I thought I’d found my perfect girl in Nell. After being her boyfriend for almost six months, a fortnight after Easter, I was home for the weekend and telling my Mom all about her. Then it suddenly struck me that there was something just not quite right with our relationship. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, so I snooped on her the next time she cancelled on us meeting up, and I found out that she was still seeing an older married guy on the side. Damn, how I wished I hadn’t gotten curious.

I’d gotten together with Nell a couple of months into my sophomore year at college; we had our first date the week after Halloween. I still don’t know exactly how and why I hadn’t spotted her a year earlier when we were both freshmen; if I had come across her back then, that might have saved me a whole lot of heartache later. Perhaps there were just too many other pretty first year girls about. Whatever the reason, our paths didn’t cross until a few days after that second year of classes had started.

I’d dated plenty of girls during my first year at college, but hadn’t really hit it off well enough with any of them to move onto the boyfriend / girlfriend stage. Yeah, I’d gotten laid enough; we were all young and healthy, we were free from high school and living away from home, it was part of getting to know each other, and pretty much everyone else was also sampling the waters. None of it had gotten anywhere near serious, we’d all parted as friends, having had fun but acknowledging that we needed to keep looking for that spark. I guess I could have just hooked up with a fuck-buddy for the duration of college, some girl who was intending to live and work on the other side of the country once she graduated, but wanted to have some fun until then. Trouble was I wanted a real girlfriend to hang out with all the time, not someone who might give me a booty call if she hadn’t got a better prospect.

Nell was different.

I’d seen her, and noticed her, in one or two of my classes the first couple of weeks of the semester, but it wasn’t until I was eating my lunch one day that we actually spoke. The canteen was crowded; she approached the table I was sitting at and asked if the seat was free; we finally introduced ourselves and chatted about our studies as we ate. She was real easy on the eye, something like five feet five, one hundred twenty or so nicely-distributed pounds, hazel eyes which sparkled when she talked, shoulder-length dirty blonde hair and a pixie-like smile. She intrigued me, but I didn’t ask her out right then because I was chasing another girl who had gotten my interest. That quickly came to nothing (turned out I didn’t interest her), so, when I saw Nell sitting alone a couple of weeks later, I went over and joined her, and by the end of lunch break I had a date to split a pizza with her Friday evening.

Our date went well; she was real easy to talk to, and I did think there was a spark that had been missing with the others. Seemed that she felt it too; when I asked if I could see her again, she said that she had a free weekend ahead, and how was tomorrow looking? We ate burgers and saw a movie Saturday night, with coffee and pie at a diner afterwards, and when I dropped her home, she kissed me on the lips and we arranged to meet up for a stroll in the park Sunday afternoon. That was our third date; I walked her home just after six and kissed her again in the lobby of her apartment block; she kissed me back with some tongue, invited me up for a coffee, and we ended up making out in her kitchenette, the coffee totally forgotten. She gazed at me with lust-clouded eyes, led me to her bedroom, and pulled me onto her bed. The making out quickly turned into foreplay, the clothes came off, I licked her pussy and we went all the way. I had a real good time and so did she; we talked softly and laughed together in between bouts of having great sex, and it all just seemed right. There was no way this was going to be merely a one night stand; we both knew that for sure as we lay together in mutual gratitude after our third coupling. It had been too awesome for both of us to NOT do it again. I didn’t leave her place until six o’clock Monday morning, with a pinky-swear promise of meeting up for lunch at twelve, and the wide smile on her face when she saw me holding a table for the two of us told me that she too had no regrets about making our relationship so close so quickly. I stood up to greet her; the hug and prolonged PDA must have clearly told everybody nearby that we’d been intimate over the weekend. There was no awkwardness between us, like I’d sometimes felt with other girls I’d slept with when we met up again; I was just so happy to be with her after a morning apart. No awkwardness in the conversation; we started again pretty much where we’d left off that morning.

