Noon Sunday, April 28th, 2024
Garin and Lyrou sat together for a picnic on a cool but sunny day. Garin offered Lyrou the chicken wrap he’d prepared. She took a bite.
“Delicious, chéri,” her voice filled with genuine thankfulness.
She set the wrap down and leaned back on her elbows, the soft grass itch-tickling her bare skin. “I’ve been thinking,” she began, her eyes on the clouds above. “Are you OK?”
Garin chewed. “Yes, babe. Nah, I’m good. How you doing? You good?”
Her hair lifted and tussled by the wind. “I want us to be OK. If you’re not, you have to say so.” She found her straw and took a drink of her iced tea, then picked up her wrap again, her gaze meeting his. “Don’t… don’t make this a kind of masochism.”
“Yes, babe, I know. You’re worried that I’m bitter after the night with Tom? Well, I was… or am… but I’m managing that. Understand, men can’t bear to hear that their wife once had a great lover long before they met. I was solid enough to watch. Give me some space to digest. I’ll be OK.” Garin viewed the park, birds and squirrels.
“Garin, I know it’s hard, but our love is… solid. I’m not comparing you to Tom, or anyone. I don’t want a competition.” Lyrou looked out at the park with him, wondering what his eyes were focused on and why.
“I know, babe. I know. Can I ask you a question?” His eyes seemed to follow a pair of birds, either fighting or playing, maybe some kind of avian courting.
Her hand caressed his thigh, the hard rockiness of his quadriceps muscles. “Of course, mon amour. What’s your question?”
“Tell me how you felt and what you thought when you watched me with Andrea. Be honest, please… the good and the bad.” Garin took her iced tea and tasted it, then gave his head a little shake in disapproval before setting it back down.
The warmth of the sun, neutralized by the cool breeze on her skin, she gathered her thoughts. “At first, chéri, I felt a twinge of jealousy. It was unexpected, but it was there.” She took a bite of her wrap, chewing thoughtfully. “But as I watched you two, it was… different and weird, but I liked it because it was different and weird. And it turned me on.” She swallowed, her voice growing more earnest. “The way you took charge, the way you made her feel safe. It got very freaky, but it was her freak. She responded to it, and you gave it to her without judging. It was like watching you in a new light, a side of you I hadn’t seen before.”
“What did you think of Andrea? Not me, not me with her, just her.” Garin watched in the distance as more birds joined in the ruckus, flitting into and out of the trees and filling their corner of the park with chirping.
Recalling the girl, Lyrou said, “Andrea was… intriguing, chéri. She’s young, eager to learn, and incredibly responsive. She’s injured.” Her gaze drifted to the horizon. “But she’s not to you what Tom is to me. We have different kinds of lovers, clearly.”
Garin cleared his throat. “Explain.”
Her expression held amusement and understanding. “Tom’s not injured or lost or ashamed. He’s the dangerous figure who can do anything at any time because that’s just him. But with you and Andrea, it was different. It was intimate, controlled, and healing.” She took another sip of her tea, her eyes returning to his. “It showed me that our love isn’t just in the physical, but in the emotional connection we share.”
Garin brushed some crumbs off the picnic blanket into the grass for the ants. “You mentioned jealousy, Lyrou… what were you jealous about?”
Lyrou took a moment to think. “Seeing you find pleasure in someone else’s arms was jarring.” She paused, her hand tightening on his thigh. “But it was also a reminder that our love isn’t just about exclusivity. It’s about trust and understanding.” She took another sip of her tea. “The jealousy was a reflex, but it quickly gave way.”
“Jealousy isn’t a reflex. It’s a towering tree with wide roots that doesn’t move a foot and only ever grows until you go lumberjack at it. When I watched you with Tom… the jealousy sprouted taller. I’m still battling it. I’m taking a chainsaw to it, but my chain broke. I’m pouring flammable liquids on it, but the storm put out my match, and I’m left praying for lightning to strike. Don’t try to console me, Lyrou. I resent it fiercely when you try to console me.” Garin was so suddenly frustrated.
Lyrou sat up, setting her wrap aside, and leaned closer to him. “Chéri,” she began, her voice gentle but firm, “I know it’s not easy for you.” She took his hand in hers, her thumb tracing small circles on his palm. “The jealousy is natural, but we can’t let it squeeze and constrict us like a snake.” The sun glinted off the golden-brown in her irises. “I’ve watched you with Andrea, and I know what it does to me. But what about you? What did you feel when you saw me with him?”
