Fisher of Men

by Phoebe Alexander

  “Let-down is the term for when the milk starts to flow, that's all.” Leah stood watching for a moment, mesmerized by the fact that mammals sustain their young by making their food. It is truly amazing when you think about it, she realized. Then after several minutes of silence, she watched Aimee insert her finger in the corner of the baby's mouth, break her suction and then rest her against her shoulder while she rubbed her back in hopes of eliciting a burp. “So are you going to tell me what you did at the party or what?” she asked as soon as Natalie let out a very unladylike belch.

  “Well...,” Leah stalled, trying to remember the last time she was embarrassed to admit something to her best friend. She wasn't sure she'd ever had a first time for that issue. “At the beginning of the party, everything was great. I was drinking and buzzing and being all charming and funny. Everyone was telling me how sexy and beautiful I am, which is not a bad thing for the old ego, you know?”

  “Hmmm, maybe I need to go to one of these parties!” Aimee laughed. “I could use a little ego boost myself now that I have this saggy tummy and big ole leaky boobs.”

  “Oh, please, whatever. In any case, then we went into a room where some people were fooling around and next thing I knew I was sort of in the middle of them.”

  “What to you mean by 'in the middle?'” Aimee asked incredulously.

  “Cap was fucking me...no one else did that by the way, but I had a guy playing with my...ahem...clit...and two ladies playing with my tits....and then I gave a BJ to another guy while all that was going on,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “Oh. My. God. You did WHAT?!” she asked again, completely shocked by her friend's scandalous confession.

  “Well, I'm not repeating it!” Leah exclaimed with a smirk. She didn't expect Aimee to be so surprised. She sat there for a moment scanning her face, trying to discern whether her reaction was solely shock or if it was colored by a big heap of judgment too. “You remember some of the stuff we did in college, right?” She stared at her again, waiting for those memories to register in her friend's mind. There'd been more crazy nights than she cared to count.

  Aimee made a little gasping sound before making the argument, “Yeah, but that was in college. And we were drunk. We're grownups now!”

  Leah wanted to say “speak for yourself” so badly but she couldn't. Despite being highly successful in her career and expertly managing people and events, a lot of the time she still saw herself as that awkward teenager who never felt like she fit in, always questioning and over-analyzing everything she did and said, and chalking up mistakes to youthful ignorance. Is that what this is about for me? Sowing my wild oats before I'm too old to use my age as an excuse? she wondered from an entirely new angle, even though she had already analyzed this whole thing up one side and down the other.

  But then again... Cap is a grown-up. He is over forty years old, and wow, five years or so ago that seemed a lot older than it does now. Or what about Casey Fontaine? She has to be at least 50. And she is definitely a mature, responsible adult. This is who they are. They don't make excuses or blame their choices on youthful ignorance. They own it. This was the argument forming in Leah's mind. She realized that age had nothing to do with this. It's just a different mindset than what most people have.

  Leah's arms suddenly felt prickly and cold as if she'd stepped out into a brisk wind. She only told Aimee because she thought she was the one person she knew who could be objective and keep an open mind about what she had done two weeks prior. Leah purposely built it up to be so terrible and egregiously sinful that she expected Aimee to laugh it off and accuse her of overreacting. She thought Aimee would tease her a little but ultimately say something like, “Way to go, that's awesome that you put yourself out there and tried something new.” She'd never known Aimee to be one to shy away from adventure.

  But watching her friend lean down and press her lips ever-so-gently against her newborn daughter's cheek, Leah realized that her old friend was a new mother. She'd now look at any adventurous, experimental behavior and think, would I want my daughter to do this? She'd never be the same again.

  That night Leah crashed on Aimee and Anthony's sofa. Her phone had remained silent for hours. Even her mother had failed to make her weekly phone call to ask how church had been, which at least relieved Leah of the temptation to lie about her lack of attendance. Her first night sleeping alone and sober in over two weeks left her feeling even colder than Aimee's reaction to her admission earlier in the afternoon. She missed Cap's warm body next to hers and the gentle snoring of two contented dogs at their feet.

