February Sucks – Aftermath

One of my criticisms of sequels to many stories, including February Sucks, is that authors unhappy with the conclusion of a story substantially change the rules that the original author placed upon the world they created. In my sequels here, I try to accept the assumptions of GeorgeAnderson’s world.

One of the main criticisms of GeorgeAnderson’s original story is that readers struggled with the suggestion of a “happily ever after” ending — that Jim would forgive Linda her major transgression and everything in their marriage would be back to the way it was before. While I accepted GeorgeAnderson’s conclusion, I wanted to explore that conclusion by looking at Jim and Linda’s marriage years after the end of the original story.

While I have accepted the tenets of GeorgeAnderson’s original story, I did allow that two people witnessing the same event could see that event in different ways, depending on their points of view.

When I used GeorgeAnderson’s words, I have tried to present those in italics, but I may have missed some as I got carried away with the writing on this one.

There is no sex in this story.

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Setting, 20 years after the end of February Sucks.

Dee hadn’t been back to town in nearly 20 years, leaving shortly after her divorce from Dave. After that Leap Day in February, things were strained between Dee and her friends, and after Dave found out that she had sex with Marc LaValliere, her marriage was over, so there wasn’t much to keep her in town. She had moved west and settled first in Davis, California and then Pullman, Washington. She had been married for a short time in each place, but she was divorced again, and she wanted to see how the old hometown had changed.

Dee took advantage of the warm October afternoon to walk from her hotel through the old neighborhood. Even though she was in her early fifties, Dee was still a striking woman. She was tall with long legs; she walked confidently and was always impeccably dressed; and her long hair was dyed to its natural chestnut color. When she left town, there had been a diner on the corner where the older people in the neighborhood would hang out, but now a coffee shop occupied that place. Dee entered out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised at the choices of pastries and different brews. Maybe there was some culture developing here after all!

Dee purchased a blueberry scone and an almond milk latte and scanned the room looking for a place to sit. Across the way, there was a woman, about her age, with a dark brown ponytail streaked with gray. She was looking intently at her phone while nibbling on a danish. Dee stopped and stared for a moment, because there was something familiar about the way the woman moved, and then it hit her — Linda!

Dee had lost track of her friend after leaving town. She had texted Linda for a while, but shortly the texts started bouncing back. Dee had sent messages through Facebook, but Linda’s page was deactivated after a couple of years. Dee hadn’t had contact with her former best friend in over 15 years, and she hadn’t realized until she saw Linda sitting there how much she missed the relationship they had.

Dee cautiously crossed the room — it had been almost 20 years since she had seen Linda, and she didn’t want to startle a stranger. As she got closer, she recognized the unmistakable contours of Linda’s face. In addition to the gray streaks in her dark hair, Linda had accumulated little lines on her forehead and faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes (little flaws that Dee had paid good money to have hidden on her face).

Dee walked around to approach Linda from the front and softly said, “Linda, is that you?”

Linda looked up as she recognized that voice from her past. “Dee? What are you doing here?” A flash of conflicting emotions flooded Linda’s mind. Dee didn’t recognize the thoughts behind the tightening of Linda’s brow — apparently, the separation had dulled Dee’s sensitivity to Linda’s emotional state, or maybe she never was really that sensitive to Linda’s emotions.

“Linda! It’s so good to see you!” gushed Dee. “I just came to town for a visit. I can’t believe I was lucky enough to run into you on my first day back. I’m sorry that I lost touch with you. You were always such a good friend.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Dee asked as she slid into the chair opposite Linda without waiting to hear the answer. “You look so great! How are you doing?”

“Things are going fine,” Linda responded without returning the courtesy question.

Dee looked at Linda’s left hand holding the tall coffee, and she could clearly see Linda’s distinctive wedding set on her ring finger. “Oh, Linda. I see you’re still married! That’s wonderful. I was worried about you, and then we lost touch. How are the kids?”

Linda relaxed just a little. “Emma got married three years ago to a nice guy that is an engineer. They have a little girl that’ll be two in June. Her husband Chase is a darling and takes care of little Nancy while Emma is studying for her MBA.”

