Second Chances

I took a red-eye flight out of SFO, San Francisco Airport. Couldn't wait until I got back home to Cleveland. I haven't seen Jerry in over 10 days, and I'll be a day and a half early. The project we're working on is another Big Data installation and development. It's gotten to a lull while more hardware was being installed and tested.

It's been a rough week and a half. Damn CEO client thinks all he has to do is write the check, snap his fingers and the next day he'll be up and running. He's paying our practice more to get it quicker, so I really shouldn't mind, but I do. I'm on salary and I have to bring in billable hours, but that means he owns my time. Its feeling like he owns my life. The things I do to get ahead...

I've been living with Jerry for the past year. It's his condo, but we split expenses down the middle. It's cheaper than a good apartment on my own. To top it off, I get a lover and looking like a very husband-to-be in the deal. But it hasn't been a great year for us.

The bloom's off the rose in our relationship. It could go further, but we've both been preoccupied with work. We both work crazy hours and I've spent more time on the road this year than I have in the past three since graduation. I'm still keen on Jerry, but I started to realize that we're in a difficult situation. I'm an independent woman, I know what I want, I think?

The cab dropped me off and the distance from the street to the front stairs was short, but the distance inside to our unit was long. The person who figured out that putting wheels on suitcases should go to heaven. If I start my laundry now, I'd be able to put together a surprise dinner for the two of us. I wheeled the suitcase to the laundry closet in the back. Special dinner for us here I come. This getting home a day and a half early will really be worth it for us.

I plopped my suitcase on the table next to the laundry closet. Bed sheets were ready to be washed. Jerry doesn't wash sheets. He's not good at all with laundry. This didn't feel right, not right at all. I picked them up, I saw no stains of an accident, but the sheets have an unfamiliar scent.

Perfume. Somebody elses perfume and a different person's scent. And Jerry's cum.

A split second to understand. He wasn't alone in our bed. I never thought something like this would happen with Jerry. He's not that kind of guy? I have to get out of here right now. I wasn't supposed to be home, and I won't be. I have to think things out. If I call my brother Dave, he'll come by and pick me up immediately. With luck, I can be out of here in 15 minutes. Faster than a cab.

I rang him up. "Hey Dave. Could you pick me up at the condo right now? It's important." I heard a yes. "Great, I'll be looking out for you when you pull up. Bye." I arranged everything back to what it looked like when I arrived and headed to the front door wheeling my suitcase back down that much longer hallway.

As he pulled up at the front of the condo, I threw my suitcase in the back seat then jumped in the car. "Just drive me away from here as fast as you can."

"Hey Sandy, what's going on?"

"Dave, I got home about a day and a half early to see sheets in the laundry. They stank of perfume. Not my brand. Can I stay with you until I figure out what to do?"

My brother Dave is in IT too. Information Technology. He likes the hardware, firmware and the interactions between the two. When he's in the mood, he programs in assembler for fun. That's machine language. He's built himself a good business designing, installing and troubleshooting specialized equipment that operates over the net and on networks. I work with Big Data. We're geeks.

We drove those 10 minutes to his house in silence, silence that I needed. He pulled into his driveway, yanked out my suitcase, grabbed my left arm and marched me to the kitchen. It was about 11 AM and lunch was on his mind. I'd lost any appetite a half hour ago. He made a fresh pot of coffee to get me going and to calm me down. Working 14 hours days for weeks on end has made me dependent on coffee.

After we settled down a bit, he started talking. "Ok, you get home, the sheets smelling of perfume are next to the washer. I'm not defending anybody or anything, but we're analysts. What else could it be?" He paused and with a silly grin on his face he said, "Is he a little?" and he swished his hand to the side. "Does he like dress up?" There had to be a look of shock on my face, but he continued. "He could be a closet transvestite. I've met a few over the years." Now with a real seriousness he continued, "Look, at this point you really don't know. That's my point. Whether you'd want to stay with him if this was the case, that's up to you. But right now there is no sure way to know."

