The Dream Wife

She sat silent and he could only stare at her, trying to understand what she had told him.

"Who are you?" he said finally. "How did I live with someone for ten years and never have the slightest idea who she was?"

"Because I'm a pretty good actress. And you loved me and didn't want to see that I didn't felt the same way. But, you had to sense deep down, you had to, that there was something...missing. Didn't you? I told myself at the end that walking away would allow you to find someone that could love you."

He shook his head.

"You were that good an actress, and I was that much in love with you. I never guessed..."

She bent her head down to the table and he couldn't believe it, but she was crying.

"Oh, god, I didn't want to hear that. I told myself that you had to sense it. I never thought you had no idea..."

He finally just shook his head in amazement and stood up. She had answered his questions. He didn't have to like the answers, but she had answered.

She reached out to grab his hand again.

"Please, stay a little longer."

How the hell could it get any worse.

"After you left you know I moved Sam into the house and it was okay for a few months. But he didn't really want the kids, although he said he was okay with them. I knew it and the passion between us cooled. Within six months we broke up and I dated around until I met Bill.

"It was like it was with Dave. The second night we went out I knew he was different and by the time we'd been going out a week we had sex and I knew I loved him."

She studied his face and then said, "The funny thing, Dan, and I know you won't see the humor in it, is that everybody told me and I can see it now, is that he could be your brother. He looks like you, about as tall, hair a little darker. He's serious and kind and calm and he loves me more than I deserve. When he saw your picture for the first time he told me later he thought I was trying to replace you with a clone."

Dan began to stand up again but she held onto his hand.

"Just a little bit more."

He sat back down.

"Okay, you love your new husband. I'm happy for you, what does this have to do with me – with us?"

"Just wait a few more minutes. Well, I had fallen in love with Bill, but I knew I had to tell him about us, about you and me and what had happened. I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want him to know what kind of cheating slut I had been. But he'd heard some stories about me from his friends and I knew he'd learn the rest over time. I was terrified that he'd think I would cheat on him.

"I knew I had to be honest with him. The night I told him I had the kids at my parents. I was terrified he'd hear my story and walk out on me. But I told him everything. As I was telling him, I watched his face and my heart sank. I could tell what he was thinking.

When I finished he just sat there and looked at me for a long, long time.

"Finally, he said, 'I would have killed you if you had done that to me. How could you? And how could I ever trust you'?"

"I sat there and tried to figure out an answer to that question and I finally told him the truth. That I had never loved you, not for a minute, but I did love him. I do love him. I didn't try not to love you, I just never did. After I said that, he just looked at me for a few minutes. Then he got up and said, 'I've got to get away from you for awhile and think about this. I'll call you'."

"I didn't hear from him for a week and I died inside. I knew he was never coming back. And then one day he showed up at the door. He kissed me and told me he had thought about it for a long time and decided to walk away. 'But I couldn't,' he said. 'I was already in love with you. I know how Dan could love you so hard, so long, because I love you the same way. I guess we're brothers in more than looks'.

"Then he told me that if we were going to stay together, I had to stop tormenting you with the kids. You remember a year ago I suddenly stopped all that mickey mouse crap and let you have them whenever you wanted, no matter how badly you talked to me or talked to them about me. That was Bill. He said I'd already screwed you over badly enough. I couldn't take your kids away from you."

She stopped talking and the two of them sat playing with their spoons. Dan drank the cooling coffee and tried to figure out what he was feeling.

"And when he came back, he asked me how I'd feel if he had pretended to love me and had affairs on the side. It killed me and he said, try to put myself in your place. And for the first time, the first time, I realized what I'd done to you. I stopped looking at it from my side, only mine, and thought about what you must have felt, what you had gone through.

"I didn't talk to you for six months. Bill did all the shuttling of the kids. I know you must have thought I was a real bitch but the truth is I couldn't stand to look at you and know what I'd done to you. If I said a word I'd have started crying and I couldn't have stopped.

