Hey Folks, what a week! The first and most important thing I have to do is to thank everyone who read the story. I have to thank those of you who wrote to me afterwards even more. The number of e-mails I had gotten before lunchtime last Thursday was staggering. I continued getting them until ... Crap I got another one this morning just before I posted the ending. Every one of you who told me what they thought should happen had great ideas. I wish I could have written five different endings to cater to the five major trends that you all wanted to see. But I wanted this out in a week so that wasn't possible. Barney-R and I had to work long and hard to make this happen and I think that what we came up with is a very good although not perfect ending.

There was one person among all of the hundreds of e-mails that really made me think. Although I didn't write the ending she wanted to see yet, I'm working on it, Theresa. Anyway ... I'm sure that some of you will like this and others will hate it, but that's how it goes. Please feel free to write to me with either complaints, compliments or outright scorn. If enough of you hate this, maybe I, or someone better can take another stab at it.

Thanks again to the legendary Barney-R for making this legible. SS06

Gretchen

"Don't try to talk," I said. "I've already called for an ambulance."

The pain was written all over his face. That same face was swelling up as I watched. Both of his eyes were going to be black. His nose was at an odd angle. Bubbles were forming in the blood on his face every time he breathed. His mouth looked weird. It wasn't the fact that his lips had swollen to nearly twice their normal size. It was as if his entire mouth had shifted to the side.

I heard the sirens getting closer. He grabbed my arm and mumbled to me.

"Mggd ... dhn mntn Dlan!" He was adamant. It took me a while to figure out that I was to tell the EMS guys or the police that he'd been mugged, and I was not supposed to talk about Dylan.

For once, I had no problem doing something that Jimmy wanted me to do. Two hours later, I was still filling out paperwork. Jimmy, naturally, had no health insurance. He had two black eyes, a fractured left orbit, a fractured cheek bone, a dislocated mandible, and a fat lip. He cried like a baby when they popped his Jawbone back into place.

They wanted to keep him for a few days to rule out a concussion. I was all for it. Paying for Jimmy's medical treatment was going to take a big chunk out of my savings.

Even though his jaw was only dislocated, not broken, he was in a lot of pain. With his two black eyes and his swollen lips, he looked like some sort of mutated raccoon.

The thing that confused me the most though was the way he looked at me. The glances he gave me, and his entire demeanor towards me were openly contemptuous.

Even though he gave me the impression that he hated me, he expected me to be in the hospital every day while he was there.

It finally became clear once he could talk again. He filed a police report that claimed that he was attacked by two guys. He told them that it had happened so fast that he didn't see them.

The police told him that if any details occurred to him to give them a call. They had lots of random mugging cases and had neither the time nor the resources to spend very much time on another one.

Once he was released from the hospital, it didn't get any better. He moved right into our ... or my house. He was no help with any of my problems. I had to get my boss to give me more hours at work to cover my expenses. His medical bills had already put a drain on the money I had. I had no idea if Dylan would ever come back to talk to me again about of problems. I couldn't believe my marriage was over.

They say that hindsight is twenty/twenty. In my case, it was even sharper than that. Mine was a case of greed. I reached out to try to grab more. I had a great man. He was a loving husband and would have someday been a great father. However, I've always had a thing for bad boys, and I got one. Now I needed to get rid of him, so I could get my husband back.

I guess that all the crap that Jimmy had fed me about the two of them sharing everything, including some of their women was old news. Apparently, I meant more to Dylan than Jimmy thought. Jimmy had all kinds of clever sayings about things, like Bros before hoes. But Dylan had beaten the fuck out of Jimmy over me.

I should have been flattered by it. But to tell the truth, it was frightening. I had never seen Dylan so much as raise his voice before that. I know that he misunderstood my motives when I pulled him off of Jimmy. I think that Dylan thought that I was trying to protect Jimmy. I wasn't though. I was trying to keep Dylan from going to jail for killing Jimmy. The next time we spoke, I had to clarify that if nothing else. I was sure that Dylan thought of that as just another case of me betraying him for Jimmy. The longer this went on, the deeper the hole I dug for myself.