  There was something so domestic, so natural about their arrangement, even though they had waded through two weeks of thick tension about the party. She wished she was only ten minutes away instead of two and a half hours so she could drive down to the inlet and endure the fish-stench to ascend his stairs. She had thought confessing her sins to Aimee would make her feel better, that she would come away absolved, validated. But what if Aimee wasn't the only person who understood her anymore? What if that person was now Cap?

  FOURTEEN

  I am my lover's, and he claims me as his own. Come, my love, let us go out to the fields and spend the night among the wildflowers. Let us get up early and go to the vineyards to see if the grapevines have budded, if the blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love. There the mandrakes give off their fragrance, and the finest fruits are at our door, new delights as well as old, which I have saved for you, my lover. -Song of Solomon 7:10-13 (NLT)

  Valentine's Day had never held any special meaning for Leah. After so many years of being alone or disappointed, it was no surprise that the holiday had completely slipped off her radar except for as it related to work. She was one year in college that Will surprised her with roses and an extravagant dinner. But later she found out that his gesture was prompted by the guilt he felt over seducing her friend Rachel a few weekends before. And no, the irony of biblical proportions that her friend was named Rachel and her being Leah did not go unnoticed. It was not long after that ill-fated Valentine's weekend that everything blew up, Will's infidelity was discovered and their relationship suffered a quick, but no-less-agonizing death.

  When Cap told Leah the Friday before Valentine's Day to pack a bag for New York City, she stared at him blankly. “Why?” she'd asked, placing a precisely folded t-shirt into a neat stack. She was folding his laundry. Somehow she ended up doing little domestic things when she was at his place, dishes and laundry, sweeping up the floor of dog hair. He didn't ask her to; it just sort of happened. She was starting to think her own apartment was going to have tumbleweeds blowing through it when she returned. She hadn't set foot in it in five days.

  “Because I'm taking to you New York for the weekend?” Cap framed his reply as a rhetorical question. “Why else would I ask?” He chuckled at her wide-eyed stare.

  “I can't just up and go to New York!” Leah gasped, astonished that he would suggest such a ridiculous thing. Her mind was racing with a million things she'd promised herself she'd catch up on over the weekend, of which at least half a million could only be accomplished at The Pearl. “And what about the dogs?”

  “Oh, geez, Leah, you're so uptight! Just relax, will ya? My buddy Jim over in Berlin is going to watch the dogs. He's got a huge farm so there's plenty of space. We'll drop them off before we leave. And bring your laptop. You can get some work done on the drive.” He left the room and returned with a small carry-on sized suitcase. “Do you have enough of your stuff here or do we need to stop by your apartment too?”

  “So you're serious then?” She put down the last pair of socks she'd bunched into a ball and was searching his eyes for a clue. His eyes sparkled like the sea when sunlight dances on the waves.

  “Of course I'm serious! I have tickets for a show and everything!” he said with a mild degree of exasperation, then mumbled under his breath as he made his way back into the kitchen, “Try to do something romanti
c and she doesn't even appreciate it!”

  She ran into the kitchen and tackled him from behind. “I heard that!” In just an instant, he grabbed her wrists that were latched around his neck and spun her around his body to face him. Her breath was momentarily taken away at his show of speed and strength. “Oh!” she involuntarily squealed.

  “You like that, Sugar?” he grinned. It was clear he wasn't actually angry.

  She was continually amazed by her infatuation with Cap's body and the power it could wield over her. His large, bulky frame and heavy labor-molded muscles aroused her more than she ever thought possible. Sometimes when he was on top of her, she'd run her fingertips across his broad shoulders and down the firm outline of his triceps and immediately orgasm, she'd be so turned on. “I do like that,” she agreed. “And I like that you surprised me, even though I don't normally like surprises. It's not so easy to surprise me, you know.”

