More than I Deserve

From off camera, Dana reached out her hand and pulled a black guy with the biggest dick I had ever seen into camera range. She tried her hardest to suck that dick but she couldn't get her mouth over the head of it.

"Too bad, you're not here, Sam," she said, mugging for the camera. "Maybe you could suck it. Or maybe he could fuck both of us instead of just me. Before Sam could react she lay down on a bed and took that huge dick inside of her. After he pumped it back and forth inside of her a few times with her screaming her lungs out, the video feed was cut off.

"Wow," I said. "That thing was huge. And she sure seemed to be enjoying it." Sam was pissed. Even though he'd claimed not to have any motivations other than financial when it can to Dana, his pride was hurt.

I couldn't help thinking that he'd gotten what he deserved. He threw me on the bed then and started fucking me mercilessly. We fucked for more than an hour. I don't even think he came once. I know I didn't. Neither of us really wanted sex.

Sam was just trying to prove that he was a man. And I was just trying to make it through until Bobby called me. I had to tell Sam that this was over I couldn't do it anymore.

"Shit," I suddenly screamed. I pushed Sam away from me.

"What?" asked Sam.

"It's after midnight," I missed Bobby's call.

"The phone never rang," he said. "Don't forget there's a time difference ..."

"Just get the fuck away from me," I said. "I need to get cleaned up before I answer the phone."

"Why?" asked Sam. "Can he tell that you're covered in some other guy's sperm over the phone?"

So we waited and we drank and we waited and we drank some more. Finally we fell asleep, but Bobby never called.

We woke up the next morning feeling really awkward. I noticed that Sam had moved to the sofa in the living room. Us sleeping in the same bed together would have been weird. I felt like shit and it wasn't just the hangover.

Sam acted like he couldn't get away from me fast enough. "I'll uhm ... Call Ya," he said. I didn't reply. Maybe something in my sick puppy that's just been kicked routine forced him to stay a few minutes longer.

"You know it's possible that the phone lines from where he is are down," he said. "And what he does IS kind of dangerous. Anything could have happened. Let's just hope it's some kind of technical glitch and that right now he misses you as much as you miss him." I just nodded and a bit of my smile came back. But deep down inside of me, I was sure that Bobby HAD called me and that I'd been so busy fucking Sam that I had missed it.

But telephones work two ways. So I decided to break my rule. I tried not to call Bobby while he was working. He'd told me a few times that the more we spoke while he was away, the more homesick he became. And I knew that I was in no danger of losing him because there were no women working on the pumping stations.

Bobby had told me himself that whenever a woman truck driver or nurse showed up she was mobbed by a bunch of guys who hadn't seen a woman in months.

I called four times and got no answer. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Suddenly my guilt was even worse. I had visions of explosions and fire and danger all around Bobby. I saw the man I love, fighting for his life while I was flat on my back with my legs in the air and another man between them. I felt sick to my stomach. I threw up everything in my digestive tract and it wasn't the hangover. I was the worst kind of whore imaginable.

Bobby was out busting his ass. He was exposed to danger every day and he did it for us and our future. He faced death and I couldn't face a little bit of loneliness. I swore again that I would change.

The next day I had another idea. I called the man that always sent us the checks to pay for our expenses and for Bobby's tuition. I thought that if there was any kind of news, good or bad, he would know.

"Mr. Lively, this is Mona Thompson, Bobby Thompson's wife," I said to begin the conversation. "Do you know of anything going on at the base that Bobby is stationed at?"

He hesitated for a second before answering. I got the feeling that something was going on. And then he spoke. "Mona, I don't have any specifics for you right now. But I'll tell you what I know ..." he said. I braced myself for the news that Bobby had been hurt or worse.

"A huge winter storm blew into the region," he began. "We decided to abandon the base. That is our protocol in situations like that. We had lots of extra people come in to help remove anything that might be salvageable. For some reason we don't have exit information for several of our guys from the base. Unfortunately Bobby is one of those."

I almost passed out. It felt as if an icy hand had grabbed my heart.

"It could simply be that he got aboard a different truck than the one he was assigned to. He could have gotten on a truck or a chopper and not signed in. He may have gotten out on a carrier that wasn't owned by the company. We've been getting calls from guys who didn't want to wait for one of our carriers and just grabbed a ride with one of the locals fleeing the storm. A couple of them ended up stranded somewhere out in the boonies with no phone service. It took them hours to get in touch with us. Then we had to arrange transport for them to get home.

Bobby is pretty smart. I'm sure he's fine and will call in as soon as he can. I promise to let you know as soon as I hear from him. And if he calls you, please do the same."

For the next few hours I just curled up on my bed and cried. I had the worst feeling that I had somehow ruined my life. I could feel Bobby's presence in the house as if he had called or been there. I had all kinds of stupid scenarios running through my head.

I felt like Demi Moore in Ghost. I felt like Bobby or his spirit had tried to contact me, but I had missed it. I had missed my last chance to communicate with the only man I had ever loved because I was too busy fucking a scumbag that I hated.

I would never forgive myself.

After a few days of worrying and crying and jumping up every time the phone rang, I went home to my parents. My mother wondered why I had waited so long to come to them.

