Chapter 4

I opened my door and climbed down from my pickup, but Leslie had already rolled her chair to the back of the van and was loading herself onto the hydraulic lift, getting ready to lower herself down to my driveway. I stood next to the lift, holding my tongue, waiting for her to finish getting out of her van. I could already tell that she knew she had made me angry, just by being here, without first calling to get my permission to come by.

"I knew if I called you first, that you'd tell me not to come." As usual, Les tried to direct how our conversation would be going. She was much stronger willed about most things than I was. I'd gotten used to this, and usually, I'd allow her to be the more assertive one whenever we spoke. She had gotten into the habit of thinking that she was the one who controlled our relationship. My recent refusal to go along with her plans was a source of bewilderment and annoyance to her. I was sure she believed that she could straighten my thinking out if I'd only allow her a reasonable opportunity to explain all the benefits of my allowing her to do things the way she had them planned. It was probably my fault for previously allowing her to assume the leadership role in our personal relationship.

"You knew it because I told you I didn't want you coming here yet. You promised you wouldn't come if I would just give you my new address, but here you are anyway. You need to get back in and move your van so I can go to the pharmacy and get something. I've got some guests inside who are waiting for it."

"What guests? I'm not moving my van until after we've had our talk."

"One of my guests is a Sheriff's deputy, and you're trespassing on my private property. If you don't move your van, I'll swear out a complaint against you and you'll be arrested and this van will be towed away to the impound yard. Is that what you want to force me to do?"

"If I move the van, do you promise to come back and listen to what I need to say to you?"

"I'm going to the store, then I'm coming back. When I get back, I need to go inside and make sure my guests are doing okay and don't need me for anything. If they don't need me, then I promise to come back outside and give you a few minutes to say what you feel you need to. Park your van out on the street though."

"Why can't I park on the other side of your driveway? There's room enough."

"Because I told you to park in the street, and because that's what I want. If you won't do what I'm asking, then we don't really have anything we need to be discussing. Either go do what I'm asking, or else get out of here and leave me the hell alone. Hurry up too, because my guests expect me back right away."

Surprisingly enough, Leslie got back on her lift and did what I'd asked her to do. As soon as the way was clear for me to do so, I backed my truck out and drove to the nearby pharmacy. I got what I went for and drove right back to my house. Leslie had parked on the street like I'd asked her to and was now sitting in her wheelchair a foot or so from the first step of my front porch. I got out of the truck and made my way over to her.

"I'd invite you in, but you can see my house doesn't have any access ramps."

Smiling at me, Leslie lifted her arms and told me I should pick her up and carry her inside so we could have our talk in comfort. I was pretty anxious to get rid of her, and to get back inside to listen, just in case Jennifer ever decided to actually call for me to come into my bedroom. That was one thing I needed to consider, but another thing was that having Leslie find out who my guests were, and what we were doing, might turn out to be just what I needed to do in order to send her packing once and for all.

I leaned in to let her get her arms around my neck, then lifted her from the chair quite easily. I carried her inside and deposited her on my living room sofa, before heading back out to retrieve her wheel chair. I knew that Leslie felt more comfortable sitting in her own chair. It gave her comfort, just knowing that she wasn't completely stranded. I lifted her up from my sofa and carefully placed her back in her chair.

"Would you like a soda or anything, Les?"

"Aren't you going to show me around your new house, Jimmy? By the way, where are all those guests you were claiming you had?"

"You wanted to speak to me, so go ahead and say what you came to say. My guests, Danny, and another friend of mine, are busy getting to know each other in my bedroom. That's why I'm not going to give you any tours through the house." I knew Leslie couldn't stand my brother, and that the feeling was mutual on his part as well.

"Danny's here?"

"He came down to help me with something I needed, and then he met one of my neighbors. It was mutual lust at first sight. Tell me what you wanted to, because I might be leaving myself soon, if she calls me in to give Danny a hand,"

"You're having an orgy?"

"Not yet, but I'm hopeful we will be soon. What did you want to say to me, Les?"

"I don't believe you, there's nobody else here, is there?"

Just then, we both heard a loud moan coming from my bedroom. It sounded like Danny's, but then we heard Jennifer shouting for me to come see her. I laughed, looking at Leslie's shocked expression, then quickly walked back through the hallway to where my bedroom door was. I knocked on my door, and heard Jennifer tell me to come in.

"Did you get it?" I fished into my front pocket and pulled out the little bottle of Astro Glide I'd purchased, holding it up so she could see it in my hand. Jennifer was naked, and sitting on my brother's waist. I could see all of her ass, and even part of my brother's dick, the part that wasn't already up inside her. "Get undressed, put some on, then come up here and work some into my ass with your fingers. Hurry up because I'm getting ready to cum and so is he."

