I couldn't say that I wasn't warned. I had been and rather forcefully. "No!" Brian had said to me, "I will not be your best man, I will not be a party to the biggest mistake of your life."

"It isn't a mistake Brian. I love her and she loves me."

"She also loves cock Jimmy. You know her track record. She has been a cock hungry slut since the ninth grade and it never changed all the way through high school and the first three years of college."

"I know that Brian, but that was all before we fell in love. I'm not going to the marriage bed a virgin. What happened before I proposed to her is in the past."

"To you maybe Jimmy, but Mickey is never going to be a one man woman. Somewhere along the way she will gut you like a fish and leave you bleeding. It is her nature Jimmy, no one man is ever going to be enough for her. I won't stand there next to you and smile knowing what is going to happen. And happen it will Jimmy, maybe not right away, but it will happen."

I knew better of course. Michelle and I were deeply in love and I knew with all my heart and soul that when we took our wedding vows we would live happily ever after.

It hurt me that my closest friend, my best buddy since the third grade, would not only not be my best man, but wouldn't even come to the wedding and the reception. Of course Michelle commented on it and in keeping with my promise to myself to always be honest with my wife I told her why. I had expected her to be pissed and say a few unkind words about Brian, but she didn't. She just looked at me and said:

"He's wrong Jimmy, you do know that don't you? You are my life and you always will be."

I did know that.

I knew what she had been like before we got together, how could I not? She lived two doors down from me and we had been classmates from the fifth grade all the way through high school. I was at a party after the senior prom where she had taken on seven of our classmates. I'd been in the car next to her at the drive in movie when she and Steve had climbed into the back seat and the car started rocking. Ten minutes later Steve had gotten in the front and Ted had gotten in back with her and the car bounced some more. I had been on the roof of our house installing a motorized TV antenna and had looked down into her backyard and had seen her on her knees sucking Mark's cock while Ben fucked her from behind.

I knew what she was before she started going steady with me, but none of that mattered once she committed to me any more than Donna, Maria, Sue, Abby, Bonnie, Sarah or Nancy mattered to Michelle once I committed to her.

You might ask why, given our close proximity to each other and given the way she was, that I had never been one of her lovers and that we had never even dated before halfway through our junior year in college. The simple fact is that I was insecure where Michelle was concerned. She as just so beautiful, outgoing and fun loving and I was such a nobody that she intimidated me. Maybe intimidated is not the right word to use. Maybe not intimidated as much as afraid of rejection.

I know, I know, that sounds stupid seeing that I had so many girlfriends, but it was the truth. It didn't matter how many girls I took to bed, they weren't Michelle. I had been in love with Michelle since she was twelve and my mind set was that if I asked her for a date and she turned me down all hope was lost. If I never got turned down there was always the chance "that someday maybe..." Dumb, but people in love are not always thinking at their swiftest.

I might have been fifty and still thinking "someday maybe" if one night at a party Michelle hadn't come up to me and said:

"Can I ask you something Jimmy?"

"Sure Mickey."

"Are you ever going to ask me out?"

I was caught flat-footed and didn't know what to say. I just stood there speechless.

"Come on Jimmy, you've known me forever, long enough to call me Mickey and I don't let just anybody do that. It isn't a hard question. Are you ever going to ask me for a date? Come on Jimmy, I'm waiting."

"Give me a second here. I'm trying to sort this out in my mind."

"What's to sort out?"

"I'm trying to figure out why you are over here asking me a question like that while your date is over by the beer keg watching us."

"My date has nothing to do with this. We have known each other for over twelve years, we've seen each other almost every day of those twelve years and I've seen the way you look at me. I've always wondered why you have never asked me for a date and tonight I decided that I had to ask."

I did what any red-blooded American boy would do in a situation like that - I lied. "I've never asked because the timing was never right. When I wasn't going with some girl you were always with some guy. When you weren't seeing some guy I was with some girl. Tonight is a good example. I broke up with Amy last week and I'm here tonight stag, but you are here with a boyfriend."

"He isn't a boyfriend, he is just a date. He brought me so I will leave with him, but I won't say yes to another date with him and that means I'm looking at a dateless weekend unless..."

I can be a little slow sometimes, but I try not to be hopelessly stupid so I asked, "Would you like to take in a movie with me Friday night?"

"I'd love to."

And that started it. Half a dozen dates led to us going steady. One day while strolling through the mall with Mickey she stopped at a jewelry store and stood there looking in the window at the wedding and engagement rings on display. She didn't say anything, but she kept looking at me and then back at the display. I knew what the unspoken question was, but I didn't say a word.

Later that night as we were having dinner at Carl's Chop House Mickey asked me what my intentions were. "Are you ever going to take us any farther than we are now?"

It was truth time so I said, "I hadn't much thought about it."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not sure going any farther is a good idea."

"You know that you are going to have to spell that out for me Jimmy."

There wasn't anyway out except to put it out into the daylight so I took a deep breath and said:

"I've known you since you were eight years old Mickey, and being in the same grade with you all the way through school has let me see you as you are. I've watched you take on multiple partners at the drive in and I've seen at least one of your gangbangs - the one at the senior prom - and I've seen you in action a couple of other times. I don't think you are capable of being a one man woman."

"So what you are saying is that I'm a cock crazy whore?"

"No, I'm not saying anything bad about you here Mickey, I'm just stating that I believe you have a sexual appetite that no one man can satisfy. That doesn't make you bad, just not a good candidate for being a faithful wife. Just on your past track record the odds are that down the road you will take on another playmate to satisfy you sexually and I'm just not a sharing kind of guy."

"So what you are saying is that it is a given that I'll cheat on you if we were to get married."

"Again, based on your past track record I'd say hat the odds are good that you would."

She looked at me without saying anything for almost a minute and then she used her napkin to wipe her mouth, tossed it down on the table and said:

"Take me home please."

When we got to her place I walked her to the door and without turning to look at me she put her key in the door, opened it and said, "Goodbye Jimmy" and went inside and closed the door. Goodbye, not goodnight. I walked back to my car knowing that I had lost something very dear to me.

I called Michelle the next morning and she said, "We have nothing to say to each other Jimmy, please don't call again."

I called her next day and then every day for two weeks and as soon as she heard my voice she would hang up on me. After two weeks I finally accepted it and stopped calling.

She wouldn't talk to me, but that didn't mean that I couldn't see her. Hardly a day went by on campus that I didn't see her. I would see her for sure every Monday and Thursday because we were both in Professor Bradley's 10 AM Poli Sci class and Tuesdays and Fridays we both had Rossman's 9:15 AM Managerial Economics. I saw her at the bookstore, in the cafeteria at the Student Union and just walking across the campus and the one constant was that she would never acknowledge me. If she saw me she would turn her head away and if I were bold enough to say "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" she ignored me.