Donna knows that while I loved my ex-wife Melissa in some ways, she certainly wasn’t the love of my life. She fell pregnant during our sophomore year in college so we married for Payton’s sake, not for love. It was the right thing to do. Once I eventually finished school and started my business, we were surprised with twin boys. And while I came to love and respect Melissa as the mother of my three amazing sons, I know I was never truly in love with her.
We didn’t have a great marriage. Not even in the beginning. In fairness, she wasn’t truly in love with me either. My marriage is my biggest regret in life. Not my sons, they’re my everything. I’m eternally grateful for them. I regret not finding the right person to marry. It’s a void that I don’t know will ever be filled.
I’m forty-nine years old. I’ve sort of given up on the whole notion of having that one special person. I’m still a single man and have needs, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will probably be alone for the rest of my life. I have my business and my sons. That will have to be enough for me.
I look at Donna, so full of hope for me. She’s been married to her husband for fifty years. I will never have that. I smile at her. “I don’t know that the great love of my life will be hanging out at Cover Me tonight, Donna, but my second greatest love, whiskey, certainly will. For my second love, I will head to the bar.” I wink at her. She rolls her eyes and walks out the door. Whiskey and Aerosmith, here I come.
CHAPTERTHREE
DARIAN
Cassandra, Gennifer, and I have ordered our drinks as we wait for Alexandra. Cassandra is telling us about a tantric massage parlor in town that gives happy endings. She’s apparently become a regular. We’re all hysterically laughing at her antics, and we’ve only had two sips of our drinks.
Crazy Cassandra is just that, crazy. She’s been my best friend since our freshman year of college and we haven’t looked back. She always got me into all kinds of trouble. We’d dance all night at fraternity parties. We’d sneak boys into our dorm. We’d sneak into professors’ offices late at night and steal exams. We’ve had to run from the cops on at least five occasions.
Despite some of the shared antics, we’ve had completely different paths with regard to men. I started dating Scott when I was only twenty years old, and he has been my one and only since the day we met.
In that same time, Cassandra has had three husbands, three divorces, and has probably slept with over fifty men. She’s unapologetically sexually promiscuous. She falls in and out of love depending on how the wind blows that day. But she’s a happy, successful lawyer, and is the best friend a girl could hope for.
I love her like a sister, and she’s supported me for the past three years like a sister would. She’s stunningly beautiful, with short dark hair, piercing ice blue eyes, the body of a thirty-year-old, and is always dressed impeccably.
Gennifer is a law school friend of Cassandra’s who has been in our inner circle for over twenty-five years now. She’s got long red hair and big brown eyes. Her kids are teenagers, a bit younger than mine, having not had them quite as young as I did.
I didn’t go to law school with them. I had Harley when I was only twenty-two years old. I slow played law school at night while being a mother, taking a few semesters off when I had both Reagan and Skylar.
Alexandra finally walks in and sits down, looking exhausted. She’s a younger attorney in Cassandra’s office, and Cassandra brought her into our group about ten years ago. She’s very tall with long blonde hair. She only got married a few years ago and had her daughter right away, but has been struggling to conceive this second time around.
We’ve had to watch her endure infertility struggles. My heart breaks for her. She’s nearing forty and I know she’s worried it won’t happen for them. Gennifer goes to order our standard eight blow job shots when Alexandra tells us to order six. We all look at her with wide-eyed excitement.
“Ugh, don’t look at me like that. It makes me feel pathetic. I could be pregnant, but I don’t know yet if I am.”
She takes off her jacket and looks at us. “Do you want to hear a fucking crazy story? I guarantee that it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before.” We all nod in excitement.
“So, I get up at 5:00 AM to go to work today. My bitch boss Cassandra likes me in early.” Cassandra smiles and winks at that.
“I wake Brent up to let him know we have an appointment at the fertility clinic at 12:30 today. I gave himveryclear instructions. At precisely 12:00 he needed to come home and jerk off into a plastic cup provided to us by the doctor. Once that was complete, he was to make sure to secure the lid tightly. I distinctly told him to then put the sealed cup into an equally sealed zip lock bag in case of spillage. I even handed him a fucking zip lock bag. He was to then put the bag with the cup in the front pocket of his pants, so it stayed as close to body temperature as possible. Then he was to meet me at the doctor’s office for my Intrauterine Insemination procedure. They basically take the good shit from his sperm, and inject it right next to my eggs to see if nature will then take its course. It eliminates the hard part, and the good part.” She smiles at that.
“I’ve been on fucking Clomid all month, which stimulates egg production, and I have eight viable eggs this month. That means his sperm have eight possible destinations. If I’m the next octo-mom, I’m going to strangle someone, likely Brent.”
She continues, “He claims to have come home precisely at noon from the office to jerk off. He gets into our bedroom and there’s a cable guy in there. The cable guy says not to worry, that he’ll be able to get HBO back and working, as if I care about HBO right now.”
She takes a breath. “Brent then seeks some privacy in our home gym, which he just then learns has a broken door lock. He’s trying to watch porn on his phone, practically on mute, so as to not alert anyone in the house to what he’s doing, when he hears Rosie crawling up the stairs yelling, ‘Dada dada,’with my mother-in-law yelling at her, trailing after her. He realizes he can’t possibly get this done at home and he leaves. He remembers that in high school he used to jerk off in his car all the time, so he gives that a go. Except he’s forty-two, not sixteen, and can’t get it done. The guy can jerk off while my nipples are falling off breastfeeding Rosie next to him bed, but alone in the car, he can’t get it done.”
She takes a sip of water. “He goes back to his office to use the private bathroom, which incidentally also has a broken lock, and allegedly finally gets the deed done.”
“He shows up at the doctor’s office forty-five minutes late. I’m fuming. I’m in a gown with my ass hanging out. I literally run into the waiting room yelling at him. I’m so mad that I don’t even care anymore that everyone can see my bare ass hanging out.
“We get into the back room and he takes out the cup to hand it to the nurse. It’sfuckingempty. No sperm. Nothing. Side note, it’s also not in a fucking zip lock bag because he can’t fucking follow simple instructions. He swore the sperm was in the cup fifteen minutes ago. I’ve never been so angry and frustrated in my entire life, and I work for Cassandra.” I can see the anger is still fresh for her.
“I turn to the nurse and yell at her to give me a new cup and five minutes in a private room. On the way into the room, I’m yelling at him that this is a clear scheme to get a blow job from me in the doctor’s office.”
Her eyes narrow. “We get to the room and he pulls his pants down. Do you know what I see?”
We all shake our heads in shock at this ridiculous story.
“I see a big fucking wet spot on the side of his boxer shorts. Do you know why?”
Again, we shake our heads.