Raleigh Ch. 02

"No, I know what you said, I'm just not sure what you meant. I don't think we've gotten boring, things just have gotten busy, that's all." James started to reply, and then cut himself off. He sighed and started again.

"Boring wasn't the right word for it. I'm sorry. There's just only so many times I can watch "The Office" without getting a little bit numb to everything."

I stood just outside the tiny kitchen, forearms pressed against the cheap linoleum of the countertop, watching James as he washed my dishes. It was one of those habits that you don't notice about a person until the roaring fire of passion has burned through into glowing coals of stability. He hated to leave dishes in the sink, and would wash them unprompted. A small part of me wondered if he resented the fact that my ADD meant the sink--and surrounding countertops--often held a bevy of half-empty glasses, salad bowls, and the occasional paper napkin. But if it bothered him, he never complained.

Instead, James stood in my kitchen in just joggers, a hand towel thrown over his bare shoulder. He placed the last glass in the drying rack and turned to face me. I connected with his eyes, and he interlaced his fingers with mine. I looked down and inhaled deeply.

"I know, babe. And now that I'm getting my feet fully underneath me in the new job, I can start to cut loose a little more."

In the past year since James and I had attended the conference in Raleigh, we had both made slight career changes. James had moved outside the classroom, taking a job as an administrator in a newly opened elementary school at the request of his former principal. At the same time, I accepted a position as a training and development coordinator at a software company. While the clientele was certainly different than my days as a high school math teacher, functionally I was doing the same thing--attempting to convince a captive audience to complete tasks they ultimately knew they'd get credit for regardless. At least this way, I got better health insurance and 401K contributions.

James moved around the counter, stood behind me and placed his hands on my waist. His fingers toyed with the waistband of my underwear, drifting underneath. I placed my palms on the top of his hands, preventing him from teasing me any further. I felt his breath on my neck as he whispered in my ear. "Besides, I need to meet these new work friends of yours. I'm sure you've told them all about your hot little trophy boyfriend, and they're dying to meet me, right?" I pressed back into him, and turned to whisper back.

"Not really. Besides, how am I going to sleep my way to the top if they know I'm bedding an elementary school assistant principal every night?"

His hand plunged into my underwear. "You know, they're looking at bringing back corporal punishment. I might need to practice my spanking skills."

We both cracked, our laughter shattering the sexual tension we had been building. I spun around to face him. "You know you're a fucking weirdo, right?"

"So what does that say about you?"

I responded by handing him the glass I had been drinking from. "One more to wash, then maybe we can practice."

James set the glass behind me on the counter, then picked me up and set me on the counter as well.

"Dishes can wait. What time does your roommate get back again?"

"I've told you, it's not going to play out like that if she walks in on us. You're not that good looking. I mean, maybe if she caught me solo, but you'd ruin the vibe."

"I'm down to try and find out." He pulled the oversize T-shirt up over my head, and traced his way with kisses down from my collar to my breasts. His tongue flicked lightly across my nipple as his thumb worked small circles over the thin fabric of my underwear. I felt myself starting to melt as my nipples hardened and I squirmed in anticipation. He hooked his index fingers back under the waistband of my underwear, and I instinctively lifted my hips to help slide them off. He shot them like a rubber band across the apartment's living room. His hand now returned between my legs, this time with the electrifying feeling of skin on skin, as his fingers toyed with my lips in a delicate figure-eight.

"I mean, I guess there's only one way to learn." I wanted the words to come out confident and in charge, but instead they came out breathy and desperate. I leaned into the feeling and ran my fingers through the hair on the back of his head. I rolled my hips against his hand, as he began to work his way back from kissing my chest to kissing me behind the ears. He tugged lightly at my earlobe with his teeth and involuntarily I moaned and pushed hard against his palm. I could feel the heat radiating from me, a desperate yearning for relief. I gripped the back of his head hard and pressed my mouth down onto his shoulder, finding purchase on the skin and muscle. I tried to keep from biting down too hard, but found the taste of iron in my mouth soon after.

"Fuck, Yvette."

"Sorry, sorry, just--oh fuck."

My apology was cut short by his middle finger sliding into me, curling up against the soft tissue of my pubic bone. As his finger curled, his palm pressed hard against my clit, pulsing and rubbing in a passionate duet.

