Notes: All fictional characters engaged in sexual activities are at least 18 or older.

* This is not a masturbatory fantasy and contains very little sex. If that's what you're looking for, please move on to the next story.

* This is not necessarily a burn the bitch story, nor a cuckold story, if that's what you're into then please move on. This story reads more like a romance story.

* I write these stories in the hope they entertain you. I have five other pending works and even though I'm sure there are still errors present I needed to get one of my stories off my plate.

* If you find errors, please inform me through the contact tab in my bio, I will collect and correct anything that is brought up when I have time.

* Please leave comments good or bad, and give me a five star if you enjoyed it.

Thanks to Alwaysready64 for his help editing this because we all become blind to our own mistakes.

********

Christmas 2017

"Uncle, Mikey! Uncle Mikey!" my nieces cried, bull rushing me before I could get my foot in the door.

They slammed into my right and left legs, latching on, squealing in excitement. I bent down to get to their level and pulled out their presents. It was Christmas time, and these were more like stocking stuffers. As a matter of fact, I gave my nieces "presents" every time I saw them. Sometimes they were Crackerjack Box trinkets and other times they were origami animals I made. They were always cheap but they loved getting presents. You'd think I was spoiling them and maybe I'd agree with you if I got them whatever they asked for. Instead it was understood that it was a token of my love for them, and showed that I was thinking of them. I know, because that's what they told me when I asked them if they knew why I always brought them presents - smart kids.

I held out their presents, but they knew that they had to kiss my cheek before they got anything. I didn't even have to ask them anymore, it was all automatic. As soon as they kissed me, they snatched their presents and ran off.

"You are always spoiling them..." my wife, Diane gushed, faking annoyance.

"How am I going to stay their favorite uncle otherwise?" I mocked.

After everyone said hi, and we did the rounds making small talk, I walked into the living room to hang out with the kids.

"Hey Mike, Merry Christmas," Beth, Diane's older sister greeted.

She was sitting on the couch, sipping on some eggnog with her husband Jake.

"Merry Christmas, Beth!" I returned, leaning down giving her an awkward sideways hug and kiss on the cheek. "Merry Christmas Jake," I said, shaking his hand. "What are you guys up to?"

"We are just about to watch 'A Christmas Story,'" she said. "Why don't you join us?"

"Love too, I'm just going to get Di, I'll be right back."

I walked back to where Diane was talking to her close friend Dave and his wife Nancy.

"Hey, babe. Sorry to interrupt, but they're gonna start your favorite movie."

"Why don't you guys start without me? I'll be there in a bit."

I found a spot on the couch with enough room for me and Diane right when the opening credits finished. Watching "A Christmas Story" was a family tradition. Not everyone in the family watched the movie every year, but me, Diane and the nieces always did. Everyone was gathered around the fire, my in-law's 90" 4K tv hanging above the mantle was streaming the movie over a wireless connection.

It was getting to my wife's favorite part where Ralphie is fantasizing about going blind from soap poisoning and she still hadn't shown. Looking around, she wasn't anywhere in sight. The kids were lying on the floor half watching the movie and half playing with their Angry Birds catapult I got them, shooting a toy angry bird at a stack of Legos trying to knock them down. Beth and Jake were cuddled up on the other side of the couch, fast asleep.

The living room was huge, decked out with two small Christmas trees on side tables behind the couch and one huge 20-footer off to the side of the fireplace. Marble side tables, opulent decorations littered the room tastefully. There was even a Picasso hanging on the wall. If not for the huge comfortable couch, the shag carpeting and the company I wouldn't feel comfortable here.

I appreciated all of the gadgets that made this room have "THX" quality sound and crystal-clear images. The sad thing was, this was probably the only time of year they'd use it. Mom and Dad both entertained themselves in their rooms, having TVs throughout the house. The living room was only used to entertain during family get togethers. I wasn't jealous, but I saw it as a waste of resources.

Most of the family were hanging out in various spots around the mansion, my mother-in-law was in the kitchen with a few female family members preparing a Christmas feast. With the open concept design I could see them from the living room. A few non-cooks were hanging out on barstools at the kitchen island talking to the cooks. Outside on the veranda most of the men were congregated, drinking beers, smoking cigars and talking about sports, cars, women etc. - guy stuff. I guess I should have been outside with them, but honestly, I got enough machismo at work. It was nice hanging out with the kids - not having any myself.

I wanted a big family and my wife and I had been trying for years with no luck. It was frustrating because we had ourselves tested and everything checked out, so I couldn't understand why she hadn't even had a missed period, much less gotten pregnancy. It wasn't for a lack of sex either, we had a wonderful sex life. I had sex with Diane at least once a day, somedays multiple times. I suspected that my wife might secretly be sabotaging it but it made no sense to me because she was the one to convince me to quit my job so I could be a stay at home dad and begged me for children.

She didn't have to beg hard, I wanted kids, but she DID come to me begging. She even tore up our pre-nuptials as an incentive for me to quit my job. I honestly didn't need her to do all of that, I never married her for her money anyway. After all, it was me that suggested a prenup in the first place but when she came to me, she already had all of the paperwork done and all I had to do was sign to cancel the prenup, so I trusted that her lawyer handled it from there.

I guess my hackles should have been raised, but I didn't care I had no intention of ever divorcing her. She was the wealthy one in the relationship. It was her money on the line not mine and if we did divorce, I would be fine walking away with nothing. After all, I came into the marriage with nothing but an education and a promising middle-class career in Software Development so in my mind I wouldn't be losing anything anyway.

Out of habit, I went looking for Diane to remind her that her favorite part was coming up, if only to prevent her from making us all rewind the movie later. I was trying to keep my distance from her for the most part, since we had a petty argument earlier. I wanted her to cool off, but being gone this long even after we fought was unusual. We had been fighting a lot this past year and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what was bothering her. She seemed to be picking fights with me, almost egging me on and I didn't understand why.

I was a loving husband and as far as I could tell I was satisfying her sexually. I was faithful and loyal and good to her family and her family seemed to love me. But something was bothering her and she was taking it out on me. I just chalked it up to her frustration of not getting pregnant yet, but my gut told me there was more to it than that. I guess I was just hoping that whatever was bothering her would just blow over, because she refused to talk to me about it.

I knew from past experiences, that if I didn't put in an effort to find her and drag her back to see the sentimental scene then she would get really demanding and take some of the fun out of the festivities. Don't get me wrong, she's not a total bitch or anything. She just tends to draw the line in the sand over small things and this was one of them. This was one of those battles I chose not to fight over.

For the most part, I was happy. I loved Christmas and ever since I got married, I was quickly assimilated into the fold of Diane's family since I didn't have any family of my own. The only family member I had left was an estranged older sister who took off when she was eighteen and I haven't seen or heard from her in a decade since. For all I knew she could be dead. I did my own search on the internet, looking for Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and anything else I could think of. When that failed, I hired a PI to find her but so far nothing had turned up.

Diane's family accepted me as one of their own. But when I first met her parents, they were wary of me. I guess they feared I might be a gold digger. I got 'Mom' on my side right away and 'Dad' too once I signed a prenup. After that her father dropped his guard and warmed up to me, and we have gone on many hunting and fishing trips together since. Her mom Maurine became my mom since my mother died during my first year of college. Her father Ted became my dad, since I never knew my own father, (he ran off as soon as her heard mom was pregnant with me, I guess two children was the straw).

Mom seemed busy in the kitchen so I walked outside to see if Nancy was hanging out with the guys. She was always a daddy's girl, and if she couldn't be found anywhere the first thing anyone would ask is whether she was with Dad.

"Heyo, Mikeeey!" Burt, (Diane's cousin), hollered. He then went into his shadow boxing routine, and mocked getting knocked out by me.

A few of the guys laughed and Darnel (Diane's cousin Sarah's husband), asked "You fighting in the octagon, big guy?"

"I don't compete, I just teach and run the gym. I let the more fool hardy Chuckleheads do all the fighting," I said, and he looked a little disappointed.

"He used to compete in high school," Dad said proudly, to which Darnel brightened up.

"That was Jujitsu, Dad, not MMA. At most I spar from time to time, but I'm trying to avoid the cauliflower-eared look," I joked. "Hey, Dad, you seen Diane?"

"No, Son, she hasn't been out here all night."

I walked back in after saying my parting "talk to you laters" and approached Mom in the kitchen.

"Hey, Mom. Have you seen Diane?", I casually asked, trying to get a quick taste of some cookie dough she was mixing.

"No, Sweetie. Last I saw her, she was talking to Dave," she said, playfully slapping my hand away.

Dave was Diane's childhood friend growing up and he and his wife Nancy moved into his childhood home a couple of houses down from here once his parents moved to Florida.

"You'll spoil your appetite!" she beamed.

"I don't think that's possible, with your cooking... If you cooked more often, I'd be over here every day!" I teased.

"Here!" she said, handing me a roll. "Dinner is almost ready, then you can eat all you want."

I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and continued my search.

"Her favorite part of the movie is coming up. You know how she gets when she misses it."

"Sorry, why don't you ask Nancy?" she asked, pointing over to Nancy talking to Gloria, (Diane's younger sister), huddled over in the foyer.

Gloria and Nancy were best friends since grade school. Since marrying Diane, Gloria and Nancy have become good friends with me too, actually I considered them my best friends. Hell, I spent more time with Gloria than Diane, people often mistook us for being married. Although I didn't spend as much time with Nancy, I grew very close to her over the years also. Nancy was the sweetest, most caring and giving person I ever met, with Gloria a close second. I was no wonder they were such good friends.

As I strolled over to Nancy and Gloria, I saw that they were talking in hushed tones. Gloria had a concerned look on her face and Nancy seemed to be unloading something. I didn't want to interrupt them but before I could turn away, they both looked up at me and waved me over. Once I was in range, they seemed to bring me into their confidence and made gestures as if I should be quiet. I leaned in and kissed both of them on the cheek.

"You ladies look serious. Is everything alright?"

Gloria was my favorite in-law besides mom. I would always joke that if Gloria had only gone to Stanford, I might've married her instead. We were like two peas in a pod, we just got each other. Even though I loved my wife, I loved Gloria also. I would never act on my love however, I respected Gloria too much to turn her into a cheater and I loved my wife too much to ever cheat on her, and I knew Gloria felt the same.

Diane, Gloria, Dave and Nancy grew up in the same neighborhood and Diane, Dave and Nancy were all part of a pack of friends. Some of the pack moved on to other parts of the country and no longer lived near the neighborhood. Since Gloria and Nancy were best friends, Gloria always seemed to be tagging along, which annoyed Diane to no end, (she complained to me about it many times).

Dave and Nancy were like family and came to a lot of our in-law's holiday parties. Diane and I had them over quite often when we would host game nights. We even took vacations together. It wasn't long into our marriage that it became expected that they would come with us on every vacation and we got so that we included them in our planning. It was mostly the four of us, but sometimes Gloria would come making it the five of us. For some reason Gloria never seemed to take a date with her which I always found strange.

"Keep it down, Mike," Gloria whispered. "Nancy thinks Dave is having an affair."

"Dave? Are you sure?" I asked sarcastically.

"Why do you say that?" Nancy asked, defensively.

"Well, it's just that Dave's not really... You know..." I said, trying not to be insulting but they didn't seem to follow my logic. "Come on, Nancy, you're a hottie... I'd say you're a nine to his six... He can't possibly do better than you. I know you love the guy, but you can do so much better. He'd be a fool to mess that up."

Nancy seemed to blush at that, and responded, "You might be right, Mike. But cheaters don't think they'll get caught, and sometimes it's the thrill of the elicit nature of the whole thing that they are after. Besides, Dave has money... Even though I know you don't care about money, (that's one of the things me and Gloria love about you), there are millions of gold diggers looking for a sugar daddy."

Suddenly the idea of finding Diane didn't seem very important and I didn't bother asking them about her.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Nan," I said, consoling. "What makes you think he's cheating on you? Do you have any evidence?" I asked, curiously.

"Not hard evidence. But you remember when I had that really bad Flu, a couple of months back?" she asked and I nodded. "We hadn't had sex that whole time, but one night I swear he smelled like 'pussy,'" she said distastefully, she didn't like using "vulgar" terms like "pussy", (at least to her they were vulgar and I respected that).

"I asked him about it and he just tried to blow it off by saying it must have been the fish he ate for lunch and he'd go take a shower to wash it off," she said, sadly.

"Really?" I asked, "He doesn't think you're that stupid. Does he?"

"Maybe he does. I don't know, but I hired a private investigator to look into it. If that bastard is cheating on me, we're through! I trusted him up 'til now but ever since then my feelers have been up. Now, everything he does seems suspicious."

I wasn't sure what to say really, so I just re-iterated my friendship, "You know, if you need ANYthing, I'll be there for you, right?" I asked, and she nodded and I pulled us three into a group hug. Gloria and I, let Nancy cry on our shoulders.

Once Nancy was able to recover, she mumbled that she needed to go over to her house and pick up some presents that she forgot.

"Give me the key, Nan," I demanded. "I can get them for you. You go to the bathroom and get cleaned up."

She gave me a grateful look and said, "Thanks, Mike," and she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. "They should be in a bag in the foyer, right when you walk in."

"OK, I'll be right back," I said, exiting the front door.

I walked down the pathway to the security gate then down the block. The houses in Bel Air were mostly mansions, and, growing up poor, the people and lifestyles took a lot of getting used too. Even though Dave and Nancy's house was only two houses down, each estate was over a hundred yards in width, so it took a few minutes to get there.

Walking through the beautifully landscaped gardens with magnificently decorated Christmas lighting, garlands, ribbons and Christmas themed scenes, it was like walking through a dream. I sometimes walked with Diane hand in hand through the neighborhood just to experience its wonder.

I had been to their house many times, and knew their gate codes and even their alarm codes. As I went through the security door set in the front's wrought iron gate, I noticed that the second floor had a few lights on.

I thought to myself, "huh, they must have forgot to turn off the lights", which was weird to me because they have one of those remote whole house control units that let you turn off all of the lights with an app on their phone.

I was the one that installed it for them and I knew Dave used it religiously, so it put me on edge. I helped Dave install cameras in key points throughout the house and happened to remember his login to his camera system and checked to see if there were any intruders.

The cameras only showed the front entrance, the back door, the stairway and the top hallway, so even though I saw no signs of any intruders, it didn't mean they weren't in a room somewhere.

When I got to the front door, the porch lights were off and the bottom floor was dark. So, I turned on my flashlight from my phone and unlocked the front door. When I stepped inside, I didn't hear the warning beeping from the alarm console that reminds you to disable it. I went over to the keypad anyway and sure enough it was disabled.

It could have been nothing. They could have just forgot to set the alarm before they left, but with the lights on upstairs I figured I would go check out the house and make sure they weren't being robbed. I couldn't hear anything, and the app on my phone didn't indicate anything. The house was big and well insulated for sound so that meant nothing. I walked through the kitchen to the mudroom connected to the garage where Dave kept his golf clubs. I knew Dave had a gun in the house but it was in a gun safe upstairs so it wouldn't do me any good unless I could safely get to it.

I normally wouldn't need a weapon at all, I'm a huge guy, 6'3 230 lbs. of all muscle. I had to stay in shape to keep my clients respect. As the owner of a MMA studio I kept in shape by keeping my clients in shape. Although I gave up my main job, I still taught a few classes three days a week and did volunteer work from time to time. But, if there were robbers and they were armed, my ability to take them down would depend on how many there were and how well armed they were and where I could catch them by surprise. I could probably take down a man with a knife, maybe not two. Throw a gun into the mix and forget about it - all bets were off. I only intended to scout out the house and if I heard anything, I would call the cops and get out of there.

The house had tiled steps, so I took off my shoes to keep the potential intruders from hearing me climb up. I wound my way up their curved steps ascending out of the darkness below and into the brightly lit hallway above. The hallway went left and right to both sides of the house so I started off going right, knowing that was were Dave's office and safe was. I stepped silently using the balls of my feet to lessen the impact my I had on the floor. I carefully crept down the long hallway and looked through the glass doors of the study seeing no one. The room looked untouched which surprised me, if I were robbing this place, it would be the first place I went. It put me at ease, since it was looking more and more unlikely there were intruders.
I walked further down the hallway searching for signs of life, just to be thorough. I looked in the "baby's room" and it was empty. Dave and Nancy had been "trying" to have children for years with no luck, just like me and Diane. Recently Dave pulled me aside in confidence, (he made me promise not to say anything), and told me that he had a vasectomy in college and Nancy still didn't know. What an asshole! I have been wanting to tell Nancy ever since but I couldn't without breaking my promise, and I tried to always keep my word. Besides, if the PI caught him cheating, it would all be mute anyway. So, in a way it was kind of a relief to hear that the asshole was cheating, because I decided earlier that week to tell Nancy what Dave was doing to her anyway, but now maybe I wouldn't need to break my promise.

Other than a big open "game room" area (which was also clear) there were no other rooms on that side of the house, so I doubled back. When I got back to Dave's study, I searched for the key to his gun safe that he hid taped under his desk drawer. He was pretty trusting and did a poor job of hiding his key from me when he showed off his newest guns. His gun safe required a key and a numeric code to get into it. I watched him punch in his code and I remember it because I thought it was pretty stupid "1-2-3-4-4" (at least he did the double four at the end). I pulled out his Smith and Wesson M&P and checked the chamber, grabbed and loaded a clip and holstered his gun behind me in my waistband. I locked his gun safe with his other guns after me and continued my sweep of the house.

I was never really into guns, and didn't own any guns myself. But both Dave and my Father-In-Law were big gun enthusiasts for differing reasons. Dad was a hunter and Dave, well, Dave needed his ego to be stroked a lot. They both dragged me down to a few gun ranges. Although, Dad, taught me to shoot long range rifles for hunting and Dave taught me to shoot various 22 and 45 caliber handguns he had in his collection.

I crept past the stairway to the hallway that led to the master bedroom and two other guest bedrooms. The doors to the guest bedrooms were to the left and right, right next to the stairway. I took a quick peek in both rooms, gun leading the sweep and they too were empty. I think I was subconsciously saving the master bedroom for last, but as I made a left and proceeded down the hallway to the master bedroom door, I could hear moaning and what sounded like the squeaking of a bed.

