That Green Dress

Melissa and I were engaged within a few weeks after we declared our love for each other, and were married just three months later. After that, we made love often, so we were not surprised at all when Melissa became pregnant with our daughter, Kaley, just a few months into our marriage.

Melissa didn't go to the gym in the last months of her pregnancy, so I didn't go as often, either. But after giving birth, Melissa wanted to get back into her pre-pregnancy shape, so we worked out a schedule that allowed us both to go. She went on Mondays and Wednesdays while I stayed home with Kaley, and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I would go while she stayed home. Our whole lives quickly fell into a steady rhythm, so we were easily able to keep that same gym schedule for the next couple of years.

Life was good. Kaley was healthy, beautiful, curious, and happy. Melissa and I were both healthy and happy, too. We both felt secure at our jobs, we earned enough money that we didn't have to worry about it, and we had friends and family we would visit on the weekends. All the feelings of jealousy related to old college girlfriends that had plagued me for years had all but vanished, and I had every bit of trust in Melissa that I imagined any man could have in his wife. It felt good to be normal again, especially after all those years of cynicism, loneliness, and perverted masturbation.

Then one day I realized that something felt different, and had been different for a couple months. It took a few more days of thinking before I realized what it was that was different: Since the time we were dating, Melissa and I were fairly balanced in who would initiate our lovemaking, but in the last two months at least, I had been the only one initiating sex. That's all; everything else between us was the same. By all appearances Melissa was just as happy as I was in all respects, including our love life.

But after becoming conscious of that difference, it was impossible to get it out of my mind. I went so far as to review the contents of my calendar to see if I missed some event, like a birthday or anniversary, and to see if the calendar could help me to remember any conversations Melissa and I had that might have been consequential. I went back five months before something caught my eye. It was a Friday night dinner with Melissa's friend, Emily, and her husband Jacob. Immediately I remembered something Melissa said that night at the restaurant.

The topic of sexually-transmitted diseases had come up in conversation, as odd as that was. Emily, being a close and longtime friend of Melissa, and therefore knowing that Melissa had been a virgin until our marriage, made an offhand remark about solving the problem by avoiding premarital sex.

"Right, Melissa?" asked a smiling Emily, speaking into the wine glass she was raising to her lips.

Jacob looked at Emily and then at Melissa with a slightly surprised look upon his face, having understood Emily's meaning and having just learned something new about Melissa. His expression wasn't lost on Melissa, who felt compelled to respond.

"No doubt avoiding sex also avoids STDs, but that's not why I saved myself for marriage," said Melissa. But before Melissa could speak her next sentence, which might have been spoken to express any offense she took at Emily's comment, Jacob interrupted.

"I, for one, find it admirable that you saved yourself for marriage, especially in this day and age. I would think that it's nearly impossible, really, the way people are."

Emily's face quickly became apologetic, and Melissa just as quickly understood and forgave.

"Honestly, saving myself for marriage was originally my conservative mother's idea, which I adopted from her. But in hindsight, I probably made too much of a big deal over it. And I've come to feel that sex and a happy marriage aren't as interconnected as I thought back then, before marriage."

Melissa looked at me with a soft smile and loving eyes as she spoke that last sentence. At the time, most of what I heard her say was "happy marriage," and it caused me to smile back at her. Only while reviewing my calendar and recalling the conversation did her statement sound different in my ears. It was the first and only time she had ever expressed any sort of doubt over her decision to remain a virgin until marriage.

But that was nothing, right? Of course. I was overthinking it. She probably said it just to be agreeable in conversation with Emily and Jacob. If she meant anything beyond the fact that we were in a happy marriage, it was only that she wished we had begun having sex sooner. And I couldn't help but agree with that. Those months of our engagement, during which we engaged often in "no-sex sex," did get frustrating for me. It felt like endless foreplay despite how many orgasms we gave each other. I remain amazed that I was able to repeatedly abstain from trying to get my dick in her in the heat of the moment.

I slowly flipped forward through my calendar, again reviewing the events and tasks it contained. That's when I noticed a Tuesday task from a couple months ago, which read simply, "7:30 pickup." I remembered what it meant. Melissa had gone to a two-day conference for speech pathologists. Her mom had taken her to the airport on Sunday afternoon to fly out, and I picked her up from the airport Tuesday evening. It was the first time Melissa and I had been apart for more than a day since Kaley was born.

