Reunion 138

This is a work of fiction and does not relate to actual events. Any mention of a person, place or thing is coincidental and should not be taken as an accurate portrayal of that person, place or thing. No one under 18 engages in sex.

In February 2024, I removed all my stories from Literotica and have been resubmitting some of them. This story originally ran under the title of "Please Don't Leave."

Because of the extensive revisions, I've retitled the story too and switched to multiple viewpoints because of the many people involved. Because of it's overall nature, I decided to put it in the romance category although there is a threesome at the end

If the reader is a Native American, and specifically, a member of the Navajo Nation, I apologize in advance if anything is misstated or misrepresented. I respect the Native Americans in our county and would never knowingly cause them harm.

Faye Dalton

I paused while eating my high-protein brunch-fast to gaze out the window in the buffet of the W Resort near Grapevine Lake in northern Dallas. Last night I served as sommelier for a private international industry party with over 200 people. I drank too much wine. I skipped the hashbrowns and loaded up on black coffee.

One of the executives at the party challenged each of my pairings. I had to test his as well as mine and explain why my choice was better.

Robert figured that as an older man who ran the company's wine division he discerned pairings better than me. He didn't. I got a $5,000 bonus from the chairman of the board after the party ended.

It's nearly noon and I only have seven hours to work with my staff on the weekend's events. Some sort of bash is being held in each of our six venues tonight and tomorrow night. I'll need to check that everything is going okay before we leave.

As people walked along the sidewalks outside, I wondered about their families and their history. I survived a mystery accident slightly more than seven years ago that left me with retrograde amnesia and wiped out all my memories prior to August 16, 2012.

According to all the reports I've been able to find, only skid marks and a few vehicle body parts remained at the accident site. No vehicles, no bodies, no other traces that anything happened. The lack of clues only added to the mystery of my life prior to 2012. Best guestimates put my age at 30.

I'm using the surname of the people who found me beside a county road in Northern Texas. I picked the first name when one of the nurses who did my first X-rays called another nurse Faye. That triggered a reaction in my clouded brain and I began using it.

The couple who found me, Orville and Peggy Dalton, and I still keep in touch. They paid for all my medical costs and for an attorney to provide me a new name and identity. They refused to accept repayment, so I've been donating what I can to various charities in the area.

As I ate, I automatically critiqued the food. How I gained my cooking and wine skills is another mystery.

The bacon lacked crispness, and the sourdough toast drooped as I ate. I would talk to the shift supervisor after I finished. Part of my job is quality control for the seven places at W Resort that serve food regularly.

I do know that I am half Native American because of my skin color, my broader face than many other people and the DNA test I took. The doctor who took the test said it wasn't conclusive as to which tribe or nation I came from.

When the doctors did my exams, they told me I previously had a child. I often wonder where the child is, if it survived, and what my husband or lover looked like. My soul and spirit sometimes crave them, despite my lack of knowledge.

That craving is the main reason I haven't gotten married. Somehow, a part of me believes they are still alive and yearning for me the way I do for them.

So many unanswered questions. So few answers.

Despite searching extensively, I've found nothing of my life prior to my accident. I even drove to the reservations in Oklahoma searching for my ancestors.

I'm still astounded at the lack of evidence that I existed before August 2012. With DNA and all the databases that hold the tiny details of a person's life, some trace should show up.

The counseling I went through helped but at times like Christmas all those mysteries press upon me more than any other time of the year. For some reason, I want to cook Romanian food at Christmas. That urge puzzles me the most.

There is a Romanian community in Dallas. I've visited some of them and they are as mystified as I am at my skills.

Other than knowing that many other people suffer from holiday depression, I don't have a clue why Christmas affects me so much. Wondering about who I was before the accident sends me into depression.

Dismissing all the gloom as best I can, I gaze at my lover across from me. That is another mystery. If I had a child, and presumably a husband, why do I prefer women over men?

Carly Tucker and I met about a year after the accident. I had recently started at the same restaurant where she sang two nights a week during her last year in college. During the break, she wandered back to the kitchen area looking for a snack.