"Fuck! Dave is fucking someone, probably one of the neighbors," I thought. "Poor Nancy!"

I took out my phone and switched over to Messenger and I invited Nancy to live stream with me. The selfie camera was pointed at me when she picked up and I could see Gloria in the background.

"Sorry, Nan, you were right, I can hear him screwing someone in your bedroom. You might want to record this for your divorce," I said, sadly. "Put yourself on mute, so I can catch him. If you don't want to watch it I can just give you the video later."

I switched the phone to the high res camera and snuck over to the master bedroom door. I opened the door carefully a crack and put my hand and phone through the door. I angled the camera to show all of the action. The muffled sounds suddenly came at me in stereo and I realized I knew the woman moaning - Diane!

I was gut punched, and I stood there shell shocked. They didn't even notice the door opening, as it was out of their peripheral vision, or maybe they were too distracted. But I saw everything through the small phone's screen. Dave was piledriving into Diane, missionary position. Her feet were resting on his shoulders.

"Fuck me, Baby... I'm yours..." she cried, but then I saw red when I heard, "Cum in me, get me pregnant... I want your baby, Dave!"

I cut off the video feed and stepped back into the hallway, and slumped against the wall sliding down into a fetal position.

*******

Spring 2007, Stanford Sophomore Year

I was alone when I first met Diane in college. I was an emotion wreck and a self-imposed loner - friendless and without family. I had pushed everyone that cared about me out of my life in anger. I didn't have time for them anyway; I was struggling to juggle three jobs while I put myself through school.

When I first came got to Stanford, Mom moved to Oakland to be near me. She had money saved up and wanted me to focus on my studies. She got a good job at a Silicon Valley firm as their head of human resources. Even though I had all of my tuition paid through scholarships, I still need to pay room, board and other expenses and mom didn't wanted me to focus on school and didn't want me to work.

I loved my mom, and despite my partying I always kept my grades up for her. She found out she had cancer halfway through my freshman year and died six months later. I was angry at the medical system and insurance companies for years after her death, not because they refused to pay for a few operations that she needed to survive but because they took my college money in the process. Don't get me wrong, I didn't care about the money or the bills; however, it broke HER heart that she couldn't put me through college like she planned all of my life and I think THAT is what put the final nail in the coffin.

Before my mother got sick, I was as a trainer at a local mixed martial arts gym. It didn't pay well and even though it was technically a job, mom didn't mind because it kept me fit. I had been training in various martial arts since I was 13 and I think she wanted me to keep my edge since she spent so much money having me trained over the years. As a child, I used to live in a poor part of town and I got into a lot of fights growing up. I had a hair trigger and would fight anyone that even threatened me or my sister. My mother put me in martial arts so that I could learn discipline and how to control my anger. I took to it like a duck to water, and thrived under the guidance of a few sensei.

My reputation as a hothead soon flipped 180 degrees to one of cool, calm and collected. People still feared me, because I didn't back down if it ever came to the point where fighting was needed. But I also started resolving conflicts with words and by example and I was known as a good mediator.

When I hit my growth spurt, I towered over all my friends. I could have been a linebacker if I was on the football team. After I got three different black belts in Jiu Jitsu, Karate, and Judo, I was offered a job at a neighborhood gym as an assistant, and throughout high school that's how I paid for my dates.

When I moved to Stanford I used my contacts to get a job at a local MMA studio. In order for the gym to supplement their income, they started teaching cardio kickboxing which was more an aerobics class than a martial arts training session and as the new guy I was relegated to teach the class. I did have them go through the motions of learning basic kicks and punches and there were a lot of work with the kick pad and heavy bags, but it was mainly to keep in shape and not intended for self defense. Pretty soon I took over teaching all of the classes three days a week; and since they were all at night they didn't interfere with school; it kept me in great shape.

I had no problem getting laid; 80% of the people attending cardio kickboxing classes were women! I soon gained a reputation as a stud; not only was I good looking, had a great body, but I have also a large cock and knew how to use it. I always made sure the women I took to bed were well satisfied and word got around.

Don't get me wrong, I was no player. I never went out with anyone that I wasn't sure I'd go out with again, I wasn't looking to screw everyone I ever saw or met. But neither was I particularly monogamous either. I always let anyone I was dating know that I dated other people and wasn't interested in a committed relationship while I was in college. College women actually loved that about me, because a lot of them just wanted no strings sex, so I had a lot of friends with benefits. I did demand that they be honest with me if they were sleeping with anyone else. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I wouldn't sleep with anyone with a boyfriend especially one that wasn't cool with sharing. Mom put the fear of God in me about safe sex when I was younger so I always wore a condom.

Once my mom got sick, however, I gave up women altogether and I focused all of my energy in getting her better. I picked up two more jobs; one as tutor at the LAC (Learning Assistance Center) at school and the other as a computer repair technician at a local Best Buy. All of my jobs were part time and they all had flexible shifts, allowing me to work my schedules around school. I was working 60 hours a week and going to school full time. Any time I had left was devoted to taking care of my mom, so I had no social life.

My mom succumbed to ovarian in the summer before my sophomore year. Life became tasteless, bland and meaningless after that. I had no desire or drive to do anything. If not for the promise she made me make before she died, that I would finish my degree, I probably would have quit.

I first met Diane as her tutor a several months after mom passed. I tutored math all the way up to Calculus III and most of the lower level computer science courses. Normally grad students or at least senior level undergraduates tutored math and computer science, but I was a bit of genius and finished all of my math and computer programming courses at the end of my sophomore year. I had an advantage since I had a lot of AP math credits transferred in from high school. All that was required in order to tutor in a subject was that you needed to get an A in the course and have a professor write you a letter of recommendation.

Diane, came in seeking one on one tutoring in Trigonometry (math was not her forte). Students normally came to the LAC to get group tutoring sessions. In group tutoring sessions, I basically hovered around a group of people doing their homework and I would help them when they had questions. If there were a lot of questions, they put their name in a queue and I would help them in order. If students had the money, they could pay for one on one sessions with tutors, and Diane's family was very wealthy.

Diane's sessions quickly increased from one session a week to five. She would always request to have me as a tutor. But my grief kept me oblivious to her interest for weeks. But even my cluelessness couldn't last long. Soon enough I caught on that she really didn't need to be helped five days a week. But being "forced" to interact with her for work, I found myself talking to her about this, that and nothing really important. It was my only social interactions I had other than answering question in class. We rarely did any Trig tutoring and I found myself coming out of my funk. Even though I could tell that she was interested in me, I still had no interest in dating at that time.

"Mike, I know you're still grieving, but you can't live your life this way. Your mother wouldn't have wanted this for you, so you are taking me out Friday night," she finally said one day.

"I don't think so! I can't stand being around 'happy' people," I said, morosely.

"Yes, you can! You're strong and for your mother's sake, you're going to fight this darkness you're in. Besides, I'll be there to take care of you..." she said, pulling me into a passionate kiss.

I hadn't realized I had any feelings for her up until then, but that set off sparks in me. So, I went to a party with her and she kept dragging me from one event to another after that. Eventually I started coming out of my shell. A month later, I officially started dating her exclusively, which was new for me as I never had anything stronger than a friend with benefits relationship before.

We didn't have sex right away, even though I was raring to go despite my grief. I think a part of me was hoping that sex would help me forget the pain of my mother's passing. We would make out and get hot and heavy; however, every time I tried to take it to that next level, she shot me down saying she wasn't ready. Despite my blue balls, I loved her so I never pushed her nor made her feel bad because of it.

It wasn't until we were invited to a frat party that things changed for us. I won't go into a lot of details but the abridged version is that three drunken frats guys were trying to get Diane to go upstairs with them when I was off getting drinks. When I found her they were calling her all kinds of demeaning names and they were too drunk to notice me. They started getting grabby and I intervened, hurting a couple of them bad. I even put one of them in the hospital when he tried stabbing me with a knife. I was arrested for assault but got lucky, because someone at the party videoed the whole thing and it was demonstrated that I was very careful not to seriously hurt them and most of their injuries were caused by their own clumsiness when they fell into furniture after I dodged their rushes at me as if I were a bullfighter. The only exception was the dumbass that came at me with the knife. The judge sided with me saying that I had the right to defend myself and the charges were quickly dismissed.

The night of the fight, Diane had to bail me out. She took me home and was all over me. The tables were turned and it was me that had to fend her off. She begged me to "make love" to her, but what she really wanted wasn't loving, it was more primal. She wanted that caveman, that had just defended his woman, to ravage her.

She really wasn't very experienced but she wasn't a virgin either. I soon gave her, her first cock induced orgasm and not long after that I showed her that she was multi-orgasmic. After that night the sex was constant and there wasn't a day, we were together, that we didn't find time for sex. It got to the point where we were having sex four or five times a day and our studies were in danger.

To me Diane was the most beautiful woman I knew, not because she was particularly physically attractive. As a matter of fact, she was the least attractive woman I had ever been with. She was about 30 lbs. overweight, had very small breasts (A-cup) and a rather large ass. She had pretty average looks, her brown hair was kind of dull and her nose was crooked. But what she didn't have in physical beauty she more than made up for in personality. She had spunk, charm and vitality that brought me out of my depression. She was very outgoing and people seemed to gravitate toward her - she had the charm of a politician. She earned my loyalty and love and it never faltered and I knew right away that she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Despite Diane's outward persona, Diane had pretty low self-esteem. However, where she gave me back my lust for life, I gave her a sexual awakening. I guess she was embarrassed by all the comments mean people would make like, "Why is he with HER?" or "Is this a before and after photo where she never changed". I was the target of the comments too but mine were more like backhanded insults directed to me but meant for her like, "He must have a tiny dick", etc.

She decided to get in shape for me. So, I signed her up at my gym and after six months of intense cardio kickboxing she lost her excess weight fat and gained a lean, toned and tight athletic body. With her new body, her confidence increased, and she started getting attention from other guys. Even though guys were asking her out, as soon as they found out I was her boyfriend the quickly backed off. Her increased stamina also increased her sexual appetite and she seemed almost insatiable.

We were a happy couple all the way through my Junior year of college. I was madly in love and although she wasn't the best lover I ever had, I didn't care because I loved her so much. During the summer break before senior year, she started becoming distant. We didn't weren't together everyday since she went home during the summer and would fly back to see me every other weekend. Needless to say, our sex life suffered. I couldn't understand it because she was almost insatiable before she went home so I expected her to be all over me when she visited me. But, our sex was lackluster at best.

I tried to ask her about it, I even asked her if she was seeing someone else. But she would always give me some lame excuses and brush it off as if it was nothing. She left mid-July to go on vacation with her family, whom up to that point, never met. In hindsight, I guess I was a little naive but the only thing I could think of as to what was going on, was she wanted me to commit, because she seemed so sincere about being faithful to me. We had been going steady for more than a year by then, so I trusted her and believed that I knew her well enough that she wouldn't be able to lie to me. Looking back now, I can see my naivete for what it was.

I wanted to ask her to marry me but she came from a very wealthy family whom I never met, and I hadn't saved enough money to get her a proper ring. I figured I was graduating from an Ivy League school, top of my class, surely even they might give me a chance.

I never went home with her during breaks in classes, and when I brought up meeting her parents she always had an excuse. I thought she might have been too embarrassed to tell them about me. I was making enough money to pay my rent and bills and I even saved a bit of it for a rainy day, but I had only two grand in the bank. Buying an engagement ring for two thousand dollars wouldn't get me anything that a rich girl would be impressed by, especially if she had to show it off to her family.

Since she was going to be gone most of the summer, I decided to take up a jewelry making and design class at a vocational school nearby. And after an intensive one-month long course, I got certified and licensed as a jeweler. With my certification, I was able to buy precious stones at wholesale prices, (a jewelry store will markup the cost of a diamond by 600% or more), and even had access to uncut stones. So, I ended up buying a raw uncut diamond for $1500 and after weeks of cutting I had a beautiful ten-carat princess cut diamond and after another week I had a beautiful ring to set it in, I wasn't the greatest artist but I was really good at copying designs. The diamond was appraised for insurance purposes at roughly 30 thousand dollars, so I figured that would be impressive enough for her parents. Not bad for two months of work.

Diane came back from vacation right when classes began. Our sex life picked back up too, so I thought everything was fine. I decided to ask her to marry me before classes really got into swing and I came up with a plan. I found a romantic spot at a fancy restaurant on a bluff overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Everything seemed to be going as planned and when I got to that part, where we were outside on the veranda gazing across the bay, she looked happy.

So, I decided take my shot. I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She had a shocked look on her face as expected, and to my surprise instead of saying yes, she said "No."

"No? But why? Did something change? Am I doing something wrong?" I asked.

"No... I don't want to talk about it right now."

"I don't understand. I mean, YOU talked about us getting married, so this shouldn't have been a big surprise."

"I know, and I'm sorry. Can we talk about this later?"

"What am I to you anyway, a toy to be played with? I deserve an explanation."

"Not, here please!" she said through her teeth.

"Fine, I'll go pick up the check and take you home."

"Do we have to leave now? they have a dancefloor," she begged, but I gave her an angry stare that she had never seen from me before.

"You want to stay here? You can call an Uber, but I'm leaving with or without you."
She left the restaurant in a huff, and gave me the silent treatment most of the way home. Normally when she would pull the silent treatment on me, I would try to get her to talk to me. But towards the end of the trip, she realized that I didn't want to talk to her either and it got her worried.

"Babe, are you mad because I said no? You are still my boyfriend... we can still have sex tonight... it's not like I'm breaking up with you," she kept trying, but I wouldn't say anything.

Lately, she had been sleeping with me at my apartment off campus, so she got even more worried when I pulled up to her dorm to drop her off.

"Babe, talk to me. Are we ok?" she asked.

"I think we are done... I'd like my key please..." I demanded, holding out my hand expectantly.

She took the spare key off of her keyring and angrily thrust it into my hand.

"I'll box up your things and give them to you later, goodbye Diane."

She didn't say anything, she just stormed off to her room.

I think it shocked her that I would dare break up with her. Maybe she thought that since I had all of this love and devotion for her that I was weak. But that was never the case. I really had nothing to complain about up until that point and I guess she mistook my easy-going attitude towards our relationship as me being submissive.

She called me up crying later on that night but I told her that if we weren't getting married and she couldn't at least explain why, then I saw no point in our continuing our relationship. Our relationship without the possibility of marriage was nothing better than a fuck-buddy relationship and I felt too strongly about her to continue with no future.

I didn't take her calls or her texts for a week after that and on a whim, I finally did respond to her Skype. She seemed to be going into sexual withdrawals, I guess the old adage you don't know what you got until it's gone was true for her.

"Come on, Mike. Just because we aren't getting married doesn't mean we can't still see each other," she said. "I miss you! Let's kiss and make up."

"Does this mean, yes, you'll marry me?"

"No, I, I can't."

"Explain to me why and I'll consider it," I responded.

"I can't, if I did..."

"Well then there you go! It's not me that's being unreasonable here, Di," I said angrily, and she nodded her head like she knew. "I don't have time for this. You know I love you, Di, but I can only love you as much as I love myself. The more you disrespect me, the more you disrespect my love for you. And I can't have that. We are through."

She seemed to drop into a deep dark depression after that. I would see her around school and I noticed that she was gaining weight again and not taking care of herself. I still had feelings for her so I decided to offer my friendship, So, I approached her one day.

"Hey, Di! How you been?" I asked, concerned.

She seemed to brighten up and it looked like she was going to ask if we could get back together again, but I stopped her before she could say anything.

"Listen, Di. Just because we aren't seeing each other doesn't mean we can't be friends," I said, and she looked disappointed. "Why don't I take you out to lunch? ... As friends."

She smiled grimly but then said she nodded with a forced smile.

After I took her to lunch, we talked over things. She wouldn't talk about why she wouldn't marry me but we did talk about everything else. I convinced her to get back into training with me and she did. When we didn't see each other on campus we would talk on the phone or text. I could tell she missed the sex because she would "joke" about us becoming fuck buddies. I would always tell her I couldn't do that with her especially considering our history and how I felt about her. She would wave it off like she was just kidding, but we both knew she wasn't.

After a month of us being just friends, we surprisingly grew closer. We were hanging out in November and Thanksgiving break was coming up. I think she was just making small talk and asked me what I was doing for the holidays.

"Nothing," I responded.

"Nothing? What do you mean nothing?"

"I mean, I'll probably order a pizza and watch some Netflix or something."

"Why don't you go see your relatives or something? Thanksgiving is the time to see your family."

"Don't you remember when we met, I told you my mom died?"

"Yes, but she can't be your only relative..."

"She was all I had." (I didn't mention my sister).

"Ohhhh, I, I didn't know that... I feel terrible," she moaned. "Why didn't I know that?"

"You never asked, and I never brought it up. Our relationship was always about YOU, Di. YOUR plans, your aspirations. You barely asked anything about me... And, I was too in love to care."

After that day, she made it her mission to rectify that and she seemed to want to know all about me. It's funny how little she knew, like she knew I was majoring in math after all I was her math tutor, but she didn't know I was double majoring in Computer Engineering, too. Although my focus was chip design, I was enjoyed software development more. She didn't know I had a sister whom I hadn't seen in years nor my efforts to find her without success. She didn't know that my dad ran out on us before we were born... but the more she learned, the better friends we became.

Finally, the day before Thanksgiving she said, "Mike, you are coming home with me for Thanksgiving... As friends of course. Mom always makes too much to eat and I need to show off my best friend."

"I'd love to, but I can't afford the plane ticket..."

"No worries, I got you a ticket, my treat... I owe you that, at LEAST, for how I treated you," she said, but I looked doubtful. "Come on, Mike. The tickets are cheap. We are only flying from SFO to LAX..." she said as if that made it ok.

Stanford was just south of San Francisco and her family lived in Bel Air.

I was going to cave in but I threw in one last argument, "You think your family would be ok with me coming?"

"Sure, sure," she hurried. "I called mom and let her know I'd be bringing home a friend. Besides, I'll have a bunch of other friends over too so you won't be alone. My childhood friends from the neighborhood are coming, Dave and Nancy... Also, my BFF Heather will be there too. So, you won't be the odd man out."

"Fine, when do we leave?" I asked, and she responded by squealing, clapping and jumping around excitedly.

After packing a carry on, we took an Uber to SFO then flew to LAX where there was a guy with a sign waiting for us.

