Two Sides to Every Story

CHAPTER NINE

Alice and Ross were already in the dining area, sitting at a table for four. We joined them, but not in the usual formation. Instead of sitting next to Dave I sat next to Ross, while she took the place beside Alice.

And fuck me, weren't those two hot for it! They were devouring each other with their eyes even before they substituted the usual air kiss for something much more lingering.

As this point I'm going to skimp on detail. I wasn't there to see what those two got up to later, and (sadly!) I didn't think to install CCTV. Consequently I can't give you a blow by blow account. I also don't expect you'll have much interest in the antics I got up to with Ross, so here's an abbreviated version of proceedings.

We ordered and ate our meals then went into the public bar for a few more drinks. Then, leaving our shopping in the car, Dave took Alice to her place while I walked with Ross to theirs (one of the plethora of new houses which keep springing up in and around the village). When we got there he offered me a drink, but I declined.

So we fucked.

And fucked and fucked and fucked.

To put it in some perspective, we used seven of Ross's eight condoms. It was exciting and new and I very much enjoyed it. I did, however, spend a lot of the time thinking about the other two.

Drop-dead gorgeous Alice fucking my sweet little Dave! What wonderful images that conjured up. I would have self-abused the night away if I hadn't had someone doing it for me.

*****

Saturday morning started sunny if a little blustery. Side by side in bed with me, Ross made a call.

'Alice,' he said, 'it's me.'

He listened then nodded. 'Okay, we'll see you there.'

'Where's "there"?' I asked as he rang off.

'In The Busfeild at twelve,' he replied.

'It's not ten yet.'

'I know. But Alice said she still has things to do.'

I took hold of Ross's cock and examined it. When aroused he is very big. Right then he was limp and apologetic.

'No hard-on,' I said brightly, 'so what do we do to kill two hours?'

'I'm sure you could find ways of making me hard again.'

'I'm sure I could. But we're running low you-know-what's. Let's go for a walk instead.'

Ross drove us up to Ilkley Moor, leaving his Focus in the parking area close to the Cow and Calf rocks. Friday had been a dress down day at work, so my clothing wasn't too badly out of place. I was wearing trainers and had a hoodie over my sweatshirt. And that part of the moor wasn't so wild. There were well-maintained footpaths and not too many peat bogs. Or so I told myself.

'It's been years since I came here,' I said as we took a circular route to the top of the rocks. 'I've visited over a hundred different countries in the meantime. And all this on my doorstep!'

'Yorkshire is beautiful,' he agreed, 'particularly the Dales. They take my breath away every time.'

'Don't say that too loudly.' I widened my eyes. 'If Rombald gets jealous he'll throw rocks at you. And big ones; like the ones we're standing on.'

'I think he's throwing something else our way.'

I looked in the direction Ross was pointing, just in time to see the sun go behind an enormous black cloud.

'I wondered where all the sightseers were going,' I said. 'Let's get back to the car.'

We made it seconds before the heavens opened. And by that I mean they really opened. I think it officially went down as a "rain storm", but there was more than mere rain hammering down on the roof and windscreen; there was sleet and large lumps of hail. And hadn't it suddenly got dark!

'You can't drive in this,' I said, peering out of the window. After racing in our direction the black cloud seemed to have stopped in its tracks, happy to dump its contents right on top of us.

There were other cars parked nearby, probably sheltering other walkers from the onslaught. I say "probably" because visibility was virtually non-existent. For that brief moment we were isolated in a public place. Close to other people, yet unseen.

Now for a bit more of my truth telling and skimping. I sucked Ross off in the front of his motor. I did it safely, of course, putting his last condom on with my mouth (yes, I know how whore-like that sounds!). And I did it very slowly, ignoring the drumming on the roof, wanting him to remember it as something rather special.

In case anyone's interested, we didn't get caught in the act. That is to say, I'm reasonably sure we didn't. Nobody came knocking on our window and, as far as I'm aware, footage of us hasn't been posted on the Internet.

Not yet.

*****

The bad news is that Dave and Alice enjoyed themselves immensely. So much so that "Dress Down Friday" became "Wife-Swap Friday". And it stayed that way for months. In honesty mode, for me the practice soon grew boring. I don't dislike men but I could never settle for the same one all the time. And that was the way it seemed to be headed with Ross.

Boring!!