“Tom was a computer science major and is working on a master’s degree. He already has offers from Microsoft, but I’m not sure he’s comfortable with big tech. He has a sweet girlfriend that was a math major. She works at an insurance company as an actuary right now until they figure out where Tom might land.”

“Wow,” said Dee. “They were just little kids when I left town. You know time passes, but I never pictured them as adults.”

“And Michael,” Linda continued, “is a senior in high school.”

“Michael!?” Dee interrupted. “Who’s Michael?”

“Oh, yeah,” Linda replied. “Michael was born a couple of years after you left town. Jim was a department manager by the time Michael came along, so Jim got to coach Michael’s baseball and soccer teams — stuff he didn’t have time to do when Emma and Tom were that age. Jim and Michael are really close.”

“That’s great! I didn’t know you had another baby,” Dee excitedly said.

“Michael has worked really hard and is a good baseball player. He has a scholarship offer from a Division II school in Tennessee, but that is awfully far away. He has been accepted at a Division III school nearby. We’re really hoping he goes there. He’s a good student, so he has some academic scholarships; Jim did a good job saving, so we can afford the tuition; and all of the schools in their conference are within driving distance, so we can still watch him play.”

“That’s great!” Dee said; her enthusiasm was honest for her friend. “It sounds like you have some great kids, there.”

“Thanks. What about you?”

Dee looked wistful. “It never worked out for me. When Dave and I split up, it was about the time we should have been thinking about kids. Somehow the timing of life and my other marriages never worked out.”

Dee returned to the subject of Linda’s life, “I know it was rough between you and Jim when I left town. I’m glad things have worked out!”

Linda looked at her left hand and focused on the symbols of her marriage with a feeling of great pride tinged by sadness. “Jim and I just celebrated our 32^nd wedding anniversary. There was a period there when I wasn’t sure we were going to make it past our twelfth.”

Dee responded, “Oh, of course you would. I knew you two would always be together. I told you everything would be like it was before after Jim got over being hurt!”

Linda looked incredulously at her former friend, “Go back to the way things were?! Are you crazy?” Linda retorted. “They never went back to the way they were. We’re still married, but only because Jim really loves the kids. He didn’t want to disrupt their lives and lose his daily influence on them. Jim’s love for his family was what allowed him to forgive me, but I never got back what we had before.”

Dee was shocked at Linda’s angry tone, and somewhat meekly replied, “But Jim forgave you and took you back. You’re still married, and you have your kids and your husband.”

“Jim forgave me, but he never completely got over what I did. He was hurt so badly,” Linda said. “Everything changed! I lost so much!”

“What do you mean?” Dee asked.

“Did you know that Jim has never taken me dancing since trying on my birthday when that woman Ellen got in the way? Jim and I used to love to dance, but the only time he and I have danced since he let me move back into the house was at Emma’s and Tom’s weddings. At Emma’s wedding, the planner had scheduled a crossover dance with Scott’s parents. Emma thought it would be a great way for the parents to get to know each other since Scott grew up in Iowa. But I knew Jim wouldn’t react well to seeing me dance with another man, and I was lucky enough to be able to talk the wedding planner out of it.”

“You can’t tell me Jim would have been so petty over something that happened almost 20 years before that he would have ruined Emma’s wedding over it?” Dee asked.

“Oh, he wouldn’t have said a word. Since the night he forgave me and took me back, we’ve hardly said one word to each other about what happened that night outside of our marriage counselor’s office.” Linda responded.

“Then how do you know it would have bothered him?”

Linda frowned. “Dee, I’ve been with him for almost 35 years. He doesn’t have to say anything for me to know how he feels. God, if I’d only paid attention to Jim’s feelings ‘that’ night!”

“About six months after he forgave me, and I thought our relationship was getting better, I was trying to do something special to create some new, happy memories for us, so I thought we could go out dancing for a date night. I arranged for Mrs. Porter to watch Emma and Tommy and made reservations at the Jackson Pub — it was a new place over on the west side that was becoming popular at the time.”