“On the one hand, I was so aroused by how slutty and rough you were, and that another man wanted you so badly. It was extremely hot. On the other hand, I wished that Tom was nothing I wasn’t… or that I had all he had that you enjoyed. It’s really that simple. I hoped to make you more jealous with Andrea… to give you the feeling that my lover gives me what you can’t.” Garin locked his fingers together over his chest and lay back on the picnic blanket.
“Garin, I do understand. And yes, watching you with Andrea did stir something possessive in me,” Lyrou tried to assure him.
“Possessive? No. I want to make you jealous. I’ll try again.” Garin smiled.
“Garin, darling, I’ve seen you with another woman, and it does stir something in me,” Lyrou pleaded her case.
“Something that isn’t jealousy, but just a reflex. Help me find out how to make you jealous, the kind of jealousy that digs in deep and anchors itself, and you can’t pull it out, you can’t touch it, because when you do, it makes you writhe. Tell me how to defy you. What kind of fling would you hate for me to have?” Garin smiled widely.
A flash of mischief lit up her face. “Well, chéri, I suppose it would be someone who represents the opposite of what Tom does for me.”
Garin’s face contorted in confusion. “The opposite?”
“Ma vie, when I’m with someone like Tom, it’s about the act of being used, about his disregard for me, damn the consequences, hence the danger. But if you were with a woman who could give you what I believe I can’t, someone who’s more nurturing, more attentive to your emotional needs, that would hit a different nerve for me. Not physicality alone, but the connection you might share with someone who understands you in a way I might not be able to… would set my soul ablaze with jealousy. If you were with a woman who you love to talk to more than me, a woman who knows you better than me… I can’t put it to words. A woman you… bond with. Non. I can’t put words to it.” Lyrou became agitated as she let slip the thing she feared, not that her husband would get a great fuck from another woman, but that he’d find a warmer, more welcoming heart to place himself in than hers.
“I see. I see now,” Garin said, his face lighting up. “That is why Andrea was such a miss. To strike your nerve, it has to be a lover who’s close to me… someone who has a real connection with me that you don’t… yes? You would hate it?”
Nervous, with a hint of a smirk, Lyrou said, “Chéri, never mind hating it. Think of feeling it, feeling the intensity of the situation. It’s knowing you’re experiencing something special with someone else, something that I can’t provide, and still knowing that you come back to me. That will be the new frontier for me.”
Garin’s arm went over and around Lyrou’s backside, his hand on her opposite lap. “There is a girl I grew up with… she’s divorced now, a single mom.”
Lyrou was visibly surprised that Garin could summon a woman in his mind for the task so immediately and that he knew something about her current condition. “Huh? You grew up with…?”
Garin’s hand gently patted her lap. “Her name is Lindsey. We were so close, many shared memories, formative memories. To be honest, as a boy, I dreamed we would grow up and get married. She was my first kiss. If we hadn’t gone to different universities and grown apart, I might have been with her instead of you today.”
Lyrou swallowed. “Lindsey? Oh.”
“We’ll bond as we did once before. We’ll reunite. You’ll see.” Garin’s expression was like that of a genius striking gravity, relativity, and the universal theorem.
“Lindsey, huh?” Her body was numb and prickly with paresthesia at the thought. “That’s… definitely something to think about, chéri. It would be quite the test for us both.”
Garin looked up into Lyrou’s face. “Will you meet her with me? Will you watch me reconnect with my first girlfriend… my girl next door. My first love?”
A complex web of emotions spun across her features. “Mon chouchou, I can’t say I’m not a little intrigued by the idea.” Her breasts rose with the effort. “But we have to tread carefully.”
Garin felt her knee. “I want to push you, Lyrou. I want to test your limits. I foolishly projected and thought a cute college girl would do that… and that was stupid. But now I know to do something you might bat an eye at, there must be another woman who has a deeper connection with me… maybe deeper than you have with me. Are you brave?”
“Chéri, I’m brave. But we mustn’t lose ourselves in these games.” She finished her tea, the sun’s warm glow on her skin. “But if this is what you truly want, then yes, I’ll meet her with you.”
Garin’s arm squeezed around her backside, his face radiating enlightenment. “You’re afraid, but there’s no more hypocrisy now.”
Lyrou was mystified, as if she were an actress in a stage play forgetting her lines. “Hypocrisy?”
Garin shook his head, his hair pressed against the picnic blanket. “I won’t allow it. You had it, you’ll never have it again.”
“Ah…” Lyrou knew what he meant. She’d been a hypocrite all the years she had her covert hookups while he remained faithful and unaware. Now, he meant, she’d be made to experience each facet that he experienced, to feel the same blows he felt. She’d be made to feel jealousy at last, his sturdier definition of jealousy, to see Garin taken from her in the way that mattered to her. “Yes, no more. OK. I agree, Garin.”
