Catching Up With Denise

When I was a kid my best mate was Dean Kelly. As so happens with these things, our mothers got to know each other when they would pick Dean and I up from school, and they too became friends. I would stay over at the Kelly's place and Dean would often stay over at our place. The Kelly's had a pool and so summers were always more fun at Dean's house! Dean and I were on the same touch football team as well and so our families started to go on outings with each other, such as picnics, hikes, football and cricket matches, and the occasional camping trip. Dean's younger sister Siân (pronounced "Sharn". Its Welsh apparently) is two or so years younger than he and I are and was probably a bit too young to be a playmate for my sis, Shelly, who was three years older than me, but everyone got on well and our families became close.

My Mum and Dad owned a Landrover and Dean's parents had a Landcruiser, and I remember, with great fondness, a camping trip our two families took up to Fraser Island during school holidays for a week when I was eleven. For Dean and I this was paradise and we spent days running up and down the sand dunes and playing armies in the bush. Our dad's taught us how to fish off the beach and we spent many hours swimming in crystal clear lakes. That holiday is one of my best childhood memories but there are two outstanding memories from that trip though. The first outstanding memory is of dad getting my sister and I up before dawn one morning to watch the sunrise over the ocean, which was magical. As we sat half way up the dune, we saw a lone dingo, which is the wild dog of Australia, walking casually along the shore, looking for a feed among the dead sea creatures that had washed up onto the shore during the night. As it passed our position, the dingo briefly stopped and sniffed the air, then turned towards us and just stared for a good minute and we just stared back. Despite being warned about how dangerous dingoes can be, I felt no fear because dad was with us. The dingo then moved on and went on its merry way.

My second great memory from that Fraser Island trip is Mrs Kelly and her swim suit. Denise Kelly has a fantastic body! Mr and Mrs Kelly were into fitness and every morning on the trip they would both get up at the crack of dawn and go for a jog along the beach for an hour. Whenever I visited the Kelly's house they had a weight machine in the garage, which both Mr and Mrs Kelly used. So you can imagine Mrs Kelly's body was quite toned. Though, at the time I don't think I really noticed, or appreciated, her toned body as much as I noticed her rather large breasts, which appeared to be the size of rockmelons. When we went for swims in the island's lakes, Mrs Kelly wore a bikini and I just remember taking a peek at her in her swimmers as much as I could. I had seen her swimming before and while most of the other mothers, including my own, wore a modest one piece swim suit, Mrs Kelly seemed to love to show off her body. And she had the body to show off too! I clearly remember on one particular occasion after swimming in one of the island's lakes, Mrs Kelly walking up the beach from a lake the sun low in the sky behind her, the water on her short cropped brown hair and on her shoulders was glistening in the late sun and her boobs gently rising and falling as she walked. I remember that she had a very freckly chest, which for some reason stuck in my mind too. She had a big smile on her face as she approached us. Now, in my memory she approached us in slow motion. I think that is just how I have fantasised about it over the years. And maybe I remember Mrs Kelly this way so much more because of all the photos mum and dad took on that trip. Over the years I would occasionally get them out to reminisce. A couple of years ago on a visit to mum and dad I got the old photo album out and scanned all the photos from that trip to my computer. But I do remember Mrs Kelly in her swim suit like it was yesterday!

Mr and Mrs Kelly seemed like they were very much in love. Craig Kelly, or "Mr Kelly" as we knew him, would often have his arm around Mrs Kelly, or they would often kiss. Nothing passionate and sexy in front of us kids, but just the kiss that loving husbands and wives share when they are head out to work or greet each other after work and the like. I thought this unusual at the time because my parents never seemed to be affectionate to one another. They were generally happy I suppose but my parents often bickered over this and that. So when staying at the Kelly's place, seeing Mr and Mrs Kelly be affectionate to each other was a little strange at first. I didn't really dwell on it though. I just remember thinking that Dean's parents seemed happier than my own.

