Pixie, Katie and Me Ch. 01

This story is the stand-alone continuation of thePixie, Joy and Me, and expands on several of the characters featured in my storyThe Loving Porn Queen -- specifically, Mel -- the Pixie, and Doug, her husband. The dedicated reader may notice a few details differ between this and the earlier story (Porn Queen, especially Chapters 4 and 5). I invite you to see if you can find them. The concept of 'love languages' in Chapter 1 of this story comes from Gary Chapman's book, The Five Languages of Love. My thanks to Jeriscol for his editing.

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"I'm pregnant -- again!"

These earth-shattering words came from my lover and wife of four years, Melissa, otherwise known as the Pixie, who stood in the doorway of our kitchen with a grin on her face from ear to ear. She stopped waving the wand from a pregnancy test kit around just enough so I could see the positive indication.

I went and hugged the Pixie, celebrating our joyous moment. We had wanted another child and, with very little effort, had apparently been successful in our quest. In that hug I thought back to the moments that brought us to this happy day.

The Pixie earned her nickname in high school, even earlier, when she ended up being the smallest person in the school and also developed mischievous and mysterious ways about her. Later I was to find the nickname was well deserved.

Somehow she had adopted social standards that varied widely from what the rest of society called normal behavior. She was a rebel. She'd over dress; she'd under dress. When hair was in, she cut hers. When short hair was in, she got hair extensions. A streak of color in her hair as a youth was not at all unusual, but at a time when only the most daring did such a thing. When her classmates wore sneakers, she wore high heels. Those were her expressions in dress.

Mel was a rebel in her thinking and actions too. She found Thoreau and Emerson fascinating, a unique stance amongst her four hundred classmates. She excelled in every one of her classes, yet exuded a devil-may-care attitude. She chose friends irrespective of whatever social clique they might belong to, her criteria being a feeling of rapport and empathy with the person. When asked, she said she belonged to her own clique and no one else was allowed in.

She lost her virginity years before most of her classmates discovered sex. She wasn't the least bit promiscuous, yet she confessed a number of liaisons before we met that honed her skills as an outstanding lover.

I'm Doug, her husband and devotee. I worship the ground the Pixie walks on and never fail to tell her how much I love her and how glad I am she chose me as her 'soul mate'. I'm a hunky guy, I'm told, and together we make a rather striking couple. I'm a six-footer, standing tall and proud to have the Pixie beside me. I have dusty blond hair, a muscular body, a square jaw, deep set eyes that I'm told lures other females into my reaches, a grand sense of humor, and a disposition that allows about anything at all to happen around me, particularly by the Pixie -- and now a two year old named Ashley that may end up owning more of my heart than the Pixie does.

Melissa -- a.k.a. The Pixie - stands five feet even and, when not pregnant and bulging with child, weighs in at a trim one hundred pounds. Mel is a gorgeous blond with an unusually shapely body that turns male heads when she walks by. Her greatest asset is -- no, not her ass -- her breasts. Yes, the Pixie is blessed with a pair of tits that even today, after nursing one child, still amaze all within sight of her beauty. Her breasts are perfectly shaped and erect -- even alert -- as they sway gently to her natural body motions.

Mel knows she has been greatly blessed with these resources, and has always used her body to entice and sometimes tease others she's come in contact with. She's a bit of an exhibitionist. Thus, she dresses mostly in tops or blouses that show her cleavage and cling to her upper body. I was one of those individuals she caught, being drawn into her lair and eventually captured, although I still think I was more the pursuer and wooer of this wonderful woman.

Mel and I started dating from her first day on campus as a freshman. I was a junior. I fell in love with Mel immediately; it was love at first sight. As our initial dating progressed she fell for me too, but then I learned about her unique philosophy about relationships. One result of that was that Mel kept dating other guys, even though we seemed to be building something permanent. The other result was that she set me up to date her roommate, Joy. Mel, Joy and I were a threesome for almost four years; a time period that changed my views about life, love and relationships forever. Not surprisingly, Mel was the thought leader of our threesome when it came to defining what our relationship would be like.

