Retirement Living - Kendra

The following story is a work of pure fiction. Neither the location nor any of the characters in the story exist nor are they based on a person nor place that is real.

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Kendra Wu had just recently moved into an apartment at the Retirement Community. Kendra's husband had died six months earlier. Her children had looked at a number of Senior Living Communities and felt that she would be safer living at this one and that maybe she could even make a few friends.

Kendra was a second generation Chinese-American had been born Ng Choo. As soon as she had started elementary school, she had changed her first name to Kendra because none of the other children or even her teachers could pronounce her first name properly. Her teachers had a particularly hard time because even the ones who could pronounce Ng had a hard time saying it loudly enough to call roll.

Because Kendra had grown up with two parents who had emigrated from Taiwan, her parents made her she spend most of her time studying rather than making friends with the other girls in the neighborhood. As a result, Kendra only had a few friends and by the time that she was in high school, her social skills were limited, which left her very introverted, quiet and shy. Because of this, she never had any boyfriends.

This continued through her time in college at a local school. So, Kendra continued living with her parents. She spent most of her time with her studies and her outside activities didn't really provide her much contact with the boys in the school. This didn't bother her parents because they were working on an arranged marriage for Kendra.

During her senior year, her parents introduced her to Wei Choo, who was Kendra's age and was studying medicine. Her parents felt that Wei would be a good husband for Kendra. Kendra wasn't asked how she felt about Wei, she just did what any good daughter would do and accepted the fact that she would be marrying Wei soon after she graduated.

They were married one month after Kendra and Wei graduated. Wei had been accepted at a medical school in another city, so the two of them moved to that town. This was Kendra's first time away from her parents. While Wei was at school, Kendra was expected to be a good wife and homemaker. She would have dinner ready for Wei when he came home and would pack a lunch for him each day. Other than shopping for groceries, Kendra had little to do, so she played the part of a good daughter and would call her mother each day and spent the rest of her time reading romance novels and dreaming that she was the heroine in the novel. Very often, Kendra would break out in tears during the call with her mother and her mother would lecture her about accepting her fate and that she needed to be a good wife to Wei.

After dinner each night, Wei would study until 10P and then would expect Kendra to allow him to have sex with him. He wasn't interested in expressing love for Kendra, because he didn't love her. He just wanted to have sex with her to try to get her pregnant because he wanted a son.

About six months after the wedding, Kendra found out that she was pregnant. Her mother was thrilled at the news and even Wei was happy, but Kendra feared that this was just one more link in the chain around her neck.

For Kendra, the only good thing about being pregnant was the Wei stopped expecting her to have sex each night. In fact, he completely ignored her, especially when the pregnancy was causing Kendra problems.

Nine months later, Kendra gave birth to a son. Both Wei's and Kendra's parents were thrilled as was Wei. Kendra just accepted it and did what she could to adjust to caring for a newborn child.

Six months after the birth of her son, Wei resumed expecting Kendra to submit to sex each night unless she was having her period. About six months later, Kendra was pregnant again. Nine months later, she gave birth to a little girl.

As soon as Kendra had become pregnant with her daughter, Wei had not only stopped expecting sex from Kendra, he had actually become cold toward her. She was never sure, but she often suspected that many of Wei's late nights were spent sleeping with nurses or hookers.

For the next eighteen years, Kendra's life revolved around the children, who she had learned to love. After Wei had graduated from medical school and finished his internship, he got a job at the local hospital. Wei's job kept him away from home and the children most of the time, so Kendra was able to raise the children the way that she wanted without any interference from Wei. Even before she had married Wei, she had decided that her children would be raised in the American tradition and not the way that her parents had raised her. As a result, she was continually taking her children to participate in activities outside of school, such as soccer, baseball or Girl Scouts.

Both children did well in school and had many friends, which was the only joy in Kendra's life. She knew the mother's of some of her children's friends and so she had an idea of what their lives had been like.

