Facets of Love

Facets of Love

Chapter 6

-

Robert Ryan Jones

December 2019

May left me.

I had trouble coming to grips with that simple fact. Nobody had ever left me before. The few romantic interests I had before meeting Mary all ended when I broke it off with the girl. I guess you could say that my parents left me when they died, but they didn't abandon me on purpose.

May was the first person to say, "I don't want to be with you anymore."

It shouldn't have bothered me. I was planning on doing the same thing to her. May leaving should have lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. When she walked out of my hotel room with suitcase in hand, I should have breathed an enormous sigh of relief and praised the gods of good fortune that I didn't have to endure a long, drawn-out bout of crying, pleading, and cursing.

May didn't throw anything at me. She didn't beg for a second chance. She didn't say how much she hated my guts but still ask to keep one of my shirts.

She just left...

Right after she said she loved me.

It rested heavily on my brain for the next several weeks. I was mostly okay when Mary was with me, and Martha occupied my body when Mary went to Gainesville. But when I went back to Oklas that December and May didn't magically appear - as if she never said goodbye and everything was back to normal - well, Manny said it best.

"Mr. Ryan, you've been a grumpy, miserable son-of-a-bitch all week. You have got to get over her. Get on your buckboard, put your wife and son by your side, point the horses west, and don't look back. Let Doc May disappear in your trail dust."

Okay, I had no intention of going west, but the old man's point was clear. I needed to move on with my life. Follow my plan. And since May was no longer a factor, the next step was dealing with the Martha issue.

December was the wrong time to tell Mary I was cheating on her with her mother. There is probably no right time, but I didn't want to ruin Christmas for the entire family, so I decided to wait until January. I also didn't want Martha involved in our initial discussion. I needed to get Mary by herself for at least one night so we could go through whatever needed to be done without outside interference.

The logical place to do that was in Gainesville, leaving Martha and Robbie at home. I'd drive up there Saturday afternoon, arriving just after her last class of the day. We'd go out to dinner and then get a hotel room. After confessing to my sins, we'd do whatever we needed to work out the rest of our lives together. That would be my only stipulation. We could stay in Tampa, move to another state, or take a rocket ship to Mars. As long as we stayed together, I would be happy.

-

January 2020

Mary Spencer Jones

That holiday season was the best of my life. It was Robbie's second Christmas but the first he actually appreciated. There's nothing more fun than watching a one-year-old crawl under the tree while two dozen relatives placed bets on which ornament he'd break first.

My only regret was that Gloria couldn't be there. I invited her, but she graciously declined. Probably because so much family love would overwhelm her, make her cry in front of total strangers. Or maybe she didn't want to sleep in the same house as me but not in the same bed. She obviously knew I had a husband but hearing about him and seeing me snuggled up against his chest as we sat on the couch and watched "White Christmas" for the umpteenth time might have been too much.

A different person drove up to Gainesville that January. A year earlier, when I first made the trip, I was a scared teenager with little confidence and no friends. This time, I looked forward to the trip. Excited to get back to school and ravenous for more time with Gloria.

-

Dr. Martha Weaver Spencer

I was not at all pleased with Robert meeting Mary in Gainesville.

I didn't mind taking care of Robbie by myself. I looked forward to it. I got a lot more attention from the youngster when his father wasn't around.

And there certainly wasn't anything wrong with a man driving two hours for the privilege of spending time with his wife. If he was a client, I would highly encourage it. But he wasn't my client. He was my lover. A part time paramour who I only got one day a week and one weekend a month. His decision to abandon me that Saturday not only decreased my monthly allotment of sexual gratification by 20%, it also spoke volumes about our relationship.

It was an obvious first step in his plan to be rid of me. He wasn't going to Gainesville for a booty call. He was sending me a message.

"You're okay in a pinch, but I'd much rather be with Mary."

Saturday night in Gainesville would eventually turn into Friday and Saturday night.

"Let grandma take care of Robbie while we play," he'd tell Mary.

After that, he'd take away our Sunday afternoons together.

