Sunday 12th May 2019, early evening

It had been a long nine days. A very long nine days, since Jill had headed off to the airport to spend time with her two different lovers before following through on our agreement that she sever all ties before we relocated to L.A.

These last days had marked the crescendo of a two-year period that had turned our marriage upside down.

Until that fateful summer day in 2018 that kick-started our new lifestyle, when I’d watched three friends vying for Jill’s affections at a party, our marriage had been a very conventional marriage.

But as I sat nervously at MIA awaiting Jill’s safe return from nine days with Malcolm, I was aware that our marriage had become anything but conventional.

To an outsider’s view, our marriage might still look conventional. But what’s the old adage ‘never judge a book by its cover’ – maybe a saying invented for our marriage, after how it had evolved over eighteen months to be what it was today,

I’d tracked the progress of Jill’s on-time flight online, not having had the courage to ring her before take-off to ascertain if she was indeed boarding. Also aware of how needy and desperate making such a call might have made me look to Jill.

The boards showed that Jill’s flight had landed and I waited more nervous than I think I’d ever been in my life, so tense to get my first sight of her that I was subconsciously standing on tiptoes to just see her a tiny bit sooner than otherwise.

Jill’s was the only flight landing at that time of evening, a BA A380 which I knew would carry a large number of passengers. As the passengers collected their bags and spilled out through arrivals, the crowd followed the normal low-high-low distribution of numbers walking past me.

As the number of people passing by went from low to very low, I began to feel a breaking sensation in my chest, wondering if this is what it had come to after more than twenty years with the woman who had been my lover and best friend for half my life.

Just as I felt the first tears start to overcome my sense of shame, even before I saw her, I heard a familiar voice. The familiar deep voice and laugh of Malcolm bending around the corner and reaching my ear a second or two before I saw him. A split second later spying the person to his left – my beloved Jill who’d kept her word to me and returned to me after nine days away with her giant black lover.

Still, some distance away, they hadn’t spotted me and I just watched them as they walked towards me slowly, arm-in-arm and laughing and chatting like they didn’t have a care in the world, their slow pace no doubt designed to eke out some last extra moments of their time together as a couple.

The first thing I noticed was that Jill had done something different to her hair. She’d had blonde highlights added to her natural brunette locks, and she’d had it straightened and cut a little shorter than normal, all of which combined to make her look several years younger.

These last eighteen months I’d grown used to Jill wearing increasingly revealing clothes, yet the outfit she was wearing was more daring and showed more flesh than pretty much anything I’d seen her in before. Especially surprising bearing in mind she’d worn this sex kitten outfit on a five-and-a-half-hour flight, not that anyone was likely to make a move on her or complain given the size of her traveling companion.

Her skirt was a micro-mini made of stretchy black lycra and her sexy long legs stretched bare until they reached the first straps of the strappy black open-toed high heel platform shoes she’d chosen. Not particularly comfortable for a long flight and traversing two terminals, but sexy as hell and I’m sure much appreciated by both Malcolm and all the other male passengers.

The pièce de résistance was the top Jill had chosen, a simple thin white cotton sleeveless number which was a couple of sizes too small and had a U-shaped very low-cut front. Much of her cleavage and upper breast flesh was on display for anyone who cared to look, with the thin material of the top meaning that her quarter-cup lacy bra was visible to all-comers. In fact, they’d have had to look hard not to notice it.

The way Jill was dressed was somehow a symbol of where our marriage had ended up – repelling and exciting me in equal measure. The perfect metaphor for the hemlock-infused tightrope that was our marriage today.

When she spotted me, Jill left Malcolm’s side and started running towards me as fast as her high heels would allow. As she got close and just before she reached out to hug me, I spotted some black ink on top of one of her right breasts. But before I could get a proper look Jill’s breasts were crushed into my chest, the flesh where I’d seen the blur of black no longer visible. As Jill clung to me and I felt the warm softness of her breasts squashed on me, I thought that I felt something different about her boobs.