"I started having panic attacks and the doctor recommended valium. I walked around like a zombie for three months and Bill stood beside me. If he hadn't been there I think I would have cut my wrists. I didn't think it was possible to feel pain and guilt like that and live."

Her eyes were red from crying.

"Because the truth is, I know you never deserved any of this, Dan. It was my fault, my selfishness. I should never have married you and after I did, the first time I started to cheat I should have asked you for a divorce. It would have been so much kinder that way."

She looked him straight in the eye and said, "I told you all this so you'd realize the truth. You never had the wife you thought you did. You never had the love you thought you had. It was all a lie, or an illusion or a dream. It wasn't real.

"I'd say you wasted 10 years of your life, but you have Becky and Bob. They're real. And they love you. If you ignore everything else I've said, remember that. I'm their mother and I know their hearts. They love you more than anything in this world, including me, I think. You can hate me for what I've done to you, but remember I gave you those two.

"It sounds like you finally found a woman who really loves you. Don't throw her away for someone- for something – that never really existed."

He just sat there when she stopped talking. He could hear the chatter in the kitchen far away, and outside the sound of a lonely car driving through the night. It seemed as if he were a million miles away from everything and he tried to figure out what he was feeling. It had been the worst night of his life, worse in a way than when Holly had told him she loved another man and was leaving him. Worse in a way because now he knew there had never been a love to lose. He had just been...convenient.

And yet....he looked at those lovely features that had been the center of his life for so long and tried to figure out what had changed. It was like one of those optical illusions when a lovely woman's face morphs into a skull. She was still Holly. She was still the beautiful woman he had wooed with rum and coke and cherries when she wore that blue dress.

And yet...somehow she wasn't. He realized it was like wakening from a dream. He could see the woman in front of him, and remember the love and sex they had shared, or at least he had thought they shared...but somehow the spell was shattered. Her confession should have shattered him, should have destroyed the last little shred of his manhood.

But he realized it hadn't. He was still the man he had always been. He had loved this woman, and enjoyed her body and had two children with her. But somehow, somehow, the hurt wasn't there any more.

And then, like the sun rising in front of his eyes, he knew the truth. It hadn't been anything he had done, or not done. It was like the old song: "you can't make someone love you, if they won't..." She had never loved him. They had just been two people living in the same house, making two babies, having great sex, but she was right. They had been roommates – with benefits.

He took a deep breath and it was like breathing in without the pain of a broken rib scraping his heart for the first time in two years.

He stood and grabbed her hands and pulled him out of the booth to face him. He looked down at her red lips and bent down to kiss her. For just a few seconds he let himself enjoy the taste of her for the last time.

"Thank you, Holly," he said, and meant every word of it.

He walked out of the restaurant without looking back and it was only as he pulled around to drive out of the parking lot that he could see her through the window, hunched over the table. Her body shook and only for an instant he wanted to stop and go inside and comfort her. But he realized that Bill would be there in a few minutes, and Bill was who she needed now.

He woke the next morning after the best night's sleep he had had in two years. He walked into the building that housed the mortgage title company where Caroline worked at noon, near the time when Caroline would be going to lunch. He took the elevator to the 11th floor where she had had her office the last time he'd been in the building.

Her office hadn't been moved. He got some curious stares as he walked past the receptionist and past her co-workers until he reached the door with frosted gilt lettering reading Caroline Jenkins. He walked in without knocking and wasn't surprised to see that Frank was in there with her. She sat at a desk and he was leaning over her, their faces close together, looking at some paperwork.

They both looked up at the same time. Caroline turned white, although they hadn't been doing anything obviously wrong. Frank stood up straight to his full height, about four inches taller than Dan. He fidgeted, as if he didn't know what to do with his big fists.

"Dan, what are you.." Caroline began.

"I'd like to talk to my wife for a minute."

Frank glanced down at Caroline and when she made a slight movement of her head, he walked past Dan and out the door without a word.

