Hey Folks. It's the middle of winter and it's as cold as hell out there. I thought I'd give you one to read on those colde nights when there's nothing on TV. This one like the last is a bit longer to give me a chance to stretch my legs. Another thiing that gave me a bit more confidence is the fact that I was standing on the shoulders of a giant on this one. While writing this story I had the help and encouragement of the incredible Barney-R editing it. I learned a lot. And although most of it went over my head, there are fewer commas here than ever before. As I said before this one is a bit longer and a bit involved. So if you need a quick story to facilitate self service, this ain't it. For everyone though ... Enjoy! SS06

I looked across my Mustang's hood at the orbital polisher. It was still new and shiny. I had only taken it out of the box once. And that had been the day that Claire had given it to me. As much as she hated my car, she had given me the polisher, supposedly to help me take care of it. Of course I knew she'd had an ulterior motive.

Claire thought that if I had the polisher, washing and waxing my car wouldn't take as long. I guess she didn't understand that the simple act of rubbing a microfiber rag across the car's brightly painted skin was akin to giving a massage to a lover. It bonded the car to me and I to it in and action that was almost intimate. The polisher, although it would make the car shinier than I ever could by hand, interrupted that intimacy ... Okay, maybe she knew me better than I gave her credit for.

I put the rag down and walked across our large yard to where Claire was sunning herself. Every time I saw Claire, her beauty hit me all over again. It truly was the gift that kept on giving.

"What are you looking at husband of mine?" she asked lifting her sunglasses.

"The most beautiful woman I've ever seen," I said.

"You've told me that almost every day for the past twenty-three years," she said. "But somehow, I just never get tired of hearing it. I'm going to have to get your eyes checked though, Honey. I'm fifty years old. I'm no spring chicken. There are lots of tender young things out there who could catch your attention, if you let them."

"You are the only woman I've ever loved," I said. "I've loved you since the first day I saw you and I'll love you until the day I die."

"I don't think so," she smirked. She sat up playfully and lifted her glasses again. "I think you love her ... just as much." She pointed across the yard at my "Screaming Yellow," 2009 Mustang GT.

I sighed in exasperation. "Claire, that was a long time ago and another car," I said. "We've been doing great. Let's not go back there. I love my cars, but I love you more."

"I know that, Honey," she said. "But women are funny creatures. Sometimes even when we know that our men feel a certain way, we like to hear them say it. And sometimes we like to have them show it."

"I remember," I said bitterly. As if she'd sensed that she'd misspoken, she changed her facial expression and her tactics.

"I love you too, you know," she said. "I always have. Despite my reservations at first, I always did want to marry you Ray. There has never been one moment in my life when I've been sorry about marrying you. But you love that car. Every few years there's another one. The worst times are when you first get them and when you're about to trade them in. When you first get them, it's almost like you have a new love. When you're about to trade them in, it's like you're about to say goodbye to a woman you've loved forever."

She was beautiful, and that was the problem. Every guy who'd ever set eyes on her wanted her. It had always been that way Students in the high school that she taught at made fools of themselves over her, even though she was now fifty years of age. Other teachers, administrators, and parents also did stupid things to get her attention, but she came home to me every night.

"Ray, why don't you..." she started to say, when we heard the doorbell ring.

"Ray, Honey, that's Sarah Winston. She's here to pick up the check for my donation to the Children's Fund. Can you fetch it for me? I already wrote it. It's in my purse on the kitchen counter."

"Claire, you know I hate looking through your purse," I whined. She pouted her bottom lip and predictably...

"Okay," I said, just as Sarah switched from ringing the doorbell to knocking on the gate.

I quickly went inside the house. I found Claire's purse but didn't find the check. I looked further down inside of it. In a pocket near the bottom of the purse, I found a bank card and a checkbook. I pulled the checkbook out and noticed that it wasn't our bank. Our checks had both of our names on them. This checkbook had only Claire's name. I pulled out my phone and jotted down the account number. Then I put both the checkbook and the bank card back.

