April Fools Phone Prank

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Author's Note

This was a story I wrote quickly just to prove to myself that I can still write something with less than a hundred thousand words.

This story did not go to my usual beta-reading and editing team, so all mistakes are mine alone.

You may not copy this story off of this site. You may not use this story as screen-read audio on a YouTube video. I will file a copyright strike. You may not use this story to train any AI or machine-learning construct.

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Last Christmas, my wife Melissa and I re-upped our cell phone contract and with that, we both got identical new phones. They were the latest and greatest Apple Phone with "AI features". This was not a big deal for me because I rarely used mine. This was a major event for my wife Melissa, however.

She is a very social creature, and her phone was the center of her social life. Between texts, emails, social media, and something called Discord, she kept in contact with everything and everyone.

"Please Peter," begged Melissa. "I want to spend a little extra to get this phone. It is my lifeline to the entire universe and I want to have the top-model for once."

After we came home from the store, her phone rarely left her hand. She confessed to me that her new phone was one of the greatest gifts she'd ever received.

Knowing this, on April Fools' day, my nine-year-old and six-year-old daughters decided to have some fun at our expense. They switched the cases on our phones and deliberately swapped their positions in their charging trays.

That was why when Melissa and I left the house the next morning, I had Melissa's phone in my pocket and she had mine in her purse. They got us good.

I never noticed. As I said, I only use my phone if there is an emergency. Melissa, however, figured it out just after she got to work. She called my office from her own and chewed me out for three minutes or so for picking up the wrong phone before we figured out that the cases being swapped meant our precious little daughters successfully pranked us both. She was surprisingly apologetic afterwards. Transparently, this was to butter me up.

My job was managing a team of software engineers who all work remotely, so I have a lot of latitude to step out of the office when I need to. Melissa's job, however, is managing three teams of workers at the HemaFast blood bank, which serviced the nine hospitals in the Tri-State area. Unlike me, she must be in the office when she is on duty. She asked me to make the twenty-five minute drive from my office to hers to swap our phones back.

That day, however, I couldn't. I was stuck in the office because our hosting platform vendor was having a critical infrastructure outage and we were pulling out all the stops to keep our biggest customer online. I apologized to my wife, and told her why I couldn't. She wasn't pleased, but she knew it wasn't my fault.

By three in the afternoon, I knew I was going to be late home from work. I called Melissa at her office and told her I wouldn't be home before seven. She groused, but again recognized it was out of my control.

In a minor miracle, I actually stepped through the door to my house fifteen minutes earlier than my estimate. Being a Thursday night and a school night, I expected my kids to be at the kitchen table doing their homework, and my wife scrambling to get ready for her ladies' night out. She had a group of friends she'd known for years. On Thursdays, they went out for a few drinks at a wine bar and then went to Jane's house where they played cards until midnight. They'd been doing that for years.

When I got home, I was surprised to find the house dark and empty. I called my wife at her office and she answered on the first ring. A train accident filled all of the local hospitals. Her regular night staff was a skeleton crew and they were overwhelmed with demand to dispatch units of blood. She called in an emergency shift. Whenever an emergency shift is deployed, the policy at HemaFast was that the on-call manager had to be on-site. Melissa just so happened to be the on-call manager that week, so she had to stay in the office until a coworker would relieve her at midnight.

Knowing that I was stuck in the meeting from hell, she called her mother and had her take the kids for the night.

She begged me to bring her phone to her. "I've got nothing to do," she complained. "My teams don't want me screwing anything up, so they won't let me help. I'm dying here without my phone, Peter. Please bring it to me!"

I needed to run out to get dinner anyway, so I agreed to bring the phone to her.

When I got into the car, I popped the phone into the cradle on the dash. When I turned the car on, the phone flashed awake and said, "Suggested Destination: Sandals Tiki Bar. Light traffic. Expected arrival 7:20."

It took me a second to realize her phone was predicting, based on the time and the date, that she'd be heading off to the Sandals Tiki Bar. This was damned peculiar, because her ladies group always went to the Grape Escape, which was only five minutes from our house, not across town to Sandals Tiki Bar.

I idly wondered how many times you'd have to go to a destination to have it suggested by the iPhone. I was trying to figure that out when a text message popped up on the screen. The text was from "Creston Medical Services. It read "Candlewood room 320". No sooner had the messaging notification disappeared when the next one came up. It was a picture of a hotel bed with the covers pulled down. The sheets were covered with rose petals. The text attached to the picture read, "Can't wait. Send ETA."

"Fuck!" I said out loud, There was no denying what that meant.

I decided I needed to find out more. I tried to open her phone. The Facial ID didn't work for me, which was unexpected. The sales clerk at the store laboriously helped us set up alternate appearances so we could access each other's phones using facial ID. That my face didn't work meant she disabled my access. I typed in her passcode instead and it didn't work either. The fact that she'd removed me from her phone, more than anything else, convinced me Melissa was having an affair.

My mind raced and I came up with a plan. I put the car into gear and I drove a few miles to my sister-in-law's town home. Melissa's younger sister Taylor was pretty filthy-minded and she loved to be in on a practical joke. I knocked on her door. "Peter!" she said. "What brings you here?"

I explained to Taylor how the kids pranked us by switching our phones. She thought this was great and, as predicted, laughed her ass off. "I want to prank Melissa too, but I need your help," I said.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

"Have you ever seen the 'Wood on the bed' picture?" I asked. "I want to set it as her Home Screen picture.

With her own phone, she googled the picture and ended up laughing her ass off. She laughed so hard, she squealed.

"How can I help you do this?" she asked excitedly.

"I need you to unlock her phone." I said.

When we'd first gotten the phones, Melissa and Taylor discovered that they looked close enough to each other to fool the facial ID. Once I got Taylor to unlock Melissa's phone with her face, I knew Melissa had a note in the notes app which contained all of her passcodes. I warned her that this list was a serious security vulnerability, but she ignored my advice. It would work to my advantage now.

I held the phone up for Taylor. She got in. I went straight to notes. Again, I was asked for facial recognition. I held the phone up again for Taylor and I got to the notes app. Her passcode to her phone was the same with a different trailing digit. It was easy to remember.

In front of Taylor, I reset the desktop image to be 'Wood on the Bed'. I locked the phone and handed it to her. "You try it," I said.

She used Facial ID to open the phone and boom, the screen was filled with 'Wood on the Bed'. Taylor laughed so hard that she squealed again.

"Thanks for making me a part of this," she enthused.

"I'm going to go take this to her," I said.

As soon as I got back in my car, I unlocked the phone to read the text messages. There were precisely two messages from 'Creston Medical Services'. They were the ones I'd already seen. I guessed that Melissa was deleting the messages as they went along. I went into the trash folder and there were over a dozen messages from 'Creston Medical Services' there. All were from the previous two days.

The oldest one, sent at 7:00 AM yesterday morning, read, "My Telegram password got locked out. Will use text instead of Telegram."

