Troubles and Treats (Chocolate Lovers 3)

“But I do care. I care about how she’s doing and how she’s feeling.”

“Yeah, okay. But I’m pretty sure at this point, you care more about how she’s feeling about your penis,” Jim says.

“True story,” I agree sadly.

“So, do not use the words: bang, anal, blow job, just the tip, or it makes him smile when you kiss it,” Jim tells me.

“What the f**k am I supposed to say then? Those are all the good ones,” I complain.

“Yes, all the good ones you used when you conned her into having sex with you six weeks after Billy was born. I do believe she took 'just the tip' literally and you told her, 'If your vagina is sore after having Billy chew his way out, I’d be fine with anal,'” Carter adds.

“I still don’t see what was wrong with that. I was trying to be nice and make her feel better.”

After not having sex her entire pregnancy and then having to wait another six weeks for her floppy bits to fuse back together, I had been desperate. Telling her about all the nightmares I was having of seeing Billy crowning during the delivery probably wasn’t my finest hour. But she cornered me in the middle of the night when I woke up screaming from another bad dream. I had been half asleep and could not be held responsible for the things I said. I knew comparing the birth of our son to the movie Alien when that little monster tears his way out of that dude’s stomach was a bad idea, but I wasn’t fully awake yet! Picture the blood, the gore, the slime, and the goo as this little freaky thing rips someone’s stomach open to get out. Now picture that happening with your wife’s vagina. The vagina you’ve touched, sucked, licked, and worshiped for years. It took a little time to separate the two.

Jenny had a c-section with Veronica, and I didn’t see anything that happened below her neck. I remembered crying tears of joy when they handed Veronica to us and the nurse helped me put on her first onesie that read: Watch your f**king language, There’s a goddamn baby in the room. I stared back and forth between Jenny and our little girl and I knew I had never been happier.

With Billy, the doctor gave her the go-ahead to try and have him naturally since her c-section with Veronica was due to a drop in Veronica’s heart rate and not because Jenny had any life-threatening complications. And so Jenny decided she wanted to experience real child birth. And it was horrific. It should have been beautiful and amazing, watching the woman I love give birth to our son, but it wasn’t. There was screaming and crying and profanities and that was just from me. You didn’t even want to know what Jenny screamed when she saw I had wandered down to the foot of the birthing table and put my face right in front of the action. And once I got there, I couldn’t move. I was like a deer caught in the headlights. Or a man caught in the slaughter of his wife’s vagina. I expected to turn and see her OB with a butcher knife in his hand because of the mess down there. There had been so many things leaking out between her legs I didn’t know what the f**k was going on or how one vagina could pour that much gunk out of it and still be alive. Her vagina should have drowned.

Telling all of this to Jenny at three in the morning a few weeks after Billy was born might be one of the reasons why we’re having problems. Talking to her again about something so monumental right now doesn’t seem like the best idea.

“What else you got,” I ask Jim as the line powers up and I pull my hydraulic drill down from its perch on the shelf above my head.

“Well, you could always ask your dad to tail her. Maybe she’s hiding something from you,” Jim says nonchalantly before he walks off to his meeting.

My dad is a private investigator who specializes in cheating spouses and workman’s comp fraud. Since I am fairly certain there is no way Jenny was guilty of one of those, it leaves the other a distinct possibility.

Oh my gosh, could this really be the problem? Why didn’t I ever think about this before?

I am immediately appalled that my sweet, loving Jenny could do something like this and that she's been lying to me this whole time.

Why hasn’t she told me? Why, God, WHY?

The reason my wife doesn’t want to have sex with me anymore is because she has a fake injury she never told me about and now she is trying to milk her boss, Claire, out of money to pay for her fake recuperation.

Chapter 3 – Baste in the Glory

“Wait, Drew installed a baby rocker to the ceiling? That doesn’t sound right,” Claire says as she signs the stack of invoices I've printed out for her.

When I had lost my job seven years ago at the computer design company I worked at since college, my best friend Claire asked me to help out at her chocolate shop that she shared with my other best friend Liz. After a few months of handling all of the marketing and computer design for her, I had found another job but still helped Claire out when I could. After Veronica was born, I knew I didn’t want to do the whole nine to five thing anymore. Claire had asked me to work full time and Liz had begged me to help her as well.

It’s been three years and I am now the marketing manager of Seduction and Snacks, which has grown by leaps and bounds. A few years ago, Claire and Liz had decided to turn their business venture into a franchise. There are now ten Seduction and Snacks stores located throughout the south.

Or is it west? I can never remember. I’m not good at geology…or genealogy…or that other thing that starts with a “g” and ends in a “y”.

Luckily, since Claire and Carter have two kids, Liz and Jim have three, and Drew and I have two, we are all very family-oriental. The kids are all at the shop at some point during the week, and I can work from home whenever I need to, making up my own hours as I go along.