I found the check, not in her purse, nor on the kitchen counter, but on the living room counter. I snatched it and took it out to Claire.

I handed the check to Sarah and returned to polishing my Mustang. As Claire spoke to Sarah, I continued polishing my car. They got up after a few minutes as Claire walked Sarah to the gate. Sarah was taller and had bigger boobs and a bigger butt. She was also fifteen years younger than Claire and ten years younger than me. But next to Claire she may as well have been a boy.

"Ray; that is the yellowest car I've ever seen. That paint is so bright, it almost glows in the dark," she said. "I dated a guy who had a Mustang a couple of months ago. His was brand new. But somehow yours looks so much more ... aggressive. It's more brash and menacing looking." She gently trailed a couple of fingers across the car's body panels. Then she waved at me with the same two fingers.

I closed the gate after her and started to go back to polishing. "She wants you," said Claire.

"No she doesn't," I said. "She just knows that there's no way anyone could come between us. But she wants to see if she's sexy enough to take me from you. She ain't."

"At least not yet," said Claire. "But we both know that I have more lines in my face now than I did only a year ago. And if my boobs were big, they'd be shrunken and resting on my tummy. My legs have always been thin, so there's no flab to..."

"Claire, shut up," I said. "I will always love you. And you concentrate too much on how pretty you are so you forget sometimes that I love the insides of you too."

"Yeah, I know that," she said. "You stick that thing into my insides so often that no one could forget it. You do know that I'm a poor old fifty year old lady. It's cruel for you to keep forcing yourself on me sexually, right?"

"Sorry, Claire," I said. "I thought that you still..."

"Ray you dummy. I was only joking," she said. "You know women can handle a lot more sex than any man can. And even though you're still in your forties I can screw you under the table any time. Besides, what we do isn't just sex, Honey. I love having you inside of me. But, really I understand what you're trying to say and I love you even more for it."

I leaned over and kissed her. She kicked her legs up around my waist and turned my peck into a much more passionate kiss.

"I was going to take a nap, Ray. I'm kind of tired. But I think you should do me for a little while before I drift off," she said.

"I think you should take your nap and get your strength back so I can do you all night," I replied.

"Oh my God, do you two ever stop?" yelled Betty Cooper over the fence. Betty was our next door neighbor and Claire's long time best friend. Her husband Archie was my golfing buddy.

A few minutes later Betty came through the gate. I hugged her as hard as I could and she kissed me on the cheek. I loved Betty. If it weren't for her and Archie, my marriage would have probably ended ten years ago.

"Ray, can I cut into your Sunday afternoon sex, to talk to Claire for a while?" she asked. I just moved out of the way and let them go at it. They were talking about one of the couples in the neighborhood who were divorcing and selling their house.

While they talked, I went back inside the house. I pulled Claire's hidden checkbook out of her purse and looked up the bank's online banking website. The checkbook itself was no help. No checks had ever been written on the account. The first check was still in the book.

I entered the account number and tried her usual password. Claire had a habit of using the same password for everything. She said that in an emergency, if one of us needed to get into the other's account, it could come in handy. Her password was 5591. It meant May fifth, 1991. She called it the happiest day of her life. It was the day we got married.

It didn't work. I tried her birthday. It also didn't work. Neither did my birthday or our address. I was going to try the last four digits of her social security number, but I remembered something she'd been talking about a lot lately. I tried 8326: August, third, two thousand and twenty six. The day she turned sixty two and the day we would both quit our jobs and retire. We had been dreaming of that day for a very long time. That was the day we would dedicate ourselves, not to the engineering firm that I worked for or the school she taught at, but to each other. We would travel, relax, and spend every waking moment together. It was our dream.

It was also the correct password. As soon as the account opened, I saw the balance in it. I immediately knew that my marriage was over. I put the checkbook back in Claire's purse and left the house, so angry I could barely breathe.

