I turned my key in the lock for what I figured would be the very last time. Donna's and my house, sold to the McCarthys.
Technically, the sale wouldn't be until Monday, tomorrow, but everything had been agreed. Donna and I would take one last look around, to make sure there wasn't anything we'd forgotten, even though we had sold the furniture with the house. Donna had taken the dishes, a good set of china she'd inherited from her grandmother, and I had already removed my hunting and fishing gear. Really, there couldn't be much stuff left there.
Donna showed up about ten minutes later, walking through the open door. She looked as good as ever, her blonde - helped by Clairol blonde, that is - hair swinging, and her long, tanned legs looking like they'd been shined in her Daisy Duke short-shorts. Still, she wasn't trying to be too sexy, as she was wearing an old grey t-shirt and didn't seem to have on any makeup. Nope, that was just her typical, casual late Summer norm. Though normally she'd be wearing sandals, today she had on tennis shoes, I suppose to make it easier to carry things to her car.
At 27, she still looked like the 18-year-old freshman I met at UK, the freshman I immediately fell in lust with, her long, slender body just begging to be touched. By the end of her first semester she'd ditched the dorm and moved into my apartment, and the following June we got married. Married students were a rarity at UK, but it worked for us: no need to go out looking for love in all the wrong places, everything was already settled, and our apartment life was simple. That we were both on the poor side meant that we settled for nights at home, hardly a bad thing, unless someone else was having a party.
The economy sucked when we were both graduated, but I lucked out and got a job teaching math at Henry Clay High School, while Donna had to take a minimum wage job. A year later, she went back to UK, to get her degree in nursing, something actually useful, while I was working on my masters at night; the school system required teachers to have their masters within five years of being hired.
But that was ancient history. Donna had hooked up with a pharmacist, and it didn't take me too long to notice the signs. I wasn't going to put up with that shit, and filed for divorce as soon as I could.
It was a no fault divorce, and since we hadn't had any kids yet, it was as easy as a divorce could be. We'd bought a house on Fontaine Road just a year earlier, so there wasn't much equity, but by now the economy was decent and housing prices going up. We got our down payment, plus about $7,000 more, back in the sale price, even after the commission and fees.
Donna and I didn't say much to each other; everything we'd needed to say had been said, loudly, already. I had just finished going through the kitchen cabinets when Donna walked in and threw something on the table. "Do you want this?" she asked.
Damn it, it was a picture album. Not a wedding photo album, since we'd simply been married by a judge. Sadly enough, he was the same judge who signed our divorce decree, though he gave no sign that he recognized us. But there were photos from parties, from playing around on the weekends and summer vacations, and from a ski trip to the Poconos one year.
"You can keep it," I said. Like, what was the point, anyway?
"We did have some good times," she said.
"Yeah, we did," I replied, before anger got the better of me. "At least, until you fucked everything up."
Donna just stood there, staring at me. "Do you really hate me that much?" she finally got out.
"You fucked up everything, Donna,
everything!
" Anger was starting to boil up inside of me.
She moved into her typical defensive mode, hands on her hips, left leg cocked out to one side. "It's not like you were Mr Perfect, you know."
"Maybe I wasn't, but I didn't screw around on you."
"Oh, grow the fuck up, John, it was just a little fun on the side. You didn't have to go all macho and torpedo everything over it."
Yeah, I had gone all macho, and tried to beat the shit out of her boyfriend, but we were in public, and were quickly separated, the fight coming to no resolution. He was bigger than me, so there was at least the possibility that I might not have won that fight anyway.
But, yeah, he won in the end: he had Donna, and I mean really had her: they were shacked up together now.
"Oh, really? And what was I supposed to do, Donna, just forget about everything, forget that it had happened?" I was getting just as pissed off now as I had been before.
"Yes, God damn it,
yes!
But