We met up most every lunchtime and after classes; when we had the same class we’d always sit close together if there was no set seating plan, and our class-mates very soon realized that we were an item. I found myself spending the night at her place two or three times a week, and every weekend we were both in town. I’d told her early on that I only ever dated one girl at a time, and although she didn’t ever expressly suggest or agree that we should be exclusive, as far as I was concerned, we were going steady after that first week. We weren’t inseparable, but we spent nearly all of our free time together. Twenty days after our first date, I called her from my folks place at Thanksgiving and we talked for over an hour; we were back in her apartment that weekend, both cutting short our stay with our families to pretty much the acceptable minimum.

Sexually, we were a great match. Like me, she was no virgin, and we both really enjoyed giving and receiving oral sex. Sometimes we spent hours on foreplay, other times we scarcely made it into her apartment or out of our clothes before we were fucking. We made love, had hot monkey sex, and sometimes just lay quietly together stroking and caressing each other. Nell was the first girl I ever actually made love with. Yeah, and note the word with, not to. There was something real special going on between us. More than just the fact that we were horny college students who loved to fuck; we each got off way better because we were with the other. Not just the physical pleasure; there was an emotional bond that made each time another expression of our desire for each other. We belonged together, we were one.

She’d had a bad experience in the past with anal sex which made her very tense at the mere suggestion; she was still willing to let me try, so one Saturday morning we used a whole tube of lube and much patience to get me inside her butt, but as she clearly wasn’t enjoying it, I stopped and pulled out. That wasn’t an issue to me, and I reassured her enough to finally get her to believe me when I said it really didn’t matter; to me she was a sexual goddess even without giving up her ass. Once she’d got over that moment of self-doubt, and realized that I was serious when I said that I so wanted to never hurt her that I would go without things she disliked doing, we made long slow love, and I came more than I could ever remember; there was a real wet patch on the sheet. She didn’t let me get more than a yard away from her all weekend; most of the time we were bare skin to bare skin close. I didn’t push her to talk about it, but I got the feeling that the guy who had taken her anal cherry had really messed her up for anyone else because he hadn’t prepared her and had just rammed it in. My showing her that I genuinely cared about her had made her especially clingy; I was fine with that as I was already closer to her emotionally than I had been to any of the other girls I’d dated. Heck, I liked having the touch of her body against mine as we sat on her couch watching TV, or cooked a meal together. It made our relationship have a special intimacy that went way beyond the sexual act.

It wasn’t all about sex; we also went places and did things together, dancing, bowling, movies, exhibitions, shopping, everything, just like a real boyfriend and girlfriend – or indeed a cohabiting couple. It wasn’t all silky smooth either; she was distinctly off for a couple of days after she came in the cafeteria to find me innocently talking to a female member of our study group, and I let her know that I wasn’t at all happy when she was forty minutes late meeting me at a spaghetti house without calling me – I wasn’t used to sitting alone at a table, waiting for my date to show or not. But these disagreements / misunderstandings were few and far between. We told each other about our families: she was the eldest of three, I was the youngest of two with a nephew and niece, and we shared our stories, hopes and ambitions. Like I said, it really seemed like we matched. We could talk and not get bored with each other. We had become best friends as well as lovers. Over the Christmas break, I really missed seeing her and called her every day; once again we cut short our time with our families and met up back at her place two days before classes started up again, just to be together. The reunion sex was amazing; not worth the time we’d spent apart, but something very special.

I remember one weekend in January especially well; we were making love on her couch, and as I held my weight on the palms of my hands gripping the cushion, with her right leg straight up over my left shoulder, she grasped my right elbow in her hand and our foreheads almost touched. She stared me eyeball to eyeball as we both achieved our climaxes, and if I ever looked into someone’s soul and saw my perfect match, I did then. Total concentration each on the other, a bond I’d never dreamed of, let alone achieved, with any of the other girls I’d fucked. I can see the expression in her eyes even now as I relive that moment. Eager to take whatever I could give her, and at the same time surrendering her innermost parts to my intrusion. The feeling of closeness and connection, like we were the only two people in the whole world? Utterly fucking awesome!