*******

Christmas 2017 - Dave and Nancy's house

I was out in the hallway and I had murder on my mind. I thought meticulously of various ways to kill them and get away with it. My rage was so great I was hyperventilating. My thoughts changed to suicide, then murder-suicide. Then it morphed to not only killing them but which way would give me the most satisfaction. Torture, maiming and disfigurement entertained me for a few minutes, I'm ashamed to say.

You have to understand that the whole time, I heard my wife moaning, groaning, and continuously spewing out betrayal after betrayal, twenty feet away. It of course didn't help that I my supposed good friend Dave was saying all kinds of demeaning things about me all the while treating my wife like a whore.

Her pronouncements and declarations of love got her worked up. His dominant caveman bullshit where he called her his 'bitch' and his 'whore'... she loved it. Finally, I threw up, and heaved over and over again all over the patterned rug in the hallway.

One of my jobs as a sensei at my dojo was to teach angry men self-discipline, and the principles were coming back to haunt me. I had both the strength and know how to tear them limb from limb so, it was with great reluctance that I remembered the teachings I tried to instill in my students when faced with rage. The first rule was to separate yourself from it, run away if you had to so you could take stock and evaluate your options. So that's what I did, I ran back to the study and slumped into a small loveseat.

It helped that I couldn't hear them anymore and my rage quelled slightly. All I could think of was, what I did wrong. How could she hate me so much? Then I started thinking of how long it was going on. That migrated to logistics of when and where. I got up suddenly when I realized that they had probably christened the very loveseat I was sitting in. I bet they even violated our marital bed.

I counted to ten over and over again, until, despite my rage, I was able to evaluate my options and take stock of my life. There was a lot more at stake here than vengeance, other people would be affected by how I decided to handle things - other people I loved. My new Mom and Dad, my sisters-in-laws and my nieces, to name a few.

So, I opened up the gun-safe once again.

*****

Thanksgiving 2009

"Well, hello! You must be Mike," Maurine, Diane's mom exclaimed, with a look like she didn't know what to do with me. "Well, come in, Mike," she said as if she just decided it was ok.

"I thought you said your Mom was expecting me," I said.

"I did. I think she just needs to get to know you," Diane said, with confidence I didn't feel.

As soon and we entered the foyer, I heard a scream as a beautiful blonde woman came rushing out and threw herself at Diane. After their ritual kisses, ministrations and small talk I was finally introduced, almost as an afterthought.

"Heather, I'd like you to meet my friend, Mike. Mike, Heather," she said, looking at her as if seeking approval from her.

"Friend, huh? Does this mean you two..." she said, pointing to us?

"No, we um, decided to just be friends."

Heather then leaned in to whisper something to Diane, her eyes never wavering as she inspected me with lust. Diane kind of blushed, and nodded. I had no clue what they said but it probably wasn't good.

I suddenly felt a hand on my back and I turned around to see a beautiful, radiant and very pregnant lady with her hand extended out to me.

"Hi, I'm Elizabeth," she introduced, saving me from what was brewing to be an awkward or embarrassing conversation.

"Oh, yes! Diane's sister, Beth," I exclaimed, with a lot of relief. "Nice to meet you. My, you look like you're about to pop... are you at nine months already?"

"No, not quite. Eight," she said, then gesturing to her belly, "Twins."

I turned to say something to Diane but she seemed to have left me to fend for myself.

"I'm sorry about that. My sister has no sense of decorum," Beth said with some annoyance.

"Yeah, I noticed... I wish I could figure her out sometimes," I declared, which garnered a brow raise.

Beth hooked her arm in mine and led me into the house and said, "Let me introduce you to everyone. We aren't all barbarians in this family," she said, and I smiled.

Beth led me around, and I met her husband Jake first. He seemed a real salt of the earth kind of guy, definitely not raised in Bel Air. I liked him immediately. He was ten years older than me and already owned a successful CPA (accounting) business. He was no millionaire but he did alright for himself, and I could tell Beth adored him. I couldn't help but like him and her choice in husband endeared her to me too. From what I heard later, her father cut off her trust when he married him, but she didn't care. It said a lot to me that a wealthy woman like Beth loved and respected Jake so much. She gave up her wealth for him but didn't think twice about it. It gave me hope for Diane and I, (false hope it turned out).

I was guided over to meet Mom. From the way she treated me at the door I felt like she didn't like me at first. But as me and Maurine conversed Beth was attentively listening. This was a change in pace for me, I didn't even get that much attention from Diane when we were going out. I was a little peeved that Diane invited me there, but it wasn't her introducing me to everyone. Not only that but Beth actually listened to what I said during conversations and picked up on things about me that I didn't realize I said.

"Mike here is a double major, Math and Computer Science (Beth didn't know that until after we broke up and her sister picked it up in the first ten minutes of meeting me). He got into Stanford on a partial scholarship," she gushed.

"Only partial?" Maurine began, then she realized how rude she was being and turned beat red. "I, I'm so sorry, I don't know where that came from. I just get so defensive when it comes to my babies."

"No, worries," I said, "If it will make you feel any better, I was sick my freshman year of high school and I flunked out of my home economics class because they were afraid I'd infect the food. I tried making up my grades, but despite all the AP classes and nothing but A's my GPA never fully recovered and so I got beat out for valedictorian by Tanya Choi by one one-hundredth of a point. My 4.23 to her 4.24..."

"Oh, I see," she said, a little happier. "It doesn't matter, I still had no right to say something like that."

"That's ok, I suffer from foot-in-mouth disease, it must be contagious," I joked, and from that she got a grin and knew I was ok. "I had full scholarships to other Universities but I really wanted to go to Stanford."

All of the sudden, a vision of beauty so awe inspiring that I was struck dumb, appeared from behind mom. The first time I saw Gloria, Beth had to elbow me in the ribs to break me from a spell she put me under. Gloria was a contrast to Diane in so many ways. She was taller, 5'10 to Diane's 5'6. Her hair was raven black, to Diane's dull auburn. In every way Diane lacked in physical stature, Gloria seemed to have in spades. Bigger breasts, tighter more voluptuous body, and an angelic face. She looked like she could be a model.

"Hello, Mike. I have heard absolutely nothing about you," she said, sarcastically. "Tell us more about you, since obviously we aren't going to hear it from Diane."

"What do you want to know?"

"What are you willing to share?"

"I'm an open book and I never lie."

"Oh really?" she asked, "Challenge accepted."

Gloria then hooked her arm into my left side, where Beth still had not let go of my right and both ladies led me into an "interview room" (a small breakfast dining area off of the kitchen).

"Girls! No water-boarding, he's our guest after all," mom joked, and she continued chopping some vegetables in the kitchen.

Gloria had me sit down and she sat to my left caddy corner from me at the table. Beth seemed to be struggling with her chair so I immediately got up and helped her sit down and grabbed a few pillows so she would be more comfortable.

Gloria was beaming at me as if I had just passed a test.

"So, Mike. Where're you from?"

"I grew up in Huntington Beach... Although not the nice part, you know the part closer to the 405..."

"Got any wives, girlfriends, or fuck-buddies we should know about?" she smirked.

"Never been married, no girlfriends right now and I haven't slept with anyone since Diane and I split up."

"Ohhh... so you two WERE an item, eh?" she said triumphantly. "Figures."

"We were going out for more than a year, I'm surprised... she never mentioned us? And what do you mean by 'Figures?'"

"You're a good-looking guy. I get it. Didn't want to be tied down to my sister? Did you break her heart, Mike, or did you let her down easy?" Gloria said kind of angrily.

"Come on, Gloria. Mike's a good guy. Why don't you hear his side of the story before you judge him?" Beth defended.

"No, she's right, I guess I did 'dump' her. Although, it wasn't really a dumping per se it was more of her refusing to move forward."

"What does that even mean?" Gloria asked.

"I love Diane, I have been in love with her for almost two years now, and at the beginning of the semester I asked her to marry me and she said no," I said, a little dejected. "She wouldn't even give me a reason why. So, I told her there was no point in us seeing each other anymore if she couldn't at least tell me why."

I went on and told them the story of how we met and how I came to fall in love with her. I told them of my doubts and how I suspected that she didn't have anything more than sexual feelings for me and a strong friendship.

Gloria to her credit was very apologetic, but I told her not to worry about it. I understood. She was just being protective of her sister.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a pain, but where IS your sister?" I interrupted my story.

"Oh, she took off with Dave as soon as he walked in the door and said she had to get something from the store and would be right back."

"Dave? Who is Dave?" I asked, maybe sounding a little jealous.

"Dave is one of our childhood friends, he grew up in this neighborhood and don't worry," she said pointing to a beautiful blonde-haired woman. "That's his girlfriend..." Relief washed over me as I saw a gorgeous Nancy for the first time, there was no way anyone would cheat on her.

*******

Christmas 2017

I disassembled the guns in minutes then reassembled them without the firing pins. I then hid them in the dirt of a potted plant.

I made my way back to the room where I discovered them still going strong. I pulled out my phone and started recording and I invited my whole contacts list. The funny thing was, Dave and Diane's phones went off too, but they ignored it. Too bad for them really or they would have seen the porn they were making.

Dave went from fucking Diane from the side to switching to doggy. Diane loved it when we did it doggy, I guess she didn't discriminate with whom either.

"Honey," I began, "You're missing the part where Ralphie gets 'SOAP POISONING'!"

"Oh my God, Mike!" she yelled, as she looked behind her.

"Don't you dare, fucking move, Dave! Not if you want to live. You too sweetheart!"

I showed them the gun and made sure that no one watching the video could see it, by holding the camera past the gun. They didn't know it had no bullets or firing pin but that was the point. The no bullets and firing pin were for me not for them. I had no intention of killing them, and I didn't want to do anything stupid like pulling the trigger in a flash of anger. But I needed answers and sometimes you can only get the unvarnished truth when the fear of God is injected into the interrogation.

"You are going to shut up and speak when spoken to. If you answer my questions truthfully, you'll live. But don't you FUCKING move! You keep that dick in her the whole time, you hear me Dave?"

"Y, ye, yes!" he stammered.

"So, how long has this been going on Diane?" I asked angrily.

She was sobbing non-stop and she was trying to answer.

"Before you answer, I think I have an idea..."

"I'm sorry..."

"Answer, my fucking question! Nothing else. How long?"

"We started to see each other romantically..."

"Romantically? There's nothing romantic about what you two were doing. You started to fuck each other, you mean?!"

"OK, please don't kill us, Babe! We started fucking each other the summer before we broke up!"

"Yeah I figured as much. He was the reason you said no, wasn't it? It wasn't your parents after all, like you said."

"Yes!" she cried.

"Why? Why did you get back together with me then? We had a clean break. We could have been friends, obviously you didn't love me."

"I thought I DID love you. I still DO love you. When you broke up with me I realized that. BUT I have been in love with Dave since we were kids... I, I just loved him - MORE."

"He had a girlfriend! He married her for Christ's sake. I don't give a flying fuck what you say, you don't make someone you love into a cheater! And you did that, to the both of us," I said pointing to her and back to me, "AND Nancy!"

"I know, but I couldn't stop once we started. I tried, I mean for the first year of our marriage we kept away from each other. But then we started going on vacations together, and we found ourselves alone a few times... and we got carried away."
"Didn't you think about what this would do to me?"

"I'm sooo sorry! You weren't ever supposed to find out... I don't know why maybe we were getting arrogant... maybe subconsciously I wanted you to find out. But I never wanted to hurt you," she bawled.

"Dave, tell her the truth."

"Wha, what do you mean?"

"She deserves to know Dave. Tell her the fucking truth or I'll shove this so far up your ass they'll have to make it a permanent fixture in your colon."

"Don't shoot me, I REALLY don't know what you want me to say."

"Fine, Dave. I'll spell it out for you then. Repeat after me."

"I don't love you," and Dave repeated it word for word.

"Just because you made him say that..."

"I'm not finished. What did I say about speaking when spoken to?" I roared, and she meeped and quickly shut up.

"I have been stringing you along for years for sex!" I said, "Repeat!" and he quickly did.

"I had a vasectomy and never wanted to have kids..." I said, and he hesitated before he saw my angry stare and he quickly repeated.

"Tell her in your own words, Dave. Now that I got the ball rolling. The whole truth... All of it, Gloria, the whole shebang."

"I. hrrmm," he cleared his throat. "Everyone knew you loved me, just like everyone knew I was in love with Gloria. I tried asking her out before I asked out Nancy. She shot me down giving me some excuse about how she would never get in the way of her sister and I should just ask you out. But I wasn't into you back then.

"When we got together that summer, I was still dating Nancy at the time. I thought you knew it was just sex... I mean you even said as much to me. But when me and Nancy's sex life cooled off at the beginning of our marriage..."

"No, no, no... You don't get to do that, Asshole! Tell her the fucking truth, Nancy had nothing to do with it!"

"S, S, Sorry. You're right! Our sex life was ok, I was just bored and since I wasn't in love with Nancy, I wanted something new. I guess I had a wandering eye. Although I craved an affair, no one was interested, that is until I thought of you."

"Keep going, let it all out!"

"I knew Nancy wanted children and I, of course, never told her about my vasectomy. When she would get suspicious, I would just do things like get the baby room ready. Or I'd have one of my lab tech friends from school fake lab results stating that my sperm count was just fine. When I wouldn't leave Nancy for Diane, Diane started to cool off so..."

"You told her you wanted her to have your baby! And she got all hot and bothered for you again. You must have been in hog heaven... just swimming in pussy, weren't you?"

"Ohhh, God..." Diane moaned.

"Fuck you, Diane. Don't act like you're a victim in all this. You were trying to get pregnant by him! What were you doing, wearing a diaphragm when we had sex? You were trying to get me to raise another man's baby. Did you even stop to think what you were doing? How it would affect the people around you. I mean, I get it, you didn't give a shit about me but what about your nieces?"

"What? How dare YOU bring them into this!" she said and she made a move as if she was going to pull away from Dave's cock.

"Awwt, Dave don't let her do that," I demanded, and he quickly grabbed her hips pressing himself to her. I could see that his fear made him flaccid and he already slipped out of her.

"I didn't bring your nieces into this YOU did. What were you thinking? Encouraging me to have a strong relationship with your nieces, when you were fucking someone behind my back? Don't get me wrong, I loved them the first day I saw them but it was YOU that encouraged me to babysit them all the time. It was YOU that bought me and them annual passes to Disneyland. You made me treat them like they were my own daughters and they adore me... And now... You are ripping us apart. You fucked over your own nieces, you evil piece of shit!"

"Ohhh, God..."

"And what about your mother? Did you think about that? I know she isn't my biological mother but she loves me like I'm her son. And I love her as much as I did my own mother! She doesn't call Jake, son, Diane! She told me she always wanted a boy but after three girls they gave up. She was glad that you married me, because..." I choked up. "Because she knew it was God's gift to her of the son she always wanted!"

"Ohhh, noooo..." she said, and she looked to be turning green.

"And what about your father?"

"My father?! My father will be ok with you leaving..."

"You might be right about that, but how is he going to trust you after all the stupid, idioticly dumb shit you just did. He made you CEO of one of his companies Diane. You think when he finds out about how dumb his daughter is that you're going to keep your job?"

"He wouldn't fire me..." she said, with no confidence in her voice.

"Oh really, even after you cancelled the prenup out of guilt for what you were doing? Trying to have another man's baby and have your cuckholded husband raise it as his own was getting to what little conscience you had left, didn't it? But dear old Daddy isn't going to question your ability to maintain contracts? Isn't going to question what's best for the company? You are exposing his shareholders to possible cover-ups and blackmail. He put you in your position out of pure nepotism, but even he isn't foolish enough to let it continue!"

"And to think, I was faithful to you the whole time we were together. Even when your hot friend Heather threw herself at me offering herself to me as a no strings attached booty call..." I let that sink in before continuing. "All of your college friends wanted to fuck me, Diane. They showed you no loyalty, but I did... I guess they must have known you better than I did though."

I tossed the gun on the bed and Dave quickly pulled off of Diane. She collapsed on the bed in crying heap. Dave grabbed the gun and pointed it at me. Taking the safety off, he pulled the trigger.

"Yeah, right, Dave. You think I'd give you a loaded gun?"

"What are you going to do?" Dave asked. He must have thought it was the end because he started pissing himself.

"Nothing, Dave. You see this? This is a live feed to everyone on my messenger list. Everyone! They all know what you did. I'm leaving and hopefully I'll never see you God forsaken sacks of shit ever again... Don't worry Diane, I won't stand in the way of 'true' love. But, when my lawyer contacts you after the holidays I expect your full and prompt cooperation, otherwise the gloves come off... you won't get a better deal from me.

"By the way, Dave, you'll have to find your firing pins before you try to murder me again."

"I didn't try to murder you, you were an intruder..."

"Dave, you tried to shoot an unarmed man who was invited into your house by your wife, in this state that's considered murder... She asked me to pick up the presents that she forgot, Dave..."

And with that, I left Diane sobbing on a cum and piss-soaked bed with the guy that just fucked her and betrayed her. On the way out the door, I grabbed the sack of Christmas presents to take them back to the in-laws without thinking. Once I got to the in-laws, I would have just got in my car and took off, but Mom had a policy of taking everyone's keys away so they wouldn't drive home drunk.

I don't even remember walking over to the house, I just remember the door bursting open and Gloria and Beth hugging me. I lamely handed Nancy's sack of presents to Gloria with a questioning look.

"She left to go see her mother..." she answered, reading my mind as usual. I nodded, numbly.

"I... need my keys..." I croaked, I was losing my voice.

"You shouldn't be driving, Mike. You're too upset. Why don't you take an Uber home?"

"I don't want to come back here..." I said.

She looked shocked as she realized the implications. Mom came out and hugged me to her, she had been crying.

"You are always welcome here, Son. Always... I know you feel betrayed... but we all love you."

"I'm going to give Mike a ride home, Mom," Gloria declared. "He's too upset to drive right now and I can take an Uber back."

"Okay, Dear," Mom replied, handing her my keys.

I walked to my car, Gloria attached to me at the hip. She poured me into the passenger seat and off we went.

"I can't stay," I said, and she looked at me quizzically. "My house... I can't stay there."

"Yes, I know. You're not," she declared, and I gave that same quizzical look right back. "We are going to pick up whatever you need and you are staying with me tonight..."