"Is this how you want her to find you? Naked on the countertop, begging for me?"

I tried to protest, but the words wouldn't rise. Instead, I bit down on my lip hard and stared at him with soft eyes. "Mmhm." The words were a quiet assent to our shared fantasy.

He wasn't wrong, either. Vanessa and I had met shortly before I left education, and the slow sprout of what I thought was just female friendship had grown into a blossoming girl crush before setting in as a full-fledged realization that maybe I wasn't as far to one side of the Kinsey scale as I had once believed. She was taller than me, with long dark hair and a Japanese cherry blossom tattoo that curled from her hip up her rib cage. If I was the human embodiment of a Pumpkin Spice iced coffee, she was an espresso from a place where the barista wore suspenders and waxed his mustache. She worked as a trauma nurse for the local hospital, and thrived on the adrenaline and excitement.

"I can't help it, I've alway been risky," she once confided in me while we nursed beers on our living room couch. "It's a blessing and a curse."

I wanted so badly for her to catch us, to find me a sopping wet mess on our countertop. I wanted her to push James to the side, to show him how it should really be done as she sent me tumbling over the edge, like a loose rock on a hiking path crashing into the water below.

I also didn't want to shoulder all the rent on my own if it went sideways, and those two urges kept me in constant tension. Meanwhile, James derived a sense of pleasure at winding the string of desire around those two posts and seeing how much tension I could handle before I snapped.

I gripped tighter now on the back of James' head and pushed it downward. I wanted him to taste me, but more I wanted the warmth of his mouth, the fire of his tongue, the roughness of his beard against my thighs. I bucked harder against his face, feeling the stiff hairs of his mustache scraping against my skin as his tongue lapped hungrily between my legs. The occasional squirm now locked into a steady rhythm, writhing against his mouth and hands. I felt the muscles in my calves begin to tighten, and the tension climbed. I crossed my ankles behind him, and clenched down with my thighs around his ears. I moved my hips faster and faster as my mind wandered into fantasy. I imagined Vanessa standing behind him, her hands on my legs as she played director to the performance in front of her.

I pictured her walking in the front door, a smirk on her face, her nipples perky through her crop top, as if she knew this is what she would find happening in her living room on a Sunday afternoon. The tension climbed into my back, and I released the grip on the back of his head, posting my palms against the cold of the counter. I arched my back, pressing further into his face as I neared the precipice of my desire.

I heard the click of the latch to the front door and saw the handle of the deadbolt turning.

I heard the actual click of the actual latch, and saw the actual handle of the deadbolt turning.

"Oh fuck."

The brief flash of "Do it! Make it come true!" immediately gave way to the red alert of better judgment. I pushed James face away, and hopped off the counter. "She's here for real! Grab my panties!"

James wiped his mouth and laughed. "We're going to finish this in bed though, right?"

"You're seriously a fucking idiot and I love you. Just go!"

We were safely stowed under the covers, James' mouth back on my clit, when I heard Vanessa yell.

"You left your panties on the TV, you animals!"

---

"So listen, Britt and I are going to go see a band play Saturday at the Tin Shack. You and James should come out with us! I want to meet him, and Britt needs more real-life male friends. If I spend another Saturday night watching him play Xbox while telling children how he's going to bang their moms, I'm going to bang his mom to teach him a lesson."

I nearly spit out my coffee and Kiara laughed.

"I'm only like halfway kidding. Britt's mom looks good, she can get it. She's got that former teen mom vibe going for her."

Kiara had been one of the first friends I'd made when I started at WorkTek. She radiated the confidence I always tried to emulate, and her sense of humor was equally as twisted as mine. By the end of my first week, she was calling me her work-wife to the other program coordinators and sending me reaction gifs through Slack during the weekly "status check meetings".

"Ugh, we should, shouldn't we? He called me boring the other day, but he was kind of right. I'll never let him know that though. He's insufferable when he knows he's right."

Kiara stood up from the small table in the break room. Her red braids were pulled into a tight ponytail which flowed from the top of her head down to her waist. She pulled down her dress from where it had bunched at her hips, the dark red fabric stiff and poised as she grabbed her coffee cup.