  “Tell me about it, Miss Plan Every Damn Thing Out!” He squeezed her affectionately. “I think we'll have fun.”

  “I know we will!” she corrected him.

  Since Leah had come back to Cap, he had treated her like a princess. There had been very little talk of swinging. Leah told him she was still trying to come to terms with what had happened at the party, and she'd let him know when she was able to talk about it again. Aimee had advised her to ask if they could focus on getting to know each other for a little while and leave everyone else out of the equation for now. To her surprise, he said yes. He seemed relieved that she came back to him and for the past few weeks, the waters had been calm and peaceful.

  Leah was grateful that he was trying so hard to be romantic, but in the back of her mind, she wondered if it was a bad sign that it seemed to take that much effort. Sometimes when they made love, she felt a tension deep in him that never seemed to dissipate no matter how many climaxes he reached. Other times she'd be curled in his arms and he'd stroke her hair and down her back and she felt like there was hope he could be satisfied by what they had. Those times left her waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  As they were driving to New York, she flashed back to the night she drove home from Philly. She'd only stayed with Aimee and Anthony for one night. Aimee encouraged her to go back and face Cap, although part of Leah wondered if her friend lacked the required energy to deal with her problems. Maybe she's just anxious to push me out of the nest so I can test my flight feathers. Whatever the motive, Leah knew she was right. Avoiding Cap wasn't going to make her feel any better. Besides, she missed him. It thrilled and scared her all at once that she missed him so much.

  When she climbed up the stairs to his apartment that night with her breath held, and not only because of the bad fish smell, she told herself she was going to be brave and ask for what she wanted. She had done it a million times in a business setting, but it seemed so different when it was her heart that was at stake. She was worried that he'd had enough of her anguish and indecisiveness and would send her away, but he opened the door and there were the dimples, so happy to see her.

  “I don't really know why I left or why I came back,” she confessed. “When I'm away from you, I don't want to be. And I don't know what I want or where this is going, but for right now, I just want to be here with you.”

  He had taken her into his arms and pressed his lips against the top of her head. He whispered against her hair, “That's good enough for me, Sugar.” Reflecting on that moment, how she felt welcomed back like the prodigal son, no questions asked, no judgments made, a smile spread across her cheeks.

  The rural cornfields of Delaware, stripped and bare in their winter bleakness, were whizzing past her outside the window of her Jeep as Cap drove North toward The Big Apple. The scene was reminiscent of her home state: endless cornfields stretching as far as the eye could see. In this case, however, she knew that a little further past those cornfields was the ocean, the place where the continent dropped off into the sea. She always found it a little unnerving when she waded into the surf, she was essentially stepping off the edge of the country. Growing up in such a wide, open space with no body of water for miles, had given the coastline a great deal of intrigue and mystery for Leah.

  Maybe that's one reason why the Bible Belt stretches across the Midwest? she wondered. All that big, open space is so free that people need boundaries and religion's rules to make them feel safe. Out here on the coast, people are crammed onto the little peninsulas and islands that rise up from the water. If we go too far, we'll drown. It's boundary enough. Maybe that's why Cap loves being out on his boat, it's his wide open space. Maybe that's why he is drawn to swinging. Fewer limits.

  She turned to Cap and put her hand on his knee, laughing inside her head at all her crazy, analytical thoughts she was capable of devising. He looked at her with a grin, as if he knew she was thinking happy thoughts of him. “Thank you,” she offered up, glad that he recognized he was the source of her happiness. Even if nothing else ever comes of this, he's opened my eyes to a lot of things I'd never thought before. She liked having reasons to exercise her brain.

  “Thanks for what?” he asked, still grinning.

  “For this trip, for being so patient with me, for being you,” she answered.

  He removed one hand from the steering wheel and used it to squeeze her hand that rested on his knee. “It's my pleasure, Sugar. My pleasure.”

