Talk of the Town

I set up my own medical billing business that I could do from home. While I was studying, I had enough money to travel during the summers. I saw a lot of places and met a lot of people.

While I wasn't a slut, I'd had time to experience more than a few men. There was no reason I shouldn't have. I was no longer married. So there was nothing to hold me back. I tried small men and big ones. I tried blacks, Asians, and Latinos. After a while, I realized what I was doing and the stupidity of it. I did a few threesomes; I even did a gang bang once, and I tried a woman.

What I came to realize was that it was pretty much all the same. In most cases, the men were just using me. Men are always going to take pussy if it's offered. It didn't mean that I was hot or special, and it certainly didn't mean that I was cherished or cared for.

What I had done with Brad was tragic, and it meant nothing. I saw college boys who were eighteen or nineteen screwing sixty-year-old women. To men pussy is pussy.

There was only one way for me to get what I wanted. And that was to get my husband back. Four years had passed and I was a different, stronger woman. Over the same four years, the pain at what I'd done had seemed to have faded for Dennis as well. I was also sure that the people in our tiny ass town had something else to waggle their tongues about.

My daughter Chelsea never mentioned her father or his life when we talked. She had always been uber protective of her dad. She had let slip that he had a lot of women in his life. She occasionally let slip that he was doing something with Jaime, or Jill or Janice or Samantha.

I understood better than anyone would have hoped. I was sure that the time was right for me to return. I could move in and start out as his friend. Then I could join the ranks of the women he dated and move them all out of my way. I could have my family and my husband back. Sure it would take more time for me to get Frankie to come around. I wasn't even invited to his wedding. But the important thing was to get Dennis back.

The thing I had never found outside of Dennis' arms was love. No one else ever made me feel that. I'm not a fat girl, but I do have a big butt and big tits.

A lot of men see me as just someone to fuck and then move on from. Dennis always made me feel like I was the center of his universe. I missed that and I wanted it back.

As luck or perhaps fate would have it, I called my daughter Chelsea, who was now twenty years old on the day I arrived in town. Things had changed a great deal, including the short term rentals that had been built just outside of town.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but it's brilliant. Short term rentals bridge the gap between a motel and a lease. You can rent them for as short as a week, with three months being the longest regular term.

You get your own kitchen and other amenities. It's basically like renting an apartment for a week or so.

I wanted to have lunch with Chelsea and catch up. Unfortunately, my daughter had classes all day and plans for the evening. She assured me that she would stop by sometime during my visit.

I sighed as I realized that she was a grown young woman now. She had a life of her own, and it would take time for me to find a new place in her life.

I settled in and began to unpack my clothes. I went into the kitchen to see what kinds of appliances I had. And then decided to go out and shop for food. As a kick, I decided to go to the market that I'd been banned from.

I looked around for the owner and didn't see him. I did see one familiar face though. Brad's ex girlfriend, Mary, was in the manager's office. She was twenty three or twenty-four and had put on some weight. Her face was still pretty but leaving her cheerleading days behind had given her a gut.

There was a picture of her with a normal but dull looking guy and two smiling small children on her desk. She looked up as I wheeled my cart past her office and then did a double take. I nodded, and she smiled and waved.

A few moments later, I was looking through the fruits, and she came up beside me.

"It took me a while to figure out who you were," she said.

"So you want to kick me out of the store?" I asked.

"Nah, that's old news now," she said. "I'm married and very happily, and I have two kids of my own. My husband loves me. And he's faithful to me. I could never have had that with Brad. You did hear what happened to him, didn't you?"

"No, I've been away and I really wasn't interested," I said.

"He left town trying to run away from you and his responsibilities," she said. "Since you hadn't sued him or gone after him for child support he had a clean criminal record. He joined the army, and apparently was still up to his games. He got involved with the wife of another serviceman. But before they could bring him up on charges, he was injured in a training exercise.

He lost one of his legs above the knee and the arm on the same side. His face is also very heavily scarred. For the first year or so he was really bitter. From what I've heard both, he and his parents tried to track you down, but they couldn't find you.

"Why were they looking for me?" I asked.

"Brad can't have kids anymore," she smirked. "Your baby is their only grandchild."

"What does that have to do with me?" I asked. "I put the baby up for adoption. I don't even know if it was a girl or a boy. Besides they swore to me that Brad wasn't the father."

"They hoped that with you on their side, they could go to court and try to get a DNA test and maybe get public opinion on their side," she said. "They're desperate."

"Why don't they just adopt the kid?" I asked. She started laughing. Then she got as stiff as a board. Her eyes were following something behind me.