If I hadn’t done so already, I was rapidly falling head over heels in love with Nell. I believed that she was the full package. I did the full court press for Valentine’s Day, the card, candy, flowers, gift of a real silver bracelet, and pre-booked restaurant meal, and she nearly killed me in bed that night. I guess I was her first boyfriend to take that much trouble, and she sure appreciated it. Okay, so I’d cheated a bit and called my married sister Eileen for her advice, which was one reason why I’d ticked all the boxes for my special lady. Oh, and I’d also given Nell a gift card for Victoria’s Secret; the Friday evening when I got to her place she modeled for me the lacy bra and panties set she’d bought as MY gift, and the unwrapping was one heck of a lot of fun for the both of us.

Nell soon got quite serious about our relationship too; late February when there was a snow storm going on outside all weekend, we laid together in her warm cosy bed and had a long and detailed discussion about whether we wanted children or careers, and the type of house we hoped to live in. We matched on all of that too (house with yard and small garden, two or three kids early on in the marriage, Nell returning to part-time work once the kids were all at school), and I knew I finally had a proper girlfriend, one that I could actually imagine marrying and having kids with. I had quickly gotten into the habit of telling her I loved her when we made love, were parting, or were signing off on the phone, and she always said that she loved me back.

I did love her, and I was in love with her. She said that she loved me back.

I felt it was still too early to actually propose to her and formally get engaged, what with more than two full years of college ahead of us; when I told her that, and asked her if she wanted to meet my parents and wear my ring, she agreed that the moment for that step had not yet come. She did promise to tell me just as soon as she felt ready to make that public declaration, and said that she wanted to help choose her ring, for us to select it together. I therefore took it that she now considered herself my girl; as far as I was concerned, we were engaged to be engaged, but not quite at the stage where we’d involve our mothers in wedding planning, not with so long still to go. (Okay, so I was young and dumb. It didn’t occur to either of us that our moms would have loved a long engagement and the chance to make the wedding just so.)

We reluctantly spent Spring Break apart to spend time with our own families, not quite ready to take the big step of taking a significant other home with us for the whole week. Nell had told me that we wouldn’t be able to sleep together at her parents’ house; her folks were a bit strait-laced and frowned on sex before marriage, and they had their two younger daughters to worry about. My elder sister had brought a boyfriend or two home for the weekend, so we’d have been okay at my house, but in the end we decided to endure the separation. Of course we spent a lot of the break talking on our cells. Our reunion was awesome; that night Nell drained me of every single sperm that my nuts had managed to save up in the eight days since we’d last been intimate. I was as happy as a pig in muck.

So why am I boring you by telling you just how fucking wonderful everything was?

Well, the short answer is that it wasn’t.

At the time, and as far as I could see, there was only one small cloud in the sky.

I wasn’t ever going to impose myself on Nell or crowd her, but even though most nights we went back to her place, she never once even mentioned the possibility of me moving in with her to share the apartment costs. I dropped a few hints about how great an apartment it was, and how I hated the noise and bustle of the dorm rooms I lived in, but she never bit.

She also never offered to give me a key to her place, and I wasn’t going to push it by asking for one.

I left a toothbrush, comb, razor and shaving foam in her bathroom there, that was all, no clothes or other possessions. It was as if she was real wary of the unspoken commitment implied by us living together, even if our spoken conversation was often about setting up home together once we’d graduated. I did get to her admit that her parents were kinda strict, and wouldn’t be at all happy about her living with a guy. A couple of times they called her when I was staying over; I took real care not to make any noises that might make them suspect that somebody else was there with her.

She’d told me that she had an occasional casual job waitressing and also did some tutoring, so at first, I didn’t make anything of it when there were a few evenings when we couldn’t meet up. Frankly, I needed the time to catch up on my own studying; if there was a choice between working on a non-urgent assignment or just being with Nell, Nell won every time, even when Aunt Flo was visiting and sex was out of the question. I just wanted to be with her. I found myself studying during my free time between classes just to clear the decks for the evening and Nell; there was no more sitting chatting or drinking coffee with fellow students waiting around for our next class, I had the laptop open and was working. Guess whose picture was on the desktop?