My dad made several calls and found out some things that I never knew. The company had launched a thorough and exhaustive search for all of their missing employees. Some had been found when they called in from nearby towns as soon as the storm cleared. Others had made their own way home and had filed reimbursement claims. A couple had been found that were drunk out of their minds in whorehouses in Las Vegas. They were using the fact that their wives hadn't expected them to be home for a few weeks to get some off the books fun.

The only person who was still unaccounted for was Bobby. My dad also found out something interesting. The company had a huge insurance policy on all of its employees that covered all types of accidents on the job. Bobby's situation meant that until he was declared dead, or a body was found, no benefits would be paid out. There was also the fact that Bobby, for some reason, had decided, against the recommendation of his supervisor to remain on the base for some type of experiment.

Bobby had CHOSEN of his own free will to remain. A situation like that might negate the insurance policy. In the case of a missing person, they would have to wait years before declaring him dead. His beneficiaries might not see a dime for more than five years. But the real kicker was that when Bobby and I got married, he had never added me to the policy as his beneficiary. We had never thought about it.

Bobby's parents were long gone. His only living relatives were a drunken step brother who lived in another state and his grandmother who lived in a nursing home. Bobby often sent money to pay for extras in her care when we could afford it.

The insurance policy pre-dated our marriage. The stepbrother and Grandmother were blood relatives. If Bobby WAS gone, I wouldn't get a dime. All I would end up with was the apartment we rented and our few meager possessions. But I wasn't worried about money. I just wanted my husband back. I didn't want his insurance policy; I wanted the future that we had promised each other.

My cell phone rang and I leaped to answer it.

"Mona?" I was so upset that it took me a moment to recognize the male voice. I thought it might have been someone from Bobby's company calling to tell me they'd found him and my nightmare was over.

"How about tonight?" asked Sam. I slammed my phone against the wall in frustration.

* * * * * *

Bobby

The first place I went was the campus. A wounded animal always goes to its home ground. The university was my second home. It was the very first day of the year and a weekend. Classes weren't due to start for another two weeks. Registration wouldn't start for a week. All of my classes had been pre-registered so I could work right up until the first day of class. I made more money that way.

More money; it just seemed so funny and so pointless now. What exactly did I need the money for? Everything I thought I had was an illusion. I felt like I'd been in the audience at a magic show. I watched the magician get chained up and lowered into a box. The box was lowered into a tank of water and the clock was ticking. How long could the guy hold his breath? After a couple of minutes, one of the magician's assistants screamed and ran up on stage with a sledge hammer to try to break him out.

A couple of guys from the audience ran up on stage to help her save his life. After a few blows with the hammer they manage to shatter the tank and all of the water runs out of it. They frantically take the locks and chains off of the box, hoping against hope that the magician has managed to hold his breath for that long, but they know, everyone in the audience is rapt. None of us can take our eyes away from the spectacle. And even though none of us, especially not the good church going people will admit it, but we all want the same thing. We all want to see them pull a dead magician out of that box.

But when they open the box, we're all amazed. The box is empty. The magician shows up in the back of the audience, sitting next to an old lady. He's even holding her dog. The mother fucker isn't even wet, let alone dead.

The audience applauds loudly, we have all been entertained. But deep down inside, deep down in the darkest recesses of our mutual souls, we all have the same thought. We all wanted to see that bastard die.

The child in me wants to believe that it's magic. The child in me believes in shit like that. He believes in magic and wonderment. He loves experiencing new things and just going with the spectacle of things. But the grown up in me looks at things with the mind of the engineer that I'm becoming.

I look at the magician, sitting there dry and smug. I look at the water. I look at the construction of the tank, the construction of the box and the angle of the box to the stage. I look at the facts and they all lead me to one conclusion. It was just a trick. It was skillfully presented and it played upon the sensibilities of gullible audience members who wanted to see a spectacle.

We all wanted to believe, but the fact is that motherfucker never really went inside of that tank.

I came home to surprise my wife. I wanted the spectacle. I wanted the magic. I wanted the love. I expected to have her run over to me and put her arms around me. I expected to give her the diamond necklace I had picked up for her on my way in and wonder how we could afford it. Then I could tell her how we had a new deal, much more money and we could go out and start looking for a house of our own, even before I graduated.

But again, I had been tricked. And where the magicians trick was done in fun and for entertainment alone, Mona's trick, cut me deep. The few seconds that I stood there, watching as some guy I had never seen slammed her like a rag doll, changed me on a fundamental level.

And as if Mona had been the magician, I realized that she had simply never been in the tank. I had been fooled again. I had been in love all by myself. If Mona had ever cared for me at all, there was simply no way that she could have done this.

For a second I allowed myself to think about how long it had been going on. But only for a second. I realized that the length of time that she had been making a fool out of me was irrelevant.

Anger flared and I fleetingly considered running in there and confronting her ... Confronting them. I saw all of the possible outcomes of that scenario in an instant and none of them were good.

I could burst in and beat the living shit out of the guy. In that case I'd end up in jail. I could also end up hurt myself or dead. I could burst in and ask Mona why she did this to me ... to us. But she would only tell me it didn't matter and hat we could work through it. Or she and the guy would simply laugh at me together.

