Why Can't You Keep Out Of His Bed? Ch. 02

Kathy knocked on the door, presently her lover opened it, and she walked in through the door with the stained glass that made a multicoloured pattern on the tiled floor. An unbidden thought flashed through her mind. "I will miss this," she thought as she walked through the pools of coloured lights as they flashed and danced on her ankles and feet.

"Come on through," David said to her, as he passed through the open door to the right, which lead to the comfortable lounge. 'My lover, or my ex-lover to be' she mused to herself, as she sat down.

David smiled at her, he looked uncertain, boyish, even. Christ! This was going to be difficult! What she was going to have to tell him would crush his heart! She would have to do it as kindly, as carefully and as lovingly as she could. There was no point in hurting him any more than she was going to have to. But she would have to be strong!

"Would you like a drink?" he asked.

"Yes, please, David. A cup of tea would be very nice."

He was surprised. "No gin and tonic?"

"No, thank you, David. Not this time. I really would love a cup of tea."

A sudden frown passed over his face. How did she like her tea? He honestly didn't know.

Kathy must have read his mind. "White, with one sugar, please!" she said, as brightly as she could manage. She smiled at him.

A few minutes later he returned from the kitchen with a tray bearing two cups of tea. They sat side by side on the sofa and sipped their teas.

Eventually, Sarah gathered enough courage to begin to say what she needed to say. "David, please I want you to know this... I do love you... but I am afraid our affair must come to an end."

She watched the pained, horrified expression on his face. Shit! This was going to be tough. Part of her wanted to continue the affair because she still had loving feelings towards David, she still wanted him, another part of her wanted to continue the affair because she did not want to hurt him. But the rest of her knew that their affair must end for the betterment of the two of them.

"No! Oh, God, no, Kathy! Please don't leave me! I'll do anything to keep you! To make you happy! What have I done? What have I done that's so wrong that you need to end our relationship?" There was fear and panic in his voice. Her heart was breaking, but she knew she must continue on the course of action she had mapped out, with help, several days earlier.

"It's nothing you have done, David," she began. And then she realised that wasn't exactly the whole truth. She had worked out a script in her head of what she would tell him, how he would probably react at any given point, but suddenly she no longer felt that the carefully concocted script would work. She felt that she needed to tell him the truth.

"Actually, David, that's not strictly true. It IS something that you did, but it is not your fault. I bear full responsibility for what has happened. And I must take the appropriate actions to ensure that things are put right."

There were tears glistening in his eyes. She felt horrible, but knew she must continue.

"What was it that I did?" he asked, his voice had a catch in it.

She took his left hand in her right, squeezed it gently and said softly: "You helped me cheat on my husband."

He looked shocked at this. "But... but... you wanted to cheat on your husband! You told me that you found it hard to be committed to one person! You said that! Only last week!"

There were tears in his eyes as she spoke to him as gently as she could, like a mother telling a young child that the puppy that he had loved so much would not be coming back from the vet.

"When I said that to you, it started me thinking. Was I a natural cheat? Someone who could not help my infidelity? Was it nature, or was it nurture? Did I really need to have affairs or was I, somehow, mentally broken, cheating on my husband for no good reason?"

She squeezed his hand again and took a sip of tea before she continued. "There was also the problem that my affair with you was becoming burdensome because I started to really fall in love with you. That had never happened before. Affairs were for sex, love was for my husband. And you, you little bugger, you managed to get through my defences. I started having loving feelings for you. I should have ended our affair then, months ago, when I realised that, but I was too weak to do it. I think I wanted you too much to do that.

"But you see, David, if I wasn't a natural cheat if I could, somehow, be faithful to one man, should that one man I chose to be with faithfully be my lover or my loving and kind husband, the father of my three children?"

David responded, waspishly, "But he is clueless! He doesn't know about your affair, does he? He doesn't suspect a thing!" There was an unpleasantness in his tone, something mocking and derisive.

She quickly let go of his hand, suddenly angry with him. "Hey! You can cut that out, right now! My husband doesn't know about my affair with you, or my other affairs, before you, for that matter! And he doesn't suspect anything because he loves me and he trusts me! How dare you take that nasty, derisive tone when you are talking about my husband?"

David realised that he had gone too far. When they had started their affair about a year previously, Kathy had made it perfectly clear that she was not into a hot wife and cuckold relationship, that she did not want to hurt or humiliate her husband in any way.

David's face flushed. "I am sorry, Kathy, I just didn't think. That was out of order. Sorry."

She gave a nod of acknowledgement. "That's OK," by the tone of her voice she was still upset, he could tell.

After composing herself for a few moments, she continued: "So, David, what I had to do was to try and work out what I needed to do next in my life.

"As I said, your words had started me thinking, so I booked myself in for an initial session of counselling.

"Even though it was just one session (I have another booked for later in the week) it began to help lift a kind of foggy depression from me. I began to realise that I was not doomed to be a serial cheat for the rest of my life, but that I had made some remarkably poor and stupid decisions in my life, decisions that had risked everything I had ever wanted, a husband and a family, for the thrill of sexual affairs. And that the desire for sex was only a part of my need to cheat. My counsellor is pretty certain that part of this goes back into my childhood, but we'll be able to further explore that in future counselling sessions."