⚜
Morning Thursday, May 2nd, 2024
In the garage with the big door open and the driveway clear, Garin sat waiting for Alan to come down from his room before school. The boy appeared, backpack and baseball cap, stopped, and beheld a desert camo mountain bike. “Holy! It looks like it could’ve been ridden by Delta Force in Tora Bora. Straight gas! It’s mine?”
Garin opened a hand toward the bike. “Son, you are a man now. You must choose.”
Alan frowned, confused. “Choose?”
Garin opened his opposite hand to a large box in colorful wrapping paper. “A gift of unknown contents.”
Alan’s hand flew up to his forehead with a slap. “Come on!” He let out an exasperated laugh. “What’s in it?”
Garin grinned and shook his head. “It might be anything. I only promise it isn’t nothing, and it isn’t in monetary value less than the bike.”
Alan wanted more clues. “Is it worth a lot more than the bike?”
Garin pressed his lips tight, then gave all the clarity he would. “I can’t say.”
Alan paced. “I have to go to school.”
Garin tapped his foot. “Choose before you go, or I take them both back to the store.”
Alan burst with laughter. “Hey-hey! Alright. Yolo baby! I choose the box. Box me!”
Garin made way for Alan to approach the box. “Granted. Happy Birthday.”
Alan tore off the wrapping and pulled off the lid. He then took out the contents and looked them over. “An electric motor for a bicycle, a phone mount for the handlebars, clipless pedals, clipless cleats, a water bottle cage for the frame, a bike lock, and a set of reflectors. Nice! Thank you, Dad.”
Garin nodded and began walking the bike out to the driveway. “It was a good choice. When you get a mountain bike, that’ll all be very useful.”
Alan played along. “Yes, sure. It sure would be cool to have a mountain bike for all my mountain bike accessories.” He then ran onto the driveway with his bike lock in hand, jostling his dad aside and forcing himself onto the bike seat. “Mine!”
Garin chuckled and let him have the bike. “I’ll help you put everything on it when we’re both home tonight.”
Alan did a circle and then a wheelie, saluting goodbye as he rode off to school.
⚜
Morning Sunday, May 4th, 2024
Early morning sun rays lasered through the dense oaks, maples, pines, and hemlocks at the rocky waterline onto Splitrock Reservoir’s calm surface. Fog drifted over it, and cutting a V-wake through were two men in a paddle canoe, Garin and Joseph. The scent of damp earth, pine resin, and pond algae, and the silence but for birds and fish plopping across the surface, was a welcome change of setting from the city.
Garin, in a baseball cap and a faded flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves, sat in the front, his black jeans tucked into his boots. Joseph, in a light honey-tan workwear jacket, blue jeans, and hiking boots, sat behind him, his eyes on a woodpecker that had just made its activity the loudest around. Not concerned with scaring fish, he turned on the radio, picking up a Rust Belt heartland rock station crisp and clear.
Garin dug into the plastic worm container between them, while Joseph threaded a fat, long nightcrawler onto his hook with practiced ease. They cast their lines simultaneously in opposite directions, the plunk of the hooks breaking the surface with a satisfactory bounce of their bobbers. They reeled in their slack, producing a momentary harmony of rickety squeaking and whirring.
Garin got the first catch, a small largemouth bass, its dark body glistening under the sun. Joseph nodded. “That’d be an impressive catch for Penny, maybe.”
Garin smiled, pulling the hook out of its jaw with a pair of needle-nose pliers and then tossing the fish back, wriggling and belly-flopping away. “Kids didn’t want to come. I don’t ask twice.”
Joseph shrugged. “My dad would yank us out of bed and kick us ass-first into the station wagon at 3 a.m. to go fishing and camping.”
Garin remembered that. As kids, Joseph’s dad was one of his dads-by-proxy that allowed him to pretend at times he had one. “I didn’t have time to brush my teeth, man. You asked him to stop by a drive-thru and he went off.”
Joseph chuckled. “We’ll eat only what God puts in our net and we roast on the spit.”
Garin nodded hard with a smirk. “He said that shit word-for-word. He was doing us a favor, though.”
Joseph held his palm out. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Garin took off his baseball cap and wore it on his knee. “It’s a mission of mine to be the opposite of my AWOL dad. I’ll get them out here, but without their phones…”
Speak of the devil, Garin’s phone buzzed. “The mote in my eye,” he said, pointing at it for Joseph, then answered, “Speak to me.”
A female voice came through, and Garin pressed it to his ear, sitting straight and looking alert. Joseph’s attention turned from watching his line for subtle nibbles to watching Garin’s face for subtle expressions. Garin listened to the woman on the other end while Joseph mouthed the name, “Lyrou?” to which Garin mouthed, “Nah,” and kept listening.
