[Author's note: This is the first chapter in the "My Renaissance" series and sets things up for future chapters.]
Chapter 1: Two days (and Brian scores)
It was the worst of times, yet it became the best of times. My name is Joe and I want to tell you about the time shortly after my divorce from my wife Lisa in 2006.
It was the worst of times because the divorce left me split from a woman I loved and cared for, out of a house I considered home, and without a full-time woman in my life for the first time in almost a decade. All of this officially happened in the space of about a week and it kind of left me feeling down.
Yet from that low-point, my life improved to the best times I ever had in a matter of months. I had a good job, good friends and my sex life was the best it's ever been.
My divorce was an amicable break. Instead of hiring expensive lawyers and paying them a ton of money, my wife Lisa and I sat down and over a couple of meetings and agreed on everything: property, division of debts and putting the house on the market about sixty days before we estimated the divorce would be final. In the meantime, we agreed to continue to share the house, to save our money and pay down our respective share of debts.
It didn't work perfectly in that period as Lisa liked her credit cards but those new debts were now all hers and that was a big weight off my mind. Ditto for that new car of hers. We did have enough equity amassed that when we split the proceeds from the home sale that she got everything paid off including half of the principal on her new car. Me, I put my share in the bank with the rest of the money I'd been saving giving me a very nice nest egg of almost two years' gross income.
At the time, I couldn't really find something I liked for what I was willing to pay, so I had planned on renting a nice apartment or condo for a while.
I was 35 at the time and Brian, a dear friend from college offered to let me move in with him until I found a place I wanted for my own. "Don't rent an apartment," he told me. "Move in with me. I could use the company and it'll be just like old times."
Brian and I had met as next-door neighbors in the dorm at the University of Illinois, and developed a close friendship. We eventually moved in together and lived together through our college years forging a strong and enduring friendship that has lasted.
After getting our Bachelor's degrees, we'd kept in touch despite our post-grad work taking us to different schools and him getting a job out-of-state after law school.
We both got married around the same time in our mid-twenties and he was one of my groomsmen at my wedding as I was at his. He got divorced and moved back to town. Almost three years later, I was getting my divorce finalized.
After deliberating on Brian's offer for a couple weeks, I took him up on it and made arrangements to move much of my furniture and other bigger stuff into a climate controlled storage unit not far from Brian's place.
Brian's house would become my house for a while. It was a nice, four bedroom, 3.5 bath house if you counted the guest bedroom in the basement. I chose the larger spare bedroom upstairs.
It was a Sunday late in October when I finally and officially moved in, with the help of Brian and about eight of our circle of close buddies. It was do or die that weekend as we closed with the buyer on the house the following week. Many hands made quick work of the jobs at hand and I took them all out to a local restaurant when we were done and we shared some great stories, beer and pizza as good friends should always do from now and then.
Brian and I belong to a group of about a dozen guys who've all known one another for a number of years. Three of us went to the university together and the rest have joined the original group over the years since then. There's a couple of lawyers, a professor, a couple of engineers and IT guys, a cop, a doctor, me, a homebuilder, an architect and a couple of tradesmen. We're like peas in a pod with many of the same attitudes and interests.
Like all guys, when together, our conversation often turns to the women. Now that we're all in our thirties, there's generally less talk about skirt chasing and more about relationship drama and issues we were having with our wives or live-in girlfriends. Brian didn't have those problems though, claiming he was "just a lucky guy", but he did apparently still have his share of fun skirt chasing.
On the rare occasion when Brian did speak of some of his adventures with the fairer sex, the other guys and I would listen with rapt attention, always seeking more details, then ask him if his tales were like fish stories - full of exaggeration. No guy could possibly sleep with three or more different girls every month, unless he was paying for it, right?
Comparatively speaking, my life was quite the contrast to Brian's. I was in a virtual barren wasteland in the couple of years Brian was back in town before Lisa and I decided to call it quits. We would have sex one or two times a month and it wasn't nearly as memorable as it was before we got married. Lisa had also gained over thirty pounds in five short years since our wedding day.
The summer before our split, we got a health club membership. She began to slim down a little and I began to regain my buff status from college. Once we talked about splitting, she got deadly serious about working out and lost a bunch of weight and toned up to the hotness I remember from when we dated.
Ironically, she and I started having more sex together – good sex at that – in the months after we agreed to split up.
Professionally, I'm a physician's assistant and while I do pretty well for myself, Brian has me smoked when it comes to income, although he certainly spends more time at office.
As a primarily a trial lawyer who dabbles in criminal law, he makes good, six-figure money. He's proven quite a rainmaker, bringing home some big settlements and judgments for his firm. His near term goal is to make partner within three years and a judge before he turns fifty.
His house, while relatively plain and modest on the exterior, was made of poured form cement with a stucco finish. It looked like any other $250,000, three car garage house on the outside, designed and built to shrug off even the worst of storms while being well insulated. The 2300 square foot interior, excluding the finished basement, looked like a million-dollar showpiece from a magazine. It wasn't flashy or extravagant, just well designed and stylishly decorated with an eye to the smallest details.
He'd had it built for him with the help of a couple of our friends, primarily the homebuilder and our architect friend. He told them what he wanted and they took it upon themselves as a "special" project. The remarkable interior design was very nicely done thanks to an old girlfriend from college that he still kept in touch with.
Brian also shared my neat-freak streak, but contracted out most of the dirty work. His place was always neat, well maintained and clean. He had Merry Maids come in Mondays and Fridays to dust, clean the floors, bathrooms and kitchen. "I'd rather pay them a few bucks than give up an evening cleaning toilets and showers. And I hate dusting!" he told me.
He had a nice Florida room / sunroom with a Jacuzzi tub in it that was right off the living room and adjoined the nice deck that was shaded in the summertime. Down in the basement he had wet bar, pool table, stripper pole with a small stage, and a couple of couches and another nice flat panel. This was the man cave and Brian had hosted small parties with friends down there. I'd been to a couple and it was a lot of fun.
Also down there was a smaller spare bedroom, a full bath, storage, a big Ft. Knox residential security container and a massive 700 square foot underground walk-in vault that was poured of concrete under the deck and Florida room outside.
I am his executor on his will and besides me, I think only his mom and one other guy had the combination and alarm code for accessing that room. There's friends and then there's the guy who has your safe combination.
The Tuesday night after I got moved in was just another evening. I was relaxing in the living room after getting home from working out at the gym. I'd only been at my new home for a couple days and was still getting accustomed to Brian's routine and my own, for that matter. Brian came back home around 10:40 or so, just as I was about to hit the hay.
I heard a female talking softly and giggling as they came in from the garage. A minute later, he brought her into the living room and introduced me.
Her name was Jennifer and she looked to be about 25 or so, give or take, and the first thing I noticed was her pretty dark green eyes and her warm smile. Instinctively, I stood up a little straighter when I got a better look at her. She wasn't a supermodel, but she was cute as hell to me in a girl-next-door sort of way. She had little freckles on her face and her lightly curled, just below the shoulder-length brunette hair had a hint of auburn.
Jenn stood about 5' 7" and was quite thin, maybe about 110 or 120 pounds. She wore a pair of snug khaki-colored slacks, a tight mock turtleneck and some heels that dressed up her casual clothes a fair bit. I smiled warmly and extended my hand to her.
