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All of our kids had done well in school, and like I said, Jamie had just gone off to college, so we were now looking at empty nesting. In the last few months, we’d talked, and Justin wanted to retire early so we could spend more time traveling the world now that the kids were grown and out of the house, and I thought that was a fine idea.
He'd used travel as an excuse for us to get married just in case something went wrong like we hadn’t been traveling at least twice a year for the past eighteen years without it. Now, today, he was bringing it up again, and since my last child support check had been cashed, why the hell not?
I hadn’t touched my personal account in years because Justin took care of all the household expenses, and if I even hinted at something, he had it delivered before I could make up my mind if I really wanted it or not. My cars, he bought; my jewelry, he bought; my luxury vacations, he paid for and everything else in between.
Of course, our children’s five-two-nines were set up by him, and their grandparents gave them all hefty sums when they graduated, and I know their future weddings and house down payments were taken care of. My money has been well invested over the years, and I have enough to take me through two lifetimes. In short, I have been sitting pretty. If he lost his mind and walked off today, I would still be set for life without the worry of financial strain.
That’s not all I was interested in, of course, but I learned after the failure of our marriage that you can’t live off of love and that shit doesn’t pay the bills. He loved me once and still cheated, and I am not one to forget shit.
“You can go down and file for the license on Monday.” I’ve never seen a happier man in my life. He paid and paid well for his betrayal, never once taking a step wrong. He let me know each time someone hit on him, which I pretended not to care about, but he, on the other hand, was very offended that anyone would hit on him because he was taken.
I reminded him time and again that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so how were they to know? So he found his old one somewhere and started wearing it again, then had a conniption when I refused to wear mine.
He suggested all kinds of ways for me to let people know I was taken. A promise ring, just an engagement ring, anything. I refused them all, but I do wear the Cartier love bracelet he got me and never took it off. Let that be enough for him.
When he pushed as to why I refused to wear an engagement or wedding ring, I reminded him that he wore his wedding ring while he was fucking that dirty bitch, that it didn’t stop him, so why would it stop me or anyone else for that matter since it meant so little and that usually got him to crawl out my ass for a while.
He reached over to the bedside table and pulled out the jewelry box he’d hidden there. Inside was the biggest rock I’d ever seen on a ring. It had to be six carats easy and the most brilliant clear-cut diamond in a teardrop shape. Flawless!
I let him slip it on my finger and felt his dick jump against my back. Nasty, he’s still got it. We spent the weekend in bed and didn’t have to be quiet because there were no nosy ass teenagers sniffing around out there. That last kid put me through it, I’ll tell ya.
From beginning to end, he is his father’s child, a pain in the ass if there ever was one. From the womb, he was giving me hell. But he’s the sweetest little boy who loves his mama. He never had to suffer the trauma of a broken family, so he’s a bit spoilt. His brother and sisters protect him like he's made of glass, and Justin does everything he can to make it up to him for the guilt he feels about his birth.
He learned about the divorce sometime in his teens and was very upset with her dad until I sat him down and asked him to forgive him. The others had already done that, but they’d dealt with it as young kids while he was much older and had a better understanding.
My sweet boy threatened his dad that day that if he ever did that again, he’d never even look at him again in this lifetime. As stubborn as he is, I’m inclined to believe he meant it, but we will never know because his dad is attached to my ass.
* * *
JUSTIN
I woke early that Monday morning as if the place was going to open earlier or something, which I knew it wasn’t, but I was so excited that she’d finally said yes that I could hardly sleep the night before. I watched her sleep for a while, just taking in her beauty and the fact that she was mine.
I looked at the clock and tried not to wake her as I climbed out of bed and, not for the first time, thanked my lucky stars that hers was the bed I was in. I break out in a cold sweat sometimes when I remember how close I had come to losing everything we’d shared in the last eighteen years or so since she let me come back home.
I can’t imagine not seeing my kids grow up, not spending every precious moment with Callie that I have. It’s like a nightmare, which I’ve had more than my fair share over the years, where I wake up in a panic until I see her face on the pillow next to mine.
In the shower, I grinned like a fool at my luck. It had only taken me damn near twenty years, but I finally had my woman back. Not that she wasn’t right there by my side this whole time, but for me, that piece of paper, as she likes to call it, means a lot.
There are days like today when I wonder what the hell was going on with me during that time; the time of the great disaster is what I call it in my mind. I’m not gonna lie; the sex was great the first couple of times with Daisy, but once the guilt started to set in, it was no longer fun.
I tried ending things more than once in the beginning, but I was always afraid that things would get out somehow, that I’d be caught and lose my wife and kids. It might sound silly now that I look back on it, but that fear, more than anything, is what kept me going back to her. The fear that if I called things off, she’s retaliate and tell my wife.
I thought I needed something; what that something was, I’m not sure, but it definitely wasn’t what I got in the affair. I’ve read other people’s accounts of their divorce and can’t find myself in any of them.
Callie wasn’t a bad wife or mother; she did her best in everything, but I was too selfish back then to realize. The long and short of it, is I needed to grow the hell up. But I didn’t know that then. Didn’t realize that I was putting everything on her because I was the breadwinner. I thought that was all that was required of me, so I neglected my wife and kids because society had pretty much taught me that that was the way to go.
I won’t say I justified the affair, but I sure talked myself into believing that it was fair and that I deserved some happiness of my own when all my wife seemed to care about were the kids. I was such an ass that I didn’t realize that she had grown up, grown into being a mother, something she had to learn on the fly because no one can teach you that; all the while, I was stuck in my college days mindset.
I wanted us to do the same things we always did together, but whereas she had already realized that we weren’t the same people, I didn’t get the memo. It’s hard looking back at that time and seeing myself and the person I had become.
Once Callie served me with the divorce papers and everything was out in the open, it was like someone stripped the skin off my bones. Not only that, but a light switch went off in my head, and I realized what I stood to lose, something I was always aware of but wished would never happen.
I think what scared me most was her attitude; it was as if she didn’t care like she was done with me when I was finally coming to see what she and the kids meant to me. It was then I realized that I didn’t want another woman, I wanted my wife, but so much about our lives had changed that I hadn’t been ready for.
I thought it would be easy; Mom had made it look so easy. But even she explained that, of course, to a child, it looked easy because I didn’t have any of the responsibility that she, as a parent, had. She seemed to sympathize more with my wife because she herself had had to fight for her place in her marriage once I came along.
There were changes to be made, and she and Dad were better at making those changes than I was. I could blame it on generational differences, but the truth is I was a shit husband and an absentee father.
