Erin's Remembrance of Things Past

Erin's entire world ended at ten-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday in early July. Later on, she realized she must have blacked out for awhile, because two days later, a package arrived for her—at her office.

Not at her home, where all her usual Amazon impulse-buys arrived.

But at her prim-and-proper office on the campus of her Traditional Southern State University. At her dignified and spacious, sun-drenched attorney's office that never, ever received personal deliveries. Oh no. Not Erin. Dignified, businesslike and professional, daily and occasional Saturdays as work-flow demanded over the years.

But there it was, two days later, that recognizable Amazon box.

But before the box arrived, there was the shock. The real and palpable shock she felt at ten-thirty on Tuesday morning in early July. Heightened by, of course, by how unprepared Erin was for it.

That morning was a typical Tuesday morning for Erin. Daughter dressed and into the bus to Church Camp. Breakfast of cinnamon toast and coffee perfectly creamed-and-sugared by her early-rising husband. Husband kissed and out-the-door. And then, Erin had time to go from robe to luxurious morning shower to luxurious morning lotioning routine.

Time for getting dressed in her conservative but expensive Talbot's suit pants with Tory Burch flats, a Macy's store-brand white blouse and a long-loved green J.Crew cardigan, listening to the drone of Housewives Gossip from her favorite Housewives Gossip podcast.

A slow, leisurely morning before work was one of Erin's pleasures and privileges for being the Queen of Firing People at the Traditional Southern State University. They had fired all of the staff and faculty whom the administration wished to fire at the end of the academic year the prior week, and so Erin, as Chief Legal Counsel In-Charge of Ending People's Jobs, could take her time readying herself to return to the work arena.

Even though there was coffee left in the pot that her husband has made that morning, she dumped the rest and treated herself to a Venti Superlatte at her favorite drive-thru coffee chain between her new-construction suburban mid-level starter home and her corner office in the square, modernist office building just off center-campus that contained all the bureaucrats and professionals and bean-counters that truly made the Traditional Southern State University run.

At ten in the morning, the privilege of her rank, Erin was climbing the wide concrete stairway from the parking area to her Office Building's front portico, enjoying the blue sky and the temperate Southern morning, miraculously cool and, for a change, only slightly humid.

Erin noticed there was no line of sweat forming under the band of her bra as there was most mornings in the summer, even from the mere walk from her car to her office.

She smiled and said hello to the other women in the elevator, even though she did not know them by name, only by face, and they doubtlessly knew what a reputation she had throughout the Campus Office Building.

How a summons to her office on the fourth floor was the final journey of most employees of the University.

But she even greeted the receptionist with a smile when the elevator let Erin off on four, and she sat down in her office chair that morning, looking forward to some Erin Time. Browsing the Housewives Gossip blogs, sipping her Superlatte, maybe doing some shopping for new Mom Jeans, but definitely focusing on her.

Her work computer was on, her lip gloss was sipping-off brighter and brighter on her Superlatte's rim, her inbox was all routine and non-urgent, and then she saw the email:

Don't Forget! Choose Your Choice for this month's selection.

Sincerely, A Book of the Month Club.

Erin reached for her phone immediately.

She opened her Book Club App.

Living in an unsophisticated and often illiterate southern college town was made a little easier for the life-long book nerd that Erin was by the Monthly Book Club's operation—a new book in the mail, any one she chose, by a fresh and often female author, already pre-selected—and selecting the book each month was one of Erin's little pleasures that made her suburban splendor so soothingly electric.

Erin loved the new and Erin loved the choice and the choosing and as she swiped her manicured finger down the choices she saw the name and the picture and the title and it swiped past but then she swiped back up to it and oh my god oh my god oh my god.

Heart palpitations.

That band of her bra, keeping up her already-large-but-now-mom-sized breasts? No doubt a line of sweat forming underneath it now.

Oh my god it was—HIS!—name.

Oh my god it was—HIS!—book.

On the book of the frickin' month club.

Her book of the month club.

Oh no. Oh so very no, Erin thought.

Two days later, the Receptionist who brought the package back to her office was surprised.

Other than flowers from her husband on her birthday and on their anniversary, Erin never received deliveries at the office.

But she thanked the receptionist and put the box down on her desk and closed and locked the door behind the receptionist after she left.

And Erin opened the box.

When she saw what was inside, she covered her eyes with her hand and mumbled something out loud.

But she did not return the package, she did not box it back up and drop it off in one of the Amazon lockers on campus, just steps away from her office, simply another return of an impulse buy. She did not take it back, and she did not mention it to her husband.

But as soon as she saw it, she knew she must have blacked out from shock and purchased it, like her drunk mommy-friends would do shopping on wine on late evenings. When she saw what she had bought for herself, she had no doubt that her subconscious was the culprit.

The matching underwear set, wrapped in discreet and sterile plastic, as well as the pair of maryjane heels in their shoebox, were not reminiscent of any of the outfits she had ever worn for her husband, he who was the dutiful and dull father of their little girl. Oh no. Not for Husband.

II.

Erin knew she could not handle hearing him read. Or speak. Or be spoken about, there, smiling, receding all the accolades. Erin knew that would be too much for her.

