Chapter 1

Kyle Whitley was getting tight. He wasn't falling down drunk yet, but he was getting there. That was why he was trying to fumble open the sliding patio door leading out to Paul and Ann's rear deck. It was a nice one, solid as a rock. They'd only had it for a couple of weeks. After having seen it earlier in the evening, Kyle was thinking of building one to replace his back porch too. Paul said it hadn't taken him but four weekends to do the whole thing. Kyle stumbled over the track for the sliding door.

It was February, Valentine's Day. Even in south Texas, that made for pretty cool evenings and he thought the fresh air would help clear his head. He reckoned the party would last at least another couple of hours and that would give him just about enough time to sober up well enough to drive himself and his wife, Peggy, home.

The nearly full glass of Jack and coke he held in his right hand couldn't be left behind. He couldn't remember why, but he'd worked it out in his mind just a few minutes ago. He was satisfied with the knowledge an earlier version of himself had made the decision. He wasn't of a mind to pour the Jack and coke out. Huh-uh! That would be alcohol abuse. He chuckled. He wasn't going to abuse alcohol by pouring it out.

Still chuckling, he finally got through the big glass door and even managed to slide it shut behind him. He ambled to the far right corner and leaned over to put his elbows on the top of the railing. Kyle enjoyed the comfortable slouch for a time. When his back began to hurt after a while, he straightened, pressed his belly against the top rail, and arched his back to relieve stiff muscles. The deck was only a couple feet off the ground, just enough to give a man a feeling of being elevated over the landscape but not far enough to make falling off it something to be afraid of.

He bumped the rail with his belly again, harder this time. He surprised himself by breaking wind in an especially long and disgusting manner. But lordy, lordy, lordy, it sure felt good. Someone snorted a highly opinionated disdain. Kyle was momentarily embarrassed, but the self-consciousness didn't last long in the whisky-induced fog in his mind. The breeze quickly took any foul odor off downwind behind him anyway. He bellied back up to the railing and stretched his arms above his head.

He vaguely felt a hand slipping between two of the vertical supports but it didn't provoke a response. He was going to have to think about it and thinking was difficult just now.

When he felt his zipper being pulled down, he tried to get his hands down to defend that precious region of his body. He banged the heel of his palms on the top of the railing... and that hurt. He spent a few moments massaging each hand. By the time he thought to move away from the railing, his prick had been removed from the protection of his boxers and exposed to the night air. That lasted only a second or two. Almost immediately, his penis was engulfed in something wonderfully hot, wet, and velvety smooth.

He didn't know if the moaning came from his throat or from down below. He decided it didn't matter. What the unseen mouth was doing down there felt damn good. He knew he'd found Peggy. He'd thought she might be out here somewhere.

His wife was one hell of a good cocksucker although she'd learned it virtually from scratch since they got married. He chuckled to himself, remembering their first few uncertain attempts to perform oral sex on one another. It had been fun though... lots of breathless giggles from her and hearty guffaws from him.

Peggy's mouth was a volcanic cavern of pleasure for him. Her tongue slathered all around the helmet-shaped head and probed into the sensitive region beneath. It felt sooooo good. Backing off slightly, Peggy adjusted her grip on Kyle's shaft and came back with her head angled slightly to take more of him inside. Kyle hissed in appreciation as he felt his prick slide down his wife's throat. She only did that occasionally. Usually she couldn't get her throat relaxed enough. When she had a few drinks though...

"Oh God, Peggy," Kyle whispered. "That feels so damn good." The woman stopped abruptly and let Kyle's penis slip from between her lips.

"Hmmmmmm?" she said slowly.

Ann was late. Not much, just ten minutes or so, but it was an eternity for Kyle. He'd been waiting inside the café where they'd agreed to get together, his fingers drumming on the table as he contemplated the possibility she wouldn't show. They'd only been meeting for a couple of weeks. He wasn't sure how Ann really felt about their series of secret rendezvous. If he was nervous, she probably was too. They both had a lot to lose and neither seemed to know what to do about this thing. It was dangerous to get together like this, but they just had to.

She arrived in a rush, flushed with the fast walk inside from her car and smiling happily at seeing him stand to greet her. She kissed his cheek and received a chaste peck in return. They were in public after all. They were more than good friends but public displays of affection were foreign to both of them. She chatted enthusiastically about what to eat for dinner while she spread samples of a circular over the table for him to see. They settled on one printed on light blue construction paper.

