Dilemma

As always, the MC's are not always good guys, but they do what they believe is necessary. There is no sex in this story, fair warning. This is not a documentary, it's all made up, except for some of the places in and around Philly.

All mistakes are mine. No editor, although my wife got me a new iPad for Christmas.

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The woman was sitting on a couch in the living room of her beautiful mansion. Leaning forward with her face in her hands.

The man was on his knees in front of her professing his love. Another man was listening close by, unbeknownst to both of them.

"Alli, I love you."

"I love you too."

"Then don't do this to us."

"There is no 'us', Billy."

"There was once, Alli, There can be again. There will be again."

"Please don't do this."

"I have to, but it'll work out, and you will eventually thank me."

"Billy, you're going to destroy my life. It will devastate Stan, and that's not fair to him. How can you do that after all he's done for you?"

"I swear, I will do anything I can to protect Stan, but I need you back in my life."

"I'm already in your life, but this is the most it can be."

"No, Alli, there can and will be more. You'll see, it'll be good."

"I can't...I won't. No way." Alli was trying to let Billy down easy. He was one of her husband's oldest and closest friends, but he had an obsessive behavior that was now threatening her relationship with her husband. That was not acceptable.

"We were in love once, Alli, we will be again."

"That was high school, Billy. I don't love you like that anymore. If you loved me like you say you do, you'd let me go."

"That's the one thing I can't do."

"I'm sorry, Billy, it's not going to happen."

"Alli, remember the New Year's Eve party?"

"I remember some of it. What are you getting at?"

"Remember the bathroom?"

"I remember being in the bathroom. I remember you coming in..."

"I came into the bathroom with you, Alli. We did things."

"What the FUCK did you do, Billy?!"

"I did you, Alli. Well, I didn't really DO you, but I got you into some compromising positions. I took pictures, Alli. People will think we did stuff if they see those pictures."

"FUCK! This isn't funny! Billy, please. I'm begging you. Don't do this. It will devastate Stan. He wouldn't understand. It would give him a nervous breakdown."

"He'll never know, I swear. I will take this to the grave with me. I would never do anything to hurt either of you. You just have to trust me. As long as we're careful, he'll never know."

"Billy, please..."

"I have to do this, WE have to do this."

Alli was crying now. "Billy, after all he's done for you, how could you do this?"

"Please don't cry. It's gonna be fine."

"How do you think this is supposed to work?"

"Look, Stan leaves on February 2nd for a business trip and will be gone till the 12th. I'm gonna plan a "business trip" as well and leave on the 4th. I'm gonna go and spend a few days taking selfies and sending them back to Alice, then fly back here on the 6th. We'll spend Saturday together rekindling our love for each other, then I'll fly back out on the 8th and spend a few days sending back some more selfies. No one will know I'm even here."

Alli was thinking fast.

She had met Billy when they were both in the 8th grade. Alli was a skinny little awkward girl who was one of the smartest kids in school. Billy was a 'bad boy'. Surprisingly, they became friends and when they went into high school they began dating. Alli lost her virginity to Billy and believed, at the time, that they would be together forever. Forever lasted half a school year when Billy acquired a roving eye. Billy actually let her down easy and they continued to be friends.

It wasn't a secret that Billy had some emotional issues. He would get into fights and was very obsessive and possessive, but he was loyal to a fault to his friends. The problem was that he didn't really have any friends. Only Alli, and the girls looking for a 'bad boy'. Throughout high school, Billy was with a lot of girls and got into trouble several times for stalking them after they broke up with him, and he got into several fights with some of their new boyfriends. There had been rumored pregnancies, but no little Billy's had been produced.

At the same time that Billy and Alli were breaking up, Billy met Stan and Lenny. Like Billy, they had their quirks. Lenny was considered slow. He was friendly, but kept to himself. He was smart enough to get through school, but was certainly on the low end of the IQ scale. He, also, was fiercely loyal to his friends. Lenny was a big kid. In 9th grade, he was over six feet tall and 220 pounds. By the time he got out of high school, he was six feet six inches tall, and about 280 pounds of muscle.