  Leah had never been to a Broadway show before. She slipped on a little black dress and pulled up her black boots with the silver buckles. Ordinarily she'd wear heels but it was only February, pretty chilly in New York, and they had to walk a few blocks to the theater. Cap emerged from the bathroom in a fitted button-down dress shirt that was every bit as blue as his eyes and perfectly accentuated his muscular frame. “Well, aren't we the best looking couple in New York!” he grinned, dimples flashing.

  “I want a picture of us,” Leah said. She realized that no pictures of them together existed.

  “You want me to take one of you?” he offered.

  “No, silly, I want one of us together!” she cried. “Come here!” She stepped in front of him and handed her his phone, directing him to take a picture of the two of them. She leaned back into him so that her cheek was against his ear and his chin was on her shoulder. He snapped the photo and she quickly assessed that it was a keeper. She suddenly wished she could upload it to her Facebook page, but then how would she explain it all to her family back home?

  Speaking of which, she had not yet confessed to her mother that she was dating someone. Her mother hadn't asked either, so it wasn't as if she was lying, She had been going to church on Sunday mornings too, and no, she hadn't been struck down by a lightning bolt. So far, she was in denial about how this new part of her life intersected with the old parts.

  That night after the show and after drinks in Times Square, they returned to their hotel room on the 17th floor. Cap turned on one light at the far side of the room and led Leah to the eight foot tall windows overlooking the busy street below. There was a window seat covered with upholstered cushions. He swiped the bench with his outstretched hand, flinging three small pillows to the floor. Then he pulled the little black dress she wore over her head, granting it the same destiny as the pillows. “Sit,” he commanded her. She felt her bare shoulders press against the cold glass as he pushed her back and pulled her legs up onto the bench so that her thighs were spread wide and her ankles rested on the cushion where she sat.

  “And just what do you think you're doing?” she asked as he lowered himself to the floor and began stroking his fingers down her inner thighs.

  He followed up his fingers with soft kisses, lingering between her legs to drink in her scent. “I've been staring at you in that dress for the last five hours and all I could think about doing the entire time is tasting you,” he admitted, sighing as he filled his lungs with her natural perfume. He hooked his index finger under the fabric of her red silk panties, tugging insistently till she lifted her hips so he could slide them down. No
w she was completely nude except for the matching red bra that lifted her stunning cleavage to glorious heights.

  I wonder if people can see me from down there, she contemplated, imagining how she might look from outside the hotel. She envisioned what it would be like to drive down a street in Manhattan and look up to find a naked woman silhouetted against the window. Oh, it's Manhattan, she reasoned. It probably happens all the time, but there was a little charge of electricity surging through her at the thought of anyone noticing and becoming aroused by the sight of her.

  Meanwhile Cap was parting her labia with the tip of his tongue, very gently licking up her slit just shy of her slowly swelling bud. “Oh my god...” he breathed against her delicate flesh, savoring her wetness on his tongue. “You taste even better than I dreamed.”

  She was starting to feel tingly as more and more blood rushed between her legs. He recognized each new signal her body gave him: the soft sighs, the widened legs, the quickening pulse, the growing moisture, the arching back, and expertly took his cue. He increased the pressure of his tongue against her clit as well as the speed at which it moved. More cues: deep moaning, her fingers ravaging his thick wavy hair, the tension in her body growing with her need for release.

  She wanted to tell him that it felt good, that he was hitting all the right spots, but she had been rendered speechless. And she had a distinct feeling he was well aware of the prowess of his oral delivery even without her confirmation. My god, I'm going to explode any minute and we didn't even kiss yet! He just sat me down and went to work, as if I get no say in the matter, she mused. Not that I'm complaining.

  Then, just as she was about to surrender to the impending hurricane of pleasure, he stopped. His tongue grinded to a halt and he pulled his face away from her thighs. It took a moment for the blood flow to stop and reverse itself back into her head so she could speak. “What the hell?!” she finally grasped the capacity for language. “Why did you stop?”