I jumped to read the latest one, which had been sent and deleted at 11:00 PM the previous night. It read, "We have been lovers in spirit for some time. By this time tomorrow, we will be lovers in body as well as in spirit. Don't lose courage! I want to skip Sandals and go straight to the hotel. I will text you the room number tomorrow."

My stomach roiled.

I started to restore all of those messages one-by-one. After about the fifth one, the iPhone presented me with a screen that said, "I see that you are trying to restore recently deleted items. Do you wish to restore all of them?"

I clicked on the "Yes" button. After a minute. I got a report that showed 19 texts, 12 emails, 200 Telegram messages, and 10 photos were restored. Melissa had done some serious cleaning last night.

Each item was hyperlinked, I clicked on a hyperlink for the restored photos and it was a mix of dick pics from some guy and selfies from Melissa. Melissa's selfies were bathroom mirror shots. In most of them, she was in lacy underwear and the picture was Melissa from the neck down. In the final two photos, however, she was fully naked with her face showing. One showed her front and the other showed her ass with her looking over her shoulder and smiling.

My blood practically boiled.

The dick pics were nothing impressive. It was a standard issue white guy's circumcised cock. It was clear that his wasn't as big as mine. I had him on both length and girth. What ever this affair was about, it wasn't about seeking out a monster cock. I thought to myself, "Thank God for small favors."

I then looked at the emails. The emails were exchanges between Jane and Melissa. Jane was Melissa's best friend and was begging her to knock off fooling around with some guy named "Ryan Creston."

Jane wrote, "You will ruin your marriage and it will devastate Peter. You know that Ryan is a lothario and he is on the make. He is playing a game of chance while using your marriage as the stakes. He doesn't really care about you and he will ruin your life. Don't be a fool! Don't do it!"

Melissa's reply said it all: "It will be just this one time and Peter will never know. I know Ryan's a lothario, but not with me. The friendship we have is real. I've looked into his eyes and I know I'm not just another conquest to him.

"Even if I am nothing more than a notch on his belt, I want to do this. He is just so damned sexy! For just once in my life, I want to know what it is like to be Cinderella dancing with the prince at the ball. I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been if I turned him down. I promise you, it will be just the one time and Peter will never know."

I sighed. Jane's heart had been in the right place to oppose Melissa's self destruction, but she fell short because the most productive thing she could have done was warn me and she didn't.

I ran a search on the phone for the name "Ryan Creston". A bunch of work emails popped up. In a few minutes of skimming the emails, I discovered that Ryan Creston was the account rep for a major national medical supply company. He'd become the account manager for HemaFast four months ago and had been making bi-weekly sales calls. She's signed two very large contracts with him in the last month.

I also looked at her Linked In. She was linked with Ryan Creston. His bio on Linked In said he was married with a kid. Not three days ago, she'd endorsed him for his contact management, sales, and professionalism skills.

The telegram messages were their primary means of private communication. I skimmed a sampling of them. The earliest ones were simple exchanges of dates and times for meetings away from the office.

Starting about three months ago, they began to eat lunches together at swanky places a couple of times a week. No doubt, he paid for those on an expense account.

Starting six weeks ago, they began to meet at Sandals Tiki bar for drinks on Thursday nights. She skipped drinks at the Grape Escape with her friends and would drink with Creston at the Tiki Bar instead. Afterwards, she would show up to Jane's place and join the card games late to launder her nights out with Asshole.

Their later messages to each other were flirty and seductive. The last twenty messages or so openly discussed the possibility of infidelity.

I started to forward all of these messages to my email by using copy and paste. Again, the phone popped up a message. "I see you are forwarding all of these messages to email. Do you want me to do this for you?"

I clicked, "Yes" and a minute later, I had all of the message history in my emails account. I did the same with the photos and the emails.

I was trying to figure out what to do next, when another text came in. It was a dick pick with the text, "ETA, please. I'm dying here."His dick was so erect it was purple.

I texted back: "On the way. Held up at office due to train accident. Be there by 9:00 PM. I didn't get dinner. I'm having food delivered to the hotel just before I arrive. They said you'll have to go down to the lobby to pick it up. Can you cover me? I'll pay you back when I get there."

I had enough time to get some food before I headed over there. At my favorite pizza shop, I bought a large Pepperoni and a bottle of soda to go. I paid one of the idle drivers twenty bucks in cash for his store hat.

I ate two of the slices in the parking lot of the hotel and drank the soda. I walked into the lobby holding the pizza box with the hat on.

I approached the front desk. "Can you call the guy in room 320 and tell him his pizza is here?"

I walked over to the waiting area of the hotel and found a secluded spot. A few minutes later, a young white guy stepped off the elevator wearing track pants and a wife-beater tee shirt. He saw me in the waiting area and made a bee line for me.

As Ryan Creston approached, I took stock of him. He was shorter than me with a slight build. He looked like a dancer rather than a contact-sport athlete. I was four inches taller and I had fifty pounds of muscle on him. He was in the kind of shape you only got with a lot of time in the gym working out on isolation machines while staring into mirrors.

I had the kind of shape that comes from doing the Daily Sixteen every day without fail for fifteen years. The Corps got me in the habit of doing the Daily Sixteen when I was an eighteen year old recruit and I never lost the habit.

He was the opposite of intimidating to me. As he came closer, I could see that he was six or seven years younger than Melissa and I. He had the kind of almost-feminine fine-featured looks that I associated with a young Rob Lowe.

When he got to me, he suddenly blanched. He recognized me and physically cringed. "Sit down, Asshole, or I'll make you sorry you were ever born," I said quietly.

He sat instantly.

"You recognize me, then?" I asked.

"You're Melissa's husband," he said. "I've seen your picture in her office."

"That's right," I replied. "It's good that you know that already. God help me, I don't know what I would have done if I had to explain it to you. Just murdering you would have been a hell of a lot easier than doing that."

Ryan started to rise up in a panic, but I pressed my hand back on his shoulder.

"Sit your ass back down, Asshole," I said with a quiet growl. "We're not done talking."

When he sat back down. I continued. "Melissa isn't coming tonight. The games you are playing with my wife are over, Creston. Understand that?"

He nodded. He caved immediately.

"I know you'll dump her now that the jig is up. That's what Assholes like you do."

He wouldn't look me in the face.

"I have all of your texts, telegram messages, and selfies you've been sending back and forth. I know all your plans and schemes going back to when you first met Melissa four months ago. I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to report your actions and behavior to your company. I'm going to report to your wife that her husband attempted to seduce a married woman. Likewise, I'm going to turn my wife into her company for negotiating and signing contracts with someone she intended to bed. Think those contracts will still be in place this time tomorrow? I don't."

Creston looked like he was going to be physically ill.

"I could have stealthily dropped this bomb on you," I said. "Maybe I should have? I was too tempted, though. I wanted to dangle reality over you tonight. I wanted you to spend tonight, the night you thought you'd finally get into Melissa's panties, sleepless in bed and miserable.

