Jasmin: Guilt Diary Ch. 01

© LIPrulz July 2007

After not having seen her for three years and thinking I was just about over her, Jasmin had shown up at my door. All of my vacillation over wether to take a chance on another chick, Kathleen by name, was turned upside down when I allowed Jasmin to walk in the door and back into my life.

"I can't go to mum's or my brother's place." Jasmin said to me. "I need somewhere to stay, Damien. Somewhere safe."

I had laughed. I knew three years ago something like that might happen with her. I had even warned her as even with everything she had done I was still in love with her. It's hard to let go.

But I had let her go, rather I had told her to go as what she had done to me tore me to pieces and was unforgivable. Yet here she was.

"Well you're here. At the moment anyway." I didn't want to let Jasmin have the impression I had agreed to let her stay. We had gone out the back and I was sitting in the lounger by the pool. I still really wanted to have a swim. Answering the door had changed much more than that.

But Jasmin at least understood now that it was not a certainty that I would let her stay. Just as I had, Jasmin had no doubt on locking eyes with me as she had come in that the electric connection between us was as strong as ever. But she also understood now that there was so much damage between us that I was resisting the ever present yearning.

"Mark wants me to go to Thailand. To get my breasts done." Jasmin swallowed nervously. There was something else she was holding back.

I knew I could get her to tell me what the real problem was. But the question in my mind was if I wanted to. If I showed any interest, Jasmin would cleave to me. She knew how much she had hurt me three years ago and making her leave had been just as painful for her I'm sure. So to come to me like this she must be in real trouble. If she suspected I really cared about that then I was lost and there would be no real chance for any kind of fair reconciliation.

As it was my heart was already in my throat just having her sitting nearby at the pool after so long sitting there by myself. I had to maintain some self-control. If she wanted to come back it had to be on my terms. She would have to volunteer everything. I she wanted something she would have to ask. I would not be placing my heart on my sleeve for her. If Jasmin really wanted to pick up the pieces then she had the work to do.

As for her breasts; they certainly did not need anything done to them. I glanced at them as I wondered about that.

Beneath her top, Jasmin's breasts looked the same to me that they were three years ago. By the time Jasmin was 21 she had a C cup size. Her nipples were the longest nipples on any chick I had seen in the flesh. Before Jasmin I had had several girlfriends and in the last three years I had seen the tits of quite a few more women. I had been serious about none of them but more of that later.

In any case Jasmin's breasts looked no different, still as perky as ever. Mark obviously just wanted her to have bigger tits. It was totally unnecessary; Jasmin was hot enough to turn the head of any man. Then I looked again. There was a difference that was hard to see as dusk came down on us.

Jasmin had not padded her bras for many years, since leaving home. But they were surely padded now. Through the cotton there was no sign of her nipples.

She caught my second glance. Jasmin smiled but when I kept my expression blank she lost the smile. Jasmin looked sad then. I let her stew. I could only imagine what she was thinking.

"Damien," she said after a while, "Could I bring the car in?"

"Ahh, no!" was my immediate response.

"Craig might take it," she tried to explain.

"Craig?" I asked questioningly, forgetting my earlier resolve not to show too much interest. Mark wanted her to have her tits done and Craig had an interest in her car?

Jasmin sniffled and I knew she was trying not to cry. "Please, Damien," and now she was begging. "I'm so, so sorry..." And she was sobbing.

She probably hoped I would stand and go over to her, hold her in my arms and everything would be ok. But I didn't and everything was not ok. Everything could not be ok because my trust had been destroyed. I let her sob and cry. It had gotten dark and she looked so alone there.

Truly I wanted to go and hold her but kept reminding myself every moment; think with your head, not your heart; think with your head, not with your heart; over and over I said that to keep myself in my seat.

If there was to be any chance at reconciliation, any chance for a fresh start, this was the way I had to be.

"Craig's a crim!" I said after a short time. "Always has been." I left unsaid the question of why was she involved with him.

