Like almost everybody else here, I have read the excellent February Sucks by George Anderson. This story must be a real teaser to all writers, because like many of us, I too felt the need to write my own ending. I sent a message to George Anderson asking for his permission to write this alternate ending, but I received no answer. I took the liberty of publishing it anyway and I wish to thank him for his writing. If he ever writes me to refuse my request, I will comply and remove the story right away.
If you're craving for a BTB story where the husband destroys everybody's lives, then I suggest you stop reading here. You will NOT be satisfied. And it will save you the painful trouble of leaving me a disparaging comment.
This story contains no explicit depiction of sex. Why? Because I find long descriptions of sexual acts very boring to write. Plus, there are authors on this site who do a much better job than me on that topic. Also, all characters others than those introduced by George Anderson are the product of my imagination, and any resemblance to existing people is purely coincidental.
I have left George Anderson's story unchanged, until the point where Jim gets to his hotel after that fateful Friday evening. This is where my story begins (in bold: the last paragraph I kept from the initial George Anderson's story. The rest is mine).
If you are still with me, enjoy!
My anger cooled as I walked the block and a half to the hotel. It was replaced by the deepest sadness I had ever known. Linda and I were supposed to be making this walk together, holding hands, chaffing our friends about what they were going to get up to once they got to their rooms, and being chaffed in our turn. She was supposed to be holding my arm that way she does, and pushing her face into my coat sleeve when the conversation got too risqué. Instead, I was alone. Alone, I rode the elevator, trying not to remember what Linda and I had gotten up to in other hotel elevators.
I hesitated when I got in front of the room door. I had no way of knowing where Linda and LaButtshit had decided to end up for their night, and I didn't really feel like going through yet another embarrassing moment, like walking in on them in the hotel room I had rented. I pressed my ear against the door, but I could not hear anything. I opened the door slowly, and was relieved to see that at least, they were not in our room. Well, MY room, I should say.
I sat in the armchair, still stunned by what had just happened. What I needed the most at that very moment was a beer, or a shot of Jack Daniel's. Or both. I had never been much of a drinker, but that was not your usual evening, to say the least. There was a small fridge in the room, but it was a convenience fridge and not a room bar. Nothing to drink. Since there was no other choice, I gave myself a kick in the ass and went down to the hotel bar.
I sat at the bar and got my beer and shot. The shot went down fast, and the burning sensation in my throat gave me a welcome break from the burning sensation in my guts. Well, a very temporary break, but still...
I could not help re-playing some of the shit Dee threw at me while at the bar.
'Linda hasn't left you. She'll come home to you tomorrow, and you'll have plenty of other special nights together. But she is spending tonight with Marc.'
Like a mother would speak to her child:
'You can play with your little cars tomorrow, but tonight you have to go to bed early.'
That had been so condescending, but also infantilizing and humiliating. I think I hated Dee even more than Linda in that moment.
The bar was unusually crowded, especially for a hotel bar. I noticed that the part of the bar where I sat could not be seen from the hotel lobby. That was a good thing, since I did not want my ex-friends to see me when they got back.
Part of me was expecting them to come and check on me, but it seemed that they had decided to enjoy the rest of their evening at the club. That came as a relief. That was a bunch of people I hoped I would never have the bad luck of stumbling into again. The good thing was that they were mostly Linda's friends, and since Linda would be my ex-wife in a near future, chances were good that they would be out of my life as well.
As I milked my beer, I started thinking about a short-term plan. One thing for sure, I would not sleep in my bed at home. I would not sleep again in that bed, that was a certainty. And I did not want to be there the next day if and when Linda arrived with LavAsswipe after their wonderful night. My first idea was to go to a motel, but since this room upstairs had already been paid for, why not use it. I would just have to leave before the others the next day, even if only not to have to face them in the lobby.
I would call Mrs. Porter to tell her not to feed the kids because I would pick them up and bring them to their favorite restaurant for a nice breakfast. Then I would bring them to my parents' for the rest of the day and ask them to take care of them. I would pretend that Linda and I had to go out of town for the day because a friend of hers had an accident. Well, I would forge something around that storyline. And then, I would park in my street, far from the house, and wait until Linda had arrived and until I was sure that LaShitface was gone. And then, showdown!
I have never been a vengeful guy. When stuck in an uncomfortable situation, I would always try to get out of it quickly, and never look back. Revisiting a painful situation was not my forte, and this included seeking revenge. I have always preferred putting my energy into easing my own pain rather than into causing more pain to others. I would not seek revenge on Linda, or even on LaForeskin. And I had no intention of being aggressive or to threaten her in any way to end up doing jail time. But I intended to make it clear that the choice she had made tonight was the initial step toward the unstoppable process of ending our marriage and radically altering our family life. And I would make clear to the rest of the planet that this had been HER doing.
In a sense, I would be the good guy, again, come to think of it. I would allow her to pursue her relationship with LaNutsack, or even have sex with whomever she wanted. But if her kink was to have all the sex she wanted while poor little cucky Jim was waiting for her at home without making a fuss, she was in for a big disappointment.
I was so much absorbed in my own thoughts that I never noticed that person walking in my direction.
"Jim Tobin, Oh My God, is this you?!" asked a very pleasant feminine voice behind me.
I turned around. It took me one or two seconds to recognize her.
"Carolyn St.James!? Wow! How long has it been? 10 years?!"
"Jim, I am with clients here, they are about to leave. I will just say goodbye to them, and I'll be right here! Gimme a minute."
I watched her go back to a table where two middle-aged women and one older gentleman had stood up and were putting their coats on. She chatted with them a bit and shook hands with them.
Carolyn was my college best buddy Adam's sister. She was a knockout at the time we turned 20, and she was even more of a knockout ten years after. As I recalled, she was maybe a year older than me.
"How have you been, Jim? I'm so glad to see you!" she said, coming back. She waved the bartender for a glass of Chardonnay, and I discreetly signaled said bartender to put everything on my tab.
"Pretty good, actually! I was finally able to make it to full-fledge University professor. I even had a student a few years ago who didn't fall asleep in my Partial Differential Equations class. Am I good or am I good?"
She laughed. The sound of her laughing was soothing. Given my current predicament, managing to make a beautiful woman laugh was a balm. I remembered Carolyn kindly making fun of Adam and me because we were good in mathematics, when she hated that with all the cells in her body. Adam and I used to be science nuts, and she had always been much more of a humanities person.
She told me she was now a representative for a communications firm, and she had come town to meet with local clients for a major contract. She was driving back home the next day.
She talked to me about her life. I had no idea she was divorced, since I had not spoken with Adam in more than 6 months. She told me she had been married for 3 years to a seemingly great guy with whom she had a 2-year-old boy. They had had a very normal and quiet couple and family life, until they had been awakened by a police raid at their home at 6 AM on a Thursday morning two months before. The police had found some child porn in her husband's computer and all evidence that he was a cyber pedophile. He was accused of child luring. She had filed for divorce right away. She told me everything had been capped two weeks before.
