| Subject: Chapter 11 |
Author:
Dee
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 20:11:45 09/27/02 Fri
In reply to:
's message, ""Almost Fatal"© " on 21:47:12 09/20/02 Fri
Title: Almost Fatal
Author: DeeCKidd
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ethan decides what to do about Theresa and their marriage.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from “Passions” Soap Opera.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethan drove around for a half an hour wondering how he missed the lies and deception from his beautiful wife. How could he be so blind?
It was like he never really knew her at all. She seemed so sweet and innocent to him. So young and naive. He admired her determination to make a life for herself.
But was this all a game to her. If her dreams of a fashion designer didn't take off, she'd fringe off the Crane name?
"But we found out that I wasn't a true Crane. Why did she stick around? She could've left and went to the next rich guy." Ethan pondered in his mind.
"She was so convincing." Ethan said to himself. "She made me believe that she had feelings for me after we met. Not before. I can't believe I didn't see it."
Ethan thought for a moment as he pulled up to an all night bar club.
"Gwen was right. She was so sure that Theresa had set this plan in motion from the very beginning. But I didn't want to see it. All I wanted was to explore and live a life with her. To bask in the joy of our new found love."
"Dammit Ethan, how could you be juked by this girl. And now you’re married to her."
Ethan got out of his car and went into the dark and smoky bar filled with half drunken men and very pretty barmaids.
He sat down at the bar and buried his face in his hands.
His mind constantly reminded him why he was there. He couldn't help but to blurt out words in his upset state.
"Damn you for doing this to me."
The bartender walked up to Ethan wiping the counter and putting a fresh bowl of peanuts before him.
"What will it be Mack?"
Ethan looked up at him with tear stained eyes.
"It's Ethan." He said giving a rather uncomfortable nod to the man standing behind the bar.
"Excuse me Ethan. It was just an expression. I didn't mean anything by..."
"Oh no, I understand. I'm sorry. My mind isn't totally with me right now."
Ethan placed his head back in hands.
"I haven't seen you around here before. Having trouble with the Mrs.?"
Ethan lifted his head up again.
"How did you know I was married?"
"Well that's a pretty expensive wedding band you're wearing there."
Ethan looked down at the ring, and reflected on the night Theresa placed it on his finger. She was so beautiful standing there looking up at him with all the love shining in her eyes.
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't quite sum it up as trouble. What my wife and I are going through could be the end to our marriage as we know it."
"Wow! That bad hey!"
"Join the club Mack!" A man shouted sitting two seats from Ethan.
Ethan turned and faced the man who seemed as though he'd been there already for two hours.
"Hush Pete. Finish your drink and don't call the kind sir Mack."
"No, no it's O.K." Ethan said waving a hand, picking up a glass that the bar tender placed before him.
"Do you have trouble with your wife?" Ethan asked the man.
"Trouble? Trouble doesn't even describe what me and my wife went through."
"Was it that bad?" Ethan said taking a gulp of beer.
"Man, let me tell you. When I met her she was fifty pounds over weight. But she was beautiful, inside and out. She went on this diet, saying that she didn't want to embarrass me when we went out in public.
"Well I told her that it didn't matter how big or small she was, just as long as she loved me. But that wasn't enough for her. I loved my wife very much but even that wasn't enough for her.
"After she carefully planned her meals and watched calories, the pounds began to come off. She was like a whole other woman. Her self-esteem level burst through the roof not to mention a load of confidence. When we went out men disregarded the fact that we were together. She received whistles and all kinds of moans.
"At first I felt like I was the envy of every guy in the place. But after a while I got scared. Now I may not be a man of the world, but I could swear she began flirting with men when we would go out."
The man drank down some more beer before finishing.
Ethan looked at him waiting to hear the end of a depressing story.
"Well, anyway, my wife convinced me that is was all in my head. That she would never be unfaithful to me or our marriage."
"What happened after that? Did you believe her?"
"Of course I did. I loved her with all my heart. I dropped the whole jealousy act after that. She was mine and would always be so I thought."
"What changed your mind?" Ethan said, scared to hear the outcome.
"I came home from work with flowers and candy to apologize only to find my wife in bed with my best friend.
"Fill me up Joe!" Pete said to the bar tender.
After his glass was refilled he continued.
"To make a long story short, she tried to excuse her way out of it, saying it wasn't what I thought and some other mumble jumble. It took a few weeks to come to grips with what she had done, and I almost forgave her."
"Almost? What made you decide against it?" Ethan asked curiously.
