Back in the Saddle

Maggie was running late. It was so unlike her to be late, she was usually punctual to a fault, but not today. Today everything had gone wrong.

It had started the night before, really. When the discreet cardboard box had arrived on her porch, Maggie knew that her TV plans that evening were going to change. She had been long overdue for an upgrade, and the sleek teal silicone toy with its flared head and clitoral stimulation had been oh, so worth it. She had gone down a dark rabbit hole of porn, staying up late as she dove deep into the dominant/submissive fantasies she had been increasingly turning to. They reminded her of the kind of wild, wanton sex she used to have long ago, before even Derrick.

When she finally got up out of bed in the morning, groaning after the fifth or sixth snooze, it was a framed wedding picture of her and Derrick that greeted her from the bedside table, exuding happiness. She winced, wondering what her late husband would think of her crazed masturbatory marathon.

She knew what he'd say. He'd say, get out there Maggie girl. It's time already. Find a good man, not a good vibrator.

She'd been on a whopping two dates since Derrick died nearly three years ago. The first year had been a haze of grief, dating hadn't even been an option. His illness had come on so suddenly, and so soon after they were married that her whole life had been caring for him. After the second year her sister had urged her to date, setting her up with a couple friends of friends, but it had been excruciating. Sure, they were nice enough guys, but the sheer effort of prettying herself up, going out into the loud bar or dinner scene, and telling every mundane fact about herself all over as if she was in any way interesting or different had been too much. The mere idea of having to start all over with someone new was exhausting. But she was 27, not 87. She had all the time in the world.

But time was not on her side this morning, it seemed. After oversleeping, she had burned her eggs black enough to set off the smoke detector, forgot her lunch, and spent a good 15 minutes in unexpected traffic. Instead of a quiet cup of coffee in the break room as she looked over her daily roster of clients, she was changing frantically into her scrubs and shoving crackers into her mouth as she snuck into her room a few minutes after the hour.

"Hi, Mr. Harris. My name is Maggie, and I'll be your massage therapist today."

"Hi Maggie, you can just call me John. Nice to meet you."

She glanced briefly at the man lying face down on her table. Youngish, nice figure, tousled brown hair. Standard towel over his lower half. Her gaze was caught by his clenching toes, and she smiled. He's nervous.

"Alright, John it is. So, do you get a lot of massages? Any style you prefer?"

"Uh, no. This is actually my first massage. It was a gift certificate I won at work."

She moved about the room, setting the timer, turning the thermostat up a bit, the lights down a little more.

"That's nice of your work. What do you do?"

"I'm a banker. Thrilling stuff," he laughed, shifting on the table. Yeah, he was a newbie. He probably thought she was going to give him a happy ending.

"Hey, it's the best job in Monopoly," she joked. "Would some music or incense bother you?"

"Have at it."

She turned on some light piano music and lit a stick of jasmine incense, waiting a second for it to catch and get herself in the zone. She was supposed to radiate calm, not pent up energy.

Maggie approached the table, coating her hands in some unscented massage oil and rubbing them together. "I've got some oil on my hands, just to warn you. I'm going to take it easy here at first so you can get a sense of the pressure. We can always go up from there. If you work an office job you've likely got a lot of tension in your neck and shoulders. I'll focus there, if that sounds good to you."

She waited for his affirmative, her hands poised over his shoulders, but it took him a moment.

"Sure thing, Maggie," he said softly, and she felt a ripple of awareness in the familiar way he said her name.

She started in, feeling the little jolt of pleasure at touching a human body again after the long weekend alone. His skin was warm and slippery under her oiled hands. She was right about that tension, she could already feel the bundled muscles of his shoulders. She could spend the whole hour just working these out.

He let out an involuntary sound, like a little moan of pleasure as she deepened the massage, testing him for signs of discomfort as she went.

"Ok to go a bit harder?" she murmured, not wanting to startle him.

"Definitely," he groaned. "Man, this feels great."

"Glad to hear it," she replied in a low voice, rubbing her thumbs under the curve of his shoulder blade, feeling the knots bump underneath her touch like little dense balls. She set in on one in a gentle circling motion.