"Claire, I'm going out for a drive," I said as I passed by her and Betty.

"Take Archie with you," said Betty. "Get his lazy ass off of my couch."

Claire looked at me strangely. I didn't realize why until I had driven away. It was unusual for me to go anywhere without kissing her goodbye.

I opened the gate and backed down my driveway. Archie came out onto his porch as I neared the street. I kept driving. I needed to get away from everyone and everything. As I left the side streets and got onto the freeway, my speed increased along with my anger. I had wasted ten fucking years with nothing to show for it.

The further away from the city I got, the fewer cars that were on the road. I was so lost in my thoughts that I failed to notice the cop until I had passed him. I was doing a hundred and sixty five miles an hour. I slowed down and pulled over. I had to wait a while for him to catch up to me.

"Sir, do you know how fast you were going?" he asked. I handed him my license, registration, and proof of insurance.

"Yes officer, I was doing a hundred and sixty five," I said. "Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts and didn't realize that I was going that fast."

"My radar gun pegged you at one seventy," he said. "That's not ticket territory, that's go to jail and confiscate your car ville. What is so bad that you were doing almost a hundred miles an hour more than the speed limit?"

"I just found out that my wife cheated on me," I said. "And she's my whole world. I just don't know how to handle it or what I'm going to do about it."

He just looked me in the eye and shook his head. He handed me my license and other documents back. "Mr. Gunn, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Just slow down, I know it feels like the end of the world, but you will live through it and get over it."

"So, I can go?" I asked in confusion.

"Yes sir," he said. "I know what you're going through. I've been there. Drive safely ... and slowly," he threw in.

I restarted my engine and drove safely and slowly on my way. I passed a park a few miles down the road and pulled in. I got out of my car and walked over to a fountain. The fountain had lots of coins in the bottom of it. I had a few coins in my pocket and pitched the whole handful of them in. I'd never been one who believed in the paranormal or anything like that but I made a wish.

I wished with all my heart that I had never met Claire. Throwing the coins in the fountain was an exercise in futility. As angry as I was, I threw them with all of the strength I could muster. It didn't do me any good. Nor did it damage the fountain or the water that filled it. The water absorbed all of the force from the coins, slowing them down until they settled on the bottom with all of the other coins. The fountain didn't give a shit how angry I was. It didn't care how much I hurt either. It couldn't it was only a fountain.

Making the wish, wishing that I had never met Claire also backfired. All it did was to start to me to thinking about how I met her.

It was twenty-three years ago. I was on the verge of graduating from college with my Bachelor's degree in Engineering. I was twenty-two years old and thought I had the world on a string.

But when I saw Claire, I was no longer the one in control of the string. And of course, I wasn't the only guy who saw her. I think every guy on campus saw her. She ruled the place like it was her own little kingdom: not even the cheerleaders, or the jocks were immune to her charms.

Claire just wandered around campus as if she was above the struggles of petty mortals. I followed her around every chance I got, but I had never spoken to her. She was an education major so we didn't have any classes in common. But somehow she noticed me one day and waved.

I pointed at myself and she nodded. I was still tentative about approaching her. "Yeah, you," she said. "Come on over here."

I slowly walked over to her, wondering why she wanted to talk to me.

"Okay," she said, smiling. "You seem to be the last one. Let's get this over with."

Up close I could see that she was even more beautiful than I had believed. Her skin was flawless and she almost seemed to glow. She wasn't very busty but she had just enough to draw a man's interest. Her legs while not spectacular were very nice too.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Come on, this is where you give me your best cheesy pick up line. Then I blow you off and you leave and call me a lesbian or a bitch. But at the same time a bunch of people have seen you talking to me, so it boosts your ego. And maybe some other girl that you're interested in will see or hear about us talking and figure that maybe there's something to you that she hadn't noticed and give you a chance." She smiled at me and my mouth dropped open in awe.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said. "When you smiled just then, I ... I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, even on TV."

