Hi folks. I have lots of warnings about this one. First off this is a long story. So those of you who'd been looking for one of those can be happy, everyone else should probably break it up into chunks and read it at their leisure. Secondly after all of the wild and crazy things I've done over the past month or so, this story has no time travel or alens or sci fi. This is a story about normal people going through an abnormal situation and moving on. Last week AlleyKat and I lost a person that was very dear to us. For a few days I didn't write a line, Kat had to pretty much make me start writing again. I was also unable to hook up with my usual partner in crime becuase she celebrated a very big very important birthday and had to paint several towns red. So for this story I received help in the editing department from a friend of ours Callista Fornio (her internet handle is CalliFornio) be nice to her because she's a college student (Go Blue) majoring in English and this is the first thing she's ever edited. Any goof ups in the story or plot are mine, but if you like it say nice things about her in your comments. SS06
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I stood there with tears in my eyes as I watched the two men. One of them was David...my David. He held the other guy, Steve Windham, down and pounded him, while a few of Steve's friends looked on in shock.
The worst thing about all of it was that it was my fault. I don't think it was totally my fault, I think it was mostly the storm. Let me go back.
I married Dave Thomas ten years ago when I was twenty three years old. I'd been a waitress after dropping out of college and Dave started coming into the restaurant I worked at. He was handsome and friendly and we knew a few of the same people. We ended up dating and things just got to the point where I couldn't imagine living the rest of my life without him.
Luckily, he felt the same way and after living together for a year we got married. We have all of the typical things that most young couples have. We have our house, of course, two beautiful children, three cars and a fairly good nest egg put away. Or at least we did until the storm came along and changed all of that.
The storm was awful. Michigan isn't one of the usual tornado disaster states. We usually have a few small twisters that do some damage in a limited area but nothing like the one we had last year that started all of this.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I'd gotten up that morning and made breakfast for the kids before they left for school. I didn't have to make anything for Dave because he was out of town on business and I was pissed about it.
That business trip had really angered me because it had made me take stock of my life. I actually had no life. I had no identity. I'm not Lisa Thomas. Lisa Thomas doesn't exist. At least I didn't exist as a complete and independent person. I felt like I only existed as a reflection of the people around me. I'm Dave's wife, not Lisa. I'm Kyle's mom, not Lisa. I'm Wendy's mom, not Lisa. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done something alone and by myself or for myself. No matter; I don't exist.
Okay, I did have lunches with my friends every once in a while. But those only made the problems worse. Those lunches only served to further illustrate, how little I mattered in the world. Most of my friends worked outside of their homes. And most of my friends weren't married.
So every time we got together all we talked about was their jobs or their careers or some new guy they were chasing. Or some guy or guys they'd hooked up with. To tell the truth, before I met Dave, I was kind of a slut. But now it was ten years later and all of my once steady college friends had caught up to me in wildness and left me behind.
When I compared my life to theirs, mine seemed dull. I mean I love my kids and I truly love Dave, but there are times when I wish I'd met him later rather than sooner. There are times when I also wish that we'd waited before having our kids.
And I know that lots of you are thinking that since my kids are in school, I could go out and get a job. Well, I tried that. The problem is that while I was in school, I wasn't really good at it. I wasn't anywhere near serious enough about going to classes and I bombed out big time and wasted a lot of money. I ended up quitting college and becoming a waitress.
So a few years ago, I registered for classes at the local community college. Dave was very supportive. He encouraged me to go and bought me a laptop and helped me with my homework and everything. The problem was, of course, me. I just didn't have the focus for even the remedial classes that I needed to establish a baseline.
They started me off with the basics. They gave me Literature, Creative writing, and Mathematics. After those I'd have Algebra, History and a general Science class. Those basic six were prerequisites for the more specialized and intense courses I'd need to take once I declared a major. They were important though, because they contributed to my overall GPA. Failing one of them, might've resulted in needing to repeat it, to get into some of the classes I needed when I figured out what I was going for.
My faculty advisor assured me that I didn't need to worry though, because any high school kid could pass the classes. They were intended to just get me back in going to school mode. The problem was that I just couldn't do it. I couldn't sit in that classroom with a bunch of kids and young people and read page after page of drivel. I don't like poetry. I found Shakespeare to be boring and not even vaguely connected with real life. I don't know where commas go and no one uses them anymore anyway. I couldn't write three pages about what I'd done over the summer to save my ass. Dave ended up dictating my entire paper to me. I had never, ever at any time in life been good at Math. I still think that LCD's, either have something to do with TCBY, or you listen to music on them. Dave was beyond helping me at that point. He was coming home after working all day, and spending another two or three hours trying to explain my Math homework to me. After a while, it was easier and less time consuming for him to just do the problems for me.