"So, how long have you been a masseuse?"

She bit back a small laugh. She could have bet he was a talker.

"Not too long actually," she replied. "I got my license a while back, at the same time I was in cosmetology school. But I only started working here last year. I used to do hair at a place downtown."

He was suddenly propping himself up on the table and Maggie stepped back, alarmed.

"Maggie?" his voice asked somewhat cautiously, and she saw his face for the first time.

She was suddenly transported six years back, to that face with its chiseled jaw, always with a bit of stubble, sharp aquiline nose, hooded eyes, dark, full brows. That face smiling at her. Lifting a frosted glass to his lips. Tracking her movements with his slow, burning gaze. That face looking up at her, mouth plucking gently at her nipple. That face triumphant between her trembling thighs. Wet, from her.

"JT?" she stammered, feeling her jaw slacken as she took another step back.

There it was, that steady gaze, drifting down her body appreciatively. He cleared his throat, forcing his eyes back up to hers, and ran a hand over his jaw. The awkwardness was palpable.

"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said finally, and she could hear the sincerity in his flustered voice. "I wasn't trying to spring up on you. I just... I remembered your voice."

When she said nothing, still staring openly at him in surprise, he went on. "I swear I didn't know it'd be you. I didn't even know you were a masseuse. The confirmation email just said M. Kilpatrick."

"That's my married name," she said faintly. She could see his chest, the sprinkling of hair she'd always loved. God, he was still so fit. Was he naked? Of course he was, she cursed inwardly. He was here for a fucking massage.

He said nothing now, looking at her a bit strangely. He cleared his throat again.

"Look, I can go. You definitely don't have to do this," he insisted, shifting his weight on the table and she rushed forward, her arms outstretched as if to prevent him from revealing more of his naked body to her.

"No!" she cried out and he froze, looking at her in alarm.

"I mean, I'm... I'm a professional. I see people I know all the time," she stammered, lying easily. "I'm fine to continue, but I can certainly step out and check the other schedules if you want to switch. It would just take a minute." She made the offer brightly, perhaps too brightly, but her feet stayed firmly planted.

He hesitated a moment. "If you're okay with it..."

"Definitely," she stated. "No problem. Just uh... just lie back down for me."

God, she could hear herself like a pathetic little schoolgirl.

He slowly lowered himself down, that beautiful face disappearing in the cushioned headrest. She could smell the tension in the room. Or, dear god, was she smelling herself? She felt a distinct slickness between her legs. What the fuck was JT Harris doing here?

As if he could read her mind, he popped his head up and turned to her.

"The last thing I want is to make you uncomfortable, Maggie," he persisted.

"It's fine," she insisted, walking over to him and placing her hand on his bare back, applying some pressure to get him to lay back down. He did, and she took a deep breath before touching him again and resuming the massage. What had been before just pleasant, warm flesh felt utterly different now. How on earth had she not recognized his body? This was a body she had known intimately. Every inch had been pressed against her. She had loved this body once.

For the longest time they were quiet, and Maggie sensed that he wouldn't speak now, not unless she did first. So she fell back into the familiarity of her work, feeling his tension all over now, reversing the benefits of her earlier efforts. Eventually though, her curiosity won.

"You're back in town, then?" Maggie said a silent prayer of thanks at the steady nonchalance of her voice.

"Yeah, I moved back a few months ago for a new job in the business district. But I used to live just over in Cresson."

Cresson, she thought. Not even an hour's drive from her these past six years?

"I, uh, I thought you were going to travel. Didn't you have a job lined up in France?"

They had talked about France in bed, she remembered suddenly. He had gone on a week's trip to Paris at the expense of the company scouting him. The night he had returned he had kissed her, murmuring in her ear in that seductive, scratchy voice of his of the smell of pastries wafting as far as the metro stations, the chic shopping districts, a boulevard he had strolled down lined with perfectly manicured trees. At the time she had wondered if he was priming her, if he might ask her to come along, and her heart had thrilled at the idea of such a reckless adventure with a new love. Later, she had cursed herself for such fanciful, stupid thinking.

