The first 3 months - Jill's lament

August 2019, Miami

Looking back over the last few months wasn’t easy. I felt myself outwardly wince more than once as I thought back over everything I’d felt and experienced since that day when things had finally exploded between me and Dave when he’d finally kicked me out. Yet here we were, forced together by our significant others, forced into a meeting neither wanted but which was made necessary by recent events.

It had been hard, so hard. No wonder I was wincing at the memories. So many difficulties, I was surprised they hadn’t crushed me, like one of those long-forgotten high school atmosphere experiments, the seemingly strong metal can be crushed and twisted by the weight of air pushing down on its vacuumed-out structure.

That’s how I’d felt most days these last few months.

Sure, I had a ‘new’ man in my life. Malcolm was a tower of strength, although to be honest, the pain I often felt took the edge off my excitement and feelings for him most days. But most days were dominated by feelings of regret. Regret at how things had ended up with Dave, feelings intermingled with a little voice in my head that said maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe if I repaired my body, removed my ink and silicon tags, and threw myself on Dave’s mercy, we could have slowly rebuilt the wreck of our marriage. But every time I built myself up to think this, I recalled the searing pain I’d felt when he’d rejected my last desperate pleadings the day he kicked me out.

And this vividly felt and remembered pain, together with the guilt I’d have felt at two more broken hearts charged to my account acted as the strongest of brakes. Like one of those huge clanking cast-iron anchor chains used to restrain a battleship or ocean-liner. More than enough to hold little old me in my pained and tormented state of purgatory. Unable to move forward into my new life and relationship because the memory and raw pain of what I’d destroyed and lost was too great.

“Hi,” the short greeting brought me back from my self-absorbed musings. “How are you, Jill?” Back from L.A. to sort some stuff out and to enable this get together, he looked good, maybe a few pounds lost and less stressed than when I’d last seen him.

Damn this man! Even after everything I’d done to him, his first go-to instinct was still to ask how I was. Me before him, reminding me again of what I’d thrown away by stretching too far, demanding the undemandable, wanting the impossible.

“I’ve been better. You?” I asked.

“Like you, mixed, I guess.” I’d have given my right arm for ‘mixed’. And maybe I was being paranoid, but the calm contentment on his face told me he was better than ‘mixed.’

“Do you miss me?” I regretted it before the words were even out there. The worst possible mix of asking a deeply unfair question and showing my sorry state for Dave to see.

He just looked at me, long and hard, his eyes seemingly searching my very soul as it took an eternity for him to answer.

“Do I miss you? Of course, I miss you, but that’s only half the story. I still love you, Jill, but that doesn’t mean we should be together or that I want us to be together, however hard that may be for both of us.”

How like Dave. The same old Dave – open and honest and rationale to a fault. I was about to speak when his face softened, he grasped my hand and spoke before I was able.

“Jill, I’ve done a lot of thinking these last few weeks. I can’t pretend to understand it all, but however hard it is, I know you and me have to do two things. We have to let go of the past, we have to celebrate what we did have as a couple, recognize that’s now about our roles just as mum and dad, grandma and granddad. Own it and face up to it, being honest that’s the new core of our relationship. And at the same time move on, move on to concentrate on our new partners, our new families. Their needs, what they can give us, the happiness they can give us, we can give them.”

I felt a few isolated tears starting in the corners of my eyes. I knew he was right, but still, such a big part of me didn’t want to let go of him, to recognize that this man I still loved now belonged to another. Part of me wanted to hate her, but however much I sometimes intentionally tried, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her. I’d been the one who’d been greedy beyond measure. Like some ancient Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra-type character, demanding the love and devotion of all the men around me, never mind the unfairness of me being the sole greedy sun at the center of the little world we’d built. It had felt so damned good – Dave, Chris, Malcolm, Callan – until it had all exploded like some unstable supernova.

Closing my eyes for a moment to slow the tears, I opened them to return Dave’s look, a deep sigh prefacing my sense of resignation as if my greedy soul was finally accepting the new world, the price I had to pay.