Our attraction was like a piece of metal to a magnet. She followed me to my apartment because it was closer and we had mind-blowing sex that night. We've been nearly inseparable since.

It wasn't that we didn't like men. I couldn't remember being with anyone before seven years ago. She had an abysmal track record with men.

We preferred each other when it came to sex, but sometimes we wanted the sensation of a real cock inside us. As a performer around the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the past ten years, she was acquainted with many honorable men. We would invite three or four for the night and have a blast.

When she suggested we go skiing for the first time, I wasn't sure. Losing my memory is like walking in the dark all the time without lights.

She took me to Sugarloaf where her younger brother is a ski instructor. Without any prompting, I properly prepared to ski. My first run was a green circle (beginners) which I navigated with ease.

(The doctors said this might happen. Motor skills survive amnesia, but victims don't understand how or why they have that skill.)

I moved to the Blue Square (intermediate) runs and still had no struggles. On the last run of the day, I went on a Black Diamond run where I almost lost control.

Before we left a week later, Ryan (Carly's brother) and I skied with ease down a Double Black Diamond (professional and dangerous) slope. "I don't know how you gained all these skills," he said. "But you are good enough to race if you want."

Why I ski so well and flopped badly at snowboarding proved another mystery. Just like how I cook without a recipe and burned cookies when I tried baking.

"Do we need to travel so far? We've only got five days off this time," I asked Carly.

W Resort only keeps a skeleton staff over Christmas Day. Today is December 20, 2019. We would fly out tonight, back Christmas night, and immediately finalize plans for New Year's Eve.

The six parties held at the resort are booked a year in advance. Carly helps plan the entertainment. Me and my staff of five are in charge of all the wines and pairings.

"That's the whole point. We've gone to Vail and other places in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho already." She generally stays away from the Northeast because of her family.

Her wealthy banker father is a constant philanderer. Her mother belongs to a bi-sexual polycule of seven people, four men and three women.

Or is it seven men and five women. The number of people changes each time she talks to her mom, which isn't often.

"Besides, I want to introduce you to Gus Schmidt. He's a great guy who helped Ryan immensely." I rolled my eyes. He's married, retired from professional skiing and has two kids, according to Carly. For all her trauma and drama in her family, at least she has one. I've been alone for seven years and four months.

Four years ago, we viewed her brother, Ryan and Gus compete at the U.S. Nationals at Sugarloaf. Both men earned a spot on the U.S. team and competed at the Winter Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Gus earned a gold and a silver medal and Ryan won a bronze and silver medal in downhill, shalom and super G.

Carly stayed longer than me and got a chance to visit with her brother who introduced her to Gus. I needed to return to Dallas. The head sommelier at the restaurant where I worked was taken to the hospital with a burst appendix. Since the restaurant picked up the tab for my entire trip if I returned, the choice was clear.

I moved to W Resort three years ago. Last year, a local newspaper named me the best sommelier in Dallas-Fort Worth. The award is comforting, but I'd trade it in a minute to find my family.

A resort bus took us to the airport shortly after seven and our plane left at nine-thirty. Around a quarter to midnight (Pacific Time), we disembarked, picked up our four-wheel drive SUV Carly reserved, and made the forty-five-minute drive to Palisades Resort without problems.

My roommate had booked us a small chalet with a kitchenette. As we drove through the area surrounding the resort, I noticed a closed grocery store.

"As soon as I'm up, I'll shop there and buy us some fresh foods for salads and charcuterie. Maybe pick up a souvenir cutting board like we did in the other places."

"Sounds good. Resort food is okay, but I prefer helping you fix nicer dishes," Carly said.

***

Charles Grigoras

I checked my figures one last time to make sure I entered all the costs and projected income correctly. I used my mouse to close the file and again to put the computer into sleep mode. I took my special computer glasses off, put them carefully on the desktop, and scrubbed my face with my hands several times.

