Gone with the Wind

"But it wasn't cheating," she said. "You gave me permission. I on the other hand didn't give you permission to go out and have an affair with this home wrecker. You cheated. What I did was to go out and try some different guys. There were no emotional attachments just sex. I didn't try to find someone to replace you. I just wanted to have a little bit of fun and become my own person. Do you know what it's like to be always known as Kyle's mom, or Wendy's mom, or Dave's wife, but never as Lisa? I was going crazy. I just needed a little bit of a break."

"Well if it's too much for you, then you should be happy," I said. "...Because, a big assed chunk of your problems are gone. You're no longer burdened with being my wife. And although you'll always be Kyle and Wendy's mother, Amanda is their mom. So you go on out there and explore. I think you should utilize your Christopher Columbus genes to the max. We're done Lisa. Now that we've spoken, I can file the papers tomorrow. We've both signed them. I hope you have a happy life. But realistically for the good of the kids, yourself and even your parents, I think you should move out of town and start again. You can always come and visit the kids but it isn't fair for them to have to be the town whore's kids."

"But Dave it wasn't my fault. It was fear. It was the storm. It just scared me so much that I lost all of my inhibitions to my sense of self preservation. My fear just blew my good sense away."

"Frankly, my dear I don't give a damn," I said, and Amanda broke out laughing. "More than your inhibitions were blown away. Our marriage is gone with the wind too. I'll honor the settlement but the papers will be filed tomorrow. If you get out of that bed right now, you might be able to catch Steve." The look she gave me when I suggested that was priceless.

Lisa went to court to try to fight the divorce and was unsuccessful. Over the six months she all but disappeared, but there were rumors that she'd gotten hooked on drugs and had left town.

"We still had to wait another six months for the divorces to become final. Of course that meant that Amanda had to waddle her beautiful ass down the aisle almost seven months pregnant. We had three flower girls all scattering flowers happily all over the church until the entire place smelled more like a funeral parlor than a wedding. Kyle was a terrible ring bearer because he as usual had clamped onto Amanda's hand and refused to let go.

In a strange turn of events, since Amanda had no family, Mark had volunteered to give her away. As we stepped up to the altar, he whispered to me, "This is the second time that I'm giving you a woman that's like a daughter to me. Promise me you'll try to keep this one."

"I do," I laughed. The preacher looked at me strangely thinking that I had said my line too early out of nervousness.

Amanda and I couldn't take our eyes off of each other. As I stared at her beautiful face I realized that all of the things we'd gone through to be together had forged a bond that dynamite couldn't blow apart. I smiled as I realized that more than our marriages had gone with the wind. So too had gone all of our problems. We had nothing but clear sailing ahead of us and we lived happily ever after. We did have a boy and of course we named him Mark Vegas Thomas.

The end.