The good news is that Ross and Alice both had high-powered jobs with the NHS. They were often relocated at short notice and had the assisted mortgages to prove it. Before East Morton they had been living in a picturesque village outside Gloucester. And suddenly, without prior warning, they were shipped off again to somewhere near Coventry. Suddenly Fridays were back to normal.

By then it was almost time to be off on my travels. Dave missed Alice at first, but less and less as the weeks went by. And she became extremely demanding with me. Perhaps she was overcompensating to some degree. Or perhaps she was making the most of our last few weeks together. Whatever the reason, she wanted to fuck at every opportunity.

Lesbian bed death? Sorry, my Darling Mikela, I hardly got any sleep on a normal night, and none at all in that final couple of months.

As far as I could tell, excessive demands aside, Dave was relaxed about me going. She was, she assured me, really going to make the most of her freedom while I was away. She might even join a lesbian dating site and experiment a little. I advised her to be careful and she laughed.

'So says the girl who has fucked legions of women who can't even speak English!'

I suppose she did have a point. Back then I'd visited a hundred and eleven different countries. I hadn't kept an accurate count but suspected I'd had sex in about half of them, often if not always with locals. In fact it might have been more. The only place I'm certain I never had sex in was the Vatican City (take it from me, it has very few women and most of the men seem to be hundreds of years old).

So there we were: two contented adults. My preps were going much as they had the last time. Dave was comfortable with the idea and I was determined to come back.

Then I screwed up, big-time.

CHAPTER TEN

My Key Phase Four contract had ended but, as there was life in the phase yet, I'd agreed to do another month "testing". In other words, we programmers were spending our days trying to break the system we'd so lovingly created. And yes, there are apps that can do that without the human input. We just happened to believe our users were cleverer than any app. Leastways they were when it came to breaking things.

It was Tuesday in my penultimate week. I was going through screen after screen, abusing all the places where a user could add in information. You know what I mean. If a field was alphabetic I'd fill it with numbers and punctuation marks. If it was numeric I'd type in rude words or try to enter negatives where only positives were allowed. The rush of excitement whenever I found a fault was immense, even if I was then tasked with the ball-ache of rewriting the faulty programming.

Little things please little minds, you might suppose. And I suppose you might be right. It was fun, though. Fun but repetitive. After a fortnight of doing hardly anything else the novelty had worn off a bit. I was actually pleased when my landline rang (quite a rare occurrence for IT programmers at the Widget Company).

'Hi Kat, it's Dave. You're not going to believe this. I've fixed that issue in Wakefield but I've just had a call from Warwick. It's exactly the same problem and they've got a Trade Day tomorrow. I'm just about to set off, but no way will I be home tonight.'

I didn't bother asking if she could fix the problem remotely. Our branch network stretched from Inverness to Truro, so remote fixes were always the first option; so too were temporary fixes. If Dave said she had to go personally, she'd be right.

I looked at the time on my display. 15:28. How far was it from Wakefield to Warwick? Come to that, where exactly was Warwick? Somewhere near Coventry, wasn't it?

Somewhere near Alice and Ross.

'It's ages since you had to overnight,' I said, lowering my voice so I wouldn't be overheard being soppy. 'I'll miss you.'

'Have a bottle of wine and go to bed with my Rampant Rabbit. You'll soon forget all about me.'

Being dependant on Dave for a lift, I normally finished bang on five o'clock. That evening I didn't. I only had vague ideas as to bus times but suspected they ran every hour, on the hour. I decided I'd get the one at seven, going to the bus station via Sainsbury's (I preferred their fresh curries to the ones at ASDA, and reckoned their wine offers would be much the same).

By six o'clock I was wishing I'd packed in sooner. My eyes were going square from staring at one screen after another. Yawns kept assailing me. I'd stayed too long. And just about everyone else had gone home. The cleaners were vacuuming and the operators covering nights had arrived for their shift. Out of the day shift . . . apart from me . . . there was only Craig still there, and his eyes looked even squarer than mine.

I don't know what made me do what I did, but before I knew it I'd logged out and was leaning over my boss's desk.

'That's enough for today,' I said, sounding like a prim schoolteacher, 'let me buy you a drink.'

'I'm in the car,' he said.

'I'm proposing a drink, not a binge. Come on. Don't keep the girl waiting.'

Ten minutes later we were in The Cricketers Arms, clinking pint glasses. Not very long after that, as Craig started checking his watch, I bought us two more beers.