Garin responded, “That’s no problem. I’ll be there. So am I. I also… I also can’t wait. I won’t. It’ll be very good. Bye, Lindsey.”
Garin poked the end-call red icon on his phone screen and sat staring into it. Joseph raised an eyebrow. “Lindsey who?”
Garin put his phone back into his pocket. “Yes. My Lindz. I’m meeting her in Newark tomorrow.”
Joseph, now alert. “Hold on a minute, you’re telling me that was Lindz?”
Garin focused on his line and spoke. “A two-alum reunion.”
Joseph thought to speak but could only manage, “Huh.”
“What do you know about Lindz since senior year?” Garin could use the intel.
Joseph shook his head. “Not much good. Her brother-in-law OD’d. She left her husband because she followed him in a friend’s car and caught him with a prostitute.”
“To have Lindz but go pay for a grimy gas station gal, and then lose her over it. What was he thinking? Give him the idiot award.” Garin couldn’t see an excuse.
“I did it once, but I won’t pay a woman for physical affection again. I want her touch to be genuine, or it’s neither affirming nor a pleasure. She doesn’t want your dick unless you pay, and she wouldn’t be selling herself if she didn’t have to, and so prostitution is buying a ticket to rape. Yet I know I’ll never be married. I want to be married. But the percentage of American women who marry the man who takes her virginity, never divorce him, never abort his child, vote the same as him, never become obese, and never cheat with another man is less than one percent. And that top tier of women has the widest pick of men. It’s not happening for me unless I cave and couple with a woman I don’t really want.” Joseph, in their boat, a fisherman of women.
“You have to disregard some of those boxes you want checked off,” Garin prescribed him a remedy.
“That’s a sacrifice I won’t make. These modern women are not worth men sacrificing anything. The notion that men should sacrifice anything in this context but the boots they put up the geriatrics’ asses in payment for the Sexual Revolution is maddening. Before then, men had women deserving of their sweat in labor and their blood in war. Now we might put our sweat and blood into re-establishing the patriarchy we were born after, but need. That, or we flee our rotted-out feminist ruin of a civilization for another as yet untouched by the harpy.” Joseph had a look in his eye that he would paddle there to the faraway, unspoiled land now.
Garin remembered Terry. “A guy I work with mentioned going to South America or Southeast Asia.”
“Western women hate passport bros because if a man can get better women for less, then she’ll have to settle for less or be passed over,” Joseph said like a morning-show economist.
“More and more are being passed over. Both chief secretaries at our offices are caught out chairless when the music stopped,” Garin said, as if they were victims of being in step with their own tunes and out of step with the tune that played.
“Western women might not care about that if the passport bros weren’t so regularly coupling with much younger women. It has to sting to be left out while your counterparts score. They need their misery-in-having-no-company to have company.” Joseph laughed on behalf of the men that they still got the last laugh.
Meaning himself, Garin said, “I saw a guy about my age in the mall with a college girl hanging on his arm.”
“And I bet while he was carrying the scholar’s bags, the old bags were giving him death stares. Women hate men who are older than them coupling with women who are younger than them. Women don’t care if younger men couple with younger women because women generally don’t want younger men. But for men their age or older to couple with women younger than them is to lose men, from the age range they want and with the highest likelihood of wanting them back, to women who have something they can never have: youth.”
“I sympathize with women in that. Imagine if each day of their adult lives men gradually shrank in height, as women decline in beauty,” Garin peered into a what-if world, fairer to women if harsher on men.
Joseph chuckled at the idea of shrinking with time, then joined Garin in seeing youth-envy how women might. “In this way, it’s similar to how men hate women coupling with men with different immutable traits than himself: taller than himself, interracially coupling with men of another race than himself, different eye color, fuller hair, another nationality, or a higher-class background, because you can’t change where you come from.”
“Maybe if you were to give up your hymen precondition, it would open the range of women enough for you to find a handful you’re somewhat compatible with,” Garin grinned and looked at Joseph through an OK sign he made with his thumb and index finger.
Joseph nodded. “There is something to that. Maybe ideally, a woman has had sex with one man before her husband, but he must be her husband’s inferior in all ways. That makes her husband seem to her to be the greater of men in comparison. Less than one notch, and she will wonder, her wondering likely leading to wandering, or at least wishing to wander. More than one notch and she can lose the ability to pair-bond with her husband over sex, which leads directly, inevitably, to emotional distance and divorce, or she’ll likely retroactively find something in one of them superior to her husband that she might miss, causing her to seek it in another extramaritally, or at least sit partially discontent with her husband’s lack of whatever it is her previous lover had.”