To Alli, he was a big giant teddy bear. He was one of the nicest, sweetest, gentlest people she had ever known. Lenny rarely got angry. Alli knew him for a full year before she ever saw him that way. That first time, however, almost got him expelled.

Alli had been in the main hall at school when one of the larger defensive linemen from the football team started harassing her. Lenny happened to be walking by when the football player started groping Alli and she screamed. Lenny pulled him off of her and the football player hit him. Lenny practically beat him unconscious. It took three of the idiots teammates to pull Lenny off of him. Everything was on camera and Lenny was exonerated because it was clear that Lenny was protecting Alli and the football player had hit him first.

At the same time she met Lenny, she met Stan. Stan was on the very edge of the autism spectrum and was very socially inept. He was, without a doubt the smartest kid in the school, possibly the state. He had an IQ that was off the charts. It was strange that he and Lenny became friends, but they did.

Stan was a very good-looking guy that didn't know that he was. He was athletic, but stuck to cross country running because he could do it alone and he liked the solitude. He was kind of like a less extreme version of Sheldon Cooper from 'The Big Bang Theory', in Ashton Kutcher's body. He and Alli started dating on Valentine's Day of their sophomore year and had been together ever since. The fact that Alli and Billy had dated had never been an issue...until now.

Alli became very protective of her boyfriend. While genius at most things, his social ineptness made him a possible target. She was fiercely protective and would go out of her way to make sure he wasn't taken advantage of. Before they had started dating, but after they had met, another kid pretended to befriend him, then ridiculed him in front of a bunch of other kids. It took him three days to come to grips with the idea that someone claiming to be a friend would treat him that way. Billy beat the kid up.

After high school, Stan went to MIT on a full scholarship, Lenny got a job at the Philadelphia Navy Yard lifting heavy things from one pallet and putting them onto another pallet, and Billy, with a GED, went into the Army. It turned out that just before everyone graduated, Billy found out that he wouldn't, so he dropped out and got a GED. Alli went to Temple and got a degree in Business Management.

Now, at thirty, they all lived in sunny California. After MIT, Stan had started his own internet based company in Silicon Valley, sold it two years later for hundreds of millions of dollars, and remembered his friends.

Allie and Stan had gotten married on the Valentine's Day after he graduated from MIT. After they hit it big, Stan got ahold of his old friends and invited them to move to California as well. Lenny was still working at the Navy Yard, and Billy was going from one sales job to another, and had recently gotten married to a girl named Alice.

Stan set his friends up in homes near his and they once again became the tight knit group they had been. He started another company and gave his friends highly overpaid jobs. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. Alli and Stan were planning on starting a family now that everything was set.

Now Billy's obsessive personality was rearing it's ugly head. Alli had noticed Billy flirting a little more than usual for the last few months, but had brushed it off, since he had always been a flirt. Now she wished she hadn't. She didn't really know what she could have done about it, but she still felt like she should have been more on her guard.

"Billy, I'll have to think about this. You must make me a promise. You cannot let Stan know anything about any of this. If he finds out about any of this, it would devastate him. This could literally give him a mental breakdown. I will do anything to protect him, Billy, anything."

"I don't want to hurt him, Alli. I would do anything to protect him, but I have to have you back in my life on a higher level."

"Where does Alice think you're going for your business trip?"

"Philadelphia. I've already made reservations at a hotel near the airport in case she checks up on me."

"What about Stan? Does he know you're supposed to be going there?"

"Well, there's a convention going on and he thinks I'll be attending that."

"Why don't you just tell Alice about the convention?"

"Because, if she doesn't have any dates planned, she'll want to go with me and hang out in Philly for the week. She knows I can blow off certain aspects of a convention, but if she thinks I'll be stuck in sales meetings, she won't want to go."

"A tangled web, Billy. Why don't you just divorce her? End the charade."

"Because she's the cover we're gonna need, Alli. Me being married will be more of a cover for us."

"There can't be an 'us' Billy."

"There will be, Allie, you'll see. It's gonna be fine."

"No it's not, Billy, someone's gonna get hurt really bad, maybe everybody."

"I love you, Alli, I will never hurt you."

"You're delusional, Billy, you're already hurting me."

"I love you, Alli"

"I love you too, Billy, that's why this hurts so much."

