24 hours, 5 years, 10 months Ch. 03

"This is who I am and will be till I die. Even with Bill, we've been good friends for over a year and a half. I'd go to hell and back for him if he'd ask, or if he'd need it and wouldn't ask. That trust in another made your betrayal so devastating, that's why I needed to hurt you as much as I was hurting. It's been good that we haven't even known where the other was for the past 5 years, and I haven't looked. It's taken that long to heal and to grow.

"If I should marry again and that wife decides to do something as shitty as you did, it would still hurt. But I wouldn't be devastated by it. I wouldn't hurt her as bad as what I did to you. I'm older and I now have a sense of integrity, a sense of being, a ... sense of self. We both learned from Gene to own what we did to others. I know that I'd never try to destroy somebody else again, no matter how nasty they were to me."

I stopped talking and took another gulp of the beer. I was able to start tasting it now. It wasn't vile like it had been minutes ago. I looked over and saw Marie wipe the tears from her eyes. She was still stunned, but she knew what I was saying. She knew what I was feeling and that she was the one that destroyed our near marriage. We sat in outward silence for a few minutes, there was no quite on my inside.

"The next day, you showed up with your mother. You really believed that it was only just sex. Were you really that shallow?"

She nodded yes. "I was pretty stupid and shallow too. Never looked beyond the present. No way to take it back, none, impossible. All I've done with my life since then is to be the most upstanding and honest person I could be." She wiped her eyes again. "It took me 6 months to fully and honestly apologize to my parents. For quite a while, they wouldn't even listen to me on the phone. I found out that there was a weekend they were supposed to be home and I showed up at 7 in the morning. If I could have found sack cloth and ashes, I would have done it. We talked till noon and they welcomed me back as their daughter.

"One year after it happened, I wrote a sincere letter of apology to Mary, Jay's wife. I asked my father to contact her and deliver it. I got a phone call back from her. Appears that he'd been roaming for a while. The mass emails only put it out for everybody to see. The divorce was actually a relief for her. She was able to start a new life without that millstone of a husband around her neck. He moved to Florida and she hadn't heard from or of him for a year when I had apologized to her. We still send each other Christmas cards and a note.

"Marie, let me get back to what happened to me. I got a transfer to Milwaukee. Lucky for me, the housing market tanked later that year and I was renting. I waited another year to buy again. It was a repo house that demanded my extra time. For the money I got from the house and what I saved, I moved up in houses. So for that I should thank you." I stopped and took a long drink of my beer. The beer was tasting better than before.

"Jim, you never sent me a bill for the wedding. You ate all those costs. Why? I was the one who tossed it all away. Why didn't you do it?"

"Marie, I was pretty dangerous for quite a while. I didn't want to tempt fate. Then I actually started a new life up here, moved up here pretty quickly. After a couple of months I found Gene. Somebody recommended her to me. I learned a lot in those next 5 months.

"During that time, I started studying to be a network Sys Admin and getting the certifications. Copiers are printers and are part of networks now and I had enough experience to understand what I was getting into. I was also getting tired of breathing in the copier fumes.

"I started dating again and I met Charlene. After a year, we got serious and 6 months after that, we married in a small ceremony. It was 6 months into the marriage we were having problems. I am very happy to say that we both tried hard to work it out. I started seeing Gene again and then we saw somebody else together. We faced facts and parted on good terms.

"It was nice to end a relationship working with someone, not blowing up at them. I haven't gone out much after that and then this idiot friend of mine kept pestering me to see this Marie friend of his wife's. I wasn't much interested but I agreed anyway. I gave him polite grief all the time about it, whenever I could. He said that she had a hard time in life. Guess he was afraid that I'd be mean or nasty. I told him that I'd be a gentleman in meeting her after her atrocious divorce. I would make him proud.

"Twenty feet from the table I saw your back, you were talking with Terry. That's when you made a hand gesture, a Gail hand gesture. At 5 feet, I heard your voice. It was you. I had to be the first out to talk. I wasn't going to blow your cover if you had one. The fear on your face when I appeared was only second to the fear that I felt inside. Then I asked if I could join you Marie, not Gail.

"After a couple of minutes, I realized that this really wasn't working and that's when I said I should leave. You had other ideas. The thing that kept me there was your owning what you did, and doing it right away. Never realized that you'd been seeing Gene too. That admission opened the door. I had to admit what I did too. I guess we studied under the same Master teacher." I paused and took some more beer. It was downright tasty this time.

"Do you think that I've done Bill proud?"

She nodded yes, but we both sat there in silence. We were both drained. Like when I cried last Wednesday night in the car. Years of emotions had spilled out and the vessels were light and empty now, but not very strong.