Chapter 2: Between Two Lovers (part 1)

The next morning found Jonathan naturally hung-over and unable to think of working. He called in sick for the first time in ages. He asked, no he told his boss that he was taking not only all his sick leave days, he was taking a week's vacation. When his boss became indignant, Jonathan only answered him, "I don't care. If you don't like it, fire me." Hanging up the phone while his boss was still arguing with him, he mumbled to himself, "As if it fucking matters." If he didn't work for them, he'd be working for someone else.

Wandering around the empty house, he knew he should be doing some things. He should be reacting, and there were things that needed to be done. He knew he had to find out facts for himself, not only accepting everything Susan had told him.

"How in the hell am I going to find a lawyer? With my luck, I'd end up calling her fucking boy toy." He searched through the telephone book until he found a female lawyer. "That should eliminate that possibility."

Staring at the phone, he couldn't call. There was this feeling of finality with that simple act of dialing. If he called this lawyer, he would be putting everything he had worked for, for years, behind him, the house, his marriage, his hopes for his and their future.

His thoughts kept wandering, "This isn't true. It isn't happening. Not to me. There has to be something, something simple that explains everything that has happened, and makes it understandable." He wanted so badly to have the whole last day just be gone. Totally and completely gone from his mind, his memories and his thinking. He questioned himself, "Maybe it would have been better she had never told me. Maybe we could have gone on as we had been. Would that have been so bad if I didn't know?"

For moments, memories came flooding back to him. Memories that were crystal clear in his mind... that day at the hospital when the nurse handed him his newly first born child to hold for the first time. "What had happened? Where did everything go wrong? Why am I here now? Where did those moments go?"

Other moments flooded his mind, their first date, him having just returned from service, she just barely out of highschool and starting her first job. Then that one day he took her fishing, and they ended up swimming naked in the cold waters of that rocky creek, their first time as lovers. "Was there something I could do, could have done, should do, should have done? Should I just accept and hold on to whatever's left? Is that enough? Can there be moments like those in the future, after all that's happened? If I don't give into her, and do divorce her, am I destroying the possibility of them ever happening? Where will I go from here? What future can I have? Do I want that future, or is it better to just accept?"

Reaching for the phone, his thoughts were, "Whatever happens, whatever the possibilities are, I need to know. I can't let things happen like they did yesterday." Conceding point with his emotions of denial, "I'll call and first just ask for some advice. I don't have to decide anything yet." The appointment was made for the next morning. He was asked to bring with him any and all financial papers, tax returns, etc.

Then first taking a couple of aspirin, he stepped into the shower, standing only letting the warm comforting water cascade over him until he felt his headache slowly recede.

Returning dressed from the bedroom, he saw that the voice mail recorder was lit. Someone had called while he was deep in thought and showering. He had not heard the phone even ring. "Jonathan, it's me. I'm at my parents and I'm picking the kids up. I'm going to take them with me to my sister's for a day, or so. That should give us both some time to think. I only told mom and dad that we had an argument. There's no need to say more, or get anyone else involved. I know we both said some angry hateful things last night. Things that should have not been said, or should have not been said the way they were. Please believe me, it's not as bad as what you're thinking. I truly do love you. We can get through this if we want. I'm sorry that I sounded so harsh and ugly last night. I didn't want to be. I was just too nervous and afraid..." Abruptly the tape ended.

He spent the rest of the day searching for financial records and contemplating how someone could profess to love two people at the same time. He couldn't seem to understand, grasp the concept. He knew he loved people differently, that there were levels of love, friends, family, wife, children, mother and father. But, how could someone love emotionally and sexually two different people at the same time? "Am I missing something here? Could she be right, someway, somehow? Is this somehow unique and unusual? Am I being too judgmental of her? Does she love me? Does she love him or is she just infatuated with him, with the sex, emotions and lifestyle he can offer her that I can't?"

"... That I can't." With that thought, the pain gnawed again at his innards. She had a life away from him, foreign to him. A life he was not allowed a part of, a life he could not provide. After the pain and fear came hate and anger, followed by self-doubt. "Why, how had I failed her? What have I become that changed us?"

He remembered her words, telling him how he had changed. He didn't feel himself changed, but then he did. Walking into the bedroom to stare at him self in the full-length mirror he wondered, "When had all these changes happen? Why hadn't I noticed them?" His thoughts darkening, "I have changed and I'm not who I was. I'm not the man she married. We've been living off of memories for how long? I wasn't there. I wasn't there for her, with her, sharing. I first left her, before she left me. Does she love him because he is the man I had been? She is loving him only as an ersatz? Is that it? Do I only need to win her back from him? Is this what it's all about?"

Then in anger, "Do I want to win her back? Why am I always the one at fault? Damn it how about me? She isn't the same person I married either! Isn't there such a thing as equality? She cheated on me. I didn't force her to do anything! I'm the one being hurt."

Still thinking erratically, his mind wandered into deeper darker passages, thoughts of her with her lover. Thoughts of how she had said that the sex was great. Did that mean her lover was better than him? Did she do things with her lover, things she had never done with him? Did they have anal sex? Did she swallow his cum? Did he make her scream out crying in passion she had never known before? Was his cock bigger?

With jealousy came pain, but also a morbid, perverse and masochistical passion and desire. He felt at the same time sick to the stomach with fear, hurt and jealousy, yet also sexually aroused. His arousal seemed to be fed by his jealousy and doubt of self-value. In self-debasement, he needed to see, hear and know each and every little detail of their lovemaking.

He shook himself, trying to break away from the illogic of his own debasement, yet he could not completely. The feeling, the emotions nagged at him. Mentally he wanted to return to the purity of the justifiable anger and rage he had known before. She was doing him wrong. Her lover had wronged him and his marriage. He had done nothing wrong. He was innocent. Yet self-doubt continued to nag and toss in his intestines.

