Hi guys! I got this crazy little story in my head and wrote it out for you. It's out of order from this story here but I've gotten so many wonderful messages from everyone that I wanted to put up something. Thank you always for being so supportive and the best group of friends! Hope you enjoy it. And I apologize to Bill Gates in advance 😅

***

"I haven't slept or eaten. Not since I've gotten the news. My dick hasn't risen for days," I say as I sit on that familiar worn monstrosity of a couch in Flynn's office. My fingers return to the leather that was torn and lifted by my much younger, more troubled hand. "I can't look at Ana because I can't think of anything but... the divorce."

The word hangs heavy in the overly incense scented air. Flynn still thinks burning a patchouli scented stick will solve more problems than the cockroaches running away. I think it's to cover up his marijuana problem.

"Christian, what happened?" Flynn asks as he crosses his legs in his swiveling chair. Even his choice of seating means he has no backbone. "This seems out of thin air." I don't know what he's talking about; the air seems pretty thick in here to me.

"The honeymoon is over, children grow, and everything that was built together I guess was all just a lie." My chest tightens at the thought. I stare out at the park through the window behind him. All the flowers are dying as winter is almost here. Then I remember it's only April.

Flynn looks into my file. "This is a turn of events. The last time we spoke you were upset that the children's school cast Fritzy's father as The Giving Tree." Oh, that's right. I'm still bitter about that. They cast me as a falling apple.

"These things come at you with no warning." I pound my chest with a cocked wrist and closed fist knuckles. I can feel the metal of my wedding ring pierce my flesh. Also, my chest hair is caught up in an errant button.

"It must have been a terrible shock," he says, and he looks a bit shaken up too. Maybe he thinks I'll jump out of the window and that'll be the end of his vacation home and gold watches.

"The biggest!" I say and I clear my throat of the unshed tears. I take a moment to process the bitter truth I'm about to impart. "I just never imagined that Bill and Melinda Gates would ever get divorced."

Silence.

Flynn just sits there, staring at me like a jackass trying to figure out if the information I just dangled in front of him is sugar or shit.

"Bill and Melinda Gates?" he asks.

"Yes, the self-made billionaire and his wife, that's the two, or the one now," I say. "She's left him. They're finished. It'll be the biggest divorce in history, and all because he's an asshole and she just fell out of love with him."

"And this bothers you so much because?" he asks.

"Because he's like me. He's a fucker with a lot of money and everyone hates him, but there was hope for him because a good woman who occasionally embarrassed herself by drinking too much at the governor's mansion loved him."

I'll never forget those parties. During the last one, Melinda sucked back so many of Kate's lemon drops she never lost the pucker. Neither did Bill. Although I don't think he was drinking much that night. His mouth is perpetually in the form of a tight, virgin asshole.

"And you think this divorce somehow reflects on you and Anastasia?"

"Yes," I say with a sigh.

"How so?"

"They fell in love, had a beautiful family, worked together to build a meaningful empire... Their daughter is an equestrian and my daughter has a hamster with a designer wardrobe and a turkey who lives in a penthouse apartment in our barn. The similarities are endless." 

He closes my file and sighs.

"Christian, you can't compare your relationship to anyone else's. I know you remain fearful that you'll make mistakes, or that you'll disappoint Ana, but I thought with the happy life you've been living that had passed."

"It all just came flying back when I heard the news," I say. "Taylor gave me the paper before a breakfast meeting when I was in New York, and I couldn't speak. I just sat there with a sausage in my mouth. Dangling. Even when the businessmen from Tokyo showed up." I bury my head in my hands.

"Have you talked to Ana?"

"Of course not," I say. "I fear that any talk of Melinda will give her ideas about freedom." I inhale sharply. I've been hiding all the newspapers and magazines so she can't read about it. And every time she goes on her phone or computer, I tell her I smell flames in the kitchen. I even lit a match to set off the fire alarm.