“I know, but it’s just so hard. Hard to accept. Hard to accept that we’re not together anymore. That the life we lived is gone. That you’re with her now, that I’m with Malcolm. That we’re over as a couple. You and me just memories in the rearview mirror, our future memories as mum and dad and grandparents destined to just be semi-attached, not wrapped in each other’s arms.”

There was a rueful look on Dave’s face, his mind filled with the same thoughts of regret as me. Somehow making me feel better. A variation on ‘a trouble shared’.

I didn’t mean to say it, it just came out, a strange little smile on my lips as I spoke. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Dave didn’t answer with words. His answer taking me off-guard as he hugged me tight, his head suddenly next to mine, his nose in my hair as my own hands stroked the short hairs on the back of his head. I felt my own desires rising, the first time back close to the man I still loved. So easy to make out or go find a room somewhere. Hang the consequences, forget about poor Malcolm and head back to my past.

But my daydreaming of budding lust was interrupted.

“Jill, of course, I can forgive you. If there’s anything to forgive. We went into this thing together. Eyes wide open. No-one forced me to do what we did.”

“I know, but sometimes I feel it’s all my fault. That I pushed things too far. Got greedy and out of control. Made it all about me, doing things without asking you.”

Again, that rueful smile. I could tell he was searching to find the right words. Wanting to be honest, but not wanting to hurt me.

“Jill, look, the honest truth is we both made mistakes. But these last few months I’ve come to a cast-iron conclusion, which I know is a hundred percent correct. It’s simply this – I don’t want to live life looking backward. Sure we made mistakes, but I don’t want to let that detract from what we did have and what we still have. Yes, we might be with different people now, but the truth is we still love each other, and we will always will. I want to celebrate what we had and what we still have, because I know that thinking like this will free us to enjoy the next twenty or thirty years. Free to enjoy and love the people we’re with. Free so that the pain carries on getting less and less and that the good days outweigh the bad days, until we’re both where we want to be.”

I looked into those eyes that I’d shared so much with. Thinking how much I loved him, but that however hard it was what he said was right. That had to be the way we moved forward.

And as the first little baby-step along that road, I braced myself to tell Dave the news I had. The news which had been the main reason for finally meeting up three months after our last painful time together.

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Dave describes the next two years

It was never a contest, but I think I had the better of the months after Jill and I met-up in August 2019. In the months leading up to and after that meeting, Jill was in many ways all over the place. She told me that she felt like a tiny boat, cast adrift, and tossed on the roaring waves of an ocean storm. After our meeting, we spoke reasonably often on the phone, both Malcolm and Veronica relaxed about it as they sensed the change, that Jill was finally starting to move on, the calls between us part of the healing process.

Through all the phone calls, I charted the change in Jill. At first, lethargy, sadness and regret were the main things that seemed to dominate her life. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t feigning it to save my feelings, but she seemed to have little joy or enthusiasm either for her job or for her relationship with Malcolm. How she felt about her job and Luther I honestly didn’t care about. He could go to hell as far as I was concerned, the games he’d played, and the way he’d manipulated us being the black hole at the center of our car-wreck marriage.

But how I felt about her relationship with Malcolm was more nuanced. Sure, parts of my heart and soul still bore grudges and were angry. But deep down, I knew he wasn’t a bad guy. He was just an ordinary guy looking for love, who’d fallen in love with the wonderful woman who was my wife. Just as I’d fallen in love with Veronica. So despite my oft bitter feelings, I wished him and Jill and their relationship no ill will. More practically as Jill was now carrying his baby, no way would I want their relationship to fail, leaving Jill alone and without a partner to care for and nurture her newborn.

So as Jill’s mood and state of mind lifted, I was generally pleased and happy. The change in her slowly clear to me on the weekly calls we shared. She tried to do the decent thing, not talking about the baby or her and Malcolm too much, but her growing excitement shone through despite this.

One of the strange side-effects of Jill’s pregnancy was that it somehow acted to knock me backward in what I thought of as my ‘cuck rehabilitation program’.

