I was going to kick that boy's ass. Truthfully, Terry, my son was a good kid. He'd just turned 19 and finished his first year of college with grades that any parent could be proud of. Terry wasn't majoring in Liberal Arts or some other program that promised an easy degree and a fun time at college. He was an engineering major. He wanted to go into automotive manufacturing like his father.

The apple definitely fell right below the tree in Terry's case. And that got me wondering yet again where Terry was. It would be just like him to have driven into town to see the car show instead of coming out here to the park to help me set up for the church picnic.

This weekend was Founder's Weekend in our small Michigan town. There were special events going on all over the city and the parks surrounding. The funny thing about it was that you could do things all over town all day long, but you had to come to the main celebration this evening where they would give out any awards or prizes. Following the awards show there would be a concert and then fireworks.

My hubby was running in the 10k race, and he was showing off his new 2015 Mustang GT in the car show. Terry was out late last night. He'd gotten home yesterday afternoon and after a quick nap had gone out to see his friends. Some of those same friends attended colleges away from home like Terry did, while others had stayed here to work or attend colleges in the area.

I have no idea what time Terry had gotten home, but before I left the house this morning at 7:00 a.m. I'd poked my head into his room and told him to drag his ass over to the park to help me set up the grill before he did whatever he was going to do today.

I had purposefully taken one of the early shifts at the picnic, so I wouldn't get stuck having to be on the cleanup squad. My goal was to get here early, unload the food, set up the grills, get them lit, and then turn everything over to the next shift. That way, I could go and watch my husband run the race. Then I could sit with him while we were at the car show.

My phone rang and I answered it angrily, hoping it was Terry.

"What? Where are you?" I growled into the phone.

"Hi, Mom. I love you too," said Sherry my oldest daughter, with a heavy dose of sarcasm in her voice.

"Sorry I bit your head off, Honey," I said. "Thanks for watching your sister. I thought that you were your brother. He was supposed to be here to help me set up."

I spoke to Sherry for a few more moments and then got back to what I was doing. There were other women and a few men on the set up crew too. We all had and knew our jobs, so everything went relatively smoothly.

Some of the guys had been there before I arrived, so there were already tables set up for me to put the food on as I unloaded it. The thing that pissed me off was that if Terry had been here, he could have been setting up the grills as I unloaded.

That would have gotten us out of here earlier and given me more time with his dad. It would have also given him more time with his friends. I sighed and kept working, wondering why I had volunteered for this in the first place.

Greg

I backed my Mustang into the parking slot that I'd been assigned to. Almost immediately the car was surrounded by people. I'd only had the car for a few weeks and today was the first show I'd taken it to.

It was really cool to drive a 2015 Mustang in 2014. I'd been one of a select few people who'd been allowed to buy the car early. We were supposed to be guinea pigs to help root out any problems in the car before it went on sale to the general public.

I looked at the clock in the dashboard and saw that I was running late. My intention had been to have been here a half-hour before. At the last minute, I'd decided to go ahead and install the more aggressive 3-D Carbon splitter I'd ordered from American Muscle. The splitter had been delivered yesterday, but my wife Donna somehow hadn't told me about it until this morning. I'd looked over the instructions while I ate breakfast and figured that I could do it in under an hour, and it made an already spectacular car, even better.

So that got me here later than expected. Truthfully the splitter was probably overkill. Most of the people who would wander through here today had never seen the new body style. I knew that I was in for a lot of opinions today. Some of the people who saw the car would hate it. Others would love it.

Ten years ago when the retro body style had come out, it was different. The S197 platform was loved immediately. There were very few who didn't fall in love with it on sight. And most of those people were owners of the outgoing body style. * I knew it would take a few years before some of them changed their minds about this body style, and some never would. I myself was torn. I still had a heavily modified 06 Mustang in my garage at home. I was thinking about giving it to my son Terry.

It was a tough decision because Terry was still a bit of a hell raiser at times, and that car could be dangerous. It made over five hundred horsepower. It could be a recipe for Terry to get in trouble really quickly.

As people gathered around and stared at the car I considered giving Terry the newer car. After all, it did kind of make sense. He was the younger generation, so maybe he should have the newer generation of the car. I'd had my 06 for almost ten years now and there were still things I wanted to do to it.

As I grabbed my quick detailer spray from the trunk, people started asking me questions about the car. I fielded them as nicely as I could. "Thanks," I said to a couple of people who told me they loved it.

"That's probably why I bought it, and you didn't," I said to a guy who said he hated it. For everyone else I just answered questions.

