The smile became real, but it was still a lame smile, and I shrugged. "Just a bit, but I'm good, okay? Go hunting. It appears to be a target rich environment."
She kissed me on the cheek, and then headed out to mingle. She wasn't wrong, though. I was born on the wrong side of the bed, and life has pretty much kept me waking up there. My brother Mike tells me that when I relax, I'm actually a pretty nice guy to be around. I keep telling him that I really don't know how to relax socially, and seldom have.
I certainly wasn't relaxed at the moment. Parties make me twitchy at best, even when I'm not specifically looking for potential trouble. Alcohol helps, though, and as long as I moderate my intake, it's almost as good as meditation as a tool to keep me away from the edge. So, I took my drink and worked my way into a corner, put my mind in neutral, and just started watching people. It's a neat trick that has come in handy in a lot of situations in my life, and it keeps me from getting bored. And so, I settled into observation mode, and my mind drifted as my eyes took in the room.
That lasted for about thirty seconds. It appeared as if Natalie wasn't the only woman trolling tonight. After the third one approached and had a brief conversation, I concluded that the light wasn't bright enough where I was standing, which is probably why they had come over. Once they were close though, I could feel them tense up a bit, and all three had quickly made excuses and left within a few minutes. The last, however, a spectacular looking woman who was probably a decade older than my forty-nine years and sporting a substantial wedding ring had looked back over her shoulder at me as she walked away, an invitation in her smile. I smiled back but had no intention of following that anywhere. Wedding rings are a deal-killer for me. Besides, I just wasn't in the mood, and hadn't been for almost three years.
My first wife, Gina Montoya, married me at nineteen, just after I finished my first few rounds of training in the Marines. We were divorced a few years later when I learned she was shacking up with her old boyfriend from high school while I was helping defend Kuwait for President George H. W.
I married again more than a decade later, this time to a midwestern girl from Ohio I met between tours while fighting Bush two's war. Her name was Madeleine Maitland, 'Maddy' to her friends, and she was Natalie's sister. There weren't fireworks, but we enjoyed each other's company, and eventually loved each other. I thought it was enough, but apparently it wasn't. The sex was good, and there was plenty of it when I wasn't deployed. She didn't want children, but because of the surgical differences between her going under the knife and me, I was the one who got snipped, and truthfully, I was fine with that.
I had left the Corps and was working civil service when I discovered she was cheating on me with her big-dicked boss and that she was one of the party favors of choice at all of the firm's get-togethers. Very long story short, I discovered this when she stumbled home one night after a business dinner.
She claimed to not be feeling well and walked, somewhat gingerly, up the stairs to the shower, and then into bed. When I came to bed two hours later, she was sound asleep, but her nightgown was up and the covers were down, and both her asshole and cunt were red, bruised, gaping open, and despite the shower, still leaking cum that wasn't mine.
I decided I wanted more information before I burned the world down, so three weekends later, while I was supposedly out of town, I walked into a pool party where my wife and three of her work friends were entertaining thirty or so male co-workers and clients. I mean, unless you are into that kind of thing (I'm not), it's disconcerting as hell to see your wife being filled out like an application by three guys who are stretching each hole to cartoonish dimensions. I really didn't know a human jaw could open that wide.
They even shot some of their own video, the highlight of which was the girls each placing their wedding ring sets on a plate, where a number of big dicks poured cum all over them, orally coaxed out by the girls themselves. Then the girls, including my loving wife, each delivered an individual, heartfelt message of love and respect to their husbands while slurping cum from the plate. Finally, they scooped up the cum-covered rings into their mouths, sucked them clean, and then spit the rings out onto the ground like sunflower husks after extracting the seed.
That actually arrived on my phone from the firm's primary e-mail account (what idiot thought that was a good idea?) as I was pulling up to the party. Later, Maddy retrieved her wedding ring, but to the best of my knowledge never got her engagement ring back.
I got angry, and I wanted to kill them all. Seriously, I actually had my MP7A2 cocked, locked, and loaded, with spare mags in my suit jacket and pants pockets when I came to my senses. Lucky for me, my hot-angry phase is usually very short-lived. Unlucky for them, it is always followed by a cold-angry phase that can last for a very, very long time.
So instead of life without parole, I got really good video and photographs, and sued the firm and the individuals involved into the dirt, got sixteen of them fired, and burned down thirteen marriages other than my own. I know, kind of an asshole thing to do, but as I said, I was angry. Nice goes on vacation when I'm angry.
My wife of course said all of the inane, stupid things cheaters say, particularly slut cheaters. She insisted that it hadn't meant anything, and that she didn't want a divorce. However, my mother, and a few other people I've admired over the years all had a similar saying that I've always taken to heart: Watch what they do, not what they say. Madelaine's actions were clear and asking her where her engagement ring was usually shut her up.
There was a month to go before the divorce was final when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. To say I was conflicted would have been an understatement. But as I've said, being an asshole comes easy to me, and I do work hard at trying not to be one all the time, even when angry. So, I stopped the divorce and stayed with her for almost a year, through all of the treatments and sickness and sadness.
She would occasionally bring up what had happened and try and tell me how much she was sorry, and how it had never happened before that time, yaada yaada yaada. I listened and didn't argue. I didn't say much of anything. There was no point. I didn't believe her, at least most of the time, and she knew it. But it didn't matter. We both knew where we were headed.
Her sister Natalie and I got close during this period, at least as close as I let anyone get that isn't my brother. She loved her sister, but hated what she had done, and she tried to be the voice of reason in the situation. Sometimes she would really piss me off, but she never backed down, and she never blamed me for any of it. I came to love and appreciate her. Sometimes I wished she was the one I had met and married.
At the end, I moved Maddy home into our bed, because why not. We had a nurse with us who took care of her medical needs and helped me with the other stuff. It was better for her, and that was better for me. We kept her doped up for the pain, but she had lucid periods.
During one of these, she told me that she didn't want my forgiveness. She said that she didn't deserve it, to which I agreed but didn't say. The only thing she regretted about her life she said was what she had done to our marriage, and to me, and she felt the need to carry that shame with her into death.
I kissed her and told her I loved her, and that I forgave her anyway. She cried, more than she had after it had happened. She was skeleton-thin and weak, but we made love, gently and carefully, because she was insistent that she wanted to be mine one last time. Two weeks later, she was dead, and I can honestly say that the entire ordeal probably did more to fuck up my head than over twenty-five years of combat operations in some of the shittiest shitholes the world can offer.
