Me again.

I decided to write this story to “close off” the series - not that anyone has been waiting with baited breath.

We’ve just got back from a bank holiday weekend in Devon, just around the coast from where we went in January. Unlike in January, the sun didn’t stop shining and it was beautiful. Sitting in our tent with a beer in my hand made me realise how far we’ve come in the last 6 months and I found myself scrolling through some of the early stories I wrote. What follows is a quick update to let you, and a future me, know how things turned out.

Our relationship

Well, we’re still together. Grace moved in with me in January after we got back, much to the bafflement of her parents, who (understandably) didn’t understand where Toby - who they’d known all his life - had gone, where I’d come from and why Grace had seemingly out of nowhere moved in with me.

I understand there was an emotional conversation between Grace and her mum, sat on their kitchen floor, where the high-level things were explained. Nothing about our crazy adventures, just that we’d met, Grace liked me, and that it hadn’t been working with Toby.

Anyway, long story short, I received the inquisition from her dad and a series of tasks via Grace that they just happened to need doing; pressure washing a patio, clearing and selling a motor home (via my brother), general garden work. And because reasons, my completion of these satisfied them that I wasn’t a weirdo and I might be a suitable fit for their baby girl.

I’m not going to claim to be part of the family, but they’re polite and kind people. I think Grace has done a lot of the work in getting them to accept me.

On my side, things were a lot simpler. My family (including my brother who was the first to know) think of Grace as one of their own. They love her and so do I.

Toby

Toby, Toby, Toby.

He remains a huge part of Grace’s life. His date in January was OK and I understand it became sexual, but ultimately it didn’t work out. It was amicable and Toby took it in his stride, but it brought about a “third-of-the-way-through-life crisis” so Toby took up white collar boxing - basically charity fights.

We went to watch one in March and although he didn’t win he gave the other guy a run for his money (or whatever the charity equivalent is). The big guy stings like a bee and he can move, and it’s obviously ticking a box for him.

I said back early on that he’s a nice guy and we're still mates. Our friendship has a strange basis but we go out for a beer occasionally. They terminated the tenancy on their place in Coventry but Toby moved in with another friend in a house share.

Me

Well, I did as threatened and got a new job. I interviewed at a few places in February/March and got a couple of offers, then started at a new place at the start of April. It’s mostly from home, with a day a week up in Manchester but it was a £28,000 pay rise, so well worth the travel.

I called this series A Bull’s Diary but I’m not sure I was ever a very good bull. The whole point of it is not to get emotionally involved but I pretty much did that from day one. We both did.

Do I miss it? Yeah, part of me does. There’s something about fucking someone else’s wife or girlfriend that makes you feel like a total god, particularly when the poor cuck just has to sit and watch or even gets a kick out of seeing you treat his woman like he never could. It’s a massive ego and power trip.

The other bigger part of me is just glad I have Grace. The sex is still amazing and she still has that sense of adventure that attracted me to her in the first place. I’m so glad I found her and that she stayed with me on our crazy journey together in the winter. I hope we have many more winters together and, maybe one of them, we’ll read these stories back, probably argue about whether it really happened the way I wrote it, but definitely remember it fondly.

Thanks for reading.

p.s.

Grace’s dad used to be an HGV driver. When clearing out his motor home, there were old ratchet straps everywhere.