'I'm driving,' he railed. 'And it should have been my round.'

'I'm trying to take advantage of you,' I countered.

'Advantage? As in . . .'

'Yeah, I was going to seduce you three Christmases ago, until the FD got in my way.'

Craig stared at me, hopefully noticing I'd undone a few strategic buttons. Did I just say hopefully? Too right he noticed. My tits were halfway out, waving and whistling at him.

'I'm engaged,' he said a tad reluctantly. 'You do know that, don't you?'

'I know she keeps throwing the ring back at you every six months. And I'm only looking for sex, not wedding bells.'

I'm going to skimp again from here. Well, I'm going to admit I don't know what got into me, and then I'm going to skimp. Was I inspired by the thrill of fucking another boss? Did I feel I owed him a few fucks from the other year? Did I suspect Dave of meeting up again with Alice on the sly? Or was it simply a case of "the cat's away . . ."

I didn't particularly pause for thought at the time. And afterwards . . .

Afterwards it didn't seem to matter so much. We'd had four pints altogether then, leaving Craig's motor on the car park at work, took a taxi to his place. And then we'd cheerfully fucked the night away, of course.

And nobody any the wiser.

If I'd left it at that I'm convinced we would have got away with it. Craig had no intention of spilling beans, afraid word might get back to his fiancée. And I had no intention of spilling beans because I didn't want folk saying I was courting favouritism from the powers that be.

Not for one minute did I think I'd done anything wrong in my relationship.

Then disaster struck. A week later and opportunity knocked again. This time Dave was sitting at her desk when the call came from Aberdeen. Exactly the same issue and again, right on the eve of a Trade Day. As the resident expert on the problem, she was immediately nominated as "it".

'Why do they always call in the middle of the afternoon?' she lamented. 'And why aren't they ever local?'

'Wakefield was local,' I said reasonably.

'Wakefield was a stop-off on the road to Warwick. It doesn't count.'

Cutting a long story short, she overnighted in a B&B with dozens of single malts and I overnighted in Craig's bed. And, as before, I said nix, thinking that, as we'd followed the same routine, nobody would ever know.

Ha!

I'd reckoned without the efficiency of the Widget Company grapevine. As the subject of gossip I was, understandably, one of the last to hear. Unfortunately, Dave must have been one of the first. She collared me the very next day, at home after work, saying "we have to talk". Unsuspecting, supposing she probably wanted to fine-tune our new travelling agreement, I accompanied her to the kitchen table (and yes, it was the same one of old).

'You two-faced bitch,' she began, surprising me, not least because her tone wasn't in any way out of the ordinary. Her calm voice belied her words. 'You've been fucking Craig.'

'What makes you say that?' I said reflexively. 'And what does it matter if I have?'

'It matters because we're supposed to be a couple.'

'Are we? What about Alice and Ross?'

'That was pre-arranged and pre-agreed by the four of us. We weren't all sneaking about behind each other's backs.'

'I wasn't sneaking about anywhere.'

'So why didn't you tell me what you'd been up to?'

She had me there. Reeling from the sudden onslaught, I retaliated in kind. 'You don't always tell me everything you've been up to,' I said. 'For all I know you might have called in on Alice when you were down in Warwick.'

Big mistake!

Still icily calm, Dave shook her head. 'I didn't tell you anything because there was nothing to tell. And I certainly didn't call in on Alice. If I was going to see her I'd have run it by you first. I am not a cheat. Unlike you.'

Deadly silence.

'I didn't think I was cheating,' I said (said? Okay, bleated). 'I thought men didn't count. And it was an impulse sort of a thing. No way could I have run it by you first.'

More deadly silence.

'How do you know?' I resumed, spooked by her lack of comment.

'Craig's car on the car park all night,' she replied, 'the cleaners seeing you leaving together both times. Archie seeing you together in The Cricketers both times. An unused Rampant Rabbit . . .'

'All right, all right,' I held up a hand. 'I'm guilty, but I still don't see what I've done wrong.'

'Think about it on the couch,' she snapped. 'That's where you're sleeping tonight.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My departure wasn't a happy one. And Dave made it worse by being civil yet determined. This was, she said adamantly, the parting of our ways. Never mind experimenting on dating sites, she was free to experiment anywhere she wanted to experiment. And never think "next time". What we'd had was over. There wasn't going to be a next time.

