Betrayed Chapter 1

She's having an affair. I couldn't ignore it any longer; the evidence was right there on my monitor that Wednesday afternoon. I had felt so... tawdry – a word I had thought I would never use – hiring the detective to follow her, follow up on my suspicions. It was as though I was betraying her, betraying the trust, the faith I had had in her during our eight-year relationship, the last three as husband and wife. As the DVD played out on my computer screen, played out the scenes I had dreaded, I knew my faith and trust had been misplaced.

Susan and I had been high school sweethearts; the convivial, popular cheerleader and her intense, intellectual, fiercely-competitive Cross-Country star. She had broken up with Jeff Spencer shortly before we became an 'item'. No one exactly accused the supernaturally-attractive emerald-eyed Redhead of 'trading down'. In a culture that demanded performance, the football team was mired somewhere in the middle of the conference standings. Jeff, a bona fide heartthrob, had been a talented-enough quarterback. Yet he, more than any other person, was the focal point of the team's lackluster performance. Rightly or wrongly, he carried the stigma of an also-ran. Meanwhile, my team's 'Long Green Line' held back-to-back-to-back State championships and I was the undisputed fastest in State history. Still, they clucked, she had given up a hunk of U.S. Prime for a runner....

"Screw that," she had cooed dismissively. "I love a winner. You are going places and I want to go there with you."

We had attended the same college, lived together our senior year, then raced to the altar after graduation. We each strove to attain the promise of 'going places' in our respective careers. She was a rising star in Marketing and Public Relations, while I was on my way to having my own seat on the Mercantile Exchange. I ran five miles every morning before work. Susan worked out regularly at her health club. We maintained our peak physical tone for ourselves and each other, just as we had when we first met. Throughout, our sex had been magic. I was the tender, caring lover she had always dreamed of, the one who pushed all her buttons the way she liked them pushed, the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.