A glance at the digital clock on the desk showed the time as 11:48 p.m., Thursday, December 19, 2019. I rose and paced the oversized office and did a few exercises. Sitting at a desk for most of the 16-hour days I work running Grigoras Sporting Goods made my muscles like overtightened guitar strings.

Once again, memories of my wife, Faye, crept into my thoughts. Her Navajo name was Shaylah, but she adopted Faye after her alcoholic parents died in a car crash. In both Nime (Navajo) and in English the word means fairy or princess.

Slightly more than seven years ago, she and her best friend were returning from visiting Faye's brother at Fort Bragg, North Carolina before he returned to Iraq. Greg Hunt, one-half Navajo Native American, owned a car Faye liked. He gave it to her for safekeeping.

She and Sherri Minthorn flew to North Carolina and decided to take the southern route across the United States to bring back the 2008 souped-up yellow Jeep Cherokee. Sherri had relatives and friends in Atlanta, Memphis and Oklahoma City she wanted to visit.

My wife grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Northeastern Arizona and planned to visit friends there. Except for her brother, all her other relatives were deceased. Both children came along when their parents were in their late 30s.

Faye and I met when my family visited the Navajo Nation as part of a volunteer group representing various churches in the Sacramento area. It was love at first sight, for me at least, and we married within a year. Athena came along a little under nine months after the marriage ceremony.

Courting her wasn't easy. My parents worked hard to stop us, including refusing access to dad's twin-engine Cessna 441. Since I was finishing my senior year at Stanford, I had friends who took me in return for discounts on merchandise. My parents didn't like it, but as one of the owners I had that privilege. The distance proved a major obstacle.

I didn't completely understand why she consented until after Faye disappeared. The tribe allowed me to watch part of Greg's burial ritual and live on the Reservation for a month.

Faye's former girlfriend, Laurie Redding, told me Faye frequently had dreams of a man who she should marry. "He looked just like you. If you hadn't arrived when you did, she and I would still be together." Bitter at first when Faye and I started dating, she helped me a lot once my wife disappeared.

My sister, Valerie, and I banded together to convince our parents to allow the marriage. I returned the favor two years later, when Gus started dating Valerie. Our mother was prejudiced against anyone who wasn't Romanian like we are. He's give year's older than my sister which was another objection.

When her friends on the reservation called me and said she hadn't arrived, we asked Herb Overstreet, the company's security manager, to oversee the search. The sheriff's department of Cotton County in Northern Texas responded with one incident that fit the time frame.

They gave Herb all they had about a multi-vehicle accident. To this day, he suspects there is more involved that they either destroyed or concealed.

Their investigation revealed no vehicles and no bodies. While I was willing to grasp at straws in my search for Faye, Cotton County was so far off any of their planned routes, I had to concede I would probably never see her again.

Because both women were young and beautiful, the sheriff's best guess was that a gang kidnapped them during one of the women's stops, smuggled them overseas, and put them to work as a rich men's whores. I shuddered at the thought, but given the lack of concrete evidence, I had to accept that it might have happened.

When we tried to notify Greg, we discovered her brother died within hours of his plane landing in Baghdad. Mortar fire landed on his troop transport enroute to his post.

With that news, all the doors slammed closed. While I continued to keep the options open, I figured I would never see Faye again. At least I had our daughter, Athena.

My mother always kept after me to remarry, but I didn't feel like I should. "Faye may be alive somewhere. What a mess that would be if we found each other and I have a wife."

I did consider amnesia, but as nothing more than a small possibility. It was a screen and book writers' trope, just like the frequent romance novels about a man who takes a woman as a fake wife to meet some clause in a will. Or vice versa, to be fair.

Val loves romances. More practical me, I scoff at them.

In my office wanderings, I paused to look over the lights of Sacramento and down at the Sacramento River. Nine years ago, my parents leased the entire ninth floor of a 12-story office complex being constructed on the site of the old Southern Pacific Yard and repair shops. As was typical, Nicu and Delorean Grigoras took advantage of introductory rates. They came from Romania as children with their parents after the former Soviet Union collapsed.