"Everyone smiles," she said looking at me curiously. "You don't seem like the rest of them. You're not very smooth. You haven't really gone after very many women have you?"

I shook my head. "Then why me?" she asked.

"You called me over," I said.

"So if I hadn't called you over you would never have spoken to me?" She asked.

"Probably not," I said. "I'm kind of shy. And seriously, there's nothing that really stands out about me. I'm just a normal guy."

"Believe it or not, being a normal guy is kind of attractive," she said. "All I ever get are guys on some sports team. Or guys who haven't done anything at all themselves, who think they're special because their family has more money than a small country."

She looked at me again and gave me another one of those smiles. "How old are you," she asked. "What are you in school for?"

"I'm about to get my Bachelor's in Engineering," I said. "I already have a very good job lined up. I'm twenty two years old."

"I'm working on my Master's in Education," she said confidently. "But I'm twenty seven years old. So you see; we're too different. And I'm too old for you. It was really nice talking to you. I hope you're a success in Engineering. And for what it's worth, I spoke to you for far longer than the rest of them. That should get you something."

The next day she noticed me again. And she waved me over again.

"You do know that this university has rules against stalking, right?" she asked. I nodded quickly.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But you called me over to you both times. I was never going to bother you. I just..."

"You just what?" she asked.

"I just like looking at you. And I liked talking to you yesterday even more. There's just something amazing about you," I said.

"So you're going to risk my giant boyfriend beating the crap out of you, just to look at me from afar?" she asked. I quickly nodded.

"It would be worth it," I said. "But when he showed up, I'd probably leave because it would hurt too much having to see you with another guy."

"Well, if you're going to follow me around, you may as well be useful, handing me a stack of books. I accepted them and followed her. As we walked, I noticed that even the way she walked was special. She seemed to glide effortlessly from foot to foot as if she was weightless.

When we got to her car, she quickly turned around and caught me staring at her. "Ray, were you staring at my ass?" she asked.

"No!" I said quickly. "I was just watching the way you walk. You're very graceful. You seem to just float."

"I did ballet for most of my life," she smiled. "And not having to carry all of those books, after lugging them all morning was like a vacation."

"Hey, how did you know my name?" I asked.

"A couple of my class mates saw me talking to you yesterday and mentioned you in class," she said. "You have a pretty good reputation. Supposedly, you're pretty smart. AND, you're supposed to be a nice guy. So what do you want for carrying my books?"

"Gosh, I'd have paid you for the chance to carry them," I said.

She smiled and shook her head. "Ray, it's not the 1950's. Please don't ever say "Gosh" again," she had the funniest look on her face. "Okay, meet me tomorrow; same place, same time. If I do well on my test, I'll let you take me for coffee.

As she drove off, I was stunned. I hadn't even hoped for the chance to sit down and talk to her.

For most of that evening and night, I was so nervous that I couldn't concentrate on my own studies. I kept telling myself that it wouldn't happen. She's gonna show up the next day and say that she had gotten a "B" on her test and that wasn't up to her standards so we weren't going. I also imagined some six foot tall, chiseled Scandinavian guy with an accent, stepping out of the woodwork to beat my ass over her.

The next day came and I went to class. I don't remember a single thing about that lecture. I'm not sure if there even was a lecture. But when the professor released us, I was on my feet and running for the door. My body reacted before my brain even realized that I needed to move. And then time was against me. Her class didn't end for another hour. The time passed so slowly that it seemed as if I had time to give each new second a name, write that name down on a list, and then mail that list home, before the next second began.

I stood outside of her building, trying not to look nervous or anxious. When she finally appeared, she was walking with two other women. The other two women were around my age. One of them had short brown hair and had her books in a backpack. The other had long black hair and was pulling one of those wheeled carriers with her books in it.

Claire handed her books to me. "How'd you do?" I asked.

"I got a "B," she said.

"Oh, sorry," I said, looking disappointed.

