It had been a very messy divorce and it came to me with quite a shock. I walked into the kitchen after a shopping trip one day and saw two sheet of computer printing paper on the counter. One was headed ‘Yours’ and the other ‘Mine’ in dark black letters. On the two sheets was a division straight down the middle of all our possession from a 15-year marriage. Alongside the sheets was a petition for divorce signed by my husband and his lawyer.
At 38 years of age, I consider myself a not unattractive woman who, never having had children, had kept in good shape through regular exercise and a good diet. I was still slender, had relatively small breasts at 34C and am about 5’6” tall. My hair was auburn with just the slightest streak of grey showing; I had no intention of having a dye job done just yet. My name is Sandra although many of my friends call me Sandie.
I was totally flabbergasted; this had come out of the blue. Although John and I had not been communicating well lately, I had just assumed that he was so busy travelling with his job and was always so tired when he came home, it would eventually pass. That illusion soon passed when a week later, I was passing a restaurant downtown on my way to visit a lawyer for the first time that I saw John leaving the restaurant with a young busty bimbo on his arm and they stopped at the door to exchange a deep, tongue probing kiss! So much for my husband being too tired to talk – he was fucking around on the side all this time! All I could hope for was that she would soon tire of him and move on to someone her own age rather than a late forties man in mid-life crisis.
After a few meeting with my very aggressive lawyer and some interesting candid photographs of my ex and his paramour, my settlement was very good and I came away with almost everything. Some might say it was all for revenge but I couldn’t think that way. I figured that I had to take care of myself for once.
Not having a lot of marketable skills – I had basically been the supporting spouse while my husband advanced his career – I went back to night school to learn how to be a dental hygienist. The class size was fairly small and mostly made up of younger women (and one young man to my surprise) but the lady sitting next to me was about my age and a striking red head. We introduced ourselves and she told me her name was Kelly and was she was also recently divorced. She had this delightful Irish lilt when she spoke and the most amazing green eyes I have ever seen.
After a few classes, we started going out for a coffee afterwards and lingered to chat about our lives and expectations. We seemed to just click and had much in common. After a few of these coffees meetings, I asked her if she would like to join me for dinner the following Saturday night; I am a pretty good cook if I do so and she readily accepted my invitation to dine at my house. We arranged for her to arrive at 5:30 and said our good nights.
I have to admit to a certain attraction to this lady; we had so much in common and she had this ethereal beauty and aura about her I couldn’t quite explain. I was truly looking forward to getting to know more about her and our upcoming dinner. I spent most of the day on Saturday shopping, cleaning the house and preparing the dinner. I wanted this to be a special relaxing evening and to allow us the time to learn more of each other.
I also wanted to see if I could figure out what it was about Kelly that intrigued me so much. About two hours before her scheduled arrival, I had a long leisurely bubble bath and dressed comfortably in my loose white linen slacks and a shawl-collared cable knit sweater. Brushing my hair to fall loosely around my shoulders, I dabbed on a light perfume – now why did I do that – and went down to await Kelly’s arrival. As I was descending the stairs to the ringing of the doorbell, I suddenly realized that I had slipped on my sexiest demi-cup bra and a sheer matching thong! What was going through my mind! Too late now, I walked into the entryway and opened the door to greet my guest.
She took my breath away! She was wearing an ankle length wrap-around skirt of sheer flowered material and a green halter top that left her back bare and showed just a inch or so of her flat tummy exposed. The colour matched her eyes exactly. I stood there as if transfixed until she laughed with a sound like bells and held out to bottles of wine saying, “Is it OK if I come in?”
I recovered and we exchanged a hug as I closed the door behind her, welcoming her into my home. I also told her she looked great and, blushing prettily, told me she felt the same about me. She slipped the sandals off her bare feet as I asked her to follow me into the kitchen as dinner was almost ready; I handed her two wine glasses and an opener and we agreed to start on wine while dinner finished. We sat on opposite sides of the breakfast counter and chatted like old friends. It wasn’t long before dinner was ready and we served it together and decided to just eat there in the kitchen.
By the time we finished and cleaned up the dishes, the first bottle of wine was empty and we had started on the second. I placed two of my own bottles in the fridge to cool down and we walked into the large comfortable living room and settled on the long sofa with our glasses in hand. Since the evening was a cool one, I had already laid a fire in the large stone fireplace and I got up long enough to light the kindling and a couple of candles and then settled back into my corner of the sofa.
Kelly felt comfortable – fortified by the wine no doubt - to ask me about the reasons my marriage ended. I, in return and feeling very easy with this beautiful woman, told the whole sordid tale. She sympathized with some comment about ‘men can be such jerks’ although I recall her words were a little stronger than that.
Having shared my tale, I asked her rather directly if her husband had cheated on her and left her for another woman; her response shook me in its directness.
“No, Sandie. It was the other way around. He caught me having sex with someone else; someone he considered as one of our best friends.”