Or ... Maybe she would simply tell me that the time apart had changed her feelings. She was sorry but she no longer wanted to be with me.

I realized all at once that none of it mattered. I needed to move on with my life. Neither violence nor confrontations would make me feel any better. I had often said that Mona was my life. The reality is that she was simply a very important PART of my life.

And as with all things, when one part of a system fails, the other parts pick up the slack until that part is repaired or the machine is damaged to the point of a total system failure.

I decided to concentrate on the other aspects of my life. I had a meeting on Monday to talk about expenses and living arrangements. I just needed to get through the weekend. I ended up crashing at the dorm of a friend of mine from one of my classes. He was nerdy enough that he was still in the dorm over the New Year's Day weekend.

I ate enough pizza and played enough Playstation 4 games to be sick of both, but made a friend for life.

The first thing I did on Monday was to go to see Malcolm Lively. Malcolm was Tom's boss, but he was handling all of the details of my new deal with the company. Malcolm had actually been the one who hired me and he like Tom was kind of a mentor figure for me.

I explained the entire situation to him and he asked me what I wanted to do about it. I gave it a lot of thought and told him that it wasn't the kind of thing I could figure out in a few minutes. I told him that I needed a new place to stay and that a car might be nice.

"Bobby what do you want to do about your wife?" he asked. "Do you want a divorce?"

"I don't know what I want," I said. "Maybe I'm a coward. I just don't think I can face her right now."

"So what do I say if she calls?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Just don't say anything."

And that was how it went. For the next few months, I didn't give myself time to even think about Mona. Every time I found myself with time on my hands I studied, or I worked on a project, or I helped out other students. I did any and everything I could think of in an effort to not think of Mona.

I could have gone and spied on her, if I chose to. But I had no desire to be kicked in the teeth again by watching her with her new man. She could have just as easily found me. After all, I was still going to the same school. It just went to show you how hard she must've been looking for me. All she would have had to do would have been to visit the engineering building.

I was always looking in every direction before I went to or came back from class. I parked in the lot behind the building most of the time and went in through the back door.

It was so much easier having a car of my own. I'd bought a used Mustang from a dealership in town. A few friends of mine from the automotive technology class at our school had used the car as a project and I got to keep all of the modifications they'd done after they got their grade.

Without having to worry about where my tuition was coming from, a lot of the pressure was off of me. Not having to worry about making or keeping Mona happy, took even more of the stress out of my life. I was free to learn and experiment to my heart's content.

And free from distraction, my grades soared even higher. It gave me the ability to apply an almost laser like focus to any and every task I had. The opportunity to replace Mona the way she'd replaced me came up several times. But I couldn't pull the trigger. Something inside of me was still too broken to think about it.

When summer came around, I was completely over Mona. I was also free to take any internship the company offered. That was how I ended up in West Virginia.

When you think of West Virginia, you think of coal mining. And there is that but there are a lot of other things about the state that are remarkable. The oil company I work for has several businesses there.

The people of the region are very hard working and the labor costs there are relatively cheap. The oil company took advantage of that started manufacturing all of their own pipes and fittings there.

It gave me experience with manufacturing systems, production lines, and manufacturing based robots that no amount of class time could replicate. I was there with about a dozen other interns from my company. Several of whom were returning for their second or third summers there.

After two days, I realized that the schedule the interns worked, didn't work for me. The idea was to give the interns a taste of the plant and a bit of experience. I spoke to the plant manager and outlined my own schedule for him. He was skeptical at first but agreed to it on a trial basis.

What I had done was look at my available time there and divided the summer into twelve one week portions. I would spend a week each, in all twelve departments of the plant.

Three days into my schedule, the coordinator for the interns had begun to complain. I was missing most of the meetings and question and answer sessions that the interns did. The interns also had a group project that they were all doing together and I had yet to sign up to perform a part of it. Participating in the project was a requirement. It showed off the skills we were acquiring and was designed as a gift to the company that was providing us with the opportunity to learn.

The plant manager was about to step in to defend me, but I handled it on my own. The project was a plate with the company's logo and the year and class number on it. I looked at it and shook my head. I took the rough sketch the intern coordinator had shown me and walked out of his office. I knocked on his door two hours later and placed the plate on his desk. He looked at me like I had two heads.

"Who made this?" he asked in surprise. "This should have taken you guys most of the summer. We were going to present it to Malcolm at the end of the summer picnic."

"I made it," I said. "So can I get back to work?"

"I don't understand any of this," he said. That was when the plant manager came in and spoke to him. He told him about the interns working four hour shifts and going to meetings. He told him how I was working ten hours a day six days a week along with the real employees. He told him how the interns observed and occasionally brainstormed to try to find the solution to a problem. Then they would compare the solution the interns had come up with to what was actually done.

On the other hand, I was actually working in the departments I went to. I usually started from the bottom and tried out every job there. I often got the worst possible jobs in every place and spent most of my time with the real employees instead of the interns.

So the project that would have taken the interns most of the summer had taken me only a couple of hours because I could actually program and operate most of the machines.