As always I'd like to thank my editor Erik Thread for his hard work and advise. This isn't the story I wrote the first time, or the second or even the third. However, the last one Erik saw was the third, so I know I've made errors since he last fixed this.
I'd also like to thank
fdkman262
who gave me some great insight into what I'd written as opposed to what I needed to write. It's a much better story because of his advise and skill as a writer.
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I was lying on our bed, lost in an erotic glow when I heard the garage door activate. 'Shit!" I blurted. Vaulting to my feet, I glanced at the clock 10:45! No! She couldn't be home yet! "Oh Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!"
I looked at our bedroom, the rose petals, the champagne and wondered if my whole life was about to crumble around me...
I'm an architect, and I'd been on my own for about a year. I'd been working incredible hours because with only one client, my staff consisted of me, myself and I. My office was in an abandoned gas station. I'd tried to have an office at home, but I found I was taking too many breaks to spend time with Judy and the girls. We had identical twin girls who were born nine weeks before I graduated from the University of Texas six years ago. They hadn't been planned, but we were overjoyed.
We both wanted a large family, but something had gone wrong during the birth process, and she'd had never been able to get pregnant again. We'd tried some fertility treatments, but although the doctors had been certain some of the newer techniques would be successful, we'd decided to put them off because of expenses when I struck out on my own.
Judy had stayed home with the girls until I opened my office. Money was tight, and we'd needed an extra salary. So, without complaint she started working for an oil company as an executive assistant. Judy thought her job had the prefect hours for a working mother. Monday to Thursday she didn't go in until nine and she was off at three. Great hours, except on Fridays when she had to be at the airport for a 7:10 AM flight to Dallas to facilitate her boss's weekly meetings. The airport was a twenty-minute mad dash from our house, or thirty if you drove the speed limit.
It made for a long day because they didn't leave Dallas until 6:25 and Judy rarely walked in the door before 8:15. Then, almost four months ago, it got much worse. Judy's boss got a promotion and the meetings started running longer. After they missed a few planes and had to pay a premium, they began to simply schedule the final flight, which didn't arrive in Midland until 9:55. It was generally close to eleven when Judy got home. I hadn't been happy about it but since Judy didn't complain, I didn't say anything.
Tonight was supposed be pure fun and great sex! Now... now it looked like everything was going to be ruined! I glanced at the clock, again, 10:45! No, she couldn't be home!
I heard her car pulling into the garage. Why was she arriving home now, the time when she'd get in if the plane landed on time? But I knew the plane wasn't on time, because, out of character, I'd checked on the flight. I had wanted everything timed perfectly for when she walked through the door.
In a disoriented fog, I glanced around the room one more time. I saw the bowl of rose petals I'd planned to strew across the bedspread. The champagne in the ice bucket I'd rented from the liquor store. I thought of the "caramelized pecan apple pie" I bought at HEB. It took an hour to cook the frozen pie and I'd only put it in the oven a half hour ago. I'd also picked up the HEB store brand "1905 vanilla ice cream" to top it. Hot apple pie with ice cream is Judy's favorite dessert, and it was one of the few things I could cook.
For a few precious seconds I was distraught that she'd ruined my surprise for her. This was a big day for us. I had learned today that the first house I'd designed had won a Frank Lloyd Wright prize! For an architect that's like... like winning the Nobel Prize!
I'd debated announcing the prize at a family dinner, but I'd decided I wanted to make my announcement to Judy alone, make it the start of a romantic weekend before we again started the very un-sexy process of the fertility treatments. With all the business the prize would generate we should be able to afford the very best. I hoped Judy would be delighted.
So, the twins were with my folks on one of their weekend RV trips to sightsee. I had told them I'd have big news when we all went out for dinner Sunday night.
I heard the garage door activate to close, but Judy shouldn't be here yet. My long denied suspicions formed ranks and began a brutal assault on both my head and my heart. While my gut had been telling me she was having an affair, my heart continued to deny it.
What do I really know?
I asked myself.
Her recent habit of going straight to the hot tub when she got home on Friday started about the time of the late flights. She wouldn't even change into a bathing suit first, she'd just hop in wearing her bra and panties. She called it "Momma's come down time." I now felt sure it was a terrible play on words; Judy had always been clever that way.
Since the late flights began, we never make love on Fridays when she comes home. She's too tired from work. But before the late flights began, when she arrived only a couple hours earlier, she practically attacked me when she got home from Dallas. If I hadn't been so pleasantly shocked, I would asked her about it. Before those Fridays, I could count on the fingers of one hand the times she'd initiated sex, and still have fingers and a thumb left over. Yet for over a month, she'd barely waited until the girls were down.