When The Past Comes Back To Bite You

"I understand and approve, Mark. We had no future together and it was only good till we met somebody and committed to them. I would have done the same if I had met a guy I love."

She then gave me a longing kiss that lasted for an eternity.

"In a way I am jealous. I kind of love you and I wish you had the same feeling for me. I'll dress up and be gone in a jiffy."

And that she did.

For the rest of the day, I was a bundle of nerve. I had mixed feeling about letting Janice go. Pushing her away to be more precise! Her appearance in my life had reintroduced some confidence in myself. It's a no-brainer that a man's confidence will peek after going to bed and satisfying a woman way younger than him.

But as much as I liked my time with Janice, what I sensed developing with Maria took precedence. I like Janice a lot. She was a really nice kid and I wished her a lot of happiness. But Maria has been my first and I now felt that she could be my next and my last.

Around 10:00 o'clock that evening, I phoned Maria.

"Hi Maria!"

"Hi Mark! I hope you are not in town around the corner. I was just about to jump in the shower and get ready for bed."

I laughed.

"No! I am in my own apartment, thinking about you."

"How sweet! I thought about you too a lot today. So, what's up?"

"I have been wondering a lot about the last thing you told me."

"And what was that again?"

"You said, and I quote, 'I love you'", I said.

There was silence on the other end. It lasted at least an hour or maybe just a few seconds. But it seemed like a long time to me. Was I reading her wrong?

"Yes...! I said that. I hope I didn't scare you away. It just seemed like the right thing to say at that moment. I felt so good and it had been such a long time since I felt that way. I'm sorry if it came out wrong," she said, her words spilling out like if she needed to apologize.

"No, no, not at all! It was perfect and I meant it when I answered that I love you too," I said.

There was no sound for a while. After a few seconds, I heard her sobbing.

"Maria, are you crying?" I asked.

"I... I... I'll phone you back," she said and hung up.

I stayed by the phone the whole 15 minutes it took her to call back. I answered on the first ring.

"Hi Mark! I'm sorry for earlier. My emotions got the best of me. I... I always have a hard time around bedtime. That's when I miss Tom the most: the loving, the caring, and the cuddling... And then you phoned. It is true that I feel good with you, that I can really say that I love you. But at the same time it made me feel cheap, as if I was betraying him," she said.

"But..." I started to say.

"Hush Mark! Let me finish. My feelings are all mixed up. I know I have to go on with my life, and out of nowhere you appeared, a blast from the past, a man I never really stopped loving. I felt cheap tonight not because I said that I loved you, but because in all my years with Tom I never told him how much you meant to me back then and because even in his arm I sometimes – mostly at the beginning – kept thinking about you," she said, leaving no room for interruption.

There was silence on the phone line for a while. I decided to fill it with my own admission.

"Maria, I understand what you're feeling right now. I did the same thing with Sandy and the few girlfriends I had before her. You were always there with them. I just don't feel the same guilty feeling about the fact that I have to move with my life. I am over Sandy and my screwed up marriage. Right now, there is only you and what I feel for you," I carefully said.

Another silence followed.

"Can we leave it at that now? And maybe speak about it next weekend when we meet?" asked Maria.

"That's a good plan," I answered. "I'll phone you later this week."

We met again the next week. I drove and we went to a quiet lounge. When she arrived, she gave me a nice kiss that lasted a few seconds, followed by a heartfelt hug. I felt a lot of tenderness in that simple gesture. It set the mood for the whole evening.

During the meal, Maria insisted that I have some wine with her. I hesitated a little bit, then decided that I could always take an hotel room later that night.

After our admission of love, we were more touchy feely all evening. Our conversation turned more to what we expected for the future rather than what we shared together when we were younger. The evening went so fast that the first thing I knew, the meal was done, the wine bottle was empty, and it was time to leave the restaurant. I had three glasses of wine and there was no way I could drive my car. I said so to Maria.

"That's crazy! You can't take a cab all the way to your town," she said.

"No, I'll simply find a motel around here, no big deal!" I answered.