One day Dean told me he had heard his parents having sex. We were thirteen I think, and really getting curious about girls. I confess I had already started to fantasise about Dean's mum, but it was just that, a boy's fantasy. I was a little boy and she a grown married woman, who also happened to be my mate's mum. Dean thought my sister Shelly was hot, and she was blossoming into a pretty young lady, but I threatened Dean that he shouldn't think of my sister that way. I have always been rather protective of my sister, but it was a bit hypocritical of me to say that to Dean when I was having dirty thoughts about his mother! Dean just laughed, and anyhow, I couldn't have stopped him since he took after his father with a strong build and had been hitting the weight machine. I am sure if we had ever fought Dean would have been able to beat the absolute shit out of me. When we were fourteen, Dean and his family moved to Melbourne. His dad had got some promotion at work but had to relocate to Melbourne. I was pretty upset because Dean and I were good mates. We stayed in touch a little, but being teenage boys we didn't get too hung up on it.

When I was eighteen and fresh out of school, with a new licence and a beat up old Hilux, I took myself on a road trip to Melbourne and visited Dean and his family. Over the four years since we had last seen one another he had bulked up big time. During his final years of school, Dean had done a bit of part time work with one of his mate's father's building company as a brickies labourer and was about to start a building apprenticeship. He also played a lot of Rugby Union and Australian Rules Football. And like his mum and dad he hit the weights most days. His sister Siân was 16 or so years old and growing into a younger version of Mrs Kelly. Dean asked me more than a few times how my sister Shelly was. Mr and Mrs Kelly were still the same friendly people they always were and let me stay at their place the two weeks I was in Melbourne. When I had first arrived Mrs Kelly smiled her big broad smile and said, "Well you have grown into a handsome young man haven't you!" It was a statement, not a question. Mr and Mrs Kelly both still exercised most days and she was looking hot as ever. They had stayed in touch with my parents so they knew most of what was going on in my family. It was nice to sit with them and drink beer or wine and chat as adults too. They told me to stop calling them "Mr and Mrs Kelly" and call them Craig and Denise. I felt so grown up, an adult and their equal.

Dean, Siân and I went on three day road trip down on the Great Ocean Road. It was a good time away but I found that I had a little more in common with Siân these days than I did with Dean. He mostly talked about sport and women. I liked both sport and women too, but I wasn't as obsessed with sport to the extent he was. He talked about women in a less than respectful way, as I imagine he would do with his building work mates, and that made me feel a little uncomfortable. Because Siân was with us most of the time he couldn't be too explicit about women but when she was not around he could actually be quite crass. We would see a pretty girl walk by and he would say something to me like, "Just imagine that sucking on the end of your cock!" or "See that girl there, I would love to just fuck her till she begs me to stop." I guess he got that from being in footy teams and working in the building trade. I played a bit of Rugby League and Cricket on weekends, which are blokey environments, but I was more conservative when it came to women. I generally adored them and didn't like the way he saw them as a piece of meat.

I remember on that trip we couldn't go to any pubs because Siân was underage. So Dean and I would buy beers and the three of us would sit down on the beach drinking and chatting. It was really nice in the warm evenings. When his sister was around, Dean was much more respectful. He hardly even swore in front of her. Siân was curious about the biology degree that I had applied for at university as she wanted to go down that path too when she finished high school. She was excelling at science and maths and wanted to be a doctor. I remember thinking how different Dean and Siân were. She was smart and looked very much like her mother, with big brown eyes and scatter of freckles over her face. Unlike her mother, Siân wore her brown hair long. It was wavy and she was always flicking it away from her eyes. The other thing about her I couldn't help but notice was her breasts were already developed like her mother's. Just like the rest of her family, she too was into fitness, and when we all went swimming I noticed that she too had a muscular, toned body. At sixteen she was already attractive and I could tell in a few years she would be a very beautiful woman. Up until that trip I had never thought about Siân Kelly as anything more than Dean's little sister, but now I started having crazy ideas of her moving back up to Queensland when she finished school and even marrying me! I kept telling her that she should look at studying at one of the Queensland unis and she just giggled and said that she would think about it. I know for some time afterwards I lived in hope! When we got back from our little road trip I did a bit of sightseeing while Dean went off to work each day. On a couple of occasions Siân and Denise Kelly joined me. I found their company most agreeable. On the morning I was to drive back to Queensland, both the Kelly women hugged me goodbye. I can't deny that I very much enjoyed the feeling of these two lovely women squeezing their bodies against mine!

