This is a work of fiction and any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.
This is the first of two parts, both told from two women's perspectives.
It will be followed by "Stargazers: Carrie's Story."
Stargazers
Ellie's Story
By Royce F. Houton
Will and I had spent most of the day outside tending the yard, mulching, planting spring flowers, trimming, cutting limbs that had grown too low from our backyard trees for their own good.
This was the penultimate Saturday in April and first day to reach the mid-80s in the 2022 calendar year. The whole world had bloomed to life and it felt rejuvenating to be outside wearing just the minimum -- a pair of ancient Dockers shorts and a T-shirt for Will and a pair of running shorts with a long-sleeve T-shirt for me.
We already felt somewhat earthy having waked with Will's morning wood pressing against my backside followed by half an hour of slow sex. We didn't bother showering off before heading to the storage area in the rear part of his backyard pavilion to bring out the tools, fertilizer and accessories we'd need for several long hours of getting the lawn ready to go.
This was the first time Will and I had done this together -- and, evidently, the first such attention this lawn had received in years.
Our romance began after we were introduced by mutual acquaintances at a Thanksgiving Day gathering Will had hosted at his home over the past few years. It was suggested by his neighbors as a way to connect with their close-knit neighborhood and hopefully emerge from the cocoon he had retreated into since his wife, Gloria, had passed away from cancer seven years earlier. Will and I started dating on-and-off a few weeks after that and by late February, when I had retired after more than a dozen years as a principal at a school very near Will's house, we had fallen in love and become a committed couple.
Will Tetherton had been a successful attorney in the Richmond, Virginia, region, and early in the pandemic, retired as a partner from a local law firm. He kept his bar admissions current and retained a few small, private clients and did a charitable work for nonprofits and people in need, working largely from home in what he calls semi-retirement.
We both have adult children who, unbeknownst to each other, had been pushing us, respectively, for years to move beyond our somewhat reclusive, single lives. I had been on my own since I learned on New Year's Eve 2008 that my husband had been fallen in love with someone else -- a man. The warning signs that he was gay had been there all along, but I had chosen to ignore them. He moved in with his lover 10 years his junior, a bon-vivant trust-fund heir of a wealthy Old Richmond family who fancied himself a performance artist. I hired the most predatory and accomplished divorce lawyer in the city and staked a claim to most of what we jointly held and a huge share of all he would earn as a partner in a locally celebrated architectural firm unless I remarried -- something that, until recently, I was unwilling to consider.
Will and I had moved in together in early March, alternating between my house overlooking a small manmade lake in New Kent County, just east of Richmond, and the house we were sprucing up on this balmy late April Saturday in suburban Chesterfield County. Both homes were paid for, so we chose to keep the lake house as a retreat for ourselves and our children and, in Will's case, his grandson Nathan.
Finally exhausted, we ordered Chinese food via Grub Hub, uncorked a cold bottle of Pinot Grigio and sat in a large swing in his backyard pavilion, dominated by a dual-purpose gas and wood-burning fireplace. As the sun dipped below the horizon, Will clicked on the fireplace and we whiled away a couple of hours relaxing and talking before the itchy discomfort from a heavy dusting of pollen that had clung to our sweat before it dried sent us sent us upstairs to the shower.
I curled up on the den sofa against Will's chest, still lean and toned at age 67, as we watched the insipid junk that is network TV in 2022 and dozed off sometime during a rerun of "Saturday Night Live." We awoke a couple of hours later. Will had to relieve himself, so he did as guys often get to do and ambled off the deck to piss into a boxwoods hedge that grew against the fence along the side boundary of the back yard.
"Ellie, it's beautiful out there and tonight is the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower," he said as he returned from his wee-hours wee-wee.
"Sure, but all I have on is your old Tennessee T-shirt," I said.
"That's fine. It's dark, nobody's out and besides, all I have on is these gym shorts and this old Red Sox jersey," Will said.
So we walked out onto the deck, only to find that the southeastern sky, where most of the shooting stars were expected, was obscured by the tall oaks and pines that formed a buffer between a public park and the school where I had been principal adjacent to the park.
We walked into the front yard, even placed our camp chairs in the bulb of Cordovan Court, the cul-de-sac on which the house is located, but the view was still obstructed.