"Even after you single handedly helped me through John's death," she finished for me. She wiped her eyes. The fact that she could still summon a tear for him six years after his death re-confirmed my attraction to her. It was clear that when she loved someone, she did it with her whole heart. If only I had been blessed to have married someone like her.

"What did you expect?" she asked. "She was my best friend. And Gary, she was in pain. She was so distraught. Anyone who looked at her ... Anyone who heard her wailing like some sort of pitiful tortured beast could have felt her pain. She cried as if her heart had been torn still beating from her chest. All I wanted was to help my best friend through that pain." She looked at me and shook her head.

"And you... " she said. "So strong, even then. You never shed a single God Damned tear. It looked for all the world as if you just didn't care. You weren't the one who seemed to need help. You went on about your business like none of it mattered."

She turned and looked at my face. Her eyes bore into mine as if she was trying to glimpse the soul inside of the body.

"It was just like now," she said. "You sit there like some huge cat. You're weighing all of your options and trying to figure out what the hell I want. And once you've determined my motives you'll shut me down and go about your business as if I had never been here."

"So why not save me the trouble and just get to the point?" I said.

"The point is I want what you've never given anyone," she said. "And then I'll ask for what I came here for." I looked across the room at her.

"What is it that I've never given anyone?" I asked.

"The real reason why you threw Charity away after twenty years of marriage. I want know why you suddenly decided that you no longer loved the mother of your children and preferred to live alone. I have my suspicions, but I need to know your side," she said.

"Why?" I asked. "After all of this time, why does it matter?"

"Because, John loved you, Gary," she said. "And I did too. And what you did just wasn't like you. And for all of this time Charity has allowed everyone to believe that what happened between the two of you wasn't anything she did. But the way she's been acting makes me think that maybe she hasn't told us all the truth."

I laughed and she looked at me across the floor. The expression on her face was unreadable.

"It's been three years," I said. "Why do you suddenly want to hear my side?"

Perhaps my voice gave away some of the anger I felt. Perhaps she was simply more perceptive than I gave her credit for. But the look on her face now told me that she really wanted to know. I think that maybe she was beginning to see the truth.

"She's never given up the hope that the two of you would get back together," she said. "But every time she goes into one of those jaunts of depression that have been plaguing her, she changes the reason why you guys broke up. At first she wanted all of us to believe that you had done something. She always claimed that it was too painful to talk about. Then later she chalked it up as just the two of you growing apart. But whenever she'd talk about you, it was about how much she missed you. Last week I asked her if she wanted to sign up to work Thanksgiving at the homeless shelter. We used to do that all the time. Charity never worked there on the holiday, because she was always busy with you and the kids. But since I'm alone, I was available."

This time her voice broke slightly as she talked about being alone. I knew that the only reason she was alone was that she hadn't decided that she needed anyone in her life more than she needed her memories.

"Anyway," she continued. "She freaked out when I asked her about it. She said that her volunteering cost her your marriage. And lately it's been really bugging me. And I guess that what she said just doesn't seem like the Gary I know. To be truthful, you've been on my mind a lot lately."

I sighed and moved over by her. I lit the logs in the fireplace and the warmth filled the room. Hope brought her feet up under her legs making herself comfortable. I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed a beer and a glass of wine. I handed the glass to Hope and started my tale.

"You already know how Charity and I met and got married so I won't bore you with that. You already know about us raising our children in the house right across the street from you. You also know that your husband, John and I were lifelong friends, so it just seemed natural for all of us to be friends. So you and Charity did a lot of things together. So let's not waste time discussing the beginning or the ending of my marriage. Let's concentrate on how Charity's charity tore us apart.

About five years ago, just after John died, I got another promotion. I became the Vice President of the engineering department. Anyway, I was making so much money that we were suddenly able to buy some of the things we'd always wanted. I traded my 04' Mustang in on a brand new 2009 Shelby GT 500. I bought that snazzy little Caddy for Charity and gave our kids a nice chunk of cash too.

We also decided that Charity really didn't need to work anymore. At first Charity staying home seemed like a good thing. But after a while she got bored. She considered going back to work, but she really didn't want the day to day grind. She had also talked for years about doing something to give back to society for all of the blessings she had been given.

So that was how she started volunteering for all of her charity work. At first it seemed like a good thing. She came home with lots of good stories about the people she had helped. Helping people seemed like some sort of tonic for her and I have to say that it revved up things in the bedroom for us. Our sex life was never really bad, but after a day of handing out coats to homeless people or reading to seniors, Charity was hotter than a two dollar pistol."

I noticed that Hope shook her head at that. I decided to ask her what bothered her about it, later.

