The Old-Fashioned Way

Your house was divided in that post-war way, though a few 1970s and 21^st century modifications had been made. A spacious entertaining room greeted visitors and guests, with a curated bookshelf and the sort of chairs you are afraid to sit in because the upholstery was expensive. You both tried to curate a bookshelf that gave the impression that successful, responsibly adults lived there. But, next to the Selected Opinions of William Brennan and The Complete Works of Flannery O'Connor were your beat-up copies of Chuck Palahniuk. You had introduced to me his work in college, and it didn't surprise me your copies found their way to the bookshelf. The people you two presented yourself as being wouldn't ask a friend from college to come over and impregnate a lesbian. The sort of people who only read the law and the classics might just bite the bullet and pay for IVF. But here we were.

Ceiling to floor drapes covered the two windows looking out to the street, and to my left was the dinette. The dinette led back into your modern kitchen (a product of the 2010s), which led back into the living room (a product of the 1970s), which led back out to the yard. I stepped carefully through all three rooms and saw no sign of either of you. I went back through the living room and the kitchen and the dinette to the great room, and delicately over to the right side of the house. On the right side of the house was small guest bedroom -- soon to be a nursey, we all hoped -- a bathroom, and the owner's bedroom you and Kathryne shared. I knew inside the bedroom as a recently added en suite that made the owner's bedroom slightly smaller than the guest room. I didn't find you or Kathryne in the guest room or the second bathroom, so I knocked on the bedroom door. I heard movement, rustling, and shortly after, Kathryne swung open the door.

Kathryne was your same height -- several inches shorter than me -- and she was dressed casually. She wore a t-shirt from her law review journal and shorts. She wasn't wearing any socks. I wondered if I had the wrong day. Kathryne would murder me if I had the wrong day. My heart beat that much faster. "Tonight's the night, right?" I asked. Kathryne nodded and started to leave the bedroom. As she squeezed by me in her cramped 1940s hallways, she patted my back and smiled.

"She's all yours. I think I got her warmed up for you." I smiled and laughed awkwardly. I didn't know what she meant or what to do. Do you say thank you? Do you stop and chat? I felt like the third shift passing the second shift at the factory gates of the world's most coveted job. I crossed the threshold into your bedroom, and Kathryne pulled the door shut behind me. "Have fun you two, but remember, Warren, cum only inside my fiancé. No facials or whatever kinky shit you're in to." The door clicked shut, and that feeling of standing at the threshold of my prom date's door was replaced by a nervous, tense, crushing feeling of sitting in a kayak and seeing the rapids crash and churn and spit downriver. Your options then are to paddle your way to the riverbank, get out, and walk around or to take a deep breath, steel your nerves, and paddle straight on over the rapids. A few frightening seconds later and you'll be safe on the other side. But you must work up the nerve to paddle into the rapid first. I turned my head from the closed door to your bed and caught your stare. You had been on the bed, watching Kathryne squeeze past me and watching me enter the room, and now, wordlessly, we locked eyes.

Yours were deep and brown. An oaken color, like the woods at the first signs of autumn when the leaves turn, and the majesty of the oaks are unburdened by winter but no longer hidden under the thick greenery of summer. Your hair fell below your shoulder blades, and you were smiling wide. It brought your cheeks high and full and in concert with the ridge of your brow, the light cast shadows over your eyes so that oaken color was that much deeper. I had seen those eyes often, found comfort in them after tests I was sure I failed, dates I was sure I had bombed, interviews for jobs I was sure I wouldn't get. I found comfort in them, that night, too. I didn't come on this trip to portage around the rapids -- I breathed deep, steeled my nerves, and walked straight over to you on the bed.

You laughed. "Don't mind, Kat. She thinks she's funny. I guess she's a little more nervous about this than she wants to let on." Christ, Eloise, I wanted to tell you, her and I both. I found a place at the end of your bed, near your feet, running my eyes along your legs, across your thighs, up your chest -- you, too, are wearing comfortable shorts and an old t-shirt -- and back to your disarming eyes. "On the plus side," you continued, "I just received the best cunnilingus of my entire life." I gulped. That sounded like a hard act to follow. I shifted my weight on the bed, pulled my legs up off the floor so that they rested underneath me, pretzel-style. I held my ankles, glanced at the floor, back to you. My mind was empty, the cupboards bare, bereft of anything to say.