Garin pulled the E-stop lever on Joseph’s system. “And if her one lover before you was superior to you in her eyes?”
“Please! And that’s who some men marry, a wife who goes to bed with him but with the shadow of her better man over them. And when her husband rolls on top of her, she closes her eyes and thinks of not-her-husband to get herself off.” Joseph painted such a miniature dystopia.
Garin looked out on the lake. “Are we up to our own high standards, Joseph?”
“I don’t know about me, but you are, Garin. Look at you on paper. What box do you not check off?” Joseph said it in such a flattering voice, loving even.
Garin feigned a serious tone. “You forgot to say no homo.”
Joseph sighed out a laugh. “No homo. For a woman, I mean, what more could she ask of you?”
“It’s never enough. Not for us, and not for them,” Garin said, sealing the matter.
They returned to the purpose of their outing. Joseph brought in a bluegill, then Garin a black crappie, then, for the smallest catch, Joseph dangled up a flailing pumpkinseed sunfish so small it was a wonder to them it got hooked. The biggest catch that day was Garin’s, the ex-girlfriend.
⚜
Noon Sunday, May 5th, 2024
Under their umbrellas, Garin reconnected with Lindsey in Newark. First by the Harriet Tubman Monument, and then passing under a canopy of red and white oaks, elms, sugar maples, and sweetgums, then stopping at the front doors of the Washington Park Gallery. The feeling there, walking together after two decades, was unreal but familiar. They weren’t looking into the same teenage faces they remembered; they were physically and mentally matured. But the recognition was mutual and deep, and they kept looking at one another to take in the sight of their castaway hearts.
Recovered?
They entered, and Lindsey offered up her membership pass with guest privileges. They kept their voices down, commenting only on the pieces they came upon: Hassam, Eakins, Monet, Renoir, Inness, Homer, Courbet, Cassatt, David, van Gogh, Bierstadt, and Sloan. Impressionistic, offensive, luminous, ephemeral, limpid, stoic, neoclassical, and groundbreaking.
Garin thought to hold Lindsey’s hand. Lindsey thought he might. It wouldn’t be prudent. Should she expect that? Should he do that? Not today.
⚜
Afternoon Saturday, May 11th, 2024
Garin had worked meticulously to relink with Lindsey. He met her again in person, this time at the very same roller rink they frequented as high school kids, still operating under the same namesake. And this time, they did hold hands on the pretense of balancing. Unlike at the art gallery, now they were loud and boisterous, trying miserably to recreate the roller-skating tricks and stunts they’d done so easily in their school days.
The DJ spotted this one millennial couple on a floor full of acne-faced Zoomers, dug their vibe, and so played his remixes of old ’90s pop hits. Familiar music, familiar spot, familiar girl, familiar boy. The neurochemical holy grail poured deep red through their veins.
Sipping frozen cola through straws, talking over the beat and with disco lights beaming across their faces, Garin said, “My wife… Lyrou…”
Lindsey nodded. “Yes?”
Garin continued; there wasn’t anything to it but to say it. “She isn’t… I don’t keep Lyrou in the dark. She knows who you are and that we’re meeting.”
Lindsey had wondered this, and now, hearing these words began to conclude Garin was laying down a line, friend-zoning her, old-friend-zoning. “I see,” she said with a fake smile.
Garin took her wrist gently. “No. She wants to meet you, too. She’s supportive of the whole reuniting. She wants to be part of it.”
Lindsey leaned in. “Part of it?”
Garin licked his lips, looked aside, then back to Lindsey. “Yes, part of it. Trust me. Will you meet her?”
Lindsey stood, and in that second, Garin thought he’d weirded her out, and she’d skate to the return counter never to be seen again. Instead, she took his hand. “Sure. I’d love to meet your wife. Come on, let’s skate.” And so they got back into that lost-long-ago mood.
⚜
Afternoon Saturday, May 18th, 2024
On their third meeting, Lindsey drove into Jersey City, and Lyrou came along with Garin to find her waiting on line for a pretzel and coffee. Where to then? Lindsey wanted to go to an outdoor market with its pop-up shops. For the most part, Garin walked behind the two women as they led, elbows locked, chatting and, to his relief, laughing.
At sunset, the three of them enjoyed a rooftop bar with a panoramic view of the region. The setting sun painted the Manhattan skyline amber and rose, casting a golden glow across the Hudson River as it shimmered like molten glass. The sky, a soft gradient of purple and coral, wrapped their bodies in a cool breeze.
