Good Friends

Everything about her life with Elliot was different. Before Elliot, the only man she'd had sex with was James. She'd been under the impression that sex with Elliot would be similar, but she'd endure it for him. It wasn't. Where James had been rough with her and quick, Elliot would sometimes spend almost an hour just massaging her and rubbing her body until she was about to burst from pleasure.

Another thing he did that she had to get used to was when he put his mouth on her, "down there." James had never done that. A first she was really self-conscious about it, but over time Elliot got her to relax and she opened up to so many more aspects of sex that she never knew existed. It got to the point where she couldn't stand to be away from him.

She started staying at his house later and later until she finally just moved in. Then, came the biggest shock she ever had. Elliot told her that since she'd come from a strong religious family, perhaps they shouldn't be living together.

Kathy started to cry because she thought that he wanted her to move out. Her mind went crazy. She had all kinds of thoughts that maybe he'd found someone else. Some whore had just swooped in and was trying to take her man away, right under her nose. The bulldog in her came out and just as quickly went away, when she noticed that Elliot was down on one knee holding a ring out in front of her.

"Well?" he asked smiling at her.

"Honey, I told you a long time ago," she cried. "You can have anything you want from me. All you have to do is ask."

"Kathy, I love you," said Elliot. "Will you marry me, and stay with me forever?"

If Kathy thought that she and Elliot had a fairy tale existence to that point, her life got even better afterwards. Kathy spent a couple of months planning her wedding with Sally's help. Elliot did have to travel for "business" once during the planning stages. He'd never had to before and it seemed funny to Kathy, but she trusted him.

She noticed that on their wedding day, Elliot was far more nervous than she'd expected. And he kept looking around.

"Elliot Carson, what is going on?" asked Kathy. "You've been acting funny ever since that business trip. I wonder about all of those phone calls that you go out of the room to take. You look at me strangely all the time. What is it? Are you cheating on me? I know Sally cheats on her husband, but I never thought that we would be like that. Don't you love me anymore?"

"Kathy, I love you more than anyone else I can think of. There is something going on, I guess I can't hide anything from you. There was no business trip. I arranged a surprise for you. I wanted our wedding to be something that you'd remember for the rest of our lives," he said.

"Honey, it's already going to be the happiest day of my life," said Kathy. "You don't need to come up with anything to surprise me. I already have everything I've ever wanted right here."

A few hours later, Kathy was nervous. Mark was supposed to be walking her down the aisle since she had no one else. Mark was doing double duty as both best man and giving the bride away.

"Where the hell is Mark?" she asked.

"He's standing up there with Elliot," said Sally smiling.

"He's supposed to be here," said Kathy. "Who's going to walk me down the aisle?"

"Elliot got some other guy to do it," said Sally. "He's outside waiting for you."

Kathy opened the door and saw a man standing with his back to her. For a second her heart nearly stopped and then he turned around.

"Are you ready?" asked the man. Kathy's makeup started to run as her tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Yes Daddy," cried Kathy. "How did you...?"

"Shh, we'll talk later," he said. "That husband of yours is really hard to say no to."

Kathy and Elliot's honeymoon was great. They spent two weeks on a cruise through the islands. They came home and started their life together. They grew more and more in love as time went on. They often had parties or barbecues and invited most of their friends. Everyone seemed to be happy for the couple. They also helped out from time to time when others were in trouble.

Less than a year after the wedding, Sally's husband Bob divorced her. Sally got pregnant and Bob who knew that he had a very low sperm count confronted her about it. He told her that as soon as the baby was born they'd do a DNA test. She couldn't handle the guilt or the pressure, so she finally caved in and admitted that he might not be the father. She claimed to have had a drunken tryst with a guy she couldn't remember. It had only happened once and she loved only him, she claimed.

He had slapped her across her face, then pulled out several pictures including one of her with Mark's dick in her mouth. He made sure she saw the date on the picture. Then he showed her more pictures and he even had videos from other places and dates.