They picked over the remains of the salmon entrée and steamed vegetables. The supposed reason for their meeting having been disposed of, they became awkward with each other. Neither wanted to broach the subject that was really the reason for coming here tonight, but the light had gone out of Ann's eyes. They couldn't avoid the topic any longer.

"Ann," Kyle said softly, "we gotta tell them... we can't go on this way. They're going to find out sooner or later, you know. If they find out by themselves, it's not going to make things any better--it'll just make things worse." He looked down into his coffee cup, wishing it were a crystal ball that could tell him what to do about this thing that had come between him and his best friend's wife. There were no solutions in the dregs of the strong brew that he could see.

"I know," Ann said unsteadily. "I feel so guilty all the time and I know Paul can see it on my face. I can't even bear to look him in the eyes." Kyle nodded. It was the same with him when he was with his wife, Peggy. Then he shook his head.

"It's not something to feel guilty about, Ann," he said, a little more forcefully than he'd planned. "It's not like we set out to go out and have sex one day. What happened... just happened. It's no one's fault." There were tears trickling from Ann's eyes now. She touched a tissue to the corner of each eye in a vain attempt to stem the increasing flow.

"It's just that Paul will be so hurt," Ann said. "I can't face that." Kyle caught her wrists in his hands and pressed her palms together on the tabletop.

"Honey," he said quietly, "he's going to be even more hurt if we don't tell him. Sooner or later, he and Peggy are going to figure out something is going on and then we'll look like criminals or something... you know that," he finished in a coaxing tone. "It's just something we have to do and hope they'll understand. There's no two ways about it."

He released her wrists and patted the backs of her hands affectionately. The physical contact reassured her; it seemed to give her a little strength. She sat up straighter and nodded her acceptance. She bit her lips for a moment then took a deep breath and let it out. Her head came up, her eyes lifted to meet his and a smile grew on her lips. The color left her face in an instant, leaving her alarmingly pale.

"PAUL!" she cried. Kyle swiveled in his seat to see his friend standing nearly at his shoulder. He and Ann had been so intent on their conversation they hadn't seen him come in the café, much less walk up to them.

Kyle looked at Paul closely. Paul didn't look good. Dressed casually, but correctly, he still gave the impression of being slightly disheveled. He looked worried. His complexion was as pasty as Ann's... and his own, Kyle suspected. He'd been caught with his friend's wife, and now there could be hell to pay. He and Ann had no other option now. They had to confess to her husband what they'd done.

"Ann... please, Ann... I've got to know what's going on," Paul said raggedly, his voice breaking twice in the short entreaty. Ann's tears poured from her eyes now. Raising her arms to her husband, she pleaded mutely for him to come to her. He did, contorting his body to slide into the bench seat beside her. He held her as she pressed her face into his shoulder and murmured soft words that had no meaning into her hair.

It was a while before Ann regained control and sat up straight. Kyle sat quietly the whole time, keeping his eyes on the table to give his friends as much privacy as he could. He occupied himself straightening the pile of sample circulars. Paul watched him with growing hostility in his eyes but the printed words on the top leaflet caught his eye before he said anything.

"My birthday?" he said in a confused tone. "That's what this is all about? You're setting up a surprise party?" The colored pages contained an invitation to come help celebrate Paul Anderson's birthday. Paul's face brightened spectacularly, then fell again when Kyle shook his head in negation.

Kyle looked at Ann forcefully, willing her to nerve herself for what was to come.

"Well... we are, but that's only part of the reason we've been seeing a lot of each other," Kyle said. "Ann, we got to do it," he said slowly. She nodded, sighing. Kyle shifted his eyes to Paul.

"Paul," Kyle said slowly, "we have something to tell you that is going to be hard for you to hear... and I don't know exactly how to do it, so bear with me. Please... let Ann and me say what we have to say and then you can do whatever you want to, okay?" His eyes brimming with suspicion, Paul nodded curtly. Kyle breathed in deeply and held it. He let it out and began to speak.

"That's all there is to it?" Paul demanded, his voice crackling with impatience. He looked at his wife. She nodded. "You mean to tell me you started sucking Kyle's cock by mistake at the Valentine's Day party? By mistake? How the hell do you do it by mistake?"