"They were too late," she said. "For a little over a year, that poor little girl sat in the orphanage, and then she was legally adopted by a couple here in town. A year after that, Brad was shipped home and like I said for the first year that he was home, he was an asshole and no one in his family even thought about her. Their interest started last year and by then she'd been with her new family for two years. Brad never signed the birth certificate and there was no DNA comparison done on him.

The baby's adoptive parents are her fully legal parents. Even if Brad could prove that he WAS the father he would have no legal standing. The new adoptive parents refuse to let Brad or his parents have any contact with her. In fact, they got a restraining order to keep Brad's parents from stalking the little girl."

As she spoke her eyes got bigger and bigger. And then a ball of energy bumped into my leg and tried to hide behind one of the large bins of fruit.

She grabbed a peach from a bin and bit into giggling as she did so. A tall thin young woman snuck up behind the little girl and picked her up, with her mouth still dripping with peach juice.

"Samantha, you know you're not supposed to run off on your own," admonished the young woman. As I saw her, my mouth dropped open in shock. Recognition flared in my brain after it did in my subconscious mind.

The young woman was my daughter Chelsea. I almost didn't recognize her. Her hair was long and curly; I had never seen her with anything except short, straight hair.

She must've been babysitting to make extra money. But when I looked closely at the wiggling little girl, the resemblance between them was uncanny. There was no doubt in my mind that the little girl she held was also my child.

"Chelsea," I said as I approached them. "I thought you had a date after school."

"I never said that," she said. "I said I had plans. My study group is meeting at dad's house. They like to use the pool and the hot tub. I came shopping so we'd have food and snacks."

"Can I hold her?" I asked. Her eyes narrowed protectively.

"Mom, I'm not sure," she said.

"Not sure of what," said a voice from behind me. "Let me guess. You're not sure about whether to tell me that your sister has been sneaking off to eat fruit again, right?"

I looked at the woman. She was a slim but shapely redhead. She had that milky skin that doesn't tan. For a slim woman she had nice sized boobs and a great butt. Her nose was lightly dusted with freckles, and she had a permanent smile.

The thing that shocked me the most was that she had responded when my daughter said, "Mom." My heart sank suddenly.

She looked up at me suddenly. She looked at Chelsea and then back at me. "I can see why he loved you for so long," she said. Despite the fact that her smile never faded, I could feel a hardness in her. This woman was ready to do battle for her man and her child.

But her actions said otherwise. She gently took the wiggling, giggling little girl from her big sister's protective arms and handed her to me.

As I touched the little girl who had no idea who I was, I felt a sense of warmth take over me. This beautiful child came out of my body. She was a part of me. No legal paper or document could ever change that.

She was MY baby! She wriggled in my grasp without even looking at me. "Mama, peeshes," she said. "We need ta get peeshes. I like peeshes. Lem'me go lady. Mama!"

This rejection was worse than Chelsea's carefully worded put off. The little girl felt no connection between us. She was more interested in telling the redhead to buy peaches than she was in meeting her own mother. She reached out for the redhead almost tearing herself out of my grasp with the desperation of her movements. She wanted her mother, and I wasn't her.

The redhead grabbed the girl back, breaking my heart. She kissed HER daughter and smiled. "Sammie you taste like peaches already," she cooed. "Go get some for us to take home."

"Come on Chessie," she screamed, already scampering away. "Mama said we're gettin' peeshes."

My older daughter quickly followed; I had no doubt that she was just as eager to get away from the uncomfortable situation as her sister was to get peaches.

I as looked back at the redhead, she surprised me. In her situation, I would have sent a cheery "Goodbye," her way. Maybe I'd have thrown in a "Nice meeting you," as I walked away.

She was writing something down on a small pad she'd pulled from her purse. "It takes her a while to warm up to people," she said. "If you want to spend a little more time with her come to dinner. Dennis would probably like to see you too. I can't promise you that Chelsea will be very available though. She and her friends have strange study habits, but it works for them.

Sammie is four, so she's usually asleep in her daddy's arms by seven thirty or eight. So I'd come early if I were you."

As she walked away, I noticed that she had it. By IT, I mean she had that indescribable niceness that Dennis had. Maybe it rubbed off on her. She found the time to say "hi," to everyone she passed. She clearly enjoyed her life.

Two hours later, I pulled up in front of a beautiful house. It was the nicest house in the center of a block of well-kept houses.

I heard voices coming from the backyard, so I went and knocked on the back fence. It opened by rolling to the side, pulled by a powerful motor. It seemed like something Dennis would have, so he wouldn't have to get out of his Mustang to open the gate.

