Friday evening, March 27
"Mom...? Is this real?"
We'd invited Jon and Jodi for dinner Friday night, along with both our sets of parents, intending the big 'reveal', Dani's movie contract. We hadn't said anything to them, just that we'd met an old friend in Reno, who'd invited us to his home in Tampa for a couple days.
ooOoo
Our flight home Wednesday was so different than the flight to Tampa, first class is... well, first-class! My only complaint was that there was no 'Marcus' for Dani to flirt with, and it was still long. We didn't get home and in bed until nearly midnight, too late and too tired for any shenanigans.
Thursday was a busy day, we called the kids and our parents, asking them to dinner Friday, Jenny and Richard on Saturday. As close as Dani is to Jenny, she still insisted we tell our family about her acting contract first, and in-person with time for some degree of explanation.
Dani said she'd call Leslie at the bank to reschedule an appointment to discuss a loan for the new store in Pasco, for which we hadn't abandoned the plan. "Why don't you invite her to lunch or dinner, you know, to reminisce... just to see what happens," Dani said with that devious smile on her face, "I still think you-know-what would be fun... and while I'm gone you might get lonesome."
"Uhhh!" was my intelligent response.
Dani chuckled, "What, you thought I'd forgotten? I thought maybe you could get to know her, then when I'm home we could invite her over and maybe... your dream..." batting her eyes at me, letting me know exactly what she was thinking.
"I... uhh... you know I can't do that, not without you here," I was stammering, groping.
"Well, I'm not suggesting you do THAT without me, just spend some time with her, get to know her, then after I get home, maybe... that..."
"You know she was your friend in my dream, I didn't even know who she was," I told her.
"Now you do, though, all the better, just ask her to go to lunch, I'm guessing she'll be thrilled."
I sighed, I wasn't going to win this argument... except... "Okay, I will... if you promise you'll call Mark, make an appointment with him first chance you get, we're going to need the financial help, anyway, and maybe..."
Dani rolled her eyes at me, "Fine, I'll call Mark, he'll want to know about the movie... but I am NOT going to try and seduce him. He needs to find someone to love him, someone who can fill his emptiness."
"You're right, but don't you think... until he does...?"
"I'll call him, I'm not sure when we'd be able to meet him, though."
"Kinda like Leslie, then, I guess, just to get that ball rolling down the lane, huh," I told her, hoping for an eventual strike.
"And Alan?" I asked, "sounds like you're going to be spending a lot of time with him, maybe...?"
She shook her head, "That would be a definite no," she said, "much as I know I might be tempted, I'm not going to go there."
"But..."
"No, I'm going to have to work with him, what you're suggesting could ruin everything," she hesitated, looking straight at me, "and I mean 'everything'. I'm not going to risk that."
She seemed to mean what she said, not leaving any wiggle room in her tone.
"After the movie's finished?"
She just glared at me in silence.
I thought about that night, Dani and Leslie in my dream, me tied to a chair, blindfolded, listening to their lovemaking, what a fucking experience that had been! Remembering, too, the night with Jenny and what Dani had said about her that night in Reno but I wasn't going to mention it, that would be too weird. She's Dani's best friend, and she'd said that about Jenny during a time when neither of us was thinking too clearly... if you know what I mean.
So, I guess it was settled, I was asking Leslie out on a 'date' and we're going to eventually meet Mark, for what, exactly, other than financial, I had no idea. But that avenue didn't seem nearly as closed as Alan Ryder. Now, all I had to do was work up some courage before that bank meeting with Leslie, next Tuesday, ten o'clock. A LOT of courage!
After that conversation, I suggested we get Dani's trunk from her parents' attic. We went to their house and struggled to bring it down the narrow pull-down stair. It's big, and it's heavy.
After picking up the chest, Dani wanted to go on a little drive, out toward Moses Lake, and she directed me toward her grandparents' old farm, "I'm kind of surprised I still even remember the way," she told me after turning on several side roads, each one a little rougher than before, finally down a long gravel road to a driveway leading off to a very old barn with a sagging roof, shop, and house nestled amongst a grove of ancient-looking elm trees, all of which looked like it'd been abandoned for years, the corral outside the barn completely overgrown with weeds, and a rusted hulk of an old crawler tractor beside the barn. The driveway was protected by a padlocked gate at the entrance off the county road. "That's it," Dani said, pointing to the group of buildings.
"Can we just stop here a little while?" she asked, which is what we did. Dani stared, and I saw a tear rolling down her cheek, "It brings back so many memories," she said, wiping her face. I was wishing I had some Kleenex, napkins, or anything. "Grandpa used to farm these fields," she told me, pointing to the rolling hills of grass, "he grew wheat, looks like they haven't for a long time."