Jasmin made an effort to control her shaking. "It isn't what you think, Damien," she cried. Even sobbing she looked hot. Jasmin's hair was still gloriously long. Some hung over her face as she leaned forward on the side edge of the deck chair. It put her face well in shadow but I knew her well enough to know her crying was genuine.

"I owe them money," she said.

"And you'll owe them more if you go and get your tits made bigger," I said cruelly.

Over the neighbour's fence next to the pool I heard the screen door of their back entertainment room slide and click closed. I didn't know if someone had gone inside or just come out.

The neighbours, a couple around my age, were new to the town and I didn't know them well. I stood up and listened but could not hear anyone moving around outside. Perhaps someone had gone in then which meant they probably heard our conversation to this point. Too bad I thought. Jasmin had come unannounced. Airing her laundry might do her some good. I could see that she had turned her head in an effort to hear anything happening next door. At least that had helped her stop crying.

"Kel and Mike?" she asked quietly.

"No, Jasmin, they moved last month. Some things do change."

She looked up at me. I could see her eyes wide and glistening with new tears ready to shed. She bowed her head. "Can we talk inside?" she asked.

I nodded, not caring she couldn't see. When I walked past her to the pool gate though, Jasmin looked up. She followed me to the back door.

"Damien? Can I please bring the car in?"

I was almost fuming then. There was no way I wanted to bend in any way to Jasmin. Not yet anyway. She had too much ground to make up first.

Jasmin understood then, I think. She knew my pride at least.

"Just until you decide if I can stay, Damien. I'll go if you want me to after we talk."

She was almost desperately pleading. I had never seen her do that before. I did not want to relent though.

"It's all I have," said Jasmin. She slumped down at the breakfast table, desolate.

"What?" I couldn't help the exclamation. Jasmin had never asked me for a settlement when she left three years ago. But I had ensured the settlement process was carried through. She had agreed to accept $110,000 and one of our rental properties. How could she now only own a car?

"I'll tell you everything, Damien. Just please bring it in."

I agreed then. I went upstairs to change from my trunks. In shorts and a t-shirt with my own car key in my pocket I collected her key. Before I went back out the front I considered asking if it was important enough to put her car up the drive in front of mine so it couldn't be seen.

The driveway up the side of the house doesn't go to a garage. We converted the garage out the back to a huge workshop and granny flat years ago. Next to the house I have an extended tandem length carport roof. The supports and roof I had made strong enough so I could put an automatic roller shutter on the drive to close it off neat with the wall of the front courtyard. The carport was then a virtual private garage on the drive and was strong enough to resist any wind. But if someone was nosy enough you could see around the front post from the other neighbour's side of the fence and see any vehicle at the front.

So I thought about putting Jasmin's car out of sight at the back of the drive. Though it would mean moving my GS lexus (leased, I'm not rich) out to then put behind her car. I decided I didn't want to do it. She might take that as too much of a sign of forgiveness.

I was honest enough with myself to admit I still loved her. As for forgiving Jasmin though, no way had that happened. I moved my lexus up and put her mazda at the front of the drive.

The passenger seat of the mazda was crowded with her clothes and personal effects. When I drove the mazda into the drive I popped the boot to have a look there also before I went back inside. The small boot was also full of personal effects. There wasn't a bag in there, just a pile of clothes. It appeared she really was in a bind. I went back inside and gave her car key back.

I made a coffee for Jasmin and a green tea for myself. While it was brewing and my tea drawing she began to talk.

Jasmin said that Craig had tricked her into signing a sale of the investment unit over to him. Apparently at the same time he had also obtained access to her accounts online and transferred all the money she had to himself.

Then after tax time the bastard had tricked Jasmin into paying her recent savings to cover the tax debt of her so called gift to him.

Jasmin's naïveté had not diminished. I might have chuckled if she hadn't been so badly taken advantage of.

"I love you, Damien," she sobbed at the end. "I'm so sorry for everything I did."

I didn't say anything. To me it just looked like more of the same crying since she had arrived. I did believe that she loved me, however. If she had been with Mark or Craig all this time then she was love starved.

"Oh, I don't know why I am going to tell you this," she cried. "I want to come back. I'll tell you everything."

