Hey Folks, I took some time off to enjoy part of the summer. My beautiful wife and I, loaded up two of our favorite Mustangs (My Boss 302 and my Yellow 06 GT) and we took several really fun road trips. This is the first thing I wrote when I got back. I'm really interested in hearing what you guys think about it. The thing I wanted to do this time is to make the protagonist a little bit less perfect as you guys have wanted to see, but also make the cheating a little bit more spread around too. So in this case, all of the people involved are human. They all have their failings. I hope you can still find someone to root for though. There two versions of this story. This is the more complete version. I'm sure you guys know where to find the second one. And sometime in the future there may be an alternate ending that isn't out yet. As usual, thanks much to the man behind the scenes, the incredible Barney-R for cleaning this mess up. SS06

Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer. I have no idea who originally coined that phrase. I heard it in the second Blade movie. Wesley Snipes took a few moments as a break from killing Vampires to spout wisdom.

The problem is that in real life, just like in the movie, it's sometimes really hard to distinguish just who is actually your friend and who's your enemy. Right now, I'm really confused. Nothing is really as simple as it seems. Over the past few years my life has become really fuckin' complicated. The guy I grew up hating, who became pretty much my worst enemy is now pretty much my best friend. But I'm living a lie and not very sure that I'm a very good friend to him. My beautiful wife and I are here at the local hospital, trying to calm him down as we await the birth of his child, but again everything isn't really as it seems.

As we wait for the doctor to come out and tell us whether or not everything is alright, I debate coming clean. I've always been an honest man and keeping this secret is driving me crazy. On the other hand revealing the truth could destroy two marriages. In this case perhaps living with the lie is the best thing for all concerned. After all, we're all relatively happy. Who am I to fuck with fate's plan?

My name is Gerald. My friends call me Gerry. It seems pretty normal doesn't it? The problem is that my parents had a really fucked up sense of humor. Our last name is Louis. See the problem?

Yep ... All through school, my teachers would take attendance and the entire class would roll on the floor laughing when they called out Gerry Louis.

The name thing actually worked in my favor though. It served as a great ice breaker. So in a very short amount of time, everyone knew me. I became relatively popular without having to do anything.

Some of the other guys who had to work to get the same kind of attention didn't like that. In a small town where everyone knows everyone else and their business, those things are hard to get over and even harder to forget. So by the time high school had ended and we all headed for the local college our roles and our places in the town's pecking order had long been established.

Occasionally, one of us discovered a new skill or talent, or acquired a new possession that raised them up a bit. But it was also quite common for us to discover a new weakness or embarrassment that lowered them on the totem pole, either temporarily or permanently.

There were some things that simply never changed though or were never forgotten. Whether good or bad, they were permanently chiseled into the firmament of our lives.

On the negative side of things there were things like Jim Nabors pissing his pants in the first grade. Some of the people we know are still laughing about it now and Jim left town right after high school. He went to college out of state and has never returned; even for a visit. On the positive side, Laci Kincaid was the prettiest girl in town. She had been in kindergarten when we all first met, and it was still true to this date.

Laci is an amazing woman. She is beautiful beyond belief, but also as sweet as the day is long. The only problem for me was that she was the longtime girlfriend of my nemesis.

Whoah, Yep, I said nemesis. And No, I'm neither a super hero or super villain, but I do have a nemesis. I guess you could call us good natured rivals. Or you could say that we were friendly competitors. But neither was actually true. You see in order for there to be competition both parties need to know that they're competing. I never realized it until we got to college.

There's also the fact that in order for the competition or rivalry to be friendly or good natured, it has to be fair. And ours wasn't. I found out after we'd graduated that my rival, Dean Martin, had cheated on everything that we had ever gone against each other on.

Our last year in college, we found ourselves competing against each other for homecoming King? I found out six months later that I had actually won, but Dean had stuffed the ballot boxes. He HAD to be king. We all knew that Laci was going to be the Queen and there was no way he wanted her spending the entire homecoming dance with some other guy.

But as usual I let it go. I am and always have been a survivor. I generally never sweat the small stuff. I've also learned to pick my battles and to make lemonade whenever necessary. I firmly believe in the balance, even though it sometimes takes years to swing back in the other direction.

As a matter of fact, four years ago, at twenty two years old, clutching my freshly minted engineering degree, I thought the balance had finally swung in my direction in an extremely aggressive manner.

The reason I believed that was because a few weeks after our graduation party and incredible thing happened. It was almost like an explosion. Miranda Swainpool moved into town. Just the act of her moving into our town to live with her elderly aunt changed the dynamics of our entire social pecking order.

