The Texoma Deluge

I could tell she didn't want to answer that question. For the record, I didn't have any evidence that she had fucked him. I had only caught them together as an intimate couple at dinner.

"It was about six months ago." She got up and walked back into the bedroom and returned with something in her hand.

"I stewed about it for three or four months and one night while staying at Lucy's, Charlie and I could hear her getting laid in a big way. I hadn't planned on it but I let him fuck me that night. Like I said I kept putting it off even though I was tempted to fuck him several times. Call it hormones or jealousy or whatever, I did it."

She then tossed what was in her hand onto the table. It was a pair of French cut lavender panties.

"I found these in your clothes after you got back from that trip you made to Memphis about a year ago and I know for sure they aren't mine."

I stared at them for a bit before replying.

"I wish you had confronted me then instead of what's now happened."

We looked at each other and she continued.

"Charlie started fucking me every time I was in Dallas at that point until a couple months ago when he moved back up to Denison for a new job. I knew I had let things get out of control but then I let him talk me into flying out to spend time with him. I made up the Atlanta trip and flew to Dallas. That first night I stayed in Dallas with Lucy and the next day her and Charlie's brother Rob and I drove up to Denison.

"After you caught me there I made Lucy drive me back to Dallas that night. I never slept with Charlie on that last trip, Dave. I knew what I had done was terribly wrong."

I could see the tears in her eyes and I could also see the panties on the table.

"Are you still fucking her?" She said while pointing to the lavender clothing.

"Only that one time and in hindsight I should have told you what happened but I didn't have an excuse for it."

"What would have you told me?" she asked.

I told her the story leaving nothing out and we both sat there exasperated with ourselves.

"Tracy, do you love him?"

"I don't know, Dave. Sometimes I feel like I do and other times... I don't know. "

I refilled the coffee cups and stood there wondering where do we go from here. Susan was right. I needed to know if my love was enough and could I get past a long affair with all its deception. I could blame my own discretions on an ice storm and tequila but I'd be lying to myself. Tracy could blame her fucking around on a pair of panties but she would be lying to herself as well. In the end we would be lying to each other if we continued with the excuses.

"You need to discover whether or not you love the man and who it is you want to be married to and I need to learn whether I can get past a six month affair with a man who at least once had your heart. I think we should separate for a while."

She gasped when I said that and the tears began to flow and I had a second thought I had not given any consideration to yet.

"Who was the man you and Lucy were with at Henry's last night?"

I didn't think her lips were going to move and form the words at first but eventually behind the tears and angst on her face she pushed them out of her mouth.

"It was Charlie."

"You flew the bastard out here with you??" I asked incredulously and with anger building.

"No, he followed us here on Thursday when Lucy told him where we were."

I don't know why but I think I believed her.

"Well, that's convenient for you. You can test your love for him here but not in this home." I was pissed I know but the dig felt good for a while...

Tracy needed to be in Minneapolis in a couple days so she booked her return flight to Dallas and stayed with her folks for a while traveling out of Dallas for work instead of Charleston. Torre kept me up to date on the sly and through that contact I learned that Tracy and Lucy would occasionally hit the town together.

I debated having a private investigator stalk her over a weekend but at the end of the day I just didn't see the need for it. She needed to determine for herself who and what was important in her life. One thing I did know was that the longer she stayed out there 'finding herself' the easier it would be for me to let her go...

"I filed papers today." She said at the table across from me.

That was unexpected.

"I didn't see any point in dragging it out and we both know it is inevitable anyway."

Given what she had already told me I guess I agreed with her.

"How did he take it?" I asked. Susan just shrugged her shoulders and said

"No clue and at this point I'm not traveling to Saudi to find out."

"How are things on your front?" she asked.

"It's been a month now. I hear from her every week but I get the sense that she's is settling in for a while. She has moved back in with the bad influence and to tell you the truth I half expect to receive papers myself eventually. If that's her decision I'll let her file."

"How about your decision, Dave?"