"Beautiful car, Greg." I looked into the smiling face of Tara Conklin. Tara was probably the most beautiful woman in our town. She was the daughter of the town Sheriff. She was a three-time loser and also my wife's best friend.

"Thanks Tar," I said. "Why are you running around in those tiny shorts? Still looking for husband number four?"

"Are you applying for the job?" she smiled.

"Donna would slit both of our throats," I said.

"Donna's my best friend," she smiled. "I'd slit my own throat before I'd hurt her."

We both laughed; Tara and I joked around all the time. She was like a sister to me.

"I'm running the race in about an hour just like you are," she smiled. "But my dad and Mayor want me to help pick out people for some of the prizes, including the nicest car in the show. Of course, there are other judges, but you've got my vote. She spun on the toes of her running shoes and walked away. Even though I was happily married, I couldn't help watching Tara walk away from me. The woman was perfect. She was beautiful inside and out.

But, at the same time, I was a married man, and I loved my wife. Maybe it was like the cars. At home in my garage was my old Mustang. It was from the last generation. It didn't have the cool independent rear suspension. It had fewer new electronic doodads. Its gas mileage wasn't quite as good.

Here I was driving the latest and greatest most technologically advanced Mustang there was. It was a great car. But somehow there was something missing from it. It just seemed kind of plastic or artificial. Somehow this car was more sports car, and less muscle car.

Tara, at 36 years old was ten years younger than me and twelve years younger than Donna. She's medium height and slender with beautiful, inky black hair and luminous blue eyes. Her breasts aren't huge, but on her tiny rib cage, they seem to stand out so much that they seem bigger than they are.

Tara is a runner like me so her ass and legs are wonderfully shaped. Although she doesn't flaunt her beauty, men stare at her as she passes. Her terrible luck with love is just that. Her first husband joined the military and died shortly afterwards. It took more than five years before she tried again. After only a year of marital happiness following a few days of being engaged, he was killed by a drunk driver. Husband number three, was a B&C guy. That meant he liked to beat her and cheat on her.

Her father, the Sheriff made short work of him. There are several men around town who are interested in Tara, including the town's mayor. But Tara doesn't seem to be interested any more. I guess it's like the song, "Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, oh my. Three times bitten so why the hell should I try?"

On the other hand, my wife Donna was the love of my life. Donna is shorter than, and not as svelte as Tara. Okay, Donna is kind of blocky. She didn't start out that way. When I first met Donna in our mid twenties, she was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. I guess you could say that I did this to her.

When we first met, Donna was tiny. She was always short but she was thin too. She's never had any boobs, but she had a tiny waist and a big ass. Donna could rock a pair of shorts in a way that would have made Daisy Duke cry.

When we first got together, I could hardly keep my hands off of her. We fucked everywhere we could, and any time we could. And a short time after we got married, I put a baby in her stomach. My daughter Sherry grew up spoiled and happy. She married her childhood sweetheart a few years ago and has a wonderful life.

Donna was an excellent mother. Her body never quite came back from the pregnancy. Her waist was a bit thicker, but she was still really sexy. After my son, Terry was born, the same thing happened. Tiny, thin Donna stayed kind of chunky. Her ass was no longer as springy or as round, and she had a tiny gut. However, I loved her still.

After my daughter, Debby was born, it was clear that Donna was fat. It didn't matter to me. But we both figured that we'd reached our limit when it came to kids. Donna isn't what you'd call roly-poly fat, but she is clearly kind of a four by four. You could say that she was stocky.

It doesn't matter to me, though. When she gets into bed and spreads her legs, I'm on her in a flash. It's a good thing for us that she went on the pill after Debby, or we'd probably have three or four more kids.

Thinking about Donna has me wondering where she is as usual. Donna is easily distracted and is almost never on time. She's been that way since we first met. Sometimes it can really get on your nerves.

Terry

One day was all it took. One pleasant summer day, tipped over the first domino and changed my life forever. Actually although the dominos would start falling that day, they had been set up the night before.

I got home late the previous afternoon. I got in just in time to see my dad drive up in his new monster of a Mustang. The car was awesome. My dad and I spent some time bonding, and he let me drive it around for a bit while he got ready to wash and polish it for the car show that he was probably already at.

I'd offered to stay home and help him prep the car, but he'd told me that it was my first night back, so he really understood that I wanted to see my friends. He's a great dad. If I was allowed to pick my Dad, I probably couldn't do any better.