"I haven't heard from you in five weeks and you show up without a word in my office."

"I got the divorce papers yesterday."

"I...I told you what I was going to do. They shouldn't have been a surprise."

"I just never believed you would really do it. Just like I never really believed that you would fuck another man just to hurt me."

She tried to glare at him but finally stared down at the papers on her desk.

"I gave you a choice," she said stubbornly.

"After you fucked him. You didn't give me any choice about that. Like you never told me I talked in my sleep. Like you never told me I called out her name inside of you. I would have done anything to keep you, but you never gave me the chance."

She lifted her chin and stared at him defiantly.

"You were the one who ruined our marriage. Not me. Don't try to blame that on me."

"And you put the nails in the coffin. But it doesn't matter any more, Caroline. I realize that if the situation had been reversed, I never would have done to you what you did to me. I would have left you, but I wouldn't have gone out of my way to hurt you like that. Funny thing is, in the last 24 hours I've realized that Holly, that selfish bitch, never really set out to hurt me. She did what she did for her own reasons, but not to hurt me. And you, my loving wife, did your best to destroy me. So who's the bitch?"

She smiled bitterly.

"I should have known. You just couldn't do it. You're still in love with her."

Dan walked past her to stare out the corner window in her office. She had a great view of the St. Johns River like a ribbon of glistening mercury twisting below her. With his back to her, he said, "No, I did what you asked me to do, Caroline. I met her and we talked last night and I forgave her. What's more important, I got over loving her. I'm free now."

He looked back at her, staring at him in disbelief. He realized she had never thought he would be able to do it. She had set him an impossible goal. And realizing that, he knew more than ever that the decision he'd made was the right one.

"Just like I got over loving you. It's amazing how easy it is to do once you learn how.

Like I said, I realized that I could never do to you what you did to me. And knowing that, I wondered why I was fighting so hard to keep a woman who could do that."

He walked to the door of her office and stopped for a second.

"I'll sign the paperwork today and let everything roll. We weren't married long enough to have any assets to split and we shouldn't have any alimony either way. I'll even talk to Holly about letting you see the kids. They have gotten to love you and if they want to see you, it's okay with me.

"As for you and me, I think you have everything. If you need anything else, come by and use your key when I'm not there. I don't want to ever see or talk to you again. Now you don't have to wait to start fucking Frank. You have my blessing. As for me, I'm going to start looking. I fell in love twice. I think I have it in me to do it again."

As he went down the elevator after the end of his second great love, he thought that he had expected it to hurt more. But like he had said, getting over Holly had taught him a great lesson. You can't torture yourself forever for the shitty things that other people did to you. It was enough to punish yourself for your own sins.

The knocking at his door started at 7 p.m. It was already long dark. And there wasn't anybody else he expected. So he let her knock until he heard the key click in the door and remembered that he hadn't changed the locks. He was in the kitchen, heating up a can of soup to eat with saltines. The kind of gourmet dining he expected to be on the menu for awhile.

He stayed busy with the cooking pan full of soup on the burner as he heard the steps coming toward him.

"I called her and she told me what had happened last night."

"Didn't trust me, did you?"

She walked up behind him and put her palms on his shoulders.

"I didn't say you could touch me."

"But you didn't say I couldn't."

"Why aren't you out with Frank? I gave you the perfect opening."

"Because I don't want to fake any more orgasms. I want the real thing."

"Use your hand or a vibrator. I'm out of the Caroline orgasm business."

"You used to like them."

"That was when I didn't see Frank in my head and in your pussy or your mouth. That kind of spoiled things for me."

She lowered her hands, reached around him and in one practiced gesture she loosened his belt and slid his slacks down to his ankles. Then she reached around and slid one hand into his underwear and closed her fingers around his stiffening cock. He tried to will himself to remain soft but as she squeezed and began to rub gently up and down his flesh betrayed him.

"I didn't say you could do that."

"You didn't say I couldn't. And it feels like you like it."

