Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2019 01:36:46 +0000 (UTC) From: S Smith Subject: Family Road Trip-Spring Break-Prologue Family Road Trip-Spring Break Prologue *This is the prologue to a multi chapter story that has been rattling around in my head for a while. All characters and situation are purely fictional. This is a fantasy, not reality. If you can’t tell the difference between the two, or if it is not legal for you to read stories involving consensual sex between adults and minors please do not read. But, please do support NIFTY archive.* *There is no sex in this prologue, but things will get very wild, very quickly in the following chapters.* My wife told me she wanted a divorced exactly 2 weeks after we moved ourselves, and our two kids halfway across the country. Because, of course. Honestly, things had not been good between us for years, we had not had sex in two years, and had not slept in the same bed for almost a year. So, it was not a complete surprise. I guess I would have thought she would have the courtesy to maybe bring it up before we sold our house in Illinois and moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. I probably still would have made the move, the salary at the new job was borderline obscene. But, I mean, come on! Not for the first time, and not for the last, I wondered where the lively, fun, smart, kind woman I fell in love with went and how this shrill materialistic harpy took her place. I can’t say I was surprised, but I can tell you she was surprised the way things worked out. I think she thought she was going to take me to the cleaners and use my savings and salary to keep the perfect life she seemed to value more than me, or the kids. I suspect she had played out the scene multiple times in her head so she could extract the maximum amount of drama. That’s how Allison was, I mean is, she’s not dead. I had barely walked into our brand-new house when she broke the news. I put my bag down on the counter in the kitchen. “Darren I want a divorce, I’m taking the kids and moving back home,” she said matter of factly. “Al, I’ve offered, no, I’ve suggested, couples counseling before. Multiple times. Let’s give that a try. I know things haven’t been great, but let’s at least try.” I sighed audibly, which I knew she hated. “No, I’ve made up my mind, I’m done trying.”, she almost hissed. Mentally I rolled my eyes, wondering exactly how she had “tried”. “Look, let’s try counseling for 6 months. If it doesn’t work out we’ll call it over, but we would have at least tried. We’re barely living together as it is, you took the master bedroom, I’m not even sleeping on the same floor as you, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like we’re on top of each other in this place. You have all the space in the world. If I’m that upsetting to you, you barely even need to see me. Come on, Al, let’s try.” I didn’t quite beg, but it was definitely pleading. She glared at me hatefully, which was a little surprising. I knew she was unhappy. So was I. I had not considered she might hate me. I don’t know if I was still in love with her. But I didn’t hate her. It would probably be fair to say I didn’t care about her much anymore. Which might be worse than hate, actually. “I gave up my career for you! I gave up everything for you and the kids!” She shouted. I felt a rush of anger, “What the fuck career did you give up?” “My law career!” Her jaw was thrust out proudly, she clearly believed she had been wronged. “What law career? You graduated from a second rate law school and took 3 tries to pass the bar. Which I pay the fees for every year, to keep you in good standing, even though you literally never even had a job!” “I was too busy taking care of you and the kids!” “The kids??? You weren’t even pregnant with Katie for a year after we got married, that was almost a year after you passed the bar. How the f…., how on earth did the kids, or me, stop you from starting your career???” “I can see you can’t have a rational conversation about this. That’s fine, my lawyer will deal with you. And she says between alimony and child support I will do pretty well. So, enjoy that,” She glared at me For a moment I was taken aback by the sheer pettiness of what she had said. The mother of my children, a woman who I was truly, deeply, passionately in love with years ago was nothing but a greedy caricature of a bitter first wife. Then, it hit me. I felt a smile tickle the corners of my mouth. I couldn’t stop it, I felt a grin, then a smile, then I started to giggle. It might have been from the bombshell news, and associated stress. But honestly, it was also funny too, right? I couldn’t help myself; it was like when you get the giggles at very serious moments. Soon I was bellowing with laughter. She stared at me with wide eyes. If nothing else, Allison hated being the butt of a joke more than anything. “You’re such an asshole!”, she hissed. I was gasping for breath, I held a finger up, “Wait”……..gasp, “Wait”……..Another spasm of laughter erupted from my belly before I finally got myself under control. “Oh, shit, I really am sorry Al, it’s just that…….,” despite trying to be mature, another fit of giggling overcame me. Allison’s face started to flush, which meant she was either extremely angry, or close to orgasm. I took a wild guess. “Did you tell your lawyer about the pre-nup?”I