Something different about her nipples – immediately making me think of when Luther had teased me by applying fake tattoos and nipples rings around her nipples. A terrible hollowness in my gut replacing my joy at seeing Jill after so long worrying that she might have stayed in L.A. Maybe Luther had played one final trick on me before finally giving up and letting Jill and me live our lives in peace.

As Jill finally pulled back from the hug, I saw what the black blur had been – it was indeed black ink, the black ink of a little black spade with the initial M in thin italics next to it. Jill saw me staring and pulled her shoulders back a little – signaling she had nothing to hide and that in fact, the opposite was true. She was proud and happy, happy for me to inspect the ink. As my heart thudded the only question in my mind was whether the thing was fake like before, or whether Jill had allowed her lover to go one step further this time.

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

To my utter relief, Malcolm bent down so he and Jill could exchange a long, lingering kiss, and then he said his farewells to me and headed off. I don’t know if it was in my imagination, but there seemed to be just a hint of nerves in the last look exchanged between the two of them.

With Jill dressed in that get-up, it was hard to concentrate on the road as I drove us home, my concentration not helped by the fact that Jill had her hand on the front of my slacks, casually squeezing and drawing patterns on my very hard member.

But even as she played with me, I sensed there was a nervousness about her.

When we got home the sense of nervousness about her seemed to spike up as I pulled her suitcase in and made us both a drink while Jill pulled the blinds shut. When I turned to hand Jill her drink, I immediately knew my earlier antenna hadn’t been wrong – Jill was almost physically shaking with nerves now, a condition which immediately had me feeling the same way.

“What is it, honey? What’s wrong?” I just about managed to squeak out between suddenly dry lips.

“Dave, honey, there are some things we need to talk about.”

“What, do we have to talk about? We’ve talked about all of this before, we’ve already made decisions,” I told her, suddenly feeling weak and needing to sit down as my vision tunneled in.

“I know, sweetheart. But I did a lot of thinking when I was away in L.A., and there are some things I need to talk to you about,” she told me, somehow managing to make her voice a lot more calm and controlled than mine.

That’s when I lost it, all I could do was just blurt it out. “Are you leaving me? Are you leaving me, Jill?”

Jill just went quiet, as the world seemed to stand still. A straight yes or no would have been best, put me out of my suffering quicker, but Jill’s answer just prolonged the agony.

“Dave, there are some things we need to talk about first. Then we can talk about the future, okay?”

‘Okay’ – she’d asked me ‘okay’. How the hell was I meant to answer that? I didn’t have the faintest idea what Jill was talking about. She’d point-blank ignored my question about whether she was leaving me – even though from my tone she knew how desperately I needed an answer. Instead, we needed to talk about stuff?

Before I had a chance to quiz her or think what on earth she might mean Jill started pulling her thin cotton top up and over her head. Immediately revealing a second black tattoo just under her left breast, and before I’d had a chance to take it in she was shimmying out of her little skirt to reveal a third area of black ink just above the tiny piece of fabric that passed as her panties.

It was May in Miami and the room was plenty warm, but none the less Jill was shaking as she stared glassy-eyed and nervously at me.

“This is one of the things we need to talk about, honey.”

My tongue felt like it wouldn’t move, all swollen and dry in my mouth, causing a painful delay as I struggled for words to ask the question flashing in my brain, a horrible feeling of humiliation bubbling up from deep.

“Jill… are they… are they… real?” I asked as our eyes stayed locked together.

Not answering, Jill ignored my question and reached behind her back, unclipping the clasp on her tiny black bra and letting it fall to the ground.

I’d been worried about the three tattoos – but now I had something else to worry about. The something different I’d felt when Jill has hugged me and squashed her boobs against me. The something different which had been hidden beneath the padded material of her bra cups was now out there in the light for me and the rest of the world to see. Two thin silver-colored bars staring at me, each perfectly horizontal as they sat proudly atop each of Jill’s nipples as they passed through the piercing hole that accommodated them.