"It was dark, honey," Ann said patiently. She was going over things she'd already explained, but this was her husband and it was important he understood.

"I heard Kyle fart; it sounded just like you do when you've been drinking beer and I didn't stop to think it might be someone else. It wasn't until he called me Peggy that I realized what had happened and I stopped right then..."

"So this sordid little affair started with a big, ol' fart? Is that what you're telling me?" Paul inquired sarcastically, his voice strained. Ann looked up into his eyes and found something there. She doubled up her fist and hit her husband in the ribs--hard.

"Damn you, Paul Anderson," she said hotly. "This isn't one bit funny."

Paul had a small grin on his face all the same. In the relief that quickly spread around the table though, she and Kyle were soon smiling broadly and all three gave in to chuckles a moment later. It was a few minutes before they could completely stifle them.

"Uh... Paul... look, I'm really sorry this happened," Kyle said sincerely. "I'd give the world if it hadn't happened but we... Ann... I..." Paul waved his hand carelessly at his friend.

"I know you didn't mean it," Paul said. "I can see it on your faces. Besides, I'm well aware Ann has... ahhhhhh... had sex with other men," he said, trying to be delicate about what he was saying. "She was divorced when I met her, for Pete's sake," he added.

"I'm not terribly upset about the "accident" as you put it, but I am upset about what you two put me through the past two weeks." Kyle and Ann looked at each other shamefacedly.

"If you'd just come to me right away," Paul said, "I wouldn't have lost so much sleep and I'd be a lot less stressed out. How come you didn't just tell me?" he asked Kyle and Ann, his eyes traveling from one to the other. Kyle looked uncomfortable.

"Peggy," he said quietly. "Once we told you, we'd have to tell Peggy."

"Oh," Paul replied. The three of them looked at each other glumly.

It wasn't that Peggy Whitley wasn't a good person. Heck, Kyle's wife was the first one to put an arm around a neighborhood kid with a scraped knee; she'd be on your front porch with a pot of chicken noodle soup if you were ill and couldn't get out; and she was generous to a fault with all the neighborhood charity drives. It wasn't any of that.

It's just... well... her mom was one of the original feminists. Kyle wondered from the day he met Peggy's family how that philosophy coexisted with the practical realities of a long marriage to a successful businessman. They'd had five children too. Kyle didn't know how that fit in with Denise's agenda.

Early in his marriage, Kyle had summoned the courage to ask Dan, his new father-in-law, about it and he told Kyle quite candidly that he ignored most of what Kyle's mother-in-law said when he heard her using the movement's odd mantras. He said he reverted to a 19^th century philosophy of allowing the woman to run matters relating to the household and let her have sway over all that virtually without comment.

Outside of that, he said they made compromises and agreements or Denise was invited to pack her bags and leave. Kyle was impressed. He also wondered if Denise appreciated the irony of her husband's way of dealing with her political beliefs... or if she knew.

Once or twice, in her role as mother-in-law, Denise said some hurtful and antagonistic things about males in general and Kyle in particular at the dinner table. Dan jumped in and told Denise in no uncertain terms that what she was saying was highly inappropriate and that it needed to cease. Denise's eyes got a little vacant, as if she were going over what she had said, or perhaps she was consulting a reference library that told her what was and was not appropriate commentary according to an agreement of some kind. Each time, Denise apologized to Kyle and the incident passed.

Anyway, Peggy inherited from her mother an attitude that bordered on intolerance for men's foibles and idiosyncrasies. It persisted well into a marriage that produced two wonderful children but it caused their marriage to be a rocky one from time to time. She always came back to Kyle though--almost returning to the woman she'd been when he married her. Lately though, it had taken longer for them to work past the disagreements.

She was intensely competitive too. For instance, though she was slight of stature, it infuriated her when Kyle could easily open a pickle jar she'd wrestled with all day long. In short, she tolerated no differences between herself as a representative of the female portion of the race and Kyle as an unwilling rep for the male half. Sometimes it meant she had to watch a sporting event she really didn't want to, and Kyle had to watch "Steel Magnolias" or something in that vein when it struck Peggy's fancy.