"So, I...I guess that means you don't need any foreplay," I finally said, after the longest silence we've had between us in ten years. If the silence between asking you to get coffee and being rejected dragged on for year, the silence we shared sitting at the end of your bed must have occupied millennia. As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished I had waited another century or two more to think of anything, literally anything else, to have said. You keep your eyes locked on mine, unsure of what to say. You shift your own weight, sit up off the pillows behind you. You, too, sit pretzel style on your legs, and finally speak.

"I guess we can get right to it, if you want. Is that what you want?" I stared intently at you, trying to read your face. Is that what you wanted? Did you want these four nights to be clinical? Was I supposed to romance you? Was I supposed to treat this like I would a date, seducing a woman after dinner and a drink? I couldn't tell what you wanted. So, I asked.

"I don't know, Elle. Is that what you want?" More silence. Neither of us were ready to speak, neither of us trusted the other to be ready to hear what we had to say. It was like our decade of friendship had vanished, and I was sitting across from a stranger, playing a perverted game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. I hated it. I hated every second of it. I regretted agreeing to this, I regretted believing it would be fun, regretted telling you I would get you pregnant, regretted this little arrangement that robbed me of Elle and gave me this vague lookalike instead. I started speaking, first to fill the silence, then to almost perform confession. "You know, Eloise," I said, shifting my weight again, turning in a half circle on the mattress, and settling next to you on the bed, my legs outstretched, next to your knee, close enough to barely touch, "uh, you know, when we went on that spring break trip to Colorado freshman year, and you snuck beers down into the hotel hot tub, and Anna and Tyler came down to join us, I tried really damn hard to peek down your bathing suit."

You untucked your legs and stretched out next to me. We were both leaning back against your pillows. You turned to look at me, and the silence returned. It was like you were trying to figure out where I was going with this, and finally, you laughed. "Is that supposed to be some sort of secret? You were pretty obvious." Now, I laughed. I roll my head and catch your eyes.

"Is that why you moved across the hot tub before Anna and Tyler came in? Because I was ogling you?" You smiled. You touched my hand. It didn't feel sexual, it didn't make my world spin. It felt like every other time we had touched.

"No, I was going to let you keep trying to sneak a glance. I wanted to know how far you strain your eyes trying to be inconspicuous about it. I thought if you tried any harder, your eyes out pop right out of your sockets" I laughed and leaned into you, resting my pinky finger around yours. We were two idiots, trying to do something stupid, and I laughed at how ridiculous we were being now and how ridiculous I was back then. There was no harm in continuing my confession to an old friend.

"Elle, I would have spent all night trying to look down your bikini. I had such a stupid crush on you. And I knew you were a lesbian, and I knew you weren't bi, but I wanted more than anything to sleep with you. And I don't know, to date you, to be together." You pushed yourself up onto your arms, turned to your right to look at me, and I rolled my head to the left to meet your eyes again. I waited to hear what you had to say.

"Do you still feel that way?" you asked me.

I don't need to hesitate. "No. I've grown out of that puppy love, and I wouldn't trade our friendship for anything, Eloise. Christ, I almost didn't come tonight. I almost left, just now. Sitting on your bed, an appointment to fuck but suffocating in silence. I wanted to bolt. Elle, I..." but I was unable to finish my sentence. You had grabbed my face, fingers catching me by the jaw, and you pulled me to your lips and kissed me. Damn it if the world didn't spin then.

# # #

You pulled away from me, and the absence of your soft, full lips on mine was palpable. My jaw was agape, and you leaned back to catch my eyes. "How was that?" you asked.

"Good. That was good." I said, nodding. You smiled.

"It's like a cold lake," you said, "sometimes you just have to dive straight in, or you'll never get used to the water." Were you talking about kissing men, or kissing a friend? It didn't matter; I was happy to swim in whatever waters you and I were exploring. I pulled you back into me, now my hand slid underneath your hip, grabbing your ass and pulling it into me. Your ass was firm in my palm -- a yoga ass, you called it -- and I let myself enjoy the touch as I brought your lips back to mine. I thought of all the different retorts I could for our cold-water analogy-- some witty, some sensual, some cool and causal, but our lips moved faster than my brain, and before I could reply, I found myself kissing you again. Deeper this time, with the shock having worn off, I felt your tongue probing mine, felt the hard bone of your teeth clacking into mine as we made out. I let myself feel the small of your back, the curve of your ass, and mercifully, thankfully, the heat from your pussy.

