Broken Bridges

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Summary: He’s my soul mate, plain and simple.

AUTHOR: Mick
EMAIL: mick@cryptoffic.com
RATING: PG
SERIES: Twisted Web
CHARACTER: Jimmie Johnson, Chandra Johnson Jimmie POV
WORD COUNT: 1,953
COMPLETED: July 3, 2008
DISCLAIMER: If I owned them I’d be too busy to write this stuff. Just fiction, folks. I own NOTHING and am affiliated with NO ONE mentioned here. Not the drivers, not the teams, no one. This is all fiction and fun. In other words...NOT REAL, NOT REAL, NOT REAL. ;-)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth in a new series Twisted Web. Might want to read the Chani/Dale saga before you get to this or it won't make sense.
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Lake Norman, NC - The Johnson's Home

It's a twisted, tangled web that we weave. All the lies and sneaking around, all of the cheating and discretions. And for what, really? A few nights of doing things we'd never possibly be forgiven for? It wouldn’t be such a terrible situation if it were just me. If it were just the two of us. If we both didn’t have other people in our lives that cared about us the way that they do. As it is I feel awful for having a hand in his crappy relationships as of late. Every time he meets some nice girl, some cute girl that he could have a future with, I come stumbling into the picture at the most inopportune of moments; figuratively and literally. I don’t plan it that way, it just sort of happens. In the beginning I felt bad about it, but now I just can’t find it in me to care. Of course, then I feel guilty for not feeling guilty, which makes me feel twice as guilty and…what can I say? It’s a twisted web. What I should really feel guilty for is lying to her. Lying to the woman who took my name, who wanted to plan a future with me. I’ve been lying to her since before I even proposed to her. She knows it too, and sticks around anyway, which just tears me up even more. Of course, at the same time it also makes me wonder why she even bothers. What the hell is in it for her when I’m off running around with my partner in crime?

I wish there was a way to stop this, but I know there isn’t. I’m addicted to him. I need him like I need the air in my lungs. Not being with him feels all sorts of wrong, and the longer I spend away from him the more it makes me feel like I’m dying inside. It sounds completely melodramatic, like some stupid high school girl with a crush, but it’s the only way I know to properly describe how much he means to me. He honestly is the air I breathe. Everything I do somehow comes back to him in some shape or form. Lately we’ve been trying to come up with as many ways as possible to spend time together. Whether it be fund raisers, golfing, skiing, “man time” with the rest of our group…it doesn’t matter as long as we’re together. I really did feel bad about inviting him out to Aspen when it was supposed to be a weekend for me and my wife, but I just couldn’t bear one more minute without him. She didn’t seem to mind until the third or fourth day when it occurred to her that I had no intentions of spending any time with her while he was around.

The sad part about of all this is that there’s nothing going on between us. We’re nothing but friends, practically brothers, but we just have this really intense connection. We’ve kissed a couple of times, but it’s never gone any further than that. No blowjobs, no sex, not even a hand job in the back of a limo or something. What we have defies sex. What we have is love in its purest form. He’s my soul mate, plain and simple. Not romantically, but in every other sense of the word. To be perfectly honest, I think he’s just scared to let us get to that next level. I’m not going to push him or pressure him in any way. I’m 100% content with where we are right now and not having sex with him isn’t going to change anything. I love the time we spend together, love our conversations and our games. We go golfing a couple of times a week, he comes out to the races whenever he can find the time, and we’ve been talking about joint business moves for a while now. We’re thinking of buying some stakes in a football team or something in the near future. Just have to decide where our money’s going to go. For a former boy band member, he’s more of a business man than I could ever dream of being. Of course, considering who he was married to, it’s probably a good thing he’s got such a hold on his finances. He may have wound up broke otherwise.

It’s never crossed my mind until now just how distant I’ve grown from my wife. I came home early from the shop, fully expecting her to be home curled up on the couch watching TV or playing Sudoku while the dogs napped at her feet. I definitely did not expect to come home to an empty house. The dogs were curled up in their bed together, but they were alone. I looked through every room in the house, even went outside to check by the pool even though it’s not quite warm enough to go swimming yet. She was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t even find a note or a message on the answering machine. I checked my voicemail to see if maybe I’d missed something, but that came up empty as well. Thinking maybe she’d decided to go out with some friends and just forgot to call and let me know, I called her cell. It went right to voicemail, and that’s when I started to panic. I’d only been gone a few hours, three at the most, and had come home so we could have lunch together before I met up with him for some time at the driving range. It wasn’t like her to just take off without a word.

