Dedicated with respect for and in admiration to 't_girl_3'... thanks... enjoy your break ...come back soon.
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She is on her way back here. My lover by night and the provider of all of that we live surrounded with by day. I am hurried in my actions but not rushed, working to a well prepared plan. Nearly everything is perfect, just as I wanted it to be for her return on this special day for lovers. The only things left to do are to wash off the sweat of the day and prepare myself for her return.
We became lovers whilst at university and had agreed that I was unlikely to find a job here in Chicago that would be following the disciple of my degree course in early Romano Archaeology. I'd not been really interested enough in education as a career to qualify further as a teacher in that (or any) subject so it was easier for us if I stayed home and kept house.
At first we'd only had a tiny apartment fifteen blocks south of Lake Shore Drive, four storeys above a quiet street which was mostly populated by middle and low income immigrant families from across the entire globe. They were a little confused about us and we didn't really make even nodding acquaintances, but we didn't make any enemies either. In those days I had a job at the pharmacist on the corner working as an accounts clerk, she was at the bottom of the pile as a 'newbie' in a respected family firm of industrial and commercial lawyers. But not for long, her rise was meteoric, being in the right place at the right time and exploiting such situations as she could to hers and the firms best advantage had meant that we moved almost every year for ten years. Then every other year until three years ago when we moved to this beautiful house in its acres of woodland and gardens outside Evanston
I'd stopped working when we (she) showed me that it was going to cost us more to get help in to run our house than I was earning. After a couple of months to organise myself I took delight in the expression she wore when she arrived home to such a place of cultured serenity as the one I had created... borne from the shell that she provided. Here in three years I had decorated the interior, removing the neutrality of the vendors' clinical clichéd modernism and replacing it with what she referred to as the comforting glow of our home. The gardens had been mostly to her design, always in consultation of my requirements from it (cut flowers, greenhouse plants, fresh fruit and vegetables). We were both very happy with our lot and now as the first non-family member of the board and, soon to be partner in the firm she was heading towards content and was taking more time away from the office for doing things with me.
It had taken her whole life to discover what it was that 'bowed her strings', me I was lucky, I'd found out one wet week in the summer between senior high and university when I was staying at my dad's kid sisters home. I couldn't really call her auntie; after all she was eighteen years younger than my dad and less than two years older than me. She came as that much of a surprise to my grandparents that they never really got over it and a year earlier had died within two months of each other. Janice, my dad's sister, had been left enough money to buy a little place eight hours out into the wilderness east of Portland with enough left over to provide a small income which enabled her to pursue her chosen path in sculpture. Sure I could have changed planes about four times and got in closer by air but the flights weren't connecting ones and the journey from San Francisco (where I'd grown up) to her house could have involved an overnight stay and up to twenty hours elapsing door to door. So she drove down to Portland the day before to pick me up from the airport and we drove, and as we drove we talked... and talked... and talked. We stopped for meals a couple of times at roadside diners in towns whose names I don't remember, lifeless, dull, soulless and stiflingly parochial places which seemed from another age to someone from a big modern city like I felt.
She got tired between the meal breaks and I took over the driving somewhere way out in the sticks on a mud spattered road. It had already been raining for the previous hour and we drove under an iron grey sky as the sun dipped behind the mountains behind us that we'd just driven through. She'd grown up around the corner from me and the past few months had been the longest I'd gone in my whole life without seeing her.
She turned towards me and curled her legs under her, I thought that she might fall asleep but after a few minutes became aware that she wasn't dozing and that she seemed to be silently scrutinising me as I drove. After a few more minutes under her gaze I glanced sideways at her and the smile on her lips started to make me feel uncomfortable. For an age I didn't say anything until I was unable to contain my insecurity any longer. I opened my mouth to comment but she spoke first
Do you realise that you're more than half of the reason that I left 'Frisco?
