"Oh, no!" Emmie cried out from the bedroom.
"What?" Chris said, pausing the hum of his electric toothbrush, immediately aware of his body bracing.
"Oh ... nothing really. I just saw that my friend Steve got divorced," his wife said from the bedroom. "Aw, that makes me so sad. They were so perfect together."
Chris clicked the toothbrush back on. Steve ... Steve ... Maybe he remembered the name, but that was all. But he had learned over time not to let his "man memory" hang out there too nakedly. Emmie seemed to remember everything, in every detail, while Chris frequently forgot entire episodes she considered important. When he did remember, often it was in only the broadest outlines.
He finished brushing, rinsed and pushed hair out of his eyes. He'd avoided going to a barber during the pandemic, then let it go after noticing a crop of curls and a partial return to the sun-bleached gold of his youth. He grimaced briefly in the mirror at the memory of his father's voice ... like a goddamn girl... you some kind of fruit now? ... an embarrassment to me and your mother....
No wonder he was anxious. But the old man was dead, he reminded himself. And I like my hair this way. So does Emmie.
Crawling up next to her on their rumpled, king-sized bed, he noted the furrows in her forehead. She tossed him a perfunctory smile, face illuminated by the white glow of her laptop and gray-streaked brown curls tumbling enticingly over her forehead.
"What's up?" he asked.
"I'm so upset about Steve! You remember him, don't you?" she asked.
"I think I do..."
"The Morsel," Emmie clarified.
Right, The Morsel, he recalled. Because she found him so cute and cuddly. Gay. Former housemate, he thought. It was always easier to remember Emmie's nicknames.
"Oh, yeah, right," he said, though he couldn't picture the guy's face or anything.
"I think I only met him once."
"Yeah, at the fall music festival," Emmie said. "He was with his husband, Nico."
"Oh, right," Chris said. Now he could picture him.
The Morsel was maybe just under six feet with brown, wavy hair, icy, light-blue eyes and the taut fitness of a typical Boulder runner, climber or cyclist, all of which he was. He'd been wearing a slightly tattered, flannel shirt in an artful green-and-black plaid pattern, jeans with holes in the knees and Teva sandals, your basic hip-outdoor guy from 20 years back (which Chris still wore himself). He remembered thinking how "normal" The Morsel looked, how "not gay," as if there was a "look" that every gay guy shared. Jesus, he thought with a flash of embarrassment. Still with the shame. At your age.
"They just seemed so happy!" Emmie said, affecting an exaggerated frown. Ever the romantic, she was always rooting for couples, as if their success somehow fortified her own union, and any failure posed a threat. Her eyes lost focus and she said, "God, I was so in love with him!"
"In love? For real? Do I know that?" Chris asked, knowing he was probably supposed to. "Is he bi or...?"
"Oh no, he was a total gay. But when I lived at The Place, we used to get so high and then just lie around together in bed, arms wrapped around each other like lazy cats," Emmie said dreamily.
The Place was Emmie's name for the creaky Victorian owned by her ex-kinda-sorta boyfriend Carter, a bookish, aloof, Pied Piper with a strange power to lure "alternative" types into his orbit and make women (and, Chris had heard, more than one guy) fall in love with him. The big house's rooms and nooks, even the attic and basement, were inhabited by five or six such denizens at any given time, including, briefly, Emmie.
Years ago, Chris had been unimpressed with Carter, who had abused Emmie's desire for love in their intermittent relationship over several years; yet the guy seemed to hold some allure for her even now. Some of it was jealousy but he no longer had the energy for such youthful indulgences.
"I guess I don't remember you talking about this," Chris said, pressing closer to Emmie. Athletic and healthy, she'd kept more than fit, biking, playing tennis and teaching dance twice a week. The gradual invasion of her silver streaks only made her sexier, he thought, kissing her hair.
"No, probably not," Emmie said, voice a little higher than usual as she grabbed and squeezed one of his hands a little too tightly. "I mean, I wouldn't have back then, because I think you would have gotten jealous."
"Moi? Just because you liked to get baked and snozzle with your gay friend? I doubt even the dumbest version of my younger self would have been too threatened by that."
"Except," she said, "it was more than that. I also used to blow him."
Chris scanned her face and saw she wasn't joking. Immediately, a spark of arousal ignited in his belly, the usual forge of his lust. Oh, how far you've come, he thought.
"Your story grows interesting," he said with an exaggerated leer. "Leave no detail behind!"
It had taken years, but Emmie had become more comfortable telling him about her sexually adventurous past, having gotten past her fear of hurting his feelings as he grew older and less hung up. Chris had always found her reticence curious, given that she'd been raised in a religion-free home with a vigorously "sex positive" single therapist mother and when being funny proudly declared she'd been a "total slut" in her youth.