"During the holiday season," I continued. "Charity got ramped up. It was as if she thought that she could single-handedly end hunger and homelessness. She didn't slight our family though. She made our turkey day and Christmas dinners and get-togethers as special as she could. But she just seemed to spend so much more time with her volunteer work. She just seemed to be driven by it.

She went as far as taking our kids to a center that gave clothing to homeless people. They spent an afternoon hanging and sorting clothing in a huge laundry. They helped to wash all of the clothing that had been donated. They came home exhausted. But then our kids were kind of spoiled. They had never had to wash and iron their own clothing growing up, let alone doing laundry for thousands of people.

The afternoon didn't do much to make our kids sympathetic to the plight of the homeless. But it did make them more likely to give a few bucks as a donation rather than work in one of the centers.

It also gave them new respect for what their mother went through. They talked about the fact that they were young and in their twenties. So if they were exhausted when they got home, their mother had to be near the point of physical incapability. That made me think about it too.

I told Charity that if she was too tired for sex or anything else, she should just tell me. She looked at me as if I had fallen off of the stupid tree.

"Gary, you come first, Honey," she said. "My charity work is my hobby, but you're my life."

I can still remember her saying that to me. At the time, I was sure that she was telling the truth. We'd been married for so God damned long. And in all of that time, she had never given me a reason not to trust her. And in the end, I discovered later on that she was telling me the truth, literally.

"Wait a minute," said Hope. "If she loved you so much, why the hell did you dump her?"

"Can I tell the story, Hope?" I said.

"Can you come over here and sit on the sofa near me, while you tell it?" She asked. "We're supposed to be friends after all."

I slowly walked towards her. I didn't want to get too close to her because for a woman of our age, Hope is kind of hot. It had been too long for me and her presence was reminding me of things I hadn't felt in a long time.

"Anyway," I continued. "Charity was running herself ragged. I felt terrible about it. I spoke to the kids about it. We were trying to figure out any way possible that we could help her. So if you remember, we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter Lisa's house. Lisa was happy as hell.

It was Lisa's chance to be Queen for a day. Charity was a little saddened by it, though. I thought that she wanted to prove to everyone that she could do it all and keep it all together. But she was burning the candle at both ends and heading for a burnout. I've seen it before. A person is working so hard that they become blind to the fact that they're falling apart.

One of the first signs is when they start to forget things.

As I spoke I started to notice that Hope was moving closer to me. The sofa wasn't that big, so she ended up close enough to me that our legs were touching. The glow from the fire and the close quarters, weren't doing me any good.

"Go on," she said, reaching her hand out and patting my shoulder. When I started to talk again I noticed that the hand she'd put on my shoulder hadn't moved.

"Okay, Charity, for some reason was more concerned with our sex life than I was," I said.

"Gary, she's supposed to be," interrupted Hope. She used that opportunity to scoot even closer to me. "Charity loves you, she knew she had to keep you happy or you would go to some other woman."

"No, I wouldn't have," I said. "I was with Charity for better or for worse."

"How do you know that she was worried about your sex life?" she asked.

"Remember how I told you that she was always hot to trot after volunteering but then lately she'd been too tired for sex or anything else when she came home?" I asked. "Well she quickly changed her behavior. She started giving me sex BEFORE she went to the homeless shelter.

That Thanksgiving day, the plan was for her to go to the Shelter to help prepare their Thanksgiving meal, and then come home so we could go to Lisa's house for our own.

I woke up that morning, with my dick as hard as a rock. The reason it was harder than normal was because Charity was slurping on it. Being awakened with a blowjob is a wonderful start to any day. And in my limited experience, Charity gives the best blowjobs ever.

She took me almost to the point of no return and then stopped. She climbed her way up my body and started kissing me. God that woman can kiss. But all of the kissing was just to let me cool down.

She straddled me and lined her pussy up and started riding me. The whole time she was telling me how much she loved me. She kept riding me until she could tell I was about to cum. Then she would stop get off of my dick and just smile at me.

At the end of every smile, the corners of her lips would shift upwards just a tiny bit more. After a couple of times, I got used to just watching that smile.

She did it two or three times. I was so close to cumming that it hurt. And there she was smiling at me. And she knew what she was doing.

"You want to cum don't you?" she smirked. I just nodded. We both enjoyed the game.

"Tell me what you want, baby," she said.

You have to remember, Hope, Charity isn't like you. She isn't slim and curvy and sexy. Charity looks like an average suburban mom. She has a wide fat ass and big motherly boobs. But I loved her so much that it just made her the sexiest woman on earth to me.