"I rode Taffy all over these hills, our neighbors didn't care, we never even had fences between the properties, it was like one big happy family in those days. I used to climb those trees when I was a kid. My dad even built a little treehouse in one... wonder if anything of it's still there."
Dani's grandparents have been gone for many years, her granddad died of cancer before we started going together when he was way too young, and her grandmother lived in a nursing home with Alzheimer's for several years after we married. We used to visit her a lot, but Dani had had never told me about the farm.
Seeing it for the first time brought forth a strong emotional reaction from me, too. This had been my wife's childhood, many of her happiest memories from what she'd said, hidden away for all those years.
"How big was it?" I asked her.
She let out a little laugh, "Seemed pretty big to me when I was a kid," she said, "couple hundred acres, I think. Guess that's not so big, but to a kid..."
We sat there another several minutes until Dani directed me down some other roads, pointing out different things, an occasional house, telling me about the neighbors who used to live there. "Wonder if it might be for sale?" Dani asked, looking at me expectantly, "maybe...?"
I squeezed her hand, thinking that it might be the ultimate gift, both to her and to her mom and dad, especially her mom who'd grown up on the farm. It was a little hard to grasp the concept that within a few months we may even be able to afford to buy a farm. Between Dani's teaching and my store we've made a pretty good living but not for that kind of expense. I saved the location in front of the house on my phone and made a note of the address marked on an old post just to help with a little research later.
We stopped for dinner at a tiny pizza café the 'Time Out', in the little town of Othello, a few miles from the farm. We'd seen the sign pointing toward the town many times, off the main highway about a mile, but had never stopped. Their pepperoni and sausage pizza with a crunchy, sourdough crust was to die for, so much better than the chains.
Once back home, we wiped the dust from the top of the trunk and carried it into our bedroom, then left it, watching one of our favorite shows, 'Bull', before we went to bed, figuring it would likely be more fun to explore what was in it at bedtime. I don't know if Dani was feeling the anticipation like I was, but it was hard to concentrate on Bull's legal troubles.
To be perfectly honest, the anticipation was driving me out of my mind knowing that trunk was in our bedroom, aching to know what might be in it. I knew that in my dream, it had been her homecoming dress, her prom dress, her cheer outfit, the New Year's Eve outfit, prom pictures, and a few other odds and ends, most of which were figments of my dream, not real life, so I didn't know what to expect from the real trunk.
I undressed and lay down on the bed, waiting for Dani to get ready for bed in the bathroom like she often does. This time turned out to be different, though, as the only thing she was wearing when she came back into the bedroom was her birthday suit, "There might be something I need to try on in there, this will make it that much easier," she said, giving me a little pose of her naked body, a naked body that the entire world may be seeing in a few short months, one that I vowed to never, ever take for granted again like I had before my accident.
I got up and walked around to the end of the bed with Dani, in front of the trunk. Dani put a hand on one front corner of the lid and me the other. "I haven't opened this since before we started going together, kind of forgot about it," Dani said, looking up at me, "you ready?"
She counted down from three and together, we pulled the top open.
There, on top, was a carefully folded garment bag. I could see Dani's hands shaking as she picked it up, carefully laying it on the bed, beginning to unzip it. Inside was a beautiful, baby-blue dress, almost turquoise, but not quite. She took it out of the bag and held it up in front of her, "I haven't worn this since Homecoming night," she said, "I put it in the garment bag in my closet that night and never took it out until I put it in the trunk. I haven't even looked at it again until now."
"Try it on?" I asked her
She giggled, "You think it'll fit? My boobs have gotten quite a bit bigger since then, I've gained some weight, too."
I laughed at that, "Yeah, maybe five pounds," I told her. And she was right, much of that was probably in her tits, only making her sexier. It'd probably been ten pounds, too, that she'd gained, not bad for thirty-some years and two kids. "You said you were going to try some things on, pretty sure you meant the dress, so..."
She stepped back from the bed to give herself a little more room and unzipped the dress, slipping it on over her head. I hadn't even realized it but was holding my breath. She turned around, her back to me, "Zip me?" she asked. I did and she took a couple steps then turned around and... wow! I let my breath exhale.
It was a little tight, which only added to the allure, spaghetti straps over her bare shoulders, a gentle 'V' between her breasts, and that slit -- even higher than I remembered in the picture. Dani looked down at herself, "I was wearing a bra that night, panties, too," she said.
"Too bad, their loss," I told her. That night of the 'party' before I awoke from the coma, she'd been wearing this dress. "Hon," I began to tell her, "you're wrong, you wore this another time, too... that night I woke up... there was a party, you wore this dress... you were so beautiful that night, no bra that night, either... and you'd taken your panties off during the party."
