This is a contribution to the
Survivor Revival Challenge
,
organized by Tara Cox. My first eleven stories were called My Junior Year Abroad. Next up was the little story, "Why I love Wives." Following that, we had five chapters of My First Time. This is my eighteenth story in the Survivor Revival Challenge. I hope you like it. Personally, I'm wasting away in Paris, where shelter in place is unfortunately called "confinement," and I'm beginning to go bonkers!
I'm also beginning to burn out. A story a day is a difficult pace to keep up! I'll take a break after this story.
**
Susan learns disturbing things about her marriage. She copes.
**
Mark and I live in a tiny apartment in Manhattan. Sheltering in Place, or Confinement, or Isolation, or whatever you want to call it, was getting to us. We were fighting all the time. Okay, some of the fights were my fault, but while we loved each other, and the sex was good, we were just getting too much of each other!
Maybe if we had enjoyed a second bedroom, to use as a study, or if one or both of us could go to work, or if we could just be away from each other for a half a day or more, things would have been fine. As it was, however, things were not fine, and we began having big, major, fights over things that in normal times we never would have even fought over.
During one of the increasingly rare moments of calm, we discussed things, and we decided it was time for me to visit my sister. Well, to be fair, I decided it was time for such a visit. Mark said nothing. But you know the old saying, right? He who is silent, gives consent.
My sister lived on the Upper West Side, and we lived on the Upper East Side, so all I had to do was to walk across Central Park. It was a beautiful Spring day, so I packed a few essentials, and made my way over to Louisa's place. I had called her, and she told me to come right over. She never much liked my husband Mark, anyway. He had done something to her, which she would never talk about, around the time we married. All I ever knew was that it upset her; a lot.
It would be nice to be with Louisa. We got on well, and she would give me sympathy, something I felt that I needed, just then. I got there and inquired about her husband Jim. It turned out he was sheltering in place in Chicago, with one of his girlfriends. Louisa explained he had lovers in Chicago, Atlanta, and San Diego.
"You're okay with that?" I said, maybe revealing, a bit too much, my incredulity at Luisa's blasé acceptance of her husband Jim's philandering.
"Yeah. He's a sex fiend, and that way it's not all up to me to keep him happy. He got stranded in Chicago during this Coronavirus horror, so I'm on my own here," Luisa said.
"No offense, Luisa, but I always thought you were the sex fiend in the relationship?" I offered.
"I'm oversexed, I admit it, but to be honest, Susan, Jim has me beat," she said.
"Why don't you divorce the cheating bastard?" I offered.
"I love him," Luisa said. "Look, it's weird I know, but it works for us. Anyway, while he's away I have our neighbor Bill. You'll meet him, he's coming over for dinner. He's bringing the branzino, and lemons, and some cooked rice. I'm roasting the asparagus. He knows there's an extra, namely you, I told him already," Louisa said.
"Well then, it's nice you have friends right here in the building," I said. "I look forward to meeting him."
"Oh, Bill is more than a friend. He's a good friend," Luisa said.
When Luisa and I were growing up, once we became sexually active, to let the other one know we were being intimate with a boyfriend, but to definitely
not
let our mother know, we also called him a "good friend." The word "good" became our special word. A lot of giggling was involved over our good friends, back then. So, I knew Luisa was telling me, in our coded way, that she was occasionally sleeping with her neighbor Bill.
My sister had one hell of a marriage! I was in a bit of shock. I knew my husband Mark and Luisa didn't get along, so I wasn't going to add fuel to the fire by sharing this bit of scandalous news, but I called him to say I felt better now, and that we should make up. In return he yelled at me through the phone, saying truly awful things, and since he was screaming, I held the phone away from my head.
It was awful. No husband, even in extreme duress, should ever say such loathsome things to the woman he loves. And this is after I had called to apologize, too. The deadliest thing he said was that he didn't want me to come home.