"I want to split that pussy. And fill it with cream," I told her. She smiled at me then but it was just a little smile.

"That's what I want you to do," she told me. "But I don't think you're gonna make it."

That was when she hit me with that full electric smile and I couldn't hold it anymore. Sperm shot out of me like someone had just flipped a switch. She leaned forward so some of it landed on her face. The woman made me cum just by smiling at me. She really had my number.

After that we lay there in bed cuddling. For a while she kept rubbing my dick as we smootched. Then she turned her back to me so we were spooned, but she never let go of my dick. She rubbed the head of it in her pussy covering it with her juice to lube it up. I knew what was coming when she started pulling her fat ass cheeks apart.

Charity and I had done anal a few times before that morning, but it wasn't something we did very often. To be honest, I liked it. She was so tight back there that she always almost squeezed my dick off. Charity being older and having given birth to a couple of kids meant that her vagina was on the loose side.

But as much as I loved the feeling I got from anal, there were two reasons why we didn't do it often. The first was because Charity didn't like it. She said it was too painful and didn't give her an orgasm. She said it actually turned her off. After a few strokes she was no longer interested in sex. So it was one of those things I got for my birthday and some Christmasses, if I had been extremely good.

The second reason was because of the length of time it took for me to actually get into her ass. Real life is not like the porno movies. It takes some time and a lot of lube to get into that tight tiny hole. Of course if we did it more often it would be easier, but as you can see, anal just wasn't in our normal repertoire.

So when I started pushing, I didn't expect much. She had tried using the lubrication from her pussy to help get me in, but I wasn't expecting it to work. We'd tried several different lubricants on the rare occasions that we did try it and it took a lot of lube and a lot of pressure just to get things started.

But I started making progress almost immediately. Charity was pushing back against me as I pushed forward. I was surprised at how easily the head of my dick pushed through her sphincter ring. Her ass was as tight as a vise. She continued to push against me and started to grit her teeth.

She gave out a low moan as I made it to the halfway point. "Oh fuck, it's too big," she said.

"How the... " I blurted out in surprise.

"Been practicing," she grunted as she continued to push towards me. "Used my finger ... then a small vibrator ... then two fingers," she grunted.

"Why?" I asked in surprise.

"Because you like it," she panted. I was almost up to my balls in her vise tight anal cavity. Both of us were dripping with sweat. I was in ecstasy and surprisingly, Charity wasn't in anywhere near the level of pain she normally felt.

"I love you, Gary," she spat, through clenched teeth. "I want to give you everything."

She pushed her ass against me again and that was all it took. A primal urge took over me. I grabbed her by the hips and started fucking her like I was beating a rented mule. Our bodies slapping against each other like two wild animals was the only audible sound in the house. I was so close to cumming that I could no longer even form conscious thoughts. I reached one arm around her and found her clit. Her body stiffened at the rough treatment of her most sensitive area.

She screamed just as I unloaded a big blast of sperm inside of her colon. For a long time we were both really still. Our obscene slapping sounds had been replaced by the sound of our breaths as our hearts slowed back to normal.

It took me a while. I squeezed her body to me even further. I could feel her heart beating as I wrapped my arms around her, still locked together. She gave a little "ooh," sound as my deflating dick popped out of her ass.

"Luv you too," I moaned, kissing her gently on her neck. At that time, I was closer to her than ever before. I had absolutely no doubt that we loved each other totally. I had just fucked her like a dog taking a bitch, but the feelings we both had we almost as if we had just made the gentlest and most romantic love. I knew she felt the same way because she reached back for my hands and placed one on top of her breasts and held the other tightly in her own hand. There was no need for words.

That wonderful feeling lasted for all of two minutes before the alarm went off shattering it.

"What the hell did you set the alarm for?" I asked.

"I have to be at the shelter by ten," she reminded me. "Come on, get up. You can do me in the shower."

"I think you broke my dick," I gasped. "I'm going to just lie here in our sweat and relive what you just did to me. I'm just going to enjoy the after-glow alone, until I go out for my run. But I'm going to be running really slow. You took all of my energy."

She just laughed at me and wiggled her naked ass as she went into the bathroom.

"I can't believe you're going to get out of a warm bed with a man who loves you, to go and serve soup to other people," I whined. "Stay in bed with me."

"I'm only going to be at the shelter for a couple of hours," she said. "Then we can both recover while we're at Lisa's place. Maybe, I'll give you some more when we get back. I won't have to do anything that will tire me out at the shelter. So we'll have plenty of time to recharge."