Just as Wei and Kendra turned 60, Wei suffered from a massive heart attack and died. A life of stress and little exercise had finally caught up with him. Suddenly, Kendra was alone for the first time in her life.

That is why her son and daughter had selected the Retirement Community for their mother. They knew that their parent's marriage had been loveless and that Kendra had very few friends. So they hoped that Kendra would find some friends and finally experience joy in her life.

Once Kendra had moved in, her children made a point of coming by to visit her and to find out what activities were being offered that week. They convinced Kendra to select a few activities, such as painting, that she might be interested in. They almost demanded that Kendra go to the community dining room for each meal to meet others and to try to find new friends.

Kendra did as her children asked and soon found that she had a real talent for painting, especially water colors. The activity director for art saw Kendra's work and made a point of teaching her as much as she knew. Soon, Kendra's abilities had surpassed those of her "teacher" and so the activity director found a local artist who was willing to take Kendra on as a student.

Her new teacher was impressed with Kendra's ability to do fine, intricate artwork and because Kendra was of Chinese ancestry, he introduced her to the styles used in Chinese art. It didn't take long for Kendra to be able to copy many of the Chinese paintings that he had shown her and to begin adapting that style to the landscapes that she saw around her.

Every time that she would finish a painting, she would proudly bring it back to show the art teacher at the Retirement Community. Her "teacher" was so impressed that she not only showed Kendra's paintings to the others in the community art class, she even got permission to frame and hang two of Kendra's paintings within the facility.

Soon, everyone at the Retirement Community knew who Kendra was and a few of them would ask to eat dinner at Kendra's table each night. It didn't take long for the first part of Kendra's children's plans to become a success, namely finding friends for Kendra. But they still wanted her to be happy and suspected that this meant finding love for Kendra.

Mitch Williams

Mitch Williams was a retired architect who had lost his wife to cancer a few months earlier. Because his wife knew that she only had a limited time left on earth, she looked around to find someplace where she felt Mitch could be happy and well taken care of. As it turns out, the Retirement Community was exactly what she had been looking for. She took Mitch for a visit and told him that it was her wish that he would move there as soon as possible after her death.

It took Mitch about six months after his wife's death to get to a position where he could fulfill her request that he move to the Retirement Community. Before that, he just had too many things to do before he could end that stage of his life. He had to worry about his wife's funeral and probating her estate as well as sorting her things that needed to be packed and shipped to their children, selling her things that the kids were not interested in, like her book collection, and then arranging for most of her clothing away to be given to charity. Then he had to pack his things and select the furniture that he wanted to move to his apartment at the Retirement Community.

Mitch continued to be very busy when he arrived at the facility. He still had furniture at the old house to dispose of, he had repairs that needed to be made to the house before it could be sold and then he had to put the house up for sale.

While he was busy doing all of this, he still had to take time out to go to the dining room for his meals. It was only the second day when his eyes were drawn to a lovely Oriental lady at one of the other tables. She seemed to have plenty of people who wanted to visit with her, so he kept to himself, ate his meals and then went back to his apartment to continue with his long list of chores.

After a month, Mitch was finally starting to get caught up. His house had sold, the buyers' required repairs had been completed and the sale was to close tomorrow. Mitch finally felt that a burden had been lifted from his shoulders and that it was time to move to the next stage of his life.

There were not many healthy, single men at the Retirement Community, but there were lots of widows, many who were close enough to Mitch's age. Many of these women had learned that they needed to be very aggressive if they wanted to catch the eye of an eligible bachelor, like Mitch.

As a result, Mitch had been deflecting offers to come over for a home cooked dinner, gifts of fresh baked cookies of cakes or even invitations to come for cocktails before evening dinner. So when Mitch finally felt like it was time to move on, there were plenty of women that he could select from. He would casually "interview" them with polite conversation at dinner each evening and made a point of trying to eat with a different group every few days. But his eye kept drifting back to that Oriental woman that he had noticed days after moving in. The other women told him that her name was Kendra and that she was the artist who had done a few of the paintings hanging in hallways. Kendra had never even tried to talk to Mitch, which he found all the more attractive.