Siân never did move to Queensland and over time I began to lose touch with Dean. He and I no longer had much in common. Maybe if we lived in the same city we might have remained friends. Being a little sentimental, I am a little bit sad that we never really tried to stay in touch, but I never really dwelt on it. When I was in my early twenties Siân came up and visited her grandparents and she and I caught up over dinner one night. She was a third year medical student at that point. She told me her parents were going strong and Dean had settled down and was engaged. She looked beautiful and I would love to have spent more time getting to know her. Unfortunately for me, she also had a boy friend. Siân and I caught up a number of times over the years but it seemed that whenever I was single she wasn't and vice versa. I am not even sure if she was keen on me. I would like to think she was because she has often been keen to catch up over the years.

I completed my studies and got a job working in one of the research laboratories attached to my uni. When I was 24 I started dating Karen, a PhD student attached to the lab. We fell in love and got married when I was 27. The first few years were blissful. While Karen's PhD and subsequent career had taken a leading role early on in our marriage, she did want to start a family by the time she was 30. It was her idea we could have a couple of kids and then get back into her career while she was still young. We started trying, with no success. We went down the path of IVF and that ended in a couple of miscarriages. After four years of trying there was a lot of stress on our relationship. I think that she and I should have just relaxed about it but I think Karen was hell bent on starting a family. Our relationship deteriorated and then, two years ago Karen and I separated. Apart from a very brief alcohol assisted fling with a work friend at a conference early last year, I had not really considered seeing anyone else.

Soon after my separation, I caught up with Siân while she was on a holiday in Queensland visiting relatives. She was now married herself and she had a baby. She was sorry that my own marriage had not worked out and she told me that me her parents separated the previous year and were going through a divorce. This was not the bombshell that it could have been because my mum had already told me that Mr and Mrs Kelly had separated. It was still a bit of a shock though because they always seemed so in love with one another. Siân filled me in on some of the details. Apparently her father, who was in his early 60s by then and ready to retire, had met a younger woman who was in her early 40s and had started seeing her. The first that Denise Kelly knew of her husband's infidelity was when he announced one day that he had met someone else and was moving out! Siân's mother was devastated. The rest of the family was in shock. Apparently Dean was pissed off with his father and had gone totally off at him. Siân didn't talk to her father for two months and was still angry. But he was their father and despite the unhappiness he had caused them and their mother, they were still in touch. He had been a good father to them, raising them well. I couldn't help but think of all the times I had spent with the Kelly family as a child and remembered how affectionate Mr and Mrs Kelly were towards one another. I thought about my own parents who were still together but had never shown even a fraction of the affection that Mr and Mrs Kelly showed towards one another. Then Siân told me that her mum was talking of moving back to Queensland to be close to her own mum, Siân's elderly grandmother. I thought about that. Denise Kelly would be a similar age to my own mother, in her mid to late 50s perhaps. What a shit thing, I thought, to be in your mid 50s and then be dumped by the person you had been married to since you were in your early 20s. They had been married for something like 36 years. It had been hard enough to separate from the girl I had been with for 10 years! I felt great sympathy for Denise Kelly.

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Approximately a year later my mum told me that Denise was moving back to Brisbane in a few weeks. I told mum that I had known Denise was thinking about moving but didn't know the details. Mum gave me Denise's phone number and email address. I emailed and told her I heard she was coming back and did she need any help? She emailed back she would be okay as far as help was concerned but that we should definitely catch up. I was definitely keen to see her again. Not because I had had boyhood fantasies about her but because she was someone I always admired and because she was a family friend.