Suddenly she realized her hands had stilled, and he hadn't said anything. Maggie felt a flush of crimson creep up through her neck onto her face, embarrassed that she had remembered such a detail, and concentrated again on her work.

"Yeah, I did," he said finally. "But I had to turn it down."

She wasn't going to speak any more, or else she'd humiliate herself.

"It's actually all related," he went on after a moment's pause. "You probably don't remember this, but when we started seeing each other I had just gotten out of a long thing with a girl named Courtney."

Oh, she remembered Courtney, all right.

"That night, when I took that phone call outside the pub, it was Courtney calling."

That inexplicable, painful, confusing night. There had been snow on the ground, glowing in the moonlight. She had sensed something was wrong by his body language as he paced outside on the sidewalk, his breath pluming in large bursts of fog as he shouted. Eventually his pacing had stopped, and he had stayed outside for a long time. When he came back in, he could barely look her in the eye. And it was over within minutes. The most intense five months of her life, gone in an instant. For him to tell her now that it was his ex who claimed him back, that was just cruel.

"She said she was seven months pregnant," he laughed, remembering the unbelievable story. "With my baby," he went on, as if that wasn't clear already. "I freaked the fuck out. I made her do a paternity test with our blood and I'll be damned. It was mine. I tried to do right by her, you know. I married her at the courthouse a couple weeks before Aspen was born."

Maggie processed this slowly, feeling the initial flare of her rancor fade rather quickly. She glanced at his left hand, outstretched flat on the table. There was a thin band of pale skin on his finger where a ring habitually lay. Had he taken it off for the massage?

Still her heart thundered. She didn't want these confessions. She had put him out of her mind, hadn't thought of him in years. Well, if she was honest with herself, that wasn't entirely true. Images of him had come to her over the years, of the sounds he made in bed, of the weight of his hand on her body, squeezing her. The delicious cracking sound as he slapped her ass. Those images had been more prevalent of late, really, as she searched back in her mind for material when she touched herself on the long, endless nights alone.

"I've never forgiven myself for how I left things with you, Maggie. It ate me up. I should have called you, I was such an ass. But Courtney was so jealous, so angry that I'd been seeing someone since we broke up. As if I'd cheated on her, which I hadn't."

"It's okay, JT," Maggie said, mildly surprised she'd been enough to make anyone jealous. As if she could've compared to tan, perky Courtney with her white chiclet teeth.

"No, it's really not," he rejoined, his voice sounding angry at her lack of bitterness. "I was a dick, and I probably made you feel like we had nothing. But we really did have something, Maggie."

She vaguely wished he'd stop saying her name, or stop talking altogether. It was getting harder and harder for her to get through massaging her ex-lover, whose sexy body now belonged to the woman he'd left her for. She tried focusing on the music, working down his back to massage his ribs and sides. She felt him loosen, seemingly satisfied with her tactile answer.

"I'm glad you found someone better than me," he murmured. "I bet your husband's the opposite of me, funny and carefree. I bet he makes you laugh, you always loved to laugh."

"Derrick was funny," she admitted with a smile.

"He's run out of jokes already?" JT teased, and her hands stilled momentarily. She hated this part.

"He, uh, he passed away a few years ago."

JT propped himself up again to crane back at her, the look of panicked guilt she had expected on his face.

"What? Jesus, Mags, I'm so sorry. I'm like rambling on and... God," he swore, his hand coming to his chin again. Her heart gave a painful squeeze at the nickname no one had ever used but him.

"It's okay," she waved his apology away, knowing it wouldn't work. It never did.

"Fuck, I'm genuinely ruining your whole day. I should go."

"Whatever. Do what you want." Maggie was surprised at the sudden vehemence of her tone. She had felt her frustration flaring, but she was downright icy. Could this day get any fucking worse? Get him off her table and give her half an hour's respite before the slew of clients she had today. How would she use the time, she wondered faintly. Would she cry out of loneliness? Or would she rub herself raw to the memory of JT's hard body under her hands? It was a coin toss. Perhaps a bit of both.

JT was staring at her dumbfounded, his expression concerned. The light music played on and Maggie turned away, going back to the side table and fiddling with her things. Just get dressed, she swore to him in her head. Just get out.