The worst part of it was that I seemed to be alone. My family was so against what I had done that they gave me the cold shoulder. They didn't disown me or anything, but every conversation seemed to be centered on my mental health.

Jimmy was worse. The longer we were together, the more hostile he became. Finally, I asked him if we could talk. I told him that his attitude towards me bothered me. I told him that if he disliked me that much, he could simply leave and live elsewhere.

I'd been working my ass off trying to save money, so I could move out if I couldn't keep the house. More than anything else, I wanted my husband to come back. Jimmy had been completely wrong. I felt really stupid. And the worst part about it was that Dylan had become exactly what I wanted from him. He became more decisive. He became more physical. And he HAD, in fact, chosen me over Jimmy, just as I had demanded he do when we first got together.

It had been me who had been weak. I was the one who wasn't strong enough to stand up to Jimmy. And with every day that passed, I regretted it more.

While at work, I ran into a friend, Sylvia, who gave me even worse information. She had been at a bar on a date a few weeks prior and had seen Dylan and Jimmy. She overheard part of their conversation. She actually heard Jimmy insulting me. He made jokes about my looks and my body. Apparently, Jimmy had never felt anything for me. She also heard Dylan defending me. He had disagreed with everything Jimmy said, and he finally got tired of it and left. I only wished she'd called me as soon as she'd heard all of that. My life would be so much different. I would have simply hung up the phone on Jimmy when he called.

Instead, I did the stupidest thing possible and let him into my house and my bed. I seemed to go from one mistake to the next where Jimmy and Dylan were concerned.

After falling for Jimmy's bullshit that Dylan wouldn't be upset if Jimmy and I slept together, Dylan had left me. The fact that he had punched Jimmy in the mouth when he mentioned Sarah should have taught me something. The days that Dylan and I were apart were hell. I should have gone to him to beg his forgiveness. But I continued to let Jimmy tell me how he knew everything about Dylan and that everything would be fine.

I then let Jimmy con me into getting Dylan back to the house, so we could talk. When he got there and found out that Jimmy was still there, the pain and the hurt he was feeling magnified. He felt as if I had simply betrayed him all over again. He had beaten Jimmy to a pulp and apparently left the state. Now I was stuck with Jimmy who was treating me as if he hated me, but refused to leave my house.

"I can't leave," he said. "When Dylan comes back, this is where he'll be."

"So we're only together, because of Dylan?" I asked, shaking my head.

"What else is there between us?" he asked. "I have to admit that I fucked up. Dylan has real feelings for you. I guess there's no accounting for taste, even among brothers. However, the two of us need each other."

"Why the hell do we need each other?" I asked.

"I already told you," he said. "Dylan will come back to you one way or another. The look on his face when he walked in and saw you was disgusting. He really thinks of you as something special. I don't think he's over you yet. I think, and this is hard for me to understand, but I think Dylan loves you. I'm pretty sure that he'll come back. And then you told me that he likes your family. He likes your dad and your mom and your hot little sister, right? He won't break off ties to them, unless they make it clear to him that they don't want to hear from him. Shit, Dylan still sends birthday cards to my mom and dad and sees them whenever he goes back home. I don't even do that."

"So that's why you need me," I said. "Why do I need you?"

"Because you need a man around you, and you can't resist me," he said. "You had your perfect little suburban life, and you shit canned it to jump into bed with me the first chance you got. You weren't even hard to get. Why the fuck did you marry my brother anyway? I had your panties off in less than twenty minutes. It takes more time than that to get to bed with a bar skank. But the real reason you need me is because Dylan is eventually going to come back here. You and I both hope that he's going to return here to work things out with you, but what if he meets someone else and comes back just for the divorce. I mean he was so pissed off last time that he just erupted and forgot all about the divorce papers, so you, and he are technically still married. You owe me one for that. I took a beating so you could stay married. But we need to work together if this is going to work out. I know him better than anyone on this planet. So if you want my brother back, you need me.