I locked my fingers into the waist band of your shorts and pulled them down over your ass and to your thighs. You weren't wearing any underwear and so my thumb ran along the bone of your hip, down across the soft flesh to the top of your pussy, teasing your labia. Your hands followed suit. You unbuckled my belt and tried to pull it off -- laying down, my weight on the loops prevented such a maneuver, and you moved on to unbuttoning and unzipping my pants. You found I was, in fact, unlike you, wearing underwear, and so you slipped your fingers into the slit of my boxers and ran them, tenderly, along the shaft of my cock. You leaned into my ear and whispered, "so, now, how does this work?"

I felt my precum drip into the palm of your hand. Warm and sticky. You seemed unfazed by it. "Well, see, you're fertile just before you ovulate..." You kissed me again, your fingers traced the bottom of my shaft, just above my testicles, tempting me, driving me wild. You kissed along my neck, up to my ear as I kept you pulled close with a hand behind your back and another tight on your ass.

"No, Warren, I'm in charge of the biology. You're in charge of the mechanics. How does this," you squeezed my cock, "work?" You gave me a helpful wink. I rolled over from my side and on to my back, and pulled you on top of me. Awkwardly, you kicked your shorts off your thighs, down your legs, and to the edge of the bed. You pulled my cock out from my boxers and ran your fingers along the zipper of my pants fly. "Can you lose your pants? This looks painful," you told me, finger catching each tooth of the zipper. I dutifully shimmied out of my pants and boxers, and laid beneath you, squeezing your ass in my hands. Dammit, how had I had missed your ass? Was it a decade of platonic friendship? Had it not been so, I don't know, tremendous, when we first met? I couldn't take my hands off it.

I managed to let go of your ass long enough to tug at the collar of my button down. "Do you mind if I lose my shirt, too? I know male chests aren't exactly your thing, but in just a shirt, I feel like Winnie-the-Pooh." We laughed and you took in the sight of me, under you, pantsless but still in my button down. I must have looked absurd. You sat up so I could wiggle out of my shirt. I tossed it to the side of the bed, and laid beneath you, naked. Your finger traced my abdomen, across my hip, to the beginning of my pubic hair. My cock twitched, throbbing at your touch on my body. I looked up at you from your bed, wondering what to do next. You seemed lost in thought, understandably so. This was your first time with a man, and I wasn't exactly an Adonis. "Sorry this is what you get," I said, running my own hands along your legs, tenderly, patiently. "Had I known I was going to be impregnating you, I would have started working out five years ago." You laughed and came out of your mindless tracing and leaned down to me.

I raised my head up off the pillows up to meet your lips, and you said, "I wouldn't know what to do with the perfect male specimen anyway. Plus, if I was going to do this with anyone, it would always have to be you." Your chest pressed into mine, and I ran by hands up under your shirt, along your back, feeling the bumps of your spine, the grooves of your ribcage, the curve of your breasts under your shirt and I kissed you deeply as you finished your sentence. You bit my earlobe and whispered, "let's get started," while reaching underneath you, taking my cock in your hand, and slipping me into you. You were warm and welcoming as you brought yourself down around my cock. My heart pounded and I felt myself throbbing inside you. I closed my eyes, bit my lip, and moaned. Fuck, Elle, you feel incredible. My hand came out from under your shirt, and I worked my way up, under your long brown hair, to your neck, and I held you, pulled you close, and thrust my hips up off the bed to go as deep into you as I could. Your mouth still next to my ear, you breathlessly exhaled in short pants, unable, it seemed, to form a reply, until you pressed your hands down on to the mattress and lift your chest off mine.

Your hair fell down around you, around and over your shoulders, and you started to form a rhythm, rocking back and forth on my cock, your hands pressed on to my sternum. I adjusted my own thrusting to match your movements, and I grabbed your thighs, tight in my hand, my fingers eagerly squeezing, betraying my deep yearning to finally be able to run my hands along you in this way. I had lusted after your thighs for years. The sun kissed them on sand dunes on our kayaking trips and I wanted you. They looked so effortlessly smooth tucked underneath you on your couch in your apartment on Belvedere we when studied together and I craved you. I caught a glimpse of them and your ass reflected in the hotel room mirror as you wiggled out of your snow pants and base layer during our skiing trip and I bit my finger and shook it off, only to find myself masturbating to the memory in the shower that night, and occasionally in the years since. Now, here, I held them and you in my hands as you rode me, and I was determined to commit every touch, every sight, every sound and sensation to memory.