"Why are you here, Caroline? You didn't want me to get over Holly. You were just looking for an excuse to divorce me and try out guys like Frank. Why not be honest? We don't need to lie to each other anymore. We're done."

She grabbed his hips and spun him and he left the pot on the stove as he turned to face her, or the top of her head, anyway.

She looked up at him and slowly opened her mouth and engulfed his increasingly rigid cock. The sight of that hard flesh sliding in and out of her red lips just made him harder and harder.

She let it go with a pop, spit glistening on it but held it firmly in one small hand that just made it look that much bigger and redder.

"I don't think your big hard dick is done with me, do you? I think it wants to get back in my mouth for some real hard sucking. What do you think?"

Her hand and mouth before it had felt so good, and it had been almost six weeks since he'd had any relief other than his own hand, that he found it hard to speak.

"You know I want your mouth and your pussy and your ass, you little bitch, but that doesn't mean I can ever forgive you or take you back. If you want to come over for some relief fucking, we might be able to work something out."

"If that's all I can get, I'll settle for that. But you know I want more. I want you back."

She took him in her mouth again and this time she began to stroke and masturbate him with her hands as she sucked and licked it.

"You must think I'm – Oh God! – easy, don't you?"

"mmmmm...mmmmm...oh yes, you taste so damned good....no you're not easy. You're very very hard...mmmmm so hard..."

"You just....uhhh....think that....ohhh....if you suck me I'll....oh shiiiittttt....forget everything and take you..."

And then he couldn't talk anymore, just make an incoherent sound as it felt like the very marrow of his bones was turning to liquid fire and shooting out of the end of his cock, shooting out like water from a high pressure hose in one vast gusher followed by another and another and he was afraid he was simply going to fall over. He braced himself against the stove and looked down but her bobbing head and that golden hair obscured the vision of what she was doing to him.

Finally he started breathing normally again and as he did she raised her head and let his softening cock slide out of her mouth. Like something from a porno film, there were strings of white cum glistening between her red lips and his red cock. She opened her mouth to let him see the pool of white liquid lying on her lips and as she stared into his eyes she closed her mouth and he could see her gulping it down.

"mmmm....oh baby, you really exploded that time..."

then her lips closed in on him again and he could feel her tongue licking it up and down like a cat licking milk from a plate until she finally let him go and leaned back on her haunches. His dick was clean and as he watched she used her fingers to clean several drops off her cheeks and chin.

She looked down at her blouse which she'd never taken off and he could see splatters of white against the material at her shoulder and near her breasts.

"Shit, you know how hard it is to get cum stains out? Probably you don't, but it is."

When he could think coherently again, he said, "What the fuck was that all about? You've sucked me before, but never –"

She reached up to grab his softening cock and squeezed it gently.

"I never sucked you and swallowed and let you see me swallow, did I? Did it turn you on to see your hot cum in my mouth and to see me swallow and lick every drop up that I could?"

"You know damned well it did."

"That's what I thought. I know guys like that in porno, so I figured you might like it in real life. I want you back Dan, and if being the biggest fucking slut in the world is what it will take, that's what I'm going to be for you."

"Why do you want me back so bad, so quickly?"

She looked up at him,then bent and kissed the tip of his cock before answering, "I talked to Holly today. We spent a long time talking and I understand things a lot better now. She told me she could see you changing in front of her eyes last night. I could see it in your eyes when you told me you had gotten over loving her. And I could see that you were lying when you said you'd gotten over me."

"Pretty sure of yourself," Dan said, grabbing her head by the back of her hair and pulling her forward to rub his cock all over her mouth and cheeks. "You think being a great cocksucker is going to be enough to cause me to forget what you did?"

She was kissing and licking his cock, then pulled away and said, "No. For that I'm going to have to take you into the bedroom and fuck your brains out."

"You think so. I don't know if I'll be ready to go again for awhile."

She took his semi-limp organ back into her mouth and with tongue, lips, teeth and fingers he was hard enough in a half minute.