"I want you to wonder if you have a family to go home to," I said. "I want you to wonder if your bosses will hold you accountable for engaging in immoral and illicit activities with a representative of a valued client. I want you to wonder whether you will still have a job tomorrow. I want you to wonder when I'm going to show up at a time and place of my choosing and make you regret you'd ever been born."

I was getting bothered by his lack of eye contact, so I loomed over him and said, "You ruined my marriage, Asshole. I read through months worth of seductive messages back and forth between you and my wife on Telegram. There's no way in hell that I'm ever going to forgive Melissa for what she did to me and my family. She allowed you to talk her into cheating. That is something I will never forgive her for. You busted up a family just to get your rocks off. You are a horrible person. I hope that you get cancer and die young. I hope your wife divorces you and takes your money and child away from you. I hope that you die young, hopeless and alone."

I dumped the pizza box into his lap and left him in the lobby.

I walked back to my car. On the way home, I stopped at the big hardware store and bought new lock sets for the house.

After that I drove to my in-laws' home.

When I arrived, my daughters had just gone to bed, but they heard me. They jumped out of bed and swarmed me when Tiffany, my mother-in-law, let me in. It was an amazing comfort to be with them. After we'd hugged and chatted for a few minutes, Tiffany sent them back to bed and dragged me into the TV room where her husband Mark was watching a baseball game. She turned the TV off and quietly said, "What's going on, Peter? You look terrible and we didn't expect you tonight."

"The kids switched my phone with Melissa's this morning as an April Fools' prank," I reported. Melissa's parents smiled at the mischief of their perfect little granddaughters.

I took a deep breath and said, "I spent the day with her phone and I discovered that she's having an affair."

They both responded with instant denial, so I opened up the telegram app on her phone and let them read through the messages. I then showed them the naked selfies and showed them how Melissa had used the Telegram app to send them to her would-be lover. There was no denying it after that. Their resistance collapsed.

I also had them read through Melissa's email chain with Jane. They were utterly devastated by their daughter's unrepentant attitude.

"I'm sorry, Tiffany. I'm sorry, Mark. She's going to have to live here. I'll be damned if I will allow her to get close enough to me to bait me into a battery charge. The house is mine and was deeded to me by my folks before we married. It is not a shared marital asset. My name alone is on the papers and I'm keeping it."

Mark nodded and Tiffany sniffled.

"Call me tomorrow," I said. "I'll let you two come over and pack up her shit. She will not step foot in my house ever again unless a court orders it. Believe me, I'm going to lawyer up and fight tooth and nail to make sure that never happens."

They both looked nauseated at my pronouncement.

Tiffany took the lead. "Peter, those messages make it clear that they haven't been together. All is not lost. You can work through this! No marriage is perfect. We'll get you guys some counseling and we'll get you through it."

Mark shushed his wife. "Tiffany, that's bullshit and you know it. No man is going to look past how Melissa involved herself in a months-long seduction. She had no shame at all about it and when challenged by her friend Jane, she placed her own wanton desires over the wellbeing of her family. It's over, Tiffany."

"That can't be true!" Tiffany insisted. She turned to me. "What about your daughters, Peter? Are you really going to wreck their home so quickly?"

"I did not wreck our home, Tiffany, Melisa did" I insisted. "As for the children, did Melissa ever once consider the consequences to our children when she entertained the possibility of that ridiculous affair? It sure doesn't look like it to me. Condemn me if you want for my lack of forgiveness, but condemn her twice as much for destroying our family in the first place."

"Are you taking the kids with you?" Tiffany sobbed.

"Not right now," I answered. "I'm an emotional wreck and I'm not equipped at this point to handle them. For the time being, I'm going to need you to continue to pick up the girls after school."

Tiffany looked relieved.

"Once I get my feet under me, I'm going to want to split custody," I said. "She may be a shitty wife, but Melissa's a good mother and the girls will need her in their lives. That concession is probably moot, anyway. The courts will probably give Melissa primary custody. If Melissa gets pissed and chooses to fight it out in court, I'll probably end up fighting for custody scraps."

"I won't let that happen," said Tiffany. "The girls need their father."

"Maybe you should ask yourself who Melissa wants the kids' father to be," I said. I pointed at Melissa's phone. "Evidence suggests it isn't me."

This made Tiffany bawl. Mark had to embrace her to settle her down.

I stood up and said. "Melissa is stuck at her office until midnight tonight. You two should call there her and give her the bad news. If I talk to her right now, it would be World War Three via telephone, which would not be good for either one of us.

"I'm going to go home and change the locks and the alarm codes on the house," I said. "If she tries to get in, I will call the police. Do us all a favor and convince her to respect my wishes about not stepping foot into my home again. Call me tomorrow."

I went home and changed out the lock sets, reset my garage door code, and changed the alarm passcode. It took only a half hour to do all three.

I called my brother Paul and told him what was going on. Paul was a partner in a law firm in town. He set me up to meet with Stacey Kerner, their firm's family law shark. My appointment was for three PM the next day.

After that, I sat down to write a long email to Creston's wife. I described her husband's seduction of my wife and I disclosed all of the evidence that I had, including the numerous dick pics that he'd sent her. I'm certain the existence of those pics would be worth a thousand words.

While I was typing out that letter, the house phone started to ring incessantly. The caller ID listed Melissa's office number. I figured that Mark and Tiffany called her. I ignored the phone ringing first. After it grew too annoying to bear, I turned the ringer off. After twenty minutes or so, the call attempts stopped.

After I was done with the letter, I tracked Creston's wife down on Facebook. I sent her the email via private message.

I actually got a response from her a few minutes later. Her reply was succinct: "Is this for real?"

I send her my house phone number. When she called, I answered the phone and we talked for nearly a half hour. It is probably more accurate to say that she cried, and I consoled. I felt shitty pulling her world down on her, but it would have been unconscionable to conceal her husband's treacherous behavior from her.

After I hung up with Creston's wife, I spent the next hour putting together an email to Greg Masterson, the CEO of HemaFast. Greg was Melissa's boss and was a leader at a prominent local church. He was extremely moral and extremely ethical. I had great confidence that he would take Melissa's actions very seriously.

In my letter, I described how Melissa had been involved in a burgeoning affair with the sales rep from one of their suppliers. I told him that only the train accident the night before had prevented them from consummating their affair.

I also pointed out that Melissa had awarded contracts to the guy's firm after their flirtation started and that I suspected that she might have given him insider information to help him land the contracts. I included some of their correspondence over Telegram that I thought alluded to that fact. I sent the letter to his work email.

By then, it was nearly two in the morning. I considered sleeping, but I couldn't. I began to write a letter to Creston's company describing his unethical behavior in slowly seducing his married client representative, pumping her for insider information to garner lucrative contracts, and then destroying her family for his personal pleasure. I included as much evidence as I could find: Telegram messages, texts, and the dick pics were all placed into the letter.

