Sometimes You Get What You Need

We did the carousel thing to let Angie out and return Chelsea to her rightful place, as Angie grabbed a towel -- one of ours -- and left the bathroom.

"I'm sorry--" I started to say, and Chelsea lifter her hand to my mouth and using her finger, shushed me.

She was looking down at my now limp instrument, and I could see that she was on the verge of crying, so I pulled her to me and held her tightly while she began sobbing. I reached up to turn the water off since it was getting cold again, and wrapped both of my arms around her to comfort her.

"You didn't have to do that, you know," I said, into her hair. That only served to make the sobbing even harder.

God, what a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was feeling sorry for myself because I was so lonely, and then today I had two extremely young women fighting over me. One who looked like she was wanting me for the rest of my life... And the other one looking on me as a price to be won.

Shit.

Eventually Chelsea sobbed less and less, and I was getting cold. I wanted to dry us off, and go and get back in bed. That is, if Chelsea even wanted me anymore.

"Are you ok, honey?" I asked as softly as I could.

With a few sniffs, she looked up at me with her swollen eyes now red from crying, and gave me a still aching smile. She pulled herself into me with a vengeance, and it was breaking my heart.

How had this happened overnight? Was I insane? Did this youngish vixen have so tight a hold on me emotionally that I could fall this hard, this quick?

Or was I indeed just a lonely old man, grabbing hold of any anchor to keep me from drowning. And in this case, it was an equally lonely young girl who was showing me a line.

With both of us dried and back in her room, she was still recovering from the hurricane of emotions that I had seen on her face just moments before.

After looking down at her feet for too long, she lifted her eyes to mine. "Do you really want me still?" she asked, back to that little girl sounding voice.

"What happened back in the bathroom didn't change my mind," I told her, evading the question. "I just don't want to be a ball -- set of balls -- in a tennis match though."

"I never meant for that to happen," she said softly.

"And what did she mean when she said that she had shared -- Tim? Was that his name? Is that going to be an ongoing problem? And why did you 'share' him with her?"

"Tim was her ex-boyfriend. And when they were seeing each other, he wanted to fuck me. So she let him. I was feeling lonely after my last boyfriend and I broke up, so I took advantage of him wanting what he wanted to do to me."

"But Chelsea, hon. That doesn't mean that you 'owe' her. If anything, he owes her, not you."

She suddenly rushed into my arms and I quickly reached around her tiny waist to pull her to me.

Sometimes she seemed like she was twenty something going on forty something... And then all of a sudden, she was acting her age or even younger. I wish I hadn't even let her kiss me last night now. This was going to get even more messier as time went on, instead of wrapping up more neater as time went on.

And then she changed again. She pulled away from me with that 'older' look on her face again, and soberly said, "We need to not be here together again. I need to come to your place instead. Now that I let Angie have you once, she's not going to let up until I'm sharing you all the time. I may even have to move out of here if it gets too bad."

I looked down into her more mature eyes, and asked her, "Who are you? Are you the little girl you sometimes seem to be? Or are you the mature vixen like you are now? I kind of need to know, because I'm not sure this will last if you go back and forth like this." I knew I shouldn't have said that, almost as soon as I had said it.

"What do you want me to be?" she asked, un-ironically.

I stared into her eyes for a long time and thought about it. That was another wrong thing to do. She silently disengaged from me and moved over to the bed, climbing on and pulling her legs up to her chest and began rocking.

I walked over to her, sat beside her, and threw my arm around her. She didn't lurch away, but then she didn't cuddle up to me either.

But after a few moments, she sighed and then let her legs go and crumpled into my side, curling her legs under her this time.

"I've longed for this kind of relationship for so long. It's kind of new to me, as much as it is to you." Looking up into my eyes, she sat there for a second, and then moved to be behind me, throwing her arms around my chest, as much to hold me as to comfort me.

This was one of the most complicated relationships... Or was this even a relationship? Or was this just a fling? One night is too short to think of living a life together.

I felt her tears begin to wash my back again. I almost wanted to tell her that I loved her, but how could I do that in just twenty-four hours of knowing her?

Many of the women I had been with before had had their immature side. Some of them seemed even younger than Chelsea has shown me to be so far. And she was, in her mature moments, much more mature than most of them had ever been.

So what then did the difference in our age make? Besides being a societally unacceptable relationship? Did I really even have any friends left to worry about offending? Surely my family didn't matter that much to me. Most of them considered me not worth their time anyway.

Her tears dried, Chelsea worked her way around me to be sitting in my lap again. Looking into my eyes close up, she kissed me lightly on the lips. Then she snuggled in close. "I want to be your pretty baby. I want to be your worldly woman. I want to be there to comfort you and hold you when you need me to. And yes, I also want to be your wife. I want to be the one that you turn to for anything.

"And I want you to be devoted to me," she continued. "I don't want to have to worry that you'll run off and find someone else. I'm not all that pretty, and Angie is. It would kill me if you decided to run off with some perky blond bimbo just cause she opens her legs to you.

"But I also know that there's more gorgeous, intelligent and outgoing women out there that might be yours for the taking. I know how women are. Angie just proved that to you. She wouldn't have give you a second thought if I hadn't already gotten you into my bed."

I kissed her on her forehead. I kissed her on her cheek. I kissed her on her neck. Chelsea had proven to me, pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was more than enough woman for me. And she was cute, and beautiful, and she wanted me, perhaps more than any other woman had wanted me before her.

Should I marry her? Not yet. Could I see us being together for years? Maybe. If she continued to be this devoted to me, how could I look anywhere else?

She was so adorable. And she was so sexy when she wanted to be. And that seemed to me to be a complete package.

I Wrapped my arms around her tightly. God she felt so good sitting there on my lap. She could be my woman/child. Giving me both sides of what a woman could do. She could keep me interested, and she could keep me from wanting anyone else.

"I so want to ask you to marry me. But we've only been together for less than a day. You don't know me, and I'm sorry, but I don't know you. Can we just take it a day and a week at a time?"

She reached up and gave me a smolderingly passionate kiss. The kind of kiss that I'd never experienced before. Wasn't that enough? I mean, it's not like I have any money and property I needed to worry about. If we got married and it didn't work out... well then, we would just go our separate ways.

I looked down into those eyes, so up close and so deeply. And my heart almost melted. When did another woman make me feel like that? God. "I love you," I said, thinking that I would deeply regret it.

And she looked into my soul, and told me, "I love you too. Let's spend the rest of our lives together? I swear I'll take care of you if you get too old to take care of yourself. I want to make you happy, in every way that I can. I want you to be my loving and devoted husband."

"But how can you be so sure? It's not like you're in your forties of fifties and you've had a string of bad love affairs. How can I have so convinced you to take a leap of faith on such an old man?"

"I don't know. I just do. I want to be in your gentle arms and heart. I don't know what else to tell you. I'll even forgive you if you take a lover on the side -- not that I want that. Just as long as I'm the one you come home to. I'm the one that you melt into the arms of at the end of the day. That's how much I already love you. I can't explain it any other way."

----

The next June we got married. We waited for another couple of years after that before we had our first child together. And now I'm pushing 60. Our child is almost in kindergarten, and Chelsea and I are still very much in love with each other.

She has grown from who she was when I met her, into a very wise and older than her years woman. I'm so glad I said yes when she asked me to marry her. I haven't regretted it one day since.