I told her I loved her, putting a finger to her lips before she could bite off my head. 'It's true,' I went on, 'but I accept what you say. I've blown it and it's all my fault. If only, eh?'

Dave sniffled a bit but didn't relent. 'I can't turn back the clock,' she said. 'Not again.'

'Remember the first time I told you I loved you?' I was wriggling on the hook, doing my best to tug heartstrings. 'You said "Me too you." I liked that. I'm going to get it tattooed on my tummy.'

(Aside: "Me too you" is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. When I found out Dave had also said it to Darling Mikela I physically threw up. Obviously, back then, when we "finally parted", the girlfriend-stealing cunt wasn't even in the script. I thought "Me too you" belonged exclusively to me.)

'Huh,' said Dave, 'I just bet you are.'

'Do you want me to ring while I'm away?'

'No, I'm going to find better things to be doing on my Friday evenings. Don't waste time trying.'

*****

As overseas trips go, that one was unusual. It was for me, anyway. It may be a primal instinct, but most travellers go west to east. Most of the many I've rubbed shoulders with do, anyway. It's a bit of an obvious choice when you consider it. West gets you Ireland and then three thousand miles of ocean. East (if you forget about the south bit from Dover) has twenty miles of channel and then a whole host of countries just waiting to be explored.

Not to mention immediately available wine and fresh baguettes!

My initial four voyages of adventure followed the usual trend. Voyage Five was different. I caught a flight from Manchester to Boston, Massachusetts, and set about visiting places I had previously missed. If you want an embarrassing admission, here it is . . .

Some of the guys at work have a thing about football league grounds. They start with a list of the ninety-two and take pains to visit them all as quickly as possible. And then, as the original ninety-two clubs change or move to new grounds, they keep on visiting. One of the operators boasts of having visited a hundred and twenty-three grounds in England and Wales. Another, an older guy, has been and seen "his" team, Burnley, actually play at ninety-seven different league venues.

I'm not so anally retentive. I do, however, have a yen to "collect" all fifty US states. So I completed the New England set by touring Rhode Island and Vermont, then took a Greyhound to Columbus and did Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. And that was enough. I'd reached state thirty-eight and decided I'd leave the rest for another voyage.

Feeling the need for heat and sunshine, my next stop was Hawaii. I had already been there, so it didn't count as "new" for me. By then I didn't care. I just wanted to chill, drink cocktails and ogle as many hula girls as possible. Well, I wanted to get to know a few of them intimately, too. I am only human, after all.

A week of doing virtually nothing chilled me to the core. As laid-back as I'd ever been, I decided it was time to see Pearl Harbour. Now I'm not much of a war buff, but I'd not even thought about it on my previous visit, and had felt ashamed ever since.

And wow, hadn't they done a good job of rebuilding! I'd never seen so many destroyers, carriers and God-only-knew what else, all of them bristling with very visible defence systems. As a display of naval power it was awesome. I couldn't imagine anyone attacking that particular base anytime soon.

By lunchtime it was getting hot. I found a bar with a thermometer outside it, but in the shade, and went wow again. Eighty-six degrees already. A couple of cold ones were definitely in order.

The woman was playing pool on her own. She looked to be in her forties and had medium-length hair that was bleached white by the sun. Her body was tanned and athletic, but it was her face I noticed first.

Well, I noticed her ass as she bent over to take a shot first. Her face came a close second.

Mmmm, I thought, very nice.

I was toying with the idea of introducing myself when she potted the 9-ball and beat me to it.

'Hello,' she said, taking a seat at the other side of the table. 'I'm Honey.' Then, laughing at my expression, 'You can blame my mother for that. And she only gave me the one name; I haven't got another one to use instead.'

'Blooming mothers,' I said sympathetically. 'Who'd have them?'

'An English accent,' she said, laughing again. 'You sound so refined.'

Before I could explain my humble Yorkshire roots the barman arrived, bringing Honey a beer on a tray. 'A drink for the winner,' he said, grinning at her.

'I always win,' she said, 'opposition or not. Can I have another for my friend, here? For . . .'

'Kat,' I said, not bothering with "Katrina". Well I wouldn't, would I? We'd had less than a minute's acquaintance and I was a "friend" already. This was definitely going to be a Kat relationship. I was sure of that, even if the obvious vibes were still to be exchanged.