Maybe Later 04: It's 'later'

Maybe Later

Continuing a tale of three fantasies: A rewarding life can be lived without a partner, a satisfying life can be lived without sex, and deserved rewards always await those who are patient.

Brett, his body still on east coast time, was awake even before the first graying of the night skies. He, too, had wrestled much of the night trying to sort out his feelings toward his wife's older sister. At length, he arose and padded into the bathroom for a quick shower and shave. Finished, he dressed and quietly found his way to the kitchen.

A short search yielded a coffee pot and some grounds, and before long, he poured the first cup of coffee.

Not bad,

he thought. He let himself out onto the veranda and drank in the sweet fragrance of a damp forest. Through breaks in the woods he could see the Pacific far beyond, and in the still gray dawn, it was hard to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began.

Louann's done well,

he considered.

Louann awakened to the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. It had been a long night for her, as thoughts and visions of her brother-in-law, some of them rather lurid, interrupted her sleep, and each time, she awoke with a feeling of guilt at the intensity of her imagination. Now, with dawn fully at hand, she reached in her closet for her robe to pull on over her nightgown.

Hey, Lou,

she thought to herself as she glanced at her mirror,

you're really going to dazzle him with your elegance!

She hadn't noticed until now how worn and saggy the robe had become.

She followed the aroma of the fresh-brewed coffee to the kitchen.

Nice, I could get used to this,

Louann thought,

but where's Brett?

She poured herself a cup of Brett's brew, and was surprised that it was pretty close to the strength she liked, too. But then, she thought with a smile,

Brett could do that; why should I be surprised?

She noticed him on the veranda, back to her, still gazing across 'her' woods.

Those shoulders,

she thought,

I hadn't noticed 'til last evening how broad they are.

As she walked up to him, she wondered if a hug might be appropriate. Instead, she threaded her arm through his. "Good morning," she said.

"Good morning," Brett smiled. "You've done well, Louann."

"Thanks," she grinned, "I kinda like it."

For several moments they listened while the night sounds blended with those of the emerging new day. Louann and Brett both were lost in thought.

Louann stared at her coffee sitting on the ledge of the veranda. She remembered the urge to rise from her chair at the keyboard, how she desperately wished to return Brett's kiss on her forehead.

Brett recalled the warmth and strength in Louann's shoulders, and the swell of her breasts so tantalizingly near his fingertips. How easy it would have been to sweep her into his arms and follow up that tentative kiss on her forehead with another filled with the passion and hunger that welled up then -- and even now he felt it again.

At length, Brett asked quietly, "Do we need to talk about last evening?"

"I thought about that for a long time last night. The right thing to say is 'I don't know what came over me,' but, you lunkhead, I

know

what came over me! You and your damn fingers -- and that kiss on my forehead!"

"Yeah, I was way out of line, kissing you like that. But I won't take all the blame either. Tell me, when was the last time you wore a scoop-neck anything?!"

God, I could see clear almost to her navel a couple of times,

he remembered

Louann giggled, and Brett grinned.

Louann shivered in the cool morning air, but the shiver was more at the thought of his hands on her shoulders, so tenderly and enticingly last evening. And the memory of his warm breath on her ear and his kiss on her forehead still lingered warmly.

"I... umm...," Brett started, then found the courage to continue. "I had trouble getting to sleep last night."

"Mmm... Me, too! Sleep came hard last night."

"I couldn't get the thoughts of you and your sister out of my noggin. Linda in Connecticut, watching TV, munching on popcorn, maybe. You, so..." He tried to continue, to add

so near, so warm, so hopefully willing,

but the right words wouldn't come.

Both noticed the small birds chattering at the bird feeder Louann had placed nearby, and it broke their reverie for a moment.

"I'm not sure," Louann softly replied. "I'm not sure I understand what happened. Do you believe in fate?" Fate, she had concluded, in the form of the moment-breaking tumble, had stepped in to resolve a pending moral issue.

"Mmm," Brett murmured. "Fate," he repeated.

Both stood quietly, pondering "Fate." Indeed, Fate had brought them together, and Fate intervened with last evening's fall.

A profound word, Fate, each mused. As silence hung loudly in the rising dawn, neither wanted to admit having not one clue how the word applied or how Fate would affect the immediate future.