I lucked into a wonderful summer job the year before I graduated from Ohio State. I became the property manager for the complex of apartments where I lived and it turned into a part-time job for all of my last year. The apartment became the base not only for me, but also for Mel and Joy, my two girlfriends at the time, right up until they graduated. I got to hire both of them to work as painters, decorators and handymen for the company. We all worked hard and made a lot of money, but more importantly we made some real positive changes on the place we lived and later on many of the properties the company we worked for owned.

That first college summer job at the apartments, and then my part-time work during the school year, turned into a job as property manager for over twenty similar properties around Columbus owned by Steele Property Trust or SPT. They paid well and the bonuses and shares in the real estate investment trust were outstanding. Further, I was given a lot of encouragement to take risks and be creative in how I approached the job of managing and marketing the properties I was assigned.

After only two years with the company, I'd been promoted and given responsibility for all of the property the REIT owned, not just residential but also commercial. The honor was amazing for someone my age; I was only twenty-four. Gray Steele, the CEO of the REIT, told me I was a boy wonder and wanted to keep me happy. He liked me and rewarded me generously with titles, salary, bonuses, cars, perks, and promotions.

Our threesome dissolved just before the girls graduated. Joy, our partner and lover, had found someone else with greater chemistry that she felt she needed to be with. With regrets but support, we wished her well. Mel and I married in an unusual wedding ceremony, of course, shortly after her graduation.

Mel distinguished herself early on, first as a painter and erstwhile decorator and then as the decorator and designer for all of SPT. She shined in her new position and everyone in the company loved her and respected her advice and decisions, even when many of them were extreme and unheard of in real estate circles. She transformed property after property, often on a lean budget, and occupancy rates went right up to one hundred percent and stayed there. After her graduation Mel became a full-time employee of SPT and she too started getting a generous compensation package and benefits.

Two years later, when Mel was pregnant with our first 'spin-off' Pixie, we cashed in our savings and all of our units or shares we had in SPT and built an unusual, beautiful and large modern home halfway between Columbus and Delaware, Ohio on two acres of land. We were able to put a lot of sweat equity into the home as well as get our special SPT discounts on many of the building costs, appliances and finishes for the home. We ended with a multi-million dollar home on a fantastic site that hadn't cost anything near that much to build.

A few months after the house was completed Mel and I settled into young adulthood as a devoted and idyllic 'couple' with a new baby, home and mortgage, two cars, and a couple of great jobs.

I'd love to be able to say our marriage was idyllic and that we never argued or had a fight, but I'd be lying. We had our disagreements and several of them became rather heated and lasted many weeks. The major source of discord was how I spent my time and how I apparently was or wasn't devoted to my new family.

Mel wanted quality time and attention, not only for herself but also for Ashley, the youngest Pixie in the family at that time. She'd rant and rave about how I'd forgotten how to romance her and how attentive I'd been during our college years and courtship. She contended I'd fallen out of love with her and that our marriage was doomed. She told me often how empty she felt. Our sex life went to zero -- nil -- nada. I barely noticed.

I suffered the pangs of high tension between family -- who I loved dearly, and the need to meet monthly mortgage payments as well as credit card payments that were becoming staggering, as our family's needs rose. I felt under great pressure and kept looking for relief in some way, either through making more money or by drastically cutting our family's expenses. I felt I had to put in long hours, usually seven days a week, to meet the demands of my job and to earn the generous bonuses that came our way periodically. I also carped on Mel constantly to stop using her credit cards in such a reckless way. Besides all this, I started to experience a wide range of stress effects none of which, fortunately, that were irreversible; I had a constant cold, sore muscles all the time, a nervous tic in my eye, and a love for wine that exceeded even what I knew made sense. Over time, I avoided going home since I knew Mel would just attack with criticism and condemnation.

Fortunately, we sought professional help but at first I wasn't that convinced outside help would work for us. We started weekly sessions with a marriage counselor, who also gave us homework in between these meetings such as reading and discussing a book and then reporting the results back to the counselor.

