1. Ignoring the Signs (Circa 1978)


    Date: 9/24/2015, Categories: Mature, Author: marlowe, Rating: 0, Source: LushStories

    As soon as you walked through the door the unmistakable aroma of weed and the familiar smell of infidelity left you in no doubt that you had entered the Cavendish Club. As usual the place was full of desperate people, some searching for everlasting love, most of them just after a one night stand. The events over the last few days had left him depressed and emotionally drained. The day had started badly and progressively got worse. It started with an early morning telephone call from Stella Mason informing him that his friend, Gary Fowler had been rushed to hospital after sustaining serious injuries in a head-on car crash. Stella said that Gary was in an induced coma fighting for his life, and although he was showing some signs of improvement the doctors confirmed that the damages to his spinal cord were so severe that he might never walk again. The afternoon didn’t get any better. Too many cigarettes and too much alcohol, pacing the floor, picking up the phone and putting it down, trying to build up the courage to phone Caroline Spencer. He must have lifted the phone a dozen times before dropping it back into the cradle. He knew that if he made the call her father would have probably answered, and given the regrettable circumstances he wouldn’t expect the conversation to be friendly. The more he thought about the unfortunate incident in his bedroom, he was beginning to accept the fact that he wouldn’t see Caroline again. He was wrong. They would eventually meet up again ...
    in 1985, although the circumstances would be very different and a little embarrassing. After spending the last hour sitting on a stool at the bar, drowning his sorrows in alcohol and wrestling with his conscience, he felt as if his heart and his life had suddenly come to a milestone he would like to forget. Staring through the bottom of another empty glass, aware that there aren’t many things in life that can beat alcohol in a crisis, shaking the glass at the barman in that universal sign for another drink, the sound of a stool scraping across the floor and a comforting hand on his shoulder interrupting his thoughts, the reflection in the mirror behind the bar throwing back the friendly smile of Heather Chapman, her sympathetic voice interrupting his self-pity. “You look like someone who’s just lost his puppy.” If he ever wanted to spend the rest of his life with a woman who came with all the attributes, then Heather Chapman would be at the top of his list. In her late-thirties, Heather was neither attractive nor unattractive, but what she lacked in appearance she made up in her sincere character, a stunning fit body and a hungry appetite for sex. Twice married and twice divorced. A free spirited ‘life and soul of the party,’ type of woman, enjoying life, obsessed with sex, rejoicing in her single status and making no secret of her preference for well-endowed men, able to balance her private life with a demanding career, drifting between her many lovers without feeling any ...
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