Of course when the time came for the tests, I failed them all because I had no clue of what was actually going on in any of the classes. School just wasn't for me. That meant that the jobs I was most qualified for had something to do with my life experience. I considered going back to waitressing and eliminated that from consideration. Why the hell should I stand on my feet all day catering to people when I did that at home already anyway?
So after dismissing school and work, I looked elsewhere for stimulation. I decided to spice things up with Dave. For months we experimented with slightly kinky sex. Dave was willing to try everything I suggested, until I brought up swinging. He shut me down so fast I still get dizzy thinking about it.
Maybe that was what made it seem so attractive. Dave is a good guy. He rarely ever refuses me anything. He works his ass off so that his kids and I can have almost anything we want, whether we need it or not. Swinging was the first thing that Dave ever just abjectly refused to do for me.
So I decided that I'd slowly move him away from his abject refusal. I brought up the possibility of us doing a threesome with one of my more attractive single female friends. I figured he's go for that in a heartbeat. After all, what man doesn't want to have two women, right?
My husband Dave that's who. Dave wanted no part of a threesome. So that shut down all of my aspirations in that department. He also started looking at me funny. I should point out here, that there was nothing wrong with our sex life. Dave had always been a very good lover. He was probably the best I'd ever had. The problem was...well when you eat steak every night, you start to want some chicken or some fish.
When we had our next luncheon and I told the girls about it, they were disappointed too. I didn't find out until later, that they'd been hoping that I'd have picked one of them to be the third person in my threesome.
For a couple of weeks Dave watched me intently. I didn't figure out why until I noticed the computer one afternoon while I was cleaning up the office. Dave had been reading a bunch of stories on the internet by writers like, CPete, Saxon Hart, FD45, HueDogg and some guy named Just Plain Bob. At first I didn't figure it out until I noticed that they were all stories about women who cheated on their husband. After I figured that out I noticed that not very many of them ended up with the guy forgiving his wife and moving on with their lives together. Most of them ended up with the women pretty miserable. That Just plain Bob guy did apparently believe in forgiveness but he was in the minority and some of the things he did in some of his stories, Dave was never going to even consider.
When Dave got home that night, I confronted him.
"I'm not cheating on you Dave," I told him. "I have never even considered being with another man since we got together." The look of relief on his face was very clear. He hugged me then for the first time since I'd asked about the three-way.
"Lisa," he said. "I love you so much. I think I'd just be too jealous to ever share you, even with another woman. I want you all to myself, forever."
He went up the stairs to change out of his work clothes. I felt so much better that I couldn't believe it. The problem was that I didn't know why I felt better. I still felt like there was something missing in my life. I still had that feeling that the world was passing me by and that everyone else was doing exciting things and I was just stuck in the mud.
More and more I found myself daydreaming about my carefree college days. So that was the mood I was in on the day the storm hit.
My kids are very bright. So they go to a special school for gifted children. It was put together by the under-secretary of education under the Clinton administration. Charles Xavier had a lot of interesting theories about childhood development and helping children reach their full potential. Xavier's school for gifted children is one of the best schools in our area. To be truthful, I really wasn't sure what all of the hype was about. The most gifted thing about most of the brats that attended the school was the fact that their parents had the gift of being able to afford to send them there.
Anyway, we lived in the suburbs that were pretty far removed from the inner city. The school was located downtown near the river front. It was a long bus ride of about forty minutes for the kids every morning. I always offered to drive them but they loved being on the bus with their friends.
As spring had finally sprung, the grass was getting greener and the days were getting sunnier. We'd also had a lot of rain and a few thunder storms. That morning I'd decided to go and try shopping at the new farmer's market they'd set up near the river front. I had visions of buying fresher fruits and veggies and paying far more reasonable prices for them.
Of course that wasn't what happened. I got down there and was victimized by a group of yuppies who'd all bought farms and retired because they couldn't handle the stress of the rat race. They all swore that they were growing pure organic fruits and veggies that had never been sprayed with pesticides or any type of chemicals and therefore were far healthier for my family.
It sounded good when they said it. And when they described how they had lovingly pampered each and every single apple through each and every day of its growth, I was sold. The problem came when I discovered that these fruitcakes had actually given every fucking piece of fruit a name and treated them like family members. That also meant that there was simply no way they could let them go for anything less than five dollars per apple. So I ended up not buying nearly as much fruit as I'd thought.
I later also found out that pure organically grown fruit doesn't have any preservatives, so it goes bad a lot faster. And when I say a lot faster, I mean a lot faster. Those beautiful apples with names went bad overnight. I also read a report on a study from independent farmers that proved that organically grown fruit is actually no healthier for you than any other fruit.
But back to the story, I was there in the market trying to arrange financing for a package of strawberries when the sky started to go dark. I could tell it was going to rain and soon. Some of the farmers were loading their produce and then their kids, in that order, into their trucks.
