Warning: This is not a BTB story since it is, after all, a Christmas story.
I would like to thank OmegaPet58 for their brilliant editorship of this story. This is the second of my stories which they have molded into a semi-coherent read. Imagine repeatedly throwing a tennis ball at a keyboard, and then sending on that finished product to someone to fashion into something approaching readability. That is the task that OmegaPet58 faces. I am humbled by their ability and patience,
I would also like to thank A.A. Nemo. He was one of the first authors that I read when I found this site and his story That Look of Love, was my introduction to the cheating wives genre. Damn you. His story A Tyler Christmas was my impetus to try my hand at writing. I know it's been years, but I would like to see another cheating wives story from you.
Third-person POV is sandwiched between @@@@@'s.
Valentine's Day
"I signed up the two of us for 'Paradise' and myself for 'Hero,'" Traci said as she sat down across from me.
I took a sip of bourbon and nodded my head. I was still trying to thaw myself out after the two-block walk from Gibson's to Division Street. The temperature had reached a low of 5 degrees but with the wind chill, it felt like it was -2 degrees outside. I had taken Traci out for a nice romantic Valentine's Day dinner. When Traci saw where I was taking her for karaoke after dinner, she jumped up and down, clapping with excitement. Traci loved to sing in public.
'Fucking Chicago winters,' I thought for about the one-millionth time.
The Dive on Division had just opened a month ago and Thursday nights were karaoke nights. This was our first time visiting the bar on Thursday, although we had dropped by a couple of times since the grand opening. Division Street in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood had long been one of the liveliest streets in Chicago. It had been home to bars and the occasional restaurant, but since the end of the pandemic, it had really blossomed. It was a lively alternative to the Viagra Triangle, the section of the Gold Coast where State Street, Wabash Avenue, and Rush Street converge and stalwarts like Gibson's Steakhouse and Hugo's Frog Bar had long reigned supreme.
The Dive on Division location had gone through several iterations, most recently as a Mexican restaurant. The restaurant had lasted a little less than twelve months before becoming the Dive on Division. Our condo on North Michigan Avenue was a block away, so Division Street (as well as the Viagra Triangle) was our go-to spot for drinks or meals. Usually, we had my daughter Emma with us. I wanted to take Traci out for a Valentine's Day dinner and for purely selfish reasons, surprise her with karaoke. Emma was staying the night with Al and Jean D'Amico, Traci's parents who owned and lived in a condo on the top floor of our building.
Nick, the owner of the Dive on Division got on the mic to announce that karaoke would begin in fifteen minutes and Traci excused herself to go to the ladies' room while I pulled up the lyrics to the song she had chosen for us. I knew the song as well as I knew my own name, but who wants to make a fool of themselves on stage?
In the seventies and eighties, my parents had been big fans of a certain genre of rock that blended a certain amount of theater with the music. What drew them to the genre was a songwriter by the name of Jim Steinman. Steinman was not your typical songwriter. As a matter of fact, it was well known that a famous music producer had told Steinman that he didn't know shit about writing music. That was why it took Steinman and Marvin Aday a/k/a Meatloaf almost three years to sell their concept album "Bat out of Hell." One of the songs on that album was "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights."
When Traci was looking for a song for us to duet with a couple of years ago, I played her a YouTube video of Meatloaf and Karla Devito singing the song and she loved it. That song became our go-to song for karaoke duets. This soon led to Traci discovering "Holding Out for a Hero," a song that Steinman had written for Bonnie Tyler for the film
Footloose.
A word about my wife: Traci Connery (nee D'Amico) is a knockout. Tall at 5'10" slim, and blonde, with a muscular bubble butt (the results of daily visits to our condo building's workout room) and a 32E bust. Traci had received an MFA in musical theatre from Northwestern University and degree in hand, made the move to Los Angeles to become a star.
Traci soon discovered that it did not matter how beautiful she was or how well she could sing or act, there were a hundred girls just like her. She did book a couple of commercials and a brief part on an episode of
NCIS
. When she lost out on the role of "Dead Hooker #2" (not even the primary Dead Hooker!) on an episode of
Law & Order
, Traci began to rethink her career aspirations.
Her agreement with her parents was that they would support her for two years in her quest for stardom. But after that, she was either on her own or she had to come back to Chicago. After two years, she called it quits. "If I was going to be a waitress, I was going to do it in a place where I could afford to live somewhere other than my car," she had told me.
Traci started work in the family business and that was where we met.
My name is Coy Connery, and I am the Fixed Operations Director for D'Amico Lincoln-Ford. In other words, the service manager, parts manager, and body shop manager all report to me. It was a position I have held for five years now and is how I met Traci three years ago. She is the only child of Al and Jean D'Amico. There are currently eight D'Amico Automotive Group dealerships scattered throughout the Chicagoland area, with DLF in Lincoln Park being the largest. Traci manages payroll for all the DAG dealerships from D'Amico's main office at D'Amico Porsche-Jaguar in Chicago's Gold Coast.
I was a single father of a two-year-old and working the long hours that my position demanded when I first met Traci. I had been engaged to my daughter's mother, Caroline, when Emma was born. We had been high school sweethearts and had been each other's first everything; date, kiss, sexual experience, etc. Caroline had been excited about being a mother throughout her pregnancy.
