"Let's see, shoulder length dark brown or black hair, medium build, dark eyes, mid to late thirties and I think five foot four to five foot eight should be about right," I thought to myself as I filled out the questionnaire. "Good sense of humor is a must and intelligent was a no brainer;" I laughed to myself at the pun I'd just made. "Needs to speak a second language preferably Spanish or Japanese and must like kids, that was a huge requirement." I looked at my answers to the questionnaire and tweaked a few of them before clicking send. I had also included a little paragraph on who I was, without mentioning names, and exactly why I was doing this. I wasn't expecting a runway model, far from it. I was looking for a normal woman who would be satisfied with me and my life style that also included my two children. You see, I loved the feeling of being in love and really enjoyed being married; just not to the woman I was currently married to.
Confused? You wouldn't be if you were married to Heather. We've been married for eight years and will not make our ninth. Looking back, I probably never should have married her. But hell, we've had the same arguments before we even tied the knot, although I thought that she would eventually grow up and change. I'm sorry to say she never did. Even after having two kids and countless arguments she never saw anything wrong with what she was doing. Heather would just say that's the way she was with a flippant tone in her voice and leave it at that, but not this time. She had crossed the line one too many times and I was done.
We didn't marry out of high school or even college. I wanted to be set in business. I wanted to have a stable life before I settled down. My two best friends in the world and I went into business together and spent six miserable years building our advertising business. We weren't huge but had a good customer base and we were growing every year.
I met Heather at a friend's party two years earlier when our business was into its fourth year and growing slowly but steadily. She was blonde, tall and very good-looking. I am not a troll but don't have the look women swoon over. I guess I'm a little better than average looking and if you didn't like me, well, that was your loss. I can remember back in college, once asking the hottest girl I ever saw to dance. I was a freshman and my two buddies dared me to go ask her. She'd turned down ninety-nine percent of the guys who asked her to dance and was just standing there with her group of friends looking great when I walked up to her.
"You want to dance?" I asked knowing fully well what she was going to say.
She gave me a holier than thou look and told me she'd rather not.
"Thank God," I said loud enough so everyone could hear. "For a moment I thought you were going to say yes and then I'd have to actually dance with you. I only asked you to be nice, you see an arrogant, self-centered cunt like yourself probably doesn't get to dance much what with her head shoved that far up her ass, but I thought I'd ask you anyway. But with that said, if you'll excuse me I needed to take a piss anyway," I said walking away from her and her stunned group. More than a few people started to snicker. As you can see, I have no problem calling a spade a spade. Well I never use to, that is before I met Heather. I guess I overlooked what she was really like.
Getting back to Heather, for some reason she decided to go out with me when I asked her. I wasn't exactly sure why, but was happy nonetheless. I was always busy so we didn't go out much; hell her dance card was often pretty full anyway. She was always friendly when we ran into one another and after our fifth year in business, things started settling down and my thoughts turned to women again. I had a few bucks in my pocket and for the first time in a long while I could now show a woman a better time than just a movie and pizza afterwards.
"Steve, how have you been? Still burning the midnight oil?" Heather greeted me, catching up to me in the mall.
"Work is still there, but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. How about you? "Are you still at that accounting firm?"
"Four years next week," she crowed proudly. "You want to grab a bite sometime and catch up?"
"Sure, that would be great. Why don't I look at my schedule and give you a call," I told her surprised as hell.
"Great, I'll expect to hear from you soon," She even had a big smile on her face. "Well, I've got to go, I've got a hair appointment and don't want to be late." She waved goodbye and was gone in less than two minutes.
I won't bore you with the details of my dates there after, or my feeble attempts at courting Heather; let's just say I gave it my best and had some degree of success. Oh, all right, for me I was in seventh heaven. We'd been going out on and off for six months when we decided to become exclusive. We'd done a lot physically but she said that she wasn't going to go all the way with me until she was good and ready.
We were coming up on our fourth month of being exclusive when I decided to go all out. Saturday I took her to a fancy restaurant, went on a carriage ride around the lake and ended up at a nice dance club. It wasn't one with all the teenyboppers, but a more mature and upscale club. It was crowded and for the life of me I couldn't catch the eye of a waitress.
"Why don't I sneak over to the bar and get us something to drink. I'll be right back," I turned and began making my way through the crowd. It took me all of ten minutes, but when I returned to our table I noticed she was gone. "Maybe she went to the ladies room," I thought sitting down waiting for her.