If I’d been doing better in the emotional side of our break-up, maybe easier for me as the one who’d finally called time, then the additional baggage I had which Jill didn’t was the withdrawal of my cuckold fix. I say ‘withdrawal’, but that’s only half the story because the bastard Luther was still making video feeds available and letting me know they were there. But talking it through with Veronica, I knew I had to wean myself off this dangerous and destructive sexual narcotic.

Sure, in the last few months Jill and I were together the pain-pleasure balance had flipped. But like all addicts, now that we were apart, the longer I went without a fix, the harder it was to resist Luther’s offers. To resist the messages that now appeared at least once a day on my phone. My blocking of his number just encouraging him to send the messages from another number.

Mostly, I resisted, but every so often I’d give in. Unable to resist the temptation that had ruled my life and destroyed my marriage. The sights and sounds of Jill loving the sex and loving the man taking me all the way back to the last few terrible days of our relationship. Somehow, the pain dulled by the split and the new woman in my life, the light of my voyeuristic pleasures burning as bright as ever. My cock diamond-hard as I saw Malcolm’s huge black cock plunging in and out of Jill’s body. My heart racing, my breaths shallow as I watched how she reacted, listened to her cries of joy, saw her wrap her arms around her new man as she’d so often wrapped them around me.

At first, I didn’t want to share my guilty secret with Veronica, but when she caught me, she insisted on me being open about it and that we talk. Now that we were properly a couple, it felt unfair to involve her and put this on her. Emotionally smarter than me, although she was more than a little hurt and angry at my behavior when it came out, she knew that if I excluded her it actually represented more of a threat. In fact, it ended up that she was the one who persuaded me to not put such pressure on myself. To not think of it as such a big deal, to accept that to watch it occasionally was no big thing, provided that the rest of my life was headed in the right direction.

‘The rest of my life’ was most certainly headed in the right direction. Sure I still had pangs of pain and regret, but freed from the destructive end-game of my marriage, my relationship with Veronica blossomed like some beautiful spring flower. I was truly lucky to have a woman like Veronica in my life. Aside from those rarer and rarer moments of sadness and regret, our new life together in L.A. was a wonderful new adventure. Renting and furnishing a new home. Seeing the excitement on Haley’s face as she chose her new bedroom in her new home. The first day of taking Haley to her new school. All emotions I’d thought I’d never know again, feelings that made me count my blessings every day.

Even the realities of having to walk our children through the permanence of our split didn’t put too much of a damper on the enjoyment of my new life. I guess it helped that John, Abigail, and Sarah were all grown-up and well-adjusted adults, and that they already knew the outline of our new lifestyle.

So when we did tell them about the split, with all the normal reassurances about how we still loved them and that it wouldn’t affect how we were as their parents, their main concerns were about whether we were sure that we were doing the right thing. At least that’s what they said to our faces, although I’m pretty sure they expressed other feelings when they spoke to each other.

Even allowing for this, this series of individual and joint family talks went a lot better than I’d feared. I can remember the twin expressions on Abigail and Sarah’s face as they looked at Jill and I. John seemed more stoic, understandably more focused on his own little family, but Abigail and Sarah’s face couldn’t hide the hurt and anguish they felt at finally having to confront the reality of their parents split.

But there was no screaming and shouting. No ‘how could you’ rants or questions – I guess they’d had enough time and warning signs to avoid such melodrama. In general, the mood was more one of sadness and disappointment and a final check that Jill and I knew what we were doing. A final irony I thought, that even at their young ages, they’d become the parents and Jill and I the parented. Our reckless mid-life behavior the equivalent of teenage wanderlust, only with far more long-term and far-reaching consequences.

The next months and years were a tale of new beginnings and new babies, because not surprisingly, Veronica and I also cemented our new relationship with a baby of our own. For Jill, the decision and timing had been easier. Given her age and what she and Malcolm had talked about in their nine days away, for them, it was just a question of when with Jill not wanting to hang around for too long because of her age.