I understood then what was happening with Jasmin. She knew that the only way I would consider a life with her again was if she was totally honest about everything. I was fairly practiced at recognising a liar but I had been blinded by my lust, my obsession and finally my love for her for many years.

I knew just about everything she had done that destroyed our lives. Apparently there was more. Jasmin's strategy was sound.

She might well be able to re-establish a relationship with me. It all depended on what she had to say, how it affected me (and her), how sincerely she wanted to be with me and what the heck she was into with these ex-friends of ours.

I decided to change my own tact. It was time to put her off balance, to surprise the truth of matters out of her. I would have once chance at a shock question, I thought.

"When was the first time you cheated on me?" I asked her quickly. My eyes were riveted to her expression.

"You mean after we married?" Jasmin clapped a hand over her mouth then. I think I heard a muffled, anguished, "no..."

Got you, I thought. At the same time though, I was devastated. "If you don't want me to throw you on the street right now and torch that mazda -with all of your clothes inside- you better tell me everything! Right from the beginning, right now! Every time you cheated on me, every time you lied at any time when we were together. Clear enough, Jasmin?"

It looked like she was trying to push her entire fist in her mouth. She was so distraught. I had never seen her like that before. She managed a nod and then unsteadily picked her coffee up.

Jasmin took several deep steadying breaths to help her to calm down. "I kept diaries," she reminded me.

"I know about your diaries, Jasmin. We are..." but I couldn't tell her that. "But when you let me read them I don't remember anything like the betrayal you've intimated."

She looked confused and I realised she didn't know what I meant. I had been writing for several years and it does broaden ones vocabulary. But Jasmin had barely finished her certificate course in marketing.

"There was nothing in your diaries about betraying me." She understood that well enough.

"Under the driver's seat," she said. "I wrote what happened in the other diary. I didn't betray you, it's just I couldn't stop it. Oh, Damien..." she trailed off.

I thought Jasmin was going to start crying again. But she didn't. She stared past me, out through the window into the night, remembering.

"You'll see. Take the diary. You'll see I didn't just write it down recently. You know I didn't use running writing, ah, cursive writing until you helped me. I wrote my feelings there so I could understand, so I could... oh I don't know what. Read it Damien. Everything I thought I shouldn't tell you is there. There are some things that might have put you in gaol if you knew and did something about it. But so you know nothing is kept back, read it all." Jasmin held her car key out to me.

Of course I took it. I may have been married to her but that didn't mean I knew how she thought. Jasmin had grown up in Australia but it seemed a quirk of her personality that she at times was quite Japanese. Many times over the years I needed to have ESP to figure out what she wasn't saying. And I knew that any confessions she might make would be torturous both for her to tell and for me to try and extract from her. Her other, normal diaries had been a very insightful read. She had said at the time I had asked to read them that she would be very embarrassed. In the end she did not deny me and allowed me easily enough to read them. Now to read something she had never intended that I see... I almost hurried out to her mazda.

As I felt under the driver's seat there was nothing but the electric motor for the seat. Getting my head down to the floor in front of the seat I had a good look under. There! Jasmin had used sticky tape (durex), lots of it, to keep a tattered looking diary wrapped in plastic and stuck to the seat. I would have used electrical tape to hide it but that wasn't something she thought of, typical of her. I found myself grinning as I pulled the sticky tape off.

Isn't it amazing how a little detail like loads of sticky tape can get you reminiscing about the funny little habits of a chick. I had to force the humour out of my mind. I took the diary, still wrapped in a plastic A4 sleeve, back into the house.

Jasmin was watching me. "Might I have a shower? I don't think you want me around while you read that."

I dropped the diary on the table. This was it, decision time. I tossed the mazda key to her.

"No promises, Jasmin. Take any of the spare bedrooms downstairs. I don't know if I'll let you stay long but you can tonight. If you want, there are bags in the small end room if you want to take some stuff from the car. If you haven't eaten dinner yet, you know where everything is. I'm going up to bed."

"Thank you, Damien." It was almost a murmur. "See you in the morning."