“When I told Jim about the plans, I saw his jaw clinch, and his back stiffened ever-so-slightly. A look came over his face like he’d just been jabbed with a pin, but he was trying not to show it. I could see the pain on his face, and knew he was thinking about ‘that night.’ I backed off immediately and cancelled the reservations. Over the next five years, I may have asked him three or four more times to go out, and he reacted the same way every time. He had forgiven me in his head, but he still had a physical reaction he couldn’t control every time he thought I might be in a place to be hit on by other men, and I couldn’t put him through any more pain, so I never asked him to go out again.”

“Are you saying that Jim was such a weenie that you never had any fun, ever again?” Dee asked.

“Oh, God, no! Jim is the strongest man I know. He did one of the most difficult things that a man could ever do when he chose to keep our family together. This was just something that he couldn’t mentally control. Through counseling, I’ve learned how badly I hurt him by what I did.”

“How was Jim hurt? Nothing really happened to him,” Dee challenged.

Linda sadly shook her head at her clueless former friend. “Do you remember what the guys used to say about me and Jim?” asked Linda.

Dee thought for a moment. “Yeah, they used to say that ‘You are the best of us.’ You guys had the best relationship, we all envied you. We all wanted some of what you had.”

“Well, Jim lost that after that night,” Linda replied quietly.

“No, he didn’t, or at least he shouldn’t have if he’d just been a little more understanding,” argued Dee. “The guys all wanted to support Jim, and we all wanted you to get past what happened and stay together. Jim is the one that withdrew from the group. That’s his fault.”

Linda began to scold to Dee for ignoring Jim’s feelings, then she remembered that she had done the same thing when she thought Jim could learn to accept it and move on.

“It took me a long time to understand the harm I had done to Jim,” said Linda. “My counselor finally convinced me that he has a form of PTSD because I had damaged Jim’s self-image on multiple levels.”

“How so?” asked Dee, still feeling Jim should have just toughed it out.

Linda committed in her mind to explain it to her dense former friend.

“This isn’t a conversation we should have in here,” said Linda. Let’s go out to the park where we have some space.”

The two women gathered up their coffees and pastries and walked out to the shore along the lake. It was cool enough that the crowd was light, but the sun shining made the afternoon tolerable. Plus, Linda thought that the breeze would muffle their voices to reduce eavesdropping. They picked a table away from others and sat on either side, facing each other.

“We were in marriage counseling for quite a while, and I have gone to counseling myself to try to understand what happened. I’m down to a few sessions a year, but it helps remind me not to get complacent.”

“My counselor helped me understand how important status is to guys,” Linda said. “Every guy has a fear, that may go back to evolution and that is certainly a strong social instinct, that a stronger, better looking, richer, or more powerful male will swoop in and steal his mate.”

“What is the old saying? ‘Motherhood is a matter of fact; fatherhood is a matter of faith.’? The only way men know that they are raising their own children is to keep their mates faithful.”

“Jim thought he had done everything he needed to keep me faithful. He was a good earner; he considerate husband who thought he satisfied me in bed; and he was a good father to his children. He had complete faith in the strength of our marriage. Then, with no warning, I walked out of that club with a guy who was taller, stronger, more famous, better looking, and richer. It was like I hit every insecurity button for the average man, and it devastated Jim’s self-image.”

“Plus, it was obvious when I came home that Marc had fucked me really well. That played hell with Jim’s confidence in bed, too.”

“How could Jim know?” Dee asked.

“Well, first, I stayed with Marc for almost 15 hours. If the sex had sucked, I would have gotten home sooner.”

“Damn, girl. I was only with him for about 5 hours, and he left me in a quivering puddle,” Dee mused. “If you took 15 hours of that, you are my hero!”

“That’s not really the point,” Linda said, frowning at Dee. “It was pretty obvious to Jim that it was a good night just based on when I got home. Plus, Jim knows my face. It’s not like I walked into the house all tense.”

Dee just nodded in understanding.

“Then, there was that stupid letter. Jim asked me to write it all down. I wanted to be honest with him, to try to rebuild some trust, but I knew I couldn’t tell him everything and have any chance of getting him back.”