"I noticed some eggs in the refrigerator," Brett said, then added with a sly grin, "will chickens fly out of 'em when I crack 'em open?"

Louann punched him in the arm. "No, you doofus, I got 'em fresh day-before-yesterday! I remembered how you like eggs in the morning."

>>>>> 0 <<<<<

Breakfast dishes cleared, Louann and Brett sat over cups of coffee. Brett had taken over to fry eggs, for himself, it turned out, as Louann settled for a slice of toast.

"Hey, about last evening," Brett began. "I think I need to be careful." He gazed at his coffee cup, now nearly empty. "I've got a very large problem. As you may have noticed, I find you attractive. Last night, the old male instincts sort of took over, and I sort of forgot that I had vowed to Linda twenty-eight years ago."

Louann hunched over her cup which held with both hands.

"That means we both have problems," she said slowly. "It wasn't just male instincts at work last night. As you may have noticed, I wasn't exactly fighting you off. I guess I, too, had 'sort of forgotten' that you're my sister's husband."

"That problem's going to come up again, Lou," Brett said as he sought her eyes. "And I'm not sure how I'll handle it when it does."

"Neither do I, Brett."

"That's what happened between us at the hospital that day five years ago when you picked me up, isn't it?" Louann began. Then she blurted, "Did you actually have your hand on my um, sex?" As she stumbled on the word she felt her face redden, and she struggled to appear objective and clear headed. Yet she felt her belly warm, and beneath her gown and robe she knew other parts of her body reacted too.

Brett found her eyes after a moment. "Yeah, that's about the way I remember it," he replied. He felt stirrings, too.

Louann and Brett stared at their coffee cups for several long and pregnant moments.

"I've wondered about that morning for a long time," Brett began. "It was a pretty perverse kind of a tease, what I did to you, and I've felt bad about leading you on like that. It was so wrong on so many levels. You're the sister of my wife, for God's sake!"

In the silence he added in a whisper, "But it felt so right at the time."

Louann reached across the table to take his hands in hers. "Didn't it

ever

feel right!" she exclaimed. "And I'm not sure who was leading who that day. If I remember right, it was me that guided your hand at a critical time. You were about to stop your massage at the top of my leg, weren't you?"

Brett nodded. "I figured I was so way out of line at that point. I knew I'd better stop. Then you reached and grabbed my wrist." Under the table, he felt himself getting uncomfortably hard.

"I'd have kicked you in the nuts a lot sooner if you'd stopped there," she chuckled, and their laughter broke the tension of the moment.

"One of us has got to come out and say it. You and I were dancing on the feathery edge of, uh, adultery then, weren't we. There, I said it," Brett began.

The ensuing silence hung heavily in Louann's kitchen. "Yeah. Just like we were last night," Louann acknowledged quietly. Each stared at their empty cups.

"I sure can't hide what you do to me, like last night, for instance. And I'm just guessing, but I think you have similar feelings for me. Seems as though I can remember something warm and liquid and slippery all over my hand that day at the hospital," Brett said softly. Then he added with a smile, "I don't think it was pee."

Louann snickered. "Not pee!" she assured him. "I can't remember a time when I was more, um, aroused."

Louann wrestled with her thoughts. This was the most frank and intimate discussion she and Brett had ever had.

"So," Brett offered at length, "You got any odd jobs you need a weak mind and a strong back for?"

"Well," she started, then thought for a moment. Lurid thoughts flashed to the foreground but she pushed them aside.

"You've never been to the Big Sur, have you?"

"Nope," he responded.

"OK, let's take a ride down the coast past Monterrey, then wend our way back north to Moss Landing. We can look in on Pebble Beach, so you can crow to your golfing buddies that you've been there, and stop in at some neat shops at Monterrey. You might find something for Linda there."

"Sounds good," Brett agreed.

"There's a nice restaurant here in Moss Landing, maybe we can end our sightseeing there." As an afterthought, Louann added, "Maybe by then we'll be ready to tackle those recipes again," and punctuated it with a sly smile and an arched eyebrow.

Brett glanced at his hostess in time to catch her innuendo and smiled. He hoped he understood her meaning.

>>>>> 0 <<<<<

The day had been glorious, perfect for a leisurely drive down the coast. The fog burned off early, and by the time they stopped at Point Sur, it was mostly sunny, though you could see the fog bank not far out over the cold Pacific Ocean.