Dylan

In the four months that I've been in Florida, I've tried hard to put the past behind me. I love the weather here. The ability to drive my Mustang all year round is another thing I love about it. I have a house that's quite close to the beach with a lot of very friendly neighbors.

My new job at the plant here was actually kind of a promotion. Back in Michigan, I was one of a team of engineers. All of us were pretty good and no one really stood out. Since all of our skills were roughly equal, they did things, mostly on the basis of seniority. That meant that at twenty-seven years old and only five years out of college, I didn't have much seniority, so I got a lot of the shitty, weekend shifts and got bumped to nights a lot.

But since my old boss, who was head of engineering in the old plant, became plant manager here, he's tried to make the plant more efficient, like the plants back in Michigan. He's been converting everything to lean engineering and lean manufacturing styles. Since I know what he wants and have experience with it, I've begun climbing the ladder here at a meteoric rate. Combine that with the fact that I have no wife and no family here to provide distractions, so I can easily work weekend and holiday shifts. All I do now is work, eat, sleep, and run. Any time that I'm not doing those things finds me adding modifications to my Mustang.

I became assistant manager of engineering in only three months. The current manager of engineering is retiring next year, and I'm the obvious choice to replace him. Who knows how far I can rise here?

On a personal note, there is no personal note. Except for my working relationships, I rarely speak to people. I have severe trust issues. Seriously, how the hell am I supposed to trust anyone when the woman I loved and thought loved me, betrayed me with the worst possible person? Jimmy and I were closer than brothers, and he fucked Gretchen for no other reason than because he could.

Neither of the two people I felt closer to than anyone else on earth gave even a passing thought to how badly what they did could hurt me. And to make things worse, they never even bothered to cover it up or try to hide it.

Imagine walking into your own home with nothing in mind except going to bed with your wife, then walking in and finding your very best friend, lying there, still half naked, watching your TV, on the white leather couch that your wife just had to have, that she doesn't even let you sit on. She always whined about getting stains on that fucking couch that I paid for. Well, Jimmy was a huge fucking stain. So fuck her and that couch.

I stayed away from both of them for the next two weeks while I got things arranged for my move here. She had the nerve to call me and tell me that I could give her the papers to start our divorce, if I talked to her for ten minutes. I know that I blew that one. I never should have agreed to it. I should have done the rational thing and just let my lawyer handle it. However, I guess I hoped that talking to her would have allowed us both some sort of closure. Okay, why am I lying to myself?

I wanted her to tell me that she loved me and that Jimmy was a mistake. I wanted her to beg me to give her another chance and for her to tell me that we could leave together and try to put it all behind us. I guess when the chips were down, the bottom line, the real nitty gritty and a thousand other dumb assed clichés all indicated that I still loved Gretchen with all of my heart.

However, when I showed up for our "talk" ... Our so called "come to Jesus" or for those of us, who aren't religious, our "heart to heart" conversation; it just turned out to be more of Jimmy's manipulation. My "brother" apparently never tired of showing me how easily and how quickly he could take the things that I worked so hard earning, including my wife.

As for Jimmy... ? My erstwhile lifelong best friend and pseudo twin brother got hit by a lifetime of pent up rage and frustration. It wasn't my fists that beat his face in; it was literally decades of doing his homework, supporting his whims, taking part of the punishment for his fuck ups and always, always, always living in his fucking shadow.

I never and I do mean never want to see either of them again. As for the divorce ... Fuck it. I never intend to get married again so I don't need it.

When I first moved down here, I thought about seeing a shrink to help me get over my issues. However, everybody knows someone who knows somebody else. I worried about the people in my new work environment finding out and thinking that I was nuts. Instead, I simply read a bunch of stories on the Internet about men who'd gone through divorces. Some of those writers describe things as if they've actually been there.