He told her that she'd be served with divorce papers the next day. Surprisingly he didn't go after Mark at all. When Sally got the divorce papers, she was happy at first. It meant that she wouldn't have to sneak around with Mark anymore. They could be together. She'd been paying a lot of attention to Elliot and Kathy. She wanted the kind of marriage they had. They were still as much in love then as they'd been from the beginning and it didn't seem to be slowing down.

Two days later, Sally discovered that Bob had sold their house and she had to move out. He'd cleaned out all of the bank accounts and their investments. He hadn't paid her car note in months. She was totally embarrassed when a big fat blond woman with tattoos all over her body and a big hook piercing her lip showed up at the plant to repossess her car. She had a big, bald headed guy who looked like a wrestler and a smaller Hispanic man with her. They weren't taking no for an answer. For some reason they had a camera crew with them. Sally gave them the keys and tried to call Bob, but he just laughed and hung up on her.

Bob had even cleaned out Sally's accounts. He'd also somehow gotten her credit card numbers and proceeded to max them out with cash advances.

Sally turned to the only place she could. She went to Mark, only to find out that Mark had no further interest in her.

He told her that the sex they had was great, but it was just sex, in a "no strings" type relationship. He didn't want to marry her and to be truthful; sex with her had become a chore. She was also not the only woman he was sleeping with.

Sally was distraught. She ended up getting an abortion. Kathy and Elliot loaned her the money. She also stayed with them until she got her feet back under her. Sally tried everything she could to find her husband again. She missed him. She'd realized it soon after he'd left. The thing that was missing from her life wasn't the once or twice a week trysts with Mark. It was the everyday and every night conversations and spending time with a man who loved her.

Sally moved out of Elliot and Kathy's house, in part because watching the two of them and how much they loved each other was painful.

Mark had also been watching Elliot and Kathy. He'd become obsessed with Kathy over the years. He simply couldn't understand what it was about her that made his best friend want to spend the rest of his life with her. He spent hours staring at her. He ogled her when she wore swim suits to swim in their pool. He knew that he wanted her. He told himself it was because Kathy was the only secretary at the plant he hadn't fucked and he wanted his record to be perfect, but he knew there was more to it than that. He couldn't explain it but he wanted Kathy badly.

He didn't think that she'd be any different from any of the other married women he'd had. So he started to make very subtle advances towards her. He complimented her often. He made it a point to spend time with her both with Elliot around and whenever possible alone with her.

If they were having a barbecue and Elliot needed to go to the store for something, Mark was on her like a cheap suit. It was really hard though because Elliot rarely left Kathy alone. Elliot loved Kathy so deeply that he didn't neglect her. Even three years into their marriage he still surprised her with little gifts and told her he loved her every day.

Mark didn't think he'd ever get a chance at Kathy, until one day out of the blue it just landed at his feet. The chance he'd been waiting for. Elliot had recently been promoted again. He was now the production manager. Elliot made at least three times Mark's salary but now had to go to a lot more meetings. He also had to travel occasionally, but he actually took Kathy with him when he did. Even after being married for that long, they hated to be away from each other.

They were supposed to be having a barbecue one Saturday and Elliot was called in because of an emergency. Kathy told him to tell them that he couldn't make it. Her parents were flying in again for the barbecue. Elliot had been responsible for Kathy's parents coming back into her life. He'd gone to their home in Philly and told them all about Kathy's life and her relationship with him and literally begged them to come to their wedding. He'd also explained to them how James had taken advantage of her and how she'd had to pull herself up and move on in her life alone until she met him.

Her parents had come to the wedding and now were coming to visit Kathy and their son in law .

Elliot's decision to go to the plant angered Kathy. She and Elliot rarely argued and this was the first time that the bulldog had come out in Kathy and had been directed at Elliot.

He promised her that he'd be there before her parents arrived. She expected him at about noon. Mark came over at one but he was always at their house anyway.

Kathy was so pissed at Elliot that she had a few drinks to calm herself down. The drinks were stronger than she thought and she was soon feeling really good. A few of their friends were outside around the pool while Kathy continued to drink and prepare the food.

"You want me, don't you?" she slurred drunkenly at Mark. He just nodded his head. Kathy had noticed a long time ago that Mark was always lurking around her. Women have a kind of radar about men. She'd also been hearing for years about Mark from all of the women she worked with. The rumor was that she was the only woman in her entire department that he hadn't fucked at least once.