"Forget about a motel. I have a big house with plenty of room. You are staying at my place tonight and that's the end of it," Maria replied.

And so I ended up at her house a few minutes later. She opened another bottle of wine and we sat on the couch. Both of us were quite subdued, a bit embarrassed or panic stricken by this development.

After a while I raised my glass and offered a toast.

"A toast to a wonderful woman," I said.

Maria blushed.

"A toast to a handsome man that brings hope for the future," she answered.

We sipped from our glasses and put them down on the coffee table, looking at each other with a shy smile on our faces.

On an impulse, I bent toward her and started a gentle, tentative kiss. In a matter of seconds the kiss turned to an intense necking session on the couch. I am pretty sure Maria had many unspent sexual emotions that surfaced in that longing kiss. We were glued to each other and years of separation shed away from our mind in that kiss. We were again the two horny teenagers madly in love with each other. I can't recall who started what, but our hands were soon exploring each other bodies. I came to that realization when my hand reached her breasts and I felt her hand going down to my crotch, seizing my hardened cock. There was no stopping us from that point.

My hand went down to the hem of her skirt and started to explore the inside of her thighs. Maria gasped when my fingers finally reached and touched her pussy through the fabric of her panties.

We stopped kissing and looked at each other. I could read the lust in her face as clearly as she could read mine.

"Maria, I love you, I need you!" I said.

She got up from the couch and pulled me up.

"Come! I want this too," she said while pulling me toward her bedroom.

There, we undressed without losing a second. Without ceremony, I took her in my embrace and guided her onto the bed. I pushed her on her back and left a trail of kisses from her lips to her breasts then all the way down toward her pussy.

Maria wasn't anymore the slender teenager that I'd known, but a mature woman with an abundance of soft curves. It was like discovering her anew.

When my lips made contact with the lips of her pussy, she let out a gasp. She was wet beyond imagination. I suddenly realized that, as a teenager, I had never lick her pussy. We weren't there yet in our sexual exploration. She had licked my cock a bit, even put it in her mouth, but we never really had oral sex together. For the first time ever, my tongue tasted her pussy slowly then went up to find her clit in the crease of her labia. Another gasp escaped her.

Gently I started to lick her clit. She moaned at each pass of my tongue and each gentle lick on her clit. Two of my fingers found their way inside her as I increased the pace of my licking. Within a matter of minutes she had a strong orgasm, her pussy clamping on my fingers and her hips jerking up and down in a reflex to increase the friction of my mouth on her clit.

As soon as her orgasm appeased, she gently grab my hair and pulled me up toward her. Even if I wanted to enter her right away on my way up, I resisted the temptation so we could gently kiss each other in the gentle afterglow of her first orgasm.

After a while she pushed me a bit.

"Mark, I want you. I need you. Take me," she said.

And for the first time in 23 years, I entered her.

We gently made love for the rest of the night. We rekindled a long lost love that we thought behind us till recently. The best of our lovemaking was the cuddling and the gentle caresses without sexual intent that followed our physical exertion.

I awoke the next morning with Maria arm over my chest and her soft body pressing along my side. She was beautiful in that peaceful moment. I had never known her like that. As teenagers, we only had few short moments of sexual ecstasy then it was time to go home to our parents. I never woke up with Maria in my arms. Another first.

We spent a very nice morning together, eating breakfast, kissing, drinking coffee, kissing, having lunch, kissing then making love before I had to go back home.

Chapter 3

Learning to face the past and to move on

The next few weeks I spent all my weekend at her place and we skyped each other every evening. We even had a few cam-to-cam sessions and we masturbated at the sight of our lover naked on video cam.

After a month Maria announced that she was coming in town Friday for a meeting at the head office of her accounting firm. I knew that meeting was important. We were so much in love with each other that we'd already talked about the impossibility of living with each other while one had to commute 90 minutes to work every day. Maria had offered to ask for a transfer to the head office. It would also allow her to be close to her son and daughter that were also living here.