Once our daughter was born, however, Caroline started to distance herself from both of us. She was having trouble bonding with her daughter and resented having to breastfeed her. One day after a long day at DLF, I came home to find our neighbor/landlord, Mrs. Gruenwald, watching Emma. Caroline had left me a note: she couldn't handle being a mom and did not want anything to do with Emma or me, and not to chase after her. All her belongings had been removed from our apartment.
I reached out to Caroline's mother, and she asked me to stop by and bring Emma with her. Caroline's mother picked up Emma and gave her a gentle hug and a kiss on her forehead. She handed Emma to me and told me to leave and never come back. Crying and sobbing heavily, she told me to never return. I realized that she was choosing her daughter over her granddaughter, and I needed to protect Emma.
I took Caroline and her mother at their word, found a top-tier family law attorney, and sued to have her parental rights taken away due to her abandonment of our child. Caroline did not contest the issue and signed away her parental rights in exchange for a written assurance that I would not pursue child support.
Life was not easy, but I managed. We lived in a three-flat that was owned by Mrs. Gruenwald who adored Emma. Mrs. G. seldom saw her kids or grandkids after her husband died so she had adopted my little family. She was heartbroken that Caroline deserted us and tried to make our lives as easy as possible. Our rent was ridiculously low for the Logan's Square neighborhood, plus Mrs. G. insisted on babysitting Emma while I worked.
Without Mrs. G., I would not have made it. My folks had moved to Texas the previous year and although they offered to help me move down there, I was a Chicago guy. Moving to Texas held little appeal to me.
I was twenty-three years old and had been a service advisor for DLF for a little less than one year when our service manager quit without notice. His departure left us in the lurch and Al frustrated. I met with Al in his office and offered him a deal.
"Promote me to Service Manager for a six-month trial period with no pay raise. If I don't do at least as good a job as the last service manager, then demote me; no harm, no foul. But, if I did do a good job, then the position would be permanent, and the raise would be retroactive to the date I was promoted."
The only thing I asked was to keep the deal just between the two of us. If the staff suspected that I was temporary, then they would have zero respect for me. I would be done before I began.
Al often said that shaking my hand on that deal was the smartest decision that he had made since asking Jean to marry him. I was lucky in that Al D'Amico saw something in me.
Once I had proven myself, he gave me a lot of latitude about taking time off for my daughter. In return, I had grown his service business and DLF to the point that we had become large enough to warrant me transitioning from service manager to service director to director of fixed operations.
We were the largest Ford and Lincoln dealership in the Midwest and our service department was the number one rated service department in the country. I had a great staff of service advisers, mechanics, body men (and women), and supervisors working for me. I encouraged union participation and paid above union scale. Al was not thrilled about that part, but the results spoke for themselves. We were a smooth-running machine.
During my drama with Caroline, Traci had been trying to make it in Hollywood. When that petered out and she returned to Chicago, Emma was two years old. Thanks to my DLF salary, we had a comfortable life. Mrs. G. to watched her during the day and (since our service department was closed on the weekends) we had plenty of time for father-daughter bonding time. I loved Emma more than life and her smile and happiness were what I lived for. I was aware before she moved to California that Al had a daughter named Traci, but she never came into our dealership, so I did not interact with her.
The first time she walked into the service department at DLF there was an immediate and shared attraction. I asked Traci out for lunch, and we immediately knew that there could be something between us. On our third date we walked by a bar in Wrigleyville that had a sign on the sidewalk: "Karaoke Tonight." Traci dragged me inside.
She quickly filled out a couple of slips of paper and turned them in to the bar employee who was managing Karaoke. I grinned at her and also filled out and submitted a slip of paper.
"What are you singing?" Traci asked.
"A song," I replied with a laugh as Traci rolled her eyes.
When Traci was called to the makeshift stage, she sang the old Cher song, "Believe." And she knocked it out of the park. I knew that she could sing and had tried to make it in Hollywood, but I had no idea that she was that talented.
When Traci got back to our table, it looked like her nipples were trying to jailbreak from her sweater. She leaned over and gave me a kiss, running her tongue across my lips, and smiled at me.
"Performing in front of a crowd kind of gets my motor running," she whispered.
I was called to the stage next, and I sang the Chris Isaak classic, "Wicked Game." Traci and I had never talked about it, but both my parents were good singers. My dad had been the lead singer in a garage band in college and my mother had been in the glee club in high school and college.
I wasn't the greatest singer in Chicago, but I was pretty good and could sing in a lower register and then immediately hit the high notes that "Wicked Game" required. When I sat down at our table after finishing my song, Traci was breathing hard, and her eyes were dilated. She grabbed my hand and practically dragged me out of the bar—not even waiting for her second song.
When the cab dropped us off at my home, she watched impatiently as I fumbled with the keys to unlock my door. Once inside, she jumped into my arms and kissed me and wrapped her legs around me as I shuffled to my bedroom. The scent of her arousal was overwhelming. As I pushed her skirt up over her hips to remove her panties, I could see they were soaked through the small triangle of her thong.