But again, that was nothing. I took those same days off from work and stayed at home with Kaley rather than sending her off to daycare, because it would've been too much of a hassle otherwise. What I remember most about those two days was Melissa calling on the phone every couple of hours to check on our daughter and me. We hated being apart, that's for sure.

Nothing else in the calendar offered any clues, so I closed it, and soon my thoughts turned to other matters. It would be a few more weeks before my mind returned to the topic.

"Mike!" Melissa called as she entered the front door.

"Yeah?" I answered from upstairs.

"Can you give us a hand?"

I bounded down the steps and took the bags of groceries from the hands of Melissa and her friend, Lisa, then gave Melissa a kiss on the lips and Lisa a kiss on the cheek.

"How are you doing, Lisa?"

"Good, Mike! What about you?"

"Good also. Nice to see you."

I took the bags of groceries into the kitchen, set them on the breakfast table there, and began unpacking them. As I pulled out two bottles of wine, Melissa entered the kitchen and, seeing me reading the bottles, addressed them.

"Lisa's staying for dinner tonight."

Lisa followed Melissa into the kitchen.

"Oh, that's nice," I said. "Are we celebrating some occasion?"

"No," Lisa responded. "It's just that my husband is away for the weekend again, so I'm bored and lonely otherwise."

"You kid," Melissa retorted.

Lisa smiled. "Yeah, I kid. You know how it is. I have my friends and he has his."

"That does seem to be how it is," I commented. "Are we ever going to meet him, or do you two actively avoid each other?"

Melissa cast me a disapproving look in jest. She and Lisa both knew I was joking.

"Yeah, maybe," responded Lisa. "But really, one of the things I love about our marriage is our independence from one another. I like that I have friends and activities that are completely my own, and that he has his own friends and activities, too. Personally I wouldn't last in a marriage like yours, the two of you so involved with one another's lives."

Neither of us responded to Lisa. I continued taking the groceries out of the bags as Melissa put them into the pantry and refrigerator.

"Sorry," continued Lisa, "that probably didn't come out right. I only meant that your marriage is different from ours. Probably stronger, really. My husband and I are better suited for more independence from one another because we have so many differing interests. Heck, I'd probably end up strangling him if I spent every evening with him."

I smiled over at Lisa reassuringly, "We know what you meant. No need to apologize. Still, we'd be happy to meet him sometime. I'm sure we'd get along well." I saw Melissa smiling at Lisa in agreement.

Returning to the task of unpacking the groceries from their bags, I heard the silverware drawer open and close behind me. Then Melissa took my hand and put the bottle opener in it.

"Starting already?" asked Lisa.

"Oh, yeah!" replied Melissa. "Kaley is at her grandma's for the night, so I, for one, am letting my hair down right away."

I smiled at Melissa and picked up the bottle of red. As I turned my attention to removing the foil around its rim, Melissa grabbed my head, pulled it toward her, and planted a big, dry kiss on my cheek. Then she took the bottle of white and stuck it in the refrigerator.

"Mind if I use your bathroom?" asked Lisa.

"You don't have to ask. Just go," Melissa said. Melissa turned toward the pantry, which allowed me to steal a glimpse of Lisa's cute ass as she exited the kitchen.

"My god, that ass," I thought, "and those legs."

Having taken off her sneakers at the front door, Lisa was barefoot. My eyes followed her thin, tanned legs upward from those feet to her faded, old, cutoff blue denim shorts. The frayed threads where the jeans had been cut had become uneven and white with age. The shorts fit loosely on her, but with her small frame, I imagine most clothes do. Her toned legs barely disturbed the fabric of the shorts as she walked away, the shorts so loose and cut so high, toward the tops of her thighs. Just above the waistline of her shorts, Lisa's white cotton panties peeked out, and above those, bare, tanned skin, with two deep dimples in the muscles at the small of her back, both half hidden by the small, lemon yellow polo shirt she wore as a top. As she rounded the corner, the last I saw of her was the swinging of that long, straight, blond ponytail that flowed out the back of the baseball cap she always wears.