Even in her shaking trance-like state, Jill somehow managed to get a few words out. “What do you think, honey? Do you still love me? Can you still love me like this?”

All good questions, but I was in such shock that I hardly heard them. Instead, I got to my feet and moved to stand right in front of Jill – now only clad in the five-inch strappy heels and her tiny black panties.

As I started inspecting what Jill had allowed Malcolm to do to her (and who’s to say she wasn’t a lot more active than just allowing it) it almost felt like a strange out of body experience for me. If felt like I wasn’t me, and she wasn’t my wife and soul mate, it felt like I was inspecting some inanimate object as one by one I looked over the markings now on Jill’s body.

The little black spade with the thin Italicized ‘M’ by it was the black blur I’d spotted at the airport, sitting right on the top tit-flesh of Jill’s right breast. Plain and clear, in a place where all the world could see it if ever she wore anything remotely low cut, or whenever she went to the pool or beach and donned a bikini.

Maybe because I’d already seen it at the airport, I didn’t look too long at it – the only question I’d had earlier was whether or not it was real or fake. Seeing it close up and the slight reddening of the skin it was obvious it was real, the ink was in the skin not on top of it.

Moving on I looked at the tattoo they’d put below Jill’s left breast. This was two sets of initials intertwined – an M and a J that nestled together and overlapped and twirled around each other, with a small black heart between the two. The meaning was two-hundred-percent clear, and I wondered if this was my answer to the question I’d asked and Jill hadn’t answered. Whether or not she was leaving me.

I must have stared at that heart and those intertwined initials for a good fifteen seconds, pondering their meaning before my eyes slowly dragged my head down to the little patch of skin above Jill’s tiny black panties.

Again, black ink tattooed into my wife’s soft white flesh. This time three different initials – MBM – which for the life of me I couldn’t fathom out. Again, long moments went by as I just stared at the black ink, totally dumbstruck that Jill had allowed this to happen right at the point where we were ending this lifestyle.

Standing back, it was then that I realized what a fool I was. Callan had been right. Not only had Jill kicked him into the long grass, the markings Jill had agreed to tell me that she had no intention of ending the lifestyle she’d enjoyed so much these last eighteen months. What a fool I’d been. Each extra month had brought new and higher levels of escalation. Jill was like a student of sex seeking ever higher qualifications. Daryl had been her High School diploma. Chris had been her Bachelor’s and now Malcolm was her Master’s and Doctorate all rolled into one. What a fool I’d been.

Months and months ago, I’d been the one that had told her that there was no way back from this lifestyle, so how could I be remotely surprised that even after the lessening pace of the last few weeks Jill had reverted to type. Her body a map of ink and metal which was the clearest declaration possible that she was unable or unwilling to give up Malcolm and this lifestyle.

With a sadness settling in my heart, I looked up at Jill and asked the question again. “Are you leaving me? To be with him? To be with Malcolm?”

This time Jill didn’t totally ignore my question – but nor did she answer it.

“That depends.”

What kind of an answer is that to give a man who’s drowning, a man who you’ve loved and shared your life with for twenty-five years and who you can see is going out of his mind with the stress of not knowing.

“Depends? Depends on what?” I asked, somehow managing to keep it together.

“Depends on whether you can share me?” Came a little voice from within Jill’s body, the truth and the full-enormity starting to slowly emerge into the daylight.

“Share you?” My face was the perfect picture of zero comprehension.

“Honey, forgive me, but I’ve done a lot of thinking these last days, about what I want in the future, about what’s going to make me happy. And you might not like to hear this, but a lot of it goes right back to what happened all those years ago in college. When you kept that letter from me, when I had Callan’s baby terminated.”

I’d been confused and traumatized before Jill’s last words, but now I was even more disoriented. I felt like I was spinning around and around, like I needed to grab onto something solid to steady myself – that there was nothing solid because everything I looked at and every word I heard was moving as fast and as giddy as me.