"I'll text you the details, and we can figure out where to eat. And I swear to God, if you suggest Indian one more time, I'll bang your mom too."

--

I wasn't sure what exactly I expected, but it certainly wasn't the band we actually saw. Deep Coal was a sort of edgy bluegrass band, with two different musicians each playing a separate drum and a fiddle player who managed to stomp louder than either one of them.

Kiara and her husband met us at a small pho place just around the corner from the venue. Her sharp, professional attire had been replaced by shredded jeans and a cut off tank top. The rips in her jeans showed the hints of a tattoo against the dark skin of her thigh and the torn sleeves of her shirt revealed the yellow lace of the bra she wore underneath. In place of her usual contacts, she now sported thin gold-rimmed glasses that matched the half-dollar sized hoops she wore in her ears.

Her husband Britt was equally as unexpected as the band. Tall and muscular, Britt was less the stereotype of a park ranger and looked more like an athlete who had moved from linebacker to lumberjack. The hem of his shorts choked across his muscular thighs, and the button down he wore seemed to be missing a few key pieces at the top, revealing a thick forest of graying chest hair. They were the same pineapple pattern, giving the illusion he was wearing a men's romper--a look I was surprised to admit I didn't hate.

In his gray henley, jeans, and faded baseball cap, James and I looked less like the winning couple from Love Island. Maybe we had gotten a little predictable in our routine. I became acutely aware of the fact that we were both wearing the exact same outfits as our first tryst, and I was pretty sure this wasn't the first time it had happened either. It wasn't that I looked bad in my pink flannel shirt and jeans, but I certainly wasn't breaking new ground in it either.

I fought the urge to shrink into my insecurities and we greeted them warmly. Kiara hugged me, spun me around and loudly smacked my ass. An older couple, already seated, turned to look and then confused, turned back. Britt's voice bellowed at James, "I'd do the same to you bro, but I don't feel like we're on that level yet," and they greeted each other with weird handshake hug combination of two men confident in the fact that they had absolutely no idea what level of affection to show another man.

Over pho, we made casual conversation--told stories of previous employment, of crappy college apartments and of road-trips gone awry--and washed them down with overpriced craft beers. We learned that Kiara had moved to North Carolina from Maryland after college, and that Britt had been married once already, to a woman he referred to only as "the one who came before". James and Britt bonded over an equal hatred of foul-mouthed fifth-graders. Kiara and I joked about women in the office we couldn't stand and she filled me in on the gossip that was apparently common knowledge already before I joined the staff. On a few occasions, I caught myself peeking at Britt while she talked, and watched the sleeves of his shirt strain against his bicep.

After the waitress, a slight older woman named Cai, picked up our check, we made our way out into the street and down towards the venue. Kiara slipped her arm in the crook of mine as the boys continued their conversation--something about washed out NFL players starting a new league.

"You guys are cute, you know? I mean, I don't see any evidence of boring, yet."

Kiara's skin felt electric on mine, and for a moment, I imagined we were the only ones on the street. Her perfume was something familiar, but I couldn't place.

"I guess. I'm thinking he's right though. We needed tonight. He needed tonight. Look at the two of them." I gestured back towards Britt and James, as they laughed and bantered like two old friends, rather than near strangers. I heard James start in on a familiar story.

"So, there we are in the lobby, there's one reservation. I'm not going to leave her stranded, you know?" I cut in before the story can hit the showers.

"You're really just putting all my shit out there, huh?"

"I just had to explain how I managed to punch so far out of my weight class. I was going to skip the really spicy parts."

Suddenly, Kiara turned to face our conversation, a glint in her eyes.

"Oh hell no you're not! We're getting a round of beers when we get there, and you two are spilling all the heavy details."

A round of beers later, and Kiara and Britt had learned all about how two horny people, sharing a hotel room, ended up sharing a bed as well.

--

As the night forged on, I found myself glancing at Kiara and Britt more and more. The way they danced, pressed up against each other like there was no one else on the floor. The way he kissed her forehead everytime he got up to get another drink from the bar. The way she always turned to wrap her legs around his ankle and idly played with his chest hair while they sat. I was woozy from the heat and the alcohol but found my mind wandering to what their bedroom looked like.