So she arrived as late as she thought she could get away with.

It was no surprise that he was going to be at the campus book store, mainstream fiction writers regularly trekked through this Southern Belt of university towns packed with the main demographic for contemporary fiction: women over forty with some or all of college completed.

It was no surprise that as she squeezed into the capacity crowd at the back of the store, she first heard the sound of the crowd's laughter, heavily female by its sound, but then when she heard his voice, the warmth in it, the rhythm, that old rhythm she knew so well, as he accepted how the crowd laughed at his joke and liked it, as Erin found it hard to stand upright for a split second, as he on the small stage set-up for authors doing readings at the bookstore went from his joke to explaining the backstory of something else obviously from earlier in the reading.

It was a surprise how long the line of book-signers took to get to Erin, so inconspicuously at the very end of that line, thanks in part to her position at the way-back of the store due to her strategically late entrance.

She played fifty rounds of Candy Crush before the long snake of mostly women over forty made its full journey, and there she was, at his table, surrounded by Official Book Store People and stacks and stacks of His Book tastefully, triumphantly, commercially displayed.

When he caught Erin's eye, he was taken aback.

Good, she thought. He looks better now than he ever looked when we were together, but I shocked him by being here. Good, she thought to herself, and smiled at him.

III.

He was staying at the chain hotel on campus. That meant Erin only had to worry about being seen walking to the hotel with him, which she would never do. Erin could leave her car parked in her official parking space, and walk over to the hotel alone, right across from the Basketball Stadium, as if she were going on some work errand, perhaps going to fire the manager of the Campus Chain Hotel, perhaps demand some official inspection of The Books and Records.

Erin explained to him how to come to the back door of the hotel and to open it for her at just the right time. How she would text him when to come down the back stairs. He was obedient and dutiful. His reading and signing at the Book Store had ended at two, and from two-fifteen to four p.m., they each had three drinks discreetly in her office, which she eagerly invited him to, so she could show off her professional success to him with pride.

Showing him the bottle of scotch she kept in her desk drawer.

She chastely behind her desk, he the author sitting in one of her

client chairs. Erin sipped the scotch and looked at him over her desk.

By their second round, they were reminiscing about the Saturday in his office years ago when he bent her over his desk and fucked her there, the papers on his desk sticking to the flesh of her tits, which had been pulled out of her top.

But thought they reminisced in low voices, from two-fifteen until four, all they did was sip and reminisce. The scotch was only half as intoxicating as the words.

At four-oh-four pm, Erin was publicly shaking hands with him like the old friends from Back East they were and publicly being seen to be staying in her office while he left to go back to his hotel.

Fifteen minutes later, she was leaving the office for a meeting with the I.D. Card Vendor over at campus services. But actually, Erin went the two blocks in the other direction, to the small alleyway shortcut that also led to the back of the Campus Chain Hotel.

Where he was. Smiling. Aroused.

It took them five minutes to walk up the back-stairs because they were kissing and groping and squeezing so. His mouth felt fresh but instantly familiar, fitting hers in distinct ways that returned a flood of memories, most of them obscene.

From stairs to hallway to room, and no one saw them.

"As soon as I saw your book," Erin told him amidst kisses in his room, "I bought these to wear for you. I knew this was going to happen," she said, as he stripped her Talbots clothes off her and she opened the buttons on her blouse as fast as she could to help him. Flinging her expensive dress clothes everywhere and anywhere, no concern for wrinkles or dry cleaning.

Under Erin's dowdy outerwear, was the matching red bra and panty set she had bought three months prior in a fugue state.

He hungered for her instantly, and Erin saw it in his eyes and face. That same fierce hunger for her that had scared her so much an ocean of time and country ago. The look that said first I want to fuck you but second I might eat you after I'm done fucking you.

"Wait wait wait," Erin said. "Don't miss the best part." She took the black maryjanes from her oversized tote. She slipped them on, instantly becoming three inches taller.

Her legs instantly becoming lean and long and intoxicating. Her very stance a come-hither look.

"Just like the ones you bought for me those years ago. Were they Carlos Santanas?" Erin asked, rhetorically, turning the shoes so he could admire her in them, admire how they made the rest of her mom body as alluring as when he had fucked her last; long before husband and daughter.

"And of course," Erin said, turning around. "See-thru sheer back. Like those panties I used to wear when I drank your cum out of a shot-glass. Y'know," she said, stepping over to him and leaning down, to whisper into his ear:

"I've never done that for my husband."

He chuckled. "Done what?"

"Drink cum from a shot glass," Erin said. "Anytime you wanted." She moved her face from one ear to the other, letting him smell her and feel her up close.

He chuckled again. "Yeah," he said. "You did do that for me, didn't you?"

"Yup," she said, long and slow, moving her face and head around his body, like she was an animal sniffing him, breathing in his scent from all different parts of him. She said it slow, "Yuuuuuuuuuuuup," With a sharp, clasping final P.

He chuckled a third time. "You were never this confident the last time you did that."

"Awwww," Erin said. "Lemme make it up to you?"

Before he could respond, she told him, "You smell so familiar," and kissed him on his lips.