I should have been happy about that but I was too emotionally drained, so I just shrugged.

*******

Spring 2010, Stanford, Senior Year

Hindsight is 20/20, so I'll fill in the blanks about what I found out and contrast it with what I was led to believe and why I was duped into marrying Diane.

As I said before, Diane isn't a looker, even with her new fit body she was bound to attract a lot of losers. So, when I said that Mom, Dad, Gloria and Beth were over the moon about me it wasn't because I was a saint. Even if I was, they didn't know me well enough to know that. But what they did know was: 1) I loved Diane, 2) wasn't interested in her money and 3) wasn't a total loser. I was graduating top of my class and was accepted into Stanford's doctoral program. I didn't have any diseases, there were no baby mommas for me to support and I picked a degree where I could actually make some money, the only downside was I didn't come from money.

Beth saw my love for children and family right away. Mom knew right away that I would never hurt her daughter. Dad knew I would protect Diane with my life. And Gloria... well, me and Gloria, as I said before, were two peas in a pod.

After Thanksgiving, I was personally invited by Mom for Christmas. Now as duplicitous as it sounds, Diane was still friends with me all the way through my senior year. I found out later that she was continuing her affair with Dave all throughout winter and spring break. We were only supposed friends at that point anyway, so at least she wasn't trying to hurt me then. But she DID betray me before we broke up by screwing Dave behind my back the summer before my senior year.

Me and Diane, continued being friends after Winter break all the way up to graduation. Dave never flew up to see Diane so as far as I can figure, she only had sex with him during winter and spring break. But despite her lack of sex life and obvious lust for me she stopped hinting at us having a sexual relationship. We went out to dinner or to lunch when our schedules synced, and kept each other company. I still had feelings for her, and I guess if we hadn't been friends, I would have dated someone else. Our friendship kept my loneliness at bay and I was too busy with school to worry about a sexual relationship anyway.

What I didn't know was that her family was constantly pressuring her to get together with me. When I think back, I wonder if she even liked me or she just stayed friends to save face. She, to this day, claims that she did love me, she was just in love with two men.

Two weeks before graduation, Diane asked me out on a date. We were dating as friends so I didn't think anything of it until she took me to the same restaurant I proposed to her in. I was immediately suspicious and I tried to ask her why we were there, but every time I questioned her she hemmed and hawed saying things like, she really liked the place the last time we came there etc.

At the end of the night as the dancing started up, Diane asked to talk to me out on the veranda. I didn't think much of it but I do remember it bringing up bad memories of her rejecting me the first time I proposed. Regardless of my feelings, I pushed back my nausea and went outside with her.

"I know our relationship hasn't been perfect, but what relationships are?" she began. "Even though we broke up, I feel like our friendship has only grown stronger... And I wanted to know if... You'd marry me?"

That hit me like a ton of bricks. I still had feelings for her and she was right, our friendship did seem to be stronger. She at least attempted to make our relationship about us rather than her, and from time to time I actually remember her doing things for me she never did while we were together. Like, she went hiking with me even though she hated the outdoors. She went to the LA car show with me when we visited her parents for Easter and even faked a smile through the whole thing. She really seemed to be trying, but I still never got an answer as to why she said no in the first place.

"Why wouldn't you say yes when I asked you the first time?"

"I knew my parents only wanted me to date one of their high-society types - but you have turned their heads around and now they are on board... So, what do you say?"

I know now that, at the time, Diane gave up on Dave and wanted to give us a try, despite her feelings for Dave.

Her mom was on board on day one, and her father was on board by Christmas. And, as far as I knew, her parents never made any proclamations forbidding her from seeing anyone. The truth, as I found out later, was that she was holding out hope that Dave would break up with Nancy. She only asked me the very weekend after Dave married Nancy. And, in my defense, I didn't go to Dave and Nancy's wedding, (I didn't know them very well, at the time), so I never made the connection.

"OK, baby! Let's do it!" I said, grabbing her up and twirling her around.

We finally did get to dance that night. When we got back to my apartment, I got down on one knee and asked her for her hand. It was then that I surprised her with the ring I made. Needless to say, we made love for hours, falling asleep as the sun was trying to peek through the window shades.

*******

Christmas 2017

Luckily, packing wasn't very hard. Me, Diane, Dave and Nancy were all planning to go on vacation the next day. I already had my suitcases packed. So, it was a pretty easy thing to go from our house in Newport Beach to Gloria's place in Marina Del Rey. When we got to her condo, I dropped my bags in the entryway and Gloria led me past her guest room to her bedroom and had me strip to my boxers and t-shirt. I crashed on her bed and was dead to the world for the rest of the night.

I woke up confused. Confused that I was so comfortable.

"Was yesterday just a nightmare?" I thought.

Diane was spooned into me, softly snoring, just the way I liked. As my eyes gained focus, I didn't recognize where I was. I looked over and saw it wasn't Diane at all but her sister Gloria.

I was hard as a rock and my cock was pressed against her nightie. It must have popped through the hole in my boxers during the night. I didn't know if Gloria was consciously rubbing her ass along my length but as soon as she felt me stir, she stopped. She turned her head and twisted her body around to face me.

"Good morning. How're you feeling?" she asked, concerned.

"Like... Like I just lost my whole family in plane crash. My world feels - undone."

She grabbed my head, pressing me into her bosom. We grasped each other desperately, trying meld into one.

"It's ok, baby. You haven't lost everyone," she said, and for the first time since I discovered Diane's betrayal I started crying.

We laid there for maybe an hour, neither daring to move. Although we were barely clothed, there was nothing sexual between us, but the intimacy was familiar and felt right. I stared at her and she stared back with nothing but love in her eyes. I felt pulled to her, our lips met in a tender comforting kiss that grew more and more passionate and suddenly she pushed me away.

"We - need to..." she began.

"Talk?"

"Yes. Talk. I'll make us some breakfast. Why don't you take a shower?" she suggested.

I saw my suitcases beside the bed as she sauntered sexily out the door, closing it behind her. I had a hard time getting myself moving. Then, I remembered what a friend of mine, that suffered from depression, told me once. When he couldn't get out of bed, he would ask himself, "What would a normal person do?" I don't know why that helped, but I think the thought that if he could find the strength to move about his day as if... then so could I. So, I beared down, pushing myself erect, and zombie walked to the shower.

I walked out to the living area, which was a combination, open concept kitchen, dining and living room, resplendent with rabbit eared tv and couch. Who owns a VCR anymore? Apparently, Gloria.

She saw me judging her and smirked, "I don't watch much tv, I stream most of my entertainment in my office," she said pointing to a small room next to her guest bedroom.

I shrugged and said, "It's not a deal breaker," then I started laughing and she joined me in my mirth.

"I see you shaved. Good, you were a bit prickly last night," she said, and everything she seemed to say hinted towards their being a next night, and next night after that. I didn't respond, I just grinned, or maybe it was a grimace I wasn't too sure.

"You want any help?" I asked.

"No, I got it. Sit down and make yourself comfortable."

I sat down at her kitchen island and watched her work. She was dressed in an almost see-through lavender nighty. I could see a matching red bra and panty combo beneath but couldn't make out much detail.

It was kind of nice being served for once, I was always the one that made the breakfasts at our house. Diane never lifted a finger to cook anything more than whatever she could throw into the microwave.

Here, by contrast, was the sexiest woman I ever met, eagerly making me a meal - and it smelled good. The bacon sizzling, the apron loosely tied, her ass cheeks floundering every time her hips moved. Even as dead as I felt, she was stirring me.

She brought me a plate of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. I didn't remember her making the pancakes. I guess she had me too distracted.

"Come on. Enough staring at my ass. We are eating at the table," she said, smugly.

I turned a shade redder, busted. But she winked at me and swayed her hips in such a deliberate way that all guilt left me.

As we ate, we talked. I never felt more at ease with anyone in my life. It just felt - right. Then the conversation turned from the innocuous and inane to something more interesting and serious.

"I know you haven't had much time to recover and think about things, but you can stay here as long as you want until you figure things out."

"Thank you, Gloria. You're a lifesaver. I wouldn't want to impose."

"You are always welcome here for as long as you need. You're my best friend after all..." she said staring at me. "I want you to know, that last night was a one-time free pass to my bed. After today, you have to decide whether you want to continue staying here, sharing my bed. Or will you take the guest room. Either way is fine by me, but..." she said nervously, and she seemed to be talking faster and faster trying to get it out as fast as she could.

"Shhhh," I said, and she looked a little shocked but quieted down. "I love you, I'll be sleeping in your bed."

Her face brightened as if she had just received the present she was waiting for.

"I, I love you too," she said tentatively.

"I know," I said smiling. "You want this broken man? You got me, but know this... I can't take another betrayal. It's got to be for keeps."

She nodded and started crying, "I already told my boyfriends I found someone and they wouldn't be hearing from me again."

"Wow, a little presumptuous of you," I said smiling.

"We have been in love for a while now... I didn't think Diane would ever be stupid enough to give you up, but when she did, I jumped at the chance," she said, laughing nervously.

She continued to eat smiling like a cat that ate the canary. There's no way I could stay depressed knowing that I found true love. With my wife, there was always something unshared, something missing. I knew what it was but I thought I could be happy without it. But now that I had it, I couldn't not be happy - looking into Gloria's bright eyes dissipated all fear, loneliness and grief I felt. Gloria loved me with the same love I gave her, and that increased my passion past anything I felt for my wife or for anyone really.
"I know that we are sharing the same bed..." she began.

"But no sex until I divorce, Diane."

"Stop that..." she said, "It's spooky how well you know me." She grinned. "And you need some pj's... because I'm not going to be able to resist you if your 'thing' keeps popping out, like last night," she said giggling.

I should have been mourning the loss of my wife for months I shouldn't be over her in a day. Gloria saved me from falling into a pit of despair. She grabbed my hand before I fell over, and so I was able to pick myself back up and continue with life as if nothing had happened - almost.

"I want you to know, that you may have lost your wife, but you haven't lost your family. Your nieces are anxious to see their uncle Mikey, you promised to see them before you left for your vacation today."

"Won't that be awkward for Beth?"

"No, she called me. She was the one that told me to remind you."

"What about Mom and Dad, err, I mean..."

"Mom and Dad? They are still your mom and dad as far as I know, and when we get married that won't change officially..."

"Married?"

"Yes," she said, matter of factly.

I tried to think about if I didn't want to be married to Gloria, but she was right. Gloria was my best friend. Even while I was married there was no one I spent more time with or talked with more than her. She knew me better than my wife ever did. We had already shared all our hopes, our dreams, even our fantasies.

She looked at me as I mulled it over in my head and looked a little worried.

"I'll have to get my ring back from Diane, it took me two months to make and was meant for the love of my life," and she brightened up once again seeing that we were on the same page. "Get in the shower. We have places to go and people to see."

She got up and started to clear the plates.

"I know you have always wanted a man's man and I'll be that in bed for sure, but I can do chores... Go, I'll take care of the clean-up."

She started out frowning in protest but ended in a smile and kissed me on the cheek and rushed her off to take her shower as I cleaned up.

*******

Summer 2010

We had almost a shotgun wedding. We both graduated from Stanford two weeks after our engagement. We planned to be married in mid-August, so we needed to come up with a wedding fast. All of the women in the family put their heads together and came up with a game plan for our big day. The only problem was that Dad was the only one not on board with it. He didn't forbid Diane from marrying me, but he thought things were going too fast and he didn't want to participate in what he saw as a disaster waiting to happen.

You see when Diane lied to me about why she didn't say yes when I first proposed to her, the reason I didn't suspect that it was a lie was because all good lies are based on truth. Her reason for saying no was to hold out for Dave, but she knew her father would see me as a gold digger and try to interfere. I think in a way, she was hoping he would somehow stop us. That's why she didn't ask for a prenup. But then I went and asked for one for her, and she was stuck.

I pulled Dad aside one day and said, "Dad, I want you to know that I get it. You were poor like me once. You built an empire of successful businesses and don't want all of your hard work to be given away to anyone but family. Believe it or not, I respect what you did and I intend to make my own mark on the world and I don't need your money to do it.

"I love Diane and I intend to be with her until death do us part..." I handed him a document. "I had a lawyer draw this up and I had Diane sign it... And yes, it's been notarized already too. I'm giving it to you so that you can have your lawyer file it, that way you'll know that it's been done. Now you can stop worry about whether things are going to work out between us and instead start supporting us and be there... If you don't this marriage is doomed anyway."

Through my whole speech he was silent. And I could see that he was fighting off tears. If he started talking then he wouldn't be able to hold in his tears. He was too old school and I understood that - boys don't cry. So, we just shook each other's hand and had a quick bro hug and he turned and walked away.

After that, he paid for everything. He was like Scrooge at Christmas; his whole attitude was repentant and he seemed excited to have me in his family.

I think he felt guilty, that he was paying for our wedding but didn't pay for Beth's. You see, Jake never signed a prenup with Beth either and was treated the same way. Beth, to her credit, never took it personally, and Dad has been nothing but supportive of them since. My signing the prenup was what he needed to get past his pride. He was out of excuses and happy because of it.

*

About a month before our wedding, I ran into one of my professors, Henry Deekin, after I finished up interviewing for a starting software development job.

"Mike!"

"Hey Henry, what's shakin'?" I asked, (we were on a first name basis).

"I was just leaving a meeting with some prospective sharks."

"Oh? You still trying to raise capital for you 'turbo-boost' algorithm?"

Dr. Deekin, developed a software algorithm that would reduce the amount of redundant data transmitted across networks. It doesn't sound groundbreaking but it actually is because it would reduce network traffic across the board. I'm not going to bore you with the details of how the software works, but imagine if network servers all across the world got 15% more efficient without having to change any of their hardware. It would have an exponential effect on network speeds. Why? Because of the bottleneck effect.

Imagine you are on the highway and it's very congested because there are so many people on the road. As a matter of fact, if one more car came on the road everyone would have to slow down slightly to accommodate it. The number of cars utilizing the roads at maximum speed before one more car on the road prevents everyone from achieving maximum speed would be called the optimal number.

Now imagine that all of the sudden the highways were filled with 15% more cars than the optimal number. The speed of the cars would have to be reduced across the board because of a daisy chain effect. But the number of cars that get put into the highway past the optimal number, exponentially effects speed. So, let's say we increase the number of cars on the road by 1% and it reduces overall speed by 1%, then adding 2% would decrease it by 4%, and 3% would decrease speed by 9% etc. (as an example not real results). So, if you can imagine if you took 15% of cars off the severely congested road, how much faster the cars would be able to go.

I saw his software at work and I believed he could be a billionaire someday if he could just get the right people to support him.

"Henry! Why don't we become partners? I can work the business end and raise the capital for you, while you work on making your software footprint smaller."

That was the pitfall about Henry's software, everyone knew it worked but it was a huge resource hog. In order for him to succeed, he would need to get his software executables to be about a tenth the size that it was at the time, since his software would be stored on router's ROM and be integrated into its BIOS.

That's just what we did. I put my doctoral program on hold and became Henry's partner. Over the next year I worked my ass off getting his company off the ground. I worked six days a week ten to 16 hours a day. The only days I took off were Sundays, major holidays, my wedding, and the week of my honeymoon.

I admit it was kind of a strain on my marriage, but when I think back Diane was very supportive of my venture. I think it had more to do with the fact that I was impressing her father, and through me she was gaining more favoritism with him.

The first month I got a business loan and hired some lawyers to formalize our partnership. After my honeymoon, I started up a marketing campaign and raised money through crowdfunding. I wasn't a business major so half of my days were spent learning how to run a business. And I ended up taking a lot of business courses online.

Henry was a brilliant theorist and mathematician but he wasn't a great programmer. So I took over the task myself. I was also brilliant in my own rite, and we often bounced ideas off of each other. I guess that's how we became such good friends. The problem was, he was paranoid about sharing his algorithm with anyone. I had to remind him that we were bound by contract and half of his proceeds would go to me anyway. So finally, toward the end of the first year he finally let me have a crack at the code.

Again, I'm not going to bore you with the details of how I made the code more efficient, but I was able to reduce the code signature down to 9% of its original size, making it small enough to be integrated into Bios software.

This didn't make us instant billionaires, we still needed to sell the software to companies and show them how to integrate our software into theirs. So, we hired a staff of IT consultant/salesmen and started shipping them off all over the world, (although mostly to China, Japan, and Korea). Our company was barely in the black and I even declined a salary so that we could hire more personnel, I didn't need the money anyway. We were making payroll and the number of contracts grew every year.

Towards the end of our first year of marriage, Diane got a CEO position in her father's main business Solar Energy and Compliance Inc (SEAC). Ted, also owned a few fast food franchises and a furniture store but his bread and butter came from SEAC. SEAC dealt with providing homes and business energy solutions and alternatives. His business, consulted with architects and builders that build everything from large skyscrapers to new homes. They not only made recommendations but provided materials and installation for solar panels, geothermal heating, and water catching devices. Anything that they couldn't do themselves they had teams of specialist ready to help.

Dad put Diane through business school that first year and once she got her MBA, he gave her the keys to the throne. He was hoping she would be able to prove herself. He started her off with a half million dollar a year salary. She accepted the position and acted calm, cool, and confident in front of her father and the officers of the company. The old CEO was retiring but agreed to stay on for one more year to groom her.

Her veneer was a sham because once she got home, she was a mess of nerves and stress. She felt like she was in over her head, and she admitted that half of her classes she passed through bribery or massive tutoring. So, with my newfound business acumen I became her advisor. Whenever, things became tough she would turn to me for advice. All of her accolades over the years were directly due to my advice. You may think that I didn't respect her, but I recognized that almost all CEOs were delegators and advice takers, so she wasn't any worse.

The major problem with the business wasn't Diane's incompetence, it was competition. There were too many other companies out there that were doing the same thing. In order to stay ahead of the competition, they needed an edge. That's where I contributed the most. You see, Diane would come home and unload her company's problems on me and I would ask her questions on the technologies they used.

She ended up sharing a lot of her companies engineering specs, and after reading over them thoroughly I came up with some improvements to a lot of their processes. I even invented many things that help her company stay ahead. One of the inventions was an improvement to solar power cells, where instead of having flat surfaces, they were texturized and acted more like lens with a series internal micro mirrors that focused indirect sunlight better. This increased their captured energy by 30%, and the process was cheap to produce.