I laid there in the bed thinking about how lucky I was and drifted off to sleep. I woke up some time later and vaguely remembered Charity kissing me goodbye before she left. I had slept so heavily that I probably wouldn't have felt or remembered that gentle kiss, if Charity hadn't dropped her glasses as she leaned over to kiss me.

I got up and stretched. I debated the merits of showering before I went out to run. I smelled awful. I smelled like sweat and sex. I was still debating it when I went into the kitchen.

There on the counter were two chocolate cakes. There was only supposed to be one. Charity had baked two cakes. One of which we were taking to Lisa's with us. The other cake, Charity was supposed to have taken to the shelter with her.

It was just another one of those little details that had slipped her mind, reminding me that maybe she was working too hard. But then again, perhaps it was just her memory that was lacking. After all memory is a function of the mind and I had fucked her brains out that morning.

The recent sex had bonded me even more strongly with my wife of many years. At that moment there was nothing I wouldn't do for her. So I quickly jumped into the shower and then dressed.

Even though it was Thanksgiving Day, I decided to drive my Mustang. I was feeling invincible and I needed a car to match that feeling. I had to go into the garage and unhook the car from the battery tender. It took me about fifteen minutes to put the wheels back on it. Then I had to get my jack out and take the car off of the Jack stands. I knew I'd have to do it all over again when I put the car back up, but the weather was nice and it was worth it.

I carefully placed the cake next to me in the passenger seat. Knowing Charity the way I did, I knew she would be pissed if the cake moved around in the cake dish and the sides of it scraped the frosting off.

Because it was a holiday, the roads were fairly empty. I made really good time. I got to the shelter in about ten minutes. When I pulled up, I was hesitant to leave my car in that parking lot, but I figured I would only be there go a few minutes. I imagined that I would walk in, hand Charity the cake, and receive a big kiss for my trouble. Then I would jump back into my awaiting steed and drive back home after saving the day.

I know it sounds corny, but I was still floating on the wings of love. Great sex does that to a guy.

I don't know what I expected, but that wasn't what I got. First off, I was barely able to get into the place. It was packed. There were so many people in the building that most of them were standing. I suppose since life was good for us, I had forgotten that there were a huge number of people with no jobs and no prospects for jobs.

Everywhere I looked in that sea of faces, White, Black, Hispanic, or otherwise, I saw the same depressed and discouraged look. That look of utter hopelessness above anything else would tell most sane people that we are all more alike than we are different.

For me Thanksgiving was just another holiday I took for granted. My biggest problems were deciding what among all of the things my wife and daughter would prepare for the huge dinner I felt like eating, and what to watch on TV while they cooked. These people had a completely different set of problems.

They were more worried about finding a safe place to sleep and whether or not they would eat at all that day. It shamed me to think that my Mustang, in its heated garage, lived better than most of the people in that room. I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a performance based full synthetic oil for my car, when most of these people would live for a more than a month on what I paid for an oil change. It was a sobering moment.

As I wove my way among the people carrying a huge chocolate cake, that just seemed silly when considering the fact that the money spent on ingredients for the cake could have paid for healthy meals for more people than would get a tiny sliver of it. But most of the people there looked at the cake as if it was a gift from the gods.

A woman wearing an apron smiled at me and I pushed my way towards her. I held the cake up to protect it. Not from any of the people there, they seemed to be in really good spirits considering the circumstances. But there were just so many people crammed into the room that I didn't want to smash it trying to work my way over to the woman at the counter.

After a few moments of apologizing and pushing my way towards her, I finally got close enough to her to talk. "Hi," she said. "Did you come to help?"

"Sorry, not this time," I said. "Charity forgot the cake she baked. I brought it over."

"Oh my God," she laughed. "You must be Gary. No wonder she's always in a hurry to get home to you." I reddened a bit at the unexpected praise.

"Charity is upstairs," she smiled. "She has some sort of rewards program for some of our regulars. You know, one of those incentive things. If they do their chores around the building, they get a star. If they go on an interview for a job, they get a star. If they get a job, they get three stars. And at the end of the month they get to pick a prize or something. I'm guessing that the cake you're holding is probably one of the prizes."

"Wow!" I said. "I had no idea."

"Your wife is one of our best motivators," gushed the woman. "She can get the guys to do almost anything."

"She has that same effect on me," I smiled.

"Work your way to that staircase on the left," she said before turning back to the huge salad she was making.

"Happy Thanksgiving," I said. She smiled and nodded.

It took me even more time to make my way over to the staircase, with the cake held high to protect it. Among the people packed sardine-like in the building, there were several children. They looked at the cake the way a shark looks at a school of fish.

When I finally got to the staircase, the crowd had thinned out considerably. I guess the further you moved from the food, the fewer people you had to deal with.