All of a sudden, several long term relationships were ended or put on hold. Miranda, although a different type of beauty, easily rivaled Laci.

They were complete and total opposites. Laci had long flowing blond hair that she kept at about mid back length. Miranda had shiny dark hair that was cut in kind of a page boy style that ended at her chin.

Laci was about 5 foot one on a good day. She had a very petite build with very pert breasts and a tight butt. Miranda on the other hand was taller but still no giant at five foot four. But her body was much more substantial. She was still on the slim side, but she had big boobs and a nice round jiggly butt.

Laci was the beautiful, almost sickeningly sweet type of girl who was usually the prom queen. Miranda on the other hand exuded sex appeal to an alarming degree.

Laci looked awesome dressed up in a gown. Miranda rocked jeans and swimsuits like no one we had ever seen.

No one in town was more pissed off when Miranda moved into town than Dean. The day before graduation, he was as usual gloating and on top of the world. He had managed to get Laci to agree to marry him. Their engagement had been the talk of the town.

I'd always had a soft spot for Laci. I'd always hoped that someday she would wake up and realize that Dean was pretty much an asshole and give me a shot. But the news of their engagement had me as usual looking to whip up a batch of lemonade. And for once I had the feeling that the lemons life had thrown me, were going to produce a batch of really bitter tasting lemonade.

I was, of course, wrong. Life, it seemed, favored me in this case. Because with Miranda moving into town on the day after Dean had announced his engagement to Laci, he was totally out of the running. All he could do is stance there with his mouth open as almost every guy in our age group made fools of themselves trying to impress her.

And the way guys in town talked about Miranda only served to make her arrival even more newsworthy.

When Phil Silvers declared Miranda's ass a work of art, and described it, all Dean could do was look over at Laci's ass and wish.

When Bob Hope swore that Miranda's breasts were like two succulent cantaloupes fighting to escape her blouse, Dean looked over at Laci and literally frowned.

For once timing and the situation put the ball in my court. So what did I do? Absolutely nothing. While every other guy in our age group and some that weren't, made fools of themselves trying to impress her. I played it cool and waited for my chance. Miranda met people, socialized, and dated a few of the guys during the first couple of weeks before we got together. I thought that was a good thing. It would give her a chance to compare me to them.

My mom was friends with Miranda's aunt. So when Miranda started moving into her new room in her aunt's house, I was tasked with helping to move the larger pieces of furniture. I was also roped into helping her paint her room. At the end of three hard days of putting up shelves and other tasks to make Miranda cozy in her new space, her elderly aunt suggested that the two of us should do something to unwind.

I offered to take Miranda out for a movie and maybe some ice cream afterwards. She eagerly accepted and I was off to the races with a big head start on the others.

Miranda was actually two years older than me but twenty four months didn't make a bit of difference. Over the next four years we both got jobs, we dated and we got married and bought a house together.

Those first four years out of college were a time of growth and huge changes in our lives as we all became fully functioning human beings. The pecking order changed for us as adults. The things that were important in high school and college no longer mattered as much.

Nowhere was that as obvious as with Dean. He graduated with a GCD, basically a general college degree. He became a salesman. I, on the other hand, had spent four years as a manufacturing engineer in the nearby auto plant. Dean and I had taken different paths and it began to show.

One of the funny things about our situation was the fact that a large group of us had known each other and grown up together practically from the cradle. We still manage to hang out in the same places and do the same things. A large part of that of course was simply the fact that in a relatively small town, there are only so many places to go.

So if the over forty crowd hangs out in one bar, the over twenty crowd is going to hang out somewhere else.

And that's where we begin our story. There's a bar on the east side of town called the Boar's Nest. It's run by a guy who has obviously watched too many episodes of the Dukes of Hazard.

He grew up with us. He actually wanted us to call him Boss Hogg. But we've always called him Porky. It's the same animal, but with a slightly different connotation.

The Boar's Nest is many things to many people. They have any and everything you would want to see or do. It is equal parts, neighborhood bar, sports bar, strip club, rock club and country bar. It all depends on when you go.

I had played in the Boar's Nest with my Hobby band so many times over the last three or four years that I actually kept a guitar in Porky's office. Hanging out there was a normal thing for a lot of us. So it wasn't unusual for Miranda and me to head over to the nest after dinner on lazy Thursday night, for drinks and conversation.

It also wasn't unusual for Laci and Dean to be there as well. Rumors around town said that everything wasn't all tea and crumpets for Dean and Laci, but they put up a good front in public.

I couldn't exactly call Dean and I friends, but we'd mellowed over the years. On the other hand Laci was very high on my list. Unfortunately, Miranda and Laci got along like oil and water. They just didn't mix well.