"This all right with you, Danny?"

"Just make sure you put it in the right ass, Jim. By the way, I'm supposed to tell you that her pussy is definitely not loose."

"I never said it was. I was telling her Kaitlyn's theory about dick's, and she took it the wrong way and got all sensitive on me."

"What theory? Katie never told me about any dick theory."

"You know, about it not mattering to her how big the dick is, because she can squeeze down on any sized one?"

"I don't understand what the fuck you're talking about, Jim, but this isn't a good time for you to be bringing Katie's name up, you understand me?" I could tell that Danny was getting pissed off at me.

"Jennifer, listen, I've got another visitor right now and I kind of have to speak to her for awhile. I wish I didn't, especially now, but I do. I better let you two get back to what you're doing, and go talk to Leslie so she'll leave me alone after this."

I guess what I'd just said caused Jennifer to get out of the mood for sex, because she hopped off Danny's pole and started throwing her clothes on. Not even a minute later, and she was rushing out of my bedroom, through the living room and out my front door. I didn't hear her stopping to even say hello to Leslie. Danny was just staying right where he was, his hands still cuffed behind his head. I don't think it had quite registered with him that his romp with Jennifer was over. He looked confused at first, then he started looking at me, like I was the one responsible for him missing out on his finish.

"Stay there, I'll run after her and get the key to get your hands uncuffed." With that, I too turned away and hurried after the departing deputy. I passed Leslie, still sitting in the middle of my living room in her wheel chair.

"I'll be back in a few minutes. I need to get the key to get the handcuffs off my brother."

I went over to Jennifer's house, and she opened her front door even before I could ring her doorbell. She was smiling at me, which kind of was a surprise.

"I forgot about my cuffs. If I give you the key, can you release him and bring everything back here to me?"

"Sure. If I leave him like that for too long, he'll either break my headboard or fall asleep on me. I'm really sorry about Leslie, but she did come over completely uninvited."

"You weren't lying about her at least. Such a shame for her to need that wheel chair. Can she walk at all?"

"No. She had a spinal injury when she broke her back. She can't use her legs at all. She's been in that chair for the past thirteen or fourteen years, pretty much paralyzed from her waist down." Jennifer handed me a big ring of keys, with the cuff ring held between two of her fingers.

"When you take the cuff's off him, why don't you send him over here with them so you can spend some time with Leslie? I need to let him finish, and it wouldn't hurt anything if he was to finish me off as well."

I went back to my house and let Danny out of the handcuffs. After he was again dressed, I took him out my front door and pointed out where Jennifer's house was, handing him the key ring and the cuffs, telling him that she was expecting him to go over to her house so they both could finish what they'd started. Danny was grinning at me as he grabbed his shirt from where he'd left it in my front yard, and hurried on down the street to Jennifer's. I went back in the house to finish up things with Leslie.

"Okay, my guests are gone now. What did you want to tell me?"

"You let him bring women over to your house like that now? You never used to stoop so low for him before. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Tell me what you need to. I don't need any morality sermons coming from you. What I do is my business now, not yours."

"I want you to sleep with me. There isn't any good reason why you should refuse to do so. We both enjoy it, and I've already made it perfectly clear to you that Thomas is in favor of my seeing to my own physical needs. He approves of me doing this. It wouldn't be a case of us doing anything behind his back."

"I already accepted it when you told me this before. I'm not worried about whether or not Thomas cares either. Like I told you at that restaurant, it's me. I just have zero interest in being your partner for sex. It would be an accommodation I have no interest in providing you. Nothing you can say will ever convince me to change the way I feel about that, so you're just wasting your breath when you keep trying."

"You claim to have no interest, but I'm sure I could get you interested again, if you'd give me a chance to. I know you enjoyed the time we spent together. I could feel it when we made love. If you choose to look at things the same way I do, you'd see that this way is even better for both of us."

"Now you're just talking to hear yourself speak. You need to believe me when I tell you it won't ever happen again. I don't want you that way anymore. It was different before, because I loved you. Even before that, before I fell in love with you, I liked you a lot, and wanted you to experience those orgasms you said you were missing out on. We were friends, and I wanted you to be happier. Now, we're no longer friends, and I don't feel any love for you at all anymore. Absent those two different feelings to provide me with the motivation I'd need, there is absolutely no reason I'd want you in my bed again."

"You said you wanted to stay friends with me. It wouldn't be that much trouble for you to help me out this way. Friends should help each other. I've helped you out plenty of times when I could have said no to you."