I'm crest fallen. Getting angry and hurt is normal, but thinking things out is what I do for a living. This is going to be more painful work on my part. We sat in silence. But then Dave continued, "Do you still have the Raspberry Pi box I built for you in your bedroom?" I nodded yes. "Then wait right here." He stood up and continued, "And have something to eat before you do anything else." He pushed the makings of a sandwich toward me as he left the kitchen.

For his own use, Dave built for himself a little raspberry Pi video jukebox system. At the retail computer stores, he bought individual plug in computer modules including a Linux operating system and programmed it to do exactly what he wanted to do - serve up movies like a juke box and connect to the net when he wanted to. He ripped all his DVD movies to files, converted them to blu-ray, and then loaded them on to USB 3 drives. He's got a library of about 400 + titles, a third of them for the kids. His TV, cable box and blu-ray player are all controlled by his remote that controls the little Pi box. He gave me a set-up like that for last Christmas and we installed it in the bedroom to watch movies.

I was munching on a capicola and ham with soft assiago on a slice of roman style bread. Comfort food has always calmed me down. He came back with a little something in his hand. "I've made a few nanny cams to plug into my Pi boxes to monitor what the baby sitters were doing. One 14 year old girl we really liked we never asked back. She was going into the vodka and replacing it with water."

He held up a 1 inch cube with a thin wire and a connector at the end of it. "All we need to do is to plug this end into the Pi box connector strip and have the black face pointed toward the bed. If I remember correctly, your dresser that holds the PI is a bit messy? It won't be noticed?" I nodded yes, it was my dresser, not Jerry's immaculately clean and completely organized one. "I've still got admin privileges to your router, server and Pi box. I can handle the rest."

"Wow Dave, I've never thought about spying on anyone. And you make it so easy." The realization of what I just said triggered something in me. I started to tear up, then I broke into full sobs. My brother held me close, "Dave, It's all about trust. It's the trust with other people, the loss of trust with Jerry that hurts. Our relationship hasn't been the greatest lately. Both of us working crazy hours. We're both starting out in our fields. We have to do it now to get ahead. We've cooled off from us, and when I try to liven it up, I get another assignment across country.

"The thing is, I have to know this. It's the trust issue that's most important for me. We can't continue, we can't go forward, I won't go forward without trust." I hung my head in silence for a minute when I quietly asked, "When can we install it?"

"Grab that sub and the 10 minute drive to get there means we get back here by 12:15. He's due home at?"

"About 6 PM, and I wasn't due home until tomorrow. I'll also grab my spare laptop from work. He has no idea where I keep it so it won't be missing."

True to his plan, we're back at my brother's place on time. He had pulled something out of the freezer to defrost to throw on the grill later. I contacted my work and as expected, was asked to return. Something big broke and the customer was nervous. I scheduled a red-eye flight out the next morning at 5 am.

Dave and his wife Terry wined and dined me all evening. It was great to spend time with them and play with my nieces. That evening with them is what I needed. After the kids were put to bed, I was able to think out, to talk out what was happening. Both of them asked hard questions. They listened to my answers, my answers that may have started saying one thing and ended up as something completely different. The worse part of it, both answer parts were true.

Dave drove me to the airport leaving after 4 the next morning. He was always great for supporting me. "Sandy, no matter what happens, you need to understand. You've invested two years with this guy. You've been living together for a year. If this went south, stand up, shake off the dust from your clothes, and find the rest of your life. You're better than this. You deserve more. Now knock 'em dead on this Big Data job." With a hug from my big brother, I walked into the airport, looking for the express security lane.

When I arrived at the San Francisco Airport, I sent a text to Jerry telling him that the job needed me to make schedule and I couldn't come home this weekend. I didn't answer the phone to make sure that he left me a voice mail back.

By the end of my work day, I got an email from Dave. He said that I was right, he wasn't. He sent me the links to his server and I saw the video file. There was Jerry and Diana from his work going at it on our bed. It was only hours since I sent him the message, and he was going at it like no tomorrow.

Blond, blue eyed, 5' 9", pretty and thin to the point of being barely short of an eating disorder, Diana. In this corner is 5' 2", brown eyed, plain, and over wieght by 15 pounds, Sandy. It's bimbo verses brain. Bimbo won the 6' 1" blond blue eyed boyfriend.