I filed a patent for each of my inventions, and let her company use them at a family discount of $1 per year.

Diane came to me one day and asked me to quit my job. Her reasoning was, she needed me on call when she needed some good advice. She also missed our sex life. Since she was the main breadwinner and she wanted to have kids she would need me to be available to raise our kids and to manage the household.

I loved her, and her logic was sound. I talked it over with Henry, and he agreed that the business was pretty much running itself by that time and as long as I was around from time to time to make a speech, I could be a passive partner. Besides, I wasn't being paid a salary anyway.

*******

Day after Christmas 2017

When me and Gloria got to my in-laws, both Mom and Dad came out to greet us. Mom quickly embraced me crying about how happy she was I came back.

"You're always going to be my Mom, right? You promised," and she nodded her head trying to wipe away her tears.

"I just wish we could adopt you..." she said, tears in her eyes.

"I don't think that'll be necessary..." I started and Mom and Dad looked curious. "You see, I intend to marry Gloria after the divorce is final, and if I was your son... well it would make it illegal for me to marry her..." I said, grinning.

"I knew it!" Mom cried. "You two were made for each other." Dad looked surprised and conflicted.

"Uncle Mikey! Uncle Mikey!" Sara and Ashley cried.

I didn't even see them coming before they slammed into my legs, latching on. I bent down with my arms outstretched and with practiced ease they both jumped onto my hips as I hooked my arms underneath them so I could pick them both up. I always made it a practice to never talk down to them. I always either lowered myself to their eye level or I picked them up to talk to them. I think that's why they loved me so much, I was an adult that treated them like equals. Like what they said mattered, and it did matter - to me.

"Uncle Mikey, I'm scared," little Sara whispered.

"What are you scared about, Peanut? Didn't I tell you, that you never need fear anything while your Uncle Mikey was around?"

"We heard Pamp-paw say that you and Auntie Diane weren't going to be together anymore," little Ashley added.

"Well let me tell you a secret," and I pulled them closer lowering my voice.

"What is it?" they whispered conspiratorially.

"I'll ALWAYS be your uncle. And I'll ALWAYS be there for you. OK? No matter what," and they brightened and hugged me tighter. "I have a surprise for you," I said, looking at Beth as if to ask her permission and Gloria to see if she was on board, but I knew the answer before I asked it.

"What is it?" they asked almost simultaneously.

"I'm not going on vacation after all, so guess who is going to Disneyland with me tomorrow?" and if it was possible for them to jump up and down while on my hips, they tried, shaking with excitement.

"WE ARE!" they practically screamed.

"Not quite..." I said teasing them, and they looked confused, after all how could they NOT be going to Disneyland with me. "Auntie Gloria is coming with us!"

Then their excitement started back up, not only was their favorite uncle taking them to Disneyland but their favorite Auntie was going too. I set them down and they immediately went over to Gloria grabbing her hand pulling her inside the house telling her all about what they wanted to do the next day. Gloria tried to pretend to be annoyed at me, but she was smiling too hard for that to work. Beth kissed me on the cheek to answer my question and we followed everyone inside.

Before I could get too far inside, Mom pulled me to the side sitting room off of the foyer.

"Nancy came back here this morning," she said, "She is afraid to go back to her house. Can you talk to her?"

"Of course, Mom. You didn't even have to ask."

"Good, she's upstairs in the first guest room. By the way Diane and Dave left..."

Nancy and Dave where supposed to go with us to Hawaii (the big island) as per usual. I wouldn't think that Diane would go with Dave after last night but Dave was a good con man and had all night to convince her to go. So off they went, good riddance. It would be nice to not have to deal with the stress of having them around for a week.

Earlier in the day, I had my lawyer put in an emergency order to freeze all of our assets until we saw an arbitrator after the holidays. I cancelled all of our credit cards and since the hotel and plane tickets were under my name, I cancelled the reservation and all of the return plane tickets. They would still have access to Dave's money, but Dave would have to flip the bill and they would have to waste a day or two in paradise getting new reservations, plane tickets etc. I wasn't totally forgiving, I could be a vindictive ass too.

I walked over to the living room and saw Gloria engaged in an animated conversation with the girls.

"Girls!" I said and they all looked at me. "Can I borrow your auntie for a bit?"

"OK, Uncle Mikey, we'll be outside playing when you need us."

Yes, that's the kind of relationship we had. An expectation of me wanting to hang out and play with them and be a part of their lives, we were BFFs.

Gloria came up to me grabbing my hand, I saw the girls notice and they started whispering to each other. I just winked at them and they giggled.

We traveled up the stairs hand in hand, she, not questioning where we were going. I knocked on the door tentatively and the door was quickly opened where a sorrowful Nancy stood. All three of us collided together in hugs of comfort as Nancy was given time to grieve her failed marriage.

"You know, the funny thing is, I'm not sad that me and Dave split up. He's been a real asshole the last couple of years anyway. I, I just wanted to start a family... I was looking forward to being pregnant and couldn't wait to see my baby's face for the first time."

"I for one am glad you didn't have any children," I said.

"Mike!" Gloria shouted, angrily.

"No, no, don't get me wrong... I would love to see you get pregnant and start a family, you deserve that kind of happiness, Nancy... What I mean is that you really dodged a bullet, because if Dave hadn't betrayed you with his vasectomy, that 'asshole' as you put it would have been the baby's father."

"That's true, still..."

"Still?" I asked, "First of all, Nancy, besides Gloria here, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. And you finding a good man to have a child with... Hell if I wasn't so in love with Gloria, I'd be your baby daddy in a New York minute," I said, with a wink.

Gloria had this look on her face and I could tell she was up to something.

"Mike, can you give us a minute alone please?" Gloria said, gently guiding me out of the room.

I waited for them in the hallway and although I couldn't overhear what they were saying, from time to time I did hear giggles and raucous laughter. Finally, the door opened back up and both women were all smiles. I was in trouble and I knew it.

"Girls?" I asked, tentatively. "What's going on?"

"We need to tell you something... It might surprise you," Gloria said, mischievously. "We have a secret that we agreed to take to our graves... until now."

"Yeah?" I asked, stupidly. I'm a pretty smart guy and usually not so dense, but in my defense, they were giving me the sultriest looks and I was too mesmerized to think clearly.

"You know that I'm bi-sexual, Mike," Gloria said, and waited a second for me to catch on but I didn't. "I prefer men of course but in college I did have a full-time lesbian relationship for two years..." she said, looking at Nancy.

I was mesmerized but I didn't need that much of a carrot, "You mean YOU and Nancy?"

"Exactly," she said with a smirk.

"Were you..." I began.

"No, I don't mess with attached partners, ever. If they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, especially if they are married. So, as soon as Nancy reconnected with Dave, we broke it off. But you can't make love to someone for two years and not develop a bond. We were already best friends but after that we were always more..."
"Does, Dave know about the two of you?"

"Oh, hell no!" Nancy burst. "I never trusted that asshole, even when I believed he loved me there was always something about him..."

"So, why are you telling me?"

"Listen, Honey," Gloria began, stroking my arm comforting. "This is by no means an ultimatum... It's an offer... Me and Nancy realized one thing - we both love you. And I don't mean love in the way that she did with Dave. We adore you, and we trust you more than anyone else in our lives. Not only that but we love each other, there is no jealousy between us. Even though you are MY man and are going to marry ME, Nancy was overjoyed. She wasn't jealous even though, she loves you."

"OK... I would never betray you. Either of you. But are you asking me if you can have a side relationship with Nancy?"

"No, no, no, no ... although now that I think about it that would be fun," she beamed.

"What is this all about, then?"

Nancy approached my other side and started stroking my other arm, "Hear her out. Gloria may seem to be the most confident woman in the world but she is still that shy girl I fell in love with growing up."

"OK, I'm listening... no judgements."

"Mike, what I'm proposing might seem a bit taboo, even illegal, but we aren't going to break any laws nor live anywhere where we'll get stoned for it... But I want you to take Nancy as your second wife... I, I mean it won't be legal or anything but..."

"Wait, what?" I said, shocked.

I wasn't expecting that, at all. It came out of left field, even though looking back they were leading up to this. I walked away and sat down on the guest bed.

"Nancy is still married..." I said dumbly.

"Yes, and of course this wouldn't happen until after she divorces Dave."

"You girls sound like you've been giving this a lot of thought, this isn't something that you just came up with in the room right now. What gives?"

"You're right. We've been thinking about this for years. It all kind of started out as a game," Gloria started, looking for Nancy to continue.

"Yeah, I had been in a fight with Dave that time we were in Cancun... You remember?" Nancy said, and I nodded my head. "Well, the three of us decided to get plastered. You were already pretty tipsy when we found you at the bar with Diane. And Diane," she finished angrily. "The slut, went to 'talk' with Dave," she started mumbling, "Bitch was probably fucking him..."

"Yes well," Gloria cut in, "As she was saying, you were already pretty well into it when we started drinking. It didn't take long for us to catch up to your tipsy and for you to get plastered. You probably don't remember, but you were telling us how much you loved us and how we were the prettiest women you ever met, and... how you wished you could marry all three of us. Then - you passed out at the bar."

Nancy finally got over her anger and interjected, "The bartender said that you needed to go and they would get some people to help you to your room. We we said we'd take care of you. So we woke you up enough to stand you up. You rested your arms across our shoulders and we dragged you out to the beach. It was getting dark but they still had beach chairs out so we laid you in one so we could rest (you're pretty heavy) ..." she said and they giggled.

Gloria continued, "We each sat down and since we were a little drunk, we started joking and laughing about what you said. It started off as joking but then we were saying things like. Would it be so bad being married to the same man? Would we want to have kids with the same man? Could we be sister wives?"

Gloria signaled for Nancy to go on, "Our talk suddenly got serious, because we realized that for the most part the answer was No. Unless we somehow found the right guy... I think it was then that we realized that we BOTH were in love with you."

Gloria finished with, "Our conversation over the years has never been serious, because obviously Nancy was married and so were you. But we eventually made a pact that if we ever had the opportunity... well..."

I was gobsmacked. I didn't know what to say at first so I just started asking questions.

"OK, since you girls have been thinking about this for years, how would that even work?"

I think the fact that I didn't reject the notion outright, brightened their faces and they started talking more excitedly.

"Well, we both agreed that if we were to do this that we would live in the same house..." Gloria started.

Nancy jumped in with, "And we would take care of each other's children as if they were our own..."

They were jumping back and forth shooting ideas at me.

"And of course, we would alternate nights with you... unless you wanted us both, but we both know threesome are tiring so that's probably not going to happen very often."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! One at a time. And that's NOT what I mean... I mean legally, morally, how would we get our families on board?"

Nancy and Gloria looked at each other and Nancy spoke up, "I'll go."

"Legally, you and Gloria will be married, and I will be your mistress. I guess in a way we will have a common law marriage. Although we aren't and even can't get married, we can still sign a contract similar to a prenup where we both agree how to support each other and our children if we ever split up for any reason," she looked at Gloria to continue.

"In our society we aren't setting any precedent with this, morally it would only be objectionable because our society decided it was easier to enforce a contract between two people rather than three and have beaten people over the head with it. But religiously, there is nothing wrong with it in any religion other than someone taking a scripture out of context. But I do get the problems that can come out of polygamy, men abusing young women forcing them into servitude under the guise of marriage. Not to mention the mess our legal system would be under, so I'm no proponent of changing the laws. But our relationship is special, we three are in love. And it's not just a feeling, we know that we three are compatible. It's not about YOU, it's about us, and how the universe is telling us to be a family."

"OK, let's suppose I agree with all of your points... and I want to. But you are ignoring one crucial factor that will make me say no. How will it affect our families? Will we be shaming them, causing them to hate or despise us? I love both of you and ideally, I am on board. But I refuse to do anything that would hurt either of your families, because they are my families too. Besides, one of the reasons you LOVE me so much is BECAUSE I wouldn't hurt them. If I did, I wouldn't be any better than Dave or Diane."

They both looked at me a little sad, but I could see that they did agree with me.

"Look, our divorces are going to take a while, who knows what's going to happen in the future. Let's hope for the best and see if indeed the universe is pushing us together," I said, leaning and giving each a kiss on the cheek. "If you'd have said I'd be here having THIS conversation with you two, two days ago. I'd have thought you were daft."

"Daft?" Gloria laughed, it was a personal joke between us that I try to work in old timey references into our conversation without her knowing - she always caught me.

"Come on," I said, faking annoyance. "Let's get your things, shall we?" I said, offering Nancy my arm and Gloria the other.

******

Early January 2018

We didn't waste time seeing a lawyer, Gloria had a great lawyer on speed dial. I had to shell out some real money to get a process server to serve the divorce paperwork to Diane in Hawaii. Not only did they get her signature but they also recorded the whole encounter on video.

We lived in a community property as well as a no-fault state, so all of her assets, the house, her pension, her savings, her salary would have to be split down the middle. Even though I didn't want her money, I asked for anything and everything purely out of spite. I knew I wouldn't win, but I had a plan and I had to act like a vengeful tool... it really wasn't hard since I did want revenge.

My lawyer, Gary Kowalski, Esq assured me that he would do everything he could to expedite the divorce. He didn't think there would be any issues with my demands, I was asking a straight split of all assets and since I did the finances there weren't any secret accounts or hidden assets to contend with. I honestly would feel bad about splitting the assets, but since she so thoroughly betrayed me, my guilt was minimal. Besides, since she asked me NOT to work, and I gave up opportunities to make my own money, in a way I felt like she owed me.

The first thing I did was to bring up the prenuptial agreement. I pointed out that she tore up the contract and we signed an amendment cancelling the prenup. After he looked over the paperwork, he got concerned.

"Did you verify that this document was signed by your wife and that it was notarized by a legitimate notary?"

"No! I had no reason to believe my wife was deceiving me. She was the one that offered to cancel the prenup, I never brought it up..."

"I'll have to have it checked out, if all of our ducks aren't lined up correctly, a judge could throw this out."

My lawyer put a freeze on Diane's assets, which forced her lawyers to expedite the court case. Ted had his lawyers represent her and they somehow finagled a court date in two weeks. During our first meeting with the judge, she didn't even bother showing up to court. Apparently, she couldn't face anyone and was still holed up in Hawaii with Dave.

Diane was Ted's daughter, so I wasn't offended by him helping with her legal defense. However, when he blatantly lied in court disputing the validity of the cancellation of the prenup, I was livid. His lawyers brought in all kinds of experts disputing Diane's signature, and he even testified that he witnessed me turning down the cancelation when Diane offered it to me.

"Obviously," he said, that's was why it never got filed with the court."

It became a case of he said she said, but the judge was favoring me. I think the fact that Diane didn't bother to come to court to testify on her own behalf swayed him.

Ted knew he was going to lose this one and looked crestfallen, but I had other ideas and my plan hinged on losing this battle. I wasn't expecting the judge to be so favorable.

"Your honor, if I may address the court?" I asked.

Gary tried his best to shut me up but I let him know that I knew what I was doing and this was part of a bigger plan.

"Go ahead," the judge replied.

"Your honor, I would like to drop the dispute on the cancellation of the prenup. On the condition that the prenup be held binding, now and in the future. I kind of expected this kind of deception your honor so I had my lawyer draw up a second proposal on the division of assets that follows the prenuptial to the letter, with the exception of my gym... I would like to keep my gym. I agree to let her have all assets that are in her name, and I want her to sign a document that gives up any interest in my partnership, and any intellectual property that I may have under my name during the marriage. Other than that, your honor, she can keep everything, all of the checking, savings, retirement accounts, the house, the cars and the vacation home," I said grimly. "All I ask is this case be expedited... Diane will need to sign the documents and file them with the court in three days or I will rescind my offer..."

"Counselor?" the judge asked Ted's head slimeball lawyer.

"Your honor, we'd like to look over the proposal, but if everything is in order, I'm sure we can get her to sign it."

"Sign it, fine. But she'll do so in my presence."

"Your honor, my client is out of the country..." he said.

"Hawaii is still in this country your honor and she was supposed to be back a week ago," I corrected.

"I don't give a rat's ass where she is, if I don't see her in court in three days, not only will this agreement expire, but I'll give him ALL of her assets too! Adjourned!" he said before the slimeball could protest.

"What was THAT all about?" Gary demanded.

"Look Gary, not only do I NOT want to fight the amendment, I want her to sign documents stating that she and I agree that the prenup is binding, I do not want her to be able to come back later and state that we rescinded it, even though we did."

He looked at me as if I had a screw loose.

"OK, Mike, but just make sure you fully disclose all of your assets, if you are hiding anything and don't disclose it, she can come back and declare fraud."

"Don't worry Gary, all the assets I want to protect are listed."

As we were exiting the court, I ran into Ted out in the hallway.

"I'm glad to see you come to your senses, Boy!" he said smugly.

"Daddy! How could you?" Gloria exclaimed.

"Don't let them entrap you Ted, remember what we talked about," Slimeball advised.

"You think she is trying to get a confession out of him?" I said. "All I had to do was show the judge this video..." I said, holding up my phone and pressing play. "As you can see, this video shows him perjuring himself...The only reason I didn't show it to the judge is for Mom's sake... I'm not going to be the one to send him to jail... even if he is a lying, backstabbing, thief!"

After they watched the damning video which disputed everything he testified to, Ted looked green and became apologetic.

*******

Mid 2011, sometime between year 1 and 2 of my marriage to Diane:

Maybe, the relationship that I had with Gloria seems too good to be true, but the truth is that Gloria and I have been in love for years now. It all started when I became a stay-at-home husband.

Gloria, unlike Diane, didn't try for a career in business. She was an artist. And being one year younger than Diane, she had just recently graduated UCLA with a BA in art. Although she was a trust fund kid, she actually had a work ethic. However, there wasn't much money to be made as an artist, (they don't call them starving artist for nothing). She wanted to be a contributing member of society, so besides the artist studio where she did her sculptures and paintings, she decided to work for her father in one of the struggling charities he started up that she believed in. He modeled it after Caterina's Club, which helped single parents get out of poverty. It focused on helping single mothers caught in cycles of poverty to break them out, and get them more permanent job and homes, provide child care, jobs and help feed their kids.