"I don't love you anymore, and I don't like you right now. Maybe the liking part will come back someday, but not if you keep trying to manipulate me into doing what you want when you already know I don't want to. You aren't doing yourself any good here, so you'd be better off acknowledging that what you want is no longer possible, then leaving. Go get married, then find someone else to give you what you need. I'm not that someone."

"Don't you think I've already tried to do that? I need you, because you know how to help me make it good. None of the others knew how, and they weren't willing to find out how I needed it to be either. This is humiliating for me to have to come here like this. Do you think I'd put myself through this if I had any other choices?"

"Look, Les, I'm sorry you're in the situation you're in, but you have to look at this from my position too. You were once a very large part of my life. You made some choices, and I've had to live with them. That was your right, to make those choices. It has to end there though, because your choices ended any possibility for the two of us to ever be together again. I've moved on with my life now. If you hadn't come over here when you did, I'd have been in my bedroom with Jennifer and Danny, helping him double team her. You must have gotten a look at her when she came out of my bedroom. Why would I want to do things with you, when I have a woman who looks like her that wants me to fuck her?"

She just sat there, looking stunned, but not answering my question. Taking the opportunity this presented, I reached down and put one hand under her legs and the other behind her back, lifting her carefully out of her chair and taking her over to deposit on my sofa again. I took her chair out to the walkway in front of my front porch and then went back in to lift her up and take her back out to her wheel chair. When she didn't make any move to leave, I got behind her chair and wheeled her out to the street, right behind the lift on her van.

I left her there and went back inside my house. I went in my back yard and finished planting all the trees and shrubbery. It took me half an hour to finish up with it. When I brought the wheelbarrow around to the front of my house to put it back in my garage, Leslie and her van were gone.

Danny got back to my house about four hours later, looking like he'd had a fine time for himself. He told me that Jennifer had expressed her disappointment that I hadn't bothered to show up at her house to do what I'd promised. I had to tell him to take a shower before I drove him back home. If I hadn't reminded him, he'd have gone home smelling of another woman, with plenty of evidence of her dried juices spread all over his face. Danny wasn't one much given to thinking about ways to hide what he'd gotten up to.

After dropping my brother off at his trailer, I went over to my Hesperia house and decided to remain there for awhile. Just from reading what I've written about my meeting with Leslie, you might have been thinking it was easy for me to blow her off like I'd done. If you did think that, you were mistaken. Rightly or wrongly, I was still carrying around a lot of conflicting emotions about Leslie. What I'd said to her had needed to be said, and I'd told her mostly the truth when I'd said it. That didn't mean I wasn't still in the middle of the process of getting my head straight about my attempting to put her out of my life. I knew I needed to do it, and I wanted to do it, but it wasn't going to be something I could completely accomplish overnight.

I was beginning to feel a fairly strong need to put quite a bit of distance between us. Physical distance, as in hundreds of miles at a bare minimum. While I'd remained relatively strong for this meeting with her, I knew it could have turned out a lot differently if she had taken a different argument in her attempt to convince me to help her out. I knew my feelings weren't quite as definite towards her as I'd tried to make her believe they were. I was also aware that weakening to the point where I would actually consider doing any part of what Leslie was asking of me would have been the worst possible outcome for my future.

All I needed for my business to operate smoothly was my customer contact list, a phone number to reach my wind chime supply people, and a place where I got a strong signal for my cell phone. If I had all that, I could relocate myself to almost anywhere. I had money enough to be able to easily afford to keep both my houses empty. I planned on moving back into this Southern California area sometime in the future, but I thought I needed to remove myself from a personal situation I recognized as potentially dangerous to my continuing emotional wellbeing.

Over the next three weeks, I sold off almost everything I felt I no longer needed. I kept my houses, the furniture in them, and my small personal pick up. Other than my clothes and some personal effects and memento's, everything else was sold.

I took Kaitlyn over to my bank, and we opened up a savings account in her name only. I arranged with the branch manager to have six hundred dollars a month taken out of my business account and directly deposited into this account we'd opened, on the first business day of every month from then on. I tried to impress upon Kaitlyn the need for her to spend this money wisely, suggesting that it be used only for absolute essentials, and only then if she knew she couldn't find a way to pay for them from any other source. She seemed frightened that I'd be doing this, and several times she asked me what was so wrong that I'd want to set things up this way.

"I'm not going to be around here anymore, Kaitlyn. Not for a long time. I'm not sure if I'll even be in touch with you guys anymore. I figure this way, you'll have a little something to fall back on, just in case, like if something happens, and Danny isn't bringing home a paycheck for awhile."