"Martha can take Robbie grocery shopping while we run naked through the house and do it in a different room every week."

Moving away would be the final step. They wouldn't move far because they needed my babysitting services. But they'd move. I knew this because I'd caught Robert Googling realtors.

I thought about calling Mary. Warning her of what Robert was up to, but I didn't. For all I knew, she might be a co-conspirator in this mutiny. And I wasn't really worried. I saw this coming months ago and had taken certain precautions.

Let's just say I had an ace in the hole.

-

Robert Ryan Jones

It's all my fault.

I had everything a man could possibly want, and I fucked it up. Literally.

-

I initially planned to give Mary a heads up. Let her know I was coming to Gainesville so she could make hotel and dinner reservations. But, worried that she might get suspicious and call her mother for an explanation, I decided to surprise her. I could make the reservations online and, with the help of a "phone finder" app, I shouldn't have a problem locating her. Yeah, I know it sounds a bit creepy, like I was stalking my wife, but she could do the same with me. It gave us both a comfortable feeling, being able to locate our significant other whenever we wanted.

It was a nerve-wracking two-hour drive from Tampa to Gainesville. How the hell do you tell the woman you love that you've been cheating on her? With two different women, one of which was her mother. My initial instinct was to jerk off the bandage and put the pain behind us.

"Mary, I've been sleeping with your mother and boning another woman in Oklas."

No, that was too abrupt. I should ease her into it.

"Hey Mary, remember that ice storm I told you about in Oklas over a year ago? Well, I had to rescue the town doctor from her car and the hotel didn't have enough rooms and the power went out..."

Not a bad start, but did I really need to tell Mary about May? She was essentially gone from my life. I should eventually confess to my affair with the small breasted doctor, but not immediately. Not this week.

The Martha situation, on the other hand, had to be brought out into the open immediately.

"Listen Mary, a funny thing happened right after Robbie was born and your dad died. Your mom needed help getting her breasts to start lactating and, well, one thing led to another..."

After a hundred miles of deliberation, I finally came up with a workable plan.

I'd tell Mary about what her mother and I were doing. End my affair with Martha. And move us (Mary, Robbie, and me) to our own place.

Any mention of May could wait until the dust settled. It might take a while to regain Mary's trust, but when the time was right, I'd bring up my other marital transgression. Maybe the following year, or when Robbie started school, or I turned sixty.

Following the app, my phone took me to a small park close to the campus. The nearest available parking place was a couple of blocks away. Switching from "drive" to "walk" on my navigation app, I entered the park and approached the dot signifying the location of Mary's phone.

It was one of those picture-perfect Florida winter days. Dozens of college kids crowded into the grassy common area, enjoying the mild temperatures and sunny skies. I didn't get a glimpse of Mary until I was less than a hundred feet from her. She was sitting at a picnic table, the late afternoon sun highlighting her golden locks. There was another person sitting at the table with her. A dark-haired woman with her back towards me. A classmate perhaps, or maybe Gloria, her roommate. Not that it mattered, although I was glad it wasn't a man.

I maneuvered around a game of ultimate frisbee and finally got a clear view of Mary. She and her friend were having an intense conversation, not paying attention to anybody around them. There were tears in Mary's eyes and she was shaking her head, as if trying to reject what the other person was saying to her.

Not knowing if I should interrupt their conversation and save Mary from the woman who was making her cry or let the two ladies work out their differences in private, I momentarily froze in place, watching my wife continue to argue with the dark-haired stranger. After an agonizing couple of minutes, Mary glanced in my direction and, instead of a welcoming smile of recognition, she screamed, as if she was afraid of me.

When the other woman turned towards me, I immediately understood Mary's reaction. Because the other woman was May. From the look on her face, she too felt endangered by my presence.

My fight, flight, or freeze instinct immediately kicked in and, like a scared child, I ran. Away from my wife. Away from my ex-mistress. Away from my worst nightmare. I ran out of the park, to my truck and, before I regained control of my senses, I was on the interstate heading south towards Tampa.