gasped a few times to catch my breathe. “Did you tell your lawyer about the pre-nup?” Now it was her turn to gasp. She looked very much like fish, hauled out of the water and gasping. Her mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened. Then closed. She glared at me. “That was just for your first company!” she snarled. When Al and I got engaged I was a founding partner in a small software company we were in the process of selling. I was a software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence. In fact, I left MIT just short of my Phd. to help found the company. At the time, the lawyer we used for the company strongly urged me to have Allison sign a pre-nuptial agreement. I really didn’t think it was necessary, but mostly because the guy was relentless, I turned it into a joke and Al did sign it. Why not, I was making good money and she was about to be a lawyer. Plus, we would never break up! When my partners and I sold that company giving me a solid six figure payment, I shared it with her. And when I climbed the ladder at a series of other companies and start-up she spent at least half, if not more, of what I made. But there was that agreement, in my safe with my guns and our passports. But my paychecks were actually deposited into a trust I had control of, technically the companies I worked for hired the trust and I was the trusts’ employee and trustee and trustor. I always thought it was mostly to save on taxes, but the pre-nup was protecting the trust. There was a specific clause in the pre-nup stating that the trust and everything in it was completely mine. “Holy shit! You think that was only for the first company? It’s a *pre-nuptial agreement*. For the whole marriage! Including the trust I set up before we got married. Everything is in that trust. Don’t you even read the checks I give you? Your law school really was crap! I’m glad your dad was stuck with that bill. Seriously?!?!?”. Then I started to giggle again. Now she really did look like she might kill me. But she was stuck and she knew it. Actually, she is pretty smart, I don’t know how she fooled herself into thinking she would be able to take advantage of me when we had a legal agreement in place. “Well, I could tell people things about you……,” her voice almost dripped with venom. I assumed she meant that I was open about my bisexuality while we dated, although I had been strictly faithful to her after our 3rd date. “Yeah, it’s 2019. Nobody cares anymore,” I replied breezily. “Your new Utah bosses might!” “My team is about to unveil some code that will increase revenue by close to a billion dollars this year, and more next. Pretty sure they’ll get over some rumors their Chief Technology Officer’s ex-wife is throwing around,” I gave her a tight smile. “Fuck you, asshole!” And with that, she stormed out of the kitchen. I couldn’t help myself, “What’s for dinner, hon?” I cried after her. Nothing but the click of her heels on the marble for a a response. I felt proud of myself for that last zinger. But then I realized the kids would be home from practice soon. And telling them was not going to be fun. “And we’re going to talk about where the kids go, you don’ just get them!!!!” I yelled, loudly. Crap. I didn’t know everybody’s routine enough to even know who was coming home first. I was scrolling through my phone trying to figure out if I’d be seeing my daughter or son first, with the bd news. Then I heard the angry clickety-clack of Allison’s heels coming back. She entered the kitchen with a finger pointed at my face. “I DO get the kids, and you better believe you’re going to take care of them. Don’t you dare think you just get to go off and do whatever you want!” she yelled at me. “Whatever I want? You’re the one who is doing this. And you better listen to me, bitch! I am going to take care of the kids, and if they want to be with me they’re going to, and if you think you’re going to use them to get me to pay for your golf, and tennis, and clubs you’re fucking wrong!”. I took a deep breathe, almost sobbing. “If you’re willing to work with me, and you’re reasonable about where the kids go, I’d be willing to discuss some form of support to you. But if you make it hard with lawyers, I will grind you to dust. You know what I can be like,” I snarled, sneery at her. For most of our time together, Allison was the one who was always encouraging me to stand up for myself and fight. She wanted every little thing at work to get blown up, always urging me to threaten to quit, or to go to HR, or to sue people. I was usually much calmer, seeking to find common ground, believing that losing a battle here and there would not keep me from getting to where I eventually wanted to be, professionally. And time proved me right. But she had also seen what I could be like when the few times I got really worked up, really and epically pissed. Once when a company tried to screw me, and a couple times when competitors went too far messing with people I worked with. I could be medieval. “The kids will be home soon. Are you going to tell them, are we going to do it together, or do you want me to?” I took another breathe and very calmly say. She looked at me blankly, apparently the afternoon had gotten too drastic for her liking. “You can tell them; they like you better anyway!” I stared at her incredulously. I knew it was true. But…..”If you think