It All Just Came Together

Part One

She'd once confided – after dinner, over some good red wine and some even better weed - that if she was ever going to be with a man again, she hoped it'd be a man like my husband.

I'd confided to her that if I ever took up with a woman again, I hoped it was someone like her - and that if we'd been classmates in college - in my "experimenting-with-women" phase - I'd have pursued her.

She'd confided that we'd have collided, since she'd have been pursuing me, too. We had a good laugh over it, sitting there, semi-cuddling, each of us huddled in a blanket on the couch in my living room. We fell asleep. Hours later, I woke, and considered touching her, just gently, waking her softly and making love to her, but thought better of it. In a way, it was vanity that stopped me. I was 47; she was barely 30. So I slipped away from her, settled a cushion under her head, a blanket over her scantily clothed little body, touched her cheek, and went to my own bed, looking very much forward to my husband's return from a business trip the next day.

That had been three years ago.

Soon after that evening, she fallen in love with a woman we tried hard to like, but didn't much. We'd had them over a few times; been to their place once. My husband and I eventually realized that the main reason we didn't like the girlfriend was simply that the girlfriend didn't like us.

I wondered if she'd told her girlfriend about our shared attraction and, probably worse from the girlfriend's point of view, her fondness for - and her innocent attraction to - my husband? I'd certainly shared it with my husband; why wouldn't she have done likewise? The difference: my husband (predictably!) was fine with it. Her girlfriend, I suspected, wouldn't have been.

When she called, her voice sounding a little strained, "just to say hi" that evening, I asked a couple of questions and soon she was weeping, telling me that she and the girlfriend had had a horrible fight "over nothing." Soon after that, she was no longer weeping, but sobbing, and we couldn't really talk. She managed to say that her girlfriend had stormed out, taking their car; she dreaded seeing her when she came home.

"Pack a few things; leave a note; I'll come get you and you can stay here tonight."

She whispered her thanks and hung up. I got out of my corporate clothes, showered and put on loose jeans and a top.

Another few hours, and we were on my couch, under blankets. We'd followed a familiar and comforting pattern of ours. There'd been some food, some more good wine, some more good weed. It was a chillier time of year than that other time we'd had one of these "slumber parties," the time when we'd confessed – more or less – our mutual attraction. That time, we'd been out on the deck, watching the last of a summer sunset; this time we had a fire going. My husband was having dinner with a partner and a client. We were all cried and talked out and there was a long pause. We watched the fire, sipped some, smoked half of the second joint, all in silence. She came over from her end of the couch, and leaned against me. We re-snugged the blankets around us.

But it grew warm under the blankets, as the fire grew intense. We kicked them off, and giggling, peeled our clothes off, most of them. But in a few minutes, we were chilly again, and pulled the blankets back up. But his time we were not each under a separate blanket. We were side by side under them, mostly skin to skin under the blankets and when we realized that, the giggling stopped. She sighed. Her hand began to idly stroke my thigh.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"Any time," I answered, maybe even more softly.

"Your friendship means so much to me. Yours and his, I mean."

Another long pause. We watched the fire some more. I heard her sniff, and with a finger on her chin, I turned her face to see if she was crying. There was one tear rolling down her cheek. I kissed it off. She turned more to me, turning her face up, and kissed me. We kissed each other.

"Will he be home soon?"

"We have some time."

"Good. But I want him to know. Is that OK?"

"It'll be fine."

And just like that, we'd agreed. My hand slid to her small, firm breast, our lips met, and we began to make love.

I'll admit that her youth made her all the more desirable, but somehow her clear, smoothly taut skin and her firm flesh didn't make me feel less desirable with my riper body, my looser skin, my softer flesh.