"I dreamed she went to Paris and became a model and all these men spreading their brie cheese on obscenely large croissants called her by her maiden name." I rip the leather from the arm and throw it at Buddha. Of course, it doesn't really go anywhere but my pants. "It was the worst dream I've ever had."

"Well, that's saying something, Christian." He motions to my file which is basically a lifetime of bad dreams.

"It's worse than before. Because before I didn't know Ana."

"Are you having sex?" he asks.

"Sex isn't the most important thing in a relationship, Flynn!"

"Normally I'd say you'd made progress, Grey," he says with the laugh of a man who wears little oval glasses. "But I know that sex is a very important way that you two communicate. I think you should talk to her and tell her your feelings, because I have a hunch this is about something more than Bill and Melinda Gates."

He's right, though the only guidance he's now giving me is to the appointment calendar for our next visit and to my checkbook. Ana is probably confused as to why I've been avoiding her. And also yelling fire every thirty minutes. I'm not sure she's going to understand when I tell her that it's all because of Bill Gates and his puckering ass mouth.

***

"Taylor, I need to talk to you about something that concerns me," I say as I catch him stocking toilet paper in the downstairs main guest bathroom pantry. It was a mystery all during the pandemic as to how one man was always able to supply a houseful with multi-colored toilet paper, some rolls only found in the seventies, but he did save the day and make the kids and Elliot excited about poo-poo time. Unfortunately, it made Elliot so excited he plugged up half my toilets.

"They're two-ply, sir," he says while waving around a pink roll. "And they flush down nicely."

"Not the toilet paper," I say, exasperated. "I have something serious to discuss with you. Maybe you should sit down." We both look at the toilet seat. "Or maybe not."

I pace for a moment to gather myself. It's not a large room so it's like I'm my own game of ping-pong.

"I have to talk to you about something that's been weighing heavy on my mind ..." I say.

"Is this about the silk pajamas, Mr. Grey?"

Silk pajamas?

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask.

"You told me I looked like I was about to smoke cigars and cheat people at cards when I woke you for your flight to New York last week, sir," he says.

Oh, that's right. They were paisley and peacock blue, and I was alarmed at how hairy his fingers were when he handed me my caramel macchiato. Especially when I saw something long and brown in it that he claimed was a cinnamon swirl.

"Well, no one wants to see you hovering over them at five in the morning looking like Hugh Hefner if he was a barista," I say. "But no, it's not about that... Though stop the fuck out of that too!" He nods. "But you're a man who is practical. Sort of. I mean, you've seen war and I know you watch The Young and the Restless."

"Yes, sir," he says.

"So, tell me! I need to know. How does it happen?"

"I record it every day and watch it with my brandy after work hours, sir."

"Not the soap opera!" This fucker is unreal. I momentarily wonder if that's when he puts on the fancy pajamas. I don't want to fucking know. "I mean how does something monumental and grand and of large-scale importance to two people just come to an end?"

"Oh God, sir," he says as he squeezes the pink roll.

"What's wrong with you? Why do you have your toilet paper up in a bunch?"

"I thank you for allowing me to serve you for so many years, Mr. Grey," he says, and he dips his head down toward the toilet water. "Can I still come with Gail for the holidays, sir?"

"No! This isn't about you," I say. "If I wanted to get rid of you, I think I'd have to have you surgically removed."

"Oh, thank you, sir," he says. Why does he sound so damn delighted to be a bunion on my toe?

"Be straight with me, Taylor. When your other wife left you, was it because you did something? You made a wrong move? I won't judge you. But I need to know. Could it have been prevented?"

He thinks for a moment, twisting his fingers inside the cardboard of the roll.

"Well, I probably shouldn't have gone out to the bar with my war buddies, sir," he says. 

"You met a girl and cheated?"

"No, I heard her screaming the name Dub from a bathroom stall."

"Oh, shit."

"No, that wasn't what she was doing, sir."

