Once again, thanks to sbrooks for a quick turn despite a hectic editing schedule. The problem with being the best is that everyone wants to use your talent.
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My story isn't anything new and ground breaking. I didn't catch her fucking ET or a Transformer or anything cool like that.
One year we were married, the next we weren't.
And six months after the divorce, she became the Lizard Queen.
I'm Matt, not that you probably care.
Megan and I met in High School. I was immediately taken in by her charm, her wit and her intelligence. That she also had a killer ass that caused guys to drool over themselves was complete happenstance, I swear.
I'm a fairly good-looking guy, not a muscle stud but in good shape. I have all my teeth and I don't think I'm grotesque to look at. My grandma says I'm handsome, so that is enough for me.
Like just about every guy in the world, I think I'm pretty funny. I'm pretty sure it was my humor and laidback personality that won me a date with the fair maiden.
Just like every other Friday, our mutual friend Lisa was throwing a party while her parents were going to be out for the night. For some reason they trusted Lisa, which shows both their willingness as parents to trust their daughter and a complete lack of judgement for what teenagers do when mom and dad aren't around.
I immediately spotted Megan's delectable ass when I heard her laughing from across the room. She was wearing the standard teenage clothing, missing it in the right places and basic giving every guy a hard on. Which isn't exactly a challenge when you are talking about teenage guys who get aroused from the wind blowing the right way.
We'd talked on and off throughout the year, but I hadn't really got a chance to use my seduction techniques on her yet. Mainly because I didn't have any, but I digress.
Megan and I made eye contract from across the room when she turned around and saw me. I was moving in closer for the kill. If this was a teeny bopper high school movie then the slow song would have been playing as I moved towards her.
Just as I was getting ready to throw out my killer smooth line of," Hi," those words that most of us know from our youth rang out loud and clear.
And I knew right away that this was going to be interesting, because Lisa's dad had just walked in.
"What the fuck is going on here?"
Even though it wasn't aimed at me specifically, I knew what the answer was. The only answer that will soothe an angry pissed off Dad. I turned and faced Lisa's dad and I began:
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Di-ck, happy birthday to you!"
He looked at me with confusion for a second and then, "Nice try moron but my name is Ron, not Richard you idiot, now get the fuck out of my house."
If you've never experienced a house emptying of high schoolers, it is basically the same thing if you turned on the lights in a disgusting place and the cockroaches just go scrambling everywhere. No rhyme or reason, people just running off in every direction.
Everyone got away. Lisa was grounded for a week and I never did hear why they came home early, but it didn't really matter.
Next Monday all of my friends sang "Happy Birthday" every time they saw me. I thought it was great. In my mind I was the hero for the day. How right I was.
In science that afternoon, Megan was smiling after class as she came up to me humming the tune, so I took my shot.
"I didn't think you remembered my birthday, that is sweet of you. How about a date to the movies on Friday to celebrate?"
"Sure, Matt, why not?" she said as she walked away. She even did that cute look back thing girls do.
I was smitten, I was in love and we hadn't even gone out yet.
I had to jerk off twice before the date to calm down and I was still hard throughout it. She looked hot. She was fun to be around. I loved to make her laugh and she seemed to enjoy my sense of humor.
That was the first of many dates over the years. We stayed together throughout the rest of high school and throughout college. I proposed at the begging of our senior year of college and we married the week after graduation.
We'd stayed close to home for school. We had great local colleges and universities that didn't cost very much to attend for in-state tuition. I went to the community college and Megan went to the State University nearby. We didn't get to see each other in class, but we made plenty of time to see each other when we weren't studying or working. We had friends of the opposite sex, but only dated each other.
It also allowed our parents to save a bunch of money and it let me be home to help out with the family business.
Villa Guardia Pizza. The best pizza you'll never have.
Grandad had started the restaurant 43 years ago when he got off the boat from Italy, and it had done really well since. It was an institution in town, and everyone went there when they wanted a slice. Birthday parties, sporting events, catering, you name it, we served at it.