But for Veronica and me, it was altogether more complicated. A big part of me felt I didn’t want to have a baby as I thought Haley might think I’d love the baby more than I loved her as it would be my flesh and blood. Veronica was in the middle, certainly not one of those insecure women pushing for a new baby to somehow assuage her fears and lock me in. She told me she would be happy either way. In the end, it was actually Haley’s attitude that tipped us to have a new baby. When she saw the photos and videos of Jill and Malcolm’s cute little coffee-colored baby, she decided that she most certainly wanted a little baby brother or sister. And as I came to find out, despite her normally sweet personality, Haley could be just as stubborn as the other women in my life. And luckily for my growing relationship with the little lady, I was one of those guys for whom the vasectomy reversal was successful. If it had gone the other way, then they’d have been one very disappointed little girl.

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Twin hopes, Dave describes a bizarre meeting

August 2021

It was maybe one of the most strange things I could imagine.

Jill and I were standing alone just in front of the altar and font, two sleeping infants in our arms, the water on their foreheads barely dry as we looked down into the knave and the small throng of family members happily chatting away. Our children, granddaughter and newly minted husbands and wives – both Jill and I sufficiently traditional that neither of us had wanted our new offspring to be born outside of wedlock. The happy little crowd, the black man-mountain and the equally black church minister at the center, making quite the hubbub of noise as they caught up on each other’s news. Any animosity our children might have felt towards Malcolm long since departed, emotions that would have been difficult to sustain amongst the love and optimism that new life always generates in us humans.

Jill smiled at me, her little one sleeping peacefully. “Who’d have thought it? Who could have believed we’d ever see a scene like this.”

I smiled back, still loving and in love with this woman who cradled her child made together with another man, suddenly reflecting on my own emotional DNA. Insecure, yes. Jealous, no. Thankfully brought up in a way that let me celebrate the good in life, rather than being dragged down by the pull of the negative. “Yes, it’s quite amazing, isn’t it. A million miles away from those neighborhood parties that started it all out. Something totally good borne out of something not quite so good.”

Although nothing was said, I knew that Jill and I were thinking the same thing. About a recent conversation, about how things had cooled after something of a falling out between Malcolm and Luther. I was surprised it had taken this long, but Malcolm had finally stood up to the man who seemed to have some hold on him and told him that the occasional parties and videos that Luther still wanted were now off the table. Not that Jill and Malcolm wouldn’t occasionally still play, but that Malcolm finally made clear that it was him and Jill that called the shots. Doing what they wanted, with whom they wanted, when they wanted.

Jill had told me there had been a few arguments, especially as Luther’s clubs had struggled in the global pandemic and the money he made from the hotwifejanecuckydan website was important to him. But in the end, he agreed to stop applying pressure and to close the website down after a final twelve-month period. Although, of course, all the pictures and videos of Jill would forever be out there on the web.

“Dave, what ya thinking?” Jill’s voice bringing me back to the hear and now.

I didn’t want to spoil such a precious occasion by telling her what I’d really been thinking, so instead, I told her the other thoughts in my mind, looking at the child in her arms as I spoke.

“I was just thinking how normal, wonderful and wholesome all this is. Compared to some of the things we did to get here.”

“Do you regret it? What we did?” Jill asked, her own expression not giving away how she felt.

I’d asked myself this same question a thousand times. “No. No, I don’t regret it. Sure, there were some painful times, really painful times. And sure, I miss us, miss you. Wish I could live in two parallel universes at the same time, able to have what we had and at the same time have what I now have with Veronica. But, no, I don’t regret it. I think we both discovered a new part of ourselves. And it would be dishonest to pretend that part’s not there or to pretend we didn’t enjoy the fun while it lasted.”

“Good answer, Mr. Foster,” Jill smiled softly before her face told me she was thinking, a question forming in her mind. “Dave, do you think you and Veronica will ever play, play like you and me played?”

Another question I’d asked myself a few times before. “I don’t think so. What do they say? Once bitten, twice shy. And anyway, as and when I get the urge, I can always open up my old video collection or give you and Malcolm a call for an encore performance.”

Jill laughed. “Pervert. But you were my pervert, so that’s okay,” she quipped.

