Three Years Six Months
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24 Hours, 5 Years, 10 Months Ch. 02 free porn video
‘Ok Bill, you don’t have to tell me again. I told you I’d meet your wife’s friend. It’s just a low keyed dinner with your wife Theresa and her friend Marie. Ok. I get it.’
‘Look, she’s a really great person.’
‘Oh no, that means she’s 80 lbs over weight and has 25 cats.’
‘Stop it Jim. No she isn’t and she doesn’t.’ He looked at me in exasperation. I gave him grief whenever he tried to fix me up. Working together for the past year and a half and we’ve became great friends. This is the latest in his getting a date for me. It has been a year since my divorce. It was not a good marriage but thankfully, the divorce was not angry or overly painful. We both realized that we shouldn’t have gotten married. We parted friends. She moved to the west coast and I stayed in Milwaukee.
‘Look Jim, a couple of years ago Terry and I introduced Marie to Chuck, a friend of mine. It all looked good. I never knew his mean streak. Marie worked hard to keep the marriage going. She went to see a counselor and was able to drag him along a couple of months. Then he fought her tooth and nail. We didn’t recognize what he was. He and I went to high school together. I never saw it. The day he slapped her in front of everybody, Terry grabbed her and I ran interference. It was pretty messy. It still took months of therapy and doing other things and then filing to get the divorce. She’s been as dry as you are. It was like pulling teeth to get her to come. So please, just enjoy the company of somebody new. Can you just be nice to her?’
I laughed. ‘You know me Bill, you I’d give grief. This Marie sounds like she gone through difficult times. I will be more than a perfect gentleman. I will be social and you and Terry will be proud of me.’ Bill breathed a sigh of relief.
Five years ago at the age of 20, I was a pretty mean bastard. I lashed out when I found out Gail cheating on me two weeks before our wedding. Kicked her out, exposed her to the world, sold my house and transferred to another city. Heard later that she also disappeared. We both lost our futures that day.
Took me quite a bit of time to get my act together again. I finally went into therapy with a Social Worker therapist. It was the best decision I ever made. I stopped running from me. Even getting married and divorced, I’m pretty solid emotionally. At 25, I have a few more life experiences to build on for the future.
One of my work decisions was to get into network administration and away from copier repair. The last couple of years I have been studying and getting certifications. For never having gone to college, I’m in a technical field that I’m good at and have to keep learning.
Bill and I walked into the restaurant and I saw Bill’s wife Terry wave to me. Marie was sitting with her back to the door. Jet black hair on a medium build. To be honest, even if she was 50 pounds overweight it wouldn’t matter. Some of my best dates were with people that would never be on the glamor magazines. It all depended on who they are underneath. The one’s I liked we discovered that we didn’t click due to other things, not appearance or weight. I do have a couple more great women friends now.
As Bill and I walked closer, something changed. Marie was talking with Terry and I saw something. It was a specific hand gesture, it was a Gail hand gesture. It was Gail’s hair and build. This was getting more weird with each step. Name is different, it can’t be Gail. Another step and I hear Gail’s voice.
I knew what I wanted to do, I knew immediately what I needed to do. As Bill got to the table, Terry and ‘Marie’ turned toward us. Gail’s mouth immediately opened and a look of fear came across her face.
Looking at her, I got out the first words. ‘Hello, you must be Marie. I’m Jim. May I join you?’ She was still sitting there in shock and I added, ‘May I join you, please?’ elongating the word please. It was a question asked with a pleading. Bill heard that, but it was Terry that saw the changes in her friend Marie, Gail Marie. In her fear, she nodded yes.
‘Bill has been telling me a bit about you. Sounds like we both went through divorces. Mine was easy but yours was very difficult.’ Gail was trying to read me. It’s been 5 years after we destroyed each other. Now we are sitting at the same table, in a different city, looking at each other. Older, wiser? Maybe even willing to talk with each other? ‘I’m very sorry, it must have been a very difficult time for you.’
I think that she finally started to understand that I wasn’t going to do anything negative, that I’m not angry, that I’m not going to take her down again. She’s just out of an abusive relationship. I can’t ever do that to another person again.
I’m not going to blow her cover. After I exposed her for cheating on me two weeks and change before the wedding, I’m sure her name would be cannon fodder for the internet. Bill told me that I was going to have dinner with Marie Wilson. Her wedded name I guess.
She started to speak, ‘It was pretty bad, I did everything right this time and it didn’t matter. But that is past and can we move to the present?’
I nodded yes and she relaxed slightly. Terry, wonderful Terry, began to ask about possibly getting wine or a cocktail before dinner. She looked over Marie then at me. The seconds are dragging into hours. Everyone at the table felt it, saw it.
The tension was thick, and this is not contributing to anything good. I turned to Gail, for indeed, she was Gail to me. ‘This is very awkward and it was a shock to me too. It might be better if I just bow out and you can have dinner with your friends now. I don’t mean to cause you anymore pain.’ And I started to get up to leave.
