Reunion 69

I'd just taken a bite of my sandwich when my desk phone rang. Trying not to let shredded lettuce and tomato drop onto my desk I reached for the phone and didn't check the caller ID.

"Hello, this is Stephanie, how may I help you?"

"Hey. It's me," said the husky voice in my ear.

"Me" was, until a few weeks earlier, the man with whom I'd ended so many of my nights and began so many of my days. "Me" was the man I'd been crazy about since we'd met; the man who'd recently told me things were too unsettled in his life for him to be in a relationship right now.

We'd exchanged a couple of emails since then but hadn't spoken. The sudden silence had been unbearable. I'd taken to leaving my house in the late afternoon hours when he usually called me while driving home from work simply so I wouldn't hear the phone not ring.

"Hey," I replied around my mouthful of sandwich. "What's going on?" I groaned inwardly at myself for not having the rapier-like wit that would have let me form a witty zinger as a reply. Then again, the cube farm didn't offer much privacy and I was in shock.

"Not much. I was just calling to see how your day's going."

"It's okay, still kind of slow. Guess we are going to catch a bit of a break as the holidays come up." I'd grabbed a red marker, written his name on a piece of paper and was knocking frantically on my desk to get my friend's attention. When she looked up I held up the paper with his name on it and then pointed to my phone. She raised her eyebrows and turned away to give me some privacy.

"That's good I guess; you were pretty busy there for a while."

"Yeah, well, it's almost too slow now. Ah, this is a surprise."

"I know. Look, I wanted to say I'm sorry..."

"Can we not do this here?" I interrupted, tears stinging my eyes. Jeez, Steph, hold it together, it's been almost three weeks.

He gave a soft, small chuckle and said, "Yeah, sorry, sometimes I forget."

We chatted and laughed about nothing for the next fifteen minutes. There was some small piece of my mind that recognized how easy it was to talk with him and I found myself smiling. We finished laughing about something silly and he said, "Hey, I want to talk to you, try to explain some of this stuff. I don't have a lot of answers but I'd like to talk to you."

I'd closed my eyes after the first few words. That voice that had so often whispered to me in the middle of the night made me weak. I couldn't understand why he'd left, how things had broken apart so quickly, and I hated the silence between us most of all. But I've already said that. I didn't know what would come out of talking, but I knew I couldn't say no.

"Sure, I'd like that. I've felt like I couldn't reach out, as if I'd sent an email or called you'd tell me to just go away. That's been so hard. I want to talk to you too. And you don't have to have answers and decisions, we could just talk like we used to for a while. Remember that?"

We agreed he'd come to my place for dinner the following Sunday. Great, 72+ hours to drive myself crazy, work myself into a frenzy with nerves and questions and rationalizations. Well, I knew I needed to feel more settled with how things would be between us. Better to pick the scab off now when the cut had just started to heal than weeks from now when it had healed more.

I went home that night and tried not to think too much more. After I got settled for the evening I opened up some old emails in random order. We'd been so good together in all ways. We talked, we laughed, we shared a great sense of adventure. And our physical relationship was nothing short of amazing. Every time, no matter how often we'd made love, we went to new heights.

All these months later I still had a physical reaction when my memory turned over thoughts of certain times we'd loved, or I read words we'd written to each other afterward. We spent a fair amount of time away from each other traveling for work, and during those times we talked and wrote what we couldn't do, what we wanted to do, what we would do when together again. With just a few words we could create an image, recall a memory. "I will think of your back arching and fingers clenched in mine while we move together towards an out of body climax" he sent in a late night email one weekend when we had to be apart.

So many images came to me when I read that. The first time I straddled him on the edge of the bed, sliding doors of our hotel room open to the sound of waves crashing on the rocks. The car ride home after my birthday dinner with my right foot on the dashboard, my left leg bent at the knee and tucked up onto the seat so he could reach into me. The first time he'd played his fingers over me while moving inside me.

Thinking about our times together wasn't doing me any good. I was getting all worked up but wasn't in the mood to release myself. Nothing in that drawer was coming out tonight.