"I've thought a lot about that and what you told me back in Durant. I do love her and I believe it's enough for a marriage to work but I can't compete with the ghost of the other man if she still loves him. She has to choose me or him, not both. If I have all her love at the end of it, then we'll be good. I can't go the other way."

The separation went on for another couple months without any resolution. I knew she was still seeing the bastard but then I had given her the invitation to do so. The next move really didn't surprise me. Tracy did eventually come back to Charleston only to tell me that she was moving back to Dallas and she wanted an amicable split. She believed she had never stopped loving him and the raspberry on top of the pie was that she couldn't get past the lavender panties. Imagine that. I didn't know if I could get over a six month affair. It was raining cats and dogs as she stood on the entry way to the condo and as I watched her get into the waiting cab and pull away down Hasell Street I stood on the step and finally found myself crying in the rain...

--------------------------------------------------

"It's a great opportunity, boy. You better grab it before some other swinging dick comes along for it." Monroe sat there chomping on his unlit cigar.

"I need you to get me an answer in a couple days. Will that work for you? Oh, by the way, I'm sending a corporate engineer to work out of the plant as well; a good looking gal by the name of Susan DeLong, make that Coe. She's going by her maiden name now."

The old man was going all out on this one and he knew it. The Durant plant needed a new VP of Operations and the executive team, meaning Monroe, had picked me for the job. I would be the youngest VP of Operations the company ever had at the age of 36 but it meant I'd have to leave Charleston and head for the rolling hills of southern Oklahoma. I didn't have to wait a couple of days.

"I'll take it." We shook hands and three weeks later I was heading back up Rt. 75 in North Texas, this time in bright sunshine. There was a bit of an odd feeling as I passed through Sherman-Denison on my way to the Red River but I only gave it a passing moment of reflection. There were no storm clouds portending of bad things to come. I had a leadership staff waiting for me and I had already picked out where I wanted to build my house; right on Lake Texoma, a fifteen minute ride from the plant.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hoff." The plant receptionist was a pleasant young girl by the name of Rose and she greeted me when I came in the front entrance. We had met during the extruder installation a year earlier.

My HR manager met me in the office and walked me back to the corner suite and let me know the entire leadership team was ready to get together whenever I wanted to kick it off. I waited until I could get settled in the office and the first thing I did was have one of the operators I had befriended on my earlier visits give me a thorough walking tour of the entire plant.

It was eye opening. Housekeeping was sloppy. Several safety guards were non-operational and it looked like 5S and other lean efforts had been waylaid in lieu of fighting fires. No wonder Monroe was smiling.

That first afternoon was an eye opener not just for me but for the entire leadership team. I laid the law down for everybody. The plant was going to clean up its safety program immediately and starting first thing in the morning we were going to begin rebuilding the team.

That evening I sat in the bar at the Choctaw Casino and Resort sipping on a pint of Ale while watching an assortment of people running calculations through their various states of mind to determine how much more they were willing to lose to the myriad games of chance. I've never been a gambler myself except for that first bout of marriage.

It took nine months of courtship to become a husband and after four years of marriage it took another six months to get out of it. The last six months since the decree have been the opportunity to get myself past the sense of loss I felt when I watched her ride away in the pouring rain that afternoon in downtown Charleston.

It was my wayward pair of panties against her poor judgement and at the end of it we both came away losers and winners; losers in the sense that we lost each other in a needless battle and winners in that we each walked away without scorching the other. Tracy still owned her place on Daniel Island that she had kept as an investment property. I kept the condo on the Peninsula and we both had separate savings and retirements; and no alimony for either.

I still talked with Steve and Donna in Denton although as the months passed the conversations became less frequent. Tracy's sister Claire and I almost never talked when I was still married and the divorce didn't change anything there. With Torre it was another matter; our conversations increased although I was pretty clear that I didn't need to be updated on whatever was going on in Tracy's life; I still heard about it anyway. As for Lucy, the cunt can rot for all I care.

