Trust Comes Easy Ch. 01

"Good. 'Cause she said having a little warm up was a good thing, mmmmmmmespecially to get you hot. She said you liked that sort of thing. Sssso we're videotaping it to sh...sh...ow you later."

I had to admit, talking to my girlfriend on the phone while she was having sex was getting me hot. Whoever this ex was, she had my number. Then suddenly a bad thought entered my mind. "Um, Kaye, how do you even know she is who she says she is?"

My mouth stumbled over the awkward statement and that made Kaye giggle. "She showed me a, ah, picture of the two of you. You were cute with long hair."

That did narrow down the possibilities. I'd cut my hair a month after college, and dated only fifteen girls during school, compared to the twenty-six I'd dated in the five years since I graduated. Remember, sex addict yes, romantic, not really.

Trying to catch her breath, Kaye said, "Just get your butt home...when you're done. We'll try to save enough energy for, uh, round with you. Love you!"

She hung up before I had a chance to speak. I didn't care Kaye was having sex with another girl, because one of the things that made me realize she is "The One" was how we agree about our relationship. While we both feel our hearts belong to one another, we agree that our bodies should be allowed to play with whomever they want. Even though Kaye grew up privileged in Connecticut she had grown away from conservative ideas quickly. I grew up in very different circumstances, but my experiences had turned me off from society's idea of what a "loving" relationship should be. I could never survive in a monogamous relationship, and knew I had to have a partner that felt the same. The last place I expected to find such a partner was in an elementary school.

Kaye and I first met when my friend Lisa was doing her student teaching. I'm a chemical engineer and Lisa brought me in as a guest speaker to demonstrate how chemicals work in the world. Lisa and I knew each other through our college radio station when we had shows back to back. I played punk rock and would usually stay afterwards to hang out during her show, cleverly titled 'Goth That' and we became good friends. Lisa still dresses like she did in college, all black with the occasional red plaid skirt thrown in. It was fun to watch the most timid girl I'd ever known get up in front of a classroom full of rowdy, inner city eighth graders and try to keep them in line, much less teach them anything.

"Class," Lisa said. The roomful of kids were laughing and talking, screaming and yelling. "Class!" she tried again. They went on like she wasn't even there.

I'd just decided to help Lisa in my typical subtle fashion by screaming, "Shut the fuck up!" when suddenly the room became as quiet as a tomb. All the kids sat at their desks like perfect little angels, their eyes towards the door. Standing in the doorway was a woman. She smiled at them and said, "Good morning class."

In one collective sing-song voice they kids responded, "Good morning Miss Foster."

"Work on your journals for ten minutes and then we'll start."

The kids took out notebooks and started writing. Miss Foster walked up to us. She was about my age, twenty-six or so, with wavy auburn hair that came down to her shoulders and an apple nose with light sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. Just looking at her made me hold my breath. She gave Lisa a friendly smile.

"Thanks," Lisa said shyly.

"Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it. Before they trust you to discipline them they need to get to know you. Speaking of which..." She turned her gaze to me and suddenly there was this spark, a flash behind her eyes that said I wasn't the only one eager to meet.

"Oh, Kaye this is Maggie, my friend who's giving the talk today. Mags this is Kaye, she's my teaching mentor."

When our hands reached out and took hold of each other it was totally by instinct, because our eyes never left each other. "Very glad to meet you," she said.

I finally found my breath and managed to say, "Same here."

I got through the presentation without a problem. The kids laughed at my jokes, and I did an interactive thing where I assigned each kid to be an element, made them stand together with elements of the same family and showed what happened when certain elements mixed together. At one point I caught sight of Kaye sitting in the corner, smiling at me, and that's when I wasn't making a joke.

Walking down the hallway after my presentation, I was nearly jumping out of my skin. "What the hell happened to you?" Lisa asked.

"Lis, that girl is so into me."

"Who, Kaye? You're kidding! How could you tell? Is this that gaydar thing?"

"No, this is that I could tell she was as into me as I'm into her thing. Like when you met John."

Lisa looked back towards the classroom and then at me with a skeptical look on her face. "I don't know Mags."

"Why?"

"If it was like the kind of thing that happened when John and I met, how come I didn't notice it?"