The backyard took my breath away. There were flowers and shrubs completely surrounding it. The foliage and Ivy completely obscured the six-foot privacy fence. It was like a beautiful little clearing in the middle of a dense forest. I felt peace, happiness, and love. There was a nice pool, completely surrounded by what appeared to be stones that led up to an incredible deck. The wood of the deck was beveled and stained. On the deck, there was a big grill, and a hot tub that was large enough for at least four people and a big fire pit.

In the hot tub were three young women, one of whom was my daughter Chelsea. They were taking turns reading from a book. It was as her ... I couldn't believe I had almost called that woman my daughter's mother. It was an unusual way to study. One girl would read passages out loud while the others sat back and sipped cool drinks.

I smiled as I saw little Sammie sitting there in the hot tub with them. They had some sort of booster seat in the tub for her. She got out of the tub and shivered at the change in temperature, then took off running across the deck to get something from a table near the grill. She grabbed a glass of milk and took off back towards the tub.

"Forget about it Samantha," Chelsea told her. "If you spill milk in the hot tub again, Daddy will kill me."

"Not gonna sill ... pill ... I'm not gonna drop it," she pouted. My daughter folded like a cheap picnic chair.

"Alright," she said. I could already see where it was going. Someone would be draining that hot tub and flushing the filters.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of a powerful motor. My heart started beating faster as I recognized the exhaust system of Dennis' Mustang. The fence opened, and he pulled into an open garage next to another Mustang.

Samantha, caught with one foot in the tub and the other on the chair she used to scramble into it, forgot about her milk and let it fall as she scrambled back across the deck headed for the garage screaming "dada is home!"

As luck would have it, her milk had fallen outside of the tub. One of Chelsea's friends grabbed a towel and mopped it up. Dennis got out of his car and scooped up my scurrying daughter, who squealed out her joy.

All of a sudden, Dennis noticed me. He stiffened for a second, but anger never crossed his features. He walked slowly towards me, with Samantha cradled in his arms.

"I have no idea what to say," he said. He shifted Samantha to one hip and hugged me warmly. There was no trace of anger in him.

Samantha suddenly spoke to me. It was as if we were old friends. "That's MY Daddy," she said. Her delivery reminded me of her mother's. It was said with many different meanings. It sounded friendly, but her emphasis on the word in the middle implied both ownership and a warning.

It was like this four-year-old girl was letting me know that Dennis belonged to her. She was also warning me that she would protect him.

Then the redhead came out from inside the house. She saw Dennis at about the same time that he saw her, and any illusion of getting Dennis back evaporated. I at one time dreamed of growing old with Dennis. I entertained the whole two old people in love sitting on the porch in rocking chairs surrounded by their grandchildren fantasy.

I could see now that Dennis might be sitting on that porch. He might even have Frankie's, Chelsea's and eventually Samantha's children running around his yard, but I wouldn't be the one sitting beside him. That spot was filled.

The hug and the kiss they shared had the girls in the hot tub cheering. Samantha reached out and tried to push the faces of her parents apart. Then she pressed her tiny lips against her daddy's cheek.

Later as Jaime and I worked side by side in the kitchen making side dishes while Dennis grilled, I asked her. "Jaime, do you think I could be ... I don't know ... Sammie's aunt?"

"Sammie doesn't need any more aunts," she said. My heart dropped. Jaime was clearly protecting her family.

"Do you see all of those girls out on the deck?" They're all Sammie's aunts. My sister is her real aunt. Frankie's wife Millie is her aunt. Sammie has too many friggin' aunts." Her voice softened then.

"What Sammie could use though ... Is a god mother!" she said. "Would you be inter ..."

"Hell yes!" I gushed hugging her.

"Sarah, Sammie is a handful," she said.

"I have really big hands for a woman," I laughed.

I visit Dennis and Jaime often now. I always spend the holidays with them, and I never miss my Goddaughter's birthday. But I couldn't stay in that town. Dennis and Jaime have their life together, and I truly needed to start my own. Besides it's a really small ass town with a long ass memory. I was tired of being the talk of it. I moved across the state to Lansing and got a great job working in a hospital in their billing and medical records department.

I've dated a few men, but I haven't found anyone to replace Dennis in my heart. Dennis was truly one of a kind. Most of the men I meet are only after some no strings pussy. I've come to terms with the fact that by offering just that to someone else, I lost Dennis.

Recently though things are looking up. I've had several dates with a big, strapping man who seems to be a complete gentleman. I think good things may happen for us. We may even have a future together. His name is ... Kurt...

The end