Thankful

"Mmm. You say the sweetest things," Kelly grinned. Then the grin faded. "But, no, Nick. My coach is here. The gym Daddy had built for me is far and away better than anything I would find anywhere else. What I do here is at least as important to me as what you do there is to you. Can you understand that?"

"I can," I said. "That just leaves us letters and whatever visits I can manage for the next six months. Then I'll be here. Well, Fort Worth. Um, how far is Fort Worth from your house?"

"About thirty minutes, depending on where in Fort Worth we are talking about," Kelly said.

I watched as Kelly's brow furrowed and she rolled and rubbed at her neck some more.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"My neck is a little stiff," Kelly admitted.

"Well, I don't really know what I'm doing, but, would you like me to try to rub it? Would that help?"

"Maybe."

"Here. Lie down and I'll try."

Kelly stretched out. I noticed as I sat up and shifted positions her feet were hanging off the end of the queen sized fold out. No wonder her bed at home was so huge!

I chivvied Kelly around until she was lying diagonally so she would fit the bed and laid my hands on her skin.

I don't really remember much of the next hour and a half clearly as I sank into the sights and textures of her body. I doubt Kelly does either as she started softly snoring soon after I began.

Uncle Billy found us like that when he came in. Kelly asleep on her stomach with me gently rubbing and caressing her skin and staring avidly at her. I didn't realize he was there until he cleared his throat.

I blushed and yanked my hands from Kelly's taut ass I'd been kneading. I don't know whether it was the sound he made or the absence of my touch, but Kelly stirred just enough to reach out to me and move her head to my lap.

"I have to admit, I never thought I'd live to see anything like that," Uncle Billy said softly.

"Um, I'm sorry, Uncle Billy."

"For what, son? It's incredible the change in Kelly there. And in just four days." Uncle Billy shook his head. "I got to say, Hoss, I've always known you were something special. But, no matter what else you do, what you've done for that little girl is just amazing. I ain't gonna lie. I was shocked when she started parading around here half dressed like I've had to get onto my daughters for years.

"But, I ain't ever seen her open up to someone as quick as she did you," Uncle Billy went on. "Lord, it took me three months to get her to speak to me in more than one sentence answers. And now, this. Son, I ain't never seen that girl sleep! Not once! Not in all the times she's been over here. And there she is, holding onto you like a teddy bear and snoring away. I don't know how you did it, but if we could bottle it and sell it, we would make a fortune."

There didn't seem to be much to say when Uncle Billy finished. He didn't seem to want to say anything else either. Both of us sat quietly and just watched Kelly sleep.

Sunday morning, the end of Thanksgiving weekend had always been more than a bit chaotic, even compared to the other days. That one was no exception, and may, in fact, have been worse once the rest of the house was awakened by Tina being escorted out by Aunt Regina backed up by Uncle Billy.

Mom and the cheer squad were, naturally, curious as they'd somehow slept through the early morning ruckus. Being caught with my dick in a girl's mouth by my fiancée, my cousin, and my uncle (and possibly aunt) had been bad enough, no matter that I was asleep and not in control. But, having my sister and mother hear about it, and ask questions for God's sake, was just too much.

Olivia was even more sullen than usual and, after a brief appearance, held to her room.

Then, there was the bi-annual scramble to pack.

Which never had made just a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe I'm just strange, but I tended to put my things back in my bag when I was done with them, dirty clothes and all. That way, all I had to do was zip up the bag and carry it out to the truck when it was time to escape. Mom and Pris, on the other hand, seemed to think we were moving in when we arrived and always seemed surprised when it was time to gather everything back in their bags for us to go back home to our lives.

And then there were the long, frantic, drawn-out conversations like we weren't going to see each other again ever, much less in just a few months.

I had never understood all of that until that Sunday right after Thanksgiving in 1987, when, for the first time in my life, I wasn't ready to get back on the road home and leave it all behind for as long as possible and kept thinking of something else to tell Kelly or ask her.

Kelly, awakened by Tina's dramatic exit, had helped me fold the bed back into its couch configuration, where we'd sat close together, holding hands, as the rest of the household bustled and babbled around and past us.

It was silly, really. I knew that I would be accepting the job with Lockheed and moving back in just a few short months. And I knew that I could, probably, find time to visit for a weekend here and there in the intervening time.

But, a part of me was terrified that, once I left, Kelly wouldn't welcome me back. Or at least not in the same way. That we would never recapture the magic of that Thanksgiving weekend. A weekend I would be thankful for the rest of my life, however short or long that might be.