that’s true why on earth do you want to take them with you??” She gave me the suffocating fish look again and then turned and clicked back to her room. “You bring lawyers into this and you’re dust!”, I called after her trim, retreating back. It might have been the cruelest thing I ever said to her. I sighed heavily and pulled my phone back out. I shot a quick text to the company’s lawyer, asking him to set up the appointments with the best divorce lawyers in the Valley, just in case. Within seconds my phone started blowing up with the other C-suite executives and senior VP’s from work texting to ask what was going on. I ignored all of them and sighed again. I opened the browser on my phone and ordered a couple of large pizzas and then poured myself a bourbon and dropped one large cube into it. Then I sat in the kitchen, at the island and waited. Soon enough I heard a car int the driveway and then the front door open. Cleats on real, polished hardwood floors make a unique sound. That would be Ben. His sister would have taken her cleats off at the door, if she even wore them home from practice. Both the kids are very athletic, but in wildly different ways. Ben, or Benjamin, as Allison ALWAYS called him, took after his mom. He was eleven at the time, whip-thin and tall, almost 5ft 5, but only weighing about 85 pounds. He had recently taken up running, a natural offshoot of his soccer. He was good at soccer, but maybe not great. But in his cross-country running club, and in swimming, he was already recognized as a regional caliber athlete at in his age group. “Hey, buddy, I’m in here. And take your cleats off!” l called out. I never pushed either kid at sports, figuring they would either take to them or not. It didn’t matter much to me. I played football (poorly) in high school, but loved cross country, although my performance there was even worse. After my time in the Army, I played rugby in college, and as a graduate student, but as I moved firmly into middle age, my weekend warrior tendencies were satisfied with long distance cycling and swimming (long distance being another way to say slow). I figured the kids would either like sports or not. That attitude was at odds with not just a lot of the other parents, but also with Allison, who felt there were certain sports a “young man” should do and others a “proper young woman” should do. Anyway, Ben walked into the kitchen, with grass stains on both his soccer shorts and jersey, his long socks still pulled up over shin guards. Luckily for him, soccer, track and swimming were all firmly in his mother’s list of “approved” activities for a young man. But what was not, and what I heard about all the time, and what he heard obliquely, and maybe not so obliquely, was how sensitive he was. Ben was a beautiful boy, almost delicate and very gentle. A cross word from a teacher or coach would devastate him for days. But he was a great, great kid, he was so kind and really wanted to live up to everybody’s expectations. He was a grinder at school and on the field. School didn’t come naturally for him, but he worked hard, just like he did on the field, he always tried to do more than his teachers and coaches wanted. As his various clubs and teams go more competitive he was starting to see that he was good, sometimes really good, at what he did and I could see a lot of confidence building in him. There was no denying though, that he bordered on being effeminate, which was not great for a kid dealing with middle school and everything that meant. “What’s up, dad, where’ s mom? What’s for dinner?” he said as he slid onto a stool next to me at the oversized island. He beamed up at me. I smiled at him and nodded, “I just ordered a couple of pizzas. Your mom is upstairs. I’m not sure she’s gonna eat with us. You know how she feels about pizza, especially delivered.” I wrinkled my nose to show my disgust at the thought of somebody delivering pizza instead of eating like civilized people. He immediately got the joke and started to crack up. Plus, the loved pizza. Well, actually, he still does. “You like the new team and coach?” I asked. “Yeah, they seem pretty cool. The coach is kinda, I don’t know, easy? Like, compared to the way it was back home?” He looked at me as if to seek my approval of his opinion. “Hey, kiddo, when you’re playing for a scholarship, or money, you can take it seriously. Just have fun right now,” I reached out and ruffled his longish, curly brown hair. I smiled at him and almost choked when I saw him smile back, “I know, dad.” “Go get something to drink,” I almost croaked, my throat tight at the thought of overturning his whole world. Luckily I was saved when another car pulled into the driveway. I heard the front door open again. And then silence until I heard a pair of shoes thunk onto the little plastic tray in the entry way that Allison said should contain all dirty shoes upon entrance. “Kim, we’re in here,” I softly yell. My daughter Kim, rounds the corner, sliding in her socks, wet with sweat and absolutely glowing from practice. She drops her backpack on the kitchen isle and moves to the fridge, hip checking her brother away from the fridge where he was filling his glass with water. “Thanks”, she smiles brightly as she takes his half full glass. As I’d expect, Ben smiles at her and turns to get another glass. It’s not really that she bullies him, I know