A Nerd in Paradise

"We should be dating," Flor said frowning at herself in the mirror on the back side of my car's visor.

She had spent the evening not exactly frowning, but not happy either.

I was driving her home after celebrating a friend's engagement. I'm not the fastest car on the track, but even I could intuit Flor's anxiety that at the age of 27 she had yet to find the love of her life. She needed to talk, but had to screw up her courage. I waited, as always, while she stared out the window at the arctic landscape of Michigan on a snowy January evening.

"We should be dating," she repeated half to herself as we skidded in the slush to a stop at a light. She turned to me, "I'm calling in our agreement. The one we made in college that we would marry each other if we hadn't found mad passionate love by the age of twenty-seven."

"Haven't we been dating?" I asked unseen in the dark car, "Most evenings, you're in my apartment or I'm in yours. People date to get to know each other. You know me better than most people know their spouse."

She nodded and continued to stare out the windshield at the blowing snow streaking through our headlight beams.

"Dating is different. You open yourself to the other person. We haven't done that. We're somewhere between close friends and friends with occasional benefits," she said with arms crossed while looking out the fogged side window.

I wanted to shout in frustration that she hadn't opened herself to me, but there was no sense trudging down that old rut. She was not into me the way I was into her. I had come to grips with it. Moving on was my only real option, and yet here I sat at her feet like a little whipped puppy begging for a crumb of attention.

"You know I'm crazy about you, I've been since college," I began since I never listened to my own advice, "but you friend-zoned me a long time ago, and have kept me there. What changed?"

Flor and I discovered each other in college and stuck together because our needs dovetailed. She was the product of the Child Protective Service by way of an abusive family, and was unusual in that she had shown enough talent and initiative in high school to win scholarships. So at the age of eighteen she was cast adrift in the academic sea without family or friends to fall back on.

I, on the other hand, had spent the first eighteen years of my life living with a verbally abusive father who had drummed into me that I was stupid and useless despite the protestations of my mother, grandmother and my teachers. In defense I turned inward living among books and ideas that never judged and always welcomed me with open arms.

In the bare knuckle town where I grew up, that marked me as a nerd. It took ten years of fist fights to prove that nerds can kick butt. I, too, had no home to go to as long as dear old dad was there.

The traffic light changed and we fish tailed a little as we turned the corner.

In retrospect it seemed natural that Flor and I glommed on to each other our Freshman year and created an instant family free of the abuse that had figured in our young lives, nor was it unusual that we were cautious about who else we committed to. Battered hearts learn to love slowly. We gave each the other the family we craved. Who else did we have to share our holidays with? Closeness grew between us that surpassed any casual friends we made, and we thrived up to a point. Then things didn't change for a very long time.

They did change for me recently when I discovered a vague anger about how Flor treated me and unhappiness about the hold she had on me. Why couldn't I let go and move on? I was ready for commitment, in fact, I craved it. Flor had frozen our relationship in a weird place where we were more than friends yet less than lovers.

I remember as a kid seeing the totem pole in the center of my home town. It was erected to honor the Indian tribe that once lived there. At the very top of that totem pole sat a turtle that fascinated me. I wondered how a turtle would manage to get to the top of a pole and more importantly how it would manage to get down. I began to identify more and more with that turtle as my relationship with Flor progressed.

I had a crazy double major in college studying both engineering and Chinese. People thought me insane at the time, but it had worked out well. I translated Chinese technical documents into English for a living. My business had grown along with my reputation for clear unbiased translations.

The traffic light ahead changed to amber and there was no way I was stopping so we plowed through the intersection on a red light. Thank God the traffic was light.

"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God," Flor chanted as we careened through the intersection.

When the money began rolling in, I saw myself as attractive to women for the first time. As a thread bare student surviving on ramen and peanut butter while working my way through college, I had considered myself a bookish wing-man at best. Now women sought me out despite my very average looks.

I should be happy, but still, I harbored a lurking passion for Florence, and the weird part was I could find no reason why. She was smart, she worked as a CPA, but I had dated smarter women. She was tall, and well proportioned, but I wouldn't call her a raving beauty. She was sweet at times, but frosty more and more. Emotional abuse had crept back into my life.