I looked up his company website and right there in the front page was an ethics hotline number and email address. I sent my email to the ethics hotline of Creston's company. By the time I was done, it was nearly three in the morning and I was finally exhausted. I preemptively called in sick at work and went to sleep.

I slept until nearly noon when I was woken up by the doorbell. Tiffany and Mark were there, looking worse for the wear. I invited them inside and offered them coffee. While it was brewing, Mark said that Melissa had tried to deny her burgeoning affair at first, but had an emotional breakdown when presented with the incontrovertible evidence. They described the awful scene as Melissa learned that I was going to file for divorce and that I insisted that there would be no reconciliation.

"If it makes any difference, Peter, she accepted all of the blame last night. She hoped that when you cooled down, she'd be able to talk to you and maybe find a way. That's not how she feels this morning."

"What changed?" I asked.

"This morning, her boss called her and suspended her without pay pending an investigation into whether she violated HemaFast's ethics policy," Mark stated. "Turning her into her boss for ethics violations was cruel, Peter. Even if she comes out of this exonerated, her career is ruined. She's enraged that you did that to her."

I gave him a look.

"I know, Peter," he said defensively. "It was cruel of her to engage in an affair with that other man. This entire sad situation was her own doing. What you did, however, didn't make it better."

I got all of the suitcases we had and lined them up in the hallway outside of the master bedroom. They packed up all of Melissa's clothes. I took the filled suitcases and loaded them into their SUV for them. By the time they were done, the SUV was full to the gills.

Her other material things would have to wait for some other time.

After that, I went to go see my attorney. This was anticlimactic and involved filling out form after form about financial accounts and assets. She discouraged me from filing due to infidelity because I didn't have proof that Melissa had sex with Creston. The fact that I knew they hadn't consummated their relationship would work against me. She encouraged me to file for a no-fault. We discussed the asset split and after examining the title on the house, she was delighted to tell me that I would keep it.

She did warn me that turning in Melissa for ethics violations was an own goal. She was making slightly more money than me, so there would be no expectation of spousal maintenance. If she lost her job, however, the court would likely force me to pay her spousal maintenance for the next five years.

"It would have been better to let the divorce conclude before you turned her in," she said. I just shrugged. I wanted it done and I was comfortable with my decision.

Stacey noted that Melissa would likely get primary custody and that meant I'd end up paying child support. "You will pay a lot more child support if your wife loses her job," she warned.

"If you and Melissa can work out an amicable agreement and come to terms on custody, support, and asset split with no objections, you could be out in sixty-one days," she said. "I have a feeling, however, that since Melissa never consummated her affair, she'll try to use that fact to fight to preserve the marriage."

She looked at me with sorrow in her eyes. "I know it sucks, but it will likely be six months or more, Peter."

Mark and Tiffany did a good job of keeping Melissa in hand and away from me. I expected that Melissa would be all over me after she got served, but to my surprise she stayed away. She sent word through Mark that she'd retained a lawyer and that she'd consider the settlement options I gave her.

Melissa decided to continue living with her parents until her work investigation was resolved. I agreed through Mark to a week-on, week-off split with the girls.

On the weeks I had the girls, I would pick them up from Mark's house after work, take them home, and feed them. Melissa and I split the cooking duties anyway, so this wasn't a big change for me. In fact, it was much harder on the weeks they were with Melissa because I was completely alone.

Three weeks after I sent the letter to Melissa's boss, he called me. Greg thanked me for reporting my ethics concerns about my wife's behavior and expressed condolences that my family had been so negatively impacted by Melissa's decisions.

He told me that he'd hired an outside third-party investigative agency to investigate Melissa's behavior. "They looked into the contract negotiations with a fine-toothed comb. Melissa gave them full access to her communications with Creston, and the supplier had given the firm free rein to examine their internal communications regarding the deals which Melissa negotiated.

"What they found was the opposite of what we expected: Melissa did not abuse her position to give Mr. Creston a better deal. Mr. Creston abused his position to give Melissa a far better deal than she would have gotten otherwise."

That was a stunning revelation to me.

"Mr. Creston admitted to the investigators that he did it out of an attempt to impress her and to put her in his debt," Greg reported. "The investigative firm only reported a single finding against Melissa: she demonstrated a stunning lack of judgement in developing an intimate relationship with a supplier rep."

Greg took the report to the board. The board voted unanimously to retain her at the blood bank. They decided that prior to this incident, her service had been exemplary and meritorious and that she deserved a second chance. She was formally reprimanded, placed on probation, and her responsibilities regarding supplier contracts were assigned to a different manager. She was made responsible for Government compliance reporting. It was the closest thing to 'peeling potatoes' that HemaFast had to offer. The silver lining was that she kept her title and pay rate.

The fact that Melissa kept her job was a relief to me because it would provide a more stable environment for the kids when she had custody and it would reduce what I would have to pay for child and spousal support.

"It may be of interest to you, that our supplier notified us that they have terminated Mr. Creston from their organization," Greg reported. "It was also brought to my attention that Mr. Creston's wife filed for divorce and is seeking sole-custody of their child. It may not bring you much consolation, but Mr. Creston has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price for his role in what happened."

Before he hung up, Greg had one last thing to say, "If I might offer a little friendly fatherly advice to you, Peter. I urge you to carefully consider reconciling with Melissa. If you can't do that, then I beg you to at least forgive her for what she has done. Resentment is a poison you take in the hope that it will hurt your enemy.

"Melissa was duped and cozened by an extremely charismatic man," he concluded. "You know that I am a man of faith. The central theme of my faith is forgiveness. I worship a God of second chances. For the sake of your family and your children, I beg you to give her a second chance. Barring that, I beg you to let the pain and hurt go."

Following the vote by the board, Melissa went out and rented a three-bedroom home in the neighborhood next to mine. Mark negotiated with me on her behalf for the right to claim about half of the furniture that we'd accumulated. I wasn't particularly fond of the furniture items that she wanted, so I allowed her to take it without objection. I had to buy a new dining room set, a new couch, and a new guest bed, but that wasn't too much of a hardship on me.

The week she had her movers come by to pick up her stuff, I took the time to go through everything in the house that was hers or reminded me of her, from the kitchen to the Christmas decorations in the attic.

It was a slog to go through all of that stuff, but it really helped me process the change of life that I was going through. It decluttered my brain and made me feel better about starting over. I took the opportunity to pack every single picture that had her in it. I wanted no reminders. I wanted to airbrush her out of my life like Stalin airbrushed disgraced ministers from his photos during the great purge.

When it came to getting out of my marriage, Melissa demanded we have a face-to-face meeting right out of the gate. As we hadn't done that, yet, Stacey pushed me to meet with her. "It will help me make a case later in the event that she tries to force counseling on you."