As indeed she had. Starting with girls at age 12, she'd had girlfriends, boyfriends, casual sex with men more than twice her age, with strangers, with a female cousin, threesomes, foursomes -- and she cursed like a sailor. Chris, meanwhile, had mindlessly followed the path laid by his Catholic upbringing, trudging into a life of mostly vanilla serial monogamy that felt constraining, yet imperative.
"We loved each other," Emmie said, not taking her husband's bait. "I mean, really loved each other. Like, if he hadn't been gay... He used to date women, but found vag too wet and gooey; I used to laugh at the grimace he made whenever the subject of came up. But he sure didn't mind that I sucked his dick."
"Gee, shocker," Chris said, propping his head upon one elbow and feeling himself hardening inside his loose-fitting scrubs. "I mean, you do know what to do with one, after all ... So, did he have a nice one?"
Emmie flashed an affected, toothy grin and nodded quickly, like a schoolgirl admitting a crush.
Chris had spent years trying to hide his fascination with big dicks from his wife, worried what she would think. But he'd gradually let on and, to his relief, she didn't seem to mind. She even indulged his fantasies of threesomes with her and a nameless, faceless "guy" with a well-developed upper body (her thing) and a very big dick (his).
"You know, he did," Emmie said, and he knew she wasn't kidding.
"Bigger than mine?" Chris asked. She always said she didn't need anything bigger than his, though he sure wanted to see her try.
"It was pretty big," she said, as if she'd come across a long-forgotten letter from an old friend. "About the same as yours, actually. It was a good one, too, just my type..." Emmie slid a hand down Chris' stomach and found what she was looking for.
"Umm hmm, sugar," he breathed, voice husky. "Tell me more..."
She did.
~~
Chris came in from a run a few days later and heard Emmie on the phone. Her tone and animated movement around the house told him her old friend Laurel was on the line. She'd lived at The Place, another of Carter's broken hearts.
"I can't believe Mr. and Mr. Morsel are no more. Uh-huh, me too, they always seemed so perfect for each other," Emmie said on the phone from the kitchen. "I guess Nico just turned into a boring old bald guy who couldn't be bothered with sex any more. No, I know, he was hot, but he really does look like a dumpy frumpster, now. But The Morsel still looks so yum ... how does that happen?"
She waved and smiled to Chris as he headed upstairs to shower, listening to the conversation.
"... and Nico, I never knew this, was super controlling. ... Yeah, totally divorced so now The Morsel picks up all these hot young guys and takes them to Europe and the Caribbean and wherever the fuck and they have massive sex. Totally! Gay-cations; hilarious. But who can blame him?"
After showering, Chris went back down to make a smoothie. He hoped Emmie would make it; she was much better at it.
"Did I hear you say that Ste... sorry, The Morsel, might be coming to visit?"
Emmie laughed. "I love that you just adopt all my names and words. That's so sweet! No, I doubt it, but I guess maybe. He still has all that money from selling his software startup, so he picks up young bucks and takes them on vacation" -- air quotes -- "and wines and dines and fucks them all over the world."
Chris had never stopped marveling at the contrast between Emmie's ability to talk about sex in this semi-raunchy, voyeuristic way, as long as it was someone else's sex life, like she was a comedian or something. She didn't seem to understand the effect she had on him in that mode. He tried to remember The Morsel, and experienced a surge of arousal at the thought of him having his way with some naked bronzed 23-year-old in a tropical paradise, ceiling fan lazily swooping overhead...
"Good for him," he said.
"I know, right?" Emmie said brightly. "OK, I'm heading out soon. I have a class at the beach at 11."
Chris had several work calls to make but found himself distracted by images of a much younger Emmie sucking off her gay friend, who was really just a vague blur in his imagination. The thought of his wife, still so sexy, though not as uninhibited as she once was, going down on any man was hot.
But it wasn't just lust, he thought, staring out his office window to the beach and flat ocean. He winced as uncomfortable memories surged into his mind unsummoned.
His idiotic affair with a woman at a conference (Jesus you idiot), more than a year of therapy, and it seemed they were now on the road to a better, more honest marriage. Emmie was still not quite over it; maybe she never would be, not fully. Chris felt queasy, fearing they would never be truly whole again. God I hope not, he thought.
Fearing he could never unring that bell or truly make amends Chris felt his heart rate rising. So stupid. He closed the file he was working on, paused for ten seconds to summon up The Morsel's full name, and tapped his name out on his keyboard. Damn, he thought, gazing at a social-media profile pic; still good-looking, but not in a showy way. Friendly, no airs at all, he remembered, no wonder Emmie liked him.
He scrolled past photo after photo of The Morsel with much younger, good-looking guys in London, St. Thomas, Phuket. He'd expected to see some kind of sleazy Lothario, slick and selfish, arrogant and rich, but he just looked ... nice.
Unlike you, a silent voice echoed in Chris' mind. No fuck that I fucked up it was wrong but it doesn't mean I'm...