Then it was time, and probably past time, for us to leave. It would be late when we arrived home and we all had an early morning the next day with school and work and our normal every day lives.

Olivia was drawn out of her room, by force applied by Aunt Regina I suspect, to join in the final goodbyes.

After the usual rounds of hugs and kisses from my extended family, I found myself standing in front of Kelly, our hands clasped between us.

"I love you, Kelly," I whispered. "I'll miss you."

"I love you, Nick. I already miss you."

One final hug. One final kiss.

And then I was watching through the back hatch of the camper as, for the first time, I was sad to leave.

Suddenly, Kelly broke into a sprint, chasing after us.

I turned and smacked the window separating the cab where Pris and Mom rode from the bed where I was being carted along with the luggage.

"Wait!" I screamed. "Stop!"

By the time I got the hatch at the back open, once Mom had stopped, Kelly was standing there.

"Yes!" Kelly screamed and almost hauled me bodily out as she kissed me.

"Um, does that yes mean what I think it means?" I asked when she let me up for air.

"Yes, I will marry you."

Kelly didn't have to pull me out of the camper shelled back. I crawled out and up her to maul her lips with mine as she held me against that fantastic body.

*** Epilogue ***

Thanksgiving 2017 found me in a place far from where I could have imagined myself back in 1987; in a hotel room in Detroit as I hammered away at my laptop keyboard while I waited for the sun to finally burn through the fog rolling in from the Great Lakes.

Finally, I deemed it light enough and left the room, and the hotel, for the park across the street where I churned out laps on the dirt track around it until a familiar form loomed out of the fog with her formidable arms folded beneath her equally formidable breasts.

"Mister, you are in so much trouble I don't even know where to start," my loving wife of twenty-seven years greeted me.

"Hey, I'm a forty-nine-year-old man. More than old enough I can choose to go for a walk without an escort if I want to."

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it," Kelly snapped. "I'm talking about that story on your laptop."

"Oh, you read it?"

"Yes, I read it! And if you think for one second I'm going to let you post that on Literotic.com, you have another think coming, buster!"

"What?" I blinked. "Wasn't it any good?"

"It was possibly legible. But, that's not the point! You can't, you really can not say those things about me for everybody to read!"

"What makes you think it's about you? Or us?" I blustered. "It's pure fiction. The names aren't even similar."

"Oh, please, 'Nick'," Kelly scoffed. "How many female former powerlifters four inches over six feet and covered in birthmarks are there in the world with a five foot tall hundred pound husband? And I'm six four, not over six and a half feet! Don't make it worse than it is!"

"Well, there you go," I said. "See? It's fiction. Like I said."

"Shut up! I'm pissed at you Nick. I'm really pissed this time. God, you made me sound like a bigger slut than your cousin's wife Tina! Speaking of which, I thought you slept through that blowjob she gave you, Mister Man! And she did not pull my top off when she felt me up, nor would I have stood there and let her if she had!"

That pretty much set the tone for the morning as Kelly picked apart my rather dubious literary efforts, seemingly unwilling to allow it was a fictionalized account.

Her diatribe paused while we got ready to go to the game. What in the hell had I done to deserve a professional football player and a professional cheerleader for children? I couldn't help but wonder.

The answer stepped out of the bathroom as nude as the day she was born to dress and continue her harangue about my dubious literary efforts.

The curtain of hair had been cut jaw length and held much more salt than pepper. The hard musculature had softened and faded with age and less strenuous lifting. Several of the stars in her constellations had winked out, shaved away to be checked for malignancy. As had her right breast, although she'd been adamant about having it restructured. Not that I would have cared if she hadn't. I loved her, the "her" that was a cool, confident, strong woman with gravitas grown from the shamed and unsure girl she'd been.

"Nick? Are you listening to me?"

"Hmm?" I blinked to see her looking at me with that long familiar shy smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Don't think for a moment you are getting out of anything by looking at this old carcass with that dopey look on your face," Kelly sniffed.

"Then, you'd best cover it up," I grinned. "Otherwise, I'll be dopey all day long. In fact, do we really have to go to the game? Couldn't we just watch it on television here? Naked, preferably?"

"No, we can not," Kelly said. "We are going to watch our daughter on the sidelines and, hopefully, our son if he gets some playing time."

"What's the difference?" I asked as I playfully reached for her. "They won't know or care if we are in the stands or sitting here in a warm hotel room. In a warm bed."

"Maybe Nick Jr. wouldn't, but I would bet you anything against pocket lint your 'Daddy's Girl' will know damn well," Kelly swatted my hand away.

I sighed dolefully and kept my hands, and my thoughts, to myself until we were handed into the limousine out front of the hotel.