Luisa and Bill overheard my husband Mark's disgusting screams, accusations, and curses, leaving me humbled, and embarrassed. I put on a brave face, decided to wait until later to cry, and soldiered on through dinner, making small talk with both my sister Luisa, and her neighbor Bill.
Bill is a good-looking man, and he's the elegant type, never using a monosyllabic word when a polysyllabic word will do. He keeps a short beard, and has glasses around the same color as the brown of his hair and beard. He has an aquiline nose, and a typical hunky body type. I liked the way he looked, and by the end of the evening I knew that I liked him, too.
Bill looked at me with sympathy in his eyes, but there was something else to his look. His gaze a bit too often drifted to my boobs. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and once there I looked at my chest in the bathroom mirror. Yep, there they were. Even a casual observer would know that my boobs had two nipples.
I mean, it's not unusual for a woman's boob to have a nipple. No surprise there. It's just that usually, I don't wear a bra. I'm only twenty-four, you see, and my B cup boobs don't really need one, at least not yet. Give me a couple of kids and ten more years of age, and I'll need a bra for sure. Right now, however, I'm braless and fancy-free. My nipples had just decided to poke at my blouse to say hello to Bill. They did so rather convincingly.
It was clear, at least to me, that Bill was interested. Of course, I was married, but it did me good, to know that at least to some man, somewhere, and a good looking one to boot, and a nice one to boot, to boot; I was desirable. I flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and returned to the table with a smile on my face, despite how viciously nasty my husband Mark had been, both when I decided to leave the apartment to clear the air, and then later on the phone.
My sister Luisa, bless her soul, offered to let me spend the night. I had thought it would come to that, which was why I had bought a tiny bag of essential supplies, which included my birth control pills and a five-year supply of Xanax. Luisa had a spare bedroom, which Jim used as a study (when he was home). They had a day bed in the study, basically a twin bed, and Luisa made it up for me. My older sister is a doll.
We drank until late and talked and talked. It felt so good to be talking to others who weren't judging me, or looking to jump in to start a fight with me. At one point I excused myself to change for bed. Luisa had given me one of Jim's T shirts to sleep in. I had forgotten what a big man Jim is; the T shirt was huge, and I have narrow shoulders. The first time I tried it on it fell down off both of my shoulders, and only my boobs kept it from falling to the floor. I found a binder clip in Jim's study and pinched the back together with the clip so that it would stay on me, and finally decently dressed, I went to join the others.
Luisa and - to my surprise - Bill, too, had also changed for bed. Luisa had put on what had to be her sexiest nightgown. I could see her nipples and areolas right through the thin, white cotton of the nightgown. Looking lower, I could also see her bush. I remembered she had said that Bill was a 'good friend.' He surely must have been, for Luisa to wear a nightgown like that one!
"Shall we kiss goodnight?" Luisa asked. Luisa came to me and gave me one of her lovely kisses, right on my lips. We had always kissed that way; it was family tradition. Bill came over to me next and he surprised me. He too kissed me on the lips, and it was much more than a neighborly kiss! It was the sexiest kiss I'd had in a long time! Oh yeah; he was interested in me, all right.
Bill's interest in me made things awkward on so many levels. First of all, I may be fighting with Mark, but I'm married to the man. Second, Bill is currently sleeping with my sister, who, by the way, is also married! Well, I figured, Luisa is more than enough for any man to handle, and this is not my problem. I smiled at them both, noticed the rather spectacular tent in Bill's pajamas, and bid them both sweet dreams.
Twenty minutes later I heard moaning. I left my room and went to the main room and stood near the door to Luisa's bedroom. They were definitely fucking. I head the slapping sounds of flesh on flesh, and the erotic moans of my sister, and an occasional grunt from Bill. I had never listened to my sister have sex before, and I knew I was being a creep, but I couldn't tear myself away. After Luisa had screamed out her climax, I poured myself a glass of port, and sat in the armchair with her recent copy of
The Economist
and settled in.
Shortly thereafter the two lovers emerged from their den of iniquity, and they joined me. Bill looked embarrassed, but Luisa seemed fine.