The last time they'd watched that movie, Kyle hadn't been able to fight off his boredom and lack of interest. His snoring finally made it impossible for Peggy to continue watching the movie and she woke him up. After a few sharp comments, she'd flounced off to bed. She'd suggested he sleep on the couch instead of joining her. Sleepy and quite comfortable where he was, Kyle had nodded and stretched out. He'd drifted off again before his wife got upstairs. She hadn't given up ragging on him for that for a long while, but she hadn't made him watch the movie again either.

At times, her attitudes caused more significant conflicts. There was the time, for instance, when Kyle caught her in a fib about where she'd been when someone dented the fender on the car. She'd actually been buying a new dress at the mall, not the supermarket like she told him. At the time, they couldn't really afford for her to buy that dress but she was afraid it wouldn't be there when they could. It had to be that exact dress, so she'd gone back and gotten it after telling Kyle she would not.

Kyle had had his suspicions. There was something odd about the way Peggy was acting when she told him about the supermarket parking lot, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. When the police report they had to submit with the insurance claim gave the lie to her whereabouts at the time of the accident, Kyle asked his wife some pointed questions. He was completely unprepared for the onslaught of verbal volleys that were hurled at him.

When he got mad at the undeserved treatment and fired back, Peggy refused to talk to him for two solid weeks. Just because she wasn't talking didn't stop Kyle though. He fell into the habit of making extemporaneous, rhetorical remarks about the incident whenever the mood struck him.

For instance, he made much of the fact that she wouldn't have gotten into the accident if she hadn't been doing something she'd promised she wouldn't. He didn't get an explanation. Peggy had sworn to herself she would not talk to him for a long time and that period was not yet up. Her self-imposed inability to even respond to her husband made her mad. That she couldn't counter the logic of the remark infuriated her even more. When he got on to her for lying when she professed to loath people who did that, Kyle earned himself another two weeks of the silent treatment.

She'd taken the dress back, only to have Kyle put it on layaway and buy it for her when things calmed down. He ate bologna sandwiches for two months at lunchtime to be able to do it, but he thought it would be worth it. He figured it would be a peace offering, but Peggy went ballistic instead. She hadn't wanted a man to get it for her. She'd wanted to do it herself. The dress was on a rack stuffed in the back of her closet. It had never been worn.

Though they usually got along, the antagonism reached levels Kyle wasn't willing to overlook on several other occasions. He loved her. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but there were times when he could not put up with her ways.

They separated twice, living apart for three weeks the first time and two months the second time. The second time had been particularly humiliating for Peggy. She'd had to admit she was wrong in throwing a fit about a credit card purchase and accusing him of buying a trinket for one of the floozies in the secretary pool. When the bill came in, it was plain to see it had been for a present for her sister's birthday and the flowers that had been sent in both their names. She'd forgotten. That had been a few months after Todd was born and things had been relatively smooth since then.

No, the reluctance to talk with her about the mistake wasn't because Peggy was a bad person exactly. It's just that she was never inclined to give a man, particularly Kyle, much of a break. They put off telling her as long as they could.

"Peggy," Kyle said as gently as he could, "Ann and I need to talk to you about something that happened at the Valentine's Day party." Kyle was sitting beside Peggy on the couch while Ann sat on the Lazy Boy recliner. Kyle had tried to take her hand but Peggy wouldn't let him. She seldom did. She wasn't a bubblegum popping schoolgirl she usually remarked when he wanted to.

"What is it, honey?" Peggy asked in a sweet voice. "It's not about the party for Paul, is it?" Kyle shook his head and bit his cheek to keep from saying something out of irritation when Peggy turned away.

He'd already told her it was about something to do with the February party and she'd ignored it. His jaw muscles clinched tight. He was trying to be gentle about this but a number of old frustrations had been weighing on his mind over the past few weeks as he tried to find a way to tell his wife what had happened. A mistake shouldn't be this difficult to tell her about. He should be able to trust she would have enough faith in him to believe what he needed to say. Instead...

"Would you like me to freshen your coffee?" Peggy asked Ann solicitously. Ann put her hand over her nearly full cup.

"No... thanks, but this is plenty for me," Ann replied. She looked at me with a question in her eyes. "Do you want to go first, Kyle?" she asked. "You went first with Paul," she added. Peggy looked at me, then back at Ann. Suspicion began to wrinkle her forehead.

"What's this all about?" she asked warily. "Kyle, what did you do?" she asked. The assumption and the accusation were plain to hear in her voice. Kyle shook his head at Ann's suggestion and faced Peggy directly.