Still, a body wants what a body wants and she was who I chose to spend my time with. My perfect winter evening was cuddling with her underneath a shared blanket as we watched a movie from my couch. I thrived on the closeness and the warmth of those intimate moments. She was my family and I was hers except when she found a new boyfriend. Then she would be gone until things didn't work out. When she dragged herself back to me I welcomed her.

She had a beautiful full head of honey brown hair that cascaded past her perfect shoulders and down onto her back and breasts. Her voluptuous figure attracted male attention wherever she went. She claimed her hips were too wide, but I thought them womanly.

"I'm going to be twenty-eight in a couple of months, and I've decided that it's time I settled down and started a family. I want it all." she turned to me, "I can't think of a nicer, more congenial person to settle down with than you."

I considered her less than amazing proposal. The word 'congenial' stuck in my craw. A friend of a friend had thrown herself at me this evening at the bar going so far as to punch her number into my phone which she found laying on the table. Flor picked up my phone afterwards and deleted the woman's name and number. At the time, I thought Flor was looking out for me so I wouldn't end up with a 'mess in a dress'.

Now I wondered if Flor was as trapped as I was. While she couldn't love me, she couldn't let me go either. The thought nagged at me that Flor had settled for me because she hadn't found anyone better. I had just enough self respect to realize I didn't want to be her consolation prize.

Love is complicated. I had boundless love and gratitude for Flor. She had been in my life for ten mostly wonderful years. She had stood beside me as I had stood beside her. I didn't know what proportion of my feelings for Flor was love and what proportion was gratitude. Was I mixing the two up?

The car in front of me was doing five miles per hour wandering from lane to lane on the snow covered road. I tried to get around him a couple of times, but he was too erratic and the streets were too slick to get past him. I dropped way back on him and allowed him to set the pace.

"That's an interesting proposition, but I didn't hear the word 'love' in the reason why you want to marry me," I offered trying to keep the snark out of my voice.

I'm an engineer. We are not known for our subtlety.

Anger flashed in her eyes. "Of course I love you. Who nursed you through covid?"

"You did," I admitted.

"Who let you stay in my apartment rent free when you were starting out in business?"

"You did," I replied.

"How can you possibly wonder if I love you?"

"Because you don't say it."

I kept my eyes on the snow covered road. Sliding into a truck worried me more than our relationship sliding into the ass end of discord.

"All right,"she turned to me leaning against the passenger side door and looked me straight in the eye, "I love you."

"And I love you," I replied barely stopping the car in time at an intersection as a tanker slid through on the slushy pavement blaring its air horn. He clipped the car in front of me and sent it spinning through the intersection and into a pile of snow left by the plows.

The only sound inside the car was the heater blowing even more hot air between us as the tanker disappeared into the gloom. Flor remained calm, too calm. She hadn't even seen the tanker or the car that was hit.

I analyzed her 'I love you'. Her inflection rose at the end as if there was a 'but' that she had bitten off to keep it from tumbling out. Was I being hyper critical? Hell, yes. The truth was that I didn't trust her to remain true to me if a better man came along.

She was a CPA, after all. She had been trained to evaluate investments and get rid of under performing assets. I often wondered if she applied that logic to dating having gone through dozens of men after college.

That made me the dependable investment with good, but not spectacular yields. Meanwhile I as an engineer was trained to avoid catastrophic failure through rigorous testing.

When we drove past the car, the driver was out and looking at the damage.

Product testing to prevent a marriage failure; now there was an idea. I dismissed it as a dumb idea, but the more I thought about it, the more logical it sounded. Could I failure-proof a marriage through product testing?

We pulled into the parking lot of our apartment building busting through the ridge of snow left by the snow plow across the entrance.

"I'm beat right down to my socks," Flor mumbled as she buttoned her winter coat and pulled up her hood, "I'm calling it a night. If you come over at ten tomorrow, I'll make breakfast."