“What’s this got to do with then?”  I made a lunge for sanity and something solid to grasp, but I was soon wishing I hadn’t, because another bombshell was about to explode right in front of my face.

“At Christmas, when you confessed what you did, when Callan found out, well it brought it all back, all the feelings of guilt, all the feelings of a baby I never knew. And since Christmas, it’s been there, but it’s only been these last nine days that I’ve fully realized it for real. What I want.”

“What you want?”

“Yes, Dave. What I want is another baby.”

“Another baby? You know we can’t have another baby. I’ve had the snip. I had the snip twenty years ago.”

There was a terrible, terrible moment of silence as Jill looked at me and the penny dropped in my slow, stupid mind. She didn’t want my baby. It wasn’t my baby she wanted.

With slow, acid words and anger building within I finally asked. “So, if not mine, whose baby? Callan’s baby, the baby you lost all those years ago? A baby for the man who thought he’d never be a father.”

Jill just looked down at the ground, unable to meet my gaze. Of course not Callan’s baby. She’d answered that one days ago when she chose to stay in LA. And it wasn’t his ink settling into Jill’s skin right now, or his initials intertwined with Jill’s just below her left breast.

Jill never said it – she never had to. Instead, she asked a final question.

“Dave, I know you and me are complicated, have become complicated. I know you love some things that other guys, more normal guys don’t love. You may not like to admit it, but that’s who you are. And me, well I’m not much different. So, my question is this – because I don’t want to lose you or stop being your wife – can you share me with Malcolm? Can you share me in the way I’m talking about? Because I think that way all three of us can be happy, I really do.”

I looked at Jill. Like all the most seductive propaganda and lies – what she said had elements of truth in it. She was right I’d enjoyed much of what we’d done. And she was certainly right about the things she’d grown to love. But it was a huge leap from these two separate small facts to the bigger lie she was peddling – that the three of us could live happily together, sharing Jill as she gave herself over to Malcolm to become the mother of his child.

I just carried on looking at her, and the longer I looked at her the sadder I became. At first, the sadness was mixed with anger, but the longer I looked at this beautiful woman who’d given me so much, the more the anger ebbed.

In my heart, I knew I had every right and every reason to feel sad. Starting the journey of saying goodbye to twenty-five years of love, laughter, and building dreams together. But I knew I had no right to be angry – because I was the one who’d started us on this path. By all means not just me, but way back when Jill had been with Chris and had suggested stopping, I’d been the one who told her I thought we couldn’t unwind what we’d started.

I’d been the one who’d encouraged us to attend the swinger party and meet with Daryl. I’d been the one who’d nudged her to that fateful dinner with Rocco and Chris and who’d then agreed to her multi-week road trip with Chris. And even after the near-death experience with Chris, I’d been the one who’d nudged her into the arms of our black neighbors which had led directly to this day. A wife sporting three black tattoos put there with her black boyfriend – a wife who was happy to have her nipples pierced for him.

How could I feel angry that having started down the ski jump, guess what, I’d just discovered the end of the ski jump was a place fraught with danger and things hard to predict.

I’d not answered Jill’s question with words – but looking into my eyes, she saw how hard the thing she was asking me to do.

“Dave, honey, I know what I’m asking is tough. Really tough. But honey, before Callan came along, you were happy to share me with Malcolm. And I know Luther’s hurt you and caused all kinds of problems, but that’s behind us know. This would be just the three of us. In L.A. like we planned. We’d have our home there, be close to John, Becky and Julia. And then just like here, I’d spend some time every week with Malcolm. You loved that here in Miami, why should it be any different in L.A.?”

Jill had always been persuasive. She was right, there were big parts of our three-way life here that I’d enjoyed – really enjoyed. And it broke my heart to think of losing her, of us not being around as a couple for our children and granddaughter.

But what she was asking went well beyond. She was talking about us staying together as a couple even though she’d carry, give birth to and raise another man’s child. The child being so clearly mixed race that there’d be no way to hide the truth even if we wanted to – which my instincts told me neither Malcolm nor Jill would want to.