she is fiercely loyal to him and protective of him. But when it’s just the two of them, well, older, bigger sister gets her way…… I watched her, with the glass upraised, draining it, her wet neck working up and down as she replenished her liquids. To her constant, and probably everlasting horror, while her brother took after his mother, Kim is my baby girl. Again, tall, but……thick. Knowing she would never be the lanky model she wanted to be, she aspired at least to be a slim thick girl and was always on the edge of attaining that. My mom would have called her ”slightly chunky”. Like me, she really needed to watch what she ate and made sure to get plenty of exercise. And like me, she carried a lot of weight in her butt and legs, admittedly her butt and muscular thighs probably looked a lot better in jeans than mine. At the time she was 14, almost 15 and already stood 5ft 9 and probably 145 lbs. In no world was she fat, but she just didn’t have the build to have 6 pack abs, no matter how much her mom criticized her and how much she dieted and did sit ups. I think she would have been a tomboy for much longer than she was, if not for her mother’s constant reminders for her to be more feminine and proper. She could never be skinny, but she was an early bloomer and her boobs were ahead of most of her friends’, I think she must have taken after my mom. At the time she was perhaps a 34b cup. I noticed a change for the worse in Allison’s attitude toward Kim after she really started to develop, almost like her mom was threatened by her. All in all, none of those physical characteristics were the ideal for her or her friends, other than maybe the boobs, but the thick butt and legs weren’t what they saw on tv or the movies. She was also very pale and had freckles across her face, facts she was not in love with. As much as Ben heard from his mom about how soft he was, Kim constantly heard comments about her weight. She was turning into a great field hockey and softball player. But it was never enough for Allison. When Kim expressed interest in possibly getting into skiing with the idea of maybe being on her school’s ski team after our move to Utah, Allison’s response was, “Great, another sport for the bigger girls.”. Kim was crushed and did not bring up skiing again. I had made a mental note to make sure she got out on the slopes after the snow started. Kim had also expressed a lot of interest in horses, which is what Allison did when she was younger. “Oh, my god, can you imagine her butt and thighs in riding tights? My girlfriends would have died laughing,” privately, Allison would say to me. And to top it off, Kim was the smarter of the two, she really did take after me, even though she was a bruiser on the field, she showed an early and strong aptitude for math and the physical sciences. Kim was not a grinder. School and sports came easily to her, perhaps too easily. Where her brother struggled she excelled. But where he was strong, she was not the most sensitive person and she wore her physical abilities as armor. Of the two I was more worried about her. Ben would land on his feet, people were drawn to him. He was kind and considerate. Kim could easily push people away and I worried about how much of herself she kept hidden in terms of her intelligence and emotions. She was much more sensitive than she let on. I was afraid she would keep hiding some of those things until it was too late. “Hey, dad, how’s it going? Where’s mom? What’s for dinner?” she smacked her lips and put her (Ben’s) glass down on the counter. “What?” she said in response to her brother’s snickering. “Dad just ordered some pizza, and mom may not join us,” he said, enjoying knowing something she didn’t. “Your brother just literally asked those exact questions about a minute before you came in. How was practice?” I winked at him “It was okay, it’s super easy here, they actually stop playing if you hit somebody’s shins!” she snorted in disbelief. Ben started giggling again, she looked at him, getting annoyed. “Hmm, I think your brother feels the same way about soccer out here,” I said, hoping to defuse the kindly, but pointed teasing between the two of them. She looked at me and then at him, and grinned, “Well, yeah, soccer is kind of supposed to be easy right? Oh, look at me, I got fouled,” she looked at me and then at him, and grinned, falling dramatically to the kitchen tile, mocking a flop. Ben giggles, but then surprises me, “Hey, anytime you want to go practice with me. We can play one on one, on a full field,” I would not have expected him to stand up for himself a year ago. “Yeah, whatever, if you ever need to borrow one my skirts for a big game let me know,” realizing she could never keep up with her brother in terms of the sheer amount of running that would be involved. She dismissively flicked her plaid uniform skirt and stuck her tongue out at her brother. “What evs. Mr. Germain said he thought I might be ready to break a 4 minute mile by the start of college. Are you gonna be? You’re not allowed to carry a stick with you……,” He ducked as she grabbed a sponge from the sink and hurled it at him. “Hey, monkeys knock it off!” I didn’t raise my voice, but also rarely spoke that directly to them, the both immediately froze. Usually their mom was the one who could be counted on to ruin a light hearted moment. “Sorry, dad, I was just playing