He could taste the scotch on her lips, on her tongue, flavoring her mouth and her kiss.

His kiss was Proustian to Erin, except, she thought, biting a Madeleine never made anyone's clit get hard.

Kneeling in front of him felt familiar, too, to Erin, as did undoing his zipper and taking out his cock. Erin was surprised by how instantly recognizable his dick was to her, as if her subconscious had never really forgotten.

But before she could marvel any further at the power of erotic memory, his dick was back in her mouth and his hands were sweetly in her hair and she was sucking his cock and having to stretch again and re-adjust to his wideness and girth, and, Proustian, she had the memory of having to do this once before, the first time she sucked his cock decades ago, on her knees on his carpet in his living room in the Eastern Metropolis, feeling the extra pressure his cock put on her jaw for the first time, comparing him to Mark her ex and realizing that Mark never needed her to open this wide, and wondering how long she could keep this up before she needed a break.

The first time, it was long enough for him to cum into her mouth and for Erin to swallow his cum down, proud of herself and sure that he would want to keep dating her now that he knew how well she could love with her mouth.

But this time, it was mere prelude.

She got him naked and then she leaned back on his hotel bed and she directed him to eat her out the way he did when they were twenty-somethings. And so he ate her and teased her and savored her. He made the slow loops around her clit and the long strokes of her lips and the fingers at just the right size and angle to reach that inside spot while he looped her clit.

Erin did not say to him that it was the best orgasm she had had maybe since she was married.

But she did get him on top of her without delay, even though she was sensitive from coming, but he was soft from focusing on her pleasure, so she let his bare cock tease her tingling cunt and open her wet lips with his steadily stiffening erection.

Let his arms hold her and his kiss take her doubts away.

And by five in the afternoon, no longer tipsy but now dick-drunk, Erin was barebacking with her former lover who now had a hit book going up the charts.

He held her as he fucked her and kissed her as he fucked her and stretched her and made her hurt just a little bit as he fucked her and she remembered, oh she remembered, she remembered all of it, exactly why she let him hurt her and dump her and break her heart and trample on it and humiliate her like she did.

She remembered and she knew exactly why she put up with all of it, and Erin let his cock own her again and let his thrusts take her doubts away.

He fucked her with intensity and need and that pounding insistence to be no place but inside her place right this very moment and this moment is everything, and he did not care that her former body was gone and mom-ified, he did not care that he was fitter and slimmer and stronger than he had ever been when they were together but instead of fucking some sophomore seminar seduction he was back in the saddle riding Erin again, and it felt so right and so familiar, it was as if twenty minutes had passed and not twenty years since his dick had gotten her drunk enough to ruin her life.

He held her as he came and his depth and his thrusts and his pelvis against her clit shook her body with a second orgasm of her own, her body spasming to suck up all of his illicit semen, to take all of this familiar stranger, stronger and greater than he had ever been before, and to keep that souvenir of him as deep and as hidden as Erin could find a place for, placing him inside of her to that most deep and most hidden of places, not her heart but someplace just as important.

By six thirty, she was sitting in the leather driver's seat of her Lexus Crossover, as she usually was at six thirty p.m. on a work day, pulling out of the parking lot, driving home, where her husband had dinner started and their daughter was already fed.

She kissed her husband warmly on the cheek when she got home.

"Oh my," Husband said. "You really smell like coffee."

"I know," Erin said, in the lilting way of an innocent girl. "I knnnnoooooooowwwwww. I spilled coffee on myself this morning and had to go all day with this gross strain on my shirt. Look," she said, showing him the faded and dabbed blouse, now partly ruined by the coffee Erin poured on herself before leaving the office that evening. "I think I got some on my pants that I didn't get off, hence the smell. Sorry, babe," Erin said, kissing her husband once more softly on the cheek, "I put on lots of extra perfume so I wouldn't smell gross for you."

"At least you tried," her husband teased her.

After dinner, she bathed their daughter and did their bedtime tooth-brushing and bedtime story ritual, then Erin showered and went to bed. Her husband was underway with one off his regular online gaming marathons.

Erin left him to it.

But, several weeks later, Erin interrupted his online gaming sessions for two nights in a row, two nights in a row of quick, straddling, cum-eliciting sex that she took from him, straddling his lap at the computer, pretending like she was ovulating and in need and not at all like she had missed her period—she thought.

Had she been wrong, she would have had nothing but joy to see a flood of dark red cascading of her and covering her husband's lap.

Joy tinged with un-admittable grief.

But two nights in a row she let him poke her and two nights in a row he wiggled and grunted and came in two fast minutes, but there was no Aunt Flo, there was not even spotting in her panties; her cotton, period panties that she was now wearing every day, sure it was just a matter of time and sure that if she was not ready she would ruin her clothes otherwise.

But day after day of cotton period panties and no period. No blood, no cramps, no sign at all.

No sign, but of course, Erin had all the signs she needed.

It took awhile for his second book to be released, but it ended up on a monthly book club and the tour again took him through the southern literary belt.

Again, she waiting in the back of the room, but this time she had an excuse.

Erin had a one-year old son in a stroller.