The Long Highway Pt. 42

They decided finally to stop. Nelson finally had to leave. If he stayed and they did it again, her husband would return and see.

He said to Akemi, "It's hot. Maybe it's the sun." Daylight filled the apartment now. Morning had risen fully.

"Or maybe the thing itself is hot. It is even in the shade," Nelson said. Akemi had no doubt what he meant, as he was still half undressed, even now slow getting ready to go.

Akemi reached to hand him his pants to put on and he pulled away, playfully. She followed as he backed up onto the living room futon and kept retreating. She tried to thrust the pants at Nelson a few times, lunged then climbed halfway onto the foam mattress after him, her upper body falling forward to the autumn leaf colored cloth covering, as if she was giving up, conceding he'd won. Nelson welcomed her at last, game over, but instead of taking his pants (also leaf-colored) she still held, he took Akemi herself, tugged her further his way by her arm above the elbow and pulled her mouth onto him once, twice, again, then all the way. They didn't care who would see.

Akemi's husband had told her the day before that while teaching he'd heard another class- the teacher had left her door open and loud laughter and delight sounded there- and Mitchell thought he'd have to try to do better in his class. It seemed too quiet in comparison.

Mitchell later went into the class, asked the teacher what she had been doing with her students. She said they'd been reading a play. They were still at it, working on the script together in pairs or small groups and were surprised, like their teacher, by Mitchell's entrance, though it didn't interrupt them.

Mitchell raised the idea with the teacher of their two classes sometime doing a play together. She didn't look interested.

Akemi remembered this as her mouth rose up and down on Nelson's cock, sliding smooth, bringing bubbles bright like laughter and she panted with her pleasure and made him groan with his and then howl loud so anyone could hear, even outside the apartment in the stairwell.

Again and again, slipping with certainty, locking on it, then sliding up again to tease the head. And it was hot as Nelson had said- and cool, slippery, glossy from her and then from him.

Mitchell had told Akemi about a foreign student who'd written in an essay the word "fuk," laughed at the misspelling. Akemi liked being with Nelson and not having to get everything right but this.

He'd start spouting but not soon. Akemi wanted to continue, make him wait, and he would. They'd made love so many times that morning and in the night it would take a long time for him to come again, so long he'd come a lot, all the way from the bottom, the base of his balls, which Akemi sometimes held, teasing it out of him but slowly, as her mouth slowly coaxed, opened wide, taking all of him, giving him her smoothness so he felt himself and all of her, inside her, her head humping over him, her hair drawing across his abdomen in her rhythm, like the surf, the sea, its foam.

Then that was it. He was done. Silence. He was still in her, her mouth still on him. Time stopped, then spread, like his cum.

--

Mitchell woke up and found on the kitchen counter bananas he'd brought on his way home. They were out, in plain view, beside them a black bag containing other groceries. He'd bought it for Akemi and his breakfast.

Seeing that, Mitchell realized he must have been really tired, discombobulated when he got home. It was almost alarming. He never forgot to put food away.

He staggered into the kitchen, all but shielding his eyes from he waking reality as if waking from a bad hangover, but he hadn't drunk. He almost didn't want to get his bearings, see that yes, the bananas were there. What had happened to him the night before? And to Akemi? To their marriage. The silence in the kitchen rang out in her absence. He felt his presence like that of a stranger. The kitchen felt larger. Everything did when you were alone.

Hell no, this was nothing, he told himself. Akemi would be back. Nothing has changed. As for his own state, he'd just slept badly (nearly not at all). That happens. You're tired but have work on your mind, work and other stuff.

He went for an early morning run on the nearly no sleep, mustered such energy as he could, at points found his arms slung low- it seemed to help propel his legs along. He saw he was running like an ape, a knuckle dragger. Ha ha. On the course Mitchell passed some younger people, hoped he made a good impression and then realized it didn't matter a damn.

The cool air revived him some. It was the same as that of any other day. Fresh. Did the breezes bring a trace of moisture, rain despite lack of any apparent clouds. At that hour you couldn't read the weather.

He must have been worried about Akemi with Nelson even before she hadn't come home. And now she hadn't. Along with work, it had sapped his energy. And now sleeplessness. And he had work this morning. He'd gone out for the run early as he usually didn't (with Akemi there), no point in trying to sleep.

Mitchell thought of Akemi's friends, his efforts to communicate with them, even speak their language. It never went well. Mitchell somehow knew that wouldn't bother Nelson. He'd feel no onus to make himself understood. The onus would be on them.

At work, his mind jumped around. It was hard focusing on lesson preparation that needed doing now, not later- class would start in a matter of minutes and he had yet to get anything ready for the students. As he typed on the keyboard, he visualized on the display words different from those now appearing, instead recalled a letter he'd written to a friend during the months Akemi and he were separate back at the beginning of their romance, when his difficulties breaking up with his old girlfriend Pam finally led Akemi to insist that they part company until he got his own life in order. Was she paying him back now for putting him through that then? It would be out of character, he thought, but what did he really know. Akemi had never struck him as vindictive, but weren't there parts of her character he'd yet to see, the part, for instance, that Nelson woke up.

Had she gotten sleep last night? Damn it, had she been with Nelson?

Too much thinking. Thoughts tend to come when you face uncertainty. The thoughts look for something solid and finding none they keep going, proliferating, especially when hung over, even if not literally. In the office, he could see as if they were in front of him again the words he'd written his friend about Akemi at that other time she'd left: "I've always loved her."