Inhibitions numb, they took Garin’s car, and he drove them altogether, the women in the back seat talking, Lindsey apologizing, Lyrou assuring her she ought not get into a DUI or worse, a vehicular accident. And so, by necessity, it was to their vacant apartment in Grantwood.
Garin, with the keys, allowed them in, and slyly Lyrou helped the drunken Lindsey to the bedroom, laying her down. “Lindsey, don’t worry about it. Stay here tonight.”
Lyrou turned to Garin, her hand on his arm. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Garin ignored Lyrou, watching only Lindsey as she lay on their bed. He stroked her head, her light chestnut-brown hair, and looked into her blue eyes. “It’s been so many years, Lindz… do you remember our first kiss?”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she giggled, a tipsy smile on her face. “Garin? What’re you talking about?” she said with her rustic Kittatinny Mountain dialect.
“Lindz… do you remember?” Garin wanted to know if she remembered. It mattered to him, and it mattered to Lyrou that it mattered to him.
A haze of drunkenness clouded her. “Garin, you’re married…” Her voice was pretty and mellifluous, like a country singer’s spoken intro.
“You’re divorced… I’ve wanted to reconnect with you since I heard.” Garin twirled a loose strand of Lindsey’s hair around his index finger, then let it untwirl.
Lyrou felt a pang at his words, and for the first time, she caught her fist forming to hit him. Oh, that Garin had been thinking of his first and hadn’t said anything, that he’d had much more going through his mind and in his heart, unseen and unexpressed, that she was unaware of.
Lindsey looked about the room, trying to focus, and then her eyes landed on Lyrou standing next to the bed. “Your wife is right here. I mean… she’s right, right here.” She giggled again, her cheeks flushing a deeper shade of pink. “I remember now. Our first kiss. You made me drop my schoolbooks. I was so dumbstruck. My friends were there on their bikes. Marissa said she pissed herself; she couldn’t believe it. Oh my God.”
“I remember it vividly. Your eyes opened wide.” Garin gently touched Lindsey’s face and hair, as he did when they were a young teen couple. “Marissa made fun of me for a month. When I first kissed you, I was so nervous… as nervous as I am now. Though it might be worse tonight.”
Watching the scene unfold, Lyrou felt jealousy. Garin was right; this feeling wasn’t the brief reflex the college girl Andrea had elicited. This was… frightening. Her hand rested on Garin’s shoulder, her thumb tracing circles, a reminder of her presence. “It’s OK, mon soleil. We’re all here together.”
Lindsey’s eyes swung to Lyrou. “You’re OK with this?”
Lyrou with raised eyebrows, “No brats on bikes, we’re all grownups here, Lindsey,” she said steadily. “And if it’s something that makes him happy, then I’m willing to share that with him.”
The alcohol-induced haze lifting slightly, Lindsey looked at Garin, memories of him flooding back, memories of those youthful days, she could even hear the emo, nu-metal, post-hardcore music they blasted, and recall the skate park and mall hangouts they had. Before Lindsey saw it coming, Garin kissed Lindsey’s lips lightly, allowing her to kiss back if she liked. For a moment, her eyes closed, giving in to the familiar sensation. She kissed him back, the taste of Syrah and nostalgia between them. It was different now; Garin was now such an adult, but he was still very much Garin.
The intimate scene before Lyrou, a strange, painful thrill was coursing in her. “Keep going, chéri. Show me what you two have been missing.”
Curiosity igniting within her, Lindsey pressed up into the kiss, her hand moving to his chest, her fingers running over his pectorals, feeling the beat of his heart beneath her palm. Garin’s kiss with Lindsey deepened, his tongue pressed into her mouth, and she allowed it.
A blend of emotions, part jealousy, part arousal, danced within Lyrou. “Chéri, I want to watch you make love to her.”
Surprise and arousal in her gaze, Lindsey nodded slowly, the room spinning slightly from the alcohol. “OK, if that’s what you both want… seriously?” her words becoming so quiet they were almost inaudible, “.. I also want it.”
Garin pulled back, his eyes met Lyrou’s for a moment before turning to Lindsey. He began to unbutton her blouse, his movements deliberate and gentle. A tangle of nerves, Lindsey sat up, allowing him to remove her blouse, revealing a lacy black Basque bra. “Is this what you both want?” she asked, pulling her bra strap by the tip of her pinky until it fell off her shoulder.
A commitment to the deed of this night, taking hold as Lyrou watched Garin’s deft fingers at work. “Oui. We both want this.”
Her anticipation building, Lindsey leaned back, allowing him to unhook her bra and expose her breasts to the cool evening air that wafted into the room through the wide open window. Garin reveled in the sight of Lindsey’s breasts, which he hadn’t seen or felt in forever, but lusted after so painfully as a teenager. He admired, as a treasure lost but now unearthed. “Lindz, I have always loved you. I never stopped. I have carried my love for you in my heart privately. I hated it when I heard you were engaged.”
