Visiting Emma

"I swear, Jack," Emma sleepily murmured in my ear, satisfaction dripping from her every word. "I could die under the weight of man who's just exhausted himself."

We stayed locked together, me resting inside her, she with her legs tightly around me. In one way it seemed like forever, and in another it didn't seem nearly long enough. When she unlocked her ankles and let her legs slip off me, I immediately missed the feeling of her clinging to me.

I picked my heavy head up off the pillow, ignored the slight feeling of dizziness, and brought my mouth to hers, kissing her. I felt her body shift beneath me, felt her begin to tighten around me again as she ran her hands through my hair. I couldn't get enough of her. Her smell, her taste, her softness. I wanted to start again, to see how hot I could make her so soon after, but I thought better of it. Softly, I pulled my lips from hers, and slowly I slipped myself out.

She exhaled, and slid her heels down my calves; her smooth arches pushed at the tightness in my legs.

"So soon?" she asked, her eyes closed as if she were trying to will the moment to last longer.

"We should get back under the shower," I said, my throat dry and creaky.

"Okay," she replied, quietly.

I started to move, but she stopped me with her arms.

"Wait," she said.

She was looking at me, searching my face again like she had the day before. Her eyes were wet, not tearing but on the verge, and when she caught me with them I didn't dare move.

"I'm not going anywhere," I tried to assure her, softly. "I'm right here."

"Do you—" her voice faltered and she cut herself off.

I waited, not wanting to ask the wrong question.

She hesitated and looked away, swallowed hard and brought her eyes back to mine. I didn't know why she was upset, but I tried to soothe her as best I could. Already back up on my elbows, I put one hand to her ear and brushed away the stray hair from her cheek.

"You don't regret what we just did, do you?" she finally asked, her voice low, almost a whisper.

"No," I shook my head. "Though it might make things between us a little more complicated."

She nodded, quietly agreeing.

"I'm sorry," she said, blinking and wiping her eyes. "Really good sex leaves me a bit emotional."

I laughed, completely surprised at the remark, and she hesitantly laughed a little with me.

"I don't think you meant it the way I took it, darling," I teased. "But I'll take that as a compliment...."

She slid her hand down my ribs, first to my waist and then my hip.

I very much wanted to keep her in bed, to keep touching her and let my hands take their time and really explore her. She was so gorgeous, and her voice, soft and full of emotion, made it even harder to resist taking her again. Thankfully, just before it was too late, she suggested we get up.

In the shower we both washed quietly. It wasn't that things had gotten tense or odd between us... it was, I think, that we both simply had a lot on our minds. She was the first to break the silence.

"Would you help me with my back?"

I turned to help, still stirred by the beautiful shape of her, and brought the soap to her shoulders. I rubbed in a good lather and handed her the bar. She took it from me, still quiet.

I began to slide my soapy hands down her back.

"I think this is the twelfth shower I've taken this weekend," I chuckled.

"At least," she replied.

"Not that I'm complaining, I'm just pointing it out."

"I didn't think you were complaining," she said, turning around. "It's actually quite hard to imagine you doing that."

"Maybe because I've had nothing to complain about?"

She leaned in and stepped up on her toes to give me a quick kiss that surprisingly lingered. "Exactly," she whispered as she reluctantly pulled her lips from mine.

"But, I do wonder," I began. "I mean, you're engaged to be married, right?"

She nodded, again searching me with her eyes.

"Does what just happened change that?"

She looked away then, down at the drain in the center of the shower, and was quiet a moment. Then, looking back up at me, she slowly began to shake her head.

"No?" I asked.

"No," she told me.

"I didn't think it would," I said, not sure if that was true.

"Jack," she said, trying to keep eye contact. "You don't really want me to leave Steven do you?"

"No, not really," I admitted. "But are you sure you're not leaving him anyway?"

"Oh, I'm sure," she said.

"Really?"

"You sound surprised."

"I guess I am, considering what just happened."

"About that," she said, lathering her hands up. She began to wash my chest, and I'll be damned if I didn't let her. "I have a confession to make."

"Do you?" I asked.

"Yes," she nodded once. "We've been close for a long time, haven't we?"

"Sure," I said hesitantly.

