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My Seven Sins
Chapter 1: Greed
(mf, first, MF, hot wife)
"Dude, are you sure this is a good idea?" My best friend,
James, asked as he helped me stuff a large suitcase into my new
convertible. "I mean, it hasn't even been a year. I know you don't
have to work anymore, but do you really need to drop everything
and go do this."
He was right. The whole thing was probably a very bad idea.
It was only about nine months since my wife had passed away,
and I still felt lost and adrift. Because we had not been able to
have children, we had put our lives into our work. Together we
built a software company that dominated three niche markets.
For over a decade we had worked hard, telling ourselves every
day that when we felt more established our lives would slow
down. Maybe we would adopt or get involved in youth activities,
but was always something for the future.
Then suddenly things did slow down, but in a tragic way.
After a few weeks complaining about a pain in her side, my wife
finally went to the doctor. Unfortunately, it was a highly
aggressive form of cancer. Within a month she was dead. I was
left a wealthy man, but all alone.
For a few months, I struggled with life. The managers of the
company were competent enough that they did not let it fall
apart. Eventually, though, I knew that my grief would destroy the
company that we had worked so hard to build. When I got an
offer to sell the business for $100 million, I sold up and dropped
out.
I could have wallowed in sorrow for the rest of my life, but,
James was there to help me through. We grew up together,
playing Little League and high school football. We had lost touch
after that, but eventually, we ended up living in the city far from
the small town where we started. He was the best man at my
wedding, and then was there to pull me through, when my life fell
apart. Now, he was going to watch over everything until I got
back.
"So you are really going to do it, go see all seven of them,"
James continued when he realized I was indeed serious. "I know
they've all agreed to see you, but no good can come of this. I'm
sure that they've all moved on at this point. Be careful that you're
not hurting them so you can help yourself, if you're really helping
yourself at all."
Just like James, most of my friends thought I was crazy.
However, when I set my mind to something I could become near
obsessive. They probably thought that's where I was now, which
was basically true. Before my wife, there had been seven women
with whom I had been involved. With each, one of my personal
failings had brought about the end. None of the endings were
good, and as a firm believer in karma. I believed that my current
misery was the universe's reply to the things I had done wrong.
Through my past actions, I had killed by wife. It probably was not
true, but it was how I felt.
After I had put the last bag into the trunk, my friend and I
exchanged a guy hug, and after one last promise to take care my
affairs, he waved goodbye as I pulled out of the driveway. It was
a beautiful late-spring Monday morning and I felt that somehow
this journey would put things back in order.
* * *
I did not see any good reason to take the most direct route,
as I drove through the lower mid-Atlantic morning. The first
person I was to meet would not be available until the next day
anyway. So I had an early lunch at a small café I remembered in
Virginia, and then a big cheese steak for dinner in Philadelphia.
After that, I drove north into the Pennsylvania evening,
eventually turning onto an interstate highway that happened to
be one of the biggest East-West trucking routes.
As the twilight turned to dusk, the headlights of the tractor-
trailers in my rearview mirror felt like ghosts chasing me. At the
same time, taillights ahead cautioned me to stop. For the first
time since I had begun driving that morning, I questioned
whether making this trip was a good idea. My first stop might be
the easiest or might be the most delicate. It was to my
hometown, where the first ghost appeared, and the first skeleton
was buried.
Soon enough, I was turning off the highway to a typical rural
interstate exit. Immediately surrounding the exit were two truck
stops, a slew of fast food restaurants, and a moderately priced
hotel. If I was just passing through it was the type of place I
would have stayed. However, like the truckers for which this
place existed, I was just passing through. After I sped past the
last of the street lights, I drove past darkened farms and small
wooden churches, each built to hold only a few farm families.
Eventually, I came to the outskirts of a small Rust Belt town.
It was not really much, just the shell of a town I remembered
from my childhood. The last of the factories had disappeared
since I had left, and few new jobs had come after that. Those
that were left had something to do with the prison that had been
built back in the '80s, while everything else was closing. As I
drove through the old downtown, the spirits of past generations
of my family seemed to surround me. When I left, there was an
unspoken understanding that I would never return. Now specters
of what I had left behind, what I had abandoned, ambivalently
greeted me. In one sense it was disquieting; on another, it felt as
if they were preparing me for what would come ahead.