The problem was she knew next to nothing about running a business; the problem being that running a charity IS running a business. Gloria barely knew me at the time, we only saw each other during holidays for the most part. Early in my marriage, she was still in school and I was working my ass off, so we rarely had time to hang out.

It was Diane, the new CEO and business major, that Gloria went to for advice. And Gloria, rather than give her bad advice suggested that she call me, after all, it was ME that SHE went to for business advice. So, to my surprise I got a call from Gloria asking for help.

"Hey Gloria. How are you?"

"Hey Mike, I have a BIG favor to ask... I don't know if you know but I recently took over Meals for Angels, one of my father's charities. I am supposed to be the logistics leader here but I have no idea what I'm doing. I tried calling Diane, but she told me that she didn't have time but that you might be able to help me... Please, please, please," she begged.

"Not a problem, Gloria. Anything for family," I said, and under my breath I said "Anything for you." Silence. Shit she heard. "Ha, ha, ha!" I said quickly covering my tracks.

"When would you be available?" she said, in a still pleading voice.

"I have time today, I could come over right now if you need me."

"Yay! Let me give you the address."

I arrived at the warehouse/office building of the charity, located in Long Beach. The warehouse stored tons of food and school supplies and had a large kitchen and offices inside. I walked in the through the loading dock and the first thing I noticed was people sitting around and chatting. Maybe they were on a break but my impressions were that they might be sitting around with nothing to do.

"Mike! Thank God you are here!" Gloria said, running up to me and hugging me to her.

I almost didn't recognize Gloria, she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and very little make up. She looked shorter without high heels on, it was the first time I had seen her in flats. It was far from the sexy holiday outfits I was used to seeing her in, but man, she still looked good to me. Makeup or not, slinky outfit or work attire, Gloria's beauty outshone whatever situation she was in. She was one of those women that could make a burlap bag look sexy.

"Wow, you look great!" I blurted. "Umm, I mean... You're welcome. Why don't you show me what you got?"

She blushed a little at the double-entendre before I realized what I said, but I decided to just move on rather than trade awkward outbursts.

"Yes, well. Let me give you a tour."

The place was divided into three sections, a warehouse, offices and industrial kitchen. The warehouse made up half the building, and the offices took up two floors on the other half; part of the first-floor offices consisted of a huge kitchen.

There were supposed to be volunteers helping with the marketing, and day to day office stuff, but a lot of them left when the last CEO left. Although, saying that he left is putting it nicely, he was allowed to quit after he was caught embezzling from the charity. Why not fire him and have him arrested? The bad publicity would have ruined the charity's reputation, no one wants to donate to a charity that is corrupt. However, Ted did force the ex-CEO to pay back everything; even forcing the sale of his house and liquidation of his assets to stay out of jail.

The first thing I did was to call everyone out to the warehouse for a quick pow-wow. Then I went around to everyone and asked them their names, nothing else. After they said who they were, I just sat there for 30 seconds, then I went on to the next person. There was a total of 50 employees so this took almost a half hour and left everyone confused, Gloria included. Once I was done though I then started talking to everyone by name as if I knew them for year.

"Javier!" I said pointing to Javier so that he knew I was talking to him. "What is it that you do here?"

"I am a ma..."

"Ahht, let me just stop you right there. Sorry, I don't want your job title, if I wanted that I'd look at the personnel records. No, what I want to know is what you DO here?"

"I, I don't understand..."

"Walk me through a typical day. You clock in, you grab a pallet jack and start moving pallets around... What do you DO?"

"Oh, I see..." he said, then he went on a detailed explanation about what he does on a typical day.

"Thank you, Javier. I know it was a bit embarrassing to go first but now everyone here knows what I'm going to ask them and how to answer. Give Javier a round of applause everyone."

On and on it continued until finally I interviewed everyone that was there that day. I was starting to get a good picture of what went on and how things needed to be run. After everyone had their say, I broke up the pow-wow, and let them get back to work. I needed to review the books and day to day operations. The back room needed to be fixed first and it was missing its leader.

The logistics for the backroom quit when he got a better job, and no one replaced him. Without the CEO to approve new hires, everything instead just slowly turned chaotic. Gloria did a good job of taking control of the payroll and getting everyone paid so they still had what was left of the staff. However, the warehouse was a mess, there were pallets of food stacked way too high, not to mention all of the OSHA violations. If it was inspected, they'd shut it down for sure.
Luckily, I knew a guy at the gym who owed me a favor who had plenty of experience doing this kind of thing. He had a huge temper and had been fired repeatedly from job after job until he was ordered to go to anger management by a judge as part of a plea agreement for an assault case he was under. "Three strikes and you're out" laws in California would have sent him to prison for many years, so he took the deal because he had a family to support.

The anger management counselor had worked with me in the past and he often referred me the tougher cases. After a few weeks, I whipped him into shape both literally and figuratively... he not only got his assed kicked by me on the sparring matt, (earning his respect), but he also cleaned up his life. I forced him to go to AA, and an anger management group we hosted in the gym. He got a sponsor and had been doing better ever since.

Unfortunately, he was laid off at his job a few months back and it was next to impossible to find a replacement with his resume and reputation. Not to mention, his unemployment was about to run out. When he lost his job, I of course told him not to worry about his monthly dues, he could pay them back when he got back on his feet. He was a proud man and wouldn't accept charity but he knew that he couldn't go back to the life he was living before, so he swallowed his pride and kept coming to the gym.

"George," I called, "Get off your lazy ass and get down to the address that I just texted to you."

An hour later, George arrived and took a look around the warehouse and whistled, "Holy shit, Mike. What's going on, this place is a disaster."

"You want a job George? It probably won't pay as well as your last job, but it does have a decent health and dental plan..."

"Hell yeah, Mike!" George shouted with glee. You could see the stress falling off of his face, "When do you need me?"

"Right, fucking now buddy! You're in charge of this back room. Gloria will get the paperwork ready and you can sign them later. You'll have to pass a background check, so be honest about your past. I already know your history anyway... But until the paperwork is formalized, I'll just pay you off the books. Sound good?"

I never seen this man cry before and to this day never have, but that day I saw him well up and he choked out his answer, "I owe you, Mike. You don't know what this job means to my family."

"Yeah, I do," I said and we slapped each other's backs.

I then got on the PA and called over the warehouse staff and introduced them one by one to George.

"Don't let that creep you out," George joked, "Mike is a savant and once he learns someone's name, he never forgets."

When Javier first saw George, he said "Holy shit, that guy's a giant," and immediately George got a new nickname "Big George," by the whole crew. George is 6'7 and close to 280 lbs of mostly muscle. He was respected right away mainly due to fear, no one wanted to get on Big George's bad side. But the staff soon came to realize that he was competent and fair, and they soon respected him for the good man that I knew him to be too.

"George, while you work here, I need you to train a backup for your job in case you quit or get sick or whatever, we can't have this place falling through the shitter just because you take a vacation."

"Yessir, Bossman."

Of course, Javier overheard him call me Bossman, and after that day the warehouse crew started calling me that too.

Gloria stood by me the whole time and just watched in amazement as I took over. I would catch her staring at me from time to time but I didn't think much of it because I figured she was just trying to learn as much as she could.

The charity not only cooked nutritious meals for low income families with kids, but they also worked in conjunction with the federal government to ship out boxes of food to low income senior citizens. The problem was, we had the food but we didn't have the partnerships with local businesses and churches. Normally they brought in volunteers to come and help in an assembly line to assemble boxes of food to be delivered.

Gloria hired a coordinator that would go out and find volunteers, talk to pastors, and HR reps around the area but her work would take months before we would see the volume of volunteers we needed. So once again, I appealed to the people around me. All of the kickboxing classes that I still taught belong to a messenger group, for class cancellations etc. Not only was I able to mass blast messages to everyone signed up to classes and give updates, but people could text the gym and let us know if they had to change their plans too.

Over the years the messenger group became kind of a support network. Whenever anyone had an emergency at home or anything really, they often helped each other out in whatever ways they could. I never asked anyone for anything before, but I always volunteered to help. Sometimes I was there to settle domestic disputes, where a husband was known to be abusive. Sometimes I was a handyman, and once I even acted as a babysitter and took a gal's kids five kids with me and my nieces to Disneyland while she went on interviews for a job.

But that being said, when I asked for volunteers to help us box food for the charity I was working for, I only got 5 hard commitments and I was worried. I guess I didn't know them as well I should because over 65 of my students and their significant others, came out that next Saturday and helped us assemble 500 pallets of food. Not only that but 20 of them agreed to help out every Saturday for a month until we got our volunteer flow going once again.

The thing was, they surprised me. While was expecting only five people to show up, I of course showed up to help them. When they all came out of their hiding places yelling surprise... Well, boys don't cry - remember? I did.

After getting a handle on the Warehouse and Volunteering, me and Gloria worked together on organizing the finances, and marketing campaigns to raise money. Every day for six months we worked together hand in hand. We even ate lunches together and often after work we would get a drink, watch a game at a sports bar or even take in a movie. I know it might not have been appropriate for us to spend so much time together, but I always let Diane know what we were doing, and never once did she suspect that we were developing feelings for each other, but the inevitable did happen and before we knew it, we found ourselves holding hands and touching.

We both learned how to do every job in the building. We even learned to cook massive amounts of food, which is way different than cooking for two. Whenever anyone called in sick, Gloria took over for them. If someone got hurt in the warehouse, I took over for them. Soon the Charity was running like a well-oiled machine and the day soon came where my work was done. Yet, I kept finding excuses to stay just to be near Gloria. Finally, it came to head when I found myself kissing Gloria and she reciprocated passionately.

I was married to her sister and was not going to break my vows, and she too, loved her sister and would never get between her and her man. So, that day we decided to stop working together, and I was crushed.

Although we stopped seeing each other day to day to save my marriage, we did still talk to each other every day. We constantly texted and called each other every night. Diane used to joke that Gloria was my second wife, but surprising to me at the time there was no jealousy from Diane.

Gloria wasn't a particularly monogamous woman. She called herself polyamorous and had many regular boyfriends. At first it used to bother me, I guess I was jealous. But, after a while, even her sex life was a topic of our conversations. We would trade tricks and tips and ideas to keep things fresh with her significant others and me with Diane. It was about then that Gloria started going on vacations with us.

Our group vacations of four soon turned to five, and honestly I enjoyed them a lot more with Gloria around even though we never pursued each other romantically. We had become best friends. We talked about anything and everything, no topic was off limits. We argued politics, debated religion, and compared music. Dave and Diane avoided our discussions like the plague, but Nancy became a third wheel and often played mediator, devil's advocate or took her own position from time to time, joining in the 'fun'.

Me, Gloria and Nancy grew to be great friends and everyone always wondered if we were sleeping together.

*********

Early March 2015

"Mike!" Gloria called, panicky. It was one in the morning and as usual I was reading books on my phone, since my tablet would be too bright and keep Diane up. I suffered from occasional bouts of insomnia, so I was lucky to get the call since my phone would normally be on silent that late at night.

"Gloria? What's going on? It's one in the morning."

"He hit her Mike..." she said, and I knew exactly who he and she was.

"I'm on my way."

"Mike... Don't do anything rash. Please?"

"I'll do my best. Why don't you meet me over there? You have a way of keeping me calm, otherwise you might as well get some bail money together..."

"Pick me up, I'll go with you."

"OK, I'll call you when I get there."

"Who was that, Babe?" Diane sleepily asked.

"That was your sister. It appears that Dave went off on the deep end and hit Nancy. I'm going over there..."

Diane sat up suddenly, "Don't do anything foolish, Mike. You could kill him."

When I think back at this conversation, I realize now that Diane never mentioned Nancy. At the time I thought she was just concerned about me going to jail. But now I see it as her not wanting anything to happen to Dave, her lover. Funny how a little perspective changes how you see things.

"Don't worry, Baby, I'm taking Gloria with me, she'll keep me calm."

"Do you want me to come with you?" she asked.

"No, get some sleep. We'll be ok, I think it might make things worse if we brought everyone."

"OK," she said, rolling back over.

The freeways were pretty clear at one in the morning and I got to Gloria's in less than a half hour going 90MPH the whole way. From there we rushed over to Dave and Diane's, (they were living in Santa Monica at the time).

We heard shouting, banging and shattering of glass. It sounded like Dave was having a fit. I reached into the potted plant beside the entrance and retrieved their spare key and quietly opened the door shushing Gloria.

I snuck quietly down the hallway to where the commotion was and saw Dave kick in the door to their guest bedroom rushing into the room, presumably to hit Nancy again. Although I ran after him as fast as I could, I didn't stop him from getting off a punch to her eye and a slap to her face.

"Son of a bitch!" I yelled in frustration grabbing him by the back of his neck, yanking him back and slamming him into dresser.

He hit the dresser so hard that he bounced off of it, falling to the floor. The dresser bounced off of the wall then tipped over and fell on top of him, spilling the extra linens and pajamas stored there all over him.

"Get out of here Nancy and wait with Gloria outside," I commanded, while Dave was struggling to get out from under the dresser.

Nancy quickly complied and I heard both of them rush out of the condo and slam the door.

The fight didn't exactly go like I thought it would. I was laughing too hard. I was hard to stay mad at Dave while he struggled to get the dresser off of him. It's not that it was that heavy, more that he was trying too hard to get it off of him. At times he was so desperate that he didn't realize that while he was lifting the dresser the side kept getting caught on the edge of a desk. The sudden resistance of the desk would cause the dresser to wobble mid lift and slip out of his grip slamming down on him. Every time he did it, I kept laughing harder. Finally, Dave saw the absurdity of his situation and started laughing too.

"A little help, please," he asked, a little embarrassed.

I picked the dresser off of him one handed, but the drawers and clothes slid out completely and fell all over him. We both took a few minutes to clean up the mess before we started talking again.

He nodded to me and I punched him in the balls, crumpling him to the ground.

I was expecting to yell at Dave and use my "Batman" voice to scare the shit out of him. But as he lay there in the fetal position, trying to spit his balls out of his throat, I calmly told him, "Dave, I don't know how you were raised, but where I come from, we don't kick puppies. You want to know why we don't kick puppies Dave? Because, even with them trying their best to devour you with nips and licks, we know that not only are they no threat to us, but they need our protection. Besides they are sooo cute, right, and we love them. Can they survive on their own as feral dogs? Sure, but at one point we chose to take them into our homes to raise, love and protect them.

"You did the same thing for your wife right? You chose to marry her, which is a commitment to love, honor and PROTECT her. So, Dave... Why the fuck is Nancy being treated worse than a dog?"

"I'm sorry, Mike. It won't happen again."

"Be sure that it doesn't buddy, it's not that hard. Just walk away next time you feel that angry," I said, then I put on my "Batman" voice. "'Cause if I EVER hear that you hit Nancy again, I'll be here to hit you back. By the time I'm through with you, your dentist will have his work cut out for him. Got me?!"

"Yeah, sure Mike. Whatever you say."

I then leaned down with my hand outstretched and he flinched. Until he realized that I was offering to help him up. After he got up, he started limping out of the room and I called back to him.

"Dave..."

"Yeah?"

"Call a locksmith to fix this broken door, right now. Me and Gloria will take Nancy out for a while and I expect it fixed by the time she gets back, capiche?"

"Yeah, Mike. It'll be fixed by the time she gets back."

"Does she have on overnight bag? She'll be staying with Gloria tonight."

"Yeah, I'll get it."

He came back with a small duffle back and handed it to me.

"Tell her I'm sorry and I want her to come home so I can apologize, alright. Please, Mike?"

"Yeah, Dave, I'll tell her."

Before I left, I grabbed a quart sized Ziploc bag and stuffed it with ice, then grabbed a bunch of paper towels.

I walked out to my car and examined Nancy. She quickly fell into my arms hugging me tight. I guess once she saw me, she finally felt safe enough to let go and the waterworks started right away. I stroked her back and ran my hands through her hair and whispered to her that it would be alright and that she was safe.

She cried so much that she started hiccupping and she left a huge wet spot on my shirt. Finally, when calmed down enough, she looked up at me and I held up the ice pack for her eye. After she put it on her eye, I handed Gloria her overnight bag and gave her a look that she recognized as "She'll be staying with you," to which she simply nodded, opened the back door and threw it in the back.

I guided Nancy around to the front passenger side and opened the door for her. Then eased her in, protecting her head as she did since she was still out of sorts at the time and liable to bump her head.

Gloria got in the back and as we rode away, I asked, "Where to?"

"Find us an all-night diner that's NOT a Denny's," Gloria said, and simultaneously me and Gloria said, "Yuck!" and we busted out laughing, as we both agreed years ago that Denny's was the worst.

*

Finding an all-night dinner that was open in the middle of the week wasn't easy. We didn't want to spend all night looking so we settled for a diner that was barely a step up from Denny's called Spires. We all were told to sit wherever we liked so we chose a booth near the back.

Nancy got in the booth first and I got in second taking the middle seat. Gloria quickly followed and sat across from us. Nancy side hugged me and refused to let me go, as soon as I sat down. When I looked to Gloria, she just smiled and the twinkle in her eye told me she wasn't faking.

After a waitress came and took our order, we all started chatting about random things and no one wanted to bring up the elephant in the room. That is, until Gloria finally took a deep breath and popped the bubble.

"Sooo... what happened when we left Mike?" she breathed. "Is he going to be in the hospital? Are we going to have to bail you out soon?"

I then explained to them what happened and said, "I doubt he'll press charges. He'd be fired from his job once they found out he hit Nancy... Your dad DOES own the furniture store he manages after all."

Nancy hugged me tighter to her pressing her breasts into my side.

"You're the best, Mike. I wish I'd have known you before..." she said, sadly.

"Me too," I heard Gloria whisper.

"Well ladies, I think you are two of the best people I know. But, honestly, if you'd had met me before I met Diane, you wouldn't be saying the same thing. I was a mess. My mother just died and I pushed everyone away from me," I said, looking from Gloria to Nancy then back to the table. "I used to be a player, before my mom got sick. You wouldn't have respected the man I was nor the shell I became. My mom always taught me to treat women with respect and I thought I was... but, I dated 10 to 11 women a week, and had four regular sex partners..." I said, ashamed.

"I have a few 'boyfriends', what's wrong with that?"

"Oh nothing, I guess. I'm not judging you Gloria. If that's what makes you happy then that's fine as long as you are honest with yourself and your partners."