Then, after that Spring Break, I started noticing a pattern of Nell not being available.

Generally there were two days a week, Wednesday and one other, when Nell often told me at lunch, or called me later, to say that she was now going to be busy and we’d have to cancel our arrangements. It never happened weekends. Wednesdays tended to be early evening, and she always said that she needed to catch up on her own studies afterwards, so we couldn’t get together; the other day or days she would text me before lunch that she wouldn’t be showing up, and then not pick up her phone until late afternoon. It wasn’t like she was being excessively secretive, but she wasn’t volunteering any information either, like who she was tutoring, which subject, or whether it was going well. If I asked, she just said something about needing the extra money and left it at that.

Although this blind spot niggled a little, I pretty much ignored it. I didn’t really think about how it was affecting our relationship until I went home one weekend to catch up with my folks and exchange some of my winter wardrobe for more spring-like clothes. That reminded me how long I’d been going out with Nell, and I guess I sub-consciously reviewed progress and discovered that from my point of view, the two of us weren’t getting any closer than we had been back around Valentine’s Day and early March, before we’d been apart for Spring Break.

There was just a little bit of distance that she’d maintained between us, and I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on it up until then. Thinking it over, I couldn’t recall when the thought suddenly hit me that there was a tiny corner of Nell’s life that I knew nothing about, that she seemed not to be open about, but it all came to the surface that Sunday morning, when Mom and I were stood with our backs to the counter, drinking our tea. I hadn’t slept all that well; I guess that after calling Nell to wish her a good night, my subconscious mind had been dwelling on our relationship.

“So, honey, this girl you’ve been dating, Nell, are you going to bring her home to meet us any time soon? You could have invited her here for Easter?”

I sighed. Knowing Nell’s continued reluctance for us to meet each other’s parents, I’d been hoping to avoid this conversation for a while yet, until she and I had agreed that it was now time. While my parents had met many of the girls I dated at high school, (heck, they knew most of their parents socially anyway) I’d never brought anyone back from college, even if I had sometimes mentioned names when answering Mom’s questions about my social life. And yeah, I had volunteered the fact that I was now going steady with a girl I really liked, so I guess Mom had a right to question me. I’d managed to change the subject when she’d started asking me about Nell at supper the previous day, but it looked like I wasn’t going to get away with doing that twice. Mom had me cornered and I knew it. Could have been worse; my sister Eileen might have been with us.

“No, Mom, I don’t think so, not yet.”

Her face fell at my reply; I guess she hadn’t expected the answer to be so definitely in the negative.

“But why ever not? You told me weeks ago that you had fallen in love with her, and that you’re dating regularly? Of course I want to meet the lucky girl who has captured my sons heart. Have you at least got a picture you can show me?”

I pulled out my phone and selected my favorite photo, the one where Nell was sitting on the grass at the park, grinning impishly up at me. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw it again. Mom cooed with approval.

“Rob, she’s lovely! Why ever won’t you let me meet her? I promise not to scare her away! Or why don’t you introduce her to Eileen first; she’ll tell me all about her.”

I groaned. I didn’t need my mom and sister planning my wedding for me right now. Like Nell and I had agreed, we still had two full years of college to get through, and then we’d see.

I guess that thought made me crystallize my sub-conscious feelings harder than they had been, and state a conclusion that I hadn’t yet fully arrived at myself. I still have no idea why I blurted my doubts out loud to Mom right then, but I did.

“Mom, I guess I’m coming to think that maybe there’s no long-term future in our relationship.”

Mom looked distressed.

“Come on, Rob, there must be! What does she say about it?”

“Oh, Nell’s dreaming of wedding rings and white picket fences, two or three kids and happy ever after.”