Tracy and her 'soul partner' moved in together after he returned to Dallas when she refused to move to Sherman. A month ago the two of them flew to Las Vegas and returned married to Torre's relief; she had no intention of attending the marriage if invited. I guess that was the finality of our saga as a couple. It meant no turning back, not that there was ever a chance of that occurring. I think it was her marrying the guy that enabled me to do something new with my life and take on this assignment in Durant. I think Monroe saw it too...

"Excuse me, Mr. Hoff, but is this seat taken?" She asked as she slid into the seat without waiting for my reply.

"Well, I was saving it for a wild thing who wanted to go for a ride."

Susan just rolled her eyes.

Her divorce was finalized about the same time as mine but it didn't go as smoothly as she thought it would. Her husband Billy fought it and tried to have a big battle over assets and at one point even went for alimony. Susan's attorney just laughed that one off with a copy of their tax returns which showed his income higher than hers. Then he switched gears and charged adultery but with no evidence that too fell flat. The judge granted the decree but she had to sell the house to give him half the equity since she didn't want to live in it. Why he fought it like he did, nobody knows.

The poor man knew what he was losing but realized it too late and it ate him up. He emailed her a picture of some really skanky looking whore sucking his cock. In return she forwarded it to his friends with the caption 'Class Act" and that was the last she heard from him.

"That crazy wild thing would make you late for your meetings in the morning. I can get you there on time and all rested up for a busy day." She purred. Thirty minutes later she was purring louder.

"Lick it just like that. Don't stop... That is so good." Susan had her ankles pulled back with her thighs opened wide.

"Oh my god, baby, eat my pussy. God I'm going to cum."

It was a beautiful sight to my eyes with her pink pussy encircled with a neat but definitely not shaved tangle of small blond curls that formed a cushion against the side of my mouth as my tongue and lips attacked her wet sex.

I let my fingers play with the bud of her ass as she squirmed on the pillow before me. Susan really liked the ass play although she was still squeamish about being fucked in the ass; a finger was OK. As I licked and sucked her quim I could feel the small quivers, especially when I licked that small space between her vagina and ass. It was an especially sensitive place for her and her orgasm started with the quivers building to a crescendo.

"Motherfucker .... Oh MY God ... I'm fucking cumming."

Her fingers slid through the hair on the back of my head and pulled my face deep into her steaming sex as she fucked her orgasm into my mouth. Both of my hands found her ass and I kneaded each cheek while her cum subsided. Moments later the sensitivity overload hit and she moved her fingers into my mouth to halt the assault on that tiny bundle of nerves called a clitoris.

"Jesus, that was good." She said as I rolled off her and onto my back.

"Suck my dick." I said to her concerned now only with my own pleasure.

She did just that engulfing the head of my cock with her wet lips and gave a slow sensuous blowjob stretched out for the next ten minutes before she pulled her moist lips off the head and rose up bringing an erect nipple to my mouth.

The next sensation was feeling her grasp my prick and rub the head up and down her wet pussy before lowering herself onto it and fucking me to Nirvana. I love the cowgirl position especially with both large breasts and her long blond hair swishing in my face; the best sensual feeling in the world to me.

When I was close she sat up pumping it for a bit before pulling it out with her fingers and stroking my nut onto my belly while she grinned at me lasciviously.

"I'm going to sleep right here tonight instead of going back to my room." She whispered to me in our post-coital haze. Moments later we were both in the shower and we cuddled on the bed watching the late evening news before we drifted off to sleep spooned closely to each other...

Susan was at the morning staff meetings from that point on although she reported to Monroe back in Charleston. I'm sure he planned it that way because he knew we were an occasional item but for practical purposes she was working for me. She was the one who made the suggestion I needed to hear.

"You need to fire about a third of the staff in there, Dave. They aren't up to the job of turning this place around and you know it."

We had been working on site in Durant for two weeks at this point and I had just started to get to really know most of the leadership team. Susan was right; the safety manager was going to get somebody killed one day with his lack of concern. Reliability and capital planning was almost non-existent. My Controller had no grasp of the manufacturing floor. In a word it was a mess.