We met at my brother's firm. As I expected, she opened up with an elaborate apology. She offered no justification or excuse. She admitted she was cozened, but also acknowledged that she was a big girl and was bright enough that she ought to have seen his seduction for what it was. She was tempted and did not rise to the occasion to refuse the temptation.

That's when she begged me to accept her apology and then forgive her. I accepted her apology but declined to forgive her. She expected that and took it phlegmatically.

She then explained why what happened did happen. According to her, four months ago Ryan replaced a sales rep who was an older man who gave Melissa misogynist vibes. They got along like water and oil. The supplier knew that man wasn't a good fit for HemaFast, so they assigned Ryan in his place.

Ryan Creston came onto the scene and immediately caused quite a stir in Melissa's office. Most of Melissa's employees are women nurses who are young and single. When they saw Ryan the first time, it was love at first sight. The talk in the office for weeks was speculation about how to best get his attention. Whenever he came into the office, Melissa's employees literally threw themselves at him.

At first, her relationship with Creston was cordial and professional. As they began negotiating their first big contract, however, they developed a rapport and became friends.

"We both had to argue with our respective organizations to get the deal that we knew was best for everyone," said Melissa. "Instead of 'me vs. him', it became 'us vs. our organizations'. We developed a very deep friendship and that's when he laid his cards on the table and told me that he was hot for me."

She admitted that she should have distanced herself and set a clear boundary, but she was deeply flattered. What made the issue worse was that her employees were openly envious of her because she got to spend quite a bit of time with him.

Melissa's nurses pushed her very hard to flirt with him, and her relationship with him gave her a lot of cachet and status in the office. "Everyone was envious of me, Peter, and it went to my head. My weakness was flattery and everyone was flattering me because I spent so much time with him. Attracting the attention of a guy that handsome who was revered by all the women around me made me feel special.

"There was nothing wrong in our marriage and nothing wrong with how you treated me. Nothing that you did or didn't do led to my decisions, Peter. My decisions had nothing to do with you at all. I accept responsibility. All of the blame is mine. This situation was about me, my insecurities, and my weaknesses for flattery. My horrible choice to seek novel meaningless flattery instead of treasuring the deep meaningful substance I had with you will forever haunt me.

"I got myself into this mode where I began to think 'just one time'. My psychologist says that the power of 'just one time' thinking is that it minimizes the offense before it even happens. You get to claim before the act ever happened that what you are about to do is an aberration-- a mistake that should not happen and never will again. She tells me that I was pre-excusing and pre-absolving my behavior before it ever happened. She helped me to see that this isn't absolution, but premeditation."

"You have a psychologist?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "I thought I needed to understand why I made the mistakes that I did. I was desperate to understand why I threw away a perfect marriage and family for something so damned false, meaningless, and unimportant. I shopped around and found the best counselor in the Tri-State area for this sort of thing.

"My psychologist helped me to realize that my premise for seeking counseling was bullshit. She told me that I was just looking for an excuse and that understanding those things wouldn't help me at all. Instead, she got me to focus on taking responsibility, owning my decisions, and productively living with the consequences. It may not seem like it, Peter, but I've grown a lot in the time that we've been apart.

"I did not come here today to beg you to keep our marriage intact. Don't get me wrong, I am desperate to keep us together if that is in any way possible. The problem is that I am a realist and I just don't think it is possible to keep us together any more."

"Then why are you here?" I asked.

"I am here today to accept responsibility and to make restitution," she said.

"Restitution?" I asked.

"I have damaged you and as the responsible party, I am coming forward with a good faith offer to do anything for you that you feel would make you whole again," she said. "You name it, and if it is within my power, I will do it for you."

"Like sex stuff? You think a little sex will just magically bring us back together?" I asked.

"No Peter, that's not at all what I think," she said with a sigh. "I do not think that a little sex will magically reunite us. I don't think there's anything I can do at this point to keep us together. It saddens my heart, but that is the reality I made for myself and I will face it head on and accept responsibility for it."

She shifted in her chair and leaned forward.

"What I do think is that I owe it to you to do anything I can to offer restitution for the damage that I did to you."

She could see I was confused, so she said, "Suppose I crashed my car into someone's fence, my responsibility would be to pay to repair or replace the fence, right?"

I nodded.

"If I was careless in a store and knocked over a fancy display, my responsibility would be to pay for the display. I ruined it. so I pay for it, right?" I nodded.

"Well, I have torn apart our marriage due to my own misdeeds and negligence. I am in a difficult place because I do not know what to do to make the situation right and to make you whole. I came here today specifically to start the process of trying to work that out.

"You mentioned sex before. If you think that is what is required for me to make you whole again, I offer my body to you in any way, as much as you want, for as long as you need."

I knew Melissa very well. She was deadly serious when she said that.

"If you need me to make a public confession, I will do it," she said. "If you need me to find you willing lovers, I will do it. If you need me to degrade myself in front of you, our families, or in public, I will do it. I made this mess, Peter, and I promise you I will do whatever it takes to make it right."

"Why do you want to make it right?" I asked.

"First of all, it is the responsible thing to do. That alone is enough of a reason. Second of all, my psychologist has me looking down the road towards the future. We've got another twelve years before our kids are grown. We'll be partnering and co-parenting that whole time. Even after they leave the home, we'll still have to be in contact with each other at holidays and family events. I want the best possible relationship with you for that entire time. I think that if you see me making a good-faith effort now, it will help us be a better team down the road."

"So you're saying you will do anything I ask now, in the hopes that it will help us get along in the future?" I asked.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Peter," she replied.

"What if you don't like what I want you to do?" I asked.

"I'm probably going to regret saying this, but what I want or like doesn't matter," she said. "I'm certain you didn't want or like what I did to you and our marriage. I'm trying to give you the same consideration."

"So if I wanted to tie you down and put spiders on your face, you'd do that for me?" I asked.

Melissa had a terrible phobia of spiders. She became completely debilitated merely contemplating being in their presence.

With a shiver and a tremor in her voice, she said, "If that's what it takes to make you whole, Peter, I'll do it in a heartbeat."

She stood up. "This is an open-ended offer. I want to give you time to think about what you need from me. The offer ends when you say it does. Next year? Two years? Ten years? That's up to you to decide. In the meantime, I've looked over your proposed settlement. I have no objections to how you split the assets. Likewise, I am amenable to a 50/50 split custody."

She started to become emotional and paused to gather herself. "I'm going to sign the papers today, Peter. I'm not doing this because I want us to divorce. You need to understand that I do not want to split with you. I am only signing the papers because I know that this is what you want. I am bowing to the inevitable.

"I beg you to stay in touch and that you will be bold in allowing me to make restitution to you," she said. "You were the best decision of my life, Peter. Ryan Creston was the worst."

She turned and left the room.

It was a lot to think about. I talked it over with my brother and my two best buddies. All three of them were amazed. They all thought it was an unusually generous offer and all encouraged me to take advantage of it.