As we looked at each other, Jill made her last appeal. “Please, honey. Please think about it. I don’t want to lose you. I love you and want to grow old with you. We can do this. It may not be normal, but we can do this. We still love each other more than anything else and we can make this work.”

But with our eyes continuing to lock us together, the sadness I was feeling, the sense of guilt at my own part in the downfall of my marriage started to turn to different emotions. Yes, I was sad and guilty, but from somewhere deep within anger started welling and bubbling to the surface.

At first, I was able to control it – evident just in the clipped, terse, dispassionate tone of my voice.

“Before I say anything more Jill, I have a question.” Jill looked at me and nodded.

“MBM?”

Jill sniffled; she was seeing the shift in my mood, my actions alerting her to the change. I hadn’t got her another drink; I hadn’t sat back down. She had the decency to look embarrassed as she looked to the floor and quietly said, “Malcolm’s baby momma.”

I had to take a swig of my drink as she drove that knife into my chest, the tone of my voice switching to pure acid.

“Do you remember what you said to me, Jill?” Jill flinched at the obvious anger showing through my voice now. I swallowed back doing my best to contain the volcano that was bubbling under the surface.

“Truly sorry, hate it whenever you cause me pain, had to find out what you truly wanted, to be totally sure? All those promises about me always being your number one, never leaving me, our family always first.” This caused her sniffles to turn into full-blown sobs again.

So much of me was screaming in one ear for me to comfort her and tell her everything would be okay. But the blinkers had finally dropped from my eyes, about how far this thing had changed Jill and changed her into a woman who was no longer able to pay the cheques of the words she spoke. Freed and now able to see properly, my anger was screaming, telling me these were crocodile tears. Mere propaganda and window-dressing, designed to make me overlook this latest humiliation.

“Once more, Jill does what Jill wants. You went to Luther’s party without talking to me. You agreed to work for him without even telling me, let alone asking. You started your porn career and allowed humiliation after humiliation to be poured on me.

Jill just stared at me, hardly able to believe that things weren’t going as she’d expected, tears and quiet sobs revealing her distress and disappointment. Her pain and sobs egging me on as an idea started to form. The genesis of a trap starting to form.

“What if I agreed to your proposal? On the condition that you have the tattoos and piercings removed?” Jill looked up at me, hopefully.

“On the condition of no baby?”

“But I, Malcolm…” she spluttered before I cut her off.

Her own words condemned her. There was no compromise to be had here. It was Jill’s way or no way. An angry look of case proven painted on my lips as I continued on the offensive.

“So there we have it, then. Jill, you’re a huge, fucking fraud. If you’d said you wanted a child with Callan, I may have seen some sense in it. Making up all those years of so-called hurt and loss for Callan and you. Which meant so much to him, that he didn’t bother to ask you about that letter until his marriage to the woman he broke your heart over fell apart. And don’t blame me for the child you didn’t have. Just as with so much, Jill, even back then, you made that decision without bothering to talk to me.

“And now, you’ve gone back on your word from just a few weeks ago. You haven’t broken my heart, Jill, you’ve shattered it and trampled it into the dirt. Even without the complete humiliation it would be for me. You, marked by another man, having a baby by this other man, running around half your time with this other man. Then twenty years bringing up this other child all in front of our children and the people I work with. Can you imagine what that would make me look like, what people would think of me? The baby’s skin tone a constant twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five days a year reminder of what you really think of me. How you really treat me. That your words of love and commitment are just worthless baubles for the fool.”

“I’m sorry, Dave, I didn’t think…” Her eyes telling me there was only the tiniest glimmer of hope in her heart that we had a future. Nearly, but not quite totally extinguished.

“No, you didn’t think! That’s a huge part of all of this Jill, you didn’t think of me. But without that, do you remember what you said to me?”

Jill burst into tears again as she feared I was going to again remind her one by one of the promises she’d made and then broken – everyone one of them proved as reliable as fool’s gold.