So while I had no intention of going back to Michigan to burn the bitch, another of the plots on the divorce stories made me realize that the best revenge is sometimes living well.

Besides, just before leaving Michigan, I had literally beaten the shit out of Jimmy. I beat him so badly that he lost control over his bowels and bladder. I was sure that there was probably a warrant out for my arrest waiting for me back there. My plan of action going forward was simply to do my level best to forget that both Jimmy and Gretchen existed.

Yep, that was the extent of my revenge, I had beaten Jimmy's ass and done something even crueler to Gretchen. I had left her in the hands of the man she wanted.

Doing this was more difficult than you would imagine. The reason for this is because I was connected to both of them. I was trying my ass off to get Gretchen out of my heart. But it was tough. The old expression goes "brunettes are hard to get over, and blondes break your heart, but redheads just fuck you up." It was proving to be true. Even four months later I still wake up and reach for her. Every time I go into the mall and see a woman with long curly red hair, I stop in my tracks and stare stupidly at her with my heart beating so loudly that I'm almost certain that everyone can hear it.

And with the type of hospitality that people in the south have, more than one of those women have come over to me, ready to ask why I was staring at them. I think they were ready to either help me if necessary or kick my ass if that turned out to be required as well.

A couple of them and their clearly understanding husbands, were very nice to me when they saw my tears and heard the story of why I had reacted the way I did. And those women all walked away with a little bit more twitch in their hips, holding on to evidently grateful mates after learning the depth of my personal pain.

But every day, I grow stronger and more able to deal with losing Gretchen. My problem is that I have three families who are all trying to support me and who all drop in whenever they damned well please.

You see; it isn't only my mom and dad who come down to visit me. They usually bring Jimmy's parents along. Jimmy's mom and dad are like my second set of parents. They always have been and always will be. Our parents are also best friends.

So if one weekend during the long winter, my dad flew down to teach me how to play golf and stay in my large beach house with me, it was no surprise that he brought along, Jimmy's dad. It was also no surprise when I told them that as much as I'd wanted to, I couldn't play golf with them because I was installing a new intercooler in the Mustang and needed most of the weekend to do it. So quite naturally, they went and played without me.

And of course the next weekend, my mom decided that she needed to help me decorate my new house, and she brought Jimmy's mom along for a second opinion.

Those things would be bad enough, but Bernie comes down even more frequently with his wife and daughter. We all spent Christmas together. My house has four bedrooms, but one of them has been converted into an office. The sleeping arrangements were bizarre.

Each set of parents got a room. My parents took my room. Jimmy's folks took the guest room down the hall. Bernie and Patty took the guest room on the first floor. Abby slept in the office and shared a bathroom with her parents, leaving me to sleep on the sofa in the living room.

We all had a serious talk on Christmas Eve. With temperatures in the fifties, we all put on sweaters and made a fire on the beach. I told them that I loved them all. However, for the sake of my sanity, I needed them to give me some time. They were all always welcome, either singly or in groups. I gave each and every one of them a key to my house.

But what I needed them to do was not to bring up Jimmy or Gretchen in my presence. I explained to them that I was slowly getting over the past and what had happened. Time would be my best ally and that perhaps someday none of it would matter anymore.

I saw some strange looks pass between all of them, but they nodded and life went on.

I think that Patty, Gretchen's mom was the hardest of all of them for me to deal with. I think she noticed the awkwardness between us and made it a point to get me alone.

So early Christmas morning, I had gotten up to start breakfast for everyone before we exchanged gifts, she caught me alone on the kitchen.

"So what is it Dylan?" she asked.

"It's going to be pancakes," I said.

"Not that," she said quietly. "For a long time, you treated me like you treat your mom and Jimmy's mom. Now you barely speak to me. You don't look at me, and if you do, you quickly look away. You still hug and joke around with my husband, so I must have done something to you. I'll admit that I'm disappointed that things aren't going the way I wanted with you and Gretchen. I'll also admit that I would love to beat Jimmy's face in, the way you did, but I would do it with a shovel. What I don't understand is where you, and I went wrong."