At the far end of town, I pulled into a small motel. It was the
kind that was popular when I was a kid, with no interior hallways,
and doors opening directly to the parking lot. I could not say that
it was nice, but it was not dirty or run down either. Instead, it
was the kind of place where one could crash for the night and not
get so comfortable that they would want to stay.
When I was safely in my room and ready to settle down for
the night, I sent an email from my phone that read, "I'm here." A
few minutes later I heard notification beep. The reply message
said, "Meet me at the old diner tomorrow at nine." As I drifted off
to sleep, I thought of Carly Johnson, the high school girlfriend I
would see the next morning.
* * *
As I sat in the diner the next morning eating an old-style
country breakfast of fried eggs, sausage links, and hash brown
potatoes, I waited to see what Carly would look like. I had not
seen her in over 20 years, and I was sure she looked different.
We had known each other for most of our lives, but did not start
dating until halfway through high school. I do not know why we
did, because we never really had much in common. I was the
popular athlete with the bright future ahead of me; while she was
the farm girl who everyone assumed would marry young and stay
around. The fact is that she was cute in that All-American, girl
next door sort of way, short with blonde hair and a big smile. We
were different, but we always had fun while we were together.
And we were a pretty innocent couple, at that. Occasionally,
we missed curfew because we were parked somewhere making
out until late. Sometimes, teachers would scold us for public
displays of affection in the school hallways. And once, we were
politely asked to leave the movie theater, when an usher saw my
hand was up her shirt. But that was as far as anything ever went.
At least that is how it went until after graduation. When the
structure of formal education ends, you enter a confusing place
between adolescence and adulthood. Some people go to work
immediately, while some start to learn a trade. Then there were
the people like me who had a summer of nothing until college
began. Though she could have started classes at the community
college immediately, Carly took the summer off with me. We
worked part-time jobs in the morning, her at a summer camp and
me laying bricks for my uncle's masonry company. In the late
afternoon we met up and try to fill the evening with fun things to
do.
We had never really seen each other that much before, as
school nights had been reserved for homework. While some
couples might become sick of each other when they are suddenly
thrust together, we did not. Every day we felt closer and closer.
Being with her all the time made me feel comfortable, or as I
feared, complacent. I had always planned for more than a small-
town life. I was going to a prestigious university to study
computers and planned to make a life in some big city afterward.
However, even doing manual labor all day did not feel like a
chore, when I knew that I was going to see Carly in the evening.
My hometown did not seem so cramped when she and I could go
anywhere we wanted.
Eventually, I felt things getting to a tipping point. When I
was alone in bed at night, my thoughts always turned towards
two seemingly mutually exclusive things. The first was Carly, how
I wanted to spend time with her, and how I dreamed of things
going to the next level. But I also thought about all the things I
wanted, the lights and excitement of a city, a job that I would
want to go to every day and would not leave me with a broken
body by the time I was 50, and a classy wife who would slither
across the bed to me wearing satin negligée only to push me
down and have her way with me. At some point I had to decide
between the two.
And so it was that on the night before I would make the
drive to Pittsburgh to start college, we were parked next to an old
abandoned house that was set back in the woods at the end of
the dirt road. Even though the summer temperatures break early
in the country, it was still cool for an August evening, feeling
more like mid-October. Still, we kept the windows down and let it
cool mountain breezes gently filtered through. The ribbits of frogs
and chirping crickets cut off any sounds from the main road about
a quarter of a mile away.
Though I had been driving, once we parked I switched to the
passenger seat. Carly sat on my lap, her head turned to the side,
as we gently kissed. We started off just like we had every other
night that summer. It was tender and fun, but soon I felt
distracted. My thoughts turn to the next day, moving into the
dorms, and meeting all kinds of new people, including new
women. Until that moment I had never thought of anyone else
while I was with Carly, but suddenly I saw a woman in a long
blue gown holding a glass of wine in the low lights of a party. I
cannot tell who she was and I did not see myself, but I knew she
was there with me.
