Note: Thank you blackrandl1958 for editing this story. For better or worse, I made substantial changes and practically re-wrote the story after it was edited. All mistakes are mine. TSG
My Sister-in-Law Cheated
And I got fucked
.
"Hi, Mike. It's Chris Harrington, Jenny Palmer's brother-in-law. Is Colleen available?"
I didn't hear the "click", as Mike disconnected the call, because of my wife Mary's yelling and non-stop pounding on my locked home-office door.
I waited two minutes and redialed Mike and Colleen's home phone. "Listen, motherfucker. If you call this number again, I'll report you to the fucking cops. Do you understand?"
"I do, Mike. I understand completely. But you need to understand two things. I don't care if you call the cops, and even more importantly, I'm going to talk with your wife and there's not much you can do to stop me. Have a good night, asshole!" This time I had the satisfaction of hanging up on him.
Despite the continued banging on the door, I leaned back in my office chair, closed my eyes and tried to make the last important decision of a long roller-coaster day. "Should I call my sister-in-law's husband?" I asked myself.
++++++++
I met my wife Mary in high school. I was a junior and was sitting in the bleachers with my buddies waiting for the start of a Friday night football game. A similarly sized group of girls from the sophomore class sat in front of us. As the game progressed, we took turns going to the concession stand. When it was my turn to go, I found that a cute blonde named Mary came with me.
We carried hot dogs, French fries and soda's back, and Mary and I ended up sitting together. She was pretty, smart, had a good sense of humor and best of all, she didn't have a boyfriend.
During the middle of the third quarter someone shouted out, "Are we going to McDonald's after the game?"
There was near unanimous agreement that the girls and guys in our group would continue to have fun at the nearby McDonald's franchise.
Deciding to take a chance I turned to Mary and asked, "I'd rather have a pizza than greasy fries. Would you like to go to Tony's Pizza?" I was thrilled when she agreed.
Mary and I dated once a weekend for a couple of weeks and seemed to enjoy each other's company. We committed to go steady after two months of dating, and things only got better.
Mary was my date to the junior prom and I was walking on clouds as I escorted the most beautiful girl in our school to the dance. I was in heaven, until I wasn't.
Two weeks later, on the Monday leading up to the senior prom, I was jogging to the tennis courts for team practice. I was jogging with my neighbor Julie Burke. Julie was on the girl's team.
I was a bit confused when Julie said, "I think you're a really nice guy!"
"Julie, we've known each other our entire lives," I responded. "Why are you telling me now?"
She punched my shoulder as we ran and told me, "It's great that you're letting Mary go to the senior prom with Jimmy Bay. Otherwise, he's so shy and nerdy he'd never got the chance to go."
Jimmy Bay was a nice guy, but definitely was shy, nerdy and I suspect, on the spectrum. He was a neighbor of Mary's, and she always watched out for him. I wasn't surprised that Mary agreed to go to the prom, but was upset that she didn't have the decency to tell me.
By Friday afternoon, six other people had complimented me on my maturity. They thought it was great that my steady girlfriend could be escorted to the prom by her friend and neighbor.
Truthfully, I didn't feel mature. I was pissed that Mary didn't have the balls to tell me about the senior prom. I knew she'd come clean on our normal Friday night date. She didn't have a choice. At the last minute on Friday afternoon, I texted her and canceled.
I was barraged with texts and voicemails imploring me to call her. After a dozen "dings" on my phone, I finally sent Mary a text, [I've known about your prom date since Monday. At least ten people told me. It's too bad you weren't one of them. I want a girlfriend I can trust. That's not you.] I turned off my phone and sulked.
Mary and I didn't get back together until the start of the next school year. It was a Friday afternoon and I was heading to my car in the student parking lot. Mary was sitting on the hood of my car as I approached. "Will you let an old girlfriend buy you an ice cream at Dairy Queen?" she wanted to know.
That was the start. We were exclusive for the next two years. During the second year, we had a long-distance relationship, as I went to college in New York City. I was able to come home often and was thrilled to exchange virginities on a March Saturday night, shortly after her eighteenth birthday.
Mary and I dated until she left for college the following year. Two weeks into her freshman year, I received a "Dear John" email. It seemed that she was having too much fun in college and didn't want to be strapped to a full-time boyfriend. I never called or wrote. I was popular, got very good grades and was a Division-3 tennis player. I replaced Mary with a steady stream of girls starting the next night.
I didn't see Mary again until two years after she graduated from college. I was working as a staff engineer for a local defense contractor and was out with some work associates after a long week. I literally bumped into her at the bar.
We talked for a few minutes before we each returned to our friends. I'll admit that I kept an eye on her for the next hour and couldn't decide if I should follow her to the parking lot, when her group started to break up.
I chuckled when Mary's friends left. She walked to the bar, sat on a stool and ordered a drink. When she was served, she swiveled her chair until it faced me and stared at our table. I watched her with a dumb smirk as a stream of guys approached her, only to be quickly rebuffed. It wasn't until she looked me directly in the eye and held up two fingers, that I excused myself from my friends.
I needed to wait for Mary to tell another guy to get lost, before I was standing next to her.
"Two?" I asked.
Mary smiled and said, "Yep! If you had let two more guys ask me out, I was going to accept his invitation."
Mary and I dated for almost six months before we became exclusive and moved in together. We were married ten months later and lived a happy and totally fulfilled life for almost five years.
+++++++
My day started early. I had a 7:30 AM meeting with a long-time customer and friend. We were meeting at the downtown Marriott in New Haven, CT, home of a spectacularly overrated University that starts with "Y".
Tony was already sitting in the conference room I'd reserved. We chatted for a few minutes, while I set up my laptop, laid out all the needed paperwork and filled a mug of steaming hot black coffee.
Tony is a civilian contractor assigned by his company to work on the United States Navy's next-generation submarine propulsion system. I'm a senior mechanical engineer. My company is a defense contractor that specializes in marine mechanics.
We had successfully worked together on three small, but important contracts over the last few years. For some reason, we were each getting push-back from our immediate superiors on our current negotiations. We were told that we had one more chance to solve the seven critical issues remaining, before others in our respective companies would take over the negotiations.
Tony and I worked straight through lunch and finally took a deep breath at 2:15 pm. "Do you think your company will accept it, this time?"