She leaned over and gave me a kiss. There wasn't a lot a passion to it, but then exhaustion frequently trumps passion at the end of a long hard work week. Neither of us liked going out after work on Fridays. Exhausted twenty somethings clogged the bars and restaurants pushing against a week's worth of fatigue to party because it was the start of the weekend, dammit.

I had turned into a bit of a foodie. I loved seeking out exotic restaurants and sampling food I had never tasted before. You can't do that on Friday nights. The restaurants are teeming with impatient people grumping at harried wait staff who in turn scream at the cooks who take short cuts. We preferred dining and drinking in the more refined atmosphere of Saturday or Sunday evenings.

At my apartment, I crawled out of my work clothes and into sweat pants and a flannel shirt and settled down in front of my computer.

There were times when Flor had been downright cruel to me. It wasn't often, or for very long, still it happened. Usually it was when she had a new boyfriend and I had none. Mostly she flaunted her new boyfriend in front of me. I didn't understand it or much care for it, but she passed through them quickly.

What would something like that morph into inside a marriage? Maybe product testing a marriage wasn't such a bad idea. There were no stress calculations for couples the way there were for bridges, still putting couples into stressful situations to see how they reacted had merit. What would happen if I put my fiancee into a temptation rich setting?

I typed into the computer's search bar 'cruises for single professional people' and pored over the options. I wanted to put Flor into a target rich environment as they say in the Air Force and see how she performed. A couple websites seemed to fit, and I ear-marked them.

The following morning, before leaving for Flor's, I grabbed my laptop. She met me at the door dressed in an over-sized maize and blue University of Michigan hockey jersey that came down to mid thigh on her. My hand on her hip discovered no evidence of underwear when I kissed her hello.

She made no attempt to return to her bedroom to get dressed and instead stepped into the kitchen pulling out a skillet from the cupboard showing a bit of bare bottom as she bent over.

We were grazing our way through bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast in her sunny breakfast nook.

"Let's make love," she said as she munched a strip of bacon.

"A morning of sex and bacon?" I replied with a grin, "is it my birthday?"

Perhaps my thoroughly grounded love life had broken free of the friendship zone reef and was starting to sail into the unplumbed waters of intimacy. Was Flor shaking that metaphoric totem pole she had set me on?

We had made love before when one or the both of us were going through a dry spell, but those were pity fucks. Flor's rule was no kissing. I wondered from time to time what it would be like to lay a passionate kiss on her, but I was happy to grope the fun parts I was allowed to play with.

Lately, she seemed more controlling than usual. I had gone along with a lot of her crap to keep the peace, but her demands were beginning to escalate. She demanded that I upgrade my old paid for SUV. When I told her that I had no intention of buying a new car, she pouted for a week, told me that she had no desire to ride around in my old beater, and ducked my phone calls.

"I'm thinking on the couch after breakfast," she wiggled her eyebrows at me, "we can start there and see where desire takes us."

"Sounds wonderful," I replied as I rubbed my sweatpants covered leg against her bare leg under the table.

"I want to allow kissing. What do you think?" she asked dipping the point of her toast into the yolk of an over easy egg.

While I tended to fall in love with the person I was having sex with, Flor fell in love with the person she kissed. Maybe she was serious about us becoming a couple? Had my strategy of waiting for her to come around worked?

"I'm all for it," I said munching bacon, "I would very much enjoy kissing you."

"Sounds like cowgirl is our best position. I like having control over the love making," she took a sip of coffee, "and I do like the idea of you kissing me. It makes my heart go pitter-pat."

She placed her hand over her heart. I did notice that her nipples were poking out. She had no bra on either. This morning kept getting better and better.

"Can I kiss you after I've gone down on you?" I asked.

She smiled.

"I do enjoy kissing and I do enjoy oral sex so yes it's okay to kiss me. I reserve the right to kiss you after going down on you as well. Are you fine with that?"

"No problem," I replied with a grin, "that's enough to get me started."

It struck me as weird that Flor negotiated sexual details before we made love. I had never done that with another woman beyond the whispered 'no anal' or the 'don't cum in my mouth' admonitions.

Meanwhile, Flor stroked my groin with her foot under the table.