Lyrou bit her lips inward, her fist forming again. She winced at this confession, but she absorbed his words; she could take it. Couldn’t she? The alcohol made Lindsey bold. “I always wondered, Garin, what if things had been different? How would we have unfurled?”
“Pretend we’re married.. that we have been married for years now.. that this is our house.. and we’re a married couple making love like we have a thousand times before,” Garin said, almost channeling his teenage self, or his current self, but from an alternate dimension.
The fire in her burning brighter, scorching her, Lyrou surrendered and became party to her displacement, party to the coup against herself, a co-conspirator with the exiled usurper returned in the figure of a nude Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey, his first love, his first, she was first. “You never got over her, did you? Ma vie, make love to her as if she’s the only one who’s ever mattered.”
Seeking understanding, Lindsey nodded, her cheeks flushing as Garin’s hands caressed her bare skin. “OK, let’s pretend.”
Garin and Lindsey began to explore each other. Their movements were slow, almost tender. It reoccurred to Lyrou in that moment that Garin wasn’t better or worse than any of her lovers; he was best at making love in this manner, his specialty, a master of it, a manner she could not do without and needed, and wished he understood that about himself. Lyrou watched as Garin’s love for her collided with his long-buried feelings for Lindsey. She could see the agony in his eyes, and a strange kinship with her husband’s first love. As he touched her with a reverence that seemed almost sacred, Lindsey whispered again, so quietly that only he could hear, “This feels so… wrong, but also so perfect.”
Garin stood and undressed, peeling off his shirt, and dropping his pants, standing beside the bed with his erection suspended over Lindsey’s now bare pale body… Lindsey was so pulchritudinous, so slim, svelte, and white compared to Lyrou’s artful body of brown curves. “Do you want me inside you, Lindz?”
The height of desire and trepidation. “Yes, baby,” she breathed, her voice shaking. “Make love to me like we’re supposed to be together.”
Garin knelt on the bed and pivoted. He prepared to take Lindsey in a missionary position. He took the iliac crests of her pelvis for handles to grip and move her into place, then noticed her soft white caesarean scar, and remembered that Lindsey had lived a whole life and multivolume tragedy of a doomed marriage in the time since they parted after graduation. She parted her legs and bared her wet and pink. That which should have remained his from the beginning. That should have birthed his children. How could he have thrown Lindsey away? It was the stupid folly of youth, not valuing the gold in his hand and skipping it thoughtlessly into a pond on a whim. Stupid. But never mind that, now finally he’d come back around to retrieve her, if only for a night, to enter her again.
Watching the memory play out on his face, Lyrou encouraged him that he didn’t hesitate for her sake, “Chéri, make her feel everything you’ve ever wanted to give her.”
Lindsey’s breath quickened as Garin positioned himself above her, his erection poised at her entrance. “I adore you Lindz; I love you so much.”
A trembling, “I… I love you too, Garin. I always have.”
As Garin entered her, Lindsey’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she let out a high-pitched moan that seemed to echo through the room. The sight of his first love in the throes of her husband was a rush of sharp emotions for Lyrou. The stab of jealousy, real jealousy as Garin had defined it, and she wondered if it could, for now, be overpowered by the heat growing between her own legs, watching them together. No. It would take more to bear this. Lyrou would have to try with sheer will to come through this night mentally sound.
He began to move, his eyes locked onto Lindsey’s, his body responding to her every gasp and shiver. “You feel so good, Lindz.”
“Oh God,” she moaned, her hips rising to meet his thrusts, “I’m your woman forever.”
“I’m your man forever.” Garin descended on Lindsey, continuing his thrusts, and kissed her neck deeply. She opened her neck to him, looking up and away, closing her eyes, love and lust in her reddening face.
“Keep going, chéri.” Lyrou whispered, unsure Garin could hear her or cared to. Garin’s eyes flickered between Lyrou and Lindsey, savoring the moment, the past, and the present all colliding in tumultuous rip tides and whirlpools.
Finding in Lyrou’s hot stare the dark chocolate pools of desire that differed inversely with yet matched in plumage her own sapphire gems-for-irises. “You’re so beautiful, Lyrou,” her voice honeyed.
A flicker of something unspoken passed between them. “Thank you, Lindsey. So are you.”
Feeling a rush of gratitude for her acceptance, Lindsey let her head fall back into the bed. She kneaded the hard mound of Garin’s triceps and stroked his solid forearms, his flexor tendons rolling under her fingers.