"And we've always been a little more intimate than just regular friends..." she began to explain, seeming to figure it out as she went along.

I nodded.

"So, I confess: I've wanted to share myself with you for a long time, Jack," she said, still rubbing soap around my chest and then around to my back. "Though," she added. "I know you've wanted me too, so don't try to deny it."

"It'd be a little late to argue that," I said.

"If there had ever been a time when we were both single, I have no doubt we would have hooked up."

"Again," I said. "Not arguing."

"Right," she smiled. "But that time was never coming...." She had stopped washing me and was carefully trying to explain her thoughts. "And," she said after a moment. "I couldn't go my whole life without ever being a part of you, without letting you have this part of my soul." Her smile slipped away, and that moment she was clearly as vulnerable as I had ever seen her.

Quietly, I rinsed myself off, moving very deliberately, and never turning away from her. When I was done, when we were both done, I shut the water off. Even with the water off, we stayed warm with all of the trapped steam and with the bathroom door closed.

I still hadn't said anything, but I knew that with Emma my actions would say more anyway. I pulled the two towels off the shower door and folded one in half, setting it down on the shower floor and sitting down on it with my back against the one tiled wall. Emma didn't take long to figure things out. She settled down in my lap, facing me, her knees resting on the towel under us. She drew in close, touching her lips to my neck and shoulder, pressing her cheek to mine. I opened the other towel and wrapped it around her back and over her shoulders, tucking the ends against the wall behind me.

My arms held her bare body to mine, tightly beneath the towel, her still-slick skin hot to the touch. It was, without a doubt, a piece of Heaven on earth.

Of course we didn't stay in the shower much longer, though we both wanted to. We knew Melinda would be back sooner than later, and so would Steve, and for all of our rationalization, we didn't think it would do anyone any good if we were found stepping out of the shower together.

It was odd, thinking of how Steve fit into what had happened. But then I thought, maybe he didn't fit in at all. At least, not between Emma and I.

As I was taking the bedding downstairs and putting it in the washing machine I had a chance to ponder the whole thing on my own.

Steve's relationship with Emma seemed a bit on the rocks lately, though there were moments when the two of them appeared every bit as happy as anyone. Since I had arrived that Friday afternoon, Emma had said a couple of strange things, things that had led me to wonder how she and Steve were faring, but even still, I had never expected to wind up in bed with her. Maybe all of that strange behavior was merely leading up to the moment when she stepped into the shower with me.... It had all happened so fast....

Not that I was complaining.

My friendship with Emma went back a number of years, and she and I had been close for a while, so her theory that if we could've hooked up we would've hooked up, well, it sounded pretty good. On top of which, I was already beginning to think of what had happened that afternoon as something from our past. It's hard to explain, I know, but I knew that if either of us mentioned our little tryst, it would be in the past tense, as two people would share an old memory.

When she finally joined me downstairs, I noticed that Emma had had the foresight to wear the same clothes she'd been wearing earlier. So much for the oil spill story. Her hair was still a little wet, but it was back up in a clip.

She swayed as she walked up to me, reaching out and pulling at a button on my shirt, giving me a lazy, satisfied smile. "You are going to make Melinda a very happy woman."

"You think?" I laughed.

"I think," she said, flashing a 200-watt smile.

And as if on cue, the doorbell rang to announce that Melinda had returned. I met her at the front door, but Emma turned back to the kitchen when the phone rang.

From quiet to chaos in two seconds.

"Did I miss anything?" Melinda asked me as she set the dry cleaning down on the loveseat nearest the foyer.

I shook my head, pulling her to me.

"Nothing at all," I told her, my tryst with Emma already filed away in my mind as something that may as well have happened a long time ago.

"That's too bad," she replied, twisting a little in my arms. "I was hoping you'd get all dirty changing that oil."

"I did," I said, smiling at her. "I had to shower, I got so dirty."

"Did you?" Mel flashed her own smile at me and buried her nose in my neck. When she brought her head back, she had an odd look on her face.

"Did you..." she began.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head.

At that moment, Emma stepped out from the kitchen. "Steve just called," she told us, all smiles. "He said he's gone straight to the airport, because Joe and Kathy took an earlier flight. They should be here in an hour."

"Well then," I said to Melinda. "Looks like we have some time to kill."