It was actually more like re-meeting my friends. When you're only nineteen being away from your friends for nine months is almost like ceasing to exist. Everything changes. Your friends become acquaintances. They move on with their lives as you move on with yours.

I really didn't try to stay in touch with most of them. It was kind of a Que Sera Sera attitude on my part.

There was one person that I'd maintained my relationship with. My girlfriend Kira, and I texted and called each other at least ten times a day, every day. We had been together for a year and as far as I was concerned, she was the best thing in my life.

Everything I did in school, every accomplishment and every failure was for her. The main reason I worked so hard was for our future. Kira's mom worked her ass off every day waiting tables in a restaurant. When we turned eighteen Kira had joined her there. I was going to college for both of us.

The one thing I had done yesterday was to avoid telling Kira when I was coming home. She asked me every day, several times a day, in fact, when I was coming home. It was the same way at Christmas time. She had been waiting for me at my parents' house and had been the first one out of the door when I pulled up.

My parents pretty much considered her their daughter in law. She also got along with both of my sisters. My older sister, Sherry liked her. And my younger sister, Debbie, idolized her.

Her mom liked me too. She was always inviting me to dinner or treating Kira and me to dinners at the restaurant she worked in.

However, this time I wanted to surprise Kira. I knew that she missed me as much as I missed her. So as soon as I left the house, I headed for Kira's house. As soon as her mom came to the door, I realized that something was off. Her mom was glad to see me, but very surprised. And her surprise wasn't a good surprise. It was like she was shocked to see me.

She told me that Kira was out with ... friends. She offered to call her for me, so she could come home to see me. Something told me not to let her. I told her that I wanted to surprise Kira and begged her not to tell her that I was home.

I drove into town. My Mustang wasn't as powerful as either one of my dads, but it still has a nice rumble to it that let everyone know that I was around. That was when I ran into my best friend Brad.

I hung around with Brad for a while, and we talked about the Founder's celebration and what we were going to do. But he seemed on edge. So I asked him what the hell was going on. I told him if he wanted to hang out with someone else it was cool. He quickly told me that we would be friends forever, but he needed to tell me something.

As soon as he told me, I got up and left him standing there. I didn't want to believe him, but I knew that Brad had no reason to lie to me. I drove to Kira's house. I turned off the lights and parked a couple of houses down the street.

I played games on my phone and lost most of them because my head wasn't in any of them. I looked up expectantly every time a car passed by. It was after midnight when a sliver BMW pulled up in front of Kira's house. I switched my phone to video mode and watched Kira and the driver. Brad had been telling me the truth.

She got out and headed for her porch. The driver got out and ran after her. I got really pissed as I saw him put his hand on her ass like he owned it. "When are we getting together again?" he asked.

"It'll be a while," she said angrily. "You know that Terry will be home in a few days. The last thing I need is to have him see us together and start asking questions. Besides, isn't Lana due home any day now?"

"Yeah," he said. "But that's different. You already know what I have to put up with from her."

"Look Jeff," said Kira angrily. "Don't call me, I'll call you. And if I call you at all it won't be until after the summer is over."

"I get it," he smirked. "Gotta protect that meal ticket huh?" He walked back towards his open driver's seat. "Kira," he called to her. "You can call me if you two get into an argument too, you know?" Then he laughed and drove off.

I sat there in my car seething with anger. I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. I decided to go up to her house and break up with her on the spot. I yanked on my door handle to open the door and saw another car driving up the street as I looked in my rear-view mirror. As the car drew closer, I noticed that it was a police car. I shut the door back and waited for it to drive by.

As the car drove by me, it stopped. The driver got out and came over to me. I rolled down the window. "Hey Sheriff Conklin," I said, holding on to my temper. I tried to think of anything I had done wrong.

"Hey Terry," he said with a smile on his face. "First night home and the first place ya went was to see that little gal a yours huh? Oh, to be young and in love." He shook his head as he said it. I knew that he was remembering the past. Seven years prior, when I was only twelve, the Sheriff had lost his wife. An eighteen wheeler loaded with those huge cement pipes that they use for drains, had taken a corner, and slipped on the icy road surface. Two of those pipes crushed several cars behind and beside the truck. The sheriff's wife had been driving one of them.

I could see, by the way, he smiled that he was remembering some of the good times with her. I guess enough time had passed that he'd gotten over the pain and the memories no longer tended to be dominated by the way she'd passed.

"Terry, I need you to do me a favor," he smiled. "When you go home, wake your dad up and tell him that I'm going to kick his ass in that 10K tomorrow. He doesn't know it yet, but the race is going to be age graded this year. This is my year!"