At first, the counseling added in one more stress factor to my life. Somehow, I now had to find not only the two hours it took to get to and go through the one-hour counseling session, but also had to find time to read a book and then discuss it with Mel. I couldn't duck any of this without being the ultimate bad guy that submarined my own marriage. Not only that, my parents got wind of our difficulties and sided with Mel; they got on my case about 'working at the relationship' and correcting my errant ways.

I have to admit that I felt better about our marriage after only two weeks of counseling. Moreover, our sex life started to revive. The counseling experience was transformational and changed how Mel and I interacted and communicated, and it ultimately changed how I worked.

The counselor was amazed at the unconventional viewpoints about relationships that Mel and I had, particularly Mel. He told us frankly that he'd never seen a couple like us. I can still remember his mouth hanging open in near disbelief as Mel and I told him about the four years that Mel, Joy and I had been a threesome. She never said one word in judgment of how we'd lived, and in fact, I think she empathized with the emotions we shared with her.

Early on, the counselor had us prepare a family budget and start to allocate our funds on a monthly basis to the areas that were important to us. Mel agreed to hold to the budget and this relieved a lot of my stress aimed at reducing our debt.

After some rational thinking about my job, I hired a 'Number Two' to help me manage the properties at SPT. Gray Steele, the CEO of SPT, supported 'un-stressing' my life and welcomed Jake Hardisty, the guy I hired, into the company with enthusiasm. Jake struggled to get on board, and gradually over the next couple of months I could feel a lot of the tension and stress from my job easing as he assumed many of my duties. Soon, I had our weekends back with only an occasional telephone call dealing with some minor crisis somewhere amidst our holdings.

Mel and I also discovered that we had different ways we wanted to be loved. I needed to be loved in two primary ways: first, through our physical relationship and second, through supportive words.

Physical touch is too easily laughed off as sex, particularly from a guy's point of view. Yet what I really needed was physical gestures from Mel that signaled she loved me; for instance, a touch on the shoulder, a hug, a passionate kiss, or a snuggle in bed by her warm, naked body.

The words of affirmation I also needed from Mel would be encouraging. They'd create a verbal intimacy, soothe how I felt about life, and help me rise to my full potential. They'd be little requests filled with love and not demands or judgments. They'd show she loved me and wanted me in her life and how proud she was of me.

Mel, on the other hand, wanted my time -- quality time. For at least some portion of each day, she wanted to have my undivided attention on her, and on Ashley, our daughter. She wanted me to share more of my life with her as well as listen to what she was thinking about or doing. She didn't want advice; she wanted my empathic listening, shown by my probing questions and willingness to suspend judgment. These 'meaningful' and intimate communications would signal to her that I truly loved her.

Also high on her list was that I would often give her little gifts of some kind, not necessarily expensive things, but just some tangible symbol of my love for her -- even if it was just a pretty flower I'd picked beside the road as I drove home.

As we learned and discussed each other's 'love languages', as the counselor called them, we got closer to each other and came into a much deeper understanding of our love for each other and how to express it in a way that made sense to our love object. In the end, I'd never felt closer to Mel nor she to me.

Our love life had suffered during the 'downturn' in our marriage. As the love replaced the emptiness we both felt in our marriage, so did our physical relationship. According to the counselor, we shed a lot of our 'baggage' and found new ways to 'fill each others tanks with love.'

Thus we found ourselves more in love than ever in our lives and then, by choice, Mel was pregnant again.

The months drifted by and all too soon the Pixie grew to more resemble a waddling beach ball with a head. Hormones kicked in too. Some days I was wonderful and could do no wrong; other days, the opposite opinion prevailed. I rolled with the mood shifts, as I knew they were just a temporary phenomena characteristic of pregnant women. What I did find hard to roll with was the negative impact on our love life. By the six-month mark, Mel had gotten so big -- or rather the baby and packing case -- that she couldn't handle intercourse comfortably.

And then the phone rang one Saturday morning in mid-June.

I answered the phone to find a shrieking, sobbing, hysterical female voice on the other end of the line that I could not identify.

"Mel, I think it's for you," I said with a mix of concern and humor as I passed her the phone.