David took a big gulp of tea, marshalling his thoughts before he spoke. "I... I see. I don't know what to say. I thought we might split up, eventually, but I thought this might be because you would meet someone special, someone better looking or wealthier than me."

She looked into his eyes. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, David, but I did meet that man, the one who was that special someone. I met him 18 years ago, he was the man who became my husband."

A look of pain passed over David's face. She thought that it was like looking down from a plane and seeing the shadows of clouds scudding across the landscape.

"What should I do, now?" he asked her.

"You should mourn for our relationship, be pleased that we had our time together but try to be pleased that we had to end it the way we ended it. Oh, I know that's easy for me to say. But I do love you and I know you love me.

"One of the reasons I am letting you go is that I know, and this is going to sound trite, I know that you deserve better than what I can give you."

He interjected: "But I don't need someone better than you!"

She shook her head. "No, that isn't what I said. "What I said was: 'you deserve better than what I can give you.'

"By that I mean someone who is yours 100 percent of the time. Someone who doesn't have half her mind on you and half her mind on her husband, or her children, someone who is not gnawed at by the guilt of her betrayal that is ever-present.

"You deserve someone who will be with you all day every day, not just as a part time lover!"

He looked at her, they locked eyes and both began to cry, tears flowing down their cheeks. They hugged, clinging to each other for the longest time.

Eventually, they said their goodbyes, and she used the basin in his downstairs toilet to wash her face and compose herself a little before she left her lover and went home to her husband and her children. Yes. Home. She was going home!

As she walked toward her car from the vantage point of his lounge window, David cried. He cried because he was losing the love of his life and, because he knew she was right. She turned, smiled a sad, wistful smile and waved at him. He responded and watched her drive away and out of his life, for ever.

Thirty minutes later, Kathy was at home. She was home before her husband and the children would not be back until later that evening.

She suddenly felt sick and made it to their downstairs toilet and vomited. "God," she muttered to herself. "I make even me sick to my stomach!"

She walked through into the kitchen and got herself a glass of water. First she gargled and spat into the sink. She then drank the rest of the water and placed the glass by the taps.

She sat in the lounge, making a game pretence at reading a magazine. She was awaiting the arrival of her husband.

She was going to confess to him. She had to. She knew she could not go on living a lie.

How would he react? What would he say? Would he throw her out? If he did, she knew she deserved it.

She hoped he would be the better person, that he would not throw her out, that he would somehow find it in his heart to forgive her, to not split up their family to keep them together.

He parked his car next to his wife's convertible and walked through the front door. He turned left and saw that she was sat on the sofa. She placed her magazine on the coffee table. She looked up at him. She smiled, but looked unsure of herself. He knew. Somehow he knew what she was going to say to him.

Paul looked at her. He sat down in an easy chair opposite to her. "Paul, I have something to say to you. I love you with all of my heart but I have to confess something to you. I haven't been a good wife to you, I have been unfaithful to you on three occasions. I am so sorry."

He gulped and looked ill. "Why are you telling me this, now? Are you leaving me?"

"Oh, God, no!" She shouted, panic in her voice. "No! Please don't think that! I am telling you because I am confessing to you, hoping that you can help me work through this."

He nodded. "So, you want to remain married to me?"

"Yes, oh yes, Paul! I most definitely do!"

He sounded tired. "Then... where do we go from here? Any... ideas, suggestions?"

She stood up, crossed over to him and sat down on the arm of his chair. "Yes. I have decided to go for counselling. Even one session has made such a difference in me. It was that session that made me realise that what I had with you and our children was so important to me that I could no longer jeopardise it with affairs.

"My counsellor suggested that we might like to try couple's counselling. Would that be OK?"

He nodded. "Yes, that's something we might like to look at. However, there's something I feel I should share with you, in this new spirit of honesty and openness. I knew you were cheating on me."

She was shocked. "You... knew? But how? I was... or rather, I thought I was so discrete!"

He shook his head with a sad smile on his lips. "It doesn't matter how I knew, but I knew."

"But why didn't you stop me?" She was puzzled.

"Because I didn't want to stop you, I wanted you to stop you. All I did was to give you some rope..."

"Enough rope to hang myself with?" she asked, somewhat bitterly.

"No, enough rope so that I could keep a hold of you to stop you from straying into danger," he explained.

She began weeping and he pulled her body closer to him, cuddling her. "We can get through this," he said. "I know we can."

She stood up, still sniffling. "Thank you, Paul. Thank you very much."

Paul stood up. "Time to change out of my work clothes," he said.

He walked over to the sideboard and casually hung his black jacket over the back of one of the chairs.

He removed his clerical dog collar from his neck, placed it on the sideboard, unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and took his wallet out of his trouser pocket. One of his business cards fell out onto the sideboard. He glanced at the card. 'Reverend Paul Harris, ThD, DD, Vicar St Peter's Church, Potters Rise.'

He would strive to forgive her. After all, wasn't that a part of his job?

This is part two of Why Can't You Keep Out of His Bed? I thought that was a complete story. However, my muse had other ideas! It's another flash story.