"Lis, you've got something on your shirt." I pointed my finger at her chest, and when she looked down I brought my finger up and bopped her nose, making it the four millionth time I've done that since we met. "Because you can be a space cadet Lis, that's why."

"Funny. At lunch, I might have another space cadet moment and drop my vanilla shake in your lap."

"It'll be okay, I'm wearing white pants." We walked to the parking lot before I worked up the courage to ask, "Any other reason you think I'm off about Kaye?"

Lisa turned and twirled her hair between her fingers. "Kaye just gets excitable sometimes. Remember when we saw Quentin Tarintino on Letterman and he was all hyper and nutty? She's like that, just not as annoying."

I held up a finger. "But he still makes great movies."

"Oh hell yeah. He should make Kill Bill 3: The Ghost of Bill."

Disappointment must have shown on my face because Lisa's shoulders slumped and she sighed and said, "Look, maybe tomorrow I could talk to her about you. Kind of feel her out."

I kissed Lisa on the cheek. "Thank you, best friend."

"Uh uh. This one doesn't come cheap."

"Does this mean you're not paying for lunch?"

The next day Lisa called me at work sounding uncharacteristically upbeat. "I talked to Kaye."

I said, "Give it to me."

"Okay, when I got there Kaye was at her desk grading stuff. So I asked her what she thought of my lesson plan and she said it was great, and then I ask her what she thought of your presentation and she said it was outstanding."

"Outstanding?"

"Outstanding. So of course I had this moment of jealousy because she said my lesson plan was just great and not outstanding but then I got over it when I remembered that she might want to get slutty with you."

"That's progress."

"I know, because normally I'd be freaked about it for the rest of the day but I was over it in a few seconds. So then I said, "Maggie really liked meeting you." And she said, "Yeah, she seems really cool."

"Really cool?"

"Really cool. I wasn't sure if that was in a friendly way or a more than friendly way. So I said, "Listen, Maggie has this theory about you and I told her I wasn't sure about it and I kind of wanted to ask you about it and I wasn't sure how to bring it up and..."

I impatiently said, "And..."

"And that's as far as I got because I was obviously beating around the bush and like I said she can be a little hyper. So she puts her hands up to stop me and said, "Yes, I'm gay, yes I'm available, yes I'm interested." Oh, and she also said, "Yes, I will kill you if you tell anyone at school that I'm gay."

I screamed out loud and did a stupid happy dance and tripped over my coffee table and fell on the floor. But I was still screaming. I continued to do so for a few moments before remembering Lisa. When I grabbed the phone all I heard was dial tone. I figured she was irritated by my screaming and hung up, but then ten minutes later an ambulance crew and the police showed up and it turned out she thought I was either having a heart attack or that someone broke into the apartment and was jumping me. That's my Lisa.

4.

I didn't get home from the benefit until a little after nine. When I stepped off of the elevator I could hear the music from my apartment at the other end of the hall. It sounded like they were in full party mode and probably wouldn't be too long before someone called the cops. I was fishing my keys out of my pocketbook when the door across the hall opened and my neighbor stepped out. I think his name was Mike, and he was a slight, quiet man who had moved in with his wife a few months ago. They weren't very talkative people so we didn't know them very well. I hadn't seen the wife in a few weeks and just the other day Miss Prescott, the building gossip queen, told me the wife had moved out. She didn't know why for certain, but the way the guy moped around it was a good bet the wife left him. Mike looked up at me and gave me the sad stare he'd been wearing lately.

I gave him a guilty smile and said, "Sorry about the noise. I'll turn it down when I get inside."

"It's okay," he said. "I'm going out." His eyes went towards the carpet. "My first time in a singles bar in eight years."

I looked at him and struggled for something to say. Nothing was coming and I simply said, "Good luck." It sounded weak.

"Thanks," he said. I watched him walk up the hall and wanted to say something else. Part of my brain said to leave it be, not to get involved with someone else's problem. The other part of my brain just got disgusted with that thought. As Mike got in the elevator I made a promise to myself to talk to him more the next time I saw him.

Then I turned to the apartment door and quietly said to myself, "Please not Sarah Rosenburg."