On the contrary, as our heat built up, she was so clearly hungry for me, so full of longing for me, to feel my body, to hold and kiss and caress me, that I felt as desirable as I ever had in my life. In much the same way that my husband's lovemaking lets me know how much he wants me, how much his body enjoys mine, her touch, her whispers, her downright horniness let us both get lost in each other, let us shed every thought but the anticipation of the next breath, the next moan, the next wetness, the next sliding of skin on skin, the next sly insertion, the next squirming, probing stroke, the next muscular clenching, the embrace, the heat, the smell, the taste ...

This was very, very good sex. We came for each other easily, which had been especially sweet, but the sex was really good already, even before either of us came, and would have been good even if we never had. It was that good.

A little later, as we lay on the carpet together, the blankets over us, cushions under our heads, me on my back, her curled against me, her head on my breast, her leg over mine, our hands soothing as I gently pressed my lips to her head and smelled her hair, her wet sex pressed against my thigh, after we'd made our shy, silly "thank-you's" and murmured to one another how lovely it had been, confessed how nervous we were at first, and how quickly, how wondrously that had slipped away, there was another long pause and then:

"So, how much longer do we have?"

"Not long; any minute, actually. We should probably get up and sort things out."

"Oh?"

"I mean ... "

"It wouldn't be good if he found us like this?"

I thought for a moment.

"Well ... actually ... I think it'd be fine."

"So we don't have to scramble to get dressed and hide all this?"

"No. No, if you don't want to, I don't think we have to at all."

"But it'd be better if we could just sort of ease him into it, right?"

"Well, probably."

"Do you think we could do that tonight?"

It occurred to me that I wasn't quite sure what we were talking about any more.

"Tell me what you want to do," I said. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be fine, for me and for him. We're fine with whatever."

"Do you think he'd like me? I mean ... you know. Sexually." Ah. So that was it. More than just letting him know, she was asking me to let her be with him. Wow. I thought for a moment.

"Yes. I do. I think he'd love being with you. In fact I'm sure of it." Actually, he'd confessed to finding her very attractive. And he found the fact she and I were both attracted to each other pretty exciting, though I'd told him it would never happen, but we sort of teased each other about it sometimes.

"And you'd be ok with it?"

"Yes." I paused, thinking, and then said "more than ok with it, actually. I'd like it. But he'll be just in from a long day at work and all ..."

"So were we," she said. "Didn't slow us down much ..."

We both laughed a little.

"Indeed. But let's let him settle in; join us for a drink, maybe. And whatever you want from there on is fine." We kissed and it was all we could do not to make love again, but it was time to move on to other things.

When he came in, we were puttering in the kitchen. I'd called him when I'd first told her I was coming to get her, and he was all for letting her hide out with us for a day or two, until things settled down between her and her girlfriend. There was still pasta from our meal; I set it aside for him with come snacks, and a salad.

So he wasn't surprised. He was, though, a little surprised when his "hi-honey-I'm-home" kiss was greeted with a silent request for more. I pressed myself to him just so, looked into his eyes, and drew him in for another, softer, more significant kiss, and I think he understood right at that moment.

When we broke the kiss, he looked into my eyes pretty much as I'd looked into his, and said softly, but loud enough for both of us to hear "I think I'll go shower up; I'll be right back. I'm glad you're here," he said, looking over at her, still holding me. "And I'm sorry it's been such a rough day for you. Let's just relax, be glad it's Friday, and make the world go away." With that he left for our bedroom and his shower.

"God, he's wonderful," she said.

"He is."

"And he's ... well ... he's really good, right? Best you've ever had?"

"Definitely. And as you know, I did my share of 'sampling' before I found him. I think he's awesome. But we'll see, ya know? I think you'll be good together."

"And it's ok if ..."

"Yes ... I told you. It's more than ok. I want you to."

"Thank you."

Arm-in-arm, we returned to the living room, where we restoked the fire, set wine and three glasses out, and settled in at opposite ends of the couch, our bare feet touching in the middle, under our blankets, where we stroked each other's toes softly. We looked at each other across the distance, her eyes twinkled with the firelight, and I guess mine must have, too. We smiled and waited. "Oh, god," she said.

"Oh, god," I agreed.