"If Jenny made that offer to me, I'd be in her ass twenty-four seven," my brother said with a laugh. His marriage to Jenny was pretty strong, but he confided in me that his wife wasn't very adventurous in bed."

Drake, my life-long best friend said, "Dude, I get that you're butt hurt that she got bamboozled by that guy, but she never cheated on you, She promised to do anything you want for as long as you want. I could use some of that in my life. Melissa's hot as fuck. If you are going to kick that to the curb, I'm going after it, friendship or no.

My other buddy Walt said, "Shit, this is the first time I've ever heard of an unfaithful woman taking responsibility, admitting she was wrong, and offering a make-good with no strings attached. You should test her. What's the worst that can happen?"

We discussed how I could put Melissa on the spot and find out if she meant what she said. At lunch three days later, I put her to the test. I drove over to her office and parked in a secluded corner of the garage. I called her up. When she answered, I said, "I'm at the back corner of the third floor of your office parking garage. I need you to come blow me."

There was a long pause and she said, "I'll be right out."

I couldn't believe it. My heart started hammering in my chest.

A few minutes later she walked over and sat in the passenger seat of my car. She unzipped me, fished me out, and began to give me oral. She wasn't in a hurry, nor was she self-conscious, nor did she look reluctant or resentful. She savored my cock in a way she never had before.

To say that it was the best blowjob of my life to that point was an understatement. She worked me slowly and sensually. She swallowed me gag-deep over and over, and tongued me, and hummed when I was deep inside of her, and massaged my balls with her hand. She did it all to make it the best possible experience for me.

When I'd finally found my peak, I came so hard my brain actually ceased to function for a while. Melissa greedily slurped it up and swallowed. She'd done that before, but not often. She usually dribbled my spend out of her mouth down onto my pubes. Not this time.

When I came back to full awareness, I was bathing in the pleasure of it. "That was fucking amazing," I said to Melissa.

Melissa was fixing her makeup in the mirror on the back of the sun shade and she smiled a beaming smile. "That was my pleasure, Peter. I am always willing to do that and a lot more. I told you I would do anything you wanted and I meant it."

She was satisfied with her makeup, so she flipped the sun shade up and turned to look at me. In the moment, she was radiant and joyful. It was clear to see that she was delighted to have done that for me.

"If you want to do this again, we should use my van," she said.

"If we put the seats down, you could lie down and I could do a better job for you," she said. "Just something to think about."

"Is there anything else I can do for you right now?" she asked.

"Nope," I replied.

She opened the car door and stepped out. She leaned back in and said, "Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to do that for you, Peter. I said anything, at any time, for as long as you need it."

She turned around and walked back to the elevator with a little extra twist in her hips.

Two days later, I texted her in the evening. "Free at lunch hour tomorrow?"

"Y" she replied.

"Park in a secluded area. Text me the location."

That morning I got a text describing where she parked, I arrived early. She'd backed her van into a corner and put a sun visor across the front window. The back seats had been folded flat and the middle seats were pushed all the way up. There was enough room in the back for us both to lie down. She'd spread a comforter spread across the floor.

I got in and climbed into the cargo area..

At noon in the dot, I called her. "I'm here," I said.

"On my way," she replied.

She came out a few minutes later in a blouse with a wide boat neck and a peasant skirt I'd never seen before. She was carrying her small Disney tote. She opened up the sliding door and looked in.

She crawled into the cargo area next to me and slid the door shut.

"How do you want me?" she asked.

"You choose," I said, which made her smile.

"Do you mind if I leave my skirt on?" she asked.

"Suit yourself," I said.

"Take your pants off and lie on your back," she said.

As I took my pants off, she got down on her hands and knees, and pulled the skirt up over her butt to reveal she was wearing a thong panty. Inside of the panty was the jeweled end of a butt plug. I'd only seen those in porn.

Her panty was soaked and as she pulled the thong off, the van filled with the redolent smell of her arousal. She then carefully withdrew the plug, which made her anus gape open about an inch. She reached into her tote and pulled out a tea towel. She carefully set the plug down on the towel.

She then pulled a large syringe from a plastic bag in her tote. It was pre-loaded it with a thick mucous-like lube, inserted the tip into her anus, and unceremoniously squirted the contents in, spreading the last of it around her outside.

"Anal?" I asked. We'd never come close to doing anything involving her ass before.

"Not my favorite," she admitted. "I don't want to risk a pregnancy, Peter. I would bear another child for you in a heartbeat, but I don't want you to feel like I trapped you. I'm working my way back on the pill and I'm going to double up with an IUD."

She then turned around, pulled a bottle of lubricant out of her tote, and slathered it onto my cock.

She crawled over me, assumed cowgirl position, and with zero hesitation, mounted me slowly. She allowed her anus to adjust to the intrusion of my cock. Once she got me all the way in, she pulled up her skirt and tucked the front of it into the belt at her waist so I had a good view of her pussy. She pulled down on the boatneck blouse and her tits popped out of the neck. Her nipples were hard as pebbles. It was clever. She was showing me her tits and pussy and had my cock in her ass. If someone approached, with a shrug and a single movement to release her skirt from her belt, she would appear to be fully and tastefully clothed.

When she'd completely adjusted to my cock, she started to make slow movements. I could tell it was painful for her at first, but she hid the pain well. I could also tell that this scenario really aroused her. She made no attempt to hide her arousal.

When she was comfortable with the small movements, she started to make long smooth strokes with a rotation in her hips.

It felt very tight and very different. It was so delightfully raunchy, and over-the-top, I was immediately on fire. I knew it was going to take everything I had to hold on long enough not to embarrass myself. To make matters worse, she produced a small handheld vibrator out of her tote, and held it to her clit. She was legitimately doing everything she could to bring herself off with my cock in her ass.

I managed to hold out until she came. Her thighs started to tremble, her upper chest turned beet red, and when the waves of contractions hit her, her groan of pleasure was one of the most erotic things I'd ever heard. The contractions of her anus around my cock were too much for me to withstand and I came for what seemed like an entire minute.

When I finally stopped groaning and came to my senses, I looked up and Melissa was looking down on me with an amazed smile. "You really liked that didn't you?" she asked. "You came a ton!"

"That was very sexy," I said. This made her smile to herself.

"Was it the fact that it was my ass, or the fact that we were in the van in a public place?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied. It made her laugh.

"I need your help," she said. "I want to lay on my back when you pull out so I don't spill and make a mess," she said.

I maneuvered from cowgirl to missionary, somehow managing to keep my cock buried in her anus. I elevated her hips by holding her under her ass, and I slowly withdrew. I did it carefully so nothing spilled.

She then handed me the jeweled end of the plug. "Hold this for me for a sec, will you?"

The plug was made of metal and it was heavier than I expected. While I held it, she lubed it back up.

"Put it back in me," she said.

I slowly slid it back in until it more or less locked into place.

"Thank you," she said.