When I walked into the apartment Kaye was sitting on a chair in the living room. As she got up and came towards me I had a chance to do what I love to do -- stare at the beauty that owns my heart. She was wearing a sports bra top and a pair of black yoga pants, which allowed me to appreciate her teardrop breasts, her taut stomach, the curve of her thighs, and the beautifully sculpted bare feet with a silver toe ring on her right index toe. Kaye goes to the gym regularly and is proud of her body, especially since she was a little pudgy as a kid. She's not painfully thin like a celebrity and not muscular like the weightlifting steroid queens, her body has a nice hourglass shape to it. In order to accent this, Kaye loves wearing belly chains. Tonight she wore a silver chain with colored beads hanging around the length of it. Kaye loves wearing belly chains as much as I love watching her in them.

As soon as she got to me Kaye gave me a passionate kiss, a big hug, and then stuck a drink in my hand. "You need to catch up, quickly."

While Kaye loved to workout, she also loved to drink and smoke pot. It was one of the contradictions that I loved about her.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a woman standing on the other side of the room, facing my Rembrandt print. When she turned it took me a few seconds to recognize her, but once I did I'd have traded anything in the world to be listening to Sarah Rosenberg for the rest of the night. Plastic surgery had altered her face, which was no big surprise, and the only reason I even thought of Amanda Gailing was because she's the one who gave me the print. But the fact that she was standing in my living room after four years was nothing less than shocking. You rarely expect the fugitive criminals you've known to come back into your life.

Finding out what she told Kaye about me suddenly took on a whole new importance.

"Hey stranger," she said, her voice sounding like we were friends who parted amicably. It took every ounce of will power I had to not grab the closest sharp object and lunge at her throat.

"H-hey. What are you doing...here?"

She walked over to me. "Just happened to be back in town and thought I'd look up a familiar face." She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

"Yours isn't so familiar anymore," I said. When I first met her she was a brunette. The woman who stood before me had blonde hair, with higher cheekbones and a wider smile than she used to have. A pair of very full, and very sexy, Angelina Jolie style lips accented that smile. But those smoky bedroom eyes hadn't changed one bit, and neither had the message her smile conveyed. When I first met her I thought it was saying, "I'm wild", but three years later I knew I had misread it. Her smile was giving away her true nature. It was saying, "I'm trouble".

Suddenly Kaye took the drink from my hand and brought it to my lips. "Less talking more drinking," she said. Between the big, shit eating grin on her face and a playful look in her eyes I could tell Kaye was drunk.

We all sat down. "So," I said to Kaye, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. "What lies has she been telling you about me?"

"None! She's good! I couldn't get a thing out of her. Actually we spent most of the time talking about me."

Amanda smiled. "Yes, and I must say she's everything I expected you'd end up with Maggie." Her face twisted a little. "Except for the fact that she's not out. Never thought you'd stand for a closet case."

"I'm only not out at work," Kaye corrected. "And that's just because the principal is a raging homophobic asshole who's got the school board in his pocket."

I noticed a small silver video camera on the coffee table. "Whose is that?"

"Amanda's" Kaye said. "She suggested we make that hot video of what we were doing before. Make you jealous. I like the way she thinks."

"She is a little devil," I said.

Amanda smiled at me again, and I vowed that somehow I'd punch her before she left. Then I had to ask Amanda the question I'd been dreading since I walked in the door. "So, what have you been up to?"

Amanda smiled that fiendish smile again, stole a glance at Kaye, and said, "Thought you'd never ask."

Motherfucker, I thought, she's enjoying this. I knew she hadn't told Kaye a thing about the past, because Kaye would have beheaded me the moment I walked through the door. But then I started to worry that the bitch was waiting until I got home before she fucked up my life just for the fun of it. That's when I realized my predicament -- I couldn't warn Kaye about Amanda without exposing things I didn't want Kaye to know about me. I just had to hope that whatever brought Amanda here would be resolved quickly. And that it didn't have anything to do with us.

"I've been traveling a lot," Amanda said. "You know, with work and all. I explained to Kaye that's why we haven't seen each other in so long. The world is my office."

"Now that's a cool fucking job," Kaye said, "working for an international hotel chain, going to exotic places and acting like a guest to check out the service."