So when I waved at Laci as Miranda and I walked in, it earned me an elbow to my ribs, from my wife.

"Why the fuck are you waving at that bitch?" hissed Miranda under her breath.

"One: I've known her all of my life. And despite the asshole she's married to. She's a nice person. "Two: It's called manners. If you don't like her, don't wave to her. But she's never been anything but friendly to you since you moved here."

"Gerry, Sweetie, I'm sorry," she said. "But that whore wants you. I can see it in her eyes."

"Yeah," I laughed. "She wants me so much that she married the guy I hate most."

We sat down at the table with most of our friends and started to relax. After a few moments and a beer or two our argument was forgotten.

I talked cars with the guys and Miranda rolled her eyes. There were a couple of guys there that loved working on cars as much as I do. They were eager to listen to me talk about the modifications I'd done to my Mustang. I noticed that Laci and Dean were sitting off at a small table on the side and were arguing as usual.

Dean stood up and walked over to me. He'd always been bigger than I was. I'd always been a lean track athlete and Dean was a more muscular football type.

I still ran a lot, but most of Dean's exercise since leaving school came from pushing himself away from the table after a big meal.

"When was the last time you fucked my wife?" he asked me drunkenly. "I should beat your ass."

"About three minutes ago," I said calmly. "We were doing it while you were screaming at her. That's why she doesn't pay you any attention."

"Go home Dean you're drunk," said Miranda, beside me. "He's never touched your little blond Barbie doll. I keep him on a very tight leash."

"You'd better," he said to her. "I should beat your ass," he said to me again.

I just shook my head and went over to throw some darts with a couple of guys I knew. Maybe an hour later, a not so drunk Dean came over and acted like the incident had never happened. He and I were just about to have a game when Porky wandered over to me with a look on his face that told me he wanted something.

"Gerry Louis," he said. "I need a favor and it's not funny."

"Ha ha," I laughed.

"Seriously, Gerry, the band I hired for tonight is running late and the crowd is getting a little bit restless. I spoke to your guys, luckily they're all here. Could you guys do a couple of songs just to tide me over until my band gets here?" He asked.

"We haven't rehearsed or anything," I said.

"You guys are great," he said. "You've been playing together since you were in high school. You don't need to rehearse. Come on Gerry, if you do me this favor all of your drinks and eats are on the house ... your wife's too."

"Oh all right," I said.

Laci

I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. I think everyone in town knew that Dean and I had been having problems in our marriage. I don't think they knew what the problems were about though. I was twenty six years old and we'd been married for only four years, but I wanted out.

I had been trying for months to get Dean to give me a divorce. Our problems had been building lately, but they had started during our first year of marriage. Who am I kidding? Our problems had started in college. They had begun before we had ever graduated and got married. We never should have gotten married on the first place. We were too different.

In a lot of ways I blame small town mentalities and our town in particular for the entire fiasco. There was simply too much Americana, too many traditions and long held expectations to contend with. And I in a ridiculous display of gutlessness played the martyr to the unrelenting weight of what everyone thought I should do.

People always want the fantasy. They always want to see the head cheerleader and the quarterback end up together. They always want to see the fairy tale. But in the fairy tales the story ends when the princess marries the prince. No one ever asks what happens next.

I can't claim to know what happens in every fairy tale, but in mine, I'll tell you that the fucking Prince turned back into a frog almost immediately after the wedding. And it's my own fault. Oh sure, there were a bunch of others, who advised me. They were supposedly wiser, older people, including my parents, who all had my best interests in mind. But they all dropped the ball and helped me to make a decision that I knew in my heart was wrong.

I've always been a small time girl with small time dreams. I don't need a huge house and millions of dollars. I don't need to be famous. I just want a nice house, a man who loves me and a family.

When I started school, I found out that somehow I was pretty. It came as a big surprise to me. I looked just like my sisters. I thought that I was as plain as grass. But the next thing I knew there were all kinds of boys being nice to me and making fools of themselves over me.

I tried to do as my parents and my sisters told me to do. I was as nice as I could be to everyone I met. But somehow it just seemed to make people like me more. When I did get to the point where I started to like the boys too, it never seemed to work out. I was always attracted to the boys that were nicer. But somehow they never asked me out. It was always the more aggressive ones who asked me out.

By my second year of high school my life was pretty much set. I was a cheerleader and it was kind of expected that I would go out with some other popular person. Dean and I kind of migrated together. I guess that it was actually more his machinations than a natural migration, but we ended up together just the same.

After a couple of years together, it just seemed that going with the flow was the easiest thing. Every time that I even suggested that we should go out with someone else just to see what it would be like, he got upset.