“What about you, will you and Malcolm carry on playing?”

Jill smiled with amusement and affection at my prurient interest. “Not much. Too busy with our new son. But maybe occasionally, when the mood takes us. It’s mostly out of my system, and Malcolm’s more than enough man for any woman, but sometimes it’s nice to be the center of attention. To feel like the queen bee among all the worker ants.”

Jill’s comment about Malcolm being ‘more than enough man’ had tweaked my dormant cuck-gland, tweaked it enough that I couldn’t stop myself asking one final question. “And would those worker ants be black worker ants, or do poor little white ants still get a look in now and again.”

Jill’s smile answered my question before she even spoke. “What would you like the answer to be? My sweet cucky ex-husband pervert.” Her words just quiet enough not to reach the ears of the black church minister who’d officiated the christening.

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A final word from Dave: Tying up loose ends

Tuesday 18th July 2023 - Miami

Shutting the front door, I had one final chore to finish before I could fully relax and enjoy the family festivities.

Grabbing my car keys, I was about to head out to my meeting when I heard the unmistakable groan that both blighted and illuminated my life back in 2018 and 2019. Heading quietly upstairs to the guestroom in Veronica and my home I knew damn well what I’d find. Like two horny teenagers, even in the midst of a family gathering, and even in someone else’s house they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

Gently pushing the door open and entering, I couldn’t resist a favorite unfunny joke. “Well I would say ‘get a room you two’, but it seems you already have. Hell, even throwing a bucket of water over you two wouldn’t do any good would it?”

Jill just turned and grinned at me. Even now, after a fourth child and her recent big five-O celebration, she was a supremely attractive and sexual woman. Sat atop her black husband, her heavy and enhanced breasts jiggling up and down as she rode her man like he was some prize stallion out for a short cross-country jaunt.

“Would you have it any other way?” she smiled back, raising herself fully up so I could remind myself of the fat girth and nine-inch length of her man’s huge cock. Looking into my eyes as she let gravity do its best as his shiny rod disappeared back in with lightning speed, making her squeal with happiness and fulfillment.

Enjoying the moment, she just sat there bolt upright, loving the full extent of Malcolm's occupation of her body, looking across at me. “Did you want something, honey?” she challenged me.

Before I could answer, Malcolm changed the mood by grabbing Jill by the hips and using his giant-size and matching strength to put on quite the show. The look on his face telling me he was doing this for all three of us. To give Jill the pleasure she craved and needed. To give me the thrill that even now I sometimes wanted. And to give himself the pleasure of sex, showing off and off demonstrating to me who was the sexual top dog.

Looking at my watch, I decided to allow myself a nostalgic ten minutes of watching his sexual Olympics with my ex-wife. Even teasing him that he’d better get a move on as I only had a few minutes. Enjoying the spectacle as he pummeled my beautiful ex-wife in as many positions as he could think of. You’ve heard of ‘Shakespeare in an hour’. Well, this was the sexual equivalent. As Jill’s flesh and soul quivered and submitted to the man who was now her legal spouse. Moaning and sobbing as he fucked her with a depth, power, and intensity that at times took my breath away. Each new position bringing a new and different response from Jill, presenting a new and different erotic tableau to me.