"I found out that she was not only sleeping with my best friend, but my cousin, my sister's boyfriend and a couple of guys down at the lodge. It took me years to recover from the initial shock of it all."
Pete took three more gulps and asked Joe to fill him up again.
"But she got what was coming to her. She hooked up with a man who gave her six children. All girls. And that weight she lost, she gained that back plus 150 pounds extra."
Ethan looked at the man in disbelief until he saw the bar tender nod his head in confirmation.
"Wow! I don't know what to say."
"Man that story wasn't nothing compared to what I went through with my old lady."
Ethan turned his head to the man sitting on the other side of him.
"What's your story?" He asked wondering if it could be any worse than the story he'd just heard.
"My wife was eighteen years younger than me and I thought she was in love with me when I proposed to her."
"She wasn't?" Ethan asked wanting to know.
"She said she was so we got married. I loved her so much that I said I would pay for the wedding of her dreams. Anyway, six months in the marriage she announced she was pregnant."
"Well that was a good thing right?" Ethan said gulping beer.
"Yeah it would have been if I was the baby's father."
"If you weren't the father then who was?"
"My son."
The man stared into his glass wondering how he got through something so difficult for him.
Ethan wanted to ask the man how his situation ended, but the bar tender shook his head to warn him that the story was over.
Ethan looked down at his glass wondering if he should have work this thing out with Theresa instead of leaving. Could he forgive her? He felt like such a fool when he left out leaving her behind.
All of a sudden he heard a voice behind him.
"What's up Joe, Pete, are we telling sob, failed marriage stories?"
Ethan turned around to see a rather large man standing there wondering what seat to take.
"You new here?" He said with his voice booming in Ethan's ear.
"Um, yes. Trying to drown my situation in my beer."
"I see. Did Pete over here tell you his story?"
Ethan looked at Pete who seemed bothered by the big man.
"I've heard some things." Ethan remarked.
"And by the look on Marty's face, he must be reliving the horrible situation between his bride and his son. What a mess that was."
Ethan spied the man suspiciously.
"So do you have a story to tell?"
The bar tender placed bourbon on the rocks in front of the man as he gave a dazy kind of stare in his glass.
"My story huh?" He mumbled to himself.
The man picked up his bourbon and took one gulp of it finishing it in two seconds flat. He placed his glass back down and tapped the counter three times. Joe, the bar tender, refilled him very quickly with a nervous look on his face.
"I'm not sure a young kid like you could handle such a horrible story."
"Try me. I've been through my horrible ordeals with my wife. I'm sure I can take anything at this point."
"O.K. son, don't say I didn't warn you."
The man took another gulp of his bourbon and began his story.
"Five years ago my wife and I were expecting a child. It was the happiest time in our lives. My job was great. I was making enough money where my wife didn't have to work. She was such a good wife. She cooked, cleaned, shopped, sewed, whatever needed to be done she did it.
"In her seventh month, we started taking regular shopping trips out to Walmart buying baby things. It was absolutely the best time of our lives. The only problem we had was the fact that she wouldn't let me touch her belly to feel the baby kicking. I dismissed it saying that she was just having prenatal syndrome.
Well one particular night we met this couple. The other woman was due the same time as my wife. And we laughed at the coincidence of it. We became friends with this other couple. Soon we were having regular dinners at each other’s houses. I couldn't believe how close we became with this couple the last months of my wife's pregnancy."
The man paused as he took another gulp.
"Are you sure you want to go on?" Ethan asked the man sympathetically.
"Yes. My therapist suggests the more I talk about it the easy I can get over it.
"Now where was I? Oh yeah. So anyway, I had to go out of town on business, and I knew I would only be gone a day, but the city I was in had a terrible earth quake and it took me days to get out of there. The other couple said that they would take care of my wife while I was away. Who would have know I was going to come home to what seemed like the end of all existence."
Ethan looked carefully at the man as he continued.
"My wife was gone. There was no baby, no nothing. I came home to a house full of police trying to arrest me. Seems that my wife wasn't pregnant at all. She pretended all this time. That wasn't the bad part of it though. The couple we befriended, my wife took the woman while her husband was at work. My wife shot the woman once in the head killing her instantly. She then cut open the womb area and took a healthy baby boy out of her. She tried to get away with this horrible situation. The police finally piece together all the facts and tracked her down. When they were trying to arrest her, she turned the gun on herself and fell dead.
"The baby was eventually returned to his father, but without a mother. My life hasn't been the same since."