Funny thing! We were close enough in such a short span of time to talk about moving together but I was still unable to ask her why she ditched me in high school. It seemed that the moment was never appropriate to ask that nagging question. It had such a negative undertone to it that I never found a way in our dealings with each other. That was mostly a question that I kept on my lonely evening away from Maria. While with her, I only wanted to tell her how much I loved her and how good it felt to be with her.

On Thursday, we agreed to meet at a restaurant downtown and that we would end up at my place for the weekend.

I was in a cleaning frenzy as soon as we turned off our video chat session. I had taken a few bachelor bad habits, including to simply pile up my dirty laundry in my closet and piling up the dishes in the sink until I ran out of plates. It's not a way to impress a date, that's for sure.

I had just put a load in the washer and was heading back toward my apartment when Janice opened the door of her apartment. Her eyes were red and she looked distraught.

"Janice, something's wrong?" I asked.

I saw that she had a hard time refraining from crying.

"I need to talk to you," she said, sobbing. "Can I come over?"

Oh my! A broken heart! My first impulse was to reject her demand. With our history and my newfound love for Maria, I didn't think it was wise to let her use me again as a comforting presence. But at the same time, she looked very sad and showed so many signs of distress. I realized that I couldn't turn her away in the shape she was. My love for Maria would prevail.

Janice went straight to the couch where she sat and started to cry. I sat beside her, put an arm over her shoulders and pulled her to me so she could cry on my shoulder.

"What's wrong Janice?" I asked.

"I... I... I'm pregnant," she finally said. And she started to cry even louder and harder

My heart stopped for a heartbeat or two. Pregnant! There was only one question to ask.

"Am I the father?"

Janice regained some composure.

"Yes. I didn't sleep with any other guy since I met you."

"But you told me that you were on the pill," I stated, hating the accusation of my tone as soon as it left my lips.

"I had an infection and had to take antibiotic when I met you. I didn't know it would have an effect on my pills," she said. Then she resumed sobbing. "Oh Mark! I am not ready for this. I am just starting college. I want to do things. I don't want to be pregnant."

I wasn't sure what to say. As a matter of principle, I am not in favour of abortion. For me it is a last resort solution. But I also believe that women can decide what to do with their body and that if Janice decided one way or the other I had to be there as a support.

Maria! Oh my God! I just met the woman of my life. I had met the one woman I was sure that could become that old lady that would hold my hand after my retirement. I had met the woman that would grow up old with me. No, think about that later. Focus right now on the problem at hand.

"Janice, what do you want to do? It is your choice and I promise that I will be there all the way. What do you want?" I asked.

"I don't want an abortion but I don't want a baby either. I have too much to do. I have to finish college. I have to travel. I have to see the world. I can't have a baby," she said and started to cry again.

I counted the months in my head. The baby would probably be born next fall, right in the middle of her session. But with some coaching, she could probably have the baby without hurting her study. Can I become a father? Take care of the baby while taking a sabbatical. That would be doable.

Maria!

How would she react to that development? We had just renewed our love for each other. We were in love but how would she react to the fact that I suddenly had a baby in my future. 'Oh by the way Maria, move with me but we will need a bigger apartment for the baby."

I was so screwed!

Janice stopped crying.

"I was thinking about giving the baby up for adoption," she said.

Her idea hurt me to the core. For the past 15 years I had dreamed of being a father. Too many of Sandy's birth control pills had dashed that hope of mine. And now, a young woman was bearing my child and I would give up on him or her. No way!

Janice and I finally ended in bed together that night but not as lovers. She needed my reassuring presence.

I had a really hard time at work the next day. Like a zombie, I simply delivered my class escaping without answering any questions from the students. I had to brace myself to meet Maria and tell her this new development in my life. It was too big to even try to hide it.

At 6:00 o'clock I entered the restaurant. Maria was already there. We kissed and I sat. I was not very talkative. Silently we looked at the menu. That's when I realized that Maria was also very quiet. She sat stiffly in her chair and barely looked at me. That didn't bore well for the rest of the evening, knowing that I had devastating news for her.

"Maria, is there something bothering you?" I finally asked, delaying the moment I would have to tell her my awkward situation.

