by Matt Tims
It wasn’t just her warm, wet mouth around his sensitive cock that was taking him to cloud nine. It was so more than that. There was a deeper and more meaningful explanation for this paradise. Everything about Claire exuded love—and it wasn’t just sexual. It was in every smile she shot his way, every effortless flip of her hair, and every giggle over something ditzy she did. Everything about her was so real and raw; but at the same time, he felt her agony. He could feel her pain from previous relationships that had ended in abuse. There was so much heartache from ex-boyfriends who’d taken advantage of her. She was such a simple woman—not mentally or emotionally. She was far from elementary in those departments. She was simple in the way she acted. She wanted to love; and in return, she yearned to be loved. There would never be another moment of discomfort in her life for as he was alive. He would make sure of that.
Claire relaxed her throat and took her new boyfriend as deep as she could, allowing his thick girth to stretch her esophagus. The way a man squirmed whenever she did this drove her crazy. She loved the feeling of giving head. It was one of the few times in her life that she actually felt in control, but she wasn’t getting off on controlling Mike. She was getting off on pleasing him.
Suddenly, there was a hand on her head.
Annnnnnnnnnd I’m back! Miss me, Claire? Guess what time it is? Time for you to take some abuse! Open up that throat and let him gag you until tears are pouring down your cheeks! Because guess what, slut? You’re just a sex toy to him. You’re three warm, wet holes for him to get off in. Bob is right. You know he is.
No, Mike’s different.
No, they’re all the same, Claire.
That hand drifted from the top of her head, down to her cheek, before moving the blonde locks out of her face.
“I want to see your eyes,” he said.
Claire instantly peered up at him.
He didn’t want to abuse her, he didn’t want to take advantage of her, and he didn’t want to cause a single second of pain. He merely wanted to see her. At that moment, Claire knew she’d heard her inner voice for the final time. No one would call her a slut, or a whore, or worthless ever again.
If she undercooked spaghetti, Mike would laugh. If she overcooked a burger, he would smile. If she purchased the wrong item at the store, she would be greeted with a big kiss instead of a slap to the face or a degrading spanking. The guy she was staring at would be the man she spent the rest of her life with. She just knew it. She’d never craved another person like this.
Mike squirmed out of her hold and flipped her onto her back. He quickly propped himself on top of her, allowing her to feel his weight before sliding inside.
Claire placed her hand on her lover’s chest and gently pushed back. “Slow, slow, slow…”
He relaxed his pace and began taking long, deep, tempered strokes inside her. Every mild thrust sent her head back into the pillow as she attempted to catch her breath. Her breasts and erect nipples heaved as she gasped for air. She was experiencing the most filling, satisfying, rewarding sexual experience of her life, and Mike was barely moving.
“Faster,” she requested with her eyes closed in ecstasy.
Mike increased his tempo.
The fifteen-year-old version of himself would’ve cum the instant he pushed inside her, and the thirty-five year-old version wasn’t faring much better. Something about her drove him crazy. Actually, it wasn’t something—it was everything. Every curve of her voluptuous body, every girlish moan which escaped from her mouth, and every time she glanced up to show her vivid blue eyes: it was overwhelming. And while their first time together wouldn’t be the longest and it certainly wouldn’t be the best, it would leave a lasting impression on his soul.
He began taking hard thrusts inside her, waiting for her head to shoot up in pleasure; and when it did, he grasped the sides of her face with his hands, held her in place, and kissed her.
Mike and Claire both came together.
Five Minutes Later.
It was such a basic moment of bonding. Mike, lying on his back with his head resting on a pillow and his arm wrapped around his lover. Claire, with her head snuggled on his shoulder as her fingers played with his dark chest hair. It was an affection Claire had spent the past two decades of her life searching for, and a feeling that Mike had unknowingly missed out on for the past twenty years. They were two puzzle pieces who completed each other in a world full of jagged edges.
“You remember Tommy Bargins?”
“Who?” Claire asked.
“Tommy Bargins,” Mike repeated. “Scrawny, kinda goofy-looking kid. He graduated with us.”
“Tommy…oh!” she remembered. “Red hair?”
He chuckled to himself. “Yep, that’s him.”
“What about him?” she inquired.
“Tommy was in my English class in ninth grade,” Mike said. “One day, we show up and the words ‘pop quiz’ are written on the chalkboard. Everyone in the class instantly knew they were screwed. We’d been reading Hamlet and literally no one could pay attention. It was just so fuckin’ boring.”
Claire laughed.
“Unbeknownst to any of us, a couple of seniors had decided to fuck with Tommy that morning,” he went on. “They pretended to be his buddy in the hallway, one of them slipped a laxative into his water bottle, and Tommy ended up drinking it without having a clue.”
“Really?” she asked. “Kids can be so cruel.”
“I know, right?” Mike agreed before continuing. “So, the teacher passes out this surprise quiz, when Tommy raises his hand and asks if he can go to the bathroom. Now, our teacher was this old lady who was kind of a bitch. She was always nasty and in a bad mood, and her number one no-no was letting anyone go to the bathroom during tests and quizzes. She thought it was a way to cheat.”