She nodded, understanding.

"I didn't love any of the women I was with. I used them for sex. They all knew that from the get go. I told them the score before they got involved with me. I always thought, I'm not lying to them or hurting them and we are both getting what we want, so I was respecting them in a way. But if I was honest with myself, I wasn't treating them with respect. Respect is an aspect of love, and I refused to love any of them. I wouldn't let them develop feelings for me. If they so much as started any drama they got their walking papers."

Gloria nodded understanding and teared up. I reached over to her and grabbed her hands comforting her.

"Do any of your 'boyfriends' love you or respect you Gloria? I know they are just FWBs but how many of them harbor feelings for you that you refuse to return?" I asked. "I know you Gloria... You say you're just waiting for Mr. Right, but you'll never find him if you have Mr. Right-Now hanging around you constantly... I had to have my mom die for me to learn that. So, take it from someone that loves you Gloria. You deserve better."

Gloria started crying and pulled her hand away from me and lashed out, "Shut up, Mike! What do you know about love? My sister..." she steamed, then pulled back before she said too much.

She got up and stormed out of the diner. I sat dumbfounded.

"Shit," I thought, and my heart sank.

Gloria was my best friend, I didn't know what I'd do if she left me.

Nancy got up and said, "I'll go talk to her, Mike. I know what's bothering her. Stay here."

I watched Nancy chase Gloria outside, and they appeared to be animated, gesturing back and forth, then they cried and hugged each other. A car with an Uber sticker in the window pulled up. Gloria got in and left. And I felt sick to my stomach. Why'd I have to say that? I should have left well enough alone.

Nancy came back in explaining how Gloria was upset and had to go.

"That's ok, I'll talk to her later after she had some time to cool off," I said, with no confidence.

"You better, Mike. She's just a little upset, she hasn't cast you out of her life or anything. Do you know why she's so upset?"
"Yes," I answered.

"So why did you say those things?"

"I didn't know it then."

"Oh," she said, kissing me on the cheek then continuing her side hug. "Be good to her, Mike."

"She's my best friend... It's funny, my wife should be my best friend, but I don't even like her very much lately. I still love her, she IS my wife. But we have nothing in common and we realized that we probably never will. Diane has no interests in anything I do and won't let me participate in any of hers."

"It's the same with me and Dave," she said. "We have been arguing for a long time. I want kids but whenever I bring it up to him, he just gets pissed."

"Maybe he just doesn't want kids..."

"I'm getting that feeling, but I told him outright that I wanted a family, before we even got married. I told him that if he didn't want kids then to let me go. Ohhh, Mike!" she started crying again. "You wouldn't believe how excited he got, he even started bragging about baby names. If he doesn't want kids, he is downright diabolical."

"He shouldn't be hitting you... ever!" I said, looking down on her as I ran my fingers through her hair, continuing down her face tracing over her bruises. "He should be protecting you..."

"I know, Mike. But he's my husband... Through sickness and health. He's sick... If he gets help then, well, you know how important I take my marriage vows, Mike."

"Yeah, I guess I do... For better or for worse. I'm struggling with the same things."

"That's why I love you so much, Mike. You're one of the rare good ones."

"If he does try anything again, I'll be right over... but you might want to call the cops. I only got there as fast as I did because there was no traffic. Call the cops on him next time, will you?"

"There's not going to be a next time. If he doesn't get help then we are through."

"Good."

We continued talking for hours and the shock of the night started wearing off and Nancy starting yawning.

"Let's get you to bed," I said.

"I, I don't want to go back home tonight..."

"You're not, your husband gave me your overnight bag, I'm taking you to Gloria's," I said, and she looked surprised.

We drove over to Gloria's and Nancy held my hand the whole way over. By the time we got there, she had fallen asleep, head pressed against the window, but her hand was still firmly gripped to mine.

I released her hand after I parked and I circled around to her side. I opened her car door and her head dangled off the side. The only thing that kept her upright was her seatbelt, and yet she remained fast asleep. I maneuvered her out of the car and she sleepily wrapped her arm across my shoulders, resting her head against my chest. I'm pretty sure she was partially awake but I could tell my carrying her gave her comfort so I just went with it - she was pretty light at 110 lbs. I carried her to Gloria's callbox and leaned in and bumped the call button with my nose. I heard a buzzing sound and after a few rings, nothing. I did it again, this time Gloria picked up on the second ring.

"Who is it?" she asked, annoyed.

"Gloria, I have Nancy here with me, can you buzz me up?"

"Fine," she said angrily.

I carried Nancy to the elevators then down the hallway to her opened condo door. Gloria was hiding behind the door. Once we got in her line of sight and she saw me carrying Nancy her face turned from a scowl to concern.

"Is she OK?"

"Yeah, she's just exhausted," I said, shaking Nancy's overnight bag at Gloria and she took it from me.

"Take her to my guest room... I already changed the bedding."

"Thanks," I said, leaning down to give her my customary kiss on the cheek, to which she pulled away frowning. I laid Nancy down on the bed and took her shoes off of her. It was pretty warm in Gloria's condo so I just covered her with a sheet, fully clothed. Believe me when I say the idea of "helping" her change into her pjs ran through my head and I had to shake my head and leave before I started getting a hardon.

I walked back into Gloria's living room, and Gloria was sitting on her couch.

"Bye," she said, pointing to the door.

"Can we talk, Gloria?" I pled.

"Just leave, Mike," she said, and her face softened when she saw my hurt look yet she kept pointing to the door.

"Does our friendship mean nothing?" I asked, sadly and she didn't waver. "I know why your so upset..."

"What do YOU know?" she asked, with a mixture of sarcasm and curiosity.

"You love me," I said, simply.

"I do NOT love you!" she said, outraged.

"Yes, you do," I said, and she quieted. "I'm in love with you too and I know the pain you are going through."

She looked shocked before she started ugly-crying. She was bawling, sobbing so hard in fact that she start hiccupping and her nose was running. I looked around and saw a box of Kleenex and handed her a few tissues. She wiped her nose and face, then threw herself into my arms.

"I'm married to Diane, Gloria. My marriage is kind of rocky and it would be so easy for me just give it all up for you..."

"I know you, Mike. And, one of the things that made me love you so much was your steadfast nature. You are honorable, you are the only person I know that let's their yeses be yes and noes be no. It hurts so much, knowing your soulmate exists but is out of your reach," she said.

"I love you, you're my best friend. Every time I call you, I feel guilty that I am cheating on her. I can't lose you... fight the pain and be my friend. If we are meant to be then we will be."

She looked at me and pledged to me, "I will. I promise."

"I'm only going to do this once, then we will have to wait to see what the fates decide," I said, and she looked at me questioningly.

I leaned into her and kissed her with all my passion and skill. I felt like fireworks were going off in my head, and I was being drawn into her like we were meant to occupy the same space, like our minds were meant to meld together. Then I pulled away before I couldn't escape the abyss I was falling into.

"Wow!" she beamed. "Why can't we just..." she asked, innocent like.

"Forsaking all others..." I reminded.

"Oh," she said, disappointed but her smile never faded. I left right away because my desire and lust was building.

******

December 27 2017

"Can we go on the Incredicoaster now? Please, uncle Mikey!"

"Remember what happened last time we tried it. You got sick and puked."

"But I'm older now, and I didn't eat a churro yet..."

"How about if we save it for later?" Gloria stepped in. "We can get a Fastpass for it for 3 'O clock, that way if you DO get sick, we won't ruin the whole day by having to go home early, OK?"

Gloria was dressed like Walt Disney puked all over her... but damn she made it look good. Sara (Peanut), Ashley (Monkey) and Gloria were all dressed in matching Disney sweatshirts, as well as Minnie Mouse princess tiara hats (which were tiaras, with mouse ears sticking out the sides that had a lace mesh hanging off the tiara in the back, almost a veil). They even had matching wraparound costume tutus over their jeans. Me? I had on my Mickey Mouse baseball cap and a Captain America T-shirt which satisfied their minimum Disney accoutrement requirements to hang out with them.

"How about if we try out Big Thunder Mountain and if you can handle that THEN we'll go on Screamin..."

"Uncle Miiikey!" Peanut cried, exasperated.

"Oops, sorry 'Incredicoaster', I keep forgetting they changed the name," I said winking at Gloria.

We had a great time, and there were lulls where we let the girls ride alone on the more kiddy rides. They just turned 10 a few weeks before and even though they still enjoyed the slower paced rides, they were at that age where they were challenging their limits and wanted to ride the adult rides.

While we saw them off on Mr. Toad's Adventure, Gloria asked, "What are your plans? What are you going to do about Diane?"

"Divorce..."

"Well duh," she said exasperated, "I mean, you're not going to just let her get away with that shit, are you?"

I was kind of surprised at her anger, I mean I knew I was angry but I didn't know where the anger on her part was coming from. I never heard her say 'shit' before unless she was surprised by something painful like stubbing a toe and it was out of character for her. I stared at her and she recognized my questioning.

"Sorry, it's just that when you two were 'on a break,'" she said imitating Ross from Friends by making air quotes as she said it, "She insisted that she had no interest in you and I asked her if she would mind if I asked you out sometime. She said OK and even gave me your phone number... I guess I waited too long... before I knew it you two were engaged... I always thought she loved you as being the reason, but now I look back and I see it more diabolical. She couldn't even let me be happy."

"I have gotten to know Diane pretty well over the years and her behavior has always been kind of selfish but she's never been out and out evil. I think there is more to this story than her betrayal..." I said sadly. "Unfortunately, it won't excuse her behavior, but maybe it will help us forgive her, later."

"OK, fine... You haven't answered me though," she said staring at me.

"Yes, I do have something in the works... I have been doing my homework over the years and unfortunately what I'm going to do will put a 'strain' on different relationships in the family... What I'm going to do will seem vindictive, but I'm not going to do anything out of vengeance. If I explained my plan, you wouldn't believe it. It could change how you feel about me. If you really do love me, you'll have to trust me. I'm not going to try to destroy your family, but it will seem like it."

*******

Early January 2018 - Before the filing of the petition for Divorce.

The idea of sleeping in the same bed as Gloria and NOT having sex with her seemed like a great idea at the time, but after a week we found ourselves rubbing against each other in a torturous bed dance. After a week, I started sleeping in the guest room and a week later I let her know that I was moving into my own place.

"Baby, you know I love you, but that's just the problem, I can't resist you," I pled.

"I don't understand why you can't stay in the guest room..." she cried.

"Baby, you just don't know how fucking attractive you are, do you? Just seeing you in a robe gets me so hard, it's all I can do just to run into the bathroom to jerk-off... I can't live like that, and unfortunately California has a six-month waiting period from the time I file until I'm granted a divorce. I can't live like that for six months and neither can you..." I said, pulling her to me, kissing her.

"OK..." she pouted.

"We'll still see each other every day, we'll just have to wait until the divorce is finalized before I can live with you, OK?"

"OK!" she said, trying to look mad, but she wore a huge grin while she did.

The first court date was coming up and Gloria insisted on coming with me for moral support.

"Are you prepared for court? What are you going to say to Diane when you see her?"

"Yes, I've been over everything with my lawyer and we have a good game plan. As far as Diane... I doubt I'll say anything to her directly."

I grabbed my last suitcase and loaded it in my SUV.

"I'll be staying in the studio in my gym until I find a place. You can call me anytime on my cell phone or you can call the gym's office, either way, I'll get back to you right away."

"You're still going to let me cook for you right?" she asked.

"Baby, I'll probably be over here every night. I just won't be sleeping here... OK?"

"OK," she smiled again.

***

Three days after the initial divorce filing

I showed up for court dressed in one of my few suits. I rarely needed a formal business look even when running my partnership, so I only owned 3 suits and a TUX that Diane insisted I buy that I only wore the one time.

I waited in the court for my case to be called, my lawyer was outside talking to another client on his cell phone. I listened to case after case being called and had a feeling our case would be called last after an hour of waiting. Some of the cases were really interesting, like the woman who was divorcing her husband after he cheated on her with her identical twin. Apparently, they were addicted to Meth and both sisters were pregnant with his babies.

"How does that even happen?" I thought

It looked like Diane wasn't going to show up but when our case was called, a man I didn't recognize, and I guessed must have been one of her lawyers, said that Diane was outside and she would be right in.

Gloria wasn't able to come with me this time, she had some emergency to deal with at work and sent her apologies.

When Diane came in finally, she looked terrible. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she was on something. She wasn't drunk, I'd seen her drunk many times, but she was definitely under the influence of something. Diane only looked my way once and looked embarrassed and made it a point not to look at me the whole time she was there.

There wasn't a whole lot of dialogue between me, Diane or the judge. The judge simply asked her if she read the proposal and she answered that she had. He then asked her if she was ready to sign, and she said she was, and she then proceeded to sign the paperwork. Thus began my six month purgatory.

The judge then had to remind her of her obligation to return her engagement ring to me, to which she turned toward me, looking at the floor the whole time and handed me the ring.

"Mrs. Diane Buchanan?" a man asked and she turned toward him as he handed her a manila envelope. "You've been served," he said, quickly leaving before the judge could react.

That's when she finally looked at me, "What's this?" she asked.

"Read it," I said, turning my back on her, and as I walked toward the exit. I turned my head back and said, "You might want, Daddy, to take a look at that..."

***

"How could you?" Gloria cried. "You'll ruin us!"

My plan worked flawlessly, Ted and Diane were so consumed by greed that they didn't realize they were signing away their companies competitive advantage. If she would have just given me the twenty million in marital assets, but she was so quick to sign the paper when she realised I was giving her everything that she failed to notice that I listed my patents as my intellectual property. I think her lawyers discounted them when they noted I only got 1 dollar a year in income from them.

"I told you, I had a plan... I said it would seem vengeful, but in the end, you would see that I did the right thing... if only you would have some faith in me," I said, sadly.

"If you pull those patents, it will bankrupt us! How is THAT, the right thing?"

"There are a lot more things going on behind the scenes that, you don't know about yet... and for good reason..."

"What are you talking about? Are you doing something illegal?"

"No! I'm not, but there is someone close to you that is and I'm trying to protect you..."

"I - just can't see - how bankrupting my family is good... Did you know that my father told me that he would have to shut down Meals for Angels (Ted's charity)."

"Yeah well, you and I both know that Meals for Angels is completely self-sufficient and doesn't need your father's money. If he shut it down, it would be completely out of spite."

"Mom has been crying nonstop all day! How could you do that to her?"

"I'm not..." I tried to get out before the phone went dead.

Gloria wouldn't take my calls or my texts after that. This was the worst-case scenario, but I knew what I had to do.

****

"Hey, Mike. How's it going?"

"Hey, Jake. Not too bad, I'm hanging in there."

"Listen... If Beth learns that I'm talking to you..."

"OK, I'll keep this call short," I declared. "Listen, you're a CPA and still in good graces with Diane. For whatever reason, the board has decided to keep her on as CEO. But I know for sure there are some shady things going on there. I need you to audit the company, and look for any illegal stock manipulations... When you find it, you need to either convince Ted to do the right thing or..."

"How am I going to do that, I don't work for them?" Jake asked.

"Tell them that you suspect that I manipulate the books somehow and..."

"Fine," he interrupted, "I'll see what I can do... Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it bad?"

"It's REAL bad."

"OK, I don't know if Diane will listen to me but I'll try."

****

By mid-February, news got out that Solar Energy and Compliance Inc (SEAC) no longer had patent rights to their best selling product of specialized solar panels, and their stock prices tanked. The board had an emergency meeting and pulled me in to discuss some sort of compromise to save the company. The way things were going, they put too much of their focus on the Solar panels and made too many commitments. Their business used to focus on advisement, but since Diane took over as CEO, they shifted their focus from intel to straight retail - selling solar panels.

It wasn't a completely horrible idea at the time, who knew Donald Trump was going to get elected President and put tariffs on China and practically ruin the solar panel industry? If they hadn't put all their eggs in one basket, they could have easily weathered the storm. But with all of the other solar panel businesses dumping their inventory as they went bankrupt, and prices on new panels gone through the roof, the only advantage SEAC had left was their superior panels that they manufactured in Mexico rather than China, but without use of the patents, they could no longer supply the panels they already sold.

I walked into the stark room, to a bunch of grim faces.

"Good morning gentlemen," I started, and I looked around and didn't see Diane anywhere.

The guy leading the meeting informed me that they felt the meeting would be more productive if she wasn't there. I chuckled inwardly.

"What's this all about?" I asked. I had an idea but I wanted them to get the ball rolling.

"Let me cut to the chase," Bob Stipe, the board director said. "We know things are bad with you and Diane, but you're killing us Mike."

I didn't care much for his familiarity, he never gave me the time of day before today. But I recognized it as a negotiating tactic and I tried to stifle my ire.

"Sorry Bob, but she left me no choice, the main patent alone, has gotten offers ranging from 50 to 100 million dollars. Unless you are talking about bidding on it them, I don't know what I can do for you."

"We don't have the cash, and our creditors aren't willing to give us the capital. If we were given enough time to meet our commitments, we might be able to forgo bankruptcy."

"I'll tell you what, Bob, I'll let you lease the patent for 6 months..."

"What's it going to cost?"

"Two million up front, and I'll loan you the eight, due at the end of the six months. I think that will give you enough time to meet your obligations and if you used your time wisely you could have your plant working day and night for six months, stocking up on your supply..."

"That's extortion!"

"Extortion? Bob, that's just good business! Besides I don't owe you anything!"

"Alright, we'll take it to a vote..." "Aye" ... "Aye" they all said almost in unison, one guy muttered, "What choice do we have?"

"OK, Mike. It looks like you got yourself a deal..."

"Great, I have a contract ready right here," I said, slapping it on the table. "Sign it, cut me a check and you're back in business."

****

Mid-March 2018

Gloria still hadn't spoken to me in more than a month, and I was pretty depressed. When I got a surprise email from Diane, requesting I come to one of her counseling sessions. She explained to me that Dave got her hooked on some hard drugs and she just got out of rehab. She had to go to counseling while she was at the facility and she continued to see a shrink after she got out.
Her shrink suggested that I participate in some of her sessions to expedite her recovery. I both hated and loved Diane and reluctantly decided why not? If it got bad I could just cut and run, I certainly didn't owe her anything.