Sunday came and he walked through my door looking as sexy and at ease as he always had. His unassuming manner and quiet confidence had drawn me to him from the first. We kept our banter light and our distance from each other as we moved around the kitchen preparing dinner. Once he came up and rubbed his hand in circles on my back. Touching and being touched by him had always been so calming to me; I'd missed that so much these last few weeks.

We ate dinner without urgency, then cleaned up the dinner dishes and went to the couch. We sat on opposite ends, me holding a pillow to my chest as though to ward off words that might hurt me. I had no idea what he wanted to say. Earlier in the day I'd joked with my friends that he'd be a pretty big louse if he came for dinner only to tell me that he wasn't interested in coming back or at least talking again. But I couldn't read him tonight.

As the conversation continued our bodies relaxed, our tensions flowing out in small waves, and we began to touch, gingerly at first, just our fingertips, then our palms, then interlacing our fingers. After a time we drew closer to each other, and then were resting with our foreheads touching, eyes closed, breathing in sync. He kissed the back of my hand, my fingers, brushed his lips over my forehead. "Are you going to kiss me?" I asked, "Or am I going to have to come over there?"

He gave a small chuckle and tilted his head, bringing his lips to mine and reaching to brush my hair aside and cup my cheek. I'd sunk into him each time he'd done that and this time was no different. We kissed gently, reacquainting ourselves with the feel of each other as the world began to fall away, leaving us in a soft cocoon. Minutes passed before we slowly brought our bodies closer, wrapping our arms around each other and pressing tight. Eventually he pulled me onto his lap with my legs around his hips, both of us moving forward and back with increasing rhythm as the ever-present heat began building between us, our kisses deepening, feeling more urgent.

Breathless I pulled away and looked into his eyes. "I think we should take our clothes off," he said.

"I think we'll need more room," I replied.

"Shall we move?"

I kissed him again, climbed off him and took his hand, leaving my narrow couch behind for the comfort of my bed. When we reached my bedroom he kissed me and unbuttoned my jeans, squatting down to kiss my belly as he stripped off my clothes. Once both undressed we dove under the covers and immediately turned to each other, bodies moving together as easily as they always had. We kissed, ran our fingers through each other's hair, our hands down each other's chests and backs before he moved atop me and asked if he could come inside. I reached down, found him and guided him into me.

As he entered me we each let out a ragged breath. That first moment was exquisite, took our breath away as it had so many times in the past. We kissed lips, earlobes, necks and shoulders as we moved together, feeling my body welcome him into me as he thrust tenderly but with enough force to let me know he'd missed this too. When his climax came he gasped and pressed his forehead to mine as his body froze; he stopped breathing and reached beneath me to pick me up and pull me close.

We kissed as our breathing returned to normal, pausing often just to look into each other's eyes.

"What's that they say about makeup sex?" he asked.

I laughingly replied, "That it's good. And hey, I'd wanted to be on top."

"You still can!" he said and with that I lowered my leg and we rolled together so he was on his back; he was still inside me.

I sat up, locked our hands together and slowly began rocking. He pulled his hands away from mine to rub my body and pull me toward him for kisses. After a time his tumescence returned and he placed his hands on my hips, moving me on him. I leaned down to rest on his chest; the increased pressure added a level of sensation that gently swept me higher. He picked up his pace, added pressure to our strokes, his breathing became more rapid, and I lifted myself from him to watch him throw his head back as he arched his back and spilled into me, holding us together as though he were trying to climb through me.

The sight of him losing control always turned me on. His broad chest and well-toned arms aroused me at any given time, and watching them frozen in pleasure always brought me a thrill.

Spent, we relaxed our bodies into the bed and each other. He stroked my head and sprinkled kisses on my face. After a time, I said, "I need to get some sleep."

"I'd like to stay if that'd be all right," he said.

"I'd like that," I replied and leaned over to kiss him. "Contacts must come out though!" and I got up to peel out my contact lenses, brush my teeth. He did the same, and we laughed about the sense of déjà vu having done this very same routine of finding him a toothbrush, contact case and face cloth the first time he'd spent the night.

We returned to the bed and wrapped our bodies around each other as had been our habit. As we were kissing goodnight, the gentle kisses became more fervent.

"What's that you said about needing sleep?" he asked as he began licking my nipple. I laughed and surrendered. He'd come home.