"I'll tell him," I said. We both smiled.

"You know that this is a form of psychological warfare, right?" he smirked. I nodded. My dad was 46 years old and ran like a fuckin' deer. I was on my high school track team, and my dad could outrun me. I had no doubt that he could also outrun our current high school track team and most of the guys on my college track team too.

As the Sheriff got back into his car and pulled away, I rolled my window back up and started my engine. The loud sound of the Mustang's powerful exhaust system echoed through the block. I drove away at as slow a speed as I could manage to keep the sound down. I didn't want to let Kira know that I had been here.

Talking to the Sheriff made me see some things. Life was simply too short to sweat the small things. Maybe having Kira cheat on me was a blessing in disguise. I'd spent the last nine months in torture. There were too many really pretty girls around my college. A lot of them expressed interest in me. I had always been honest and told them about how I was already attached to a woman back in my home town. Most of them took it really well. They complimented me on staying faithful and told me to please call them if I broke up with her.

The hardest things though were when I got together to study with classmates. Some of those classmates were female, and I hit it off with a lot of them. This year, I would have no restrictions on what I could do and whom I could do it with. So maybe breaking up with Kira was a good thing. Maybe I should think in terms of broadening my horizons on the job front as well. Maybe next year, I would take a summer internship with one of the big manufacturing companies. My dad had offered to line something up for me, but I'd told him that I just wanted to relax over the summer.

I decided to just do that. I would just relax over the summer and have a good time. There was no need and no reason to make a big scene and confront Kira. She was a grown woman. She had the right to make her own choices. She could do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted. And I had the right to do the same. I actually felt a bit foolish.

I mean with all the opportunities, I'd had to meet someone at college; I'd stayed faithful to her. There weren't really very many guys our age around town. That asshole that Kira had taken up with, Jeff Fairenbrook was a couple of years older than us. His father owned a car dealership two towns over. He seemed to like his women a bit younger though. His fiancé, Lana, was one of the prettiest girls in our class. And also one of the smartest. She was in a pre-med program at the same college I attended.

I had a couple of required classes with her. In fact, I had helped her with differential equations in one of the math classes that both engineering and pre-med students had to take. Lana was still as nice as she'd been in high school. And unfortunately she was totally faithful to that asshole.

As I drove home, I debated, whether or not I should tell Lana. By the time I got home, I was even angrier than I'd been before. All kinds of things went through my head. I even thought about dating Lana to throw it in Kira's face. I had all sorts of bizarre dreams, but in the end, reason won out.

After all, I was studying engineering. Engineers are critical thinkers. We're problem solvers. We have to look at a problem, examine the facts, come up with a solution, and look at the end results of that solution and any others.

In this case, the facts were plain and simple. Kira did nothing legally wrong. Her only crimes were moral, and they were against me. So it was up to me to decide not only how we would go forward, but how I would. As I've mentioned, I felt foolish. I felt foolish because I had turned down opportunities to spend time with and possibly have sex with other women. I had done that because I loved Kira. What had happened in my absence had only served to prove that Kira didn't love me the same way.

What had Jeff called me? Her, "meal ticket." I just decided that wasn't what I wanted to be. I still wanted to have a great life and marry someone whom I would love and spend the rest of my life with. It just wouldn't be Kira. And since she lacked the class to tell me that she had taken up with another guy while I was gone, I didn't feel obligated to let her know that we were done.

So, as I woke up that bright and sunny Saturday morning, my mood was already altered. And even though I thought that I was fine, I wasn't.

I vaguely remembered talking to my mom about helping her at the picnic. We were supposed to be delivering food that other people would cook and setting up the grills. I grabbed a couple of toaster waffles and some microwave bacon. One good thing about being home was that there was always food.

I jumped into my Mustang and noticed that I needed to wash it. My sonic blue paint wasn't very hard to keep clean like my Dad's cars. But I still liked to keep her looking good.

I revved up the engine and drove towards the park. Despite my decision to put my anger and the situation with Kira behind me, my first test arrived. As I got to the corner of my street, I noticed Kira's mom's ancient Chevy Malibu coming in the opposite direction. The car was stopped at a traffic light. I drove right past it, noticing that Kira, as usual, had her head down adjusting the radio station while she waited for the light to turn green.

As I passed her, the sound of my motor caused her to look up suddenly. I turned my head the other way avoiding eye contact and continued on as if I hadn't seen her. When I got to the corner. I made a sharp right turn, even though the freeway entrance was in the opposite direction. With my turn completed, I floored it. Fortunately, it wasn't a residential street.