Shaking my head, suddenly tired with my anger now nearly spent, I dialed Malcolm.

“Dave, how are you?” I could hear the nervousness in his voice.

“I think you’d better come and get her,” I didn’t say anymore, just ended the call.

“But Dave,” Jill tried between sobs, “I love you. You love me.”

“Yes, Jill, I do,” my anger spent, my voice softer now. “But I cannot carry on like this. You say one thing, only to change your mind. To humiliate me again. Enough is enough Jill. I’ve put up with more than any man alive, but even I’ve finally seen the writing on the wall, and I won’t live with it for a single moment more.”

“Dave, I’ll tell Malcolm, it’s off. I’ll get the tattoos and bars removed,” she was almost screeching now.

I heard her words but didn’t listen to them, shaking my head in quiet resignation.

“And what about in a week or a month or year? When you get the itch? When something happens and you find something else to blame me for or to humiliate me over? I’m sorry Jill, I really am, but I can’t trust you to stay the course.”

I went upstairs and got another suitcase out and packed some clean clothes for Jill. Tears were streaming from my eyes as everything I touched reminded me of the life that was falling apart around me.

When I got down again, Jill looked ten years older than her years.

“You can’t throw me out, this is my house too,” she sobbed.

“Yes it is, but I’ve been the one to go to a crappy motel before. You have somewhere to go to, you can stay at the company brothel.” She flinched at this.

“I’ll be gone by the weekend, then you can move back in. When I am settled in LA, we can discuss selling the house and everything else that needs to be done.”

Then there was a pounding at the door. I opened it, but didn’t move to the side, challenging Malcolm for once. I knew I would take a beating if he decided to, I’d seen the proof of this in how he dealt with Chris. Not breaking eye contact, I said, “Jill your baby papa is here.”

He walked in, saw the state of Jill he turned on me, only to stop when Jill put her hand on his arm. She didn’t say anything, just shook her head sadly. He picked up her bags and they walked to the door. Jill turned and stepped forward to give me a hug, but I stepped back away from her. More tears started, from both of us.

As they disappeared around the corner, I closed the front door. I topped up my drink and sat down and started to reflect on everything that had led me to be sitting alone swirling my glass of malt.

The rest of the night, Monday and most of the early hours of the morning were spent in inward reflection – with only a few hours of restless sleep providing temporary respite.

For all of that time, my mind and soul were a tapestry of emotions and thoughts. Sadness at what had come to pass. Self-flagellation at having been so stupid as to have started this whole lifestyle in the first place. Paranoid, or maybe not so paranoid, wondering if this had all along been some semi-secret plan of Luther’s to heap burning coals on me until Jill was free to join with Luther’s good friend Malcolm.

Wondering how I should move things forward with Veronica. Whether the official or unofficial grapevine had already alerted her to the fact that Jill and I would no longer be a couple together – either here or in L.A. My paranoia scribbling questions in my mind about whether, with his objectives already achieved, Veronica would even still be interested in me and available? Or whether what I took as her honest and deep-rooted love was nothing more than a skillful sham funded and initiated by her boss?

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

Tuesday 14th May 2019, morning

After another night with barely an hour of uninterrupted, useful sleep, I was slowly munching on morning toast and wondering how to fill my day – how to break the around-and-around circular spell of the disoriented mood I was in. Wondering to myself which of the various stages of mourning I was in for the corpse of the marriage I’d lived in for so long.

Just around eight A.M., my phone pinged with an incoming message.

I didn’t reach for my phone for some time, through a mix of disinterest and fear. Disinterest to read or hear another word from Jill. Fear lest it be a message from Veronica fulfilling my worst thoughts. It was only when my phone pinged for the second time (Apple’s kind reminder to open the unread message) that I summoned the energy and strength to lift the device and read.

‘Dave, so sorry to hear how things turned out. If you want someone to talk to, you know where I am. Any time of day or night. Luther.’