“I think I might have put too much in there. I said that sex with Marc was like being possessed, and I’d never felt that before. I meant that it felt like I wasn’t controlling my own actions, like I was possessed, like by an evil spirit; I was hoping that would help Jim understand that I felt out of control. Jim took it that Marc had reached a place that Jim never would, and that Marc owned that piece of me that Jim never could. It made Jim feel inadequate.”

“Even in counseling, I couldn’t make Jim understand that I didn’t have sex with Marc because the sex in our marriage was inadequate. Going with Marc really had nothing to do with Jim, but he just stayed focused on the idea that he had to be inadequate in some way for me to leave like that. Nothing I could say would convince him. In our private meetings the marriage counselor told me to give it up; that talking about it just kept reminding Jim what happened. Jim held on to that letter for a long time. He might still have it hidden away somewhere.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Dee said.

“We had problems in the bedroom for quite a while. Sometimes Jim was fine, but sometimes it was like there was a ghost hanging over the bed whenever we tried to be together. Jim couldn’t relax and open up — like he was trying to compete with something that wasn’t there. Sometimes Jim struggled to keep it up with me, but other times he would just pound me with no sensitivity at all. I’m pretty sure I received more than a few hate-fucks over the years. There are still some days when Jim is in a dark mood, and I know something has reminded him about what happened. Those are the nights he turns his back to me in bed, and I’m not sure he’s asleep.”

“That’s sad,” said Dee.

Linda continued, “Let’s go back what you said earlier: that you all considered Jim and me the model couple. Jim had a good job, a big house, nice kids, and a beautiful wife. He had some cool toys in the garage and the best grill in the neighborhood. All of the guys looked up to Jim in one way or another, and that was important to him.”

“Yeah, we all were a little jealous of you two,” Dee confirmed.

“In that moment when I left him in the club, and everyone else at the table realized what had happened, Jim went from the coolest guy in the room to the most pitied.”

“But the guys wanted to help him — help you both. We all did,” said Dee.

“It didn’t matter. Jim couldn’t face the looks that he got from the other guys. No matter what they did, he could tell that they felt sorry for him.”

“Plus, those were the same guys who sat there and did nothing to help him on the most devastating night of his life. If they had jumped up and said, ‘Come on Jim, let’s go find the bastard and kick his ass,’ Jim might have been able to stay friends with them. As Jim told the story to our marriage counselor, the guys just sat there and let you carry the conversation and sort of backed you up, making excuses for me. They just made Jim feel abandoned.”

“Just because I was selfish, I crushed my husband’s self-image, and I separated him from the guys he thought were his friends. I left him totally alone.”

“I never thought about it that way,” Dee said.

“Dee, do you remember how Jim and the guys used to hang out all of the time and play golf and go to the lake and ski and watch ball games and stuff?”

Dee nodded.

“Jim doesn’t really have any male friends anymore. He talks about people at work, and every once in a while, we go to a cookout or baby shower to be polite, but there isn’t anyone that he does anything with. He hasn’t played golf since just after we got back together.”

“But Dave used to tell me that Jim was the best golfer in the group,” Dee said.

“Yeah, but golf reminded him of the friends that he felt like had betrayed him.”

“Jim doesn’t watch sports anymore, either. He couldn’t stand to see Marc on TV. Even if Jim watched another game, if they broke in with a highlight of Marc, it would just put Jim in a funk. Then, when Marc retired, he became part of the studio pregame show, and he had those razor commercials. The only way Jim could keep from seeing his face was to just stop watching sports. We cancelled our cable years ago. I think that’s one of the reasons that Jim started taking the kids hiking and camping — it kept him out of the house on the weekends when the games were on.”

Dee was starting to pick at her scone — she seemed to have lost her appetite.

“Just after we got back together, Jim had an interview for a promotion. It should have been a formality because the position had really been created for him. Jim just blew the interview. He spent the whole time apologizing for everything that had gone wrong in the department in the last year –things that weren’t his fault and that he discovered and fixed. In the end, they hired a woman from outside.”

“But Jim was always so good at his job,” said Dee.

“I know, but that night did a number on him. My counselor tried to explain it to me.”

“Have you ever heard guys talking about ‘marrying over their head’ or ‘outkicking their coverage’?”