"I know that!" I shake my head. Taylor really did live a sordid life before I collared him up. Oh God. Is that why he calls me sir so much? I remind myself to vomit later. "I'm just trying to figure out how not to fuck up a marriage. I need advice."

"Is everything okay with you and Mrs. Grey?" he asks, and he sounds concerned, caring even. I can almost imagine I'm one of his auto parts.

"We're okay now," I say. "But who knows." I sit down on the toilet. Elbows propped on my knees as I pull at my hair. "The future is so uncertain."

"Not for Nikki and Victor, sir," he says.

I look up at him. "Who the hell is that?"

"On The Young and the Restless, sir," he says. "They've broke up probably forty-seven times—" He stops and looks up at the ceiling like he's recalculating. "No, forty-eight times, Mr. Grey. And every time, even if it takes many, many years, and paternity suits and illnesses and a multitude of torrid affairs that sometimes end in murder, they always walk down that aisle to the tune of Ice Castles."

What the fuck.

"Is this supposed to comfort me, Taylor?" I'm pretty sure I never want to find out what Ice Castles is.

"Yes, sir," he says, and I just look at him as I accidentally flush the toilet with a slight movement. We put in motion sensors to make sure everything goes down since Elliot. I tried to teach him the song I taught the children—the one about dimes in the slot machine. You don't win if you don't pull the handle, but it didn't work. Plus, Kavanagh yelled at me for promoting a gambling lifestyle to her husband. Like I had to convince him to be a complete disaster of a man. "It just goes to prove that no matter what the odds, true love always wins out. And you and Mrs. Grey are the truest love I've ever seen." He smiles. "Besides me and Gail, of course."

"You mean it?" I look up at him and the toilet flushes again.

"Yes, sir. And that's saying a lot next to Nikki and Victor."

"Thank you, Taylor." I think.

"Mrs. Grey is upstairs in the master suite, sir," he says.

"How the hell do you know that?" Has he been spying on her in bed? Or the shower? I'm about to clock him one and flush him down the drain when he answers me.

"Because I just put the blue roll you requested in the master bath, sir. I closed my eyes when I passed her, as you've requested in the retiring areas of the home, Mr. Grey."

"Good, Taylor." I stand up and straighten myself and the swirl of another flush alerts the room to my exit. "Maybe I'll see if she wants to talk." When I reach the door, I look back and see that he's securing the pink roll on the toilet paper holder. "Don't put it rolling under, Taylor! You want to put a hex on this whole house?!" He quickly straightens it the right way and I leave him there.

The last thing I need is to live in fear that Ana might become a model in Paris because Taylor got slap happy with his pink toilet paper roll.

***

I find Ana, curled up on our bed in her little shorts and my t-shirt, reading a manuscript. Her hair is piled on top of her head with this chopstick looking contraption. She's utterly gorgeous and my heart drops. She's my Melinda, but stunning and not a complete embarrassment at holiday parties.

"Ana," I say as I part the door. "Can I come in?"

She looks up. Those blue eyes. "It's your room too," she says. "I thought you had forgotten."

Fuck. She's not happy.

"I've just been working late and getting up early," I say.

"So, I've noticed." She closes the manuscript and puts it beside her. Her legs look smooth and shiny as she crosses them, waiting for me to say or do something. My dick twitches for the first time in days, but I shake my head to put all impulse aside as I sit next to her on the bed. I don't want the weight of our conversation to collapse under the weight of my balls.

"What's wrong with you?" she asks.

"I'm still jet lagged," I say.

"I guess your business trip really used up your stamina," she says.

She's spicy today.

"What does that mean?" I ask. I haven't seen Ana this upset since Tilly got her hand stuck up my Quaker Oats costume. It was a show for the school promoting good nutrition. Of course, Tilly was a stick of artery clogging butter. I thought Elliot was the one unzipping me, but his eggplant was making it with Kate's boiled potatoes, which gave Tilly's greasy fingers a chance to strike.