Finally, one night when Mitch walked in for dinner, there was an empty chair and Kendra's table. He asked if he could eat with them and they asked him to please have a seat. The entire group chatted during dinner about a wide variety of topics. Kendra was very quiet until the topic of art came up. Suddenly, she opened up and became talkative. Mitch was enthralled, partly because as an architect, he had an appreciation for art and those who had developed their artistic talents.

Mitch stayed to talk to Kendra about art long after everyone else had left and the table had been cleared of all except his coffee and her tea. Mitch and Kendra talked about their children as well as their love of different types of art. Kendra found a kindred spirit that night and Mitch fell in love.

From that point on, Mitch was a fixture at Kendra's table each night and it didn't take long before she invited him to her room after dinner to see her latest projects. Once they were there, Kendra fixed tea for both of them. They continued to talk about details of their lives, from family and where they had grown up and gone to school to how each of them had found their calling either in art or in architecture.

Mitch finally had to excuse himself around midnight in order to get some sleep. In contrast, Kendra could not fall asleep. She had this new friend who shared so many interests with her. She felt this new emotion that she had never experienced before. She had seen enough movies to suspect that this was love, but she also knew from those movies and personal experience that such things often do not work out.

The next night, Mitch invited Kendra to his apartment after dinner so show her photos and drawings of some of the buildings that he had designed. He had also made a trip to the store to buy Kendra's favorite flavor of tea and the tools to make tea the way that Kendra did and not with a paper tea bag.

That evening, the emotion that had kept Kendra awake the night before was even stronger. So, when it was time to say goodbye, she stood up on her toes and gave Mitch a kiss on the cheek. Suddenly, she felt an emotional save spread from her lips to her entire body. As for Mitch, he also felt something like an electric jolt when Kendra had kissed him. The only difference between them was that Mitch knew what this meant whereas Kendra was confused.

The next morning, Kendra made her normal call to her daughter just to talk about normal mother-daughter things. During the call, her daughter asked if she had met any men. Kendra hesitated long enough that he daughter became concerned and asked if Kendra was okay. Kendra told her that she was okay and that yes, she had met a man. At that point, her daughter became excited and wanted to know all the details.

Kendra told her about Mitch and his background. She described how he also loved art. Kendra tried to change the topic and her daughter kept asking about Mitch. Finally, it became obvious that Kendra was trying to hide something. So her daughter asked her what she was hiding. That was when Kendra admitted that she had kissed Mitch on the cheek last night and that she had suddenly felt this overwhelming emotion sweep through her body. It was an emotion that she had never felt before meeting Mitch. Her daughter immediately knew what was happening and told her, "Mom, you are in love with him." Kendra told her no, she must be mistaken but her daughter persisted. But at this point, the seed of the idea of love for Mitch had been planted in Kendra's mind.

The next night at dinner, Kendra and Mitch were both unusually quiet. They joined in the talk with others, but rarely said anything to each other. After dessert, Mitch got up and left. The other women at the table were so concerned that they asked Kendra if there was a problem. Kendra just gave them a smile and said that everything was okay.

The next day at lunch, Mitch came up and asked Kendra to join him at one of the limited number of tables for two. Generally, the married couples ate at these but Mitch knew that they had to talk and wanted to do so with a little bit more privacy. They had a pleasant lunch but both avoided saying anything about the kiss two nights before or dinner last night. When they finished, Mitch asked Kendra to go outside to walk with him.

As soon as they beyond listening distance from the front door, Mitch turned to Kendra and said that he didn't know how to say this, so he would be blunt. He said, "Kendra, I think that I love you." Kendra immediately started crying, so Mitch suspected that he may have offended her. Kendra finally stopped crying and smiled up at him and said, "Mitch Williams, I love you too." As soon as she said that, Mitch let out a huge sigh of relief, grabbed Kendra's hands and then leaned down to kiss her on the lips. When he started to pull away, Kendra put her hands around his neck to pull him down and have him a passionate French kiss that lasted for about 30 seconds.

