Love and Happiness Read online

  Love and Happiness

  by Ben Burgess Jr.

  www.urbanbooks.net

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART ONE - For Better or Worse

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  PART TWO - What’s Done in the Dark Comes to Light

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  PART THREE - Things Fall Apart

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  PART FOUR - To Love and to Cherish

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Chris

  Karen

  Urban Books, LLC

  300 Farmingdale Road, NY-Route 109

  Farmingdale, NY 11735

  Love and Happiness

  Copyright © 2019 Ben Burgess Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.

  eISBN 13: 978-1-60162-912-8

  eISBN 10: 1-60162-912-5

  ISBN: 978-1-6016-2911-1

  This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  Love and

  Happiness

  by

  Ben Burgess Jr.

  PART ONE

  For Better or Worse

  Karen

  I was lying on white linen sheets, panting and sweating, in a motel room in Syosset. My breasts rose and fell as I tried to catch my breath. The strong smell of sex filled the room. The air conditioner blew on high, cooling my trembling naked body. I stared at the mirror on the ceiling, wondering how, in a matter of minutes, I’d gone from complete bliss to sadness.

  When I had sex with Raheem, it took me away from my chaotic life. He made me feel sexy and unrestricted. I felt like a woman. But when it was over, I fell hard back to reality.

  I watched him get dressed and wondered why I kept doing this to myself.

  “I gotta go. I’ll text you sometime tomorrow,” Raheem said. “Okay?”

  He kissed me softly, and for that brief moment, it felt real, but I knew our relationship could never be anything more than this. This wasn’t love. What we had was purely lust. Our relationship was merely a quick fix to my problems.

  Raheem winked, waved good-bye, walked out of the motel room, and closed the door behind him. I stood up and stared at my reflection in the full-length mirror. I fanned myself and ran my hands down my naked body. My chestnut eyes were the windows to the soul of an emotionally drained woman. For the past three years, I had been living a lie, and every day, I felt like a piece of me died.

  My heart was heavy as tears filled my eyes. I started to cry, thinking about what my life had become. I cried because I just wanted to be happy, but I didn’t know how to be.

  I composed myself, dressed, and headed to the motel office. A maid who had been cleaning one of the rooms shook her head and scowled at me when I put the room key in the return slot. She had seen the wedding ring on my hand. I knew she figured no married woman would come here in the middle of the day with her husband. She was right. Raheem was not my husband.

  Raheem had a family too: a wife and three kids. I had my husband, Chris, and my twin girls, Jocelyn and Jaclyn. He cheated on his wife for the thrill of fucking someone else. I cheated to feel validated.

  I got into my silver Honda Accord. The judgmental look that the maid had given me would be another thing to torment me as I headed home. I felt even worse than before.

  Personally, I didn’t think I was asking for too much from my marriage. All I wanted from Chris was for him to pay attention to me. I wanted him to show me romance again, the way he had when we first started dating. Light candles when we made love, and not just try to shove it in me without any type of foreplay. Shower with me, go dancing with me, surprise me with date nights and flowers every now and then. Truly take the time to understand and listen to me. Those things were important to me, and I refused to accept Chris being a good, loyal man as a trade-off for what I needed to have in a loving, stable marriage.

  Don’t get it twisted. I loved Chris. I did. I always had, but I was not in love with him. I owed him a lot. I had known he was the one when we met in college, at a campus party.

  “Look, I’m not interested,” I had said to some random guy who approached me at the party.

  “Come on. Enough with the ‘playing hard to get’ shit. Come here,” the random guy had said, pulling on my arm.

  “No,” I said, scrunching up my face and yanking my arm out of his grip.

  “She said no, so leave her alone, before there’s a problem,” Chris said, coming to my rescue.

  “Who the fuck—” random guy began, but then he turned around and saw Chris, Will, and Lou standing behind him. They were all huge, but Chris looked the most intimidating. He was about six feet one and was ripped like a Greek god.

  “Trust me, brother, you don’t want this type of problem,” Chris said as he folded his arms and rested them against his chiseled chest.

  “My bad. I didn’t know she was with you,” random guy said as he walked away.

  “Thanks for that,” I said, liking how sexy Chris looked.

  “It’s no problem. I’m Chris, and these are my boys, Will and Lou.”

  Will and Lou nodded and waved.

  “I’m Karen,” I said and smiled.

  Chris and I got to know each other after that. I loved that he was driven and masculine. He was about something, a “real man.” It was a huge change from the boys pretending to be men who usually approached me.

  Back then, I was reckless and irresponsible. Then Chris came into my life and showed me that I needed to calm down and think about my future, and not only about my past. I toned down my hard partying. I quit smoking weed and cigarettes. I stopped drinking to the point of throwing up and passing out and focused more on school and improving my life. In some ways, Chris saved me. He taught me to want more for myself, and I was truly grateful for that.