‘Sit down Jim. Please sit down Jim.’ She elongated the please like I did. It was a plea, not an order. I stopped getting up and slowly sat back down. ‘Terry, Bill. This is Jim. The Jim of 5 years ago.’ There was a look of shock on both their faces. ‘We haven’t seen each other in 5 years. This is the man I told that my stupid cheating was just sex, it didn’t mean anything. He was the one I damaged. And after 5 years, he is sitting here in front of me wanting to not cause me any discomfort.’
Both Terry and Bill were speechless. Gail had shared her history with them. They know about me, what I did 5 years ago. Now they brought the two of us together unknowingly. Terry started to stammer. ‘Bill only told me that he was a sys admin named Jim. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry Marie. I didn’t want to..’
Marie cut her off. ‘Neither of you’ looking at her friends, ‘or you’ looking directly at me, ‘knew any of this. I think that we’re all adults now. We’re here, it’s dinner time.’ Then she stared at all of us. ‘Would we all like to have dinner together, the four of us? I’m up for it. Jim, would you please have dinner with us? Will this be OK for you?’
Without a second of hesitation I blurted out ‘Yes, I would very much like to have dinner and a bit of conversation Marie.’ The two others nodded yes.
Bill grabbed the wine list. This is somebody who knows nothing about wine except red or white, or pink. And he was most familiar with pink from a big box. ‘How about some VAL POLICE SELLA?’
Both Marie and I busted out laughing. He was quickly reading off the first thing he saw and I knew that he’d mispronounce every wine, except MD 20/20. I know Bill, he’d do anything now to change the subject. Marie took the lead on this one, ‘Bill that’s Valpolicella. Try it slowly, ‘Val’ ‘pole’ ‘it’ ‘chell’ ‘la’. It’s northern and central and lighter, not a robust southern grape.’
Bill is a peasant. Always was, always will be. Direct, honest, salt of the earth. Damn good person, damn great friend. But I can’t help myself on this one. ‘Bill, Are you going to be a Pollock your entire life?’ At this we both laughed. Anybody can make an ethnic joke, ONLY IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THAT ETHNIC GROUP. Marie was a little shocked at first, but it finally clicked. T
here were a pair of ‘Ski’s’ sitting in front of her.
I took the list from his hands and gave it to Marie, ‘Would you please pick something, I don’t think that it’s going to work with Bill doing it.’ I chuckled and lightly punched him in the arm. Terry started laughing, half from Bill’s nervousness and the other half hers.
Knowing the two of them well, Marie turned to me to ask what I wanted. ‘I’m a dry red kind of guy, but I’ll drink anything. Whatever you choose that will fit for you and Terry, will be OK for me. I know that Bill is going to have a beer. I’m here for the company. Let’s order a couple of appetizers too.’
She gave me a second glance, and then signaled for the waitress. It was going to be a merlot. She started rattling off a couple of appetizers and we were all nodded yes.
As the waitress walked away with our initial order, Maria turned to me. ‘I don’t know if you’ve eaten here before, but this is a place for red meat, that’s why I got the merlot. It was between that and a cab.’ I nodded and we all started talking about what was good and what was better. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the details.
It had been 5 years. It’s also been a couple of disjointed months in therapy before, during and after my marriage. I wanted some form of closure with Gail, I mean Marie. I guess it’s Marie now. Her parents called her Gail Marie. I wonder if they still do. I’m starting to feel that Gail was with the old Jim and Marie was for the closure for the newer Jim? Hope springs eternal.
One of the big things I learned in therapy was to own what I did. Whenever I hear people own what they did, I give them a high level of respect. Marie broke the ice doing that today. No bullshit, just honest painful truth. I was still thinking of walking away, and she talked about her saying she was stupid, it was just sex, and she damaged me from that.
A couple of years ago I made a decision to be truthful and take whatever comes from that. I’m not speaking nasty truthful, but honest and caring truthful. Sometimes it was bad news, like when Charlene and I realized we couldn’t work it out. I put it into words and it took some weeks for us both to agree that we couldn’t make it work.
I felt my arm being jostled, it was Terry. ‘Have you figured out what you want?’ The wine had arrived and a glass was waiting for me.
‘Actually, no,’ I was stalling to cover for my thinking of the past, ‘But I’m open to suggestions. I think that I’m pretty easy when it comes to food. Hey, I eat my own cooking, don’t I?’
Both Terry and Bill laughed. Burnt hotdogs on a grill is about my measure of culinary expertise. Mac and cheese too. I am great reheating with the microwave.
Then Marie surprised me. ‘Why don’t you order the lamb?’ I haven’t had lamb in 5 years. I nodded yes, and then asked her what she was looking at.
‘Oh, I’ve had the duck, but I don’t know. Maybe…’
And I answered for her, ‘The medallions of beef have your name on it.’ She smiled.