Carly must have noticed me drift off because as I sat on the
passenger seat, she straddled me. Placing her hands on either
side of my face, she pulled me towards her and kissed me deeper
than she ever had before. And then she stopped, and whispered
in my ear that I should recline the seat because she had a
surprise for me.
As I pulled the release on the seat, it gently reclined so that
I was on my back. In the moonlight, Carly slipped her shirt over
her head. Still a teenager, her breasts were not very big, so that
night she had not worn a bra, something that I had not noticed.
Leaning down, she kissed me again-gently at first and then with
the desperate passion that begged me to remember her. For a
moment, I could feel what was in her soul, she wanted for me to
stay or to take her with me.
I should have told her to stop because I knew I was leaving,
but I justified to myself that I would see her on holidays. If
something was meant to be it would happen. I did not say
anything, though. I wanted to see where the evening would take
us.
Carly knelt up again and took her hands and put them on
her breasts, she looked down at me and told me to be gentle. I
had felt her up before, and she had never complained about me
being too rough, so I knew she was talking about what would
come afterwards. Tonight we would go all the way; it would be
her way of trying to keep me.
When I nodded my head agreeing to her quiet request, she
leaned down and kissed me again. Then lifting herself back up,
she effortlessly removed my shirt. Pulling me up, we kissed with
our bare chests touching for the first time. Even though the
breeze made it slightly chilly, I still felt the heat between us.
Carly's body was willing to keep me warm, probably for longer
than I would want it.
Eventually, we ended up naked with her shorts and my
jeans pushed onto the floor of the car. We had switched places,
so that Carly could be on bottom and see my face as I entered
her for the first time. I reached back and opened up the glove
compartment, so get a condom that I kept there just in case this
finally happened. In a voice so soft that it was almost inaudible,
she gently said I did not need to wear it. I realized that while she
did care about the consequences of having unprotected sex, she
probably hoped that those consequences would be her ending up
pregnant.
For a moment, a quiet panic came over me. What lengths
was Carly willing to go to get me to stay? Did she want to try to
trap me and make sure I stayed around? Did she think that giving
herself to me in that way would get me to come back? However,
the panic was extinguished by the reality of my predicament. I
was so turned on at that point that I was not going to refuse sex.
But I did not want to baby, not now, and probably not with Carly.
So instead, I rolled the condom onto myself.
In an absolute sense, I do not know whether the sex was
good. However, I know that is first time teenage sex goes, it
went well. Carly only had momentary pain when I entered her but
then began to really enjoy it. Eventually, as I gently slid myself in
and out of her, she looked up at me, her mouth open as if in
surprise, huffing every time I thrust inside. Finally, she pulled me
down towards her and with a grunt ground herself up into me. I
did not realize it then, but reflecting on it years later, I knew that
she came. Pulling towards her made me go off at the same time.
I pushed as deep as I could inside of her and filled the condom so
that I thought it would burst.
We did not feel any need to get dressed quickly, so we
adjusted ourselves so we could cuddle with my front to Carly's
back in the rapidly chilling night. Though the feeling had been
wonderful, I could tell it was different for me than it was for her.
To me it was the natural culmination, the apex, of our
relationship. In that way for me, it was a success, a victory.
However, for Carly, I could tell it was a failure. She then knew
that though she offered everything to me, but the next day I
would be gone and she would be left alone to find someone else
and start over.
The next night when I was settled in my dorm and my
roommate was out, I did call her. However, the sadness I could
hear in her voice made me feel bad. That coupled with wanting to
be out experiencing the life around campus made me wish to get
off the phone. Eventually, the calls got less and less frequent
because I could not stand the sadness. Over Christmas, Carly
gave my class ring back to me. It was definitely over.
* * *
"So Spencer McCabe finally comes home," a sassy voice call
me to attention.
Looking up, I saw a middle-aged, but still young looking,
woman. Carly Johnson still had the blonde hair and big smile, but
now her chest was much bigger. She was not skinny like she had
been in high school either; she definitely had the curves of
somebody who was a wife and mother. To me, she looked
beautiful.