  When we first started dating, there were several times when my immaturity almost drove him to leave me. Sometimes I’d relapse and go back to my party girl ways. My last big fuckup happened senior year. He was the first person I called that night.

  “Chris, please don’t be mad at me.” I gripped the phone tightly, mentally preparing myself for his reaction.

  “What? What’s going on?” Chris asked groggily. It was two o’clock in the morning.

  “Chris, please wake up, baby. I need you. I got arrested. I’m in jail.”

  “What did you say? You’re where?”

  I sighed, knowing that Chris was going to give me some long-ass speech about me fucking u
p again. Ugh. I hated it when he lectured me.

  “Let’s speed this up,” said the blond douche-bag cop, rolling her eyes and tapping her feet.

  I ignored her and continued talking to Chris. “I’m in one of the holding cells at the One Hundred Fourteenth Precinct. They’re taking me to central booking. I got arrested for DUI.”

  Chris sighed. There was a long pause before he spoke again. I thought the call had got disconnected.

  “Chris?”

  “Yeah. I’m here . . . What happened?”

  “I was partying in Queens. I ended up smoking—”

  “Smoking weed.”

  “Yes, Chris. I was smoking weed. Anyway, I guess it was stronger than I thought, because the cops said they saw me swerving and running red lights. Anyway, I got pulled over on my way home, and the cops smelled the weed on me. When they searched my car, they found some bags.”

  “How much is some, Karen?” Chris had that tone in his voice that made me feel like a child.

  “I bought a couple bags for days when I’m stressed out.”

  “How much is a couple!” he shouted.

  “I don’t know exactly. They said it was felony weight, though.”

  “Jesus, Karen. Who are you? Pablo fucking Escobar? This could’ve all been avoided if you’d just stop with this bullshit.”

  “I don’t need a lecture right now. I need your help. Can you help me, please?”

  Chris bailed me out of jail. Since I had no money, he spent a small fortune on a great lawyer, who found a loophole in the case and somehow got all my charges dropped.

  While my legal struggles were over after that, my partying was still putting a strain on our relationship. Chris grew distant. The writing was on the wall. I knew he was close to breaking up with me. I didn’t want to lose him for good, so I stopped taking my birth control. I knew he’d never leave me if I got pregnant. It was low down and risky, I knew, but I loved him. I loved him more than anything and anyone. Well, I did get pregnant, and he didn’t leave me, but as time passed, our relationship became stagnant.

  When I came home nowadays, I didn’t feel appreciated or beautiful. Chris and I didn’t go out on date nights or do anything exciting anymore. He was always working. When he wasn’t working, he was sleeping, watching sports, or tinkering in the garage, restoring his ’66 Mustang. I swear, he cared more about that fucking car than he did about me. He didn’t pay attention to me anymore. Don’t get me wrong. He was a wonderful father. He always took care of our kids and provided for us, but we’d lost something. I felt that something when I was with Raheem.

  * * *

  I was a couple of blocks away from my house in Levittown when I started breaking down again, so I steered my Accord to the side of the street and parked. I took a deep breath and pulled myself together. I had to look strong when I saw my little girls. I fixed my makeup, put on my shades, and then drove to my house. Chris’s black F-150 truck was parked in front. I pulled into the garage and parked next to the piece of shit Mustang he’d been working on for over three years.

  I climbed out of the car and walked in the house. At the sight of the toys and the spilled juice all over the kitchen tile floor, which I had mopped that morning, I started fuming. I found the kids in the living room, laughing and chasing each other around our cream-colored couches, with crayons in their hands. Chris was in the computer room, looking at parts for his stupid Mustang, not even paying any attention to the girls.

  “Mommy!” the twins yelled when they saw me, and then they ran over to hug me.

  “Hey, guys. Did Daddy make you dinner?”

  “Yes,” they answered in unison.

  “What did Daddy make my baby girls?”

  “Daddy made us eggs and waffles!” Jaclyn yelled.

  I was annoyed that he had fed them breakfast for dinner, and even more annoyed that the sticky plates were still on the kitchen table. The dirty skillet and the spatula were sprawled on top of the greasy stove. I cleared the dishes off the table and dropped them in the sink. Then I stomped to the computer room, picking up the jacket and T-shirt that he had tossed on the floor on my way there, and stood in the doorway, with my arms folded across my chest.

  “Hi, Chris.”

  He sat there in a greasy tank top and blue jeans, his hands filthy from working on his car. He had his feet up, his dirty-ass cement-covered boots resting on the small file cabinet next to the computer.

  He didn’t even have the decency to look up from the computer screen. He waved nonchalantly and said, “Hi.”

  There wasn’t a bit of enthusiasm in his voice, and he kept searching for car parts, like I wasn’t even there. Where was my warm welcome? Where was the show of affection after missing me all day? He didn’t even question my whereabouts. It almost bothered me that he made cheating on him so easy.