Then, I locked eyes with you -- those deep oaken eyes -- and we shared an understanding of the absurdity of our present circumstances. You pressed down on my chest and rocked your hips up and down with a lyrical precision so that the wet thumping filled the small bedroom and you asked me, "so, is this everything you thought it would be?" and I couldn't form the words in my head to answer. My mind was so occupied committing the night to memory that no executive function was dedicated to speech. I breathed out, tried telling you with my eyes how much I enjoyed you having me, and finally, after some delay, the synapses began to fire again. I formed the words with my mouth, but the tongue hadn't yet received instructions. I tried again and finally croaked out a reply.

"Fuck, Elle," I shook my head, dumbstruck, "I mean, fuck."

You laughed. "I think I broke you, Warren," you teased, but you didn't stop your artful gyrations. "I'm almost afraid you won't be able to handle what I want to do next." My eyes must have opened to the size of saucers, because you laughed again, and I managed to speak a coherent thought.

"No, please do whatever you want. I'm just enjoying every moment of this." You smiled and grabbed the corners of your t-shirt. I slipped my hands underneath your shirt and rested them on your hips. I waited eagerly for the fulfillment of a decades long fantasy.

"Are you ready? I hope it's everything you wanted it to be in the hot tub," and you pulled the t-shirt up and over your head, and there you sat - on top of me, wrapped around me, riding me -- topless. Your stomach was taught -- you were never rail thin nor muscle bound, and your stomach sported lightly defined ab muscles. You were always athletic enough to keep in shape, but never so obsessed with your figure to tone or sculpt your abs. Your tits rested on your ribcage like earthen mounds on a prairie -- a visible part of and yet somehow distinct from the rest of your body with a defined valley between the two. You had perfectly round breasts with small, pink nipples in the center -- the sort of classically round areolas and nipples you saw in nude portraits on art gallery walls. You were large enough that one could hold your tits in one's hands and feel their heft, extending from the bottom of one's palm to the tips of one's fingers.

Cutting across each of your tits was a pale triangle -- the tan lines evidence of your time kayaking in the sun or trips to the lake. And here, on the bottom of your right breast, hidden from all eyes in the hot tub or on the beach, within the pale expanse of the tan line, was a small freckle. That it was resting on unsunned skin, on the bottom curve of your tit, let me know I was in rarified air. Was I the first man -- and the last -- to see this freckle? To know you this way? But the beauty of your body and the immediacy of our act left only short time for ruminations, and so, like an unlearned, unexperienced, primal rutting brute, I dispensed with speaking and resorting to squeezing your hips tight in my hands and showed my appreciation for your figure by thrusting hard and deep and fast in your pussy.

You tossed yourself down on to me, so that your hair fell in my face, across my lips, while you breathed heavily onto my neck. Your hot breath and your warm cunt made my every hair stand on end, and I grabbed your ass in my hands to pull you down on to me. I let your stray hairs remain across my face, tickling my nose, caught on my eye lashes, obstructing my view because you met my strokes into you by squeezing me tight between your legs and moaning in my ear. I couldn't think of anything else except how to keep this going, and I felt myself getting ready to cum. My cock throbbed and I felt the sensation building, and I felt I needed to warn you. "Eloise, I could cum if you wanted me to," and you tossed your head up off the mattress, surprised.

"Already?" you asked, with a tinge of disappointment in your voice. You didn't stop riding me, but I stopped meeting your movements, and pulled my head back away from yours, pressing it into the pillows.

"I thought that was the whole point of this!" I shot back, and you smiled. You sat up, straightened your back, and I resumed meeting you as you rocked back and forth on my cock. I could feel it, the building, the need. You pressed your hands onto my hips and curled your toes under my legs. I could feel it, any moment now, and so I started talking, just to take my mind off the sensation, in hopes of buying myself some time. "In my defense," I started, and you tilted your head so that you were looking down your nose at me, as if you were certain you would be unconvinced after this paltry explanation, "I'm fucking my best friend, who happens to be a lesbian, and who happens to be dammit gorgeous, so I'm a little excited. That's like, three bucket list items in one."