Lenny left the house. He wasn't sure what to do about this. If he just beat the hell out of Billy, like he wanted to at this moment, Stan would find out and know what was happening. He decided to wait and call Allie later. She was really smart, she would know what to do.

Two hours later, with Billy gone, Allie was trying to figure out how to diffuse this situation with no one getting hurt. There was no way she would cheat on Stan...no way. She had to figure out how to get the pictures that Billy had of her before Stan saw them. While she was certain that Stan would believe her if she told him she had been drugged, she was still concerned about what would happen to his psyche.

The next problem would be how to get Billy out of their lives without having all this come out. She wasn't lying to Billy, she loved him...like a brother. There was not one single romantic feeling for him in her body. She no longer trusted him, and she knew he had to somehow be removed from their lives. He was like Old Yeller, she loved him but knew he was too much of a risk to keep around. Eventually, he would screw up the wonderful man her husband was.

Her cellphone rang and the picture showed a selfie of her and Lenny she had taken when the two had gone to a Philadelphia Union soccer match together.

"Hey Lenny, what's up?"

"Hi Allie, got a minute?"

"For you, Lenny? I've got a bunch of minutes."

"Is Stan close by? Can he hear you?"

"Nope, just me."

"Ummm...Allie, I don't know how to say this. I heard what happened today at your house with Billy, and..."

"Lennie, listen to me, I'm not sure what you heard, but...Lenny, can we meet somewhere? Since you already know something, I could really use someone to talk to, and I'd rather not talk about this on the phone."

"That would be fine with me, how about the Starbucks?"

"That would be great, twenty minutes?"

"Sounds good, see you there."

"Thanks, Lenny."

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Billy felt like a complete dick, but he just couldn't help himself. He had to have her. His own marriage was falling apart and in his mind, Allie was what he had to have. He knew he couldn't have her completely, she would never leave Stan, but just having a piece of her would bring the stability to his life that he needed. At least that's what he rationalized.

Billy didn't really have any pictures of Allie, he was surprised that she hadn't demanded to see them. He had gone into the bathroom when Allie was in there, but it was only because he heard her when she had started throwing up. He had gone in to make sure she was OK and later thought of using that to his advantage. He hadn't even drugged her. It was in her mind that she hadn't had a lot to drink, so he let her believe what she wanted. In reality, she had been drinking all day. The fact was, she wasn't a drinker and was kind of a lightweight.

Now that the die was cast, he was going to go through with it. He figured he would fly out to Philly on the 4th and set his alibi. He would call Alice from Philly, send a few selfies at local landmarks, and return to Cali on the 6th. He would spend the weekend with Alli, then fly back to Philly on the 9th and take a few more selfies. he would fly back to Cali on the 12th, just like his agenda said.

He hated doing this to Stan, but his mind kept telling him this was the only way his life would get back on track. Allie was the answer. She was the calming force in his life. He never should have broken up with her when they were young. If they had just stayed together, maybe his life wouldn't have gotten so screwed up. The more he thought about it, he was sure his life would have been better if he had stayed with Alli. He wasn't lying when he said he would die for either of them, but he felt like he was suffocating without her.

On the other hand, if Alli and Stan did break up, Alli would still be super-rich and the two of them could live comfortably, and happily, for the rest of their lives. That, however, wouldn't be worth it if she was miserable. He would have to share her...at least for now.

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Allie pulled her car into the strip mall parking lot and walked into the Starbucks coffee shop. She ordered a mint tea and put a little sugar and some chocolate powder in it. She got a regular coffee, and kept it black with no sugar, the way Lenny liked it.

She found a table in the back of the store with a little privacy, and looked around to see if there was anyone she recognized. Nope, no one. Five minutes later, Lenny walked in and saw her. He lumbered over and sat across from her with a worried look on his face.

"Lenny, thanks for meeting me here, tell me what you heard."

"Well, Allie, I was dropping off some paperwork for Stan, and I saw Billy's car in front of the house. I didn't think anything of it until I was in the house and heard you two talking. I knew you two didn't hear me so I didn't say anything. I was in the kitchen while you two were in the living room. I saw Billy get on his knees and beg you. I was really mad that he was putting pressure on you, but I decided it would be best to wait and talk to you later. I figured you would know what to do. I'll help you any way I can."