May lied to me. Despite her promise to keep our affair a secret, she had somehow discovered my real name and then tracked down my wife. Not at our home but at Mary's college. Why would she do that? Why would a woman who valued her own privacy so much that she never told me where she lived, go through the trouble to find Mary?

The only answer that came to mind was her obvious disdain for men. With the exception of Manny and me, she didn't seem to trust our entire gender. I never knew why. She never talked about it, but I assumed one or more men had mistreated her in the past. And now that I was no longer part of her life, maybe making me miserable, separating me from my family, was a form of retribution against manhood in general.

But May wasn't like that. She wasn't vindictive, just cautious. Or was I wrong about that as well?

Mary's reaction also surprised me. She was obviously upset, having just learned of my affair with May. But why would she be afraid? I'd never done anything to harm her and certainly wasn't there to chastise her. I was the one who deserved to be beat up, both physically and verbally. Not Mary.

-

Mary Spencer Jones

It's all my fault.

God delivered the man of my dreams to my doorstep, and I managed to screw it up.

-

Gloria wasn't herself when I got to her apartment Friday evening. There was nothing I could put my finger on. She wasn't rude or snippy. Just distracted. Like there was something weighing heavy on her mind.

I tried to cheer her up by relating stories of my Christmas. She usually enjoyed hearing about my happy family but, for some reason, tales of Robbie opening presents and then pitching the toy to play in the cardboard box didn't lighten her spirits. When I asked about how her holiday went, she muttered something about working double shifts and then changed the subject.

Maybe that's the problem. I was bragging about how wonderful my life is and she's too embarrassed to admit she's jealous.

Whatever it was that bothered her, it didn't interfere with our Friday night bedroom activities. Despite my experimentation with Casandra, I was still a newbie to the lesbian thing and gladly let Gloria take the lead.

Surprisingly, making love to a woman wasn't much different than it was with a man. Or maybe I should say that sex with Gloria was remarkably similar to what I did with Robert. Both were passionate and fun bedmates, and both ensured I was satisfied before they took their reward. Sure, Robert had a slightly different anatomy, but Gloria had a night table drawer full of phallic shaped toys and wasn't averse to occasionally bringing a fruit and vegetable tray to bed with us (pickles, squash, cucumbers, and carrots were her favorites. We tried a banana once, but it made an awful mess). The point is, I was hoping that giving and receiving several orgasms would brighten her mood.

Gloria was gone when I woke Saturday morning, but she left me a text asking to meet her at a local park after classes... "for pizza, iced tea, and a heart to heart." It was the 'iced tea' that made me suspicious. In the past, we always shared a bottle of wine with our pizza.

I know it isn't polite to search another person's medicine cabinet. But if you're sharing a medicine cabinet with somebody and happen to find a home pregnancy kit lodged in the corner, with one of the strips missing, it's not a crime to look in the trashcan to see if the missing strip had a pink stripe on it.

Which it did. Which explained Gloria's mood the previous evening and the 'iced tea' comment in her text. Gloria was pregnant.

That's where my invasion of her medicine cabinet should have stopped. And it would have if I wasn't a few days late. Not that my period always came on time, but I was staring at one of Gloria's unused pregnancy test strips and I had to pee anyway, so I took advantage of the situation.

When I left for school that morning, there were two positive pregnancy test strips in Gloria's bathroom trash can.

Gloria was already at the pizza parlor when I arrived that afternoon. There were no empty tables either in the restaurant or on the sidewalk, so we took our food across the street and claimed the last empty picnic table. We ate our first slices of peperoni in silence. I knew she wanted to talk about her pregnancy, but she needed to bring it up.

"You know, don't you," she finally said.

"How can you tell?"

"You didn't ask why we weren't having any wine."

"Yeah, that and I kind of saw the test strip in the trashcan. Sorry."

"Not a problem. I was going to tell you anyways."

"You want to talk about it?" I asked. "Are you excited or is this something unexpected?"

"A little bit of both. I went off the pill on purpose, hoping to get pregnant but, now that I am, I'm a little scared."

