Like my first story, this comes from people that I've known throughout my life. This one hits a little more towards home tho, it's based on true events. I incorporated some of the people from my first story, because they all knew each other anyway. None of the names of the characters are real, nor are most of the places of business (a few that had no real significance are real). There's some sex, but not a large amount. The story is a little longer than I intended (8 pages), but, after I started writing, I found that it was going to take that many pages to tell the story.
*****
It was a late Friday evening, the channels on the television flipped back and forth between the cable news outlets. Fox, CNN, it didn't matter, the world was turning to shit.
"What the hell has happened to the world?" Gary spoke out loud, "Has everybody lost their fucking minds?"
He turned the channel to WBNS TV10, Columbus, Ohio to check on the local weather. Even tho he hardly, if ever went outside anymore. Just to sit on the front steps occasionally, he still liked to see if it was going to rain or not. The timing was almost perfect, the weather report would be on after a few commercials.
Sitting on the couch, a bottle of 'Jack' sat on the coffee table half empty in front of him. As he reached for it to pour another glass, a new commercial for JWB & Porter Carlson, Attorneys at Law, a lawyer's office based out of Columbus, Ohio came onto the screen. Their specialties were Accident and Personal Injury cases, and they also handled divorce and family law.
Gary felt a certain animosity towards Porter Carlson, and over the years, when he had heard a commercial for this law firm, he had always blurted out, at the end of each ad,
"Jace Ballard and Porter Carlson, getting rich by chasing ambulances and
wrecking marriages
."
He had always called JWB the 'pretty boy' of the pair of lawyers, since he was the younger of the two and quite good looking.
Ignoring the ad as he usually did, Gary's heart sank when he heard a voice that he hadn't heard in over twenty years, but a voice that he knew so well. His attention became glued to the television, as there on the screen, was the handsome and well dressed Jace Wellington Ballard (JWB), with his arm around an astonishingly beautiful dark haired woman as she spoke about the law firm. JWB finished up the segment with,
"You've been listening to me and Porter for all of these years, now listen to my beautiful wife."
Gary opened the bottle of Jack, and instead of pouring a glass, he put the bottle to his lips and guzzled almost all of what was left. He glanced back to the television just in time to briefly see the 'happy couple' kiss.
Gary didn't bother to watch the weather, he got up to walk outside and sit on the front steps. As he opened the front door, he almost fell out onto the concrete stoop, the effects of the alcohol were taking hold of him rather quickly.
Gary's mother stood in the kitchen watching her son. She felt like crying, but she was almost cried out. She didn't know how to help him, he'd been on a downward spiral for over twenty years now. Now drinking and barely eating, he had wasted away to about ninety five pounds. She retreated to her bedroom and went to bed.
*******
Gary Arthur's first day of high school in the fall of 1970 was a nerve wracking experience. He stood right at six foot tall and weighed all of one hundred and fifteen pounds. Tall and lanky, his black hair didn't hang, but it went half way down to his shoulders and had an 'I just stuck my finger into a light socket' look to it. He had a pencil thin black mustache to compliment his wild hair.
Even tho most of the other boys in the class had long hair like him, he still felt awkward and out of place. When the teacher started speaking, she told the class to pick a partner to work with, preferably someone of the opposite sex. Two boys or two girls together, seemed to do more goofing off, than school work.
He felt someone tap on his shoulder, he turned and looked into the most beautiful brown eyes he'd ever seen,
"Hi, I'm Maria, Maria Serevil. Would you like to be my partner?"
It took Gary a couple of moments to come to his senses, then, still looking right into her brown eyes,
"Oh. . . A. . . I'm a. . . Gar. . . Gary Arthur. . . Yeah, sure," he said nervously.
That was the beginning, and it didn't take long for them to become best friends, and soon they were a couple. They were inseparable, wherever one was, the other was close by. They were voted by their classmates the cutest couple in their junior yearbook. They were a fixture around this small southern Ohio town in Gary's red 1969 Chevelle SS.
With Gary and Maria's birthdays both falling late in the year, they were both nineteen by the time they graduated high school. When they were seniors, Gary was still an even six foot tall, but he had filled out and now weighed around one fifty. Maria was five foot, three and weighed in at one hundred and five. She had small, but perky 32 C breasts, and dark brown hair that fell to just above her shoulders. Of course Gary still had his wild black hair.
A lot of boys at school had 'crushed' on Maria, but they kept their distance, because it was so obvious how much she was in love with Gary and they saw no point in trying to break them apart.
Their families knew it was going to happen, and so did most of their friends and classmates. Within a year of graduating high school, they were wed. They were both still virgins when they married and had the joy of discovering sex for the first time with each other.
Gary got a haircut, but it seemed that anything short of getting it all shaved off, he still looked like he'd been doing science experiments with electricity. He took a job working for the local street dept. The pay wasn't anything to brag about, but it did pay somewhat better than minimum wage and had some good benefits too. Maria took a job as a receptionist in a local insurance company. With both of their incomes, they lived quite comfortably.
After two years, their first child was born. A boy, they named him Joshua, and Gary and Maria couldn't be happier. Within two more years, another son was born, this one they called Jacob.
They decided that they needed to find a bigger home to raise their children in. They had been renting, but found a nice home in a nice neighborhood. It was an older three bedroom with a full basement and the previous owner had started to build a study in the attic. It definitely had a lot of potential.
After buying the home, Maria decided to take some night classes offered at the local university for working mothers. She took a short course on business administration. After she completed the course, she decided to try and find a better paying job. Gary told her that they didn't need more, they were doing fine. Her reasoning on the matter was; this would give them more money to turn their house into their dream home. She was persistent, and finally convinced him to go along.
Gary and Maria had been married six years, when she visited the local unemployment office and put in resume's to several different companies. She interviewed at three different businesses and was hired as the secretary to the CEO for Cutlar Industries. Her salary would be a 70% raise over her job at the insurance agency. She put in her notice, and within two weeks had started her new job.