She didn't leave me enough time to answer as she continued
I realised that you were so innocent that you'd probably have misinterpreted it even if I'd written it down and sent it to you in a letter,
I was concentrating on the driving so much that my mind was only correlating all that she said in time-lapse and I was more than half a sentence behind her in my comprehension as she spoke on
All of those sleepovers, I tried to let you know, but you were so blasé that you never noticed that I didn't ever have boyfriends, you ran roughshod over my every attempt to just spend time with you and I spent endless dreary hours following you round as we entertained ourselves with whatever trivial and juvenile whim of yours we were following . We went shopping for everything together: shoes, tops, panties and bras, I even managed to convince you to let us share a changing cubicle once and you never guessed why I wanted to be there.
My mind was reeling and for a stupidly long time I searched for a reason for and a meaning to her words that weren't what I was starting to understand.
I tried to be with other girls... in high school but didn't even fancy them enough to do more than let them kiss me and feel me up... you were always the centre of every fantasy; the main character in every dream... and you ignored every sign, thoughtlessly slapped down every advance
She must have noticed the open-mouthed amazement etched into my visage and went on hurriedly
If this is going to spoil your week at my place then I guess maybe we ought to speak about it straight away, otherwise I'll end up crying all of the time that you are here.
My brain was still playing catch-up and I guess she took my continued silence to mean something else
I had to tell you Flora, I was going to burst just keeping it inside me... please don't hate me... I promise that I wouldn't even want to force you into anything that you didn't want as much as me... we can still be friends... I desperately don't want to lose that.
There was silence and I closed my slack jaw as I composed my reply.
I saw the signs ... I noticed the advances, but I just didn't
know
... I was so scared of it being something in my mind alone and that you might tell dad if I was wrong and you didn't feel that way, that everything I thought I saw could without too wild a stretching of my paranoid imagination have been accidental or incidental. I thought that my heart would break when you said you were moving out here to the middle of nowhere... I tried girls at school this whole year that you've been gone ... I've dated men as well and none of them made me feel what I had felt when you were around.
I pulled into a deserted lay-by that was right there on the roadside as I finished my reply and that first kiss lasted long enough to count every moment before it as having been worth the wait. Every experience, every up and down in more than eighteen years of my life up to then just giving me enough room to have been there... right then.
It started demurely enough, lip to lip, almost apologetic... as if we were both unsure of where this was going. After a few seconds or so of so tentative a caress, in an unspoken agreement of duality our arms reached out, our hands sought the comfort and need to caress and the passion levels increased. Almost breathless we broke apart tongue wrestling in the gap as we stopped scrabbling at each other's garments and each tore off our own clothes.
It wasn't so much an act of love as one of unbridled lust. Raw sexual energy filled the car as we sat with the rain hammering on the roof and windows in the growing darkness. It also wasn't the most romantic place to make out, but we didn't care about the cramped space or the discomfort and the bruises caused in our rush to be satiated were only noticed in the days to follow when our lovemaking became more refined as we adapted to each other's needs... how we talked long of our regret at all of the wasted times as we lay entwined in each other and unburdened ourselves of all that we had never dared to reveal to each other before.
That fall I left for four years of university on the east coast, promising to return to her arms at every opportunity... it was at the frat house during that first semester where I received news of her tragic death in an automobile accident. I was numbed to a shaking silence and sank to the floor of my room with the voice of my father echoing in my ears.
The funeral was a dreadful affair where there was nobody to whom I could explain the depth of the grief that seemed to be threatening to overtake everything else in my life and lead me into the darkened pits of despair.
Then the train I was riding across country on my way back to school was involved in a level crossing crash which killed three of my fellow passengers along with eight school kids and the driver on the bus that we hit. I was in the farthest coach from the crash at the rear of the train and only suffered minor bruising after being thrown to the floor by the impact.
But you know how they say 'they happen in threes'? Well... the third wasn't long in coming, before the Christmas break my dad arrived in New York and over dinner explained that he'd found someone else and that he and mum had already split up. He told me how he was willing to support me financially but that his new lady friend was close to my age and didn't want them to have any further part in his old family. They sold the house and mum moved over from the west coast, she'd decided that after twenty years she'd try and return to her studies as a start to rebuilding her life.