"Of what?"

"Everything. Raising a kid in a crazy world. Being a single mom."

"How about the dad?"

"He's not in the picture. Nothing more than a sperm donor. A very handsome and smart sperm donor, but he'll never know he has another kid."

"So, what happens next?"

"That's what we need to talk about. I'm obviously going to need a bigger place. And we can't see each other anymore."

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

"Mary, you're the reason I got pregnant. You've got a loving husband, adorable son, and supportive relatives. I thought that only happened on the Hallmark channel but, having met you, I know it's possible. I realize I can't have the entire package, but I want to get as much as I can.

"But you Mary. You have it all. You've got the white picket fence with a minivan parked in the drive. I have a one-bedroom efficiency with a trashcan full of empty wine bottles. The only thing threatening your happiness is your relationship with me. That's why we have to end it. Today. Right now. I refuse to let your happily-ever-after be ruined by a manipulative, screwed up lesbian like me."

"I don't have any say in this?" I asked through a river of tears. "Suppose I'm willing to take the risk. It's only two nights a month. Can't I at least stay with you through the spring semester? I'm sure we can work something out."

I was about to say more. A lot more. And would have if I hadn't looked away for a second and saw Robert, standing motionless not thirty feet away, staring at me.

He knew. Somehow, he knew about Gloria and me. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. His facial expression and body language said it all. The shock of seeing me with Gloria made his eyes open wide as his body backed away from us. It was a look of fear, anger, and disgust.

And then he ran. I don't know why. Robert never ran away from anything. He always confronted his problems head on. But, when he realized what Gloria and I had been up to, he couldn't get away from me fast enough.

-

Dr. Gloria May Carter

This is all my fault.

I've ruined the lives of the only two people I love.

-

Mary was already crying when it happened. I was breaking up with her and she wasn't taking it very well. I tried to tell her that it was for her own good, but she wasn't buying it. Her tears broke my heart but when she screamed and looked behind me, I had a premonition of doom.

Ryan was standing not thirty feet from us. His combined look of anger and disgust sent a chill down my spine.

How?

I asked myself.

How did he find me? Did Manny give him my real name? Or did he get it through the new Oklas doctor? And even if he knew my name, how did he track me to this park?

And why? Why would he want to find me? There was no way he could know I was pregnant. I'd only found out this morning. What possible reason would he have for being here?

Time froze for several seconds and then he turned and ran. Which wasn't a bit like him. The Ryan I knew would have stood his ground and fought. And that's when the terrible truth came out.

Mary shouted "Robert" simultaneous with me screaming "Ryan".

Shit. Ryan's real name is Robert. He's Mary's husband. And he's not running from me, he's running from his wife. Because he thinks I'm telling Mary about our affair.

I didn't mean to fall in love with Ryan. I did everything in my power to keep him at arm's length. And it was obvious he was doing his best to stay away from me. I'd like to blame Manny for our eventual downfall, he had a lot to do with it. But, even if the old man hadn't made us shack up together during that ice storm, there is no doubt in my mind that, sooner or later, we would have found ourselves in bed together.

Mary was an entirely different story. When she first showed up on my doorstep, she was nothing but a spoiled, newly married girl who needed a place to sleep. In my mind, she'd be just one more notch on my bedpost, one more coed that I'd use for a semester and then move on to the next willing girl. Sure, I immediately fell in love with her body, who wouldn't? But, as the month's progressed, she unknowingly seduced me with tales of her life in Tampa.

Mary had what I'd always dreamed of. A loving, caring family. That was part of my attraction to Ryan as well. He treated me with a respect I thought incapable of a man. I knew both of them were married. They never tried to hide their families from me. I just didn't know they were married to each other.

I should have. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that Mary and Ryan were a couple. They were essentially the same person. Except for the fact that one hid a world class cock in his pants while the other's tits were impossible to ignore, being with one was just as enjoyable as the other. And I'm not just talking about in bed. Naked or clothed, I savored every minute I spent with both of them.