"Come on, let's take a walk out to the lighthouse," Brett suggested. Louann, never one much for a hike (unless it was in a mall, shopping), reluctantly agreed.

Brett was impressed at the scenery, the sun-dappled sea, the ancient rocks on which the lighthouse stood, the brown and green hills behind them as they strolled across the spit of land between the lighthouse and Highway 1. The sea quietly lapped at the sandy beach and sandpipers scampered to and fro, searching the washed-up kelp fronds for treats.

"You get out here much?" Brett asked with a grin. He guessed he knew the answer already as Louann struggled to sound as if she did this all the time, though her puffing as they stopped gave her away.

"Gosh, yes, all the time," she fibbed, and Brett chuckled in response. Linda had been far more an athlete than Louann, a fact that Louann made no attempt to hide. Louann prided herself on being the acknowledged "Renaissance Gal," while Linda laughingly accepted "Material Girl."

The first part of their outing, the tour of the Big Sur thus far, had been cordial but a little stiff. Both Brett and Louann still weighed the implications of their intense encounter of the evening before. Each was pretty certain that something more, something frightening but at the same time tantalizing and exciting, could have or would have engulfed them.

They finally topped the highest point on the promontory that was Point Sur. Both sat, appropriating a bench where they could see back across the peninsula and up and down the desolate coast. Louann was grateful for the rest, and tried once more to disguise her puffing with deep breaths. Brett noticed, though he doubted her heavy breathing was because of him. They sat alone with one another, and the only sound was the muffled surf on the sea side of the point and the chill breeze rattling the leaves in the shrubbery.

It was Louann who broached the subject. She often set the agenda and the pace of the discussions she had with her brother-in-law. "Brett," she began after she stopped puffing, "did Linda mention anything about birthdays to you?"

"Um, yeah, I think so. Why do you ask?

"She said something about a 'birthday present.' In fact, I think what she said was that you are her birthday present to me."

"Hmmm..." Brett tried to remember what Linda had said last week.

"What do you make of that?" Louann continued. "At first I thought she meant that you were supposed to do some of the 'man jobs' around here. But as I've thought about it, I'm not sure. I really don't have any 'man jobs.' That I can't handle myself, I mean."

"I think she said my visit would be a birthday present," Brett pondered. "I assumed she meant that a couple of days visiting you was her present. I never about thought who was getting a present."

"I wondered if getting you out of the house for an extra few days was her present to herself," Louann snickered.

"Except it wasn't her birthday. It's closer to ours," Brett added soberly.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The gulls soared overhead and the breeze wafted through the scrubby brush. Lost in their private thoughts, Louann and Brett neither saw the gulls nor felt the breeze.

"How are things with you and Linda?" Louann asked.

"You serious?"

"Yeah. I've sensed for a few years that the spark has gone out of your marriage. Is everything OK?"

It was several minutes before Brett replied, and he started with a sigh. "Yeah, Linda's sort of gone within herself. She says she doesn't feel well, that her back hurts. When I suggest she call her doctor, she brushes me off and tells me there's nothing they can do about it. She mostly watches TV all day long. She just sort of sits there. It's like she's brooding." He stood and paced for a moment.

"What makes it even worse," he continued in a small voice, "is she doesn't want to have anything to do with me. We haven't even touched one another except for the quick kisses goodnight or goodbye. When I try to talk with her about it, she just gets mad and asks why we should even bother having sex. The other day I happened to brush my hand across her boob, and she snarled, 'What are you trying to do, cop a feel?' She makes me feel like I'm a rapist or a pervert."

"Oh my God, Brett," Louann rushed to respond, tears in her eyes, "I had no idea!" She wondered for a second if she should have asked the question.

"We're just two people who happen to live in the same house. Some days I feel so... lonely."

Without thinking she hugged him close. For Louann the hug was one of sympathy. Brett returned the hug weakly, in frustration.

"Wow," Brett said at length. "Sorry about that. Talk about a download!"

"It's OK," Louann replied. "That's what friends are for."

"You're a special friend, Lou. I've never told all that to anybody."

They trudged wordlessly onward along the path. Brett's visit had taken on a somber pallor for the moment.