I picked up the diary and headed up the spiral stair from the breakfast room. Through the stairs I looked down at her just before I stepped up onto the landing. Damn, but she looked good. I couldn't believe she was back in our house. The question was wether I would permit her to remain. Was the answer in my hands? The diary felt both heavy and hot in my hands. It wasn't really that heavy. It was rather thin in fact. What it might contain felt like a ton weight to me.

Jasmin had been very frank in the diaries she had let me read. If this was as frank I was both wary and keenly curious to see what it was that she had never told me.

She looked up then and our eyes met. Yes, the connection was still there. I could see through the puffy eyes. Our souls were still intertwined. Surely (if you believe such things) there was a heavy history between us, mixing our souls in previous lives. Her smouldering gaze was drawing me in. I knew from our years together that she was probably getting wet then. Years ago that was all it took to turn each other on, a look.

Heart heavy, I tore my eyes from Jasmin's and took the remaining stairs to the landing. I waited there listening.

She knew of course. The floor upstairs creaked a bit and she hadn't heard any of that. I heard the chair downstairs slide back on the tiles.

"Never a night goes past," she said, "That I don't dream about you, Damien."

I heard her footsteps then, going around the table. If she had of come upstairs at that time I would have taken her straight to bed. But her footsteps receded into the kitchen and down the hall.

I left the landing and entered the extended master bedroom. After Jasmin had gone three years ago I had moved the computers and a couple of tables upstairs in the alcove beyond her dresser. I dropped her diary there. My hand was trembling.

Cursing myself for such weakness I took some deep breaths of my own to calm myself. Resolutely then I turned back to the landing, slid the glass door closed and latched it.

I would be both thankful and regretful for that later. I drew the drape across the door also, then sat down at the desk with her diary waiting, the current centre of my universe.

Absently I flicked the kettle on as I regarded the diary. I had eventually brought a kettle up stairs so I didn't have to take time away from the keyboard when I was writing.

I slipped the diary from the plastic and opened the tattered front board. The pages within were very high quality and pressed thin like Bible paper.

Although I very much wanted to I did not page through to the end. I flicked the pages through once and saw that she had written a great many.

The inside of the front board had old liquid paper obscuring something. Well I wanted to know everything so I went into the ensuite and took a spare razor blade. As carefully as I could I began to scratch the liquid paper off.

The writing beneath was faded and most of it came off with the powdery liquid paper. I had been careful though not to scratch the board.

With a soft pencil I rubbed across the cleaned area. What I eventually came up with was:

- (obscured) Jasmin, (obscured) hottest slut ever. The (obscured) piece of (several obscured words) fucked,

Rick-

Who the hell was Rick?

I turned the page. The writing I saw there was definitely Jasmin's and definitely the printing she was still using at eighteen. As I relate it here I am withholding only the dates. I will divide it into paragraphs, altering some of the grammar, adding quotations where needed and correcting some of the language. Jasmin wrote everything until after she showed me her diaries in a continuous block so there is a bit of work to do on it. Like everything else I have written here the names have also been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Apologies for not cleaning it up too much, it would take too long. Jasmin wrote:

I can't believe what I've done. I'm writing this so I remember it always and make sure it never happens again. I have been keeping a diary since I came back from Japan. This one is much different though. No one but me will ever read this one. I would never be able to show my husband (please let that be Damien) this one. But he can see the normal diaries for sure. No one else will ever read my diaries, especially this one, until I am dead.

(That was a bit dramatic, I thought. I stopped and pondered her words through to a tragic conclusion. But the Jasmin I knew would never kill herself. She was never ingenuous with what she said and I knew she had every intention of seeing me again in the morning.

That also reminded me to phone work. I needed to be sick tomorrow so Jasmin and I could talk. That done, I returned to her diary.) Jasmin wrote:

I had sex today with Rick. It's only nine days since I was with Damien on the washing machine. It's David's fault. Or maybe it is my fault. If I gave Damien the photos instead of keeping them...

But I don't want that to be the first thing I write in this diary. Damien, Damien, Damien... He should be first in this diary.