I looked at her, and she had the beginnings of tears in her eyes. The woman really did have feelings for me. The next thing I knew I was crying too. I just hugged her, and we cried a lot of silent tears together.

"It isn't you Patty," I finally told her. "It's just that ... I lo ... I loved her so much ... And when I see you." I sobbed for a moment. I was too choked up to go on.

"Oh Dylan," she gushed. "I never thought about it. She looks just like me. It must be torture for you."

"It's worse than you can imagine," I said. "When I see you, I see the future I was supposed to have had. I see what Gretchen would have looked like after a lot of years together, and after we had our kids and I just start to cry because I almost imagine her as being as beautiful as y..." I never got to finish. She ran out of the kitchen.

I stayed and concentrated on making breakfast for the rest of my guests. I started on the bacon because I knew with four men in the house, plus Abby, we'd need a lot of bacon. A little while later, Jimmy's mom, Carla, came in to help me. She made the batter and started turning out pancakes that were so perfect that I was sure I could never duplicate them. She made them the exact same way I did. They weren't rough and irregular like the ones my mom made.

I asked her about it, and she laughed. "Of course, I make them the same way you do, dummy," she laughed. "I taught you how to make pancakes when you were sixteen. I've just had a lot more practice than you have." She thought it was hilarious.

I remembered it then. Back when we were kids, I would have breakfast with Jimmy's family every Sunday. I loved her large country breakfasts a lot more than my mom's cold cereal and toast breakfasts. My mom didn't like to cook on the weekends. She liked to relax.

So I would go over and help her cook most Sundays. Jimmy and his dad usually slept until we called them, it had been our time together. I often told her things that I never told even my own parents. As I thought back on it, I had special times with Jimmy's dad too. It had been he who had kindled my love for working on cars. My dad used to take our car into the shop to have the oil changed and to do all the routine maintenance on it. Jimmy's dad did it all himself. I learned to do brake jobs, tune ups and everything else, and before too long I did a lot of the work on our cars too. I always called him over when I had a problem, and he was consistently glad to help.

I realized then that a big part of the reason I had turned out the way I had was because I'd grown up with the benefit of having twice the normal number of parents. That bullshit that Hillary Clinton said about it taking a village to raise a child might've had a shred of validity to it.

My mom came down the stairs after that, with a smiling Patty. They had stuck Patty's hair up in a bun so it looked different from Gretchen's and Patty was wearing glasses. She usually only wore them for reading, but they made her look different enough that it wasn't nearly as painful for me.

We all exchanged gifts most of which were mine, and we had a great morning. I had given Gretchen's parents and Abby gifts, as well as presents for all four of my parents. Everyone was having a good time until I brought us all down.

My mom was on me in an instant. "Dylan, what's wrong?" she asked.

"This is the first year; that I can remember that I haven't gotten a present for Jimmy," I said, breaking my own rule about mentioning them.

"But you hadn't heard from him in four or five years," said Jimmy's dad.

"Every year he bought him a present and put it under the tree," said Gretchen's Dad. "After Christmas, he put them all in the hall closet still wrapped because he was sure that assho ... Jimmy would be back."

"At least you didn't have to waste your money on Gretchen, this year," spat Abby. "Remember last year you got her that big assed diamond bracelet, and stuck it under the tree just to distract her away from the fact that you bought her a friggin' car!" No one said anything after that.

Mom decided that all the men should go out and play golf, including me. There would be no cloistering myself up in the garage on Christmas. She even told me I could give my Mustang her Christmas presents the following day. The women would all cook Christmas dinner together.

We decided that my dad and Jimmy's dad would be partners and Bernie, and I would play together. "Which team am I on," asked Abby. We all looked at her crazily. Abby, dressed in yoga pants and a tight, light jacket did not belong on a golf course.

"I don't know how to cook," she said, "Unless it has microwave instructions. And I can't think of anything more boring than staying here all day long watching the three of them, comparing recipes, and trying to decide who gets to make the mashed potatoes."