Ever since I was a little boy, I'd been going over to lend a hand. I'd been working part time throughout high school and I was basically working full-time hours throughout college, which wasn't exactly that hard. Community College isn't exactly the hardest place to get good grades from as long as you actually show up for the class, and even attempt to study it, you end up passing because of the curve created by those who probably shouldn't be there. So, I got my degree fairly easily. I did an online school for the rest of my Bachelors so I could fit it around my work schedule.
The wedding was great. All of our friends and family were there. She looked gorgeous, her mother cried, her dad cried because of how much it cost, everyone had a great time. And no, we didn't have pizza.
A short honeymoon later, and it was time to start in the real world. Or at least it was for Megan, I already had my career planned for me by my family. Not that I minded at all.
Megan was able to put her education degree to good use and was quickly hired on by the local school department. It is amazing what doors open up when your grandmother is best friends with the school superintendent. Schools also tend to like the new teachers who don't cost as much.
Life was good, I worked long hours as did Megan. Don't buy into the hype about how much time off they get. The summers are great but the lesson planning and grading is a nightmare during the school year.
After a few years, Megan had enough seniority in her position to feel comfortable taking some time off. Not that she would have been fired, but she wanted to be established before taking time off. Our first son Stephen came along four years after the wedding, his brother Robert followed the year later.
Megan went back to work after her maternity leave was up. Living in your hometown is a huge advantage when it comes to finding sitters for kids, especially with grandmothers who love to have them. They split the duties when Megan and I had to work and saved us a bunch of money on sitters.
As the boys got older, they started school and eventually took up playing sports.
While Megan obviously took the lead with the boys' education, I tried to assist in my stronger areas like history and civics. That worked well since those were the ones she didn't enjoy as much. I did the things I was supposed to do, I played catch, taught them to throw, took them camping with Scouts. I tried my best to be a great dad.
Where I messed up was in not making sure I was being a great husband and putting Megan first. I did the normal things; I bought the flowers on the important days and I told her I loved her. What I didn't do well was just take time to be with her. It doesn't excuse what she did, but after having talked to some female friends and a therapist, I can at least theoretically understand it.
As Megan got closer to forty, she started to doubt her looks and who she was as a woman. She thought that people only viewed her as either Steve or Robert's mom or Matt's wife. She was losing her identity as a woman, or so she perceived.
I didn't understand what she was going through, especially with my hectic schedule. We'd decided to open a second restaurant in the next town over. I'd run one while my dad would run the other. We'd hired on the additional staff necessary and spent months training them at the original so when we opened, we hit the ground running.
Everything was seemingly going great until my Dad had a mild heart attack. No serious long-term issues but he had to take a step back for a few months. That had meant my bouncing between both places on an almost daily during the fall, which is one of our busiest seasons. I was basically killing myself just trying to hold on until Dad came back, or we decided to hire another manager if he couldn't.
With my running around between work and the kids events, I didn't realize that Megan had reconnected with an old friend of hers from college on Facebook. Yup, fucking Fuckbook.
So, Megan and the guy I'll refer to as Dimwit start chatting on Facebook. They hadn't dated in college because Megan and I had been dating so they were just friends. It started off as sharing life stories about what they had been doing since.
Then it moved on to her sharing her frustration that she was being forgotten as a person. Why she decided to share it with Dimwit instead of me I never figured out?
Maybe because over the Internet it feels safer to say what you are feeling because you don't have the close proximity that you have in your daily interactions with people in real life.
Megan was scheduled to go to a teaching conference at the end of November.
She'd been before so it wasn't a big deal. Of course, I didn't know that she and Dimwit had decided to use it as cover for them to have a nice time together and ensure that they were compatible.
She went and she came back and I can see that she is both happy but off. It's strange. I could tell that something was bothering her but not what it was.
"Honey, what's wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing is wrong, just give me space."
"Something's clearly bothering you, what is it?"
"I'm fine."
I realize I may not understand women completely, but I am smart enough to realize that "I'm fine" is woman code for "everything is fucked up, and it's your fault."
"Come on, Babe, tell me what's wrong."
I could tell she was getting heated as she talked to herself for a minute. I'd seen this before. She'd get angry, let it out and then after a few minutes she'd calm down and then we'd work together to solve the problem. We had this process down.