At that point she crawled over to me. She pulled a plastic baggie out of her tote, removed a clean pair of panties and pulled them on. She placed the soaked panties into the baggie, sealed it, and placed them into the tote.

She then turned to me. "May I clean you up?" she asked.

"Please," I said.

"Mouth or wipes?" she inquired.

"You're offering to clean me with your mouth?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Mouth," I said, thinking I was calling her bluff. She was not bluffing, however, and quickly bent to take my cock into her mouth.

"No need for that," I said, holding her back at the last second. "Wipes are fine."

She pulled a package of wipes out of her tote and carefully cleaned me off. She then dried me with the clean part of the tea towel.

"Anything else I can do for you, Peter?" she asked.

"That's it for today," I said.

Once again, I watched her walk back to the elevators with a twist in her hips. It had taken less than fifteen minutes.

Over the next three months, I called her up three or four times a week at random intervals and demanded sex. Sometimes I'd ask for something specific. Other times, I'd force her to decide.

We did it in my car, in her car, at a hotel, at a public park, in the bathroom of a bar, in the backyard of her parents house, and once in a conference room at my office building at night. I figured out pretty quickly that she liked me using her like this. It absolutely delighted her. She always showed up aroused, wet, and ready to go for anything I wanted.

I pushed her boundaries quite a bit and made her do things like clean me with her mouth, take naked selfies, risk displaying herself publicly, and giving herself pain as we had sex.

I even took her up on her offer to find me a lover. "I'm going to Dad's cabin overnight this Friday," I said. "Get me a lover."

To her credit, she only paused ten or fifteen seconds before she said. "I'll text you her number."

Later that day, I called the number she sent and found myself talking with a woman named Kylie. She said that she'd been told to expect an overnight trip to a mountain cabin and was looking forward to it.

I picked Kylie up at an apartment next to the University campus. She was a willowy blonde and I was surprised to see that she was very young. She had a fun and manic energy and we quite talkative as I drove up to the mountains. She was twenty years old and was a student studying Bioinformatics. She escorted to help pay for college. She admitted that she had a serious thing for older men, and unashamedly announced what she was really looking for was a sugar daddy who could provide her stability so she could stop escorting.

After flirting back and forth for a while, I figured out she knew Melissa personally and that she was a cousin to one of Melissa's nurses. I could never pin down which one, however. As we talked, she shocked me with how witty she was. She made me laugh over and over.

When we arrived at the cabin, she was frisky and ready to go. She stripped herself naked. She was bird-legged, had small pert breasts with large nipples and no overhang, and a small patch of blonde pubes just north of her lips. There was a sort of perfection to her youth that was incredibly arousing.

I was in the mood to start by pleasuring her. I'm pretty good at oral and after a few minutes, I realized she'd never really been eaten out by someone with any sort of expertise before. I had her absolutely screaming as she orgasmed over and over. Her response to my skill was beyond thrilling for me.

Eventually, I had mercy on her and obeyed her plea for me to stop. She gave me a look of adoration and awe that was at once gratifying and scary.

After that, she went all-in. She gave me her absolute number-one A-plus best effort after that. She would not stop until I couldn't get it up anymore. It was fun at first, but using condoms was a hassle. When I went to sleep, I spooned her, but we had no real emotional connection and it was awkward. When I saw her without makeup the next morning, I saw for the first time just how young she was. I was ashamed I'd consented to using a sex worker that young. I felt like a creepy lecher.

When I dropped her off, I tried to pay her. She refused and insisted she was getting paid by someone else. She even refused a tip from me. In truth, as hot as she was, the sex couldn't match the white-hot intensity I had when Melissa took care of me, so I went back to using Melissa to satisfy my needs.

The whole time we were doing this, Melissa never once asked to talk, or imposed herself on me, made any reference to the impending divorce, or made a single demand on me. I talked this over with my buddies and the best that any of us could tell, was that she was doing it because she wanted to.

When there was only one month remaining on the waiting period of the divorce, I asked her to meet me at a coffee shop. She expected that I'd take her into the restroom and use her. Instead, I handed her a cup of coffee and asked her, "You are serving me and doing anything that I ask of you. You haven't once asked for anything in return, nor have you tried to stop the divorce. Why?"

She thought about her answer for nearly a minute before she responded. "I don't want to divorce. I have expressed that to you before and made my feelings known. I am utterly powerless to stop it. My psychologist tells me that a frequent tactic used by an unfaithful wife is to play legal games and force the husband into counseling sessions. In essence, it is an attempt to game the system to trap the man into mandatory sessions, where he is hit with emotional blackmail to force him into extending an unwilling forgiveness. This strategy frequently causes animosity and hatred. My psychologist tells me that the success rate of this strategy is very low and usually only serves to make the man's life a living hell.

"I don't want to trap you into that sort of hell, Peter. The strategy that I've adopted is to give you all the space that you need, accept responsibility, and provide restitution any way I can. I'm under no delusion that I can talk you out of the divorce. I don't plead my case, because I want to communicate that my offer of restitution was freely given. I have no expectation of a quid pro quo. To me, what I'm doing isn't about tricking you into reversing your decision. It is about trying to build a rapport that will help us have a better co-parenting relationship down the road."

She got an odd smile on her face.

"I must confess, Peter, that I've really enjoyed taking care of your needs," she said. "It has produced the hottest sex we've ever had. I've never had more fun or gotten off harder, and it allows me to stay close to you and to experience a degree of intimacy. It has helped me out so much with the loneliness."

"Loneliness?" I asked.

"For the last twelve years, I've had you by my side," she explained. "We worked as a team. We talked every day. We supported each other. We had sex and all sorts of petty intimacy from a quick squeeze, to a back scratch, to a peck on the cheek. I got used to it-- you know how touchy-feely I am. I've got to say, going without that is brutally tough."

"Have you thought about finding someone else?" I asked.

"Oh, I've had a lot of offers to date," she replied. "The loneliness makes these offers tempting, but I just can't bring myself to accept them. You always acted in my best interests. I could rely on that. Those other guys? Who knows what they want? It is damned hard to tell whether they are actually interested in me, or if they are just trying to get into my panties."

Messi's sighed and considered saying more. She decided to continue.

"I'm also scared to death because of the girls, Peter. I don't want to be that single mom who brings a creepy boyfriend or step dad into their lives. The fact that I couldn't see the transparent bullshit that Ryan Creston was slinging makes me totally insecure. I know for a fact that I don't have the best judgement when it comes to men. If I brought the girls harm from dating the wrong guy, I'd never forgive myself."

There was along pause and she asked, "How are you doing? Are you hanging in there?"

I shrugged. "I'm lonely. I'm lonely for many of the same reasons that you mentioned," I confessed. "I've dated a bit and it hasn't gone well."

I deliberately understated this. I'd gone on twelve dates and eleven were disasters. The woman from the date that had gone well ghosted me the day after. I wasn't about to tell that to Melissa.

"I have a real issue with confidence and with anxiety," I confessed.