By the time we were in college, Dean was like a member of my family already. He seemed to win at everything he tried and my parents were very sure that he would be successful at whatever he ended up doing. But it was all an illusion.

I didn't find out until a couple of days after we graduated that Dean was not the homecoming king. My boyfriend had cheated. He had not only rigged the contest, he had cheated on me to do it.

There was a girl on our class who was a well-known slut. Every town has one. Our town had Leslie Wisdom. Leslie was the smartest girl in the class and wasn't very nice either. She was a big girl and although she got a lot of dates, she'd never had a boyfriend.

According to the rumors, she'd had sex with most of the boys in our class at one time or another. Leslie was always volunteering for any committee she could get on, and was so smart that her organizational skills were important.

Anyway, Leslie was in charge of counting the votes for the homecoming court and assigning the positions.

It turns out Leslie knew ahead of time that statistically, based on the early votes, Dean was going to lose. Apparently it was some sort of backlash. Dean was always nice to me, but he was some kind of an asshole to everyone else.

I found out during an eye opening talk with Leslie a few weeks after my wedding that Leslie, in exchange for sex with Dean, had falsified enough votes for Dean to eke out a very close victory over Gerry Louis.

Actually, the talk with Leslie was like discovering that there was no Santa Claus and my entire life was a lie.

I had just gotten back from my honeymoon. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Dean found sex with me disappointing. After waiting six years to get into my panties, there was no disguising the fact that he didn't get what he thought he was going to get.

But seriously, what did he expect? I was a virgin. I was actually disappointed that he was disappointed. I was actually pissed that he'd lied to me. Dean had too much experience. And if we were supposed to be saving ourselves for each other, where the hell did he get it?

He shrugged it off, but it was Leslie who opened my eyes. Dean had fucked half of the girls in our class at one time or another. He'd fucked Leslie to be the homecoming king, but before that he'd only laughed at her because she was beneath him. Dean was too special to fuck fat girls ... Unless he needed something from them.

And for Leslie, of the twenty boys in our class there were only two or three left that she hadn't fucked. Gerry was at the top of her list. But she was sure it would never happen.

The biggest thing Leslie had told me was that my entire life was fake. I was fake. For most of my time in both high school and college, the deck had been stacked in my favor. Teachers had given me higher grades. Contests had been ruled in my favor when close. Positions and memberships had been opened for me, and a lot of other things had come my way. Not because I had earned them or deserved them, but because I was pretty and everyone wanted to be a part of the dream.

It had been the same for Dean. The big difference between Dean and I was that Dean knew about it. He knew that as long as he was the prince to my princess, referees would give him the close calls. He could get away with things on the football field unless they were blatant, because everyone wanted to see the golden boy win.

I was stunned. Leslie told me that if I thought my life was tragic; imagine how Gerry had to feel. He'd gone through our entire life always coming in second to Dean, mostly because the deck was always stacked against him.

He was the nicest boy in town. He was kind. He was sweet. He was funny. He was smart and he worked his ass off, but he was never going to win. And the one time he had the chance to, my boyfriend had fucked him out of it. A big part of it was simply because of his personality. Gerry was so good at coming in second. Everyone knew that he had the class to accept it gracefully. He never got angry no matter how hard he worked, or how strangely the points seemed to be tallied. With Gerry there would always be a cheerful acceptance.

In those small town contests, no one ever wanted to see a scene. And Dean would have showed his ASS if he ever lost. Dean would have pissed all over the floor and whined like a baby about how unfair things were. So whenever things were close, the golden boy got the prize.

There was more to the story too. Leslie told me something that only Gerry's closest friends knew. Gerry'd had a crush on me for years. He had never acted on it or even mentioned it because, I was Dean's girl and Gerry wasn't the kind of guy to hit on someone in a relationship.

I guess telling me all of that was Leslie's way of letting me know that real life wouldn't be like our school years had been. The playing field had shifted. The fantasy was over. I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. My boyfriend was a liar and a cheat. And in the new reality, being pretty and sweet no longer meant shit.

A few days later, things got even worse. Miranda came to town and everything changed. I was no longer totally alone and unrivaled atop the town's totem pole of attractiveness and appeal. It took a few days to settle in but it was apparent that while I was probably still the prettiest girl in town and the nicest. Miranda was clearly the sexiest, the best built, and the most exciting.

It was even more apparent that Dean was pissed. We were still newlyweds; we'd been married less than two weeks. People were still patting him on the back and telling him how God Damned lucky he was to have me all tied up ... And then hurricane Miranda hit our town.