Dee looked confused.

“I think it has something to do with football. It means guys think they married women too good for them. According to my counselor, that’s important to guys. Part of their confidence comes from being able to attract a woman that they see as higher status than they are. It’s sort of, ‘if I’m able to attract a woman too good for me, then I just might be better than I thought.’ For a lot of guys, especially ones that marry young, they connect the growth of their professional confidence with the personal confidence they get from their marriage, partly because the two grow together. When I left the club, Jim’s personal confidence just collapsed, and it took his professional confidence with it. It took him years to regain the belief in himself that he lost that night.”

“That’s too bad,” Dee responded.

“Luckily, his new boss was really good, and she saw Jim’s potential. She put Jim in positions to be successful, and he got his professional confidence back. It was his boss that recommended him for the department manager position.”

Linda paused as she considered sadly what she had to say next. “The worst part is that it cost us both the marriage that was important to both of us.”

“But you’re still married,” Dee said. “You didn’t lose that.”

“We did, because the marriage I have now isn’t the same marriage we had before that night. Jim and I were madly in love and trusted each other completely. In a moment of weakness that I still can’t explain, I threw all of that away.”

“In counseling, Jim described the moment when he knew there was trouble. It was when I came back to the table after dancing with Marc, and I tried to smile to reassure him, even though I had already decided to leave.”

“Jim described it as ‘my second-best smile,’ and he said that I had never given him my second-best smile.”

“Well, now I live with Jim’s second-best smile.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dee.

“When you’ve been in love with a man for as long as I’ve been with Jim, you know the difference between his best smile and his second-best smile. I haven’t gotten his best smile since Jim and I finished our last dance that night, and we were walking back to the table, me holding his arm and looking into his eyes, as happy as I had ever been. Then, within half an hour, I had thrown that all away for one night with an asshole who just got a thrill from stealing other men’s wives.”

“But I thought Jim forgave you,” Dee protested.

“Forgiving isn’t the same as forgetting,” Linda said firmly.

“What do you mean?” Dee asked.

“Dee, do you remember that cat I had when I was in high school?”

“Yeah! That big calico that used to sit on the back of your couch and look out the window? When I would walk up to the door, she was so still that she looked like a statue until she would suddenly move her head to stare right at me just before I rang the bell. She was a beautiful cat, but a little scary.”

“Well, did I tell you about what happened just after I got her? I was in seventh grade, and Bella had been a stray and was about a year old when I found her. She followed me home after school, and I fed her, and she stayed.”

“Yeah, you loved that cat.”

“Well, one night I was up late watching a movie and just absent-mindedly scratching her. I don’t know what I did, if I touched her in the wrong place or if something in the movie startled her, but she spun around, clawed my arm, and bit my thumb. I bled all over, and I had to take antibiotics because the bite got infected.”

“Yeah,” Dee nodded. “I remember when you had your hand and arm all bandaged up. You got out of a pre-algebra test.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Did you know that I never completely trusted that cat again? I would pet her, but never when I was doing something else. I always watched her for any sign she might do it again. She never did, but I was always wary.”

“I didn’t know that,” Dee said.

“Well, that’s what I did to Jimmy that night. The thing he trusted most suddenly spun around and hurt him in the worst way possible. I think Jim is giving me all he can, it’s just that somewhere, deep inside him, he feels like he always has to be wary, and the extra trust that we had was destroyed that night. Part of Jim knows that I can hurt him, in the most cruel way, no matter how many times I swear to him that I won’t.”

“I guess I get that,” said Dee.

“In the early days, Jim would just say, ‘You swore in front of our friends and family that you wouldn’t cheat on me. Why should I believe you when you swear, now?’ I never had a good answer for him. Luckily, Jim gave that up when he forgave me.”

“So, I have a different marriage now than I had before that night,” Linda continued. “My husband before was trusting, social, and friendly. He loved people and loved going out to dinner or to dance. My husband now is introverted and suspicious. He is uncomfortable in public places, and he would prefer to be at home or in the woods than anywhere else. He loves me, but it is different.”