We had not forgotten each other. After all, we were going to get married and had lived together in a spartan life style where we dreamed of a future that could afford things like this. She was still going to school to be a nurse when it died.
Once we figured out what we were going to eat, the awkwardness of the situation came back. It couldn’t be helped. So I asked Marie if she finished her schooling to be a nurse. That brought a smile to her face and we all relaxed a bit.
‘I was able to transfer to a nursing school here in Milwaukee and only was one semester behind. I have an Uncle and an Aunt that put me up for a while till I found a couple of roommates.
‘It was a more rigorous program, but we’re working with live people and they deserve the best that we can do. I’ve been working for about 3 1/2 years and have paid off all my student loans. I’m even starting to think about a masters part time. I’d like to be a Nurse Practioner.
‘By the way, that’s where I met Terry. We were roommates. She’s been a great friend to me ever since I came here.’ That’s when she looked at me and in a softer voice said ‘A great friend that supports the good things I do in life. I’m the same for her. She’s a sister that I never really had.’
‘Marie, how are your parents doing?’
She smiled at my question. ‘They both retired and are getting into each others hair.’ She started chuckling and I smiled. ‘In fact, they should be here in a couple of weeks. They are traveling to Yellowstone and will spend a night with me each way. We get to visit and they get a free hotel room for the night.’
Bill was looking very confused, ‘Jim, you told me that your ex was Gail, and this is Marie.’
As Marie was taking a sip of wine, I gestured to her, ‘This was Gail Marie Sculotto. Her father’s side is Italian, her mother’s side something eastern European. That’s where she got the beautiful dark hair and the blue eyes from.’
Terry looked at Marie and me. ‘You two want to be here. I still don’t get it.’ She looked at Marie, ‘You told us all about it. You should want to kill him, he should want to have nothing to do with you. I’m probably pushing this, but why are you both here?’ That’s when Marie answered. ‘We were young, and speaking for myself only, immature.’
I jumped in, ‘No, you are speaking for me too. I was young and hurt and very immature. I didn’t physically hurt anyone. I’m not proud of what I did do. I know now that there were better ways to deal with it.’
Marie looked back at me, ‘Jim, you did what you had to do. I was a pretty self centered fucked up little girl. We were planning on having kids soon. Look at what my faithlessness would have done to them. You saved those kids because we didn’t have them. You did good. It wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t nice, but I completely deserved it. You helped me grow up.’
‘Marie, I’m still sorry for what I did to you. We could have split and it would have been bad, but …’
‘Jim, I was young and dumb and …’ At this point, the food arrived and stopped the conversation. We started eating and quickly changed the discussion, much to the relief of Terry and Bill. I know that they were aware that we needed to talk about this, but not with them around. I recognized that and mouthed a ‘later’ to Marie who nodded yes in reply.
With the food, the earlier debilitating tension was slipping into the past. I’d be lying if there wasn’t an undercurrent going on, but it ended up being a pleasant dinner for the four of us.
We ended up with decaf espresso and biscotti for desert. It was heading on to 9 PM and the next day was Thursday. We all had to work. It was Terry that suggested that we call it a night. She’s always been a voice of reason.
I looked at Marie and motioned her over. ‘Tonight is getting rather late, but I think that we both have things to say and hear.’ She nodded yes. ‘Do you have any time this weekend? We could grab a simple meal and find a quiet place to talk?’
‘Jim, I think that that would involve exchanging phone numbers, wouldn’t it?’
‘I think that by now, you know that I’m not going to bite and I don’t think you’re packing a piece in your purse.’ She gave me a dirty look, and then realized I wasn’t serious. So we exchanged numbers. Bill had driven me from work and was going to drop me off there now. Terry and Marie drove separately.
Getting into the car with Bill, I was ambushed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this stuff? We almost got killed tonight. Do you have any idea the shit I’m going to get when I get home?’
All I could do was to start laughing. He got a bit pissed at me for that. But I started laughing longer and harder and finally broke down and started sobbing like mad. So much held inside of me, so much touched and released. Bill stopped cursing me when he realized what I was doing and pulled over.
It was over 10 minutes later when I began to recover. I felt empty. Good empty not
bad empty. Maybe not empty, but a weight was lifted from me. The only bad thing was the flood of old feelings flooding back in.
‘Jim, we need to pick up your car and get that home. Then we’re going to …’
‘It all came back, it all came back…’
‘Hang in there buddy, we’ll get to your place and we can talk some more, OK?
It took another 20 minutes for me to get back home. I plopped on the couch and Bill got out a bottle of my vodka. ‘I’m not going to waste your whiskey on you, you’re not going to taste it. I got a text from Terry, she’s going to be home late tonight.’ He smiled at me, ‘Looks like we’re both going to be doing some listening.’ He handed me four fingers of vodka with lime and popped open a can of soda for himself. ‘I gotta drive, you gotta talk. And you can crawl to your bed tonight. Where do you want to start?’
Elissa
- 21.04.2022
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