around,” Kim quickly said. “Yeah, sorry”, her brother echoed. “No, no, you guys are fine. It’s just I need to have a talk with both of you. I don’t think your mom is going to come down, so we should just do it,”, Looking at both of them, my heart breaking for both of them. “Then we can have pizza,” I feel a thin smile on my lips. Kim slides onto the stool right next to me, and weirdly, I notice how red her knees looks, and how one is scabbed over. It must have been a rougher practice than she let on. Her brother sits behind her on another stool, they both look at me, expectantly. “So, listen, you mom and have been talking, and…well, I guess it’s gotten to the point where we’re going to go ahead and separate. I think she wants to go back to Illinois.” I’m not sure what I was expecting, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what I got. “Oh, cool,” Ben literally said. “I’m surprised it took this long,” Kim said, expressing a lot of emotion and insight for her. “Umm, so you guys don’t seem super….upset…?” I looked at both of them. Neither spoke for a long 10 seconds. Finally, Kim broke the silence, “Well, it’s not like you guys actually , you know, like each other anymore, right?” “Yeah, you should at least be happy,” Ben said, agreeing with his sister. I was floored by their reactions. I’m positive I was much more upset when my folks told me they were getting divorced. Ben stood up and moved past his sister, standing in front of me, he gave me a big hug. “I love you dad,” he said. I hugged him and back this time could not stop the tears from rolling down my chest. Kim scooched off the stool and wrapped her arms around both of us, “I love you too, dad.” I hugged them and smelled clean sweat and grass and cried just a little bit. After several more shouting matches over the next week, Allison and I came to an agreement. We would let each of the kids decide where they wanted to live. If at least one of them wanted to return to Chicago with her, I would buy a house or condo they could live in until whichever of the kids, or both of them, were out of that place for good. I would also give Allison ten thousand a month for as long as she had either of the kids with her. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but surviving on that, even without a house payment to make would mean a significant downgrade to the lifestyle she had gotten used to. I figured if she wanted more she could get a job. Or not. I really didn’t care. When the four of us talked, we told the kids they could have a few days to make the decision about where they wanted to live, and assured them that however they choose, we would both keep loving them and we’d make visiting each other a priority. I was not surprised when Ben immediately said he wanted to live with me. I could tell his mom was angry, but she had the grace to not show it too much. Kim said she wanted to think about it for a few days which we all said would be a good idea. The next day I was in my downstairs bedroom, sitting on the bed typing up memos for work when I heard a soft knock on the doorjamb. Kim was standing there in black leggings and a red sports bra, her hair plastered to her head, her arms and upper chest glistening with sweat; she had clearly just stepped off the treadmill, or the stair climber, one of which she used religiously for at least an hour a day. “Dad? Can I talk to you?” She asked, clearly bothered by something. “Sure, hon, come on in.” I pated the bed beside me. She crawled up onto the bed and sat next to me, her back against the headboard. She rubbed her hands nervously up and down her thighs. “Umm, I don’t want you to be mad at me……..,” she mumbled, looking down at her lap. Sensing what she was going to say, I put a hand on top of hers. “Hon, it’s fine if you want to go with your mom back to Chicago. I’m not mad and it doesn’t mean I won’t keep loving you just as much as I do right now. “It’s, it’s just, she’d be all ALONE,” she sniffled and then began to shake as she tried not to cry. “Shh, it’s okay, honey, it really is,” I leaned over and kissed the top of her head and wrapped an arm around her. I held her while she cried and I was stunned that she wanted to go live with her mom, a woman who criticized everything she did and tried to control every aspect of her life because she didn’t want her mom to be alone. For being the one I thought was less sensitive , she was really ready to take one for the team on this. “It’s fine honey. You can live with her and you can visit out here and Ben and I will go back there, and if you change your mind you can always move back out here. It’s fine,” I rocked her back and forth a little and said We made the move fairly early in the summer so the kids could get settled. Kim and Allison took the rest of the summer to move back to Chicago, they found a condo near downtown where Kim could easily get to her old school in the northern suburbs. Meanwhile, in the hills to the east of Salt Lake, Ben and I settled in. I bought new master bedroom furniture and moved in the big room upstairs, Ben concentrated on his running and swimming clubs and played soccer. I wondered how thing would go over the next year………. *This is my first attempt at both writing a story and using HTML. All constructive comments and suggestions are welcome at: s.smith170 *at* yahoo *dot* com Flames will be cheerfully ignored!*