At five foot eight and a full head of blonde hair she wasn't hard to spot especially on the dance floor. I didn't believe my eyes so I stood up to get a better view. Yes, that was Heather with some very tall guy. They were dancing to a salsa type of song and she looked hot dancing but way too close to him for my comfort. When it ended and a slow song started I figured she would come back to the table but when they latched onto one another a slow burn started down in my stomach. It had taken me three months to get that close to her and this guys hands were now all over her back and elsewhere on her body. If the music hadn't stopped just then, I was getting ready to go over and stop it myself. She walked back to our table with a big smile on her face.
"You're back," she said picking up her margarita. "It's hot out there," she was fanning herself with one hand and sipping on her drink in her other. "I needed that," she said finally putting the glass down. When another guy walked over and asked her to dance she was about to get up and go with him when I spoke up.
"You leave me again and dance with him, you can find your own way home tonight."
"Steve, it's just a dance."
"And, we're just on a date too, I guess?"
"Steve, you said it yourself you're not a big one for dancing but you know how much I like to dance," she said standing up. "It's just one dance and I'll be back in five minutes."
When she took two steps from the table, I stood up. I slammed down my drink, turned and started walking away. I could hear my name being called, and by the time I hit the door I knew she was right behind me. I gave the valet my ticket and waited.
"Steve, what the hell are you doing?"
"Leaving, what does it look like?"
"You were just going to leave me here without saying a word?"
"Heather, I told you inside that if you left me again I was leaving and you still walked away with that guy."
"Steve, it was just a dance, what's the big deal?"
"It seems to be no big deal as far as you're concerned," I said as my car pulled up.
"Steve, wait, I'll get my purse and wrap."
"I've got a better idea, why don't you stay and have a nice time dancing with every Tom, Dick and Harry. This way you won't have to worry about me being bored while you're on the dance floor," I got into my car. "Don't call me, I'll call you," I called through the window at a now pissed off Heather. I pulled away feeling just like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," I remember him saying out the window just before he was shot; and that's just what Heather and I had.
She never called me nor I her. I dated others and even though I missed her like hell, I wasn't going to be taken advantage of or disrespected. If she had asked me first I probably wouldn't have minded her dancing a fast song or two with someone else; but never, I repeat never, a slow song. There was no way in hell I was going to let anyone that close to my supposed girlfriend.
Sandy and I were having dinner at Tony's; it was our second date, when I heard a familiar voice behind me. I didn't even have to turn around to know whose it was.
"Evening Heather," I said without even looking at her. By that time she had moved to the side of our table along with her man of the hour. "How have you been?"
"Just wonderful now that I'm no longer with an insecure man anymore."
"Glad to hear it. But, excuse my manners, Heather, this is Sandy, Sandy this is Heather, A girl I used to date."
"Steve, we did more than date."
"That's right we did; that is until you let your good looks and ego get the better of you. But that all behind us now, isn't it? Would you like to introduce us to your man of the night? That is unless you plan on dumping him for someone better later on," I said sarcastically.
"Fuck you, Steve."
"That's right, we never did get around to that either, did we? I can't say I'm sorry though. You've probably gone through ten guys since me and I'm sure they don't make a rubber thick enough to protect me from what you could possibly have." I smiled up at her. With that she turned her back and walked away. Her friend scurried off attempting to catch up to her.
"What the hell was that all about?" Sandy asked. "Remind me not to get on your bad side; what the hell did she do? Get you gang raped by a bunch of Hell's Angles?"
"I don't really want to talk about it and besides, it's in the past."
"Bull shit! Steve, the way you two were going at each other anyone can see you both aren't over each other; that is except the two of you."
The night kind of went down hill after that. There was a little making out on her couch after dinner but Mr. Happy wasn't cooperating My brain was throwing out millions of pieces of data for me to process.
"Steve, when you're done with her maybe we can try again, or not. I'm not use to playing second fiddle and I don't like it." She was right; I guess there was still something there. I mumbled something about calling her but we both knew it wasn't going to happen. I got one more kiss and I was out of there in my car going nowhere in particular.
The next week and a half was tough. We were running late on two projects and had three others on the line. When Ken told me to get my head and ass wired together I knew just what he meant.
