Brenda was awake and moving before her alarm went off. She had fallen asleep much faster than she expected the night before given the excitement she felt and now awoke feeling rested and ready. She slid out of bed without waking her husband Mike and quickly showered and dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose fitting blue top. Without a word to him she left the bedroom and went to the kitchen. She made a cup of dark roast coffee in the travel mug that she used every day for her drive to work and ate the normal bowl of oatmeal that had been a staple of her morning for many years. She quickly rinsed the bowl and put it in the dishwasher, slipped on a pair of knee high brown leather boots and grabbed the bags by the backdoor as she slipped out the door to the garage.
She held her breath as she tossed the bags into the back of her Ford Explorer, opened the garage door and started the engine. After backing out of the garage and hitting the button on the remote that closed the garage door she exhaled a huge sigh of relief and felt the tension bleed from her body. The last thing she wanted was to have Mike decide this morning to get up and see her off. Not that he ever did, or for that matter had even spoken to her very often at all over the last couple months, but this morning would have been more uncomfortable than usual.
While in most ways this was a morning like any other Thursday morning, for Brenda it was something entirely different. Rather than going to work this morning, she was heading on a trip that could mean the end of her twenty-four-year marriage. In about ten hours she would arrive at a hotel near Charlotte, NC where she would meet a woman that she had fallen in love with. Mike knew where she was going, but not why. The purpose of the trip was to pick up their fifteen-year-old son Josh who had spent the last few weeks with his aunt and uncle in Greensboro, about two hours from Charlotte. She had told Mike that on the way she was going to go to Charlotte and spend a couple days with a group of friends from Virginia that she hadn't seen since they had moved to St Louis seven years earlier. They could save on airfare and she'd get to see her friends, made sense to Mike.
The move to St Louis had been his idea. They both were tired of the Washington DC suburbs they had both grown up in, but moving half way across the country, hundreds of miles from family and friends seemed excessive. Mike had found an excellent job with a salary that they could live on and the company paid their moving expenses. Brenda was able to find a job quickly as well and from a financial perspective the move had worked out well. Even Josh had settled in and was excelling at school and had made lots of friends.
Mike worked a lot though, and their marriage, that had never been fantastic, started to resemble roommates more than a husband and wife. It was not unusual for them to go weeks without having a conversation that didn't pertain to Josh. Both were not good at facing conflict, so when things got bad, often for no identifiable reason, they would pull back from the other and barely speak for weeks and on a few occasions, months. Normally, it would end as suddenly and unexpended as it began, though a couple times they had screamed at each other a bit before making up. Never did they actually discuss it, so it just went on.
As she pulled out onto the interstate, Brenda picked up her phone and sent a text to Alex that let her know she was on the road and would see her tonight. She knew Alex wouldn't respond for a couple hours because she had worked the late shift at the Target store in Roanoke, VA where she was a shift supervisor. Brenda liked it when Alex worked the late shift because she got home after her boyfriend John and his kids were asleep and didn't get up the next morning until after they had left for the day. The less interaction Alex had with John the better Brenda felt.
As she headed east into the rising morning sun, Brenda began to think back to how all of this had started. A series of events that had happened simultaneously and had created the opportunity for two women to develop a relationship that both needed desperately.
It had all started when Mike and Josh had left for two weeks to go fishing in Minnesota. They had gone every year since the family had moved to St Louis. Brenda had chosen to stay home the last four years because she really didn't enjoy fishing and the boys got to spend some time together. Brenda had sent a couple of texts to Mike on Sunday and Monday afternoons and received short responses, but that was the entire communication for the week and by the weekend she was a little annoyed. That set the stage for the series of events that would play out and lead her to where she was at that moment.
After work on Friday she settled down on the couch with a glass of wine and flipped on her laptop. She was lonely and a bit horny which guided her web surfing to a site she had found recently called Literotica.com where people wrote and posted erotic stories. She found herself more and more drawn to stories about lesbian couples and that evening found a couple stories that she enjoyed. After finishing a particularly delightful story, she began exploring the site a little more and noticed a link to a bulletin board. She clicked the link and checked out the topics, most of which were related to writing erotic literature, but one caught her eye, "Personals".
She clicked the link and found herself staring at a list of posts from people looking to connect with other members of the site for a variety of topics. At the top of the list was a post from a member with the name "Daisy29" that read, "Looking for an older woman to explore fantasies". Intrigued, Brenda clicked on the link and read the post, "My boyfriend is out for the night. Any older women want to chat. I've been fantasizing a lot about women lately."
Following a link to Daisy29's profile, Brenda saw that she claimed to be a "twenty-nine-year-old woman who lived with her wonderful boyfriend." Her profile also indicated that she was on-line. "What the fuck," Brenda thought. She scanned the site and saw a link to "Send User a Private Message". She clicked the link and typed a quick message, "Hi, 47 year old married woman. I'd like to talk about your fantasies." She clicked send and sat for a moment and watched the screen.
A minute later the site indicated that he had a message waiting. She clicked on the link and there was a message that read, "Hi. I'm Alex. It's nice to meet you."
She clicked the link to respond and typed, "I'm". "Shit," Brenda thought, "I can't use my real name." She thought for a moment and decided to use the name Joan. "I'm Joan. It's nice to meet you as well sweetie."
The two sent four or five messages back and forth before "Daisy29" asked, "Do you have KiK. This sucks."
Brenda typed back, "I don't know what that is, remember, I'm old."
"Stop it, you are not. It's a messaging app for your phone. Download it and create a username and we can chat there. My name is Lexi29," Alex responded.
Brenda pulled out her phone without hesitating and found the app in the app store. It took only a few seconds to install the app and in about a minute she had an account set up as Joanie47. She searched for Lexi29 and sent a request to connect. The request was accepted within seconds and a closeup image of a lovely young woman's face appeared in a tiny circle next to the screen name. The image was so small on her phone that she couldn't tell much beyond that it was a face, but she assumed it was fake anyway so she didn't pay much attention to it.
They continued their chat and Alex began to tell her about her life. While Brenda was hesitant to share any real details about her life, Alex had no such hesitations. She told her about what an asshole her boyfriend was, how he got drunk and smoked on the front porch every night listening to Insane Clown Posse music. How she had been pregnant but eight months ago the baby had been still-born. She told "Joan" all of this like they had known each other forever.
After chatting for about an hour, Alex just suddenly stopped responding. Brenda waited several minutes, then sent a message, "Well it was nice chatting with you. Guess you found someone more interesting." Brenda pulled her laptop back up and saw that no new messages were there either, so she shut down her laptop and went to bed. Having been in internet chat rooms before, she was not surprised that someone just moved on. It happened a lot.
The next morning Brenda went about her normal Saturday activities. She went to the gym and took a spin class, then met a couple friends for coffee. While having coffee and chatting about the latest PTA drama, the message indicator on Brenda's phone began to flash. The notification indicated that there was a KiK message waiting for her. Surprised, she opened the message and read it, "I'm so sorry Joan. I fell asleep. I wasn't chatting with someone else."
Closing the app, Brenda went back to her conversation with her friends. They sat for another hour or so and talked before it was time to get back to their lives. "See you all next Saturday," Brenda said as she left and headed for home.