  “Seriously, Chris, why couldn’t you clean the table or put the dishes in the dishwasher?”

  “Hmm?” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Can you look at me when I’m talking to you?”

  I tossed his clothes at him. That got me his attention. He looked up, glared at me, and shook his head.

  “You need to pick up after yourself. I didn’t come home from my work to act as your maid.”

  “As soon as you get in the house, you start with this shit, Karen? Jesus, it’ll get done. I had a long day. Can I relax first before you rush in here and start delegating chores for me to do?”

  “I had a long day too, and when I come home, I don’t want to see the house a wreck. I already know I’ll end up cleaning it.”

  “Nobody told you to clean it. I said I’ll do it. Calm down. It’ll get done.”

  “Why can’t you clean up before you get involved with your online nonsense?”

  “Why can’t you just chill out? I’ll clean up when I’m ready. Relax.”

  I left Chris mumbling some shit under his breath and walked back to the kitchen. This was a silly spat that I was making bigger than it needed to be, but I was frustrated about things. I turned on the faucet and rinsed some of the dirty plates.

  I thought back to earlier, when Raheem had his way with me. I could almost feel his hands on my body as he sucked on my neck. I got moist remembering how passionately he’d kissed me, how our tongues had intertwined, and his hands had cupped my breasts. I jumped when Chris grabbed a dish out of my hands.

  He smiled and said, “Babe, I told you I got this. Hang out with the kids. I’ll clean this up.”

  I smiled, walked into the living room, and cuddled with the kids on the couch. Chris annoyed me at times, but he tried to make me happy. I still loved him. I’d fucked other men, but none of them, past or present, compared to him sexually. He held it down in the bedroom and made sure I was pleased every time we were intimate. I’d had the best orgasms of my life with Chris. I’d dated my fair share of men, and Chris was the first man that made sure I was pleased before he got his rocks off. That alone made him a keeper in my book.

  While that was a beautiful thing, what we lacked with our marriage was passion and emotion. In the past, we’d been intimate maybe two or three times a week, but lately, with everything going on in our lives, it had been reduced to maybe once or twice a month, if that. Our busy schedules kept us apart and gave me perfect excuses to see Raheem and Tyrell, the other man I was cheating on my husband with.

  Raheem came in second to Chris when it came to pleasing me sexually. He had a longer penis, but Chris’s was thicker, and he had a better stroke. Tyrell had girth but very little length. It was like having sex with a small soda can. He wasn’t great sexually, but what he lacked in that department, he made up with by being romantic and sensual. He lit candles, gave me massages, and treated me to dinner at nice restaurants. He made me feel special, something I no longer felt with Chris.

  Raheem was a skillful and passionate lover. He was good at creating the illusion that we were making love. When we were together, he seduced me like I was the heroine in a
romance novel. I knew he didn’t love me. I didn’t love him, either, but in those moments when we were intimate, he satisfied my need for affection.

  Lately, having sex with Chris felt like fucking, and there was no variation. Don’t get me wrong. There were times when I enjoyed the rough stuff, but I needed more than just that. I needed to feel desired and wanted.

  My kids’ fingers snapped in front of my face.

  “Mommy, you’re not paying attention to the movie,” Jocelyn said, interrupting my thoughts.

  My little princesses were nuzzled comfortably under my arms while we watched Frozen for the hundredth time.

  “I’m sorry, baby. Mommy is a little tired from work.”

  After the movie, I bathed the girls and put them to bed. Then I went into my bedroom and undressed for a shower. I cleared my throat to get Chris’s attention. He was in bed, watching SportsCenter on the TV, as usual.

  “I’m going to shower,” I said, standing naked in front of him, hoping he’d notice and want to join me. I hated that he never complimented me anymore. After having two kids, I knew I was not in my best shape, but I worked out regularly to stay tight.

  “All right. I’ll be here,” Chris said, not even looking at me.

  “Do you wanna shower with me?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nah. Go ahead. I want to watch the highlights from tonight’s games. I’ll see you when you get out.”

  I threw my hands up and let out an annoyed sigh.

  “What’s your problem?” Chris asked.

  I ignored his question and walked into the bathroom. The reality was, our situation was partly my problem. Before we had kids, we did little things like take showers together and cuddle, things couples did to keep their bond strong. Now it felt like we were nothing more than glorified roommates who were raising children together.

  I showered alone. Even though his dark, chiseled body looked good lying on top of our red duvet, if he thought I was going to give him some ass tonight, after he turned down my shower invitation, he had another thing coming. I stepped out of the bathroom to the sight of Chris snoring in bed, still holding the TV remote. I gently removed the remote from his grasp, turned off the TV, then placed the remote on his nightstand. More than anything, I wanted Chris to wrap his muscular arms around me, but as usual, I ended up going to bed craving the affection that was missing from our marriage.