Months ago, when Melissa started bringing her new friend by our house, Lisa's looks didn't make too much of an impression on me. She was easy to talk to, polite, and obviously intelligent, but I didn't find her to be physically attractive. Generally, I had always been attracted to taller, more curvy women. Fit, but curvy. Lisa is not at all curvy, and she is definitely not tall. Once I even used the word "boyish" to describe her. Melissa slapped me on the shoulder when she heard me say that. She also scolded me, saying that "Lisa can't help it" when I said that Lisa is flat-chested. Both are true, though. I don't think she ever wears a bra, and it makes sense, because there's no need.

But the more I see her, the more physically attractive I find her. It began when I saw her take off her baseball cap for the first time. Her silky blond hair fell down loosely around her head, partially covering her face. From behind the hair her freckled nose poked out. As Lisa's hand swept her hair back and away from her face, I saw how light her blue eyes were, and they seemed to sparkle when she then looked over at me and smiled. "So cute" were the words that popped into my head. Since then, sometimes I have seen her nipples poking through her shirt, and I very much appreciated the view each time. And her ass...it is small, but it is muscular and perky, like the rest of her. Once the thought entered my head that her pussy must be proportionally small, I haven't since been able to avoid looking at her when I could get away with it.

It's not that she is better looking than my wife. Melissa is beautiful - as beautiful now as she was when I met her. It's just that they are so different in appearance. Where Melissa is tall, Lisa is short. Where Melissa has ample breasts that outsize my hands, Lisa has barely more than a pair of nipples. While Melissa's skin is a natural light brown, Lisa's skin is tanned only from all the sun she gets.

All fantasies aside, though, the reality is that I would never trade my wife away for any other. It is her physical beauty that initially drew me in, but the love and trust that developed between us over the years is worth more than a hundred Lisas.

We made salad and ziti with meatballs for dinner. The girls went through the first bottle of wine so quickly that they sent me out to buy a couple more bottles after dinner, just to be sure we didn't run out. Melissa has never been much of a drinker, so the request was unusual, but I didn't think too much of it. I bought two bottles of the same brand of red that we had over dinner. I figured it was safe because the girls had already shown how much they liked it.

When I returned home, I set the bottles on the kitchen table and told Melissa I had some emails I wanted to catch up on before getting relaxed for the night.

Lisa, smiling and standing next to Melissa, said, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

I recognized her words as a famous proverb and smiled back at her. "Don't worry; I'll rejoin you both later. Please just save a little bit of the wine for me, you lushes." I kissed Melissa on the cheek and went upstairs to work.

About half an hour later Melissa came upstairs to our bedroom, which is where I was working, and changed her clothes, putting on a navy sweatshirt and navy sweatpants. That outfit is basically her pajamas. On her way out, Melissa asked, "Are you coming down soon? We started a movie." Her hands busied themselves behind her head, wrapping a band around her hair to make a ponytail.

"Yeah, sorry. A couple of these emails required some in-depth responses. It shouldn't be too much longer, though. I'll be down."

Melissa smiled at me tenderly and looked into my eyes for a moment, then nodded, leaned over, and kissed me on the lips. She held it there a long time before parting and standing up straight again. We smiled at each other for another moment before she stepped outside and closed the bedroom door behind her.

Easily another half hour passed before I was through with my emails. I closed my laptop and stood. Taking a cue from Melissa earlier, I changed my clothes and put on my flannel pajamas before going downstairs. Passing by the dark living room on my way to the kitchen, I saw Melissa sitting on the couch on the side closest to me, with Lisa on the far side, just to her left. In Melissa's lap was one of the couch's pillows, on top of which rested a big bowl of popcorn, which the girls were sharing as the movie played.

Seeing me, Lisa remarked, "Well, if I had known it was going to be a pajama party, I would have brought my pajamas."

Melissa ignored the comment.

I smiled, but didn't know how else to respond. Pointing at the bottle on the coffee table, I asked, "Is that empty?"

"Yeah, I think it is," replied Lisa. "I guess that means we're on to the last one now."

"Guess so," I said. I continued my walk to the kitchen, where I opened the last bottle of wine. I poured a glass and quickly drank it right there before refilling it and proceeding back to the living room, bottle in hand. Lisa held her glass up and I refilled it, then turned to refill Melissa's.