"You're right, that definitely got you started," she chuckled.

After breakfast I dried the dishes while she washed. As she scrubbed out the cast iron frying pan, I stood behind her and slid my hands beneath her jersey stroking the silky skin of her hips and bottom. I loved the way her narrow waist flared into full rounded hips. I like a woman shaped like a woman.

"Hey, what you're doing is sexual harassment in all fifty states now," she said pressing her butt back into my groin.

"It is if you ask me to stop and I don't," I gave her hips a squeeze, "are you going to ask me to stop?"

"Not for the foreseeable future."

I slid my hands further up her jersey and cupped her breasts while rolling her nipples between thumb and fore finger. Her breasts were an intoxicating combination of full, soft, warm, firm, smooth and crinkled. She scrunched up her face and wiggled her hips.

"M-m-m-m, that feels nice, but we're never going to get to the fun stuff if you keep distracting me," she whispered as I nibbled on her ear, "but hold that thought. I love you stroking my breasts."

"Sorry, I was overcome with your beauty," I whispered back stepping away.

"You shor' know how to talk purdy, mister," she drawled as she handed me a wet cast iron skillet and then pretended to wipe her nose on her pretend sleeve.

As I dried the skillet, Flor stepped back, pulled her jersey over her head and dropped it to the floor. I stood slack jawed and mesmerized. Her voluptuous beauty stood out in a world of stick figure models. There would be no mistaking her for a boy. Despite their size she carried her breasts high over a lean flat tummy. Her narrow waist flared out into full rounded hips above slightly muscular legs from all the jogging she did.

"What do you think?" She pirouetted on tip toes for me.

"I wish I had my camera," I replied when I could speak.

She had that perfect dimpled, inverted heart shaped ass and narrow waist that made me want to spend the day covering her unblemished bottom with little kisses and tiny nips to make her jump and giggle, but she had strict rules about what was permissible as foreplay.

"Why do you want a picture when you have the real person in your arms?" she purred while unbuttoning my shirt.

"Can I have both? When I'm old and gray, I'd be able to look upon your breathtaking beauty and smile as I remember."

"I'm not averse to pictures later, but right now I want you primed and ready."

"For what?" I asked playing a simpleton as she tugged off my undershirt.

"Your task this morning is to satisfy my every sexual whim."

She slid my briefs and sweat pants down in one smooth motion. When my erection popped into view, she smiled up at me.

"Your equipment is ready."

With my cock in her hand, she led me off to her bedroom.

We made the slow, gentle love of lingering kisses and soft caresses until she didn't want it lingering or gentle. Neither of us were new to lovemaking so we enjoyed the journey rather than rush to the conclusion. She nearly asphyxiated me in the throes of her first orgasm when she locked my face against her pussy with her thighs clamped around my head, but I forgave her enthusiasm.

After that she rode me cowgirl style until she orgasmed in my arms with her lovely breasts crushed against my chest. It was a good orgasm; her bite marks on my shoulder proved it.

'I want you in me and around me," she sighed into my ear.

I lowered her onto her back and continued thrusting into her letting her orgasm again and again until that exquisite tickle deep in my groin grew into a mind melting orgasm and I pumped and pumped deep into her wishing that I could fit more of me into her. After that I collapsed beside her on the bed gasping for breath.

"That was amazing," she said between gasps as she stroked my hip, "I should keep you around."

"No way. This was way too much work," I replied panting, "I'm going to look for a less demanding woman, maybe one who's already pregnant,"

She grabbed my softening cock.

"You can leave if you want, but this stays with me."

After our third time, she lay gasping with her head on my shoulder and her leg thrown over my thigh. I do like the caresses and the pillow talk after sex, but this time vague dissatisfaction filled my mind. I couldn't shake the notion that I had been used as horniness relief rather than loved.

I tried to bury a disquieting thought that I wanted more out of a relationship than Flor could give me, but like an old tire buried at a garbage dump it popped to the surface again and again. Was it possible that Flor would never be able to give me the commitment and the love that I needed from her?

"Where did you learn to do stuff like that to a woman?" Flor asked as she nibbled my earlobe.