"Nick, can I ask you something?" Kelly asked on the way back after the game.

"Anything. Anytime," I answered.

"Was it hard to write about them?"

I shifted my gaze out the window as we joined the procession away from Ford Field after a 30-23 loss to Minnesota in which our son hadn't played after all.

Laurell had been the first of us to shuffle off the mortal coil in '93. Her heart, weakened by years of her starved body consuming itself, had given up. That first loss had, I think, hit all of us the hardest. I know it did me. Perhaps that was why I'd come down on our daughter like a ton of molten lead when she'd hit puberty and started dieting. It had taken a lot of intervention from Kelly, and two counselors, to make us alright again.

Uncle Billy had been next in '97. His diet, of course, was blamed. But, I couldn't help but wonder if Olivia hadn't contributed. He'd seemed to take her relationship with Tina, if not in stride, at least well. But, her three arrests for domestic violence against Tina didn't go down as well.

Mom had taken early retirement and moved in with Aunt Regina after Uncle Billy passed until Mom followed in '07. That decade, I think, was the happiest I'd ever seen either of them.

I don't know, and don't really care, whether Michelle saw what she thought she saw between our mothers. It didn't matter to me in the slightest whether they were two aging women taking solace in each other's companionship or if that companionship, and solace, extended to the bedroom. For Michelle, it seemed to matter a lot as she cut all ties with any of us.

We hadn't seen much of Ollie and Tina either after Kelly's resounding "hell, no" to their request that we help them have a child by me getting Tina pregnant. Although, that might have had more to do with Kelly cutting down the amount of money I was allowed to give the couple each month afterward.

Aunt Regina was still a going concern, but she was back in Arlington at AT&T stadium with Pris to watch Priscilla's two sons vie for some field time. It still seemed strange not to see them on Thanksgiving, but the women had put their heads together and decided we should each watch our own offspring that day and get together other times of the year.

"No," I finally said. "No, it wasn't hard. As long as I'm alive and remember them as we were, they live on in here."

Kelly reached out and hugged my arm.

Later that night, after we'd seen our offspring and watched for any sign of our nephews on the television together while we shared a late meal, Kelly was getting ready for bed as I sat once more at my laptop and pulled up the offending piece of erotic "fiction."

"Oh, and another thing," Kelly said. "I never said it felt like your cock was in my stomach in my life!"

"Want to bet?"

"No," Kelly said softly. "Not with your eidetic memory. But, come on, Nick! You make me sound like some horny little cum slut and you like some huge dicked cockhound. It's not my fault I have a short, narrow canal. And I don't, I really don't, want anyone who might know us reading that on Literotica.com and thinking such things about me. I'm a horny little slut for you, Nick. Not the world at large."

"Fine," I sighed. "I'll rewrite that part. Is there anything else?"

"I'm not just real wild about you exposing my personal angst and insecurities like that," Kelly admitted. "I revealed myself to you because I love you and trust you. To have you turn around and shove me naked and bleeding out for the world to see feels like a betrayal."

"That, I won't change. If you had realized how breathtakingly beautiful you are, I wouldn't have stood a chance," I said. "And besides, there are millions of women, and some men, who share those feelings of inadequacy. If they can somehow learn from you and I that they don't have to, that love and happiness are out there for them too, if they just look for it... Well, I think we owe them that. Now, wife, I have a question for you. Are we going to have our Thanksgiving tradition? Or are you too mad at me?"

"Don't be absurd! Of course, we are going to lick, suck, and fuck until one of us passes out. My kitty has been drooling for hours in anticipation."

Kelly lay with her head on my chest as I stroked her hair, although it made her feet hang off the bed.

"All right," she said. "You can post that story to the contest. As is. But, if you put in one word about what went on here tonight, we're going to find out how you feel about getting pegged by your wife."

"I wouldn't dream of it, wife," I kissed the crown of her head as my eyes started to drift closed. "You do know that you are what I'm most thankful for in my life, right?"

"Still?" Kelly turned her head to look into my eyes.

"Still and always, my star-studded love."

I was almost asleep when Kelly spoke again.

"And I didn't say yes until Valentine's."

"Different contest," I murmured drowsily. "It fits the story and the contest."

"Maybe," Kelly said. "But, I held out until Valentine's. You write that."

"As you wish," I managed as the world faded away for three minutes less than three hours.

***

If you've made it this far, slap us a star. Or, possibly, three. If it wasn't your cup of tea, there's more writers than me. If you love wintery weather and traditions and some cool holiday loving, don't be shy to give them all a read.

Literotica.com Winter Holidays 2017