Melinda nodded, but for some reason she didn't look at me.

An hour later Steve showed up with Joe and Kathy. I hadn't seen Joe and his wife in a long time, but they were much like I remembered them. Joe had moved from Los Angeles, where he and Steve had grown up, to a town in Texas called Beaumont, and it was there that he'd met Kathy. Kathy was everything beautiful about the Lone Star state; she carried herself with a learned poise, a studied grace, and she was gifted with both charm and wit. Kathy was the quintessential southern belle, and the phrase, 'a southern girl may talk slow, but she's thinking fast' was never truer than with her. Joe had hit the marital lottery, and he never grew tired of admitting it.

We decided to get Joe and Kathy settled in their bedroom, and then we'd take a few minutes to catch up before getting ready for dinner.

As I put one of Kathy's bags down in the closet of the upstairs bedroom they'd be staying in, Joe immediately took my hand and gave it a firm grip. He had a man's handshake, vital and firm, and I grinned at the enthusiasm he showed for seeing me.

"It has been far too long," Joe said, with a slight Texan accent. It was a bit weird, I admit, because he otherwise sounded so much like Steve.

"Yes it has," I told him, still grinning.

It had indeed been a long time since I had seen Joe, but he still looked very fit, very healthy. He was Steve's older brother, and though they didn't look much alike, at least to me, they were very clearly siblings. Just the way they acted, the way they thought so much alike. I'd always liked Joe though I never really got to see him all that much.

Joe and I turned to Kathy just as she pulled away from Emma. Kathy turned to me.

"And hello to you, Jack," she said, leaning in and giving me her cheek to kiss, her Texan accent more pronounced than Joe's since she'd had it all her life. "I believe you just might be getting even more handsome with age."

"Caroline, your charm is matched only by your grace," I said, giving her my best imitation of a gentleman's bow.

"Jonathon," she said, taking a breath and bringing her hand to her throat. Her eyes twinkled and that amused smile of hers was in full force. "You're getting better at this. Tell me more about my grace."

"Be wary now, Jack," Joe warned good-naturedly. "If she takes too much of a liking to your sweet talking, she'll insist we bring you home with us."

"By the way, which of these rascals told you my first name was Caroline?" she asked, using her eyes to include both Steve and Joe.

"I read it in your biography, Congresswoman," I smiled, to underline her title. Caroline 'Kathy' Brennan-Walker was a second term congresswoman in the Texas state legislature. As I said, poise, grace, charm and wit.

"I've seen that book," she nodded. "Full of lies and half-truths."

"And at least one fact," I replied.

"Just the one," she admitted, wryly.

"Where's Melinda?" Steve asked, suddenly.

"She wanted to take a quick nap," Emma answered. But then we heard the sound of the shower starting up down the hall. "That must be her getting ready for dinner. How does that sound to everyone?"

"Superb," Kathy said, excited. "I have read such flattering accounts of the food and service...."

She went straight away to her suitcases and that gave the rest of us the impetus to get out and go to our own closets.

As I passed the bathroom closest to my bedroom, I could hear the water sheeting off Melinda, I could hear it slapping the basin of the tub, and the imagined image of her under the shower came to mind. I wondered, briefly, if I had some sort of fetish for women and showers.

Forty-five minutes later, Joe, Steve and I were in the kitchen, each of us dressed to the nines. No beer, like the evening before, instead we were eating a couple of mints and still catching up with one another while we waited for the girls to join us. Which, somewhat surprisingly, didn't take that long.

But even if they had taken hours, it would have been worth it.

Kathy was stunning in a strapless burgundy number that went to her ankles, with matching shoes and a tiny watch that was probably worth two months of my salary. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and any worries I'd had about her being underdressed were thrown out the window.

Emma followed Kathy down. She had on her new slip dress, with the shoes she'd picked out especially for it. Her hair was together in a loose braid that hung down the front of her left shoulder, and she had slipped a string of pearls around her neck. The cut of the dress left her shoulders bare, and the pearls and braid accentuated and brought attention to that fact. She was gorgeous.