Garin was pushing their boundaries, his and Lyrou’s. He whispered into Lindsey’s ear, “Look at her, Lindz. Do you think she loves me, even as she watches me love you?”
A blend of admiration and curiosity in Lindsey’s mind, “I can see it,” a word with each wet thrust. “It’s… incredible.”
Without looking back to Lyrou, Garin made a request, “Lyrou, can she let it out?”
The intensity of the moment was etched on Lyrou’s face. “First-woman, if you do what’s right for you, I can find no fault.”
Garin stiffened his legs and began thrusting into Lindz with great diving motions, torquing into her, slapping hard against her clitoris with each impact… his cock stroking her G-spot so nicely… vibrations resonating in her pelvic-complex like a musical organ. “Yes, Garin,” she cried out, her body responding to his every move. “Take me back to that time!”
History with a capital H, Garin and Lindsey lost themselves in each other’s arms. Lyrou watched, and she recognized Lindsey’s body building, a crescendo of pleasure to the rhythm of their lovemaking. “Garin, I’m so close,” Lindsey gasped, her body trembling.
“Nobody understands the real me like you, Lindz.. I’m going to give that to you.” Garin grunted, trails of sweat running down his arms and back.
“Do it.” Lyrou quietly urged, almost silent. “Let her feel everything you’ve been holding back.”
The years of longing and irrecoverable moments swirling in her, Lindsey nodded, coiling tighter within her, “It’s too good!”
“Do it, chéri,” Lyrou whispered, her body trembling in anticipation of their shared climax.
Lindsey felt the familiar ache of his love and desire for her, and he was close, “I missed you.”
“Let it out, Lindz… you’re my girl.” Garin took her in both arms, embracing her close even as he continued pounding between her legs into her crotch… and then he pulled from her.
A final nod before Lindsey let go, her body arching off the bed as she screamed out her orgasm, “Yes! Huuu-aaah! Ah-ah-ah, aaah!”. Lindsey half-raised and gave a flurry of kisses on Garin’s chest and arms, “Thank you,” she panted, nostrils flaring, her body still quaking from her explosive orgasm.
Garin stood over Lindsey, and her hand found his rod. Garin’s body tightened, his deltoid muscles flexed and striated, like the thick, fibrous strands of an anchor rope. His eyes closed tight as Lindsey continued working him. His gaze flickered open to Lindsey’s mouth, her pink lips, and then back to Lyrou’s eyes, the connection between them unbroken. Lindsey’s hand was moving faster, her breasts jiggling together with the pace of her strokes, the friction building.
Lindsey raised her chin, her head tilting back farther, her mouth open as wide as it might go. She briefly pressed, licked, and parted her lips wide once more. His arm veins popped, and he let out a primal groan as he climaxed, “Aaaaahhhgggg” his hot seed spilling onto Lindsey’s eager face, speckling over her cheek and across her lips into her mouth, on her forehead and in her hair, spilling on her neck and running down her chin. As she tasted the warmth of Garin’s release, Lindsey licked her lips, savoring the moment. Lyrou handed her a palm full of tissues from the nightstand, and she wiped away the evidence before tossing it down into the little bin by the desk. “Was that good?” a soft whisper of pleasure. The intimacy of the moment seared into her soul.
Garin leaned forward and kissed Lindsey; she kissed back with the spirit of having owned him first. Garin moaned with ecstasy, such beauty, it was the high point moment of his erotic life to that hour and he became erect, causing him to ejaculate a bit more, his abdominals tensed as he shot another load, “Fuuucck… fuck.”
Lyrou took Garin by his face in both hands, the fire of desire flaring anew. She kissed him also. “Remember me? You taste like home.” She turned to Lindsey, her hand still wrapped around Garin’s shaft. “And you… you just tumbled out of a recurring dream.”
A spark of something unnamable lit within Lindsey, “This is… more than I ever imagined,” she breathed, her eyes dropping to the still-hard cock between them.
Garin crawled into the bed, lying next to Lindsey and embracing her naked body. Lyrou lay adjacent, embracing Garin, sandwiching him. Their three naked bodies locked together in the same bed, preparing to rest and chat more, savoring. A look of wonder and amazement in Lindsey’s face as she spied Garin and Lyrou. “I never thought I’d experience something like this,” her body still humming from their shared release. “It’s like… we’ve come full circle.” Feeling a strange warmth in her chest, Lindsey gasped, “I never knew it could be like this,” she said, filled with awe. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“Lindz, did your divorce hurt?” Garin’s ecstasy gone.
A brief flicker of pain crossed her features. “It did,” she admitted, her voice soft. “But seeing you with Lyrou… it makes me realize that some loves are meant to last.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t find the one in your