“So of course there’s a future! I’ll tell her that she’s picked a keeper!”

“Mom, that’s not the problem. What I can’t get over is that although I’ve been exclusive ever since I first asked her out, my guess is that she perhaps hasn’t. Once or twice a week, she calls or catches me at lunch, and says we can’t meet up that lunchtime or evening. She never explains. I’m getting the feeling that she’s possibly dating someone else as well. If that’s so, I’m not sure that I can see any hope for us at all.”

“Can’t you get over that? Won’t she stop seeing him? Does the past really matter if you truly love one another?”

I sighed again. Now was REALLY not the time to go over this. I hadn’t formed an opinion for definite, so I was still thinking on my feet.

“I don’t reckon I can, Mom. It’s a matter of honesty. All she ever says is that she’s sorry but she’s got to cancel our date, and it’s always at short notice. If I was tutoring someone and he kept wanting to see me the same day he called, I’d be letting off steam to my girlfriend about it hardly being worth the money for the disruption to my life. If she won’t tell me the truth, how am I going to trust her enough to commit to her for the rest of my life?”

Mom shook her head sadly.

“I guess I can see your point, Rob. If you are going to marry the girl, you’ve got to have a genuine intimacy and wish to communicate everything, or it’s never going to work out long term. It’s not a thing you should ignore, but I just hope that there is an innocent explanation and she’s just too embarrassed to tell you just yet. Perhaps it’s an old flame she needs to let down gently. Maybe your relationship is still developing, and that special intimacy and partnership will still come.”

“I hope so too. I did really think that I’ve found The One. She’s clever, witty, fun to be with, beautiful, kind, sexy, and I hate being away from her. I could see us getting old together, and never tiring of each other’s company. So, I guess that I do still really love her, but there’s that niggling seed of doubt, and I can’t get over that.”

“Have you ever actually asked her why she has to cancel seeing you, or what she needed to do that was so urgent? Communication is a two-way street, you know.”

“Of course I have. She either says she needs to catch up on some studying, suddenly been called in for a special function at the restaurant, or do some extra hours tutoring, or just changes the subject and doesn’t give me an answer at all.”

She sighed. I guess my tone hadn’t been all that hopeful.

“Oh, honey, I can’t tell you what to do. I just pray that it works out for you, I know how fond you are of that girl. Bring her home when you feel you can, your sister and I are still dying to meet her and get to know her. I’m certain that we’re going to love her just as much as you do.”

Dad came into the kitchen in search of a wake-up coffee at that point, and my quiet sharing of confidences with Mom came to an end as she started on cooking breakfast. I didn’t want to go through the same question and answer session with him as well, so I put my phone back in my pocket without showing off my girl to him.

I guess that my conversation with Mom, and the realization that something wasn’t right, was what spurred me on to try to find out more about exactly what Nell was up to. Wednesday lunchtime that week, once again I got the “Sorry sweetie but I can’t make tonight“ from her, and no volunteering of a reason why she was suddenly unavailable. I sighed inwardly and gave my usual reply that I’d probably go to the library and catch up on some course reading and note-taking instead.

But I didn’t do that.

We had copies of each other’s schedules. I knew she had a one-hour class at four. At a quarter before five o’clock, I pulled on a hoodie and some shades and headed on foot for Nell’s apartment building, where I found a bit of shadow on the opposite side of the street and sat down on a planter to fiddle with my phone, trying to make it look as if I was innocently waiting for someone. At five past, she came up the street from the direction of the campus and entered her building, walking real quickly as if she was on a tight schedule. She didn’t even glance in my direction, so my disguise wasn’t tested.

Everyone else I watched coming and going seemed to belong there; most of them I recognized from seeing them about the apartment block at other times. No-one stuck out as a student going for a tutoring session with Nell, and she didn’t re-emerge. About twenty past, a car pulled up and parked parallel, and I started watching even more closely.

To my utter horror, I recognized the driver as he got out! It was my DAD! What the heck was HE doing in this part of town?