Yet as good as Kathy and Emma both looked, Melinda, to me, looked even better. She had her auburn hair clipped up so that her neck and smile got all the attention, while the black sheath dress showed off her figure and the black heels added a couple of inches to her height. She was also wearing a thin anklet which was something I'd never really thought of as sexy until that very moment; suddenly, it was one of the sexiest things I'd ever seen. When she smiled at me, I felt it all over.

The drive to the restaurant wasn't particularly long. We took two cars, Melinda and I in the Escalade (since I'd changed the oil, Steve joked) and everyone else in Steve's black 5 series BMW.

At the restaurant, I handed the keys to a valet, and the Maitre De greeted us the moment we went inside. Our coats were taken, and soon we were all being seated.

It was a very private table, with slightly lowered lighting, and everything looked expensive, dark wood colors and deep veneers. It was a first class restaurant, no doubt about it.

As we were seated, I noticed that Emma almost immediately began to squirm in her chair. Before we were introduced to our waiter, Emma had already excused herself to the restroom. I wondered about her for a moment, but everyone kept the conversation going and soon enough Melinda had all of my attention anyway.

I could smell the perfume she was wearing, a blend of lavender and something else, maybe just soap, and it had a strange effect on me. It took me back to the night before, lying in bed with her, smelling her skin and her hair. I was in a public place, but I was in my own world, completely preoccupied with the girl on my left.

She was looking at her menu. I was mostly looking at her. When she noticed, she leaned over and whispered.

"What are you thinking about?" Her voice was very low, her breath warm in my ear.

"You," I whispered back. "I have been completely enchanted since the moment you came downstairs. You look dazzlingly beautiful...."

She tucked her chin a bit and smiled a little smile. "All those lovely words," she said, low, but no longer whispering. "What are you going to say the next time I make myself pretty for you?"

Sometimes she could be bold, and sometimes she could be shy, and it was wonderful never knowing which I was going to get.

"I'll learn new ones," I answered. "In different languages. English doesn't have enough for you anyway."

It was then that we both seemed to realize that we weren't alone at the table, probably because it had gotten so quiet suddenly, and everyone was staring at us.

"When did you all get here?" I asked, as a bit of a joke, and luckily it made everyone laugh. Then I was able to change the topic. For a moment, I wasn't sure I'd be able to, mostly because Kathy seemed to be quite interested, but Steve helped out and pretty soon our 'should've-been-private' conversation was all but forgotten.

Until Emma came back and asked if she'd missed anything.

"Just some wonderful flirting between our two newest love-birds, that's all," Kathy told her, that amused look of hers surfacing again.

"Oh," Emma said, looking almost uncomfortable. "Perhaps it was best I was gone."

Kathy laughed, but Steve didn't. And neither did I, though I smiled as if I had found her remark amusing.

I wasn't sure what was happening in Emma's head. For a moment, I studied her as she looked at everything but me, and I hoped that our conversation about her not leaving Steve had been honest. I started to wonder if maybe this afternoon had been a mistake; something she wouldn't be able to put behind her.

"Remember how we used to go out on Noah's boat?" Melinda suddenly asked, obviously changing the topic. She even put her menu back down.

"Of course," Emma answered, taking a sip of water. "Very nice boat."

"Yes, very," Melinda smiled, and I thought I saw satisfaction in her eyes. "Do you remember that Memorial Day weekend trip we took a couple of years ago?"

"I remember that," I said, with a conspiratorial smile. "I accidentally saw Laura naked."

Joe and Steve had heard this story from me before, so it was old news to them, but apparently Joe had never told Kathy because she gasped in delighted surprise. Emma seemed to be amused though, and she was looking at me again.

"Yeah, 'accidentally'," Mel snorted, picking up her napkin and playfully hitting me with it. Seriously, she snorted.

"No really, that was an accident," I insisted. "I had no idea she was changing in that cabin."

"Maybe you didn't know she was there, but it still wasn't an accident," Emma added, taking a sip of water.

"Are you suggesting that she...what are you suggesting?" I asked, not understanding this new direction the conversation was headed. "Are you saying she wanted me to catch her like that?"

"You really didn't know? Really?" Mel asked.

"Of course not," I answered, to Kathy's further delight.

"Oh yeah," Mel nodded, leaning a bit away from me. "Everybody saw through that—except you, apparently. She had a thing for you, but you were with Corenne. She wanted you to 'catch' her and jump in the sack with her."