“I don’t think Jim even realizes how he changed. Would you believe that we haven’t had sex in a hotel since that night? Sexy lingerie turns Jim off. All my bras are plain, and my panties are cotton. If we are going to make love, I just come to bed naked.”

Dee cocked her head in curiosity.

“Don’t get me wrong. Our sex life is good. Jim is loving and attentive, and he pays attention to my needs. It’s just that sometimes he gets distant, and we have never gotten back to the same level of intimacy that we had before. Most other women would be happy with what I have, but since I know what things were like before, I can tell the difference.”

“Here’s an example of how suspicious Jim is. When Michael was about five, I was looking in Jim’s desk for some papers we needed to refinance the house. There was a brown envelope in the bottom of the drawer. When I opened it; it was a DNA paternity test for Michael. At first, I was shocked and hurt, but then I remembered what I had done. Old Jim would never have done that, but new Jim was something I created, and he needed the reassurance.”

“Did you ever mention that you found the test results?” Dee asked.

“No. I figured it was just something Jim needed to do to quiet the nagging voice that I planted in him,” Linda replied sadly. “If it calmed his fears and kept us together, it was worth it.”

“So, has Jim been miserable this whole time?” Dee asked.

“Oh, no!” Linda protested. “If you asked Jim, he would say he is a very happy man. It’s just that I have known him for a long time. The kids have gotten his best smile, so I know it’s still there.”

“When Emma pitched her high school softball team into the state finals, I’ve never seen Jim more proud; he was beaming from ear to ear. When Tom got the lead in the school’s production of The Crucible, Jimmy was worried because it was a tough part, but Tom pulled off John Proctor better than any high school kid should have. When Tommy got a standing ovation, Jim cried as much as he did the morning Tommy was born.”

“Michael started playing baseball when he was about seven, and Jim has spent most of the last ten years hitting fly balls and pitching batting practice helping Michael get better. Jim gets tremendous joy from his family; he just doesn’t get the same joy that he used to from me.”

“If Jim can’t love you like you deserve, why do you stay married to him?” Dee asked. “Don’t you both deserve to be happy?”

“Oh, Jim loves me,” Linda replied, “Probably more than I deserve after what I did to him. I’m thankful for that every day. It’s just that I know what 100% of Jim’s love is like; that’s what I threw away that night.”

“But Jim has such a capacity for love that 90% is more than I could get from anyone else. And part of the reason that Jim forgave me was because he didn’t want the kids to suffer because of our problems. I didn’t want that, either, but I know that if it hadn’t been for the kids, I would have been out on my ass on Monday.”

“Jim chose to overlook the pain that I caused by my foolishness that night; I chose to accept that my behavior had injured Jimmy so badly that he would never completely heal, and he was giving me all he could.”

“Any other woman who had gotten the love that I’ve gotten would feel lucky. We rebuilt a great family life, mostly due to the grace that Jim offered me when he forgave me that night almost twenty years ago. It’s just that I know what unconditional love from Jim feels like, and I’ve never gotten that back, and it’s my own damned fault.”

“Then why did you do it?” Dee asked.

“You know, I’ve thought about that, a lot, and I really don’t know,” Linda ruefully replied. “I never have been able to explain it, and that bothers me.”

“I hadn’t had too much to drink because Jim and I had ‘big plans’ for the night.”

“My counselor thinks I had my own self-esteem issues that played into it. I’ve always been insecure about my looks, and women respond more to compliments from strangers than they do their partners. I guess we think that our husbands have to say we’re beautiful, so we stop believing them.”

“She told me that women naturally respond to a powerful man, and I got caught up in Marc’s masculinity, for lack of a better term. All those things that are threatening to a man are things that trigger a woman’s interest. For some reason, that night I couldn’t control it. She thinks it might have something to do with pheromones, but I can’t find anything that says that humans really react to things like that. She even suggested that the cycle of my birth control pills might have made me more vulnerable that night.”

“In the end, they all sound like excuses instead of reasons. It scares me that I don’t know why I did it, because if I don’t understand it, I can’t be sure that I could keep it from happening again.”

“I guess, on some level, my body reacted, and I just thought I could get away with it, but I didn’t understand the costs.”

