Hello and happy new year.
This is a follow up to a story I posted at the end of 2013. Reading the first one, "The Bastard", may help understanding this story but is not a requirement. The first thousand words are a rehash of the previous story but if you can't remember it, it might be worth looking it up.
It's funny I have been trying to bash two stories into shape to post without much success. I was spraying a fallow paddock the other day when the idea for this follow up came to me and I knocked it out in three days.
Fortunately I found the very capable hands of Siren Capts who massaged the mess into a readable story. Thank you so much for your time and patience. I enjoyed your feedback and hope we can do it again.
Also if you are looking for brilliant writing then you may be disappointed. I hope I'm a story teller but I can't claim to be a writer, something my hard working editor will attest to. After reading a couple of cracking stories by Oshaw and The Unoriginalist it's easy to be intimidated. On the positive side it has a happy ending, something different for me.
Finally my mandatory warning. This story contains a whore and a cheating wife so if that is likely to offend you then please don't go any further. Frankly they are the main reason I wrote a follow up because I enjoyed their characters so much.
Anyway I hope you enjoy, be sure to leave a comment. I like reading the feedback, good and bad.
Cheers
Charlie.
*
I had never been a ladies man. My early failures at high school had led to a lack of confidence. The awkwardness that followed caused more disappointments and the seemingly endless feedback loop continued. I threw myself into my work at a local store and by my late twenties was the owner of it and the shops around it. I thought money and success would cure my problems but I was still the same fish swimming in the same pond. The ladies that weren't already married, knew me and probably never considered me as anything other than a friend.
I wasn't a virgin but rarely had a girl come back for more. There was much speculation about my sexual preference. One look at my porn stash would have ended that however that's not something I wanted publicized. While my abilities in business allowed me to be self assured in work surroundings, put me in a social setting and it evaporated. In desperation I had decided to engage a professional.
That's how I met April. She had recently moved out of Sydney where she had been a struggling artist who worked as an escort to make ends meet. After selling her apartment she hoped to just paint in the country where it was cheaper to live. Reality set in six months later. She went back to what she knew, the escort business. I was one of the first customers she entertained in her country home.
I became a regular and we got to know each other well. As well as anyone can know an escort. I told her of my problems finding a girl and she pointed out my flaws and suggested ways to fix them. In the six years since I had met April I had became quite attached to her. It wasn't just the sex, sometimes we just talked. I suppose I could have been delusional but I felt we had a connection. It had been the longest relationship I had with a woman, apart from my mother then she told me she was moving to Italy. She had won an art scholarship and was going to paint in Italy for twelve months. I said only half joking that I would wait for her but she wasn't planning on returning after the scholarship finished.
"Europe is the beating heart of the art scene. It's where I want to be!"
Resigned to losing the one woman I could talk to I was moaning about having to find another sexual partner. In the time I had been seeing April my business had continued to do well. I had expanded to two neighboring towns. I had also become the target of some single mums and divorcee's. They all had one thing in common they were more interested in my bank account and new house on the hill rather than me. That could have been one of the reasons why I had kept seeing April, in many ways it was cheaper!
April had suggested a different approach, targeting happily married but neglected wives. At first it seemed a stupid idea but I found a niche and mined it for all it was worth. After a dry first three months I hit pay dirt. Taking Julia, a happily married mother of two, to the theatre and later dancing while her husband had their boys away at a football tournament. We ended up back at an apartment I was renovating and we had sex. I say sex deliberately because it was a primal thing. There was no love here, just lust.
Afterwards there was some guilt on both our parts and some scary moments. Her husband was a big bloke and could crush me easily. Ironically it was he who pushed us back together, Julia had been compensating for her guilt by raising the bar in the marital bed. Bob was over the moon at his wife's new found enthusiasm. Tracing it back to the night at the theatre he approached me to continue taking her. He had always considered me gay and recent events in my shop had wrongly confirmed that to many in the town. So I was to be his gay warm up guy, delivering him a wife primed for action.
