Braining Ch. 05

Their neighbors had some familiar names: Terese and Glen lived on their street; Carina and Jon, Megann and her husband, and Dan (the band singer) and his wife lived one street over; and Alana and her husband lived two streets over. Bear was the only one of the original twelve that had disappeared -- no one had heard from him since their sophomore year of college.

Jenn and Phil, as predicted, hadn't lasted together. Jenn, after one misstep and a quick divorce, was happily married, she and her husband lived a few doors down from Carina. Phil lived down the street from Brian and Blair, a content, lifelong bachelor. The others were perpetually amazed at the endless stream of stunningly attractive, confident, interesting women he dated. He was monogamous in his dating, but the longest any lady had lasted with him was a year; usually he went through them at a rate of two or three per year.

The group remained as close as ever. They hung out and cooked out together on holidays, and non-holidays. They watched each other's houses when they went out of town. They frequently vacationed together in various combinations. They all, except Phil, had kids, and their kids had all grown up best friends as well.

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Saturday morning. Brian and Blair woke up, the house quiet in a way that only a home no longer inhabited by kids can be. They silently agreed that warm, gentle touching said more than any words could. Brian's 50th birthday was only a few weeks away, Blair's was in a couple of months. After half an hour, Brian broke the comfortable silence. "You know what I was just thinking?"

Blair suspected she had been remembering the same thing. She quoted from their distant past, "What I'm worried about is, ten, twenty, even thirty years from now. We'll be sitting there, about to turn fifty, and will you be going, damn, what if I had ended up with one of the others?"

He grinned. "Exactly. And now, here we are, about to turn fifty."

"So, do you ever wish you'd ended up with one of the others?"

"Not even once. How about you? Do you ever wish we hadn't done what we did?"

Blair considered her answer carefully. "Looking back on it, I wish I hadn't been so insecure, then maybe I wouldn't have felt so guilty. But, what we came up with was very effective in exorcising the guilt I felt. With your concern and foresight in arranging things so they wouldn't affect the group, everything has turned out wonderfully. We didn't lose any friends, and I learned so much about us, how well we complement each other; and about you, how solid your life values are, how your mind works. I wouldn't change a moment of it."

Brian recognized this as her moment, and waited for her to continue. "I learned a lot about how being impulsive can be dangerous, and how it's better just to relax and trust in the moment. It can take time for good things to develop, and it's usually best to resist the urge to take control and force things to happen. There really aren't any shortcuts in life, even when you have special abilities -- really good things can feel empty when you haven't earned them."

He nodded in agreement. They cuddled awhile longer, got out of bed, and padded to the kitchen, where they put together some breakfast. They sat at the counter, eating.

She said, "There's a lot I like about being empty-nest."

He raised his eyebrows. "Such as?"

Blair paraphrased from their first night together, modifying the quote to fit the present, "The pool is nice in the morning light."

Brian slipped into the moment, and +brained her nightie off as he felt his pajama bottoms sliding down. The elastic hung up briefly on his growing erection before they slid to the floor. He opened the French doors onto the pool deck, quoting back, "I didn't bring a suit."

"I was counting on that."

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