“While I was doing it, I knew it was wrong, but I plotted to do it anyway, and then I walked out of the club and left Jim sitting there alone. I maliciously hurt the husband that I said I loved more than life itself. How could I have been so cruel?” Linda was starting to cry as she relived the pain of that night.

Dee wanted to soothe her old friend, reaching over to hold her hands across the table, “But you aren’t malicious. There isn’t a mean bone in your body!”

“You’re right,” Linda said sadly. “I was worse. You know how they say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference? That’s what I was that night, indifferent to the needs and feelings of my husband. I couldn’t have done anything worse, but he took me back, even though I didn’t deserve it.”

“You made one mistake,” Dee said. “Maybe you need to forgive yourself.”

“Yeah, but it was a deusy,” lamented Linda. “I had no idea how deeply Jim would be injured — and believe me, it wasn’t just pain that I inflicted on him but real damage. That’s hard to forgive. It’s one of the ways that I know that Jim is a better person than I am. Jim could never have hurt me the way I hurt him, and I’m not sure I could have forgiven him the way he forgave me.”

“But, you didn’t mean to hurt Jim,” Dee argued.

“Like they say in the police shows, ‘planning proves intent.’ I conspired with Marc on the dance floor to leave with him. I gave you the signal to go to the bathroom with me to get away from Jim. Then, I walked out the back door on Marc’s arm.”

“During our arguments in those early days, Jim would say that I chose Marc over him, and I always tried to deny it, that I never stopped loving him. But Jim was right. From the time I left the table to dance until I got into Marc’s car that night, I made multiple decisions where I chose my wants over Jim’s needs. That was the real choice, and where I really betrayed him.”

Linda looked up. “Did you know that our reconciliation is partly based on a lie?”

“How so?”

“Well, on my birthday, Jim tried to take me out dancing. Looking back, I think it was part of us trying to do things we had done before; trying to deny that things had changed.”

“Anyway, while we were out, this beautiful woman asked Jim to dance. She gave us some story that she needed a nice guy to dance with so that the creeps would leave her alone. They danced a couple of fast songs, and then the music slowed down. I knew Jim was milking this, trying to make me understand what he was feeling while I was dancing with Marc, so I was trying to be patient and not get mad, but I was sitting there crying thinking about what Jim must have been feeling watching me that night.”

“The woman whispered something in Jim’s ear, took his hand, and started to lead him off the dance floor. Jim pulled his hand away rushed back to the table with the most horrified look on his face.”

“He held me and apologized all over himself. I thought he was apologizing for being petty and trying to rub the dances in my face, but after that, things in our relationship started to get better.”

“So, that was good, right?” asked Dee.

“Yeah, but that’s not all of it. We went to our next counseling session, and Jim starts into the story about our birthday date and him dancing with this beautiful woman and almost leaving the bar with her. He said it made him understand part of what happened to me, and it helped him forgive me for being weak.”

“Isn’t that good,” asked Dee?

“Let me finish,” Linda replied. “So, Jim is in the middle of his story, and I gasped. I had a one-on-one session with the counselor a few days before, and I had told him the story. The counselor looked at me with a ‘shut up, stupid’ look, so I let Jim finish.”

“Jim made it sound like he had followed the woman halfway to her hotel room with his penis hanging out of his pants.”

“Do you know far he went with her?”

“How far,” asked Dee.

“Three steps! Jim forgave me because he thought taking three steps before jerking his hand away from that woman was equal to me spending all night getting fucked senseless.”

“At my next one-on-one session, I asked the counselor about it. He said that I should let Jim live his own reality, especially when it’s to my advantage. He said that Jim really wanted to forgive me, and his mind created an excuse to do that.”

“Maybe he was right,” said Dee. “At least it worked out for you.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t keep me from worrying that if Jim remembers what really happened, everything we have could go up in smoke. I like what we have now. We don’t go out anymore, but we started hiking and camping with the kids. I miss dancing, but I love Jim enough that I don’t want to hurt him worse by bringing up bad memories. I don’t think I even own a party dress anymore.”