Julia hadn't been that keen initially but after a dry run on our second theatre visit she relented and a six month affair began. Trying my new talents out on some other local women meant I had five on the go, making me a very busy and satisfied man.
That changed later. I wanted to see what April had been up to so I tried a google search for her. I didn't have her real name but I did know the name of the scholarship she had won. A quick check of their website gave me the name Deborah Ryan. My searching came up with a photo of April/Deborah standing in front of a painting in a gallery in Milan. There was something different about he. She was pregnant. The date on the article and the size of the bump had me thinking I could be the father.
I started to question what I was doing. Sure I was having fun but at the end of the night that fun left. In the morning I woke up alone. The only time I ever had woken up with a woman it had been April just before she left. I had driven her to Sydney to catch her flight to Italy and spent two glorious days with her staying at the Intercontinental. I decided to try and find her. I was a regular traveller so I organized a trip to Italy for three weeks. It was a frustrating trip. I spent most of the time chasing my tail. Every time I thought I was getting close I would end up back at square one. I would go to a city where she was supposed to be and chase around it for two or three days only to find she had moved on.
Returning home dispirited I continued with my married lady friends. The trouble was it wasn't the same. Yes, the sex was still mostly great especially with a new girl. However these affairs have a use by date. Somewhere between three and six months seemed to be all they needed before they returned to their married bliss. Sometimes it only lasted one night. I remember one particular girl who made a strange noise like a hyena on speed the entire time I was inside her. I couldn't wait to leave.
I tried again to find April. That time I had what I thought were solid leads before I left. She abhorred social media probably didn't want her face out there because of her previous occupation. I got really close that trip but that was a double edged sword.
I traced her to Saint-Tropez where I was told she was staying near the harbour. It was actually on the harbour, in a luxury yacht with an Italian millionaire. I saw her pushing one of those three wheeled strollers along with him walking beside her. He was always touching her, and she would lean over and whisper things in his ear.
I wanted to go up to her, to demand to see the child but who was I to spoil her new life. I was just a client of a call girl, a life she no doubt wanted to leave behind. I went home with my tail between my legs a thoroughly miserable human being.
On my return I reassessed my life. I looked at the cement and glass monstrosity that was my house and realized it had no soul. It was a bachelor pad on steroids, lots of toys and glitz but no warmth. The pool out the back was stunning with its sandstone paving, sun chairs and gazebo with wet bar. But where were the people to enjoy it? Kids running around playing tag, friends and family enjoying a get together on the manicured lawns. I needed to change.
It was time to stop chasing no strings attached sex with married women. I guess I was just a late bloomer. Other guys had sown their "wild oats" in the teens and early twenties. I'd waited till my later, but now at thirty five it didn't cut it anymore. In the past two years I'd slept with sixteen women and added a few extra chapters to April's teachings on satisfying a woman. I was in better shape than I was at twenty and I was making a comfortable living. Surely it shouldn't be to hard to find the Miss Right for me.
I worked on it for six months, dating single women around my home town. That didn't work out for me, the gay thing kept cropping up. So I joined a couple of Internet dating sites, at first it was a bust too, too many photo shopped pictures or dodgy descriptions. I had to learn the short hand, like reading a real estate listing. You know, "great investment opportunity" means you wouldn't want to live there. In the same way I found "social drinker who likes going out", meant a borderline alcoholic who got very "social" when she drank.
I eventually met a really nice lady, a little older but still in great shape. We went out for a couple of months and I thought we were really hitting it off. I was to pick her up to go to the theatre on the Friday night when she rang to cancel.
"Why? Is something wrong?" She sounded like she had been crying.
"Well sort of... It's a bit hard to explain...Um."
"It's okay we can work this out together, I'll come over straight away."
"Umm..no....sorry. Tim, I haven't been truthful with you. I'm married."
"What! Why are you on a fucking dating site?" I was astonished.
"My husband has been overseas for nine months, I was getting lonely. I...I just wanted some company." She started sobbing.