Dean was used to having the best of everything. And it was apparent that between Miranda and me, Dean thought that he ended up on the losing end. I saw him comparing the two of us, although he tried to act otherwise. I saw him look to my breasts and then back to those mountains on her chest and frown.

It only took a few weeks before Miranda ended up with Gerry, and Dean got even more pissed. And for the past four years things have been going downhill for us.

It's hell knowing that your husband looks at you as being an also ran, or a consolation prize. It's even harder when your husband believes that he deserves or is entitled to the best of everything.

Of course the fact that Gerry had busted his ass both in school and outside of it meant nothing to Dean. He was constantly complaining that Gerry got a better job than his because he was sucking someone's dick. It was stupid. I kept trying to explain to him that Gerry was an engineer because he got a degree in engineering when we were in college. Dean had expected to go into football so he took only general education classes and ended up in sales.

It didn't matter to me in the least. But Dean could not handle being second best or third best in anything. And Gerry having a much better career and making a lot more money was hard on Dean.

But things were rough all over. Seeing how Gerry treated Miranda was hard on ME. One of the things I noticed as the years went on was that Gerry was like me. He was happy with what he had. He spent his time making what he had better instead of whining about what he didn't have. He treated Miranda like she was special. It quickly became obvious that she WAS special to him. I think that's what twisted Miranda. Over the years she got used to the way Gerry treated her. She also got used to the way the guys looked at her body. She began to think of herself as being something special and that she deserved the treatment she got.

"Are you even listening to me?" Dean bellowed. "Shit, I told you it didn't mean anything. I don't love her. I did it for you."

His yelling pulled me out of my thoughts and back into our latest argument. When we walked into the bar that evening, before we could even sit down at a table with our friends, I'd caught Dean exchanging knowing glances with one of the new waitresses.

It was the same old song and dance. She had big tits. She also had a big everything else, but those lumps on her chest were the main attraction. Gerry had tried to get me to have breast implants several times. I had refused. I kept telling him that if he didn't want me the way I was, to find someone else. I also had to remind him that we couldn't afford them.

I had immediately launched in on him as soon as I saw them making cow eyes at each other. "So how many times have you fucked this one?" I asked him. It had happened so many times that I couldn't work up enough tears to cry about it.

Naturally he started out denying it. And the girl, sensing that bad things were coming, was smart enough to make herself scarce.

We had been arguing and drinking since then. I was only drinking soda, but Gerry was getting drunker as we continued. He wasn't fully drunk but he was on the way when Gerry and Miranda walked in.

He was drunk enough to let go of his inhibitions though, and it wasn't a great thing for our future. It was a hot summer evening, and Miranda was dressed accordingly. Like me she wore shorts and a sleeveless top. I think half of the women in the bar were dressed that way. But most of them, including me, weren't built like Miranda.

Gerry let out a gasp as he saw her. His eyes bugged out of his head. He'd completely forgotten about our argument. "I hate that lucky bastard," he hissed.

"Why?" I asked. "Is he lucky because he worked hard for what he has? Or is he just lucky because you were locked into marrying me before SHE came to town? Tell me the truth Dean. If Miranda had moved to town before we got married, you'd have dropped me like a turd and gone after her wouldn't you?"

"Of course not," he lied. What hurt me the most was that even as he denied it, his eyes never left her tits. "Why are you defending that asshole anyway?" He asked loudly.

His eyes looked me over as if he could spot any traces of a lie by staring at me. But we had played this game too many times. He was trying to shift the focus away from our argument and onto something else.

"You're fucking him, aren't you?" He yelled. He got up so quickly he knocked his chair over. He went over to Gerry and started yelling at him. "When was the last time you fucked my wife?" He screamed at Gerry. Even as he was screaming at Gerry he was looking down Miranda's top.

The funny thing about it was the way that Gerry reacted. Unlike a lot of the people we'd grown up with, Gerry wasn't afraid of Dean. Dean was physically bigger, but the two of them had gotten into enough scrapes growing up that Gerry knew he could hold his own against Dean. And since we'd left school Gerry had actually stayed in very good shape, he hadn't just let himself go the way Dean had.

Both Gerry and Miranda had refuted Dean's accusation. She had given me the evil eye from across the room. I had no idea why Miranda didn't like me. I'd been trying to be friends with her ever since she moved to town. But for some reason, she just couldn't stand me.

Dean wandered back over to me, but he took a side trip and had a few words with that waitress with the udders. She looked at me and laughed so I knew whatever he'd said had been something derogatory about me.

I was about to leave when he sat back down. "We just got here. Where are you going?" he whined.

"I was just going to leave so you wouldn't have to worry about me keeping you from Miss Titties," I said.