"Why am I here Diane?" I asked, annoyed.

"My therapist insists that I have unresolved issues with you and that if I'm ever going to be healthy again then I needed to at least talk to you to work through them."

I was sitting on a folding chair in a office that looked like it was used for group therapy sessions than anything else. Diane's psychologist, Mary Beauford, was sitting in between us and trying not to look bored. Diane was sitting across from me, looking fidgety as she bounced her knee up and down, squirming in her chair.

"You are looking better than the last time I saw you... so what do you want me to say?"

"My therapist suggested that I write down all the questions I needed to ask you in order to move on."

I looked over at the therapist questioningly.

"Yes, Michael, we..."

"Mike. My name is Mike, not Michael. I get that you are trying to be formal and establish some sort of authority by using my 'proper' name. But my birth certificate says Mike not Michael, so the proper name to use is Mike and the polite thing to do would have been to ask me what I liked to be called."

"I, I see. Well I do apologize..."

"Did you READ her questions beforehand?" I asked, concerned.

The therapist looked concerned as if I caught her in a faux pas and not a major breach of protocol.

"I, I, I had her read me the questions beforehand, yes."

"My question was, did YOU read her questions that she has on her sheet?"

"Well no, as her psychologist there has to be some level of trust."

"Unless you read and approved each question before we start, I'm out of her."

"Arrrgh, Fine!" Diane huffed, handing the psychologist her legal pad of questions.

As Mary looked over the list of questions, her brow furrowed and she said, "Diane, we talked about this..."

"You know what, let's just get this over with!" I yelled, no longer hiding my annoyance.

Mary handed the questions back to Diane, saying, "You aren't asking him those questions, she said pointing out a few questions on the sheet."

"Fine," Diane said, and she began her questions. "Why did you marry me?"

"That's a loaded question Diane, but the simple answer was, that I was in love with you and wanted to start a family with you. Why did you marry me?"

"I'm asking the questions," she said.

"I'm out of here!" I exclaimed, frustrated seeing this as a waste of my time.

"Wait!" Mary tried to take control of the situation. "Diane, I don't think he is being unreasonable by asking you the same questions you asked him. Remember what we talked about?"

"Sorry, you are right, I need to learn to be empathetic, to put myself into someone else's shoes."

"And?"

"And, I should never do anything to someone that I wouldn't want done to myself... but what's that got to do with..."

"It applies to questions also, don't ask him anything you aren't willing to answer yourself if asked of you..."

"Fine. I, I guess I married you because, you were a good guy... You were the best lover I ever had and I trusted you... and it didn't hurt that my parents absolutely adored you."

I looked at her a little pissed, not asking the obvious follow up questions like, "You didn't love me when you married me?" etc. Even Marry seemed very surprised by her answers.

"Next!" I demanded.

"You always seemed like such a standup guy, so when you ripped me off it surprised me..." she began.

"Diane! We talked about this. No leading questions," Marry corrected.

"Why did you leave me destitute?" she asked.

"Diane!"

"No, that's fine, I'll answer that," I said, looking at Diane pitifully. "I didn't leave you destitute and you know it. You had over fifty million in assets when I left the marriage and I took none of your money. Let me remind you that it was you that falsely claimed that the prenup was still in effect. If you hadn't ripped me off, I would have had to share my assets along with yours. And if you did you would have owned half of my partnership. You got greedy... So, to answer your question, I didn't rip you off, YOU did. If you want someone to blame, blame Karma."

"But, you're almost a billionaire now! And I have nothing... I'm renting an apartment out of Long Beach for God's sake! My father won't have anything to do with me and I'm living off of whatever is left of my assets after Dave stole what he could from me."

"Diane! We agreed to stick to a question and answer format only..."

"It's ok Doc!" I said. "I'm not a billionaire first of all, but you are right I have done very well for myself. And, if you had ANY faith in me whatsoever, you'd have been sharing in my successes. But it was you that threw it all away. It was you that put your faith in someone that you knew was not only not good for you but evil to boot. You were a fool!"

Recently it was announced that Henry and My company was being sold for close to 2 billion dollars, (three years in the works). The deal wouldn't be effective until the end of the year but after taxes I'd have a net worth of a half a billion dollars. If not for the prenup, I would have had to split the profits with Diane. I had to get her dad to believe that they were getting one over on me so they wouldn't look too closely at my partnership and my intellectual properties and go after them. I used their greed and paranoia against them.

"You believed that by deceiving the court about our cancelled prenup, you'd walk away with all of our marital assets. I admit that I did know all along that I was going make my own fortune but it was supposed to be OUR fortune. You know that you only had ten million dollars left over in your trust when we got married?"

"N, no, you know I never pay attention to those kinds of things. That's why I put you in charge of our finances."

"That's funny how you use the word OUR finances, but when it came time to divorce me it was YOUR finances... But it's a good thing I was in charge of OUR finances, because while we were married, I put you on a budget, took control of your spending, and increased your ten-million-dollar fortune to the fifty million that it was when we got divorced. In essence, I kept you from bankrupting US and earned you forty million more dollars... Where's my share of that money Diane?"

"It's not my fault you got greedy, and it's not my fault you lost all of your money after the separation. You're a fucking business major for god's sake, you know how to invest your money and put yourself on a budget. But let's face facts Diane: YOU lost your money not me. I didn't deceive you either, I listed my division of shares in my partnership with Henry in the divorce degree with special language stating that YOU would not seek any remediation on the sale of my partnership after the divorce. YOU signed the paperwork, Diane. You were not only supposed to review it but your lawyer was supposed to go over it with you before you signed. And yet here we are. You as usual, not taking any responsibilities for your actions.

"I wasn't responsible to take care of you after we separated. You act like I somehow sabotaged your investments. Your stocks were up when we divided our assets, and you kept the short-term risky investments way too long. Why didn't you go see a financial advisor or something? If you had, maybe you wouldn't be broke right now."

Diane looked frustrated and angry and responded with "Fine! Why did you let Dave hit me then?"

"What? I LET Dave hit you? You are talking about the time after you got caught cheating and ran off to Hawaii with Dave?" I asked, incredulously and she nodded. "How would I prevent Dave from hitting you when you were hiding from me across the ocean? Did you expect me to follow your cheating ass to Hawaii while you fucked your new lover in our hotel suite?"

I looked at Mary, but she looked at me shocked, "I didn't know that's what she did, she gave me a different impression..."

"She's a liar. Yeah, I know," I said then turned to address Diane. "Hurry up and finish your questions. My patience is wearing thin."

"Why'd you get me fired?" she asked, meekly knowing it was a stupid question.

"I? Got YOU fired? No, no honey, that was all you. I wasn't a part of the board of directors that fired you. I think, it was the smartest decision they ever made. If your own personal financial mess is any indication of how you run a company..."

After the board met with me, I was surprised to find out from my inside man, Jake, that they fired Diane a week after I met with the board.

"But I was doing great! The company went from being stagnant when I came on board to profitable..."

"Yeah, that's true, no thanks to you. Or did you forget that ALL of your great ideas came from me? You were nothing but Christian to my Cyrano, all you did was relay my ideas like a puppet. Once I cut ties with you, you were nothing but an impotent wooden doll. Once it got out what you were doing in your personal life, the board lost all faith in you.

"If you want to get out of the mess you are in now. You need to stop blaming others, stop believing you can do anything you want and start recognizing your weaknesses. I pity you Diane. I wish I could have stopped you from digging the hole that you are in now. After all, you, at one time, saved me from a pit of despair when my mother died. I think you took advantage of that and abused it..." she started crying.

"I..." she started as if to defend herself, then she thought better of it. "I'm sorry."

She started crying once again, and I got up to leave since she stopped asking questions. Before I got to the door, I turned back to her.

"I loved you, was loyal to you despite opportunities to betray our marriage. I was smart enough to do it without you ever finding out. The thing is, I did it for ME. I did it so I could hold my head high.

"Look at you. Pitiable, yes. I don't hate you Diane, but I wish that someday you get over yourself and start to learn to love others. If you had, you would've loved yourself too and wouldn't have self-destructed. If you had maybe you could have held your head high, too."

****

April 2018

"Thanks for meeting with me, Nance," I said sadly.

She gave me a brief hug and sat down across from me.

"You know I love you, right?" She asked.

"Yeah, I do."

"Will you please tell me what's going on? As much as I would like to run off into the sunset with you, I would never betray Gloria."

Nancy had started her divorce to Dave about the same time I started mine with Diane, so we were both still waiting the six months to be over with. She already had judgements on the division of assets, and Dave not only lost half of his savings, 401K, but he also had to pay five thousand a month in alimony. He hadn't been seen or heard from in months, but his checks kept coming. People thought he might've been whacked, but I knew exactly where he was. I had people keeping tabs on him since I started my divorce. I followed the creed, "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer."

"Well, she DID break it off with me... But I haven't given up on her just yet."

"What does she think you did? She won't tell me. You would've had to do something horrible for her to give up on you, you two are perfect for each other," she said.

"I know. And what I'm doing makes me look bad, but I'm keeping her in the dark for her own good. You see, her Dad is doing some very bad and illegal things and if she finds out and doesn't report him or even worse finds out and tries to help him... The people watching him might hold her culpable. I can't take that chance. Gloria believes I am hurting her mother and the rest of her family, so I understand why she has blinders on. Hopefully, she'll forgive me when the truth comes out."

"I can't get in between the two of you, promise me you'll work it out so we can a least be friends..."

"I can't make that promise, I don't have any claim on her and if she starts seeing other men... It'll feel like a betrayal. I doubt I could handle that as well as I did with Diane. What I feel for her makes what I felt for Diane - like puppy love in comparison."

"Don't take too long, Mike. She's really hurting right now."

"It'll all be over with, soon. I promise."

****

July 2018

SEAC stock prices dropped from a high of $55 a share to a low of $0.44, even though they recovered most of their sales commitments, their outlook for the future wasn't bright and the stock market didn't want anything to do with them.

The family still owned a few other smaller businesses on the side so they still had some income coming in, but two fast food franchises and a furniture store doesn't generate enough income to stay in Bel Air.

On the bright side, my divorce was finalized the day before, so I had a blip of happiness come my way. But today was the day of confrontation, and I dreaded it.

"Hello, Jake? Yeah, it's time. I'll text you the address where we can meet. Be sure that Maurine is there, will you? Thank you, Jake."

I booked a small conference room at a Marriott and waited. It was ten past twelve and I was worried they wouldn't show up. But, eleven past the hour the whole family seemed to pour in. In the conference with me was two guys in suits and my lawyer.

Diane and Gloria gave me the evil eye. Ted looked like death warmed over, and Beth and Maurine both looked sad. They all looked like they were going to give me an intervention, or a lynching I wasn't sure, but when I was through, I could finally unburden myself once more.

"Please, have a seat," I gestured to some seats across the conference table from me and my lawyer. The two men in suits remained standing.

Maurine suddenly burst out in despair, "Tell me it isn't true Mike, you're supposed to be my son, I thought I knew you."

"Mom..." I tried to say.

"You have NO RIGHT to call her that!" Gloria screamed.

"Remember what I told you before this all started Gloria? Have faith in me and in the end, you'll see that I did the right thing... I'm sorry you lost faith, but now's the time for you to sit DOWN and LISTEN."

She quickly sat down and I continued, "Mom, I'm sorry I had to deceive you, but try as I might I couldn't get him to stop."

"What are you talking about, Mike?"

"These gentlemen are from the Securities and Exchange Commission. They are federal officers and are here to ... well go ahead John (one of the guys in the suits)."

"Theodore Wisniewski, you are under arrest! Anything you say..." he said continuing to read him his Miranda rights.

"What's this all about, Mike?" Mom asked.

"I'm sorry, Mom. But, Ted here has a legal obligation to inform his stockholders about any significant selling of stock in his company. He not only tried liquidating his assets before things got bad but he also took out loans on your house in Bel Air and his three other business... He was cheating on you Maurine, and planning to take off with all of your money leaving you with nothing.

He hired Diane, to manipulate the stock prices and generate interest from investors. News, good or bad, moves stocks. You need buyers to sell your stocks and Ted wanted the volatility that Diane was supposed to create as a catalyst to sell his shares of his company secretly.

What he didn't anticipate was that I would drive the price of the stock to all time highs which kept him from selling completely for years. After the divorce he tried his best to sell his stock as fast as he could; unfortunately, the stock took a nosedive before he could make good on his plan and he took a huge loss."

Maurine turned to a handcuffed Ted and said, "Is this true, Ted?" to which he just shrugged.

"It's all here," I told Maurine, while patting a box of evidence. "Don't worry Maurine, Jake and I got the feds involved before he could transfer his money overseas, his money is frozen until all of this is sorted out."

"OKay... but what about my company?" she asked.

"That's right. YOUR company, right?" I said chuckling. "Why'd you do it Maurine?"

"What? I didn't do anything!"

"Ahh but you did. You see I did my research on you Maurine, and it turns out that this company was founded by YOU. You're the one with the engineering degree, you're the brains behind Ted's sucess. Ummm, what WAS he good for anyway?"

"He always had a way with words, so I let him do the talking."

"You let the prisoners run the prison Maurine... You should have nipped this in the bud years ago, but you fell asleep. You grew comfortable being a great mom and you were happy to let others take control..."

Maurine was sobbing by this time, and Gloria, Diane and Beth had shocked looks on their faces and remained silent.

"I am now a majority stakeholder in SEAC, you see while Ted was selling, I was buying..."

"You bastard!" Gloria yelled, but I ignored her.

Maurine however read me like a book, there was no fooling her. "So..." she began.

"I'll sell it all back to you for the price I bought it."

"The company is worthless without your patents, I would need time to reorganize..." she began.

I pulled out a stapled stack of papers, "Sign here... I'm selling you my patents for a dollar each on the condition that you take control of your company."

"I knew it!" she exclaimed, rushing to my side of the table and hugging me. "I just knew it."

"I told you before, Mom. You will always be my mother to me..." I said, embracing her. "I gotta go..." I said, gently pulling away from her and looking toward Gloria. "I just wished that..."

"I know, son. But we all make mistakes."

"I love you mom," I said, kissing her on the cheek and rushing out of the room before my emotions overwhelmed me again - boy don't cry, right?

...

Epilogue

The next day, I was loading the last box of my stuff into my SUV. I had been living in the studio above my gym for the past six months, never bothering to get a place. There was a sign out front saying "Under New Management", I gave my gym to Big George, and between his job at the warehouse and the income from the gym, he would finally be able to afford a bigger place for his family, (his wife was pregnant with their third child).

"Soooo, were you going to just take off and not look back?"

I turned, and was surprised to see Gloria standing there.

"Gloria! It's good to see you..."

"Were you at least going to let us apologize?"

"I'm just moving my stuff into storage, I'm not running away."

"It sure looks it to me," she said, sadly. "After the way we treated you..."

"I don't blame you. After all, I did let it look like I was screwing over your family."

"I should've had faith in you. You did warn me."

"Yeah," I said simply.

"Forgive me and I promise you I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

I looked at her and smiled, "How many guys did you sleep with?"

"None! I just couldn't... there was something nagging at me the whole time telling me I was betraying you. I guess it sabotaged my love life because even though I was pissed at you, I couldn't even get myself to look at another man..."

"Good!" I exclaimed, curtly. "Take this!" I said simply, pulling the engagement ring out, "It was made for you."

"You mean?"

"Yeah, Baby, I've been dragging my feet waiting for you to get your ass over here. I let Mom know what I was doing hoping you'd get a clue... If I waited any longer, I was going to come get you!" I said.

Gloria burst out crying.

"After we move my stuff into storage, we are going on a trip... OK? Umm, that is after we pick up Nancy..."

She nodded her head, flinging her tear drops at me.

"We'll get married when we get back," I declared.

"Whatever you want, Baby," she smiled, kissing me passionately. "Baby? You know I'll go with you anywhere, but do you mind telling me where we are going?"
I handed her a manila envelope and she looked through the pictures and documents.

"Who is she?" she asked, concerned.

"Apparently, she's my niece. She's living in foster care up in Seattle. The PI I hired years ago finally found my sister through DNA. He got the idea to search public Ancestry sites to see if he could find close relatives matching my DNA profile, and surprise! They got a hit. It turns out my sister ran away with an abusive drummer. She got pregnant and he left her to fend for herself in Seattle. She died a few years ago of Hep C. I'm going up there to get my niece and bring her home..." I said, grabbing her hands. "You know how important family is to me."

"I know."

"I'm going to have my sister's body flown back to be buried next to my mother," I said, "It's time to bring ALL of my family together... And start a new one," I said, mischievously grabbing her butt.

"Does your niece know about you?"

"Yes, she didn't know my name or how to contact me, but she knew she had an uncle... she has a picture of me and my sister that Sis gave her. I called her on the phone and she is excited to meet me. I talked with social services and they said they'd have the paperwork ready for me by the time I got there... You ready to be an instant mom?"

"Yes! But, I want at least five... Not counting Nancy's," she clarified.

"OK, Baby... Let's take them one at a time..." I said, concerned, but she just continued grinning. "At least we'll be able to afford them," I muttered.

"Oh... Babe. Diane asked me to ask you if you know what happened to Dave, no one has seen or heard from him in months..." she looked at me concerned, when I frowned. "It's not what you think... she's been trying to get her act together and part of her process is to confront..."

"Yeah, I know I went through it with her a few months ago."

"She wanted to tell me to tell you that she is sorry. She had no right to blame you for anything. And she is working on accepting personal responsibility for her actions."

"That's good, and I hope she does," I said sincerely. "Dave is in jail, last time I checked. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I believe that, more than I believe in Karma. Dave had been tempting fate for a long time. When the police heard about him getting Diane hooked on drugs, they started watching him. He was caught in a sting operation, propositioning an underaged girl online that turned out to be an undercover cop. I guess the thrill of fucking married women just didn't do it for him anymore. So, he chased after the wrong prey. Now, I'm sure he's getting all of the illicit sex he wants, as someone's bitch," I said, "It's sad, really. All that hurt and pain, it's almost like an entity that has to hop from one person to another..."

Gloria hit me on the arm, "OK, Mr. Philosopher. Enough pondering about Dave. He made his bed, let him lay in it. We have stuff to move, people to see and places to go... Together... Let's bring my niece home," she said with a twinkle in her eye.