The tattoos, fake breasts and pierced nipples which I’d hated when I’d first seen them somehow now the final crowning glory in a scene that just looked right. Two people sexually suited and matched, the biggest of black bulls breeding all over again the beautiful woman he’s already bred to completion before. Everything coming together in a perfect sexual compendium. Jill’s brow damp with perspiration, her breasts swinging in time with the bull’s thrusts, her nipples erect from sexual stimulation and emotional excitement that most women can only dream of. Her cries and moans the icing on the cake, building louder and louder as she rose and rose, until finally they clutched tight, kissed and she accepted all that her new husband had to give her as they screamed and shouted together.

~~~~~~~~~~

As I headed back down the stairs, I left the lovers recovering, glad that the kids by the pool had all been so noisy that somehow no-one had heard the cries of passion coming from the other end of the house.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I took one last look at the happy masses thronged around the pool. Before I thought darker thoughts and headed off to make good on a promise sworn to myself back in the dark days of 2019. Much had changed in the five years since then, but just for the next hour or so I was prepared to head back into the painful memories and shadows.

I met him at my attorney’s office. His face lined by years of stress and worry as he’d tried to dig himself out from under the mountain of debt he’d accrued during the Pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Not a good time to be a club owner cum restaurateur who’d overextended his credit lines and had to service the interest even with clubs shuts and little if any income to speak of. With the banks finally calling in his loans, he’d had to resort to ‘hard money’ with eye-watering high-interest rates that came straight out of an Al Pacino or Joe Pesci movie.

Somehow he’d scrimped and saved, allowed his own share in the clubs to be diluted and just about managed to keep his head above water. Until the day four months ago when a chance communication from a friend in corporate finance told me about an investment opportunity that might interest me. About an ex-Army guy who knew the business and was looking to move from Miami to Japan. To get as far away as he could from his current investors and start-up somewhere a million miles away. His newly established clubs serving the off-duty US soldiers, sailors, and marines present in the Chrysanthemum’s thrones shadow for the best part of a hundred years and probably for the majority of the next hundred years.

As things had moved forward in the discussions between me and my friend, and then between me, my friend and Luther, he’d had such a low opinion of me that Luther still saw me as the poor helpless sap. The poor helpless sap who’d allowed him to manipulate me until there was nothing left of my marriage. This was the thought I contented myself with, trying not to smile too obviously, as I looked at his thin and tired face as he put pen to paper. Thinking that it was poor old stupid ‘Dumb-Dickless-Dave’ who was about to fund phase one of his resurrection.

No doubt thinking that with so many miles between me in L.A. and him in Okinawa he’d easily be able to siphon funds so I’d be lucky to get any return greater than buying a T-bond. The shake of the hand the final matching counterpart to our two drying signatures on the paper.

Just as Luther was trying not to grin at the thought of another victory over me, I had an inner certainty that finally after five years of waiting the papers Luther had just signed would finally give me the revenge on him that I’d vowed to myself. Vowed to myself when I’d had to endure the latest in his line of hotwifejanencuckydan videos – one that had taken my humiliation to new depths and lows.

Now, after five years, the only thing that annoyed me was that it would be a good month or so before Luther would find out the truth of what I’d done. That the money I’d fronted him was in fact generated from a side agreement I had made to sell my stake on to some particularly unpleasant Okinawan Yakuza. Not the kind of people I normally had access to, but Japan is a curious place where the most respectable of businesses often rub along cheek by jowl with some very unrespectable businesses.

The investors found and gently-courted through an old business contact from my early twenties when I’d spent six months in Japan way back in the late nineteen-eighties when Japan was still all the rage. A guy who I’d kept in touch with as our respective careers blossomed. Yuki-san, who’d even come all the way to attend my wedding, didn’t know these guys personally. But as is the way in Japan, he knew people who knew people. His bonds and the investment opportunity sufficiently strong that his friends of friends were more than willing to play ball with my little scheme.

In about a month, when he’d sunk in his forty-five percent of the cash, Luther would receive a late-night visit from his new investment partners, who’d let him know in no uncertain terms that he was screwed. That he’d be working for them for the next twenty or thirty years for little more than a pittance, and that if he failed to make adequate returns for them he’d be unlikely to ever see the good old US of A ever again.