To my amazement, he headed into the building, walking with that confident stride that showed me he knew where he was going.

No way! No fucking way was MY Dad going to see Nell. They’d never met, not even talked on the phone, he hadn’t ever even seen my photo of her. I must have been mistaken. Maybe Dad had a body double? Maybe he didn’t?

I sat for a while, my whirling thoughts making me almost unable to move. My logical brain wouldn’t work either; if I’d been questioned by a cop right then, I wouldn’t even have been able to give my name. Eventually I regained some control of my body, and I stood up and crossed the road to double check the license plate. Yeah, it was indeed my father’s car.

OH FUCK!

Nausea almost overcame me, and I just got myself to the apartment block dumpster before everything I had eaten and drank that day blew out of my throat. I stood there gasping and heaving for a while longer, desperately trying to think of some other reason for my Dad being at my girlfriend’s apartment block at a time when she couldn’t be with me. I may be lacking in imagination, but I couldn’t think of a single argument against my gut feeling that he was currently upstairs screwing Nell.

But how to prove it, one way or the other? I had no key to her apartment, so I couldn’t get in to see. I looked around for inspiration, and saw an empty pizza box in the dumpster, fortunately far enough away that my vomit hadn’t touched it. I picked it up, pulled down my hoodie so as to look less suspicious, and walked into the lobby as if I belonged there. Nobody questioned me, I knew the faces of the two guys I passed who just grinned as they saw the box, and I took the elevator up to Nell’s floor. It was easy enough to put my ear to her door and listen.

Crap! I knew the gasping noises that Nell makes as she starts getting wound up, and I could hear them through the cheap door; I guessed that they were fucking in the living room rather than her bedroom. I pushed my head closer against the door to try to hear more, and to my amazement, it swung slightly open. SHIT! In their haste to get started, they hadn’t even locked the fucking door!

I had no hesitation in sliding round the door and gently pushing it closed behind me. I was now standing in the small closet and washroom lobby leading to the living room, in the shadows, and could immediately see my Dad naked on his knees eating Nell’s pussy as she lay back on the edge of the couch. I could easily have vomited again, but there was nothing left in my stomach, just a really vile taste in my mouth.

Jeez! It was like watching a car wreck unfold in slow motion. Crap! MY girl was with MY fucking Dad! How fucking weird is that?

I was frozen in place. My brain had just taken a break from decision-making. It hadn’t even triggered the ‘fight or flight’ reactions. If you ever daydream about what you might do in such a situation if it ever happened to you, you come up with solutions. When it actually happens, with no prior warning, all those wonderful ideas stay well hidden. I’d always assumed that if I caught someone messing with my girlfriend that I’d beat them up without a second thought. Instead, I was physically paralyzed while my mind was racing through a range of emotions. Yes, there was rage and anger in my soul, but it didn’t urge me to violence. Should I stop them before it went too far? It had already gone way beyond anything I could forgive. Should I confront them? What would I say? It was my Dad – could I bring myself to hit him? Eighteen years of conditioning told my subconscious that beating on him would be a very bad idea. Should I just leave and try to forget it? Crap!

I just knew that Nell and I were finished. I didn’t even have to think about that one.

What about Dad?

Was it just a really unfortunate coincidence that he’d decided to cheat on my Mom, and had somehow picked on my girlfriend as his mistress? Did I owe him any male loyalty, to cover up his indiscretion as far as Mom went, even if he now owed me so big that I could own him? Could I live with holding out on the woman who had given me my life, who’d carried me inside of her for nine months before enduring the pain of childbirth so that I might exist? Who’d nurtured me ever since?

My instinctive conclusion? I owed more to my Mom. She needed to know, but it couldn’t just be hearsay. I needed evidence to show her. It took a couple more minutes of me watching in shock before I remembered that I did actually have my smartphone on me, so I pulled it out, set it to take photos without use of the flash, and snapped a couple of images – but they only showed the back and part-side of Dad’s head.