"No, no. Thanks," Melissa said as she looked up at me. "I think I've had enough for the night." She gave me a weak smile, and I could see that she was drunk.

I smiled back down on her agreeably, then set the bottle on the coffee table and sat in the chair adjacent to the right of the couch. The chair doesn't face the television directly, unlike the couch, but a slight turn of the head to the right is all that's needed for a view.

A couple minutes later, Lisa asked me, "Do you want this popcorn? It looks like we're both done with it."

"Yeah, actually. Popcorn sounds good."

Reacting to our words, Melissa took the bowl of popcorn in her right hand, held it out, and leaned toward me as her left arm kept the pillow from falling out of her lap. The effort was not nearly enough to reach me at my seat, so I stood and leaned to take the bowl from her. Just then, Lisa brought her right foot up from the floor to the couch cushion. With her left leg already up on the couch and folded underneath her, the movement created a flash of white in my field of vision, clearly visible in the light of the television. Instinctively I looked toward it, discovering that the flash of white was Lisa's panties, which now peeked out from behind the thin strip of denim at her crotch. As soon as I understood what I saw, I quickly looked back to the bowl of popcorn as I took it from Melissa's hand. Sitting back down, I immediately turned my attention back to the television, took a mouthful of popcorn, and tried to pretend that my heart didn't just jump out of my chest at the sight of Lisa's white cotton panties fitted tight against the lips of her little pussy.

A second later, I saw from the corner of my eye the bill of Lisa's baseball cap turn toward the television. She had been looking at me until that moment. "Why?" I thought, "Does she know what I saw?" I took another handful of popcorn and stuffed it in my mouth. I was looking at the television, but I wasn't watching the movie. All I could see was the image of Lisa's legs spread with her panties visible. Her ball cap turned toward me again. I felt compelled to acknowledge it, so I turned my head to face her. She was looking right at me, smiling. I smiled back and made a shrugging gesture as if to ask, "What is it?" Lisa stuck her tongue out at me for a second, then returned her attention to the movie, as did I.

When I refilled my glass of wine some minutes later, Lisa had snuggled in closer to Melissa and pulled a blanket over her legs. No doubt she had been a little chilly in those shorts. Melissa had sunk lower into her seat, and her eyes were unfocused and half-closed. She looked like she might fall asleep before the movie was over.

More time passed, perhaps fifteen minutes or a half hour, with the three of us sitting still and quiet as we watched the movie. Then Melissa cleared her throat. I would have ignored it, but immediately afterward she made a sort of whimpering sound. In an instant I became alarmed, thinking that she drank too much and was about to vomit red wine all over our living room. I turned toward her to see what was the matter, but saw first that Lisa was already looking at me with a serious expression on her face. I figured she was just as concerned as me about the sound that came from Melissa.

Melissa's head was leaned against the rear cushion of the couch. She sharply drew in a breath and let it out unevenly.

Lisa continued to stare at me, her expression unchanged.

I didn't understand what I was looking at. Was Melissa about to vomit? Her eyes opened a little wider and she looked toward me, but her gaze appeared just as vacant as earlier. She drew in another breath sharply and let it out quickly. Her right hand gripped the pillow that remained in her lap. She gasped for another breath as her hand began to slowly pull the pillow away from her. I still didn't understand what was happening. In my alarm, all I was expecting was a mess.

Melissa's eyes closed, and suddenly she sank deeper into the couch as her knees pulled apart from one another, and the pillow fell from her right hand to the floor.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaah!"

Melissa's body squirmed and spasmed. In the middle of it all was Lisa's right arm, relatively steady in relation to Melissa, with its hand hidden beneath the waistline of Melissa's sweatpants.

"Aaaaaaah!" Melissa moaned again exhaustively between short, deep breaths. My mind caught up with reality. I finally understood that I was watching my wife have an orgasm, and that Lisa's fingers were causing it.

"Aaaah! Mmmmmph!" Melissa's eyes half opened again to look at me. Then I understood that she had removed the pillow for me to see what was happening. "Hmmmph! Mmmmmm..." She descended from her orgasm, and her thighs clamped together on Lisa's right hand.