As always, thanks to my team. They are, Norafares, Girlinthemoon, Hal, Pixel the Cat and GeorgeAnderson. Harddaysknight is my mentor and gives me critical review. SBrooks103x also gives me a prepost read. I thank you all. I'll borrow a page from Bebop3 and thank all the good people at Sports Illustrated.
Author's note: This is a short story. It isn't meant to be a novel or even give any closure to the lives of the characters. Please feel free to supply your own ending. I know how I think it ends, you make up your own mind. If you demand a life history, this won't be your cup of tea, Randi.
*****
It was one week after my seventh wedding anniversary. There wouldn't be an eighth. I talked to my attorney that morning and my loving wife would be served with divorce papers the next day. We had quite a conversation that night. It began calmly enough.
"Seneca, I don't want to lose you," she told me. Seneca, that's my name: thirty-two years old, hotshot troubleshooter for a major banking software company, clueless idiot. Simone, that's my wife, thirty-one, a total babe, as sweet as honey, tax attorney and a cheater. She doesn't want to lose me, she says.
"Well, you know how that happened," I said.
"No, I don't," she insisted. "I have no idea why you'd throw me away like this."
"Well, there's the little matter of fucking strange men that may have slipped your mind," I told her.
"No, I understand about that," she said. "The thing is, it wasn't men, it was a man, and he was a stranger. I'm not having a love affair and I never will. I was out of town. You weren't there or I'd have fucked you. I'd much rather fuck you. I didn't sleep with someone we know or are ever going to encounter again. I only did it once. Tell me, has there ever been a time in your life when you asked me for sex and I turned you down? Hell, I hit on you more than you do me."
"No, you've never turned me down," I said. "So your position is that as long as it's rare, we don't know the person you're fucking, and you're not having a love affair with them, it's okay?"
"Exactly," she said. "How does that harm you, Seneca? I love you, only you and I'll never love anyone else. I have a very high horny factor, okay? I'm going nuts after a week of not having you. It's not as if I'm in love with the guy I fucked. It was just a fuck. I didn't make love to him. He was like a human dildo to me."
"Why not use a non-human dildo?" I asked.
She gave me a look. "Please," she said. "I'm not some seventeen year old girl, getting herself off in her bedroom and hiding from her parents. Seneca, I love you and you're just tossing me aside like a piece of trash over something that doesn't harm you and you weren't there to use anyway."
"Well, I love you, too," I said. "It does harm me. If we weren't married, it would be different. If we were just people that dated now and again, I would agree with you. We're not those people. You married me. I asked you, and you said yes. We made promises. You made the same promises I did. If you didn't like them, you should have said so at the time. No one made us get married. We volunteered for that. Now, seven years down the road, you tell me you didn't like those promises we made and you want different ones. You should have told me before you broke the first ones. I'd have said, 'Fine. We'll get a divorce and you can fuck anyone you want. You don't get to change the rules for me, Sim. If you wanted to change the rules for you, you knew what to do. That would have been right and honorable. This is just a chicken shit thing to do. The difference is; it looks to me like you're the one tossing me and our marriage aside like a piece of trash. We make love every day when we're home. I know you can go more times than me. That's just biology, but do you think I don't get horny when we're not together? I don't fuck other women."
"Why not?" she asked. "I sort of expected you to. What do you do?"
"Simone, don't you think we should have had this conversation before you decided to fuck around?" I asked.
"Yes I do. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it before," she said. "I didn't plan for it to happen. It was a spur of the moment thing. I feel really bad about that, Seneca. I'm very sorry. It will never happen again. It's my fault and I should have communicated with you better. The situation just came up when you were gone for a week and then I was gone for two weeks. I did tell you about it as soon as I had a chance to talk to you in person. It just pissed you off and you ran off in a huff and didn't talk to me for two weeks. I had to hire people to find you, track you down and spend three days on the floor outside that shithole of an apartment door before you'd talk to me again."
"I may still regret that," I told her. "I'm still pissed off at you, Sim. I may be pissed off at you for the rest of my life. I don't see any way past this."
"I do," she said. "Just let me love you, the same as before. Love me back. I'm going to love you anyway, whether you do or not. What do I have to do to prove I love you and only you?"
"How about not fuck other people?" I said.
"Okay, I won't fuck other people," she said. "That means that when I call you, you have to be available. If I'm in St. Louis or San Francisco or Houston and you're in Boston, how is that going to work?"
"Jesus Christ, Simone!" I was getting angry now. "Are you telling me that any time we go off somewhere apart you get so horny that you have to either fuck me or some stranger? You just can't control yourself?"
"That's not it at all," she said. "I can control myself. Why should I have to? If you're there, I make love to my husband. If you aren't, do you imagine that I have any trouble finding someone to take care of me?"
"No, I don't imagine that," I said. "Any reasonably attractive woman could probably find some man to fuck her ten times a day, but that isn't the point. Millions of women, married women, manage to keep their legs closed every day until they get back to their husbands. Why can't you?"
"I realize that you're very unhappy about this," she said. "Don't lose your temper, Seneca. Just talk to me. We can work this out."
I took a deep breath. "I'm glad you're confident about that, Simone, because I'm highly skeptical. Why did you marry me?"
"Because I love you," she said. "How could you doubt that? I'd die for you."
"That's odd," I said. "You'd die for me but you won't stop fucking other men for me."
"No, I will do that," she said. "I told you how that can happen."
"So, I have to be at your beck and call, constantly? If you're feeling horny I have to drop everything and come running? What about my job? I work, you know." I said.
"I'm quite aware of that," she looked at me oddly. "You don't have to work, you know. I could support us quite easily."
"I like my job," I said. "I'm good at it. Why don't you quit your job?"
"Okay, I will," she answered. "See what I'm willing to do for you, Seneca?"
"Okay, let's suppose one of us quits," I mused. "There's still this little thing about you going behind my back, being a slut for strange men and breaking the promise you made me when we got married. There's the fact that I don't trust you worth a damn. Do you have some magic wand for that?"
Tears filled her big green eyes. "No, I don't know what to do about that," she admitted. "I know I was an asshole about that. I'm very sorry about all of that. I know me saying that doesn't mean anything, but I am sorry. I'll regret that the rest of my life. Can you think of some way for me to fix that? Is there some punishment you think would be appropriate? I deserve it. I'll do anything that doesn't permanently harm me."
"Jesus Christ, Simone!" I exploded. "What are you, two years old? Am I your father? I'm supposed to ground you or something?"
"Calm down," she said. "It was just an idea. I don't know what to do, Seneca. I'm desperate here. I don't want to lose you. I'm floundering. I thought maybe if you fucked other women or something; maybe you could do something to me, spank me or something. You've always wanted to have my ass. I know I'll hate it, but I'll give it to you."
I took another deep breath. "No, fucking other women won't work. You don't seem to mind that, although for the life of me I can't see why not. That wouldn't cause you the pain you caused me. That other is just trivial shit. I think the only thing I can do is divorce you, Simone. That seems to be the only thing you care about."
"Please don't do that, Seneca," she pleaded. "I'm afraid you'll find someone else and replace me."
"Like you did me," I countered.
"No, it's not like that at all," she protested. "I never replaced you. I never will. If you divorce me, I won't ever replace you. You're the only man I've ever loved or ever will love. I didn't replace you. I did something stupid. I should have talked to you, but I didn't replace you. That will never happen."
"So what's going to happen?" I asked. "You should know, Simone, you're going to be served with divorce papers tomorrow."