Decision βor-Two Seconds' Leeway
It had been a perfectly ordinary school-day: it didn't stay quite that way.
Late afternoon: all students had long since departed for home. Hayley, at 57 the school's most senior fourth-grade teacher, was alone in the main office. She stood at the bank of mail cubbies, idly sorting through her day's receipts, dropping most items into the recycle bin unopened. The last envelope caught her attention by touch β very heavy, expensive paper, lovely on the fingers. She looked at it - dark cream with a tiny touch of lime β elegant stuff! She flipped it over and her eyes widened: it was hand-addressed in exquisite, formal copperplate cursive, narrow italic. No return address. It was addressed to "Mrs Hayley S. S. Sharpe".
There were precious few people who knew her full name with its three esses: those few knew her complete maiden name, Hayley Sonja Semple, but nobody, including Hayley herself, ever used all four. More important, and absolutely definitive, was the unique style of the capital esses, which she instantly recognized -
Jason
had written this! His surname, too, began with an ess and this was HIS script!
Jason - her first-ever lover, back when she was all of seventeen (he claimed she was 17 going on 35), he 28 β she in high-school, him a first-year PhD student. Four years together, head-over-heels, monogamous, then the breakup, initiated by her on the premise that N=1 was an inadequate sample size upon which to base a choice of long-term (permanent?) mate.
She'd often felt it hadn't been her wisest decision. She'd married #2 β George: they were still together, and total N=2 still held. Today they were empty-nesters, 'married-with-three-grown-kids'. All spice and sex had long ago evaporated, it was now a 'companionate marriage', with which state of affairs she was not at all happy.
Hayley shook her head in disbelief. Renewed contact after 37 years! Her heart seemed to skip a beat and her deep belly twisted gently. After all, amidst all the other things they were so well matched in, they HAD been a very hot item, with a wonderfully intense and varied sex-life, so she was entitled to squirm a bit in her chair at certain memories.
She stared at the envelope, fondled it gently β very little in it, one sheet, she guessed- plus something rectangular, small, probably a business card. She studied the address and wondered if, just perhaps, the pen responsible was the one she'd given him when he passed his doctoral qualifying exam? That would be romantic, she thought with a giggle. The pen had been of a quality, certainly, to have lasted this long β it had cost more than a month's allowance.
Then her eye caught the stamp β it was upside down, one of their old code symbols, meaning "seriously private communication in this one, open discreetly!" They had developed the code when she and her family went to England for most of a year: all their communications had been via snail-mail, with far too many busy family eyeballs around for comfort.
She flushed and her heart raced as she took a quick glance around the office β she was still alone. Back to the envelope, thinking 'Surely to god he wouldn't have...?!' She flipped it over again, scanned the back closely, seeking tiny, light-pencil, inconspicuous writing, specifically the number '1369' near an edge. Nothing. Hallelujah! Within their code, that would have signified a second, inner envelope, also sealed, carrying one of their personal pornographic photos. They'd made a LOT of those! It had been quite fun, both taking them and then working together in the darkroom. She still had half a dozen of the very best, those few that had somehow against all odds transcended mere porn and arrived at the artistic.
The surviving photos were sequestered in the lovely wood-and-velvet jewelry box Jason had given her for her eighteenth: they'd wiggled the liner free of the outer container, making it removable but in an invisible, unexpected way. The photos were under the liner. Although she hadn't looked at them for three decades, there they'd lain, not ten feet from hubby George, throughout their entire marriage.
The oddball number '1369' had a private, but fully explainable, etymology. Jason had been a Marine, and once explained to her that every occupational specialty in the Corps had a four-digit code β all Marines were trained as "basic riflemen" β code 0311 β and then as one got additional training, one accumulated codes β he'd become a precision-approach-radar tech, code 4739. The crude joke amongst Jarheads was that the TRUE "basic code" for every Marine was "1369" β standing for "unlucky cocksucker". She'd thought that cute, and had co-opted it as her private nickname (she being utterly enamored of oral sex) but she had insisted on removing the "UN". For years he had used 1369 as his salutation in their private correspondence: she had signed all her love-letters "L:1369" β meaning "I Love You - from your 1369".
Hayley stared at the address again for half a minute, then stepped into her private office, closed the door, sat down, and laid the envelope before her on the desk calendar. A minute more passed. She picked it up, studied the firmly-glued flap, impulsively ran the tip of her tongue along the flap's edge. HIS tongue had been right here, no more than a day or two ago. That infinitely talented, oh-so-energetic tongue.
She shivered slightly at those memories, all of them good. When she'd ended their relationship so cavalierly, she'd had no idea just how much she would miss that gadget and its capabilities: she had the extraordinarily misbegotten, vague idea that all men would be alike in their tastes and techniques β how bloody wrong THAT was!
Hayley picked up her opener, slit the top of the envelope. Good paper, indeed β it actually took effort to cut. She puckered the envelope so she could extract the contents, and generated a tiny gust carrying the faintest ghost of a scent. The odor went straight to her reptilian brain, her insides knotted violently down behind her pubis, and her breath actually stopped whilst her brain spent half a second analyzing, then presented her with the identification.
It was his deodorant! Always and forever, from first date to finale, he'd used the same one, and she loved it β she could see the package, white and green, 'Mennen Speed Stick Regular'. After lovemaking they would shower together, wash and dry one another, and then she would apply the stuff for him. Resulting more than once in the need for a second shower.
'That sly fox!' she thought with a tiny grin β '...he really knows how to play this game!'
Just the fact of his letter coming to her at school said volumes β that he'd already put in considerable effort, and intended to be VERY careful to give her every chance to tell him to go away.
She bit her lip gently β what else might he know, or have intuited, about her? If HE hadn't changed much, then perhaps SHE hadn't either?! Then she caught herself β "Egotist! What game, exactly? You haven't even read it to see what he has to say!"