"I second guess every decision I make now. That comes from the fact that every decision I've ever made has led me to this exact point in my life, which frankly sucks. I'm angry all the time and I'm pushing people away."

She nodded and smiled in a sympathetic way. She knew exactly what I was saying.

"That part where you say a man feels trapped by counseling really resonated with me," I confessed. "I can't imagine going to a complete stranger, airing my dirty laundry, and then subjecting myself to being pressured to lower myself to take you back. Just thinking about that makes me nauseated."

"Lower yourself?" asked Melissa, sounding hurt. "What does that mean?"

"What you did to me was blatantly disrespectful," I said. "It was obvious that the only consideration you gave me was certainty that you could dupe me and keep it secret. I didn't matter: my status and my feelings were of no account to you. It never once crossed your mind that I was worthy enough to justify a little self-denial when it came to Asshole."

She flinched as if I'd slapped her.

"It made me wonder whether it was that way all along. For weeks, I asked myself: Did you ever really care about me? Did I ever really have the sort of elevated position in your mind that you had in mine? I had to seriously consider whether you ever thought I was special. It is weird, because what happened in the here-and-now completely rewrote my past. It wasn't until you started making good on your offer of restitution that I actually saw evidence that you were putting my needs and desires above your own."

Tears started rolling down Melissa's cheeks. With iron discipline, however, she refused to sob.

"I have pride, and a sense of self worth, Melissa. If I took you back after what you did, I'd be saying that your disrespect for me was acceptable. If I did that, I would definitionally be lowering myself. I'm not sure I'd be able to look myself in the mirror. I feel like I need to stand up for myself. If I don't, who will?

"At the same time, I struggle with the notion that I've been a shitty husband and a father because I went right to the divorce and have made zero effort to honestly try to fix our situation. My parents are all over me for not taking you back and they don't want to have anything to do with me. 'Think of the girls!' my mom keeps shouting at me. It goes without saying that they are slathering the guilt on with a trowel.

"To an extent, I agree with them. To be perfectly honest, I don't really want to divorce you. I love you, I love our family, and I really loved the life we had, Melissa. It was what I always wanted. I keep having to remind myself and my parents that it isn't what we have anymore. If I took you back, I'd be eating the mother of all shit sandwiches and I just don't think I could live with myself."

It was written on her face that she really understood me in that moment. That she could see and feel the impossibility of my position was a remarkably gratifying moment for me.

"So am I wrong?" I asked her. "Should I have tried to patch things up?"

She took my hands into hers and said, "I have my pride too. I wanted some form of counseling for us, but I refused to trap you in it and try to get you to bend using guilt. This conversation has been very enlightening. It helped me to really understand where you are coming from. I think we should let the divorce happen, Peter. I think we need to clear away the debris.

"If I could have my wish, it would be that we would undergo some sort of counseling once the divorce is finalized. If we did it then, you wouldn't be trapped, there would be no artificial deadlines, no emotional blackmail, and the worst possible outcome, which would be failure to make any headway, would only result in the status quo ante. We'd have nothing to lose. We'd still be a divorced couple trying to navigate co-parenting together."

"I'll think about that," I said. I started to put my jacket on.

"Would you like a blowjob before you go?" she asked. "I'm on my period, so I can't give you more than that, but I'd love to do that for you."

"Sure," I said. "Not here, though."

"Where?" she asked.

"My house," I replied.

Melissa had a weird look on her face as she stepped foot in my house for the first time in months. She was fascinated by the changes to the place that came from removing her furniture and belongings. As she walked past the dining room, she looked at the furniture I bought from IKEA to replace what she took and turned her nose up at it.

"Peter, I'm sorry to have condemned you to Swedish institutional hell," she said.

We ended up on the bed in the master bedroom. She pulled off my pants, took off her blouse and bra, but left her jeans on. She made love to my cock with her mouth for an hour before she finally brought me off. She kept my spend in her mouth, which she flashed to me. On a whim, she slowly dribbled it out on her own breasts and rubbed it into her skin. She never explained why she was doing it, but she gave me every impression that she savored the feeling of my sperm drying on her bare tits.

"Thank you, Melissa," I said. "That was amazing."

"It truly was my pleasure," she responded.

The day that my divorce was granted was one of the most difficult of my life. I had custody that week and I knew I was going to struggle keeping it together in front of my daughters.

I called up Melissa. She answered on the first ring. She sounded like she'd been crying.

"Are you at work?" I asked.

"I went home early," she explained. "I didn't want to be so damned emotional at the office."

"I don't think I want to be around the girls for a few days," I said. "I'm going to ask my parents to take them for the rest of the week and the weekend. Do you have any objections to that?"

"No," she replied. "I don't think I want to be around them either."

"I'm going to take a few days off and go to the family cabin," I said. "Want to join me?"

What followed was the longest moment of silence in any conversation I'd ever had with Melissa.

"Yes," she replied. "I'm due four mental health days and Greg will authorize them in a heartbeat. That will give me until Monday of next week."

"I'll pick you up in an hour," I said.

My parents knew that I'd want to get away for a few days after the grant of the divorce, so they were prepared for my request.

When I picked up Melissa, we hugged and cried in the front seat of my car for nearly five minutes.

As we drove up to the cabin, I put on my favorite playlist. It was all of the music we'd had sex to in college. Melissa hadn't heard most of those songs in years and ended up singing along. It put her in an incredibly frisky headspace. When we got to the cabin, we talked, we fucked, we slept, we fucked, we hiked, we fucked, we cooked meals for two, and we fucked.

Both of us consciously started out trying to keep an emotional distance, but by the second day, it was true lovemaking. Both of us knew it, but neither of us wanted to say anything because we didn't want to break the spell.

On the way home, I said, "I want us to get some counseling, Melissa-- like you described in the coffee shop. Now that there is no pressure, no deadlines, and nothing to lose, I want to see if we can clear away the debris and come out in a different place."

She tried to hide her smile, but I knew her too well. "If you are up for that, I am too," she said.

We picked up the girls together and they were shocked and delighted to see us both in the same place at the same time for the first time in months. It didn't take long for my folks to figure out that Melissa and I spent the last six days together at the cabin fucking our brains out. Dad was going to ask about it, but Mom slapped his shoulder and said, "Zip it, Hal. It's none of our business."

For once my mother and I saw eye-to-eye.

Melissa's psychologist didn't do marital counseling, so she gave us a list of marriage counselors that she endorsed. We researched the list and found one that we both liked. He is very good and has helped us to deal with our situation productively without resorting to guilt, excuses, blaming, or emotional blackmail.

We've been going to see him for two months, now. At this point, I still don't know if we'll end up back together. The fact is that Melissa has grown a lot. Our counselor constructed a plan to help us discover whether failure really is the best teacher for her. Whatever happens from here is one hundred percent in my control. That was another way that Melissa offered restitution. That's means I am in control and I will get the outcome that I want.