…or was it? It was in that instant that reality hit me hard in the face. Like a ton of bricks dropped from fifty stories up, the realization that I no longer had a real relationship with my wife came crashing down on me. And with that realization came the panic that I didn’t even know where to begin looking for her. Jeff and Ingrid were up in New York with Ella for a couple of days, her family was all back in Muskogee, and she wasn’t with my parents because they were both at work. Outside of that handful of people, I had no idea who her friends were or what their numbers were. I was at a complete and total loss. Never in my life had my heart pounded like it had at that very moment. The fear that something awful had happened to my wife struck me in my gut and I began to pace the house, praying to every deity I could think of that she was okay and that she’d be home soon. I’d ended up calling him and cancelling our plans, explaining the situation to him. He sounded as devastated as I felt, but he understood all the same. No matter how much we mean to one another, I still care about my wife, still worry about her wellbeing.

The grandfather clock in the front hall, the clock I won the day the Hendrick plane went down, was chiming three o’clock when the front door finally opened. I’d been home for almost three hours, sick to my stomach with worry, when she finally walked into the house. I’d been curled up on the couch with Maya and Roxie, all three of us perking up at the exact same moment when we heard the hinges of the front door squeak. I’d been meaning to grease them for ages, but now I was glad for the racket. I’d flown up off the couch and practically tackled her to the ground as I bear hugged her, filled with relief that she was home and safe. She seemed both shocked and confused at my being home, and even more so at how worried I’d been over her odd disappearance. She’d looked at me like I was a crazy person and informed me that she’d left me a voicemail at work to let me know she’d be stopping by to bring me lunch. We must have just missed one another, she’d said, so she stayed and had lunch with Junior instead. Hadn’t wanted to waste a perfectly good meal and he’d practically salivated over the pastrami on rye hoagies she’d shown up to the shop with.

Nearly an eternity passed before I managed to pry myself off her. She was still looking at me with the same expression on her face and it was starting to eat at me. Were we really so far apart that she was surprised over my worrying about her? Or was there something more that she wasn’t telling me? It was as she slipped by me and upstairs, saying something about wanting a shower, that I really took her in: the way her normally perfect hair was thrown up in a messy ponytail. Her makeup looked like it’d been through the rinse cycle. Her clothes were rumpled and there was a smell on her…one I recognized but couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t perfume, far too musky, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. My mind began to race, wondering if she was telling me the truth. This was my wife, after all, and there was no way she’d ever be anything but loyal to me.

Right?

I’d gone up after her a minute or so later, slipping into the bathroom while she was in the shower. The sight of her naked in the stall, steam floating around her as she washed her hair, it made me fall in love with her all over again. She was absolutely beautiful to me in that moment; the woman I’d fallen in love with years before. I stepped closer to the shower and she jumped when she saw me, startled by my sneak attack. I’d laughed it off and asked if there was room for two in there with her, but she’d begged me off, telling me she was tired and had a headache, just wanted to curl up in bed and lay down for a while. It stung being shot down by her. In the years we’d known one another, we’d never been able to keep our hands off one another when we were alone together. When we first got married, we came up with every excuse we could to get one another naked whenever possible. Now here we were, three years into our marriage, and she was giving me the headache line. Feeling shunned, I’d stormed from the room and called him up, told him our plans were back on and to meet me at the country club.

I’d left without even a word, turned my phone off just to spite her. If she wanted to play games with me, I’d play them right back. I had better things to do with my time than sit around playing guessing games with her. I was hurt and turned off and just wanted to be with someone that wanted to be with me. We’d met up at the golf course and spent two hours at the driving range, practicing our strokes. After we’d tired of swinging clubs, we’d moved inside for dinner and drinks. She crossed my mind once or twice, but one joke from him or one sip of brandy and she was forgotten again. My wife. The woman I love. The woman I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.

I’m beginning to think there’s more going on with Chandra than she’s letting on and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Right after I have one more drink with Nick. My soul mate.

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Mick - mick@cryptoffic.com