After the storm, I’d been riding since Jill’s arrival I no longer had the energy to even be angry, let alone to reply with appropriate words.

But by the ultimate of ironies, it was Luther’s message that caused me to see the flashing icon for unread voicemail, suddenly aware that somehow I’d missed six calls from Veronica last night. The mystery only solved as I realized I’d turned it to silent to try and get some much-needed sleep.

I looked at that little flashing message for ages, too frightened at what it might mean. Wondering if it was linked to Luther’s message, Veronica calling to tell me that she and I were now history as Luther’s plan was now fully worked through. A message tantamount to a one-legged man finding his other leg’s got gangrene.

I didn’t have the courage to listen to the message, so instead I decided on an alternative course, heading upstairs to find an old family heirloom handed to me by my mother many years ago. In the family since my great grandfather had purchased it many, many years ago.

I’d done a lot of thinking these last two days. A helluva lot of thinking. I’d been presented with Hobson’s choice, a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Knowing Veronica’s routine, I parked down the street, watching the happy smile of a woman I loved as she enjoyed the sights and sounds of offspring playing. I’d chosen to park a little way away as I really still wasn’t sure what I was going to tell this woman.

In some ways, I should have been more ready for this moment. After all, the last eighteen months had been enough of a rollercoaster to prepare me for today. But still, I didn’t feel ready. Part of me was still pulled back by those tugging tendrils of the memories and feelings I still had for Jill. However much I loved Veronica, however much Jill had hurt and humiliated me, still, I didn’t feel fully sure which way I wanted to turn. Which of the two choices I’d been given I’d finally take? The pain balanced by the echoing words of Jill that she’d give up Malcolm if we could still stay together.

For some time, I sat in the car, looking back at the last couple of years. Part of me wondered if this day was in some way may be inevitable. After all, if you roll the dice often enough, one day your luck will surely crap out. And ever since Jill and I had picked up the dice after more than twenty years of a conventional marriage, we seemed to have developed the unerring knack of rolling more often and more violently with every passing month. I guess that’s the way things often go for gamblers. Each passing day they avoid the bust convincing them they’re indestructible and always able to beat the house’s odds.

But this was truly the end of the road, and I knew it. And I knew the decision I had to take. In truth, I’d probably known it since Sunday night. My action to kick Jill out more the reality than her final pleading words for our future.

Feeling inside my pocket, I pulled out the box and opened it to make sure everything was still in good order. I smiled, it was beautiful and elegant as I remembered it and I wondered how my Great Grandfather had felt when he’d looked at it all those years ago. Closing the box I held it tight in my hand as I left and locked the car.

I came up to her from behind to surprise her, my hands on her shoulders the first she knew that I was there. Even before she turned, she had her second clue, as a little girl called out. “Uncle Dave,” the excited little voice called as she rushed across the playground and hugged me.

When she’d finally calmed down, I kissed her cheek and asked her to be quiet for just a minute as I needed to talk to her mummy.

Moving to stand in front of her mother and the fellow Latina mum she’d been chatting to, I introduced myself to her friend and apologized for interrupting. Then switching away from her friend, I looked directly at her, fishing in my pocket and pulling out the box.

Opening the box and holding it in front of her I looked into her eyes, sad at many things but happy that if she said yes, my life might just have a second act.

“Veronica Mendez, I want you to know how much I love you, and I want to thank you for loving me, and I want to ask you if you’ll take a risk on me and join me in LA, to become my partner, let me show you what life can give to you and Haley. I don’t want to assume anything, but I don’t discount that one day I might ask you to do me the honor of one day being my wife. I don’t want to talk about anyone or anything else, I just want to ask you if you’ll make me the happiest man in the world be agreeing to spend the rest of your life with me.”

As I put the locket around V’s neck her arms locked around mine and I felt a smaller pair around my leg. I was a man still with a deep well of sadness, but also a man who knew the sadness would fade and that I was truly lucky to have this wonderful woman in my life.