Maria, the beautiful woman I loved, looked at me with a very sad look on her face.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I have some disturbing news for you and I am not sure you will like it very much," she said, barely audible over the brouhaha of the restaurant.

"Well go ahead, I also have some bad news for you," I said.

"What is it?" she asked.

"No, you go first," I replied.

Her company probably told her that her request for transfer was denied. Or the request was put on the back burner for a while. After I tell her about Janice, she would probably be relieved.

"It's the second time you got me in this predicament," she started to say. "I just hope this time that I will not lose you over it."

Now I was lost. What was she talking about? My thoughts were interrupted when Maria resumed.

"I never told you why I broke up with you in high school. My parents forced me. They didn't think that you were a reliable man for me. You were too wild. They thought that you would amount to nothing and decided that I had to be away from you," she said.

So that was the reason she broke up from me. Her parents forced her. They were so sure I was bad for Maria that the whole family moved away. Wow! It felt good to finally hear the truth. But Maria brought me back to the present.

"When Mom realized that you got me pregnant she told Dad and he decided to cut all links between us. He had a standing offer to move and he took it. For him, you were not husband material and he also wanted to avoid the terrible shame of having an unwed pregnant daughter. Well, you did it again. I found out today that I am pregnant of your child. Again."

I choked on my drink, water even spilling from my nose.

Maria pregnant! And Janice pregnant! What a mess. What am I suppose to do now?

Maria came closer and hit me on the back while I was still choking on my drink.

"It's alright Mark. Don't panic! I love you and we will be having a child, as many couples before us since Adam and Eve," said Maria.

"I had to tell you point blank like that because I found it today and I am a bit upset, but also because my two kids are coming to meet us here. I wanted to introduce you to them because we are heading toward something that will involved them," Maria said. "We will talk about it later, but I had to tell you right away."

"What was it you wanted to tell me?" she asked after I had regained my respiratory functions.

"Oh, well... It's like it... er..." I started to say.

"Oh there's Joshua, my baby!" said Maria interrupting me.

A smiling young man was walking toward our table.

"Josh, this is Mark, an old friend from high school. Mark, this is my son Josh," Maria said, introducing us.

I stood up and shook his hand. Even meeting him for the first time, he looked so familiar that I felt that he was already an acquaintance. Genetics can do that.

We were still exchanging greetings when Maria told us: "And here come my daughter, my first born."

I was about to sit down when I turned my head toward the new comer. It was Janice. I missed the chair, ended up falling to the floor, hitting my head on a nearby table, and causing a little commotion.

As stunned as I was, I was able to see that Janice was as surprised as me. She stood there mouth agape while Maria and Joshua were helping me back up. As soon as I was standing, Maria introduced me to Janice.

"Janice, this is Mark, the man I told you about. Mark, this is Janice, my eldest," said Maria.

We shook hands.

I don't know how to describe exactly this supper. Awkward? Confusing? Nightmarish? All of the above?

When Janice and I shook hands, we had an unspoken understanding to keep our relationship from Maria and Joshua. I am sure also that Maria didn't want to share right away the news about her pregnancy with her kids.

And the revelation of Maria shed a new light over my relationship with Janice, her first born. Janice didn't know it yet, but I was her father. What a mess! I felt like crap. I was an unknowing creep, a pervert. I had slept and knocked up my own daughter. Could my life sink any lower than that? I was devastated.

But now was not the time to talk about it. However these were many huge life-altering secrets to keep.

Fortunately, there was Joshua, unaware of all the tension around the table. His easy-going personality made us all feel a bit better during the supper. He even teased me a bit about my relationship with his mother. It was nothing hurtful, just a bit of teasing that made me likes him a lot, but in my frame of mind, I was unable to answer in kind.

Unfortunately, he was the first to leave, having to meet some friends later.

After his departure, silence fell over our table.

I love Maria. I had to come clean with what was happening with my life. But here was not the place. I asked if it would be agreeable to them to go to my apartment. Maria was unsure at first, but when Janice replied that it was a great idea, Maria accepted.

We jumped in a cab. When I said the address, Maria had a weird look on her face. After all, it was the same address as her daughter's.