"You've barely touched me these last few days," Ana says. "You've been avoiding me and why have you been stealing all my newspapers?" Her eyes cut at me like glass.

Oh boy. Here it goes.

"It's not you, it's me," I say, and she audibly gasps. Tears fill up her eyes. I'm alarmed and I straighten up. "Why are you crying?"

"Because you said that!" she says.

"Said what?"

"It's not you, it's me! No one says that who doesn't mean it." She covers her face with her hands before removing them and then throwing daggers my way. "Who is she?"

"Who is who?"

What the fuck is happening?

"Is there someone at work? Your secretary perhaps?"

Hell, I know when she starts spouting off words like perhaps it's serious.

"You think I'm fucking Andrea?" I ask. God why not just freeze my dick, burn my eyes out and give me an igloo hole.

"I don't know. I hear about these ongoing things kept from wives for years," she says.

"Ana, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Just be honest with me. You're having an affair, aren't you?" Her lip is quivering now. It's adorable and I want to bite it, but I fear she may bite me first.

"An affair? Why would you say that?"

"I've read about these things, Christian. It happens right under the wife's nose. For years even. The rich husband thinks he can jet off on business trips with women he claims are business associates and keep it secret. You just went to New York last week!"

"With Taylor to acquire a hardware firm!"

"Exactly! Hardware! I wonder what else was hard." She laughs in a way that says nothing is funny or ever will be again. 

"Where is this coming from?" I ask as I look around for any conveniently placed knives.

She hops up and paces to her vanity mirror. God, I hope she doesn't use hairspray and a candle lighter on me.

"I've been so trusting and naïve," she says as she takes down her hair and brushes those gorgeous chestnut locks. "I believed in true love." She throws down the hairbrush, stares at the rings on her hand and sobs. She then eyeballs me in her mirror. "Don't look at me like I'm crazy. I just read all about what happened to Melinda and Bill Gates!"

I stare at her, open mouthed and dumbfounded, before I fall back onto the bed and start to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" She jumps on the bed and shakes me. All at once, I take hold of her hand and pull her onto my chest.

"You are one confounding woman, you know that?" I push a strand of hair from her cheek and stroke her face.

"Why?" she asks as she leans into me. She's softening a bit.

"Because I read all about that too," I say with a sigh, and she crinkles her nose in that cute and curious way. "Bill and Melinda. I haven't been able to talk to you or make love to you..." I close my eyes tight and pained. "Because all I can think of is you jetting off to Paris as a free woman and becoming a model for a bunch of brie cheese starved Parisians with giant croissants who call you by your Maiden name."

"What?" I can see her trying to formulate this equation.

"Ana, I read about that divorce and I thought of us," I say.

"Me, too," she says, and her body falls heavy on top of me. She lays her cheek right over my heart and it's the best thing I've felt all week.

"You did?" I ask.

She nods against me. "He was so rich and powerful, and he just lost interest in her." She's about to cry again, I can feel it. "You may lose interest in me too."

I roll us over so she's under me and I can see her eyes.

"You've lost your mind, you know that?" I wipe away a teardrop forming. "Why would you think I'd ever not be completely fascinated by and devoted to you?"

"If Bill did that, so could you..."

"Listen to me. I know that fuck face. Always swinging around a cock no one believed he had in high school. The argyle sweaters. The platform shoes. He's a pompous loser who just so happened to luck into the best thing he could ever hope for with his wife and he fucked it up over and over again, just like Microsoft." My vitriol for Bill spills from my tongue. "He didn't deserve her or any of it. She gave him a life and a family, and she finally came to the realization that she could do better than someone who just hides behind his money and pretends to be cool."

Ana starts to giggle.

"What are you laughing at, Mrs. Grey?" God, she's adorable.