That Christmas set the tone for the next few years. They always included everyone coming down to Florida to spend the holidays with me.

A few weeks after that first Christmas, roughly six months after I had left Michigan, I was in the garage, as usual, working, not on my car, but a friend's. I thought for a second that I'd heard my door open and close. I listened for a moment and didn't hear anything further so I stayed under the car.

Even with my creeper, it wasn't easy getting under cars in my garage. In this case, I was installing an entire exhaust system, from long tube headers all the way to polished chrome exhaust tips on a late eighties Mustang. The owner of the car started the project with me. We were upgrading many of the car's systems, but his wife was waving the flag on too many late-night garage sessions.

By ten, I had the entire left side hung and ready for the tips. I decided to call it a night and let Greg help with the other side the next day. That was when I walked into my house from the garage and pulled my shirt over my head.

"Oh ... my. It's good to see you're still staying in shape," gushed a female voice. I looked into my living room to see Abby sitting there. She had her feet drawn up under her on my sofa. She had all kinds of papers on my coffee table.

There was an open pizza box and candles burning in my dining room.

"Hi Abs," I said once the surprise wore off. "What are you doing here?"

"I came down for a break," she said. "I have a three-day weekend for Martin Luther King day on Monday. I figured I would stay with you Saturday and Sunday and fly home on Monday. That way, I could escape the sub-zero Michigan temperatures for a couple of days. It's okay isn't it?"

"Uh ... Yep," I said.

"I mean it's not like you're re going to have a woman here or anything, is it?" she said.

"I actually do," I said. "It's kind of an awkward situation. It's nothing permanent. She uhm, belongs to another guy and..."

"Dyyyylaaaaann," she whined, drawing my name out to at least fourteen syllables. "You aren't supposed to do things like that. I mean even though someone did it to you. My sister and your ... Br ... friend. I refuse to call that asshole your brother ... Anyway they're worthless. But, you're a good guy. Where is this skank? Is she out there in the back? Is that what you've been doing?" She went out the back door that I had just walked in from and into my connected garage. She turned the lights on and started laughing.

"It's the car isn't it?" she laughed elbowing me in my side. She stepped down the one step between the garage and the level of the house and looked at the car.

She was wearing a very short, extremely sheer nightie, and as she bent to try to see what was going on under the car that made it necessary for it to be raised on ramps, it gave me a view of what was going on under that silky nightie.

Abby was either wearing a thong or nothing. All I could see was the fleshy half globes of her ass cheeks and after at least five months without sex, they got a reaction.

As I've mentioned, Abby is shorter than Gretchen. Her hair is blond, not red, and it's straight not curly as her sister's is. Even though she's as thin as Gretchen is, being shorter makes her appear curvier and her boobs are at least a couple of sizes bigger. As she straightened up and caught me looking at her ass, she never said a word. Her lips drew into a smile though and let's just say that her headlights turned on.

"Dylan, why is everything on this car black?" she asked. She was trying really hard not to smirk.

"It's just a style thing," I said. "A lot of people really love that dangerous, predatory look that it gives their cars."

"Well it looks stupid to me," she said. "It looks like Darth Vader's Mustang."

She took my hand and led me back into the house. We ate pizza together and drank beer. We told each other jokes, and talked about our lives. Finally, she was relaxed and we went back into the living room. She kept moving closer to me on the sofa and laughing until I had nowhere else to move. Then she wrapped her silky arms around me and tried to kiss me.

I turned my head. "Abby, you're Gret's sister," I said.

"So fucking what," she spat. "You and Gretchen are over and done with."

"Abby, it's..." I began.

"Dylan, I've liked you for a long time," she said. "You and I are both adults. I'm twenty-five years old. I have a good career as a teacher. I have my own house. I'm not living in a shitty little apartment, barely getting by like Gretchen is."

"What!" I said. "She had all the money from selling the house. She also had everything I left her in checking and savings."