I sent an email back to Dave thanking him for his help. I told him that I didn't think that there wasn't enough investment in the relationship for me to want to save it. Last night I talked with the two of them about a job offer in Oregon that I just received. It was for working in Big Data. More money and at higher technical level and no travel. My career was starting to move. Jerry the Accountant was still his entry level position after 2 years. It was also tax season. He had to work extra hours to prepare for the audits.

I took the next two weeks to get that job. There were five interviews. It began with a half hour phone interview with personnel, another hour with the potential boss. Then three in-person interviews with boss, the work team and the final one with the CEO. I got the on-site ones done over 24 hours during the 2 days I was scheduled to be there. It felt like a good fit all along and they offered the job to me that day.

My remaining 15 hours in Portland gave me time to find an apartment to sublet. The gods were smiling on me that day and I found one in the trendy area near the office that just opened up that morning. I signed and immediately had my mail forwarded there.

I asked my brother to collect packing materials and organize friends for a quick move. Once against my better judgment, I watched a Diana and Jerry sex show file on my brother's server. It made me sick, but it also made it easier to leave. I still didn't know how I was going to tell him I was leaving, but I thought that getting away in the middle of the night was one of my better options.

I needed to finish up some issues with my current job and that was going to take another two weeks, so I told Jerry that I'd have to stay at the customer site till then. He sounded sad. Fucking that blond bimbo on the side and he's sad?

The last two weeks I was away was heavy tax season time for Jerry and he was working late every night of the week. He was also unexpectedly assigned to do an audit in Columbus for a couple of days. I really didn't care anymore. I needed to move on and emotionally move forward and away from him.

One day Dave called me on the phone. "Sandy, you've got to see this, you've just got to see this. Go to the web cam" and he hung up. I opened my personal laptop and saw Diana fucking somebody new. Jerry was out of town, I had gotten a text from him yesterday. He was in Columbus, hours away. There she was fucking somebody called Don.

I heard a text arrive on my phone from my brother. "Don is her boss listen"

It was obvious that this wasn't the first time they were screwing each other. Appears that Dianna has a full time job at the office and another part time job fucking Don, the boss two levels up. Suddenly I'm starting to understand that this is not just about Jerry. I called my brother and we talked about it. He's been keeping up on their sessions. I'm wondering why? I don't know. Cheap thrills maybe?

"Dave, what does this have to do with me anymore? You know it's over for me, he just hasn't found out yet. So she's screwing a couple more guys. What's it matter to me now?"

"Sandy, you're not that shallow. I know you and I love you as only your brother can. Look at yesterday's session. It's pretty short. You'll see something."

I connected up with Dave's server and easily found the session. If it was a non-IT user, it'd had a descriptive name. Here among the geeks, the file name is YYYY_MM_DD_HH24_MM_SS. Nothing creative, but machine created and easy to find. It was a rather small file, compared with the others. I pulled up the session up and waited.

There was Jerry and Diana walking into the bedroom. He wasn't looking very happy about something. She playfully grabbed his ass from behind. After a few minutes of small talk, she started to undress Jerry.

Why do I have to watch this? Why shouldn't I just turn it off? I am more pissed at my brother as each second slips on by. Why watch? Because my brother asked me to, and I trust my brother. Damn him. Why do I have to go through more pain? I waited.

Jerry's not in the mood, he's really not in the mood. Now she's starting to talk about me. Real motor mouth and she's pretty damn nasty. Not only is she screwing my boyfriend in our bed, she is dissing me something fierce. That little ... and that jerk of a boyfriend is saying... Hey wait a minute. Jerry tossed her hands away from him.

Jerry was verbally laying into her. He was upfront and in her face. He told her that she had no right to say anything like that. That they both were the ones with a problem. He's going on for a couple of minutes, never letting her get a word in edgewise. I see her face go from power and control, and as Jerry continues, it fades to sorrow, then to an edge of anger. He finally tells her that it's over for today and it would be better if she left now.

As Jerry turned around to leave the bedroom, I saw a Diana make a vicious angry face at the back of his head. Then with both hands, flipped him a double bird. That's maturity if I ever saw it before. As they left the bedroom to leave, I heard Diana apologize to Jerry in a very sorry tone for saying bad things about me. That's a class act there, I know that Jerry has bigger problems with Diana then he realizes. Still, it was nice that he defended me, to his mistress. Oh whatever, I'm moving on.