"I know you will, Lenny. For now, just keep this between us. I am NOT going to do anything with Billy. I always hear that once you give in, it only gets worse. Eventually, it would come out and devastate Stan. I can't chance that Lenny, I can't. I need to figure out how to get the pictures he says he has, then have Billy removed from our lives."

"I'll do it, Alli. I'll get rid of him for you."

"Not like that, Lenny. A different way. I don't want him hurt, and I don't want you in prison. There has to be a different way."

"Maybe I could make it look like he just decided to leave and not come back."

"As much as that would be nice, I don't want him hurt if we can help it. As a last resort, I may consider it, but only as a last resort."

"OK, Allie, whatever you say. You just tell me what to do."

"Let's sleep on it and talk again later, OK? Thank you, Lenny. I really appreciate your help. You don't know what this means to me."

"Anything for you and Stan."

Allie got home at five o'clock and threw some steaks on the grill. She figured Stan would be home around six. At five after six, Stan walked through the garage door into the mudroom. "ALLI, I'm home," he yelled.

"I'm on the deck, got some steaks on," she yelled back.

Stan walked onto the deck and gave his wife an affectionate hug, leaned down, and kissed the soft spot behind her right ear. He knew it gave her goosebumps. It always surprised her when he showed her displays of affection, because he wasn't affectionate with anyone else. He didn't like to shake hands, and hated it when another woman wanted to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The only other woman who ever got away with a small hug and a cheek kiss was Alli's best friend Andrea.

"Hey beautiful, how was your day?"

"Just fine, studmuffin. Went to the gym, jogged through the park. Went to the animal shelter for a while...and they have a REALLY cute Corgi puppy there. Worked with Andrea there, she said to tell you hi. Did I mention the Corgi puppy?"

"Well tell her I said hi back, I really like her. She reminds me of you, you know. She even looks like you. Actually, it's eery how much you two resemble each other. Now, sweetheart, Corgis are expensive, I'm sure that puppy belongs to someone. Someone will claim it. Do NOT get attached."

"I know, I know. Maybe someday?"

"How about we wait 'till summer so we can train him outside." It was a statement, not a question.

"Really? Are you sure? I know you get uncomfortable around dogs."

"Waiting till summer will give me time to get used to the idea."

"OK, Stan, that sounds perfect. I love you, honey. I still don't know what I did to deserve you."

"Yes, well, you know I love you too, and you know that I feel compelled to say it every time you do... so... I love you too."

"I know, just wanted to hear you say it," Allie laughed. "Go wash up, I'll get dinner on."

"OK. Just to let you know, I made reservations for us for our anniversary, so don't make any plans."

"That's great, where are we going?" She asked this with a huge smile. It wasn't like Stan to create surprises for her. The norm was for him to run everything past her ahead of time. Since he wasn't comfortable with surprises, he figured she was the same way and thought he was being considerate.

"Well, it's a surprise, but I'll tell you if you need me to."

"No, sweetness. I love it when you have surprises for me. I can't wait. I love you."

Stan let out a big sigh. "I love you too, but if you can't wait, then I'll tell you."

"No, goofball. I meant that I'm excited about the surprise, but I'll wait for Valentine's Day and be surprised. I love it when you surprise me."

"You're weird," he laughed. "I'm gonna go wash up."

"I LOVE YOU!" Allie yelled this as he closed the French door to the deck.

Stan stopped inside the door and pressed his forehead against the inside of it, stepped back, then reopened the door to the deck. "I love you too. May I go wash up now?"

"Yes, studmuffin." She giggled. She would not hurt this man. She would do anything she could to diffuse this situation with Billy, without hurting Stan. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got at Billy. She understood he had a personality disorder, but she could not be the one to take the brunt of his problems.

A few days later she got a call from Billy. "Hey, Allie. You busy?"

"Hello, Billy. No, I'm not busy. What's up?"

"How about lunch?"

"Sure."

"How about Antonio's? It's quiet."

"How about the food court at the mall?"

Bill let out a big sigh. "OK, OK. I was hoping for something a little more...intimate."