She'd often wondered what it was about him that was so special that women would risk their marriages for. She'd seen what happened to Sally. But it had all been idle curiosity that under normal circumstances never would have gone anywhere. She loved Elliot with all of her heart and couldn't imagine cheating on him.

"I'm really pissed at Elliot," she said. "It would serve him right for not listening to me." Mark went over to her sensing blood in the water. He gave her another drink and started rubbing her ass through her pants.

Kathy started feeling really good and thought that it was Mark, not the liquor making her feel that way. A half an hour later, Kathy was flat on her back in her bed, when Mark started pounding away at her. She wasn't enjoying it at all. He didn't know what he was doing. It reminded her of James. He wasn't making love to her, he was just fucking her. She started crying and pushed him off of her.

"Baby, just let me finish," begged Mark. Actually Mark hadn't found anything great about the sex either, but he was so close to cumming that he wanted to get his nut off. He just couldn't figure it out. She wasn't that pretty. Her body wasn't lush and now she wasn't even good in bed. She just laid there like a rock. What the fuck did Elliot see in her?

Kathy was hysterical. She'd cheated on the man she loved. Though she'd been drunk when they started she was now stone cold sober. She knew that a very special part of their relationship had been severely damaged due to her temper.

"Get the fuck out of my house," she snapped at Mark. "Don't ever come back."

"Kathy wait," said Mark. "This was a mistake. A very, very, big mistake on both of our parts, but if I just leave and stop coming over here, Elliot will know something happened. The best thing would be for both of us to just forget that this happened. We both love Elliot. Neither of us wants to see him hurt. I'm not in love with you and I'm sure you're not in love with me. Let's just forget it. It was a drunken mistake."

Kathy nodded, vowing that she'd become an even better wife to Elliot. She and Elliot already had sex most nights, but in the first few weeks after the barbecue, Kathy tried to kill Elliot with sex.

A few months later, when she'd almost got the incident out of her mind, she started to relax. It was really hard because every time she saw Mark, she felt guilty. She was also fighting really hard to pretend that things were normal, when every time she saw Mark she felt nothing but disgust.

She got angry at herself all over again every time she saw Mark and realized that she very easily could have lost her Elliot, over that smug, selfish bastard. When she felt that badly, she needed to try to make it up to Elliot all over again. So she'd try to fuck him to death again.

So, roughly six months after the barbecue, Kathy discovered she was pregnant. According to the doctor she was about six weeks along, so she knew that the baby was Elliot's. That enabled her to put the entire Mark incident out of her mind as she concentrated on raising her family. Elliot and their daughter were Kathy's entire world. She never took them for granted because she realized that at any time circumstances could steal them from her. Happiness is only one bad fucking decision away from misery.

Two years later she was pregnant again, this time a son. Kathy and Elliot were the dream couple that most of their friends envied.

It was four years after the birth of their son and six and a half years after the incident that it all unraveled. Elliot bounded into the dining room of the house he shared with his wife and soul mate, Kathy and their two children. They were having yet another barbecue and her parents were coming over again. It was different this time because for the past year, his in-laws didn't have to fly to visit. They'd bought a house only three miles away so they could be closer to their grandchildren.

Another thing that made this barbecue special was that Elliot had been planning on surprising Kathy. Their 10 year anniversary was coming up and he'd hired a minister to come over so they could renew their wedding vows in front of all of their friends. He'd also bought Kathy another ring and they were going to leave in a few days on the same cruise that they'd taken for their first honeymoon. The in-laws were going to watch the kids.

All of that went out the window as Elliot stepped into the dining room. He heard two voices and recognized them as his best friend Mark and his wife.

"Damn, that little girl is smart," said Mark. "And you know what Kathy? She's a real charmer too. She reminds me of myself at that age. Are you sure she isn't mine?"

"Mark, don't be stupid. She was born 15 months after we...After what happened. I also have the blood test results that they did at her school. She's my husband's daughter through and through. There's no chance of her being yours," said Kathy. "Every time you bring up my lapse in judgment, it just makes me hate you more."