But a long moment passed and she heard nothing, not the squeaking of her massage table or the rustling of fabric. She felt her heart beat faster, shifting her weight restlessly. What was he waiting for?

"Come back, Mags," she heard his soft voice beckon to her, and she shivered.

Then she did hear shifting, and turned to look over his shoulder. He had laid back down.

Tentatively she returned to him, realizing she still held a bottle of self-warming oil in her hand. Absently she poured a little on his back and used her knuckles to work on his vertebrae.

"It feels nice," he crooned, and Maggie's heart gave another strange lurch.

She continued her work, venturing down the length of his spine, finding the tension she had expected in his lower, center back.

"I was surprised when you just vanished," she said, almost to herself, hearing the words and feeling surprised she had even spoken aloud. "Makes sense though, that you went off to do the right thing."

JT sighed heavily. "I tried to make it work with Courtney, I really did. Aspen was just so sweet and innocent, we both wanted her to have a real family, and we tried. But Courtney and I have always been like two pieces of a puzzle that just don't quite fit right. You can jam it and jam it all you want but it never really goes. We'd fight all the time at night when Aspen went down, and it eventually got to be too much. We tried living in separate parts of the house and co-parenting but I couldn't do it. So we got divorced, and we share custody. I moved back to town where at least I could work at a place bigger than the local bank, get back into investing."

As he spoke she increased the pressure on her closed fists as she rocked them into the tightness in his lower back. She leaned into it, feeling his stress, working it out. That job in France had been a big deal. He had given it up, his dream of working abroad, all for an angry ex and an unplanned child. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like, raising a baby unsure of the love of your partner.

JT groaned audibly, and she eased up.

"No, don't stop," he rushed. "Jesus, that feels so good."

Biting back a little smirk she resumed, opening her fists and working her thumbs into the little dimples above his butt. She had forgotten about those.

"Ok if I go a little lower?" She asked huskily, her thumbs already slipping beneath the hem of the towel.

"Uh huh," he groaned again, clearly enjoying her ministrations.

Wondering how bold she could be before he stopped her, Maggie let her thumbs glide into the muscle of his butt. So tight, even here. Trust a guy like JT to store tension in every possible place, even his ass. He was always wound so tight. He'd either be working out for hours or fucking her brains out to release it. She used to marvel at how her body could clear his mind, bring him sleep, coax his smile.

But that was six years ago, she reminded herself. Surely the span of years had made them both different people.

Maggie absently turned this idea over in her mind as she kneaded his ass, her fingers wrapping around to his hips. Was she different? In some ways, yes. She had felt true heartbreak after he left her, the kind that makes you doubt if love is even real. Then Derrick and the happiness with him, milder than JT but still so good. A wedding and then a diagnosis and then heartbreak of an altogether different kind. A widow at 27, not even financially stable or fulfilled in her work. The avalanche of medical and funeral expenses had nearly bankrupted her, and Derrick's assets were long gone. It was certainly not what she had thought her life would look like.

But if you stripped that down and got to the core, she was still the same. She still felt that same schoolgirl thrill when JT looked at her with his burning gaze. Her appetite was the same, maybe even greater now with its added starvation. She still wanted that crazy love, the kind that fast forwarded time and made all the troubles in your life seem paltry and ridiculous. Nothing mattered, really, when you had a connection like that. Maggie remembered it vividly.

A gentle chime sounded, waking Maggie from her daydreaming. She straightened, easing her hands off of his butt. Jesus, not how she'd imagined her morning going, she thought with a gentle laugh.

"Flip over for me," she said softly, going back to the side table for a little spearmint lotion. Something to wake him up a bit, keep him refreshed the rest of his day.

"On my back?" he clarified, his voice sounding a bit hoarse.

"Yeah. I can get your shoulders more that way in the time we've got left."

She turned back to him, expecting to see him shifting, but he had propped himself up on his elbows once more, looking at her. If she wasn't mistaken, he was blushing.

"It's just," he began awkwardly, looking down the length of his body. "The massage has felt really, really good."

She laughed aloud in surprise, and he grinned a little despite his pained expression.