It didn’t take long for Claire to connect the dots. “Oh no…”
Mike smiled as he vividly remembered this moment from his youth. “A minute goes by and he asks again. This time, the teacher tells him if he asks to leave again, then he’s going to get a zero. So, it’s quiet for a few more minutes, but then suddenly this smell starts wafting through the room.”
She ceased playing with his chest hair and moved her hand over her mouth. “He didn’t…”
“I still remember the look on the girl’s face who sat in front of me,” he laughed. “It was like someone had just told her that her dad died. Standing next to his desk, in beige khakis, and with a big shit stain on his ass…is Tommy. And from that moment on, Tommy Bargins was known as ‘Tommy Shits.’”
“That’s where that came from!?” Claire shouted. “That’s why everyone called him that!?”
“Yep,” he confirmed. “One moment in ninth grade gave him a reputation for four years; and if I ran into Tommy now, do you know what I would say to myself? I would say, ‘hey look, it’s Tommy Shits.’”
She giggled before moving her hand back to his chest.
“We had a moment in tenth grade,” Mike told her. “No, it was more than a moment. We had a thing, but you ended up hating me.”
“I never actually hated you,” Claire rebuffed.
“Well, it wasn’t a good situation regardless,” he said. “I’m just happy that you didn’t remember me in that coffee shop as a scared fifteen-year-old.”
“Mikey No Balls,” she giggled. “Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
Mike burst out into laughter. “It most certainly does. How many people get a chance at a do-over twenty years later? I just feel so lucky.”
She tilted her head and smiled up at his face. “I’m the lucky one.”
“My wife texted me last night and told me she got a lawyer, and he encouraged her to press for full alimony payments.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she questioned.
He stared down into her warm blue eyes. “Because I don’t care. I mean, she makes like twice as much money as I do so who knows how that’s going to work? But it wouldn’t bother me even
if she didn’t. You wanna know why?”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because last night, the only thing on my mind was you,” he told her. “And I realized that there’s nothing in the world that could bother me, because I finally found the one.”
She gazed at him with her mouth agape. “Mike, I don’t know what to say…”
“I want to marry you.”
She instantly propped herself up on her arm. “What!?”
“I want to marry you,” he repeated, his confident cadence never quivering even for a moment.
Claire’s free hand moved over her mouth. “Oh my God, Mike…”
“I wanted to marry you twenty years ago, and I’m not waiting any longer” he revealed. “The second both of our divorces go through, we’ll go to some tiny chapel somewhere—just the two of us—and I want you to be my wife.”
Two decades of regret briskly disappeared as Mike felt his soon to be wife lean over and kiss him. And that inner voice that always told him what a failure he was? That vanished as well. How could you be a failure if you’re with the woman you love? Money, success, big houses, and expensive vacations didn’t mean anything if you’re missing that special someone. Every meal he ate, every destination he visited, and every moment he spent lounging around would feel like he was on top of the world, because he finally had his girl.
Chapter 7 - Memories
Twelve Months Later.
“Here we are…1…1:17 PM on a Monday. May 25th. D-Day plus two…”
The sound of footsteps accompanied a camera recording the journey from the basement, up into the kitchen.
“Two days ago the greatest moment in the history of humanity happened,” the voice continued as the camera made its way around the kitchen table and toward the living room. “Weighing in at six and a half pounds with sparkling blue eyes and adorable blonde hair…”
Claire looked up and immediately raised her right hand over her face, attempting to block herself from the view of her husband’s phone. “Oh, come on, Mike! Seriously!?”
The brand new dad laughed as he made his way into the living room.
“I look like shit!” Claire said, still trying to hide her face.
“You look amazing,” he rebutted. “Come on, let me see that smile!”
She shot an exaggerated smirk in the direction of his phone. “Happy?”
“Not as happy as someone…” he sarcastically moaned while taking a seat next to her on the sofa. He zoomed in to record his two-day-old daughter suckling on Claire’s right nipple. “Save some for Daddy…”
“Oh my God!” she rolled her eyes with a laugh before turning her attention to her daughter. “Please don’t end up like your perverted father!”
Mike cleared his throat and began doing his best impersonation of a British TV newscaster. “The media and paparazzi have been clamoring for footage of the royal baby for days now. This is, however, the first video we have witnessed of the child: Baby Elizabeth.”
“Royal baby…” Claire laughed. “My blood is the furthest thing from royalty.”
“Here we see the child, feeding from her mother,” he continued in his British accent. “The Queen of Yorkshire.”
“Yorkshire?” she questioned.
“I don’t know,” he laughed back in his regular voice. “It sounds British to me.”
Claire shook her head.
He quickly got back into character. “And as beautiful as the baby girl is, the media is dying for an update on the Queen. So, the question, Queen Claire. How are you feeling?”
“Ugly.”
“And?” Mike asked.
“Fat…still.”
“Ugly and fat…still,” he repeated from behind the phone. “Insightful…”
The phone zoomed in on Claire’s makeup-less face. Deep, heavy bags hovered below her eyes. “You’re gorgeous,” Mike told her, back in his normal accent.
“Yeah, right…” she groaned.