A day later I got another email from Dave. There's another somebody new in Jerry's bed while he's in Columbus. I open the file and it's his co-worker Jason. I always knew that Don was a letch and I tried to keep away from him. His hands roamed whenever he was around young women. But Jason was nice, he wasn't a jerk. Jason's married and he and Loretta were trying to have a baby. We're social friends with them. This is all getting worse. Both men are married. Dan has two children. I feel so sorry for their wives. I'm realizing that I feel so sorry for me too. I've not grieved about the loss of this relationship. With these two married men, this is pain that keeps on spreading. I have to do something.

The next Friday was finally going to be D-day for Jerry and me. I'd set it up with him to meet at a fine restaurant directly after his work. It's a short distance from his work and that'll not give him a reason to go home first. I'll officially take a cab straight from the airport. It'll be my good bye dinner for him, but he won't know that until later. It's officially been a month since I've been home.

It's over. His screwing around, both of us more committed to our careers than to the relationship...it's not meant to be.

On Thursday morning, Dave met me at the airport. Till Friday morning, I'll be with Dave and Terry. Then I'll be at a hotel till I leave on Saturday morning. He might try to find me at Dave's house. I also scheduled a connecting flight from Cleveland to Denver to Portland, not the direct flight. He won't know that. I don't want Jerry attempting to see me at all.

On the drive to Dave's home, we talked about the flight and Portland and anything but Jerry and leaving. "I can't wait to spend some quality time with my nieces. I know that they are 3 and 1, but they're as cute as buttons and the older one calls me Zia Sandy."

"Sandy, their eyes light up when you're here. You starting a new job means no time off for awhile." Being with family is great, no matter what.

I knew being with them all now makes a big difference. The past month of Jerry's indiscretions have been more that I should have had. It's just too much. Dave had a couple of friends lined up to help me pack on Friday morning while Jerry's at work. I figured that we'll get there after he leaves at 7AM and we'll be out of there by 11. His bedroom use tended to be after noon. Dave will monitor Jerry's location in his phone so we'd know he shows up there before dinner. If he does, then it's no goodbye dinner.

There were 4 of my brother's friends on a workday Friday, all taking the morning off to help. They took direction well and understood when I would occasionally break down. We did well, getting in at 8 and leaving at 10:30. Back at Dave's house, Terry was there helping me to sort out and package what I wanted to ship. She kept me busy, but she allowed me to grieve.

I've never liked acting, not being real. That's probably one of the reasons that I used to be attracted to Jerry. I could be real with him. I thought that he was real with me. Now I'll meet him at the restaurant. I have to put on an act. I wanted to wack him over the head, I wanted to yell and scream at him, I wanted to cry my eyes out, but none of that will ever happen with him. I know that there's going to be bit of a lack of closure, but vanishing to Portland I think is the best way to go. A bit of payback will be this romantic dinner followed by an empty condo.

I monitored my 'flight' to make sure that my story would be kept straight. I was due in at 4 and could reasonably be at the restaurant by 4:45. I walked in rolling my suitcase at 5 and Jerry was sitting at the bar. He ran up to me and gave me a big hug. That's when I started pretending, I hate pretending.

It's been a month since we saw each other. Jerry was honestly happy to see me, but a bit on edge. We talked about work, and traveling, nothing of real substance. The jerk looked at me funny, like he wanted to tell me he was cheating, but I switched the tone of the conversation when ever that happened. I wasn't going to give him a chance. We drifted, he cheated, it was over. Case closed.

As Jerry was paying the bill, Dave and Terry 'unexpectedly' showed up at the restaurant and greeted me. We broke into a conversation for a few minutes, isolating Jerry. I glanced over at him and told him that I'd like to have a drink with them, and they'll drop me off at the condo when we're finished. He wasn't happy about that, but agreed. I gave him a peck on the cheek and said goodbye and he left. As he disappeared out of sight, we left and they dropped me off at the hotel near the airport. There was no way I wanted Jerry to get in contact with me from now on.