At that point, Mitch told her to forget the walk, let's go back to my apartment. As soon as the door was closed, Kendra jumped up and put her arms around Mitch's neck and wrapped her legs around his waist to give him another lip-lock kiss. They stood like that for about two minutes before Mitch's legs started to wobble. Kendra dropped down and pulled Mitch back to the bedroom so that they could both be comfortable as they made out on the bed. They spent the next hour kissing and rolling around on the bed. Every time that he had a chance to look into Kendra's eyes, all he saw was love. As for her mouth, when it wasn't on his, she had a big grin that he had never seen before.

After about an hour, they got up and went into the living room to sit on the couch to talk. They held hands as Kendra finally told Mitch about her marriage. Mitch knew that she had been married, but she had never talking about it, so Mitch was stunned. He had heard about arranged marriages and how they are often loveless, but he had never met anyone with that experience. For his part, Mitch explained to Kendra about how much he had loved his wife and how difficult it had been to watch cancer slowly kill her.

It was now getting close to dinner time, so Mitch finished the conversation by telling Kendra that he loves her but that he could also now understand why she might want to take things slowly from here. Kendra thanked him and asked that if this were an "American" romance, what would happen next? Mitch explained that at their age, couples who are romantically involved don't waste time because they realize that life can end soon or that they could have years together. He told there that therefore, the answer to your question is that usually the next thing to happen would be for them to start sleeping together.

Kendra thought about that for a little bit to process what Mitch had just told her. She saw the logic but since this was her first romantic involvement with a man, she wanted to be sure before she took that step. So, she told Mitch that she needed to think about that before taking as drastic a step as sleeping with him. Mitch told her that he understood her position as they stood up to go to dinner.

Dinner conversation that night was back to normal. Neither said anything about what had happened that afternoon, but the women in the group suspected something major had occurred to cause such a dramatic about face for both Mitch and Kendra and Kendra's larger smile than normal for her very reserved personality.

After dinner, they walked out separately, but as soon as they turned the first corner in the hall, they were holding hands. Mitch's apartment was the closest, so they quickly went inside. As soon as they were inside, they were all over each other once again.

Finally, Kendra frowned and told Mitch, I need to leave because I cannot trust myself around you anymore tonight. Mitch understood and gave her a small smile before lightly kissing her on the lips. Kendra hesitated as if to say something and then turned and practically ran out the door without saying another word.

That night, neither Mitch nor Kendra was able to get much sleep. They both wanted to be with the other but knew that Kendra wasn't quite ready. But around 3AM, Mitch heard his doorbell ring. He threw on a robe and went to answer the door. Standing there was Kendra, also in a bathrobe. She ran into the room and gave Mitch a big kiss. Mitch tried to let the door close quietly, but it ended up slipping out of his hand and hit hard enough that his neighbors were probably awakened.

Kendra grinned and told Mitch, I could not sleep because I could not stop thinking about you and how much I love you. Mitch told her that he also had not been able to sleep for exactly the same reason. Kendra jumped up and wrapped her arms and legs around Mitch again to give him a big kiss. This time, Mitch was able to maintain his balance and walked the two of them into the bedroom with Kendra's lips never leaving his.

Mitch collapsed onto the bed so that Kendra was on one side and he was closer to the middle. Kendra continued to kiss him until finally pulling back and telling him that she doesn't want to have sex with him tonight but then she said that it would be very soon. Then she said, "What I do want to do tonight is to have you hold me so that we can both get some sleep before breakfast time." Mitch told her that was a good idea and asked if he could lie behind her and hold her breast. Kendra didn't say anything in reply. She just picked up his hand and put it on her nearest tit. Mitch reluctantly let go so that they could get into position. As soon as she was ready, his hand was back on her tit and then she lightly placed her hand on top of his and gave it a squeeze so that he also squeezed her. Kendra sighed in delight and they both quickly fell asleep.