Ethan looked at the man speechless. He had asked for this. He wanted to know the story and now wished he didn't know.
Ethan sat at the bar wondering what he was doing there. His pathetic story about Theresa didn't compare to what these men were going through. Yes she made some mistakes, but she was really a good person, with a good heart, and he loved her. He loved her with all his heart.
"So, Ethan," the bar tender replied. "What's your story? Is it as deep and as sad as what you've heard?"
Ethan looked down at his wedding ring and wondered again why he wasn't at home with his wife.
"Well Ethan, is your wife a slut or a murderer?"
The words coming out of his mouth struck Ethan's heart rather hard. He wanted to hit the bartender for saying such words about his precious Theresa.
"She's a liar." He snapped.
"A liar hey. What did she lie about? No, wait let me guess. She lied and told you that she was out with the girls when she was with her lover?"
"No it wasn't like that!" Ethan said angrily.
"Wait, I believe I can guess. She told you she was a virgin when you met, and you found out that she was a call girl?"
"No!" Ethan yelled.
"A stripper?"
"No!"
"An escort?"
"No! It wasn't anything like that!" He said a bit ticked off at Joe's gall.
"Then what was it? It must really be horrible."
Ethan felt foolish now about telling Joe what Theresa had done.
"She lied about loving me."
"Oh she doesn't love you?"
"No! She loves me. She didn't tell me that she loved me all her life."
Ethan really sounded foolish now. What was he thinking?
"O.K. let me get this straight. You are thinking about leaving her because she's your soul mate?"
The bar tender looked at Ethan as if he was some deranged nut from off the street.
"It wasn't like that. She schemed to win my love. She pretended to date men to make me jealous. She locked my girlfriend in a broom closet just so she could dance with me all night at a costume party we attended.
Joe looked at Ethan with a pathetic smirk on his face.
"What?" Ethan asked him. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason." He said wiping the counter.
"No, I want to know why you have that smirk on your face."
"Look son, I don't know this wife of yours, but I'm just willing to bet that these three men sitting at this bar would love to trade places with you. Sounds like to me that your wife did everything she could to make you see that your life is with her."
Ethan looked down in his glass.
"Ethan look." He said placing a hand on his shoulder. "If I were you, I would go home and fix things with your wife. Don't be a fool be flattered. She loved you so much that she went out of her way to get your attention. Don't be mad. There are so many guys who wish their wives loved them that much, to go through such extremes to win their love. You are one lucky guy Ethan. One lucky guy."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Ethan turned the key to his apartment door, he pondered in his heart how to fix things with Theresa. He was sure he still loved her, and there was no doubt about her love for him. But could he trust her. She had the chance to be honest from the beginning but wasn't.
When Ethan entered their apartment he saw Theresa lying on the couch asleep hugging his picture.
He went and knelt down beside her. He placed a hand on her cheek.
"I do still love you Theresa. I have loved you for so long. I'm sure that we will get through this just like we've gotten through everything else."
Theresa stirred a little at the touch of his hand.
"Oh Ethan," she sighed in her sleep.
Ethan leaned forward and placed his lips on his beautiful wife.
Theresa's eyes fluttered open in shock.
"Ethan?" She whispered.
Ethan didn't respond. He placed his lips back on hers and kissed his wife very passionately.
He was flattered that she went through so much trouble to win his heart. If she hadn't, he wouldn't have remembered liking her when they were children. He would also be Gwen's husband, which was something he did not want to be.
No one made him feel like Theresa made him feel. He truly loved her and was willing to forgive her for not being honest. He knew in his heart that he could trust her and now was the time to start building the lives they were meant to live.
Theresa was overjoyed that Ethan had forgiven her. They would have still been in a sensuous lip lock if the phone didn't ring.
"Maybe you should get the phone baby." She said in between kisses.
"Who would have the nerve to interrupt while I am trying to make out with my wife." He responded.
"What... If... It's... Important?" She said smiling.
Ethan gave a great sigh, hesitating to pull away from her.
"Hello!" He said out of breath.
"Yes." He said in a more serious voice.
"When? What time? Right here! O.K. we'll be there as soon as possible. Hang in there buddy."
Ethan replaced the receiver and looked at his wife.
"What Ethan? Who was that? Is everything all right?"
Ethan pulled Theresa to her feet.
"Hurry! Get dressed! That was Chad. He just took Whitney to the hospital. She's having the baby."
Ethan and Theresa headed out the door in a hurry to be there for the very best friends they've ever had.
************************************
End of chpt 11
Read chpt 12
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 