When I reached the other end it the street, I made a quick left drove a block and made another quick left. I floored it again and got to the next corner just in time to see Kira make a U-turn headed the way she'd seen me going. My phone rang then, and I just let it go to voicemail.

Once Kira made it to the street where I'd turned, I waited for her to go down that street and then drove straight to the freeway and took that to the park as I had originally planned. As I drove, I was happy. I put some distance and some time between us. Knowing Kira as I did. I knew that if she had not seen me; she'd have driven to my house. If she didn't find me there, she'd go to town to the car show. She would either find me there or speak to my dad and find that I was helping my mom. Then she'd drive to the park and catch me there.

This way, I could go to the park and help my mom and then go to the race to watch my dad and finally hang around at the car show. With cars all over town, avoiding her wouldn't be a problem. There was also the fact that I knew she was looking for me, but she had no idea that I was done with her.

I got to the park in record time. I floored it and was doing over an hundred and forty on the long sweeping straights between my house and the park. With all kinds of people heading into town and the park, I knew that none of our town's five, count em ... Law enforcement officers would be on the freeway. And really that total was down to four, since I knew the Sheriff, himself would be getting ready to run in the 10k race.

My car's usual rumble sounded more like an angry growl as I pulled into a parking spot in the big parking lot at the park entrance. One of the old timers there waved at me as I got out of the car.

"God damn," he chirped. "That thing's as loud now as when your daddy drove it. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you was him turned young again. Ya look just like him; I swear. But you better git your britches in gear. Your mom's been cussing up a storm for the last half-hour or so about you not showing up to help her."

"Thanks for the warning Mr. Richards," I said. Reed Richards had been the high school's science teacher for over forty years before he retired a couple of years ago. He'd been my dad's science teacher, my sister Sherry's, and mine too. His love for science was contagious, and I think that he was responsible for both my dad and indirectly, me, going into engineering.

I headed for the picnic area at a brisk jog. When I rounded the copse of trees that served to block the winds from the picnic area and also provided shade during the hotter summer weather, what I saw slammed me into a stop. I felt as if I was having a heart attack.

However, the closer I got, the worse it became. At first, I thought I was seeing things. I blinked several times, but it didn't go away.

There she stood, my mother, the woman I had always loved and respected, with her hands down in a guy's pants while he felt around in hers.

They were so busy that they didn't even realize that I was there until I was. They were both concentrating on the people in front of them who were working on the picnic. They didn't think that anyone could see them. And as far as the people in front of them went, they were correct. But I was coming up from behind them.

"Get your fuckin' hands off of the whore!" I yelled. A man who was older than my father snatched his hands from my mom's panties and stepped away from her.

"I ... I... !," he stuttered.

"You what, asshole?" I yelled. My anger at Kira and everything else just boiled over at that moment. I punched the guy in the face as hard as I could.

He staggered away from me holding his hands to his face.

"I don't want to hurt you, kid!" he said.

"As if you could," I growled. "But I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to hurt you badly."

As he tried to run away, I jumped forward and tackled him. I started beating the shit out of him. My father had sent me to martial arts classes from the time I could walk. After the third punch several men from the set-up crew pulled me off of him. They held me while he ran away.

The men tried to calm me down, and my mother came over to me. "Terry, Honey, we need to talk about this," she said.

"The only person I'm going to talk to is dad," I growled. "As soon as they let me go; that's where I'm going."

"Terry, please, you can't do that," she whined.

"I have nothing to say to you, whore," I snapped. "I have no respect left for you. Just get away from me."

"Let him up," said one of the men. "Ralph is gone now. I don't know what he did or why the boy went after him. But it's over now. They can calm down now separately. Terry we're going to let you go. But don't go anywhere near Ralph until you calm down. Ralph may be old, but he can cause you a lot of problems."

Just as I got up, my problems got worse. As I tried to walk away, my mother trailed along behind me. "Terry, can we talk?" she whined.

I walked almost back to my car with her trailing right behind me. "Terry, it was only a joke. You have to let me explain. Stop, Terry, talk to me. I can explain it."

I turned so fast that she ran into me. "You don't have to explain shit to me, whore," I spat. "Explain it to Dad."

"Terry, it was just a joke that got out of hand," she said. "If you tell your father, he will never understand it. Terry, I'll lose him." She was crying her eyes out.

I tried to calm myself down. I tried to think and act in a very analytical manner. I sat down on a bench near where I parked. And looked at her.