Life is what you make it, make your luck, destiny is in your own hands.
Prologue
I might as well own up right at the front of our short-term hopefully intimate but rather one-sided relationship between you the reader and myself: I'm an arsehole, no, let's be brutally frank with you, I am one dumb stupid arsehole. And an unlucky one at that.
I never knew how well-off I was until I was temporarily very well-off, before becoming somewhat less well-off and then realised I might never again be as well-off as I was when I really was well-off.
If you are following me so far, well done, you should be proud of yourself, I feel happier believing that at least one of us in this fleeting acquaintance has something, however small, to be proud about.
I suppose the beginning of my sorry story is the best place to start.
Chapter 1. Beginnings
I believe I became disillusioned with my marriage about eleven or twelve years into it, which is more than ten years ago now. I discovered that my wife had been unfaithful. I came across the evidence and she admitted to a one-off affair in a fit of pique, because a short notice I was unable to accompany her on a holiday trip. She said she had immediately regretted the affair. We had planned the trip together, but I had to cancel at the last minute. We decided to stay together for the sake of our two young children, but the spell of our love was broken forever and our marriage became an empty shell.
When we met, my wife Ruth was a couple of years younger than me. By the time we married, a couple of years later, she had just left college to start working as a junior accountant, working evening classes towards becoming chartered. We were 22 and 20 respectively when we wed. She told me she was a virgin when we first met, but after 22 years of marriage I have evidence that that was a lie.
Ruth Edmundson was an only child living at home with her parents when we met. Her father was a bank manager and always seemed friendly towards me, despite our difference in class and circumstance. Ruth's mother however, thought I was something the cat had dragged in and, I believe, continually sought to undermine me at every turn with her daughter. It turned out to be an act on her mother's part; she clearly fancied a bit of rough when she tried to jump me about a month after I started seeing her daughter. I put her firmly in her place, that I would never betray Ruth and that if she tried anything again I would tell Ruth. Thereafter she never gave me reason to let Ruth know, the only secret I ever kept from her during all those years I've known her.
I was a bricklayer's labourer, living in some pretty desperate digs, having left home and school at 16 following a dust up with my father. To my future mother-in-law I was exactly as I described myself in my opening sentence. I had no education or qualifications, working as an unskilled labourer, more often getting paid cash in hand when I did work and earning absolutely nothing when weather conditions dictated otherwise. I was susceptible to work drying up from time to time. To the Edmundsons, I had few prospects for their only daughter.
But Ruthie thought the world of me at that time, or she appeared to me to do. After all, in some circles I was considered something of a catch. I was toned fit and tanned, of only average height but with thick dark hair long enough to tie in a pony tail (my only excuse reader is that the style was very fashionable at the time even among accountants and bankers). Ruth was blond and petite with bright blue eyes and, I must say, a very nice pair of tits.
We first met at a noisy dark disco in town and, to be honest with you, I really fancied her friend first but then so did Bob, my cousin and best mate. We both had a couple of dances with the pair of girls along with a couple of rounds of drinks in between. Her friend Carol was tall and slim, with small but high perky tits and legs that went on forever and she stood out not only by her height but her long frizzy, startling red hair. Also, she was loud and extraverted and appeared to be up for anything for a laugh, which definitely took the notice of a couple of randy fellows like my cousin and I.
When we suggested we go on somewhere quieter where we could carry on a proper conversation or something, the girls decided to deliberate their possible acquiescence by privately discussing us in the Little Girls' Room. I was the designated driver that night, restricting myself to the regulation two lagers and lime. (Look, this was a long time ago and tastes change, ok? Do you want to follow my story or not?)
Anyway, as I was going to be otherwise occupied in driving, my mate Robert had first dibs and naturally he opted for the willowy Carol. Damn! I thought, Carol was hot, slightly tipsy and clearly 'begging for it' big time. Bob was taller, darker, fitter, much more handsome than me, so the chances of swapsies and sloppy seconds later on was more than likely extremely bloody unlikely.
Bugger my luck! Not that Ruth was ugly or anything, but compared to the scrumptious Carol she seemed dowdy and dumpy in that dingy nightclub, with more than a touch of puppy fat around her middle and hips, although she did have the benefit of a nice sweet face. Her outstanding tits I had already commented on.
When the lovely ladies returned from their consultation, Carol grabbed Bob enthusiastically by the arm and dragged him off towards the exit. It looked like our argument about who had what dibs didn't count for a fig. The ladies, or one lady at least, made her choice and I distinctly got the feeling that had I lost out on the deal.
I drove the car, so my mate occupied the back seat with Carol from where they were soon making all sorts of interesting squeals and coos. Meanwhile I was stuck with Ruth in the front seats with her trying to make small talk and me concentrating on trying to get out of town and park up somewhere secluded to fulfil some potential action of our own. By the time we stopped, though, Bob and Carol were going at it full pelt and Ruth couldn't keep her ears or eyes off what was happening on the back seat.
I parked up in a shadowy layby that I had been undisturbed in before, pulled up the parking brake and released my seat belt. Following Ruth's example, I looked around too, it was wrong I know, but we felt compelled to. All I could see in what little moonlight twinkled through the filtering tree canopy was Carol's long black-stockinged legs in the air with a flimsy pair of white knickers comically caught up in the buckle of her shoe around her right ankle, and Bob's even whiter arse pistoning frenetically between her stockinged legs. Bob's rocking buttocks were held in a deeply-indented vice-like grip by Carol's multiple-ringed fingers, pulling him harder into her audibly slurping vagina.
If my beat up old car had had a working radio or cassette player I could have blanked out some of those disconcerting sound effects by cranking up the volume. What did I tell you about my luck? Consistent, ain't it? Ruth and me had attempted a little small talk on the journey trying to learn more about ourselves but it was an uphill struggle for both of us and, certainly towards the closing miles of the trip, I cannot honestly remember a word either of us exchanged.
I'd had a raging hard-on for the previous ten minutes, the tent in my trousers rubbing on that big old-fashioned steering wheel that I gripped with white knuckles, as I had motored to that secluded parking-up spot and thinking to myself why can't I be jammy with luck like Bob?
After I had stopped the car, remembering to pull up that dodgy safety brake, I spent a minute or two straining my neck staring at the spectacular bonking almost within touching distance, a taboo I had absolutely no intention of transgressing, before I tore away my gaze and looked at Ruth. She looked beautiful in the moonlight, she wore far too much make-up of course, but all girls around her age did, especially if they were not as confident about their looks as they might later become. The skin on her face looked smooth and translucent, her mouth was open slightly, her lips in profile looked fuller and more luscious then they had seemed in full face view.
I think that I was smiling at Ruth with the humour of the situation rather than any expectations of falling on my feet like Bob had. After all, when the girls were away about their ablutions earlier, both Bob and I had come to the conclusion that Carol was the one most likely to put out straight away while Ruth was the quiet one that would need investing time and effort in for a few weeks before she finally gave up the goods, if at all. Hence my disappointment in the distribution of dibs, although looking at her now I thought she wasn't bad, she certainly wasn't a plain girl.
My head turning in her direction must have broken Ruth's trance and she switched those shocked round eyes to focus on me. Then she relaxed and matched my grin with her own delightful, I thought, smile.
Ruth has always had a beautiful smile. It is wide and generous, crinkling up the skin below her cool-blue eyes, emphasising her high cheek bones, which framed her pert nose and flared nostrils perfectly. No dimples but a slightly tapered chin which made her face look younger and quite the sweet little girl. Just at that moment I thought she was actually quite pretty in the romantic moonlight, so much better than that harsh strobe lighting in the shadowy night club earlier.