Sure, he could try and make a run for it. But the local Yakuza had spies everywhere, including in the military bases. So even if he tried to use his military connections to escape the island, as a minimum he’d be leaving all his money behind, and as a maximum, he might be leaving behind other valuable assets to which he was attached.

The best thing about it was that it was all totally above board and legal. I’d sell my ownership rights on to a legally established Japanese company, something I was totally entitled to do. And in a month, when the deal went down, I’d tell Luther by recorded delivery that I’d lodged paperwork with my attorney such that if anything ever happened to me, he’d be the first person the police would go hunting for. A meal served to him with a side order of ‘P.S. Do you really want to come back home. There are some very unhappy Colombian former investors here in Miami who are very keen to know how you funded your Japan gig.’

Yes, on balance, I was much looking forward to late August 2024.

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Despite the traffic, the route back from the Attorney’s office was thoroughly nostalgic. I’d loved our time in Miami, and having raised our family here in many ways I still thought of it as home. But piece by piece it seemed the whole family had upped sticks and moved West to California. John and Becky had been first, with me and Veronica the next instalment. And even after Jill and I had split, Jill had stuck dogmatically to her plans to move to California to be closer to her granddaughter Julia. Of course, wherever Jill went, Malcolm was sure to follow, the two of them running a club that was the newest outpost of Luther’s little empire. The whole set completed when not surprisingly our twin daughters Abigail and Sarah decided ‘if you can’t beat them, why not join them.’ Unlike their elder brother John, they’d had enough of academia and so when they’d completed their bachelor’s degrees they both looked for and found jobs in L.A.

Ever since we’d moved out, we’d kept our old house in Coral Gables. For a while we’d tried to sell it, but when we couldn’t get a price we liked, as we didn’t need the capital we rented it out. The last tenants had moved out a month ago and we’d taken the chance to have it redecorated before the next tenants moved in. It was this gap between tenants that gave us the idea for a family holiday reliving old memories and all sharing the same house.

And when I say ‘all sharing’, that’s exactly what I mean. It was now more than five years since Jill and I had split and things were good between us. Sure, there were still hurt and painful memories. But these memories were also counterbalanced by more than twenty years of great memories and love.

Time heals pretty much all wounds. That and love, and kids, and family. The need to be together and stand together to support John and Becky and their growing family. Little Julia Emma Foster, a big girl of five-years-old, now the proud and very protective big sister to Dale David Foster, two years her junior.

As I closed the front door, I looked out to the pool area where everyone was gathered. Grown-ups and adults each doing their own thing. The sounds of talk and laughter and fun the perfect dessert to the splendid main course I’d enjoyed at the attorney’s office.

“Drink?!”

Jill’s sudden question took me by surprise, I’d not seen her there in the kitchen.

“Sure, why not.”

As Jill poured me a beer, we shared a moment, knowing we were at the center of the happy group gathered outside. At the center of both generations that were milling around outside. Only Veronica and Malcolm members of the third generation, part of our little family tree by marriage rather than by blood or adoption.

Jill squeezed my hand and looked at me, anger and anguish long gone from our relationship. “Isn’t it a wonderful sight, honey. Who’d have thought, five years ago, that we’d be standing here like this? Enjoying a wonderful family holiday like this.”

“That’s what kids do for you,” I said like some would-be sage philosopher. Jill smiled, she knew I was mocking myself, my professorial tone too exaggerated to be anything but self-deprecating.

“Mummy … mummy.” The word’s sailed across the air, just moments after the sobs and cries of a child falling and grazing their knees on hard concrete. Malcolm junior might have had his Father’s build, taller than Julia despite her seventeen-month head start, but he’d not yet learned the stoic attitude to pain that was his Father’s stock-in-trade.

As Jill quickly ran out to comfort her young son, just for the briefest of moments my mind went back to our last day together as a couple, thinking to myself how glad I was she wasn’t like Veronica and our daughters. That she’d covered her bikini with a long, over-sized t-shirt top to cover her tattoos, and that by the outline of her breasts she’d left her immodest nipple jewelry locked in her suitcase. After five years, I didn’t begrudge her the right to wear what she wanted. But there was a time and a place. Our kids and I had accepted Malcolm and Jill’s lifestyle, but there was no need to rub our noses in it.