Elliot quietly went back up the stairs into the bedroom he shared with Kathy. He lay down on the bed with his heart pounding so hard that he was sure everyone downstairs could hear it. It was becoming hard for him to breathe and the tears running down his cheeks made it hard to see. He just stared at the ceiling gathering his thoughts until a voice brought him back to reality.

"Daddy, are you coming downstairs," his six year old daughter asked him. "I want you to go in the pool with me."

"I'll be down in a few minutes Steph," he said.

"Mommy wants you to come now," said Steph. "She said she misses you and to tell you that you're going to get it tonight."

Steph came into the room and sat on the bed. "Daddy, when Mommy tells me I'm going to get it, she means I'm going to get a spanking. Tell her that she can't spank you. You're the best daddy in the whole wide world. You don't need a spanking."

Elliot looked at the tiny cherubic figure in front of him. No matter how this played out, he had to make sure that things worked out well for her and that she and her brother would always be taken care of and loved.

"Daddy, are you crying?" she asked him.

"No sweetheart," he said. "I just had something in my eye." He grabbed her hand and lifted her onto his shoulder. He was hopeful that her euphoria at being carried in her daddy's arms would wipe out the recent memory of his tears.

Elliot put Stephanie down and she ran into the arms of her grandparents who had just arrived. Her four year old brother put down the toy truck he was about to throw into the pool and ran to meet them as well.

A couple of their friends waved or yelled a greeting to Elliot. He smiled and waved back. Kathy was making a beeline in his direction. He pretended that he hadn't seen her and moved so that she had to go through a couple of other people to get to him. "I'll be right back, I'm going for more beer," he loudly announced to no one.

"If you buy it, we'll drink it," yelled one of the guys.

Elliot headed for the fence to the driveway and ran right into Mark. "Hey bud, you want me to ride shotgun?" asked his friend of over twenty years.

"Nope, I got it," said Elliot. He was sure he'd kept the rage he felt towards Mark out of his voice.

Mark was sure he'd seen anger on Elliot's face. He wondered what could make his lifelong friend that angry. Whatever it was, if El needed to talk, Mark would be there for him. To get that angry it had to be about Kathy or the kids. Mark offered again.

"El, I'm not busy, I can go and help with the beer," said Mark.

"I told you, I've fucking got it," snapped Elliot. "Why don't you go and see if Kathy needs you."

Mark could tell something was wrong, but he was sure that Elliot still trusted him. Elliot didn't trust anyone with Kathy, or his kids. So if Elliot was telling him to check on Kathy, it meant that Elliot was upset about something and wanted to, as usual, make sure his wife was protected and okay.

Elliot waved at his father in law and mother in law on his way out.

Mark went over to Kathy and offered to light the grill. Just as he arranged the charcoal he heard Stephanie talking to her mother. "Mommy, I don't think you should spank daddy," the child said.

"Steph, what are you talking about?" asked Kathy.

"You told me to tell daddy that he was going to get it," said the little girl. "Well, I think he's already sorry for what he did so he doesn't need a spanking."

"Honey, what does your daddy need to be sorry for? Mommy was just joking with daddy. He knows what I mean. Why do you think he was sorry?" asked Kathy.

"Because when I went upstairs to get him he was laying on your bed crying," said Steph. "But don't worry, I'll tell him that you're not going to spank him."

Kathy barely heard her daughter's reply. For very close to ten years she and Elliot had been living a perfect life. They had their little tiffs and arguments but all couples did. She and Elliot had never said a cross word to each other in all of that time though. He was more than her husband, he was her other half. As far as she knew, they had no secrets from each other. What could Elliot have to cry about? Steph had to have been mistaken. After all, she was only six.

Kathy turned and saw Mark fussing over the grill. There, stood her only regret since meeting Elliot. Every time she looked at him, it made her skin crawl to think that only 7 years ago she'd let him fuck her in a moment of drunken weakness. She wished that he and Elliot would have an argument or maybe Mark could just get a fucking girlfriend. That way he could stop hanging around her house so damned much.