I started to stand and give her a hug, but she told me not to
and slid down into the seat across from me. After an awkward
pause, she asked me why I wanted to see her. When I explained
about my wife dying and needing to put old demons to rest, she
immediately said she was not available. She was indeed married,
to a guy from high school who had been the president of the
Future Farmers of America. She had five children, including a 15-
year-old son, and daughters ranging in age from 7 to 13. She
was a teacher's aide at one of the elementary schools, and had
no complaints about her life. She did not need me coming back
into it.
I was devastated. I had not expected for her to want any
kind of relationship with me, and it was not why I had come here,
but part of me was very hurt. When your first love finally tells you
that they do not love you and will never love you again, it is a
crushing blow. In that moment, I realized it was true that you
never forgot your first love and that any pain from that
relationship would be the pain that hurt the most. Looking across
the table, I did not see anger or hatred, only finality.
Carly asked me how old she was when her son was born.
Always quick with math, I determined that since we were both
41, she would have been 26 when he was born. After asking me
to subtract one year for being pregnant, I said that she had been
25. When she added that her son was a honeymoon baby and she
had been with his father for two years before the wedding, I
realized what she was getting at. The girl who everybody thought
would marry young had waited until I had finished college before
moving on. Seeing my realization, my high school girlfriend said,
"Yes, Spencer. I waited for you. I waited just in case you changed
your mind."
Sadly, I nodded my head and told her that I was afraid she
had, and continued that that was why I had come back. Even if I
wanted anybody in my life at that point, I did not deserve
anything from her, and I would not ask anything from her either.
I really just wanted to make things as right as possible.
I had expected a negative response, but inexplicitly that
simple admission seemed to make everything in the right. With a
caring smile, Carly asked me about my wife and whether we had
any children. I saw the sympathy in her eyes when I told her that
no kids ever came along and we never got around to adopting. I
tried to tell her about the business we had built together and how
that was like a child to us, but she and I both knew that they
were empty words. Ironically, it was I that had left her alone over
20 years ago, but she had found a family and community. I was
the one was that ended up alone.
We left the diner and walked around the old downtown like
friends. She told me about her children and her husband. She
gave me the gossip on who from high school had stayed and
gotten married, who was divorced, and who had unfortunately
passed away. We talked about her parents and mine, who had
passed away soon after I graduated college. Occasionally, she
would even poke me with her elbow like we were too high school
kids again. Finally, at about 3 o'clock, she invited me to come and
watch her son play baseball. I thought it was strange, but she
said, "You're an old friend now. You are always welcome in this
town."
We drove in Carly's car to the other side of town to where
the high school stood. The bleachers at the baseball field were
only about half full, but that was probably as many people as
were going to come. Surprisingly, she pulled me over to sit next
to her husband and daughters. Amazingly, the man was not at all
surprised that I was there, and greeted me with a big warm
handshake saying, "Welcome home."
It was strangely pleasant to sit there with her family and
watch the game, but at the same time I wanted what Carly had.
She had somebody to grow old with, and people who would give
her grandchildren. Her legacy would go on for generations. My
only legacy was a company that I had just sold.
After the game, Carly's husband offered to give me a ride
back to the diner. However, I declined telling him that I had been
in the car for most of the day before and would be in the car for
most of the next day. The walk would do me good. In reality,
though, I needed time to sort out what I was thinking. The
husband was a very nice guy, and I wanted to be him. I wanted
Carly and her children, not sexually, but as the family I did not
have.
The sun was setting as I walked back through downtown.
When I was young, there was still life there after the work day
was done. There were churches that had events that night, some
bars at which people would hangout, the Masonic Lodge, the Elks
club, you name it. There were things going on. Now, it was
desolate. Of the few businesses that were there, mostly lawyers
and medical professionals, were closed by that point in the
evening. While the large Rust Belt cities were making comebacks,
the small towns that had one or two factories and were not really
near anything else were still slowly dying. I decided that since I
was rich I could do something about it. When I finally got home, I
would talk with my lawyer and accountant and see how much I
could use to start a business. I was not sure what would be, but I
knew it would be something that would give people jobs and I
would put it right here in the middle of downtown.
* * *
After a good country dinner at the diner, I drove the
convertible back to the motel. I needed time to process the day,
so I sat in an uncomfortable chair at the small table in the room
and doodled on a piece of paper. The more I thought about it,
any bit of sadness began to disappear. Instead, I felt a sense of
satisfaction.
