by Ben Boswell
I groaned. Terri always brought that up. And she was right to do so, because it really was unforgivable. Not so much of my mom, but of me. Why hadn’t I told my mom to put it away? Probably, I thought miserably, because I sort of liked the idea of reminding Terri I’d had other women before her, which I probably felt I needed to do because she was so out of my league that it made me feel insecure.
Terri continued, “She had a cute face. Not sure about the bangs, but nice eyes, sexy full-lips….”
Wow, Terri had studied that picture more than I had realized.
“But I don’t really have any idea about the rest of her. Nice boobies? How about her ass?”
“I don’t know, Terri. I mean, she was a cute girl. Yeah, I guess, nice boobs. Big, I guess. Maybe the same as yours, but you’re skinnier, so yours are… more impressive.”
“How about her nipples?”
“Yours are definitely better,” I replied quickly. “She…. This is weird to say, but hers didn’t really get hard. I don’t know, it always made me feel like she wasn’t completely into it with me, and….”
I trailed off. That was the first time I’d put that thought into words.
“Okay, and the rest of her?”
“I… I don’t know. I mean, I guess she was built a little thicker than you. Not fat or anything, but like… cruvy, you know.”
Terri nodded. “Did she have her bush?”
“Yeah, actually, yeah. That was, what, seventeen years ago? So right on the cusp of shaving getting really popular.”
“Okay, so, now that we have that out of the way, tell me what sex was like with this cute, solid, big breasted, soft nippled, full lipped, pie making genius?”
“I’m not, unlike you, a good story teller. And anyway, I’m not sure there is much to tell. I really don’t remember if we had sex here. Maybe. Probably, but if so it wasn’t very memorable. We just didn’t… or maybe, I just didn’t….”
It’s weird how having a conversation can trigger new thoughts or old memories. It is as if the act of speaking forces the brain to make new connections.
Terri sensed it too. “Didn’t what?” she asked forcefully.
I hesitated, but her sudden intensity drew it out of me.
“I couldn’t… I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t… maybe I’m not… a very good lover.”
“Oh Bill, that is so not true. Why would you say that?”
“I… I don’t know.”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. “Bill, what is going on?”
“Okay…. Okay, so, there was this evening. And… look… for all I know, it was nothing.”
She chuckled. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, out with it.”
I sighed.
“Does it have to do with pies?” Terri asked.
I laughed, and it broke the tension.
“No. No pies. It wasn’t even at Thanksgiving. It was back at school. Senior year. Maybe right after winter break. Melanie and I….” I laughed. “Oh God, Terri, you’re going to like this.”
“Don’t build it up too much.”
“So, we went to this house party. I had these buddies who’d rented a big old Victorian, and there were like a dozen guys living in there. It was like a mini-frat minus the hair gel and homoeroticism. They’d have these parties all the time, and it was sort of one of our go-tos. We’d go out for dinner, watch some street performers, and then head over for a few beers, maybe a little weed, before going back to my place.”
Terri laughed. “College in other words.”
I nodded. I was unsure if I wanted to continue. Yet somehow, now that I’d started, it felt important to get it all out.
“There was this guy who lived there. Tommy. Toby. Something like that. Big guy, rasta vibe, even though he was pale as a ghost, blond dreads, wore those John Lennon glasses. He was basically everyone’s source for pot. I’m not even sure he was a student. Maybe he had been once.
“Anyway, he had this thing for Melanie. He’d call her Melle Mel and then do the rap from I Feel for You, which didn’t make any sense, but it was like their thing. He was a character. Always high. I always thought she was just, you know, humoring him, or whatever. But you know, they’d talk. He was always going on about something. Music. Politics. Real stream of consciousness.”
“Uh huh,” Terri interjected. “He sounds interesting.”
“I don’t know. Wow. I can’t believe I’m….”
“Just get it out.”
She seemed to know where this was going.
“So you’re at this house party…” she prompted.
“…and it’s getting late. We’d had a bunch of beers. I don’t know if I lost track of time, or what. But I’m thinking it’s time to go, and I start looking for Melanie. And I can’t find her. And I’m going up and down these rickety stairs. There are people on all the landings. Half the rooms are open with people sitting on futons or listening to music or whatever. And I’m, like, sure I’ll spot her any second.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I’m asking people, and no one has seen her, no one knows whether she’s gone. And I go up another flight of stairs, and now I’m in this converted attic, with this low ceiling, and a bunch of closed doors leading to these little dormer-style rooms. There is music coming from downstairs, but I can hear sounds coming from one of the rooms.
“So I walk over, and it’s people going at it. Real loud. The girl in particular is just squealing and grunting, and….”
It was more than that. It was this sort of desperately passionate keening. Not frenzied, but focused and soulful.
“Melanie?” Terri suggested.
I shook my head. “No. It… It couldn’t have been. She’d never…. She wasn’t a screamer.”
I could see Terri’s skeptical expression in the dim moonlight coming through the window.
“Did you ever find Melanie?”
“No.”
“And Tommy Toby?”
“No.”
“So, um, what happened?”