Susan drove along the state highway out and up into the mountains above their city. The children were quiet in anticipation of visiting Aunt Jenny and Uncle Joe. Jenny and Joe lived in their mountain home far from neighbors, but with, horses, dogs and cats to play with. Alongside their log house was a small meandering steam flowing from shaded pool to shaded pool in the late summer's heat. Remote from other children, they still had plenty of adventures to occupy their time. Jenny and Joe could have no children, so the few visits from their nephew and nieces was always welcomed. Both worked from home on the Internet, so time was not a question. Susan knew that once there, the children would be taken care of and happy, while she would have time away from Jonathan and Rich to think her own thoughts.

Having slept the night, and time having past, she was deeply regretting how her conversation had gone with Jonathan. She was ashamed of the part she had willing played. She had not wanted to say the things the way she had. None of the talk seemed to have gone the way she had planned. Nothing she had said had come out right, or was understood the way she had intended. She had not controlled her emotions and instead reacted to his rage and anger, with her own anger. In her anger, she had willingly hurt him when she had not wanted or needed to hurt.

She had planned to not say anything about her sexual relationship with Rich. Only that it was sexual. Yet, she knew that she herself had been the first to say anything about how their lovemaking was. She had hurt him unnecessarily by doing so. Maybe even hurt him too much to repair. She should not have gone there. That was wrong, very wrong.

Driving up the meandering road her thoughts turned to her confused feelings and emotions pertaining to her sexual relationships with both men. Morally, she knew that her relationship with two men was wrong. Yet doing so felt so right. Only during the first few times with Rich had she felt the illicitness of having sex with someone else but her own husband. The same feeling of naughtiness she had as a teenager. Nowadays their relationship did not include that element at all. She felt as if she had two husbands.

Her lovemaking with him was different, freer and wilder than with her husband. It seemed there was little or nothing that they had not or would not try at least once. Anal sex was nothing unusual. Oral sex, masturbation in front of each other, even her using toys to do so, were all things that she did with him that she would never think of doing with her husband.

Because, she was not actually married to Rich and their relationship was only a relationship for a time, she did not feel the moral pressures of her upbringing. She did not feel the need to act as the proper wife and mother of his children. She could easily and openly talk with him about anything sexually, telling him of her fantasies she would have feared to tell her husband. So, it wasn't about the sex they had, that made the sex so good.

Still, most times during lovemaking the images of the two men would fade, blur and blend with each other. She would be making love to her husband in her mind, while making love to her lover, or visa versa. Sadly, she wished that in not only sex, but also in other intimacies shared with each of the men, she could combine the two into one. Jonathan was strong, stable and solid; a wall to depend on, while Rich was kind, gentle, compassionate and caring, open and understanding.

Guilt had been very strong at first, and she had called off their relationship twice and only gone back to him after he once had attempted suicide, and then again when she accidentally met him while shopping. He had seemed to be so depressed and near suicidal again. Then she had given up and willingly returned to him. Creating the situation they were now in.

Neither of them had ever intended their friendship to become a love affair. Meeting at one of those house parties her husband refused to attend, they had only talked. She had obviously seen his depressed mood, and listening to his story told by him and others, understood the depth of his emotional pain. He had enjoyed their conversations and seemed to come out of his dark moods around her. He had admitted to finding their talks helpful and comforting. He made her feel she was someone special. He made her feel needed and of value beyond her drab life as a housewife and mother.

They had for a long time continued on meeting and talking, even after the party. First for days they only talked on the phone. Later they met at cafes and restaurants during the day, when her husband was at work and the children in school. Nothing had been sexual all that time. They had grown into a close friendship only, with each of them sharing their hopes, worries and concerns.

Before the accident, he had worked as a Para-legal. The settlement from the insurance company of the car manufacturer had been a multi-million dollar settlement. Between having the money, time spent in the hospital, he had given up any attempts at working. Through their talks she had been able to persuade him into returning back to college and studying law.

Slowly, their relationship had moved from phone conversations and lunches to her finally in a sisterly manner visiting him at his house. Her intentions had been for her to cook him a home-cooked meal. The meal and visit to his house had not seemingly changed their relationship much. Yet, more and more did she visit him, going directly to his house, and less and less did they see each other in town.

Before long she seemed to simply have taken over the position of housewife, and ordered his haphazard household back into an orderly manner. This had though brought them into a closer intimacy, and not even aware of doing so, she often associated him and her behavior towards him, with her husband and her behavior towards her husband.

Unaware of even doing so, they both were slipping down a steep slope of emotional entanglement. Often their conversations would turn to being sexual in nature. They talked about their desires, fantasies and likes. They told each other about events in their past where each had done something unusual and exciting. So, with time, the atmosphere between them became sexually charged, and then it happened. Though they had kissed before, that day after kissing in the kitchen, they had fervently adjourned to his bedroom, their lunch left still uncooked, sitting on the kitchen counter.

After their passion had abated she had hurriedly dressed and rushed from his house. At home she had showered, crying while scrubbing and scrubbing in an attempt to undo what they had done. When he later called she refused to answer. She avoided all contact, and shunned places he might go. Plagued with guilt, she promised herself that something like that would never happen again, and be her secret transgression known only to herself.

Yet, a week later, hearing the news that he was in the hospital after having taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Knowing the feeling of guilt for having been at least part of the cause, she visited him. Holding hands, they quietly promised each other never again to be intimate. But, that was an empty promise. Though each felt guilty about their actions, each was too weak and the next session of lovemaking and regrets followed within days.