"Hello," Mel said politely, unsure of why I'd passed the phone to her.

"Oh, dear. Darling, get hold of yourself, I can't even understand you." A long pause transpired and Mel said, "Oh, now that's a little better. Tell me what's wrong. Are you OK?"

I listened to one side of the conversation, occasionally hearing only a muffled shriek from the earpiece even though it was against Mel's ear.

Mel tried to mouth to me who it was but I couldn't decipher her pantomime or read her lips. She kept saying comforting words to whoever was on the phone and urging them to 'get a hold of themselves.'

As Mel talked soothing words into the phone, I took Ashley out of her highchair and indicated to her mother that we'd go out in the backyard. I led the toddler out of the house and left Mel to deal with the distressed female on the phone.

Half an hour later, Mel waddled out onto the back deck and waved to me. Ashley and I were in the sandbox building and destroying sand castles.

"That was Katie. She's left Dan, or rather he's left her or more accurately, kicked her out."

"Oh wow!" I uttered as Ashley pummeled the carefully crafted sandcastle I'd just left for her. "Why? What happened?"

Mel went on, "Seems the two of them have just grown apart and become lonely souls. Near as I could get out of her between bouts of sobbing, they were both co-existing and living in a very dead and very cold marriage then he told her last night that she had twenty-four hours to clear out of 'his' house. Apparently, he's moving in some new honey tonight."

I stood and went to Mel. I wrapped the small beach ball in my arms and told her, "Honey, I'd never do anything like that to you. We've got the beat." I hugged and kissed her forehead.

"She's coming here this afternoon. I invited her."

"Oh," I exclaimed, casting a glance towards the house wondering what shape the guest room was in.

Mel followed my gaze and responded, "Don't worry, we can clean it up in a few minutes. The bed's clean."

"What time? Did you get flight information?"

"No. She said she'd call if she had a chance. She's going to throw a suitcase together and head for the airport, Southwest Airlines out of Manchester. She thought she'd get here around five."

"Do I want to know more of the details?" I asked.

"I don't have them," Mel answered softly. "Most of the time on phone she just sobbed and kept saying she was 'so sorry' and that she just couldn't think of anyone she was closer to or wanted to talk to more than me -- us -- you too; both of us. Then she'd have another crying jag."

"Well, she's more than welcome here. I hope we can help her turn her life around."

Mel went in and puttered as an expectant hostess would. I played with Ashley up until lunch then we put her down for a nap.

Mel fielded a brief call about one-thirty. She told me a few minutes later, "She'll be here at 5:50 p.m. Can you pick her up?"

"Me?" I said in an exaggerated voice, horrified that I would be welcoming a hysterical woman that I'd happened to have a little fling with years earlier, although at Mel's instigation. I certainly didn't want Mel to think anything untoward now.

"Yes, you!" Mel said with a laugh. "I actually think you'd be the best medicine for her right now." She gave a long theatrical pause and added in a more serious tone, "You know she loves you."

"Me?" I said again, my voice going up a further octave.

"Yea. Ever since we had that weekend when we swapped, she's always had a soft spot in her heart for you. She confessed to me back then and I know she hasn't changed. Whenever we've talked, she's always wanted lots of details about what your doing or thinking. You're the perfect lover in her eyes."

I sputtered, "But ... but ... but that was five -- no, six years ago. We were different people -- experimenting and all. There was Joy in our lives too. Now we're married ... Ashley ... you and the babe." I gestured towards the center of the Pixie's beach ball.

The Pixie adopted her very authoritative stance, hard to do since the result was that the beach ball belly became more pronounced and off-center over her legs. "I know all that stuff, and I know you. I love you and I love Katie. She's one of the few people in the world I wouldn't mind ...", she paused and redirected her statement. "Look, just pick her up at the airport. Buy her a drink -- two drinks. Give her dinner if she's up for it. Romance her a little to help her self esteem then bring her back here. I mean it. Play it by ear. If she's a basket case, just bring her back here and we'll work on her together."

We talked some more and Mel insisted on my meeting Katie, finally convincing me that the male-female chemistry might be just what could power up her wounded psyche.