The office was designed for my parents to share the space and was much too large for me. I installed an oversized sofa along one edge and spent many nights sleeping on it as I averaged 90-110 hour work weeks.

I expected to soon move the corporate offices into a larger overall space, but a smaller office for me. The lease expired in a year and we planned to move further south as we expanded in that direction. Our 33 stores operated in Northern California and in Nevada as far east as Elko.

Our advisory board didn't want the hassle of dealing with another state's laws. My family owned the business, but as part of me taking over management at such a young age, our lenders insisted on an advisory board.

The company would experience its best year ever, my projections tonight showed. We'd already leased a few buildings and set the wheels in motion for the expansion. We had enough reserves. Jerome Haller, my financial person, made sure of that.

Most recently, the death of my parents slightly more than two years ago came into my mind. My father was an experienced former U.S. Air Force pilot who flew his Cessna often.

Two days before Thanksgiving, they left Sacramento to fly to Vail, Colorado to spend the holiday Val and the rest of our family. I was already in Vail skiing.

The plane hit an unexpected downdraft and crashed in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The wreckage and their bodies weren't recovered until spring. Dad had flown that same route numerous times over the past four years.

Since Gus and Valerie had contracts binding them to jobs in Vail until the end of the ski season, the responsibility became mine by default. Val is a much better chef than a businessperson.

She acted as a sounding board, but she didn't want to deal with the day to day stuff. Gus's parents own a ski resort in Vermont and he's got a good head for business.

At age 29, I became president of a company in 18 cities. After a short inaugural period, we expanded.

The company survived and thrived only because of the expertise and support of key employees. I did nothing but work and take care of Athena. Many days I brought her to my office and let our nanny or my mother take care of her here.

Once they died and the plane was lost, I never replaced it. I had a pilot's license that I let lapse. With two major tragedies in my past, I didn't want a third.

Gus played an important role in our success. As a former national champion and Gold-Medal Olympian, he replaced my parents in the advertising and that proved a tremendous help.

While I grieved for my parents, I couldn't help but feel a hint of satisfaction at how Gus helped us survive and how much we had grown. Dad kept me on a short leash and we clashed frequently.

Tomorrow, I would head to Palisades Resort Tahoe to see Athena, Gus, Val and their two young children, Natalia, six, and Felix, four. Once my parents died, and I became swamped with keeping the company alive, I let Athena stay with Gus and Valerie.

I had not gone without girlfriends. When my mother complained, I simply said, "Faye would have wanted me to not sit around and mope. If something happened to me, I would hope she would feel the same."

The rules were clear when I dated. If the wrong kind of sparks flew between my daughter and a date, that was it. My daughter is all I have left of my brief life with my soulmate.

My current girlfriend's name is Sarah Whitmore. She represents a company that makes and distributes camping gear. Her uncle owns the company based in Tacoma, Washington. Her father is president of a chain of banks in the Pacific Northwest and her mother is an attorney.

Sarah told me she understood she would always play second fiddle to Faye. That was fine with her. We never asked each other to be exclusive, so if one of us had sex when we weren't together, we understood.

Before I went into bed, I performed the ritual I did each night. In front of a large picture of Faye, I bowed my head the same as I had done since August 2012. "I pray for your safe return and your happiness if you don't."

***

Despite my best intentions, I didn't leave Sacramento until after six p.m. The drive is about two hours and I arrived in time to put Athena to bed.

Sarah greeted me at the door. "I had a good time skiing today. Your daughter is waiting for you to read her a story. I'll be waiting in our room," she said with a kiss.

Natalia and Felix were already in bed, Val said. "They'll mob you in the morning. Best to spend as much time with your daughter as you can tonight."

"Dad," Athena said as I finished "The Reindeer Wish." I was the only person she allowed to read her that book.

(The book is the story of a young girl finding an abandoned reindeer baby in the woods. They become good friends and have many adventures together. As the reindeer grows older, he wants to go back to his kind. Anja, the main human, leads him to join the greatest group of reindeer of all, those of Santa's sled team.)