After Denise had settled back in she contacted me and said she was having a little get together with old friends and would I like to come along. Of course I would love to come along. Mum and Dad were going to be there, as was my sister Shelly. A few of the other parents of childhood friends who I had lost touch with would be there too. Denise had bought a modest town house that was not that far from where I lived and so on the day of the get together it didn't take me long to drive over. I was the first guest to arrive. Denise Kelly greeted me at the door. For a 57 year old she looked fabulous! I hadn't seen her in 17 or so years but she still looked amazing and fit. Sure, she had a few wrinkles and lines on her face, and her hair was a slightly different brown from what I remembered, suggesting she now dyed it to keep the grey from showing. And she was not quite as slim as she used to be, but she definitely looked a lot more like a woman in her 40s than someone pushing 60! What the hell had Mr Kelly been thinking when he left her?! Denise greeted me as the old friend that I was, with a big warm smile, a cheery "Hello stranger!" and a warm embrace.

"Wow, Denise, you look fantastic! How have you been?" I couldn't help but compliment her.

She smiled her broad smile. "You are still a handsome young man yourself! Come in come in. We can put that bottle of wine you brought in the fridge."

As I walked through her house I recognised some familiar pieces of furniture such as the coffee table, or some paintings and photographs on the walls. Some of these items were very familiar to me from the years I had visited the Kelly's when I was a boy. There were some family photos, but none of the photos contained any pictures of Craig Kelly. I felt a little overcome with sadness for Denise. But she seemed anything but sad. She came across as the cheerful, happy woman I had always known.

"Would you help me with the BBQ? My brother gave it to me for today and I have never used it before. Harry will be over later on to help but he has to work this morning and so won't be here till the afternoon. I think that between us we can work this thing out."

"No worries, I'm sure it's not rocket science." I followed her out to the small courtyard at the rear of the house. I screwed in the gas bottle and made sure the burners worked.

"I've prepared most of the food so there is not much left to do here until people start to arrive. Would you sit and have a wine with me?" She asked with a smile.

"Sounds like a great idea." I smiled back.

Denise and I chatted and sipped wine. She had all my attention and I hers. Neither of us mentioned her or my marriage break downs. We chatted about pleasant things like what we had been doing for the last 17 years since we had last caught up, or what we were going to do in the future. Her eyes held mine and she smiled a lot. I too smiled and it was not at all unpleasant to be sharing a wine and chatting with this attractive lady. Even if she was old enough to be my mother! We finished off a wine and I poured another.

"Not too much before the others arrive," she said with a cheeky smile, "People might talk when they get here!"

I laughed a little and thought that it would be quite nice if something happened between she and I for others to talk about! "Let them talk!" I ginned. She giggled.

Nothing was going to happen though. It was only half an hour between my arrival and my parent's arrival. Other guests came, including my sister Shelly and her husband Glen. They could only stay for lunch because their children were being baby sat and they had to pick them up mid afternoon. All up there were 20 or so guests and the little town house and its courtyard was quite crowded. I ended up working the BBQ with my dad while Denise entertained her guests. Her brother Harry and his wife came over just in time for lunch. After lunch we spent the afternoon drinking tea or coffee. I sat next to Shelly in the lounge room and she too commented on all the familiar photos, paintings and some furniture that she remembered from our childhood visits to the Kelly's place. I chatted with some guests who were parents of some of the kids I went to school with and had known me as a child from school or football. Other guests included her niece's, who were close to my own age (but married), and some old childhood friends of Denise's.

All in all it was a pleasant afternoon. There were also one or two older blokes who did not appear to have female company and they seemed to hover around Denise, vying for her attention. She laughed and held them captive with her easy charm. Even as a few guests left, the unattached men lingered. I confess, I felt a little jealous and wished it was me who was having more one on one time with this attractive woman. Denise had not spent much time with me since other guests started to arrive. At some point I noticed that dishes were piling up in the sink and a few people were leaving. It wouldn't be fair for everyone to leave Denise with this mess so I started washing dishes.