Brett's anguished confession confirmed what she imagined of her sister and brother-in-law. What shocked her now was the depth of Linda and Brett's chasm.

Louann wrestled with Brett's revelations

. Poor Brett! He's married, but he's almost as alone as I am. What has come over my sister?

she pondered.

Brett's face reddened as he thought about all he had dropped on his wife's sister. He was lost in silence.

Have I dumped too much on her?

I don't have anybody to kiss goodnight. Maybe that's better,

Louann considered.

At least I don't have the hope that any intimacy might follow.

The enormity of the thought staggered her.

No hope?

"Oh, by the way, I'm assuming what we say here stays here..."

"Yep, the usual," Louann said. She was aware for the first time of the fragrance of the shrubbery as it mingled with the musty damp floor of the trail.

Louann was lost in thought as they walked on. She still marveled at Brett's red-faced confession, and was amazed because she, too, had considered the same thing these past few years!

Brett stopped. Taking a deep breath, he turned to her and said, "Give me your hands, Lou."

She turned slightly toward him and he took her hands tenderly in his.

Reddening slightly, he began, "It's these hands. You have beautiful hands, Lou. Your hands, so long, so slim, so - um -

elegant

."

It was Louann's turn to blush now. Nobody but Linda ever called her "Lou." Brett never had until this day.

"'Absolutely honest'?" he went on. He took a deep breath. "I have dreamed of these hands. In my dreams, I've held them like this. I've felt them touching my cheek. These fingers have run through my hair. They've rubbed my back..." He thought to continue, to tell her where else he dreamed of her hands touching him, but stopped. This was honest enough for the moment, and certainly way more than he ever dared confess before.

Louann tried to lighten the moment. "These old things?" she exclaimed as she pulled her hands free and waggled them in front of her face. "I always thought they were pretty gangly." From the look on her seat-mate's face, she immediately regretted her attempt at humor.

"Oh, Brett," she said, almost in a whisper, "I'm sorry. Nobody ever told me things like that." The thought flashed across his mind that responses like hers just now could be a reason she was yet unmarried. He couldn't dwell on the idea because Louann tenderly placed her hands around the back of his neck. Her eyes brimming with tears, she pulled him gently to her and nervously pecked him on his lips.

Brett's arms enveloped her, and he returned her kiss with ardor, hungry and hard. Their kiss was the culmination of many years' desire. It was frantic and demanding and soothing and passionate. Their lips met fiercely, and their tongues touched and danced in exciting embrace.

At length they broke the embrace, each needing to come up for air. A very sober "Wow," was all Louann could muster.

"Yeah," was all Brett could manage, and he was astounded at his clever response. "I think we have

lots

of stuff to talk about!"

They ambled along the path after a while, holding hands. "I haven't held hands with anybody since my kids grew up," Brett said, and with that, he gave her hand a little squeeze.

"Brett," she started, "I have wondered about this moment for years."

"Umm, me, too."

"I've fantasized about kissing you, what your lips would taste like. About how your whisker stubble would feel like against my cheek." She decided, for the moment, at least, not to tell him where else she dreamed about his stubble touching. "Linda used to tell me all about you when she got home from her dates with you."

"Really," Brett reacted, "whatever did she tell you? I deny everything!" He wasn't especially shocked at the revelation, as he knew the two sisters were close, but he was curious what his wife had passed on to her sister.

Louann looked up at him coyly and offered, "Oh, ...maybe later," and they walked on.

She broke the silence after a while, "So, you fancy my hands and I like your whisker stubble. It's your turn: anything else you'd like to add?" She noticed their hands were damp with sweat. Her panties were damp, too, and she was pretty sure it wasn't sweat.

"Hmmm," Brett said, "I've played Truth or Dare that wasn't this much pressure." After a few moments of searching for the right words, he continued, "Your twins have always driven me crazy." He grinned after getting the words out.

Louann's brow furrowed for a second. "What twins are you talking ab...?" she blurted, before it dawned on her that the twins he spoke of were those on her chest. She was suddenly aware of their sway beneath her clothing, and her face reddened even as she felt her nipples stiffen slightly. "Oh," she said meekly. Gathering her composure, she added, "these little things?" With a sly smile and a raised eyebrow, she thrust her chest out at him.