“Ssshhh … there, there …” as Jill comforted her four-year-old son, even with Malcolm standing there by her side, I didn’t have a moment’s anger or malice in my head. My life had moved on too far, was full of too many good things for any such emotions to gain purchase within my soul. I was happy for Jill’s happiness.

It hadn’t always been like that. Jill and I had many painful conversations in the first couple of years after we split. But gradually the balm of time and the many good things in our lives worked their magic. The worst I suffered these days, and I knew Jill was the same, was the occasional bout of dull regret at the path we’d taken and what it had cost us. But we both now had our new significant others and both had been blessed by children to round out the little troop of five people happily playing in the pool. Led by eleven-year-old Haley, the would-be Colonel in charge of the other four, ably helped by five-year-old Julia who Haley looked on as the little sister she never had.

Haley was a natural as the big sister to the other four. Maybe that would change when adolescence and ‘boys’ hit her – but for now, she was more than happy to play with the others with the age gap not even a thing for her.

In this little troop of five, maybe the most amazing thing of all was the way that Malcolm Jnr and Henry, Haley’s little brother played so nicely together. Malcolm Jnr was one year one month older than our son, but it was if they were brothers, the seven-inch height difference and different skin tones not mattering a jot as they roamed the yard looking for anything interesting to explore and play with. Malcolm Jnr having miraculously recovered from his near-terminal knee-grazing.

With her husband Malcolm locked in a deep conversation with John about the joys and challenges of fatherhood, Jill returned to the kitchen to finish off fixing the drinks. She caught me gazing at the two boys, sticks in hand, exploring the yard as if they were the bravest of new world adventurers. She smiled a smile that brought back one of those painful aches, momentarily wishing I could have both Jill and Veronica in my life. I still loved Jill, just as she still loved me, but we both knew it was destined to be nothing more than a platonic love until the day we died. Each having found and made vows to our new partners. Each having sealed this love and vows with the creation of new life. New life to have and to hold, to love, and to nurture.

Forgetting the drinks, she kissed me softly on the cheek, winding her arm through mine as she joined me in looking at Malcolm Junior and Henry together.

“You do know, Dave, that you and me must be the luckiest people alive. Somehow, out of the total mess that our stupidity created, we’ve managed to find two amazing people, and managed to be blessed by two amazing young boys.”

I smiled. I knew she was right. How each in our own ways she and I had been stupid. Jumping before thinking. Jumping before checking how far down it was and if the thing on our pack was a parachute or a plain old knapsack.

She had a strange smile on her face as she continued her philosophizing as she headed out the door with the drinks. “I just hope and pray they don’t someday fall in the love with the same girl at school. No good could ever come of it. We lucked out once. Twice would be one time too many.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 28th, 2024 – Okinawa and L.A.

The FaceTime screen I was looking at, so often an important part of my life back in 2018 and 2019, told a very different story today. If it had been a web feed its address would have been www.Lutherandhiswellfuckedfuture.com

“You set me up, Dave. You total and utter fucking bastard.”

“Nice to see you too, Luther, my friend. How are things there? How are your new friends treating you? Well, I hope. Maybe even given you some nice Yakuza ink to show you who you belong to now.”

“You fucking shit. I’ll get even with you, just you wait. You better be looking over your shoulder every night, Dave.”

“Brave words, dickhead. You know my company are lead contractors on the new Homeland Security Passport system, right? Imagine how interested your old Colombian investors would be to hear their good friend Luther’s coming home? Hell, who do you think supplies the Yakuza with all their coke? I’m sure your Colombian investors would cut them a good deal if they were to re-export some third rate American trash in return. What do you think, Luther? Should I make the call?”

If it were medically possible, Luther would have gone white. Either way, he certainly went three shades whiter than before he’d heard my words.

“And Luther, that, as they say, is check and mate. Now, who’s got a giant dildo pressed against his ass, my friend? You might have cucked me for a few months, but you are going be ridden long and hard for the rest of your natural.”

The FaceTime call went dead, with whatever the Apple equivalent of a slammed receiver is from a very unhappy American exile in Okinawa.

Life suddenly felt good. Not a cloud in the sky. Pains and aches for sure, sometimes. But a great new life to look forward to. Another fifteen years until Henry went to college and Veronica and I would need to find other diversions. Thankfully, both of us too old by then to do anything too dumb.

Probably.

(Cbears and Kite, thanks guys for your help with this final instalment of the Jill and Dave saga and all your many hours editing and checking before that.)