I imagined Kiara's hair, whipping back and forth as she looked back at him from all fours. I imagined the beads of sweat forming on his hairy chest as his large hands gripped her shoulders and slammed into her. I imagined the way she would look between my legs while it all happened, and felt that familiar warmth and numbness spread across my face. As the band wrapped up its final encore, I felt a hunger and desperation for the night to continue. As if reading my mind, Kiara placed her hand on my leg.

"You guys should come back to our place. It's the perfect weather for a night swim."

I looked at James to gauge his reaction. He shrugged, passing the decision-making ball to me as he always did.

"What, are we just going to skinny dip?"

"What's the point of having your own pool if you can't?"

If I had been sober, there might have been a chance that insecurity would have taken over and I would have declined for us. Instead, the boldness provided by Ashy Mountain Brewing's latest offering kicked in.

"Fuck yeah, let's do it."

After a short wait, we piled into a cramped Uber. Britt sat up front, while James and Kiara wedged me into the middle seat of Rosemarie's Camry. A few minutes after taking the on-ramp to the highway, I left James' hand on the clasp of my jeans. I went to swat it away and Kiara grabbed my hand out of the way.

Kiara picked up her phone, and quickly typed away two messages. A moment later, my phone buzzed.

"Don't be boring."

Kiara placed my hand on her thigh, as James began to toy with me. I gripped Kiara's thigh and leaned my head on her shoulder as his finger moved in long slow strokes under the thin mesh of my underwear, grazing my clit with each pass. I squirmed against his hand and against the back of the seat, praying I didn't do something to ruin poor Rosemarie's upholstery. Thankfully the ride back to Kiara and Britt's house was short and James seemed to relish the opportunity to take things deliberately, painfully slow.

Kiara and Britt's house was cute, in the classical Sears-catalog, Craftsman way, but I wasn't in the mood to take stock of the siding colors, or the placement of an upstairs portico. I was hungry to get inside and see where the mantra of "Don't be boring" would take me. As we pulled into the driveway of the house, James took back his hand--simultaneously a relief and further torture--and I buttoned my pants back up. James and I hung back as Kiara and Britt walked up the wooden porch steps to the faded green front door.

James turned to face me, smirking at the flush across my face.

"Yvette, I'm good with wherever this goes, as long as we leave together."

"Just..." I hesitated. "Don't leave me out, okay?"

"That's literally the least likely outcome at this point, I think."

As we stepped across the threshold of the house, and the door shut behind us, I expected to feel the tension heighten. Instead, it felt like the thrill of free fall. I watched, enthralled, as Kiara slipped out of her jeans and pulled her shirt up over her head. I had caught glimpses of the yellow lace bra underneath her tank top, but with her jeans in a crumpled heap on the floor, I now saw that it wasn't just a lace bra, but the matching yellow lace thong as well. The tiger tattoo I spied through the rips in her jeans was now on full display, and I found myself starving to see the rest of her

I gave her the same twirl she had given me at the restaurant, complete with the same loud smack against her ass. James and Britt disrobed at the same time, both seeming unable to take their eyes off us as they did so. Kiara ran her hand behind my hair and cupped the back of my neck, drawing me into a kiss. Her lips were soft, and that same familiar scent of juniper filled my nostrils. As she kissed me, James unbuttoned and pulled down my jeans, followed shortly after by my pink flannel. Now clad only in the thin black mesh of my underwear, I felt a brief chill, followed by the deep warmth of yearning.

Kiara led her husband over to the couch, pushing him onto his back and kneeling down in front of him. James stood behind me and slipped his hand back where it had just left and resumed teasing me as we watched Kiara's head bob and sway, in circular waves around her husband's lap. His deep voice now let loose in primal grunts and moans, sighs of relief and the occasional "take that cock". I could now hear the wetness in me, as James worked his fingers in and out with more purpose.

Wordlessly, James led me over to the couch next to Britt and I sat down, unsure of what he was planning but deeply willing to find out. His fingertips slide underneath the elastic of my waistband, and pulled my underwear down to my ankles. His hands were warm as they slid back up my calves, before spreading open my knees. As Kiara bobbed next to us, James traced his way up my legs with kisses, before sliding his tongue--warm and wet--into me. The gentle, willing to please attitude of my boyfriend had instead been replaced with an aggression, out to prove that he knew me and my body best.