I had just about finished processing my thoughts and was
about to get ready for a shower when I heard a knock on the
door. There was no peek hole in the door, so I fastened the chain
lock and opened it partway. Before I could look outside, though, I
heard a quiet voice say, "Spencer, will you come with me."
As if drawn towards the rocks by a siren, I grab my wallet
and keys and stepped outside. There in the flashing dull light of
the dying fluorescent floodlight, I saw Carly with a smile that was
sad, scared, and expectant all at the same time. She did not look
like the woman I walked around town with all day, but she was
not done up either. Rather, it looked as if she had freshened up a
little bit after the game, perhaps had dinner, but had come as the
woman she was, not pretending to be anything else. She was
beautiful.
Without saying a word, she took me by the hand and led me
to her car. When I nervously looked around to see if anybody was
watching, she replied in an assuring voice, "He knows I'm here."
By the total for voice, I knew something was going to happen
that night-something I had not expected.
Instead of driving, she gave me her keys. She did not say
where to go when I pulled out of the parking lot, but I knew
where she intended for me to take her. We skirted downtown and
drove off into the country. Eventually, we came to the dirt road
that went up to the dilapidated house in the woods. It was more
overgrown than I remembered it, but was easy enough to drive
back. As we slowly pulled up next to the house, I noticed that the
roof had fallen in and the rest look like it could go at any
moment. At the same time, though, it still had pride.
We were not the scrawny teenagers we had been all those
years ago, but luckily Carly's car was big enough that we could fit
into the same position in which we had just before I left for
college. The kisses were not tentative like they had been then,
but they were not passionate like a lovers were either. There
were matter-of-fact and filled with affection, but not really love.
This was something that Carly needed to do. It would be two
things at the same time. First, it was a way to show me what I
had missed, but was also a way of saying goodbye. It was what it
should have been the last time we were here.
As we kissed, our hands began to explore each other's
bodies, to feel the changes that we had missed in our years
apart. When Carly slipped her shirt off, I noticed that her breasts
were much larger than the last minute seen them and they
sagged a little, and I could see stretch marks on her belly. Even
with any flaws age may have brought, though, she was beautiful.
Soon enough, we were both naked. As I knelt between her
legs, I whispered that I did not have any protection, but she told
me to do it without one. When I still hesitated, she told me that
her tubes were tied after her youngest was born. There was
nothing to be afraid of.
Unlike when we were teenagers, I did not go right inside of
her. Instead, I gently caressed her down below. Her hair there
was long and still silky, obviously never shaved and probably
never even trimmed. At the same time, though, I could somehow
feel experience. This would not be awkward sex between two
teenagers.
When I slid myself inside of her, she felt warm and
welcoming, like coming into a warm house on a cold winter night.
Naturally, it felt different than I remembered. But it was much
more than I could have expected it to be. As all of our
movements synchronized, Carly gently told me that I was doing it
right, just how she wanted it. Even as I could feel her body
tensing, she spoke gently, telling me that she wanted to feel me
come inside of her. Her orgasm was quiet when we came at the
same time. And she encouraged me to get every drop insid of
her. When I was finally done, she kissed me and said, "Now isn't
that what you wish you had done the first time?" In reality, it
was.
After a few minutes of enjoying our bodies pressed against
each other's, I got back in the driver's seat and drove back down
the overgrown dirt road, with Carly now curled up on my
shoulder. We skirted the outside of town again, and made our
way back to my motel. The drive was short, but the afterglow
made it feel eternal.
When we got out of the car in the parking lot, Carly made no
move towards my motel room. I felt awkward, not knowing how
to end this unexpected evening, but when my high school
girlfriend placed her hand behind my head and pulled me down
for one last deep kiss, I felt at ease. When our faces parted, she
told me that I was always welcome here, but what had happened
that tonight would not happen again. Long ago, her husband
agreed that if I ever came back, she could have one time with
me. She needed to get the 'what could have been' out of her
system. We were now just old friends again. I was fine with that.
Back in my hotel room, I did not feel like I needed to
process anything else. Everything in this town was in place, and I
was ready to continue my journey. The next morning I would
drive to Pittsburgh.
END CHAPTER 1