"Yeah," I said. "Amanda always was able to get away with the craziest things. She's practically a criminal." I smiled at Amanda. She didn't look worried in the least. I realized there was something about Amanda that wasn't there four years ago. Beyond the obvious physical changes there was something even bigger that was different under the surface. It was in the way she had moved when she came towards me, the way her arms hung at her sides, the way she smiled, the way she looked at me and everything else in the room. It annoyed me that I couldn't put my finger on it, because whatever it was, my mind was telling me to be frightened of it.

The CD player was on shuffle and a song by the Sneaker Pimps started. Amanda looked at me. "Remember this?" She turned to Kaye. "This was our song back in the day. We loved dancing to it. And fucking to it."

Kaye's eyes widened. I knew she was turned on, by Amanda's candor and the sultry glance I received after she said it. "Well," Kaye said as she picked up the remote and switched to another song. "We don't want to get too ahead of ourselves." She chose a dance song and stood up, offering a hand to each of us. Amanda and I stood and the three of us started to dance together.

We worked our bodies to the rhythm, occasionally taking turns grinding up to each other. There was also laughter and goofiness and for a few minutes I forgot I was in the company of one of the most treacherous women I'd ever met.

At one point Kaye reached over and turned down the volume. "I hate to be a downer, but I need to take a break." She started walking away.

I was a little out of breath when I asked, "Where are you going?"

In a proper tone, she responded, "To fire some ass monkeys into the toilet."

There was a pause, and then we all burst out laughing. Not a giggly laugh, but a full-blown go-until-you-can't-breathe-anymore laugh. It took almost a minute for us to settle down, but then Kaye lost it again and Amanda and I followed suit. Eventually I controlled myself enough to ask, "Where the hell did you get that?"

Kaye had been laughing so hard that tears were coming from her eyes. Between giggles she said, "One of my kids. It took everything I had not to laugh while I told him that's not the way to ask about going to the bathroom."

That sent us into a laughing fit again, and it was another minute before Kaye could function enough to walk away. Amanda and I were trying to catch our breaths, still having the occasional chuckle, when I heard the bathroom door shut. My laughter stopped on a dime, my smile dropped and my tone became serious as I gave Amanda a hard look and said, "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Her smile widened and she shook her head. "Well, well, not much has changed. You're still all business."

"You want money? I'll give it to you. Just get out of here once you have it."

"And miss all the fun of watching you squirm? Little Miss Serious, always making plans and plotting your every move. Just the possibility that you might fall apart is worth sticking around for."

"Stick around much longer and I might have to call the police. They'd love to sit and talk with you, wouldn't they?"

"You're not going to call the police. Then you might have to explain our past to Kaye. I don't think she'll want to be your sweetheart much longer after that."

I let my anger get away from me. "Bitch!"

I threw a fist at her, but she caught it in her hand. My other hand grabbed her throat and she grabbed mine. Her arms were skinny but proved to be all muscle as she wrestled me down on the couch. I pressed my thumb onto her windpipe, but other than a little gagging she showed no sign that I was hurting her. She got her fist away from my hand and pried my other one off her neck, then grabbed a throw pillow and covered my face with it. Suddenly I couldn't breathe. I kicked and threw my fists at her body but I couldn't see where I was aiming. Amanda pressed the pillow harder and I thought she was going to kill me.

Then she pulled it off and I coughed and gasped for air. When I looked up Amanda was putting the pillow back in place. I couldn't stop coughing as I heard the end of the toilet flushing. Amanda helped me up to a sitting position and started rubbing my back.

Kaye stepped into the doorway. She was stark naked.

My body actually stopped coughing for a moment. Amanda said, "So much for not getting ahead of ourselves." And then I started coughing again.

Kaye looked at me with concern. "Babe, are you okay?"

"Just..." I coughed twice and then held up my glass, "...went down the wrong pipe."

She walked in and my coughing started to subside as I admired her. I loved looking at the curve of her pert breasts, which were capped with small pink areolas, and her nipples were like hard pebbles on top. Her mound had a strip of brown hair that she kept neatly trimmed. Kaye walked over to the table and picked up the camera, turned and started hooking it up to the television. Her lovely toned ass commanded our attention, the small butterfly tattoo on her right cheek somehow managing to enhance its perfection.