"Are you crazy?" she asked. "A "B" is awesome!"

"I just thought that you deserve better,

"He's really cute, Claire. Are you going to keep him?" asked one of her friends.

Before she could answer; a guy who had to have been six foot four, with a lifetime subscription to the steroid of the month club came over.

"Please tell me you're joking," he said. "I've asked you out at least ten God damned times. Do you know who I am? Do you know that anything he can give you, I can double? What the fuck is going on?"

"Okay, he has a nine inch dick, and he can keep it up for three hours," said Claire. "Whip it out and let's measure it."

The guy, wilted in front of us. "You'll be bored with him in a week," he said. "So don't try to come running back to me."

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to come between you two. I should probably go."

"Ray, what are you talking about?" she asked. "I've never dated that gorilla. I never would date that gorilla. He's one of the guys who throws a ball or catches it or something. The only things I know about him are that his family is rich and he seems to carry empty beer cans around with him so he can crush them on his forehead. Let's get our coffee."

I told Claire's friends that I had enjoyed meeting them, and they went their way and Claire and I went ours. We sat down and ordered and she looked across the small table at me and smiled. My IQ dropped forty points. I couldn't think of a thing to say.

"Ray, are you okay?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I practiced everything I wanted to say," I said. "But I can't think of a single one of them."

"Ray, I'm just a girl," she said. "And we kind of have a problem."

"What kind of problem?" I asked.

"That gorilla knows a lot of people. So you're going to have to hang around for a few weeks so I can prove him wrong," she said.

"I can do that," I said.

"In a way it'll be a good thing," she said. "That way most of the idiots who try to hit on me will back off."

Claire

As I heard the sound of Ray's Mustang drive off, I reached for my cover-up.

"That man has no idea how scrumptious he is," said Betty. "Every year he gets hotter. And he loves you so much, Claire. You are so lucky. Over the past ten years the two of you seem to have become even tighter. Hey, I thought you were tanning?"

"Are you crazy?" I asked. "Do you know what the sun does to your skin?"

"Then why the hell are you out here, wearing a bikini that most twenty year olds would feel embarrassed about?" she asked.

"That's my way of taking Ray's attention away from my rival," I said. "I have to keep the amount of time he spends on that fucking car in check. So when he plays with it. I come out here in an outfit designed to break his concentration. Most of the time he never finishes washing that car and we end up back in the house with other things to do."

"But you're fifty, Claire," she said.

"I don't care," I said. "I love him so much. And every year it gets better. Do you know that when we first got together, I didn't even like sex? I thought it was just something women give their men to keep them happy. Don't get me wrong, I had orgasms. But it just seemed like too much emphasis to put on a couple of seconds worth of inability to control my motor functions.

I loved Ray, he wanted sex, I gave it to him. I gave it to him whenever he wanted it, however he wanted it. But after the incident ... Everyone thought that Ray and I were fine. But it took a long time for us to be comfortable with each other again. It was mostly Ray. I forgave him for accusing me after only a few hours, but it took him a long time to get over it.

Ray has always had an inferiority complex. But he's especially bad when it comes to me. He used to ask me almost daily why I was with him. And now that I'm clearly on the way down, Ray still loves me so much that I can barely believe it. When that man looks at me, I can feel his love. It warms me and surrounds me like warm beams of sunshine.

The funny thing about it is that over the years as I've been going down in terms of looks, Ray has been getting better. But it doesn't really matter because it was never Ray's looks that attracted me to him. It was his kindness and the way he made me feel. I've told you lots of times about how Ray and I met and how we had coffee that first time. But after that first time, really from when he and I first spoke, I knew there was something there.

All of the odds were stacked against us. Ray was barely past twenty and I was approaching thirty. I had dated at least thirty or forty guys and had sexual relationships with nine or ten of them. I'd had a bunch of short flings, five longer relationships and been engaged twice. I later found out that Ray had dated only three girls and had sex with only two of them. I'd pretty much been through the mill and back. I knew what I wanted. I also knew that it probably wouldn't happen and had sealed myself off from love to work on plan B. Ray wasn't a part of my plan so he really threw me for a loop.