“I left. I figured, she must have gotten tired and gone home. I don’t know. This was before we all had cell phones.”
“So what do you really think happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That she was there. That we’d just missed each other or something.”
“Was she upset?” Terri probed.
“No.”
My wife regarded me skeptically. I had, of course, had the same thought over the years. If I had just left without her, she’d normally have been pissed. She wasn’t, so….
“Bill…. What do you think happened?”
“I think she hooked up with him.”
“But you never said anything to her about it.”
“No.”
“But you thought about it?”
I groaned. “I don’t know.”
I’d suppressed it for so long, and now, suddenly it was churning inside me, desperate to burst out.
“Bill….”
“Yes. All the fucking time. I had no proof, and I didn’t want any either. So it was all in my mind, I guess.”
“Which allowed you to deny it, but even still, it affected you,” she noted. Then after a pause, “How did it make you feel?”
“Angry. Jealous. Betrayed….”
“Horny?”
“Terri…. I….”
“Bill, it’s okay. You know I won’t judge.”
I remained mute.
“You fantasized about them, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not like I planned to consciously. It’s just that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About those sounds. What was he doing to her to make her squeal like that? Was it just that he was huge? Was he putting it in her butt? Whatever it was, he was pushing her buttons like I never had.”
She laughed softly. “Or maybe it was just the novelty
of being with someone new. Or the thrill of the illicit, cheating on her boyfriend while he was roaming around looking for her.”
“Maybe,” I replied doubtfully.
“Or maybe it wasn’t even her.”
I nodded.
Terri continued. “A lot to unpack here. Why do you think you never mentioned this to me?”
I shrugged. “It’s embarrassing to admit that your girlfriend cheated on you. That another man could fuck her better than I ever could.”
I felt my eyes sting. I hoped Terri couldn’t see the tears I could feel forming. But I couldn’t help it, because in that moment I wasn’t really thinking about Melanie, I was thinking about Terri.
If she noticed, she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she said, “And part of you worried that she wouldn’t be able to resist going back to a man who could make her scream that way.” She paused. When I didn’t contradict her, she asked, “Is that part of why you guys broke up?”
“Maybe.”
She squeezed my hand tighter.
“Okay, Bill. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to suck your cock –“
“Terri, no, I feel weird about –“
She put her finger to my lip. “Shhh.”
When she was sure I was going to be quiet, she continued. “I’ll always be here for you. Remember that. But now, I’m going to suck your cock. You can think of anything you want. Think about playing with Melanie’s big tits. Think about her fucking Tommy Toby. Think about me with Chucky or Jean-Pierre or Brian. Think about Scarlett Johansson. Or just focus on how it feels. Just let go.”
“Terri, you don’t need to do this.”
“I know. I want to.”
She gave me a quick peck on the lips and disappeared beneath the covers. She untied my PJ bottoms and yanked them down. Her cool, slender fingers cupped my balls. She kissed my rapidly stiffening cock up and down. Her silky hair tickled my belly and thighs. And then she swallowed me whole. I gasped in delight.
I wanted to just focus on the experience. Terri is a very talented cocksucker, her mouth soft and very wet. She swirled her tongue around my shaft and the head of my cock. Her hand gently kneaded my balls. I wanted to just focus on that, but I couldn’t. My mind was roiling.
Melanie wailing in passion. All those scenarios I envisaged flooding back. In his arms, bouncing up and down on his huge prick. Or bent over, her tits swaying beneath her as he slammed her from behind. And then to Terri, on the Paris balcony, getting fucked to the cheers of onlookers. Terri, in my lap, grunting and wheezing as Chucky sodomized her. Melanie on her back, squealing, with Tommy plowing his cock into her ass.
Terri’s mouth felt so good, and yet made me oddly angry. She was a whore too. They all were.
And then shame. Shame at my thoughts. Shame about being excited about other men with my women. Shame. Shame. Shame. Anger. Excitement. Churning, churning.
I realized I was close… more than close… over the line. I tried to grunt a warning, but it was too late. I was spurting hot seed into my wife’s mouth. She didn’t even flinch. Instead, she continued to stroke my cock and gulp down my come.
For a moment, all my anxieties were gone. Just bliss.
Terri made her way back up. She was sweaty from being beneath the covers. Her breath had the musky odor of my come. She kissed my cheek.
“We’ll talk about this more tomorrow. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
She turned over and I cuddled her. And in just a few minutes, I felt her body soften, her breaths become softer and more regular as she drifted off to sleep.
***
She might have drifted off easily, but I didn’t. After an hour of tossing and turning, I finally decided to get up. Everyone else was in bed, so I had the house to myself. I crept quietly across the old, creaky wood floors to avoid making noise.
I made my way into the family room, and approached the towering bookshelf that lined an entire wall of the room. Most of it was filled with books from my dad’s academic career as an economic historian, but one column had always belonged to my mom and was filled with an endless series of photo albums, all in order, all neatly labeled by date.
I ran my finger along the spines of the correct volumes, and pulled out the one I was looking for. I carried it over to the fireplace, where the remaining embers glowed red and inviting. I sat down with the heat at my back and began thumbing through.