"I think you're pretty cool without your money," she says as I stroke her hair back. "You're not Bill Gates, Christian. Yes, you're rich—"

"We're rich," he says.

"Yes, and you aren't trying to prove anything to anyone."

"Except you. Always, Ana. You're the only one whose opinion of me matters."

"I know who you are, Christian. You're a wonderful husband and father and we all love you so much. But when you wouldn't make love to me... I just thought... Please, just don't shut me out, okay?" She twists her hips against my crotch, and I know that I'm done for. And I like being done for only by her.

"Okay," I say, and I kiss her head.

"Besides, you know why you'll never be like Bill..." she says, dangling her thought for me to catch. "He has a very small dick."

"What?! What do you know about that?!"

"A girl at my office knows another girl at his office who knows another girl that went away with him. She told everyone. And he doesn't even know how to use it."

"You know I don't like you talking about other men's—wait, how small are we talking?" I ask.

She holds up a pinkie and then bends it over by half.

A light has shone down of me and suddenly lit up my entire life!

"Oh, Ana! Do you know what this means?" I lift her up and kiss her.

"That Bill isn't swinging anything?" she asks.

"No! I mean, yes!" I laugh jubilantly. "That's nothing like me, Ana! My cock is humongous! And I know how to use it!" I lift my arms to the heavens. "If the length of my dick is any indication of the length of our marriage, then we're going to be together forever!"

"I love you so much," she says, and we share a kiss with a passion we've been building up for days. Her tongue is glorious and her lips so sweet. I'm about to rip her shirt off when she pulls back. "But I want to know about my modeling career with these large croissant cheese lovers in Paris."

I give her a smack on the bottom. "The only modeling you're doing is for me, woman. Right now. With nothing on and the runway is my dick." I smile. "The big one."

She pins me down and we kiss. I'm so ready to get lost in my wife, until we both hear little voices and little feet.

"Daddy! Mommy!" Teddy and Phoebe cry out.

"I think we're being invaded by enemy troops," I say, and she laughs as we pull apart.

I hear Chester hissing before I see him sitting on Phoebe's shoulder. "Oh look," I say. "He's wearing tights today." And I think some sort of a wig, unless rodents use Rogaine. And hair bleach.

"No, Daddy. Those are Lululemons," Phoebe says as she spits on his hair and smooths out some fuzz. "He's starting to do yoga. You need to take his class after you make cookies with us." Chester stretches his arms out, though I don't think he's reaching for higher spirituality. More like a launching position to land on my face.

"Just not the raisin kind," I say. The last time we did that Chester added his own special ingredients to the bowl.

"Dad! Fritzy's dad fell off his chair with his lady friend last night and broke something. They want you to play the tree now," Teddy says.

That drunk fuck. I told them he could never handle the role. Looks like the hex I put on him and his giving tree worked.

"Well, I'll do what's required of me," I say.

"Tilly says she'll help you with your limbs," Teddy says.

"I bet she'll try," I say, and Ana gives me the elbow.

The kids proceed to jump on the bed. Chester keeps flying up and down on Phoebe's shoulder.

"Well, Mrs. Grey," I say to her as the kids jump all over my kneecaps and my internal organs. "I now know for a fact I'm not Bill Gates."

"Oh, why's that?" she asks.

"He could never play a tree with more than two limbs," I say with a mischievous wink.

She rolls her eyes at me and laughs.

"I'll look forward to reprimanding you for that little infraction later," I say.

"I look forward to it too, Mr. Grey." Her eyes sparkle.

That wicked, wonderful woman of mine.

All mine.

Forever.

As I sit here and watch the children playing and my Ana laughing and a crazed hamster who is hissing at me in his yoga pants and Rod Stewart wig, I realize something profound. This life. This home. This family. This is my Giving Tree.

And it's given me absolutely everything.

So, the mantra I will meditate in Chester's yoga class this evening will be simple...

Fuck you, Bill Gates and the half pinkie dick you rode in on.