A month later half my staff was new and we were on the first steps toward a reinvigorated and entrepreneurial workforce. The point of it all was not just the functional plant; it was also to enable me to start to have a personal life away from the plant namely to break ground on my new home.

I had flown back to Charleston to close on the condo and to bring Monroe up to speed on what we were doing and stayed over the weekend. Henry's was jumping Friday night when I walked in and Satch had his hands full at the bar.

"Hey man, another Russian?" He hollered out above the din. I just nodded and handed him my card. Then he laid a déjà vu on me.

"Your Ex? She just left out of here about an hour ago with her new man and that little blond chick with the tattoo. They left the bar tab open and said she'd be back, just so you know." He grinned like a black reaper.

"Fuck her and him and especially the other one." I wasn't going to be run out of my favorite hangout. As soon as I said it my angel came to the rescue.

"Who are you fucking now?" she whispered in my ear seductively. I turned and gave her a quick kiss.

"It isn't so much who but what I'd use to do it with." She thought that was humorous and turned the conversation to what was important.

"Buy me a drink and tell me how the closing went."

Susan had flown back with me to work with Monroe over the coming week on next year's budgets and tonight she had dressed up and perfected the absolute killer look. There wasn't a young college chick in the whole place that had a leg up on her in that arena. Of course I was biased but Satch laid a low whistle as well.

"Satch was telling me the Idyllic Modern Woman was in here with her new husband and her sister and that they were coming back. That aside, the close went well. Money is in the bank and until I get the house built, I'm technically homeless. Got a room you can spare a bum?"

"Only if you work for it and speaking of work, here they come." She winked and nodded toward the doorway and the other end of the bar.

I glanced up at the reflection in the mirror and sure enough the three of them had taken up residence at the far end of the bar. I turned back to my date and tried to ignore the mastodon in the room to no avail. Lucy came sauntering by on her way to the ladies room or in her case the cunt closet. On her return she made her presence known.

"Dave, I thought you cut tail and ran off to places unknown. New meat?" she said while trying to pour syrup over the words passing her trout pout lips and glancing at Susan.

"One of the Frat Houses is looking for a good bitch. Steady employment. You can get an app at the other end of the bar. Goodbye, Lucy."

I turned back to Susan and ignored anything else she had to say and she just dissolved into the crowd.

"Sweet girl." Susan said while suppressing a grin that just wanted to burst out all over her face. "A Frat House bitch?" The laughter erupted at that point.

Soon after we were joined at the bar by a couple of regulars looking for updates on what was new in my life and congrats for the promotion. Nonetheless I still had the trio at the end of the bar in the back of my mind. Friends of Tracy's had joined them and they had moved off to a table out of sight.

Susan decided to put my mind on better things and she settled into my arms as the several of us bantered away until nearly 2AM and almost closing time. I was staying with her in her hotel room and she was definitely the driver on that night...

I headed back to southern Oklahoma the following Monday and that evening I was talking with Torre. I mentioned seeing Tracy in Charleston and discovered she was back there for the same thing I was; to close on the sale of her house on Daniel Island. She had rented it out for the past year and the tenants decided they wanted to buy it.

"The other thing I wanted to tell you was that Jimmy and I are getting a divorce."

"Jesus, Torre, I didn't see that coming, really, I didn't."

"Neither did I." she replied before I could hear her crying softly. She pulled herself together and continued.

"He started having an affair with a woman working for a client and the next thing he knew it was a full blown love affair and now she's fucking pregnant with his kid... one big fucked up mess. Life sucks, doesn't it?"

She tried to laugh between the sobs but it didn't work.

"We're going to work it out with the kids and the house. Fuck it, you know how it is. It's a fucking divorce."

"Torre, you know I'll be here for you for anything you need. How are Steve and Donna taking it?"

"I haven't told them yet. You are the only one I've told but I will. It's going to break Dad's heart. He loves Jimmy."