Labor Day at the lake. My old Corolla. Brenda and her then-boyfriend Lucas, who, last I heard, was a multimillionaire out in Silicon Valley. I wondered if my sister ever thought of him, or whether maybe Pete did. My dad, his beard dyed dark; around the time of his midlife crisis, when he’d gotten into running and fitness. It had never occurred to me before, but I suddenly wondered if he’d had an affair at the time. Maybe with a sexy, young undergrad? No, that didn’t seem his style, but then again, he’d surely be surprised by how things were with Terri and me nowadays.
Pictures of changing leaves shot from the top of Mount Monadnock. The first dusting of snow sprinkled over the old wood bridge at the end of Johnson’s Meadow. Our old dog, Daisy, the friendliest, dumbest mutt in the world. She always wanted to curl up beside you, which would have been great except for her penchant for rolling around in dead things.
Then finally the pictures I was looking for. Melanie and me. Smiling. Holding hands as we walked in the woods. Of course, a shot of her in the kitchen, working on a pie. Sitting on my lap in the big leather armchair. I looked over and there it was, in the same spot it had occupied since I was a kid.
She was very cute. Twenty at the time, but looking younger in jeans and a flannel shirt. She was bright eyed, and Terri was right, she had lovely, plump, full lips. I didn’t appreciate her like I should have. There was always some other girl turning my head. I imagined that she didn’t notice, but she must have. I was twenty-one myself, and not really in touch with my own emotions. I don’t think I pushed her away, but nor did I hold her close.
More fundamentally, I took her for granted. It never occurred to me that she might leave me or stray. If anything, I was the one who needed to “work at it.” I was the one who was always chaffing for freedom, whether it was to spend time with my buddies, or flirt with other girls. Why? I don’t know. It’s not like I was a stud back then, but somehow the lesson of April, that a girl who I might (unfairly) consider plain might still be attractive to others, had been lost on me.
Did I know for sure that Melanie was the woman screaming in passion in the attic room in the old Victorian? No. But that was surely because I didn’t want to know. I never confronted her about it. Worse, I did nothing to prevent it from happening again. We continued to move in the same circles. We continued to see Toby around on a regular basis – and yes, his name was Toby, even if I pretended with Terri not to be sure. He continued to flirt with her, although she now seemed more embarrassed by it.
And he was increasingly bumptious. Snide asides. A dismissive tone. It was easy to play off to others. He was a college dropout. A cut-rate pot dealer still living in a group house in his mid-twenties. But I never called him out on it directly because I knew he could nuke me in response.
You’re just a loser, Toby.
Yeah, but I’m balling your old lady, aren’t I?
I knew he was. I could see it in his face. That cocky smirk and challenging gaze. Primordial. An assertion of dominance.
I’m fucking your woman. What are you going to do about it?
I knew that look well now. I’d gotten it from Chucky. And Brian. And even from Jean-Pierre, though he wasn’t aggressive about it. But even so, I recognized it.
I fucked her again. Dropped a load right in her tight little pussy. What are you going to do about it?
I slammed the photo album shut. What was I going to do about it? Nothing. Nothing because I was too much of a wimp to put an end to it.
Worse, I didn’t do anything about it because it turned me on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Terri didn’t actually bring things back up the next day. Or the day after that. I think she sensed that things were too raw for a productive discussion. Indeed, for the next couple of weeks, we both did an admirable job of ignoring the elephant in the room, no matter how much he snorted and stomped about looking for attention.
But finally, one evening, a couple of weeks later, after the kids were in bed, and Terri and I were finishing off trimming the Christmas tree, we had the conversation we’d been avoiding. It began, surprisingly enough, with a discussion about my Amazon wishlist.
“It’s empty,” she noted.
“Is not.” I had just checked it.
“Socks and salad tongs are not a Christmas list, Bill.”
“Surprise me, then.”
“Oh, I am perfectly happy to do that, but I’d like to be sure you’ll like it.” Her face was a mask, but her lilting tone was suggestive.
I hesitated. “Are we still talking about my Amazon wishlist?”
“What else would we be talking about?”
She gave me a challenging look. You ready to talk yet?
“Terri….”
“Bill….”
I stayed silent.
She continued, “Okay, so we know each other’s names. Now what?”
More silence for me.
“You know we need to talk about it at some point.”
Despite myself, I nodded.
“Who have you been fantasizing about more the last couple of weeks? Me? Or Melanie?”
I blushed. Fuck Terri and her ability to see right through me.
“Okay, so, both,” she concluded.
“Do I need to be here?” I asked. “You seem perfectly capable of carrying on both ends of the conversation.”
“Yes, Honey, I could, but…. Please pass me the tinsel…. But I think we’ll both get more out of it if you participate.”
Reaching into the box of decorations, I pulled out the hideous angel with which we’d traditionally topped the tree. Creepy oversized eyes. “Can we throw this thing away?”
Terri took it from my hand and deftly lobbed it in with the box of broken ornaments we were planning to discard. “All you have to do is ask.”