“You are,” he repeated. “You’re just as beautiful as the day I laid my eyes on you for the first time back in tenth grade. I can still remember you strutting into class dressed in little boy shorts and a cute t-shirt. Your blonde hair bounced around and your blue eyes gleamed. It was like every butterfly in the world was stuffed into my stomach.”
She commented with a sigh, “That was a long, long, long time ago…”
“And I still get that feeling every time I look at you. Every time I see you shake the hair out of your eyes, every time you flash that smile at me, and every time you strut around in your little boy shorts,” he laughed. “You drive me fuckin’ crazy.”
Claire turned to the camera and rolled her eyes. “Are we making home movies?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied.
“Do you think one day our daughter is gonna want to listen to her father talk about watching Mom strut around in boy shorts?”
He pretended to contemplate the question. “I was actually thinking sometime down the road we invite my parents over, maybe a few friends, pass some popcorn around, and watch this together.”
“Well, I may feel like I just got hit by a truck, but I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world,” she admitted, still disgusted by her physical appearance. Mike and Elizabeth more than made up for her lack of confidence at the moment, however.
The parents both smiled down at their newborn baby girl.
“What if you never walked into that coffee shop?”
Claire looked over at Mike. “What?”
“That coffee shop,” he stated once again. “What if you decided to go somewhere else that day? I never drink coffee, so why did I ask Shawn to meet me at a coffee shop? For me to be there at that exact moment was such a stroke of luck. And then for you to come walking in. What if it never happened?”
“But it did, Mike.”
“I know, but what if it hadn’t?” he asked.
“Who knows?” said Claire. “Maybe some other girl would’ve walked in. Maybe you would’ve decided to go talk to her. Maybe she would be holding your child right now.”
He gazed down at his baby daughter as he processed what his wife was saying. “But it wouldn’t be this.”
She wasn’t following. “What?”
“It wouldn’t be this,” he reiterated. “You, or Elizabeth, or any of this. It would be different. And this…this is perfect.”
Claire smiled at him.
He announced with an unbelievable amount of certainty to his voice, “We’re going to watch our daughter flourish into an amazing woman. We’re going to grow old together, and someday we’ll be sitting in the backyard, watching our grandchildren run around, and I’m going to wrap my arm around you and still feel a million butterflies dancing in my stomach.”
Seventeen Years, Three-Hundred and Sixty-Three Days Later.
“I’m not doing it! Let’s just save it for next year!”
Claire trailed her daughter into the kitchen, following the sound of soccer cleats tapping on the wooden floor the entire way.
“Elizabeth!” Claire shouted as she grabbed the teen’s arm. We’re doing this!”
The young blonde began to rapidly shake her head back and forth. Snuffles soon gave way to streams of tears. “But, Mom, it’s the last time!”
Claire wrapped her arms around her daughter’s body, consoling her the best she could. “I know, baby, so let’s enjoy it.”
Ten years ago, Mike began experiencing shortness of breath. A few days passed before he felt a pain in his chest and right shoulder. Then a horrific cough with bloody mucus set off alarm bells. Claire drove him to the emergency room where later that day he was diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer, and given a six percent chance to make it five years. When Claire pulled the doctor aside and asked for his honest opinion, she was told that it was the most aggressive case of lung cancer he’d ever seen. It didn’t make sense. Mike had never smoked a single cigarette in his life.
“I wanna save it!” Elizabeth whaled into he
r mother’s shoulder. “I don’t want him to go away!”
Claire ran her hand through her daughter’s long blonde hair. “He’s never going away. He’ll always be with us.”
The chemotherapy didn’t help. In fact, it only made the suffering that much more excruciating. The strong, vibrant, full of life father had been reduced to a bald, pale, shell of his former self. The energy had been sucked out of her; and despite the happy face he put on around his family, there was no hiding the pain he was in.
But Mike couldn’t just fade away. He refused to leave his wife and eight-year-old daughter all alone. He needed to be there for his family. He had to guide them and remind them of just how special they truly were, so he started writing. Nineteen multi-page, handwritten letters later, he was done.
Every year on his wife’s birthday, and every year on his daughter’s birthday, they were instructed to open a sealed envelope with a date marked on it. The letters consisted of reminders, life lessons, jokes, and memories. Once Elizabeth hit puberty, her letters turned more detailed and took a different tone. He wanted her to respect herself for the type of person she truly was. There was no need to seek male approval or put her body on display, because her mind was the prize; but if she found a man, then he needed to be strong. He had to be able to make her a better person. He couldn’t ever consider taking advantage of her or using her in any way. Mike saw the life he wanted for his little girl, and he was going to walk her through it, even if he wasn’t there for her in person.
Claire’s letters lacked the detail of the ones left for Elizabeth. They weren’t full of instructions and advice. They much much simpler than that.
He adored Claire. Everything she did in his eyes was perfect. The last thing he desired was for her to dwell in a pit of sorrow. He encouraged her to go out and find a man who deserved her; but more importantly, a father figure who could properly guide Elizabeth along her life’s journey. He wanted his wife to always remember how lucky she was to have their daughter in her life. Somehow, someway, the two most special women on the planet lived together, and that was something both of them needed to cherish.