I figured at first that he and I would have coffee a few times where we could be seen and then I'd go back to normal. It didn't work that way at all. Before I knew it, Ray was showing up every day to carry my books. And he was so kind. He just threw off sparks like a new puppy. And our coffee dates, gradually became real dates at restaurants and going for walks.

And then I started having problems in math. My goal, of course, was to be a teacher. But I had never on any level been good at math. I figured with my Master's I could probably teach any subject in school. But Math was kicking my ass. Believe it or not, one of my friends had to remind me that Ray was an engineering major. As soon as I mentioned it to him, he set up study sessions and I slowly improved. Eventually I became fairly solid in math and felt better about it.

That was when some of my friends started to pester me about Ray. My friend Patty was constantly pestering me about him. I guess, I had intimated to her in some fashion that when I was done with Ray, I'd hook the two of them up. I remember that I had said it in the beginning because I figured that it would lessen the blow on Ray.

But the more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to. I ended up getting into an argument with Patty over him. She showed up for class wearing a blouse that was so revealing, that when she walked down the hall guys were walking into walls. Of course she put a sweater over it before we went into the classroom. But once we got out of class, her intentions became clear.

"Patty, what's with the hooters blouse?" I asked her.

"I just thought that someone might notice me more if I played up some of my attributes," she smiled. "Besides it's been months since this thing started, and you told me it would only be a few weeks. You have to be done with him by now. The sooner you break things off with him. The less painful it's going to be for him. He's a really nice guy, Claire. Why hurt him?"

"I know that I'm not involved in this," said Margaret, my other close classmate. "But, I agree with Patty. Claire, continuing to string the guy along like this is cruel. It's like a cat playing with a mouse before it kills him. The cat knows that it's going to kill the mouse. Anyone watching knows the cat is going to kill the mouse. Shit, even the mouse knows it's done for, but the cat just prolongs it out of sheer enjoyment."

"Claire, there are lots of your level of guys around us. Half of the jocks and rich guys here would give their left nut to go out with you. Shit, you're almost thirty. Some of the professors look at you like you're a steak and they've been eating only vegetables. You got everything you needed out of Ray, and more. Out of pure gratitude for his help in Math, you should let him go," said Patty.

Then Margaret, chimed back in. "What about the rest of us," she said. "Some of us aren't going to end up with the sports guys or the rich guys. For us a guy like Ray, who's smart and really nice, is the top of the line. But once you've broken his heart, he won't be good to anyone. The sooner you break things off with him the better."

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that as usual Ray was standing there outside of my lecture building waiting for me. I also notice Patty adjusting her blouse. Some women love competing for a man. Clearly Patty was one of those because her nipples had gotten so hard that they were showing through the blouse. Her boobs were large and beautiful. Ray didn't have a chance. I looked at my two friends. I didn't have very many female friends. My looks kind of made it that way. But at that moment I made my choice. If I had to choose between the two of them and Ray, they would lose.

As it was, there wasn't a battle. Ray, saw us, smiled at me and though I'm sure he saw them he barely glanced at Patty's display of boobage. I decided that he deserved a reward. So I gave him one and made either the best move of my life or the biggest mistake. As Ray reached out to take my books, the way he had so many times before, I just let them drop and stepped into his arms. I hugged him and almost went into shock. What I'd intended as a quick little hug, kind of like patting a puppy on the head as a reward for not shitting on the rug, sealed my fate.

As I hugged Ray, I felt it: I had dated, and been with guys who were, bigger than Ray. I had been with guys who were stronger than Ray. But I had never felt so loved and protected by any man outside of my own father. And my father might have come in second to that hug. I wrapped my arms around him tighter and held on for far longer than I intended.