“When Michael’s baseball started taking off, we spent a lot of time following his travel team to tournaments. We spent lots of time in the car and took picnic lunches and ate in the park. That was nice together time.”

“Depending on where Michael goes to college, we may still get to follow some baseball. Now we have our granddaughter, and I think Emma wants to have more, and Tom is getting serious with his girlfriend, so I hope that moving around to see our grandkids keeps us busy.”

“A part of me worries about what will happen when Jim doesn’t have the kids as a distraction, and he just has to look at me every day. I hope we have created enough happy memories that I’m not just a reminder of the worst day of his life.”

Dee looked sad. “Listening to you now, I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you that night. I was caught up in the glamour and the risk. I thought I was doing what you wanted, but I guess I wasn’t there to help you.”

Linda looked at the table. “I was a big girl. I should have known better.”

Linda looked up at her former friend, “Did you know that I offered Jim a divorce?”

Dee was surprised, “You were fighting so hard to keep your marriage together. What happened?”

“In February the next year, Jim started to get moody. I didn’t notice it at first, but it got worse and worse. About halfway through the month, I got my head out of my ass and realized that Jim was struggling with the anniversary of that night coming up. I mentioned it to the marriage counselor, and he brought it up in our next couple’s session. Jim talking about it that day was the most raw I had seen him emotionally. Jim cried — I don’t mean that a little tear rolled down his face, I mean he really cried — it was the only time I have ever seen him like that. It was one of those big steps for me in understanding how much pain I had caused.”

“So, the next February, it happened again, and watching Jim hurt just killed me inside. So, when we had our next couple’s session in March, I apologized to him again for hurting him, and I said if it would make him happier, I wouldn’t fight if he wanted a divorce.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He looked sad and apologized for being moody. Imagine, him apologizing for being the victim of my selfishness. Anyway, he said that he did love me, and he didn’t want to disrupt Emma and Tommy’s lives any more than they already had been by the tension in the house.”

“So, then I said, ‘I know part of this is about you taking care of your children. If you want to wait until the kids are out of the house, the offer will still stand if it would make you happier.’ He shook his head and said, ‘Why would I want to disrupt our grandkids’ lives any more than our kids’ lives?'”

“So, that has been where we are. In some ways, I think we stayed together because we were too stubborn to let an asshole like Marc break us up and mess up our kids’ lives.”

“Sometimes being pig-headed works,” chuckled Dee.

“Obviously, things changed when Michael came along, but my offer to Jim still stands.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed that he never calls you on it,” Dee said in support. “How is Jim now?”

“He’s better, but he still has his days. Februarys are always tough on him. I realized he got quiet whenever I wore blue, so I don’t have anything that color anymore. It was a pain that summer when Michael’s baseball team wore blue jerseys, but I was able to get a white polo with the team logo on it.”

“Do you ever think about that night?”

Linda pondered for a second. “The only times I think about it are when I’m in the middle of something happy, and the thought that I could have lost it jumps into my head. It popped in during kids’ birthdays, Emma and Tommy’s weddings, when I found out I was pregnant with Michael, and when little Nancy was born, so it intrudes into my happy moments.”

“I used to have nightmares that I was having sex with a powerful stranger, but I could see Jim’s sad face across the room, and everything I love was sliding away from me, but I couldn’t get away to stop it. That doesn’t happen so often anymore, but every few months I will wake up crying. Jim just holds me until I calm down.”

“There’s nothing positive?” Dee asked.

“No. I had this pipedream that I would have this special memory that I would carry forever, but I didn’t understand the cost. For every hour I was with Marc that night, Jim has suffered through more painful Februarys trying to deal with what I did, and I have had to watch the man I love hurt for days on end. For every orgasm I had, I lost ten because I hurt Jim’s sexual confidence, and then there were the times that something reminded Jim of that night, and he would have to process it by sleeping in his den or by turning his back to me in bed.”

“The worst was what it made me think about myself. I had to spend every day remembering that I was capable of hurting a man that I had claimed to love more than life itself, and that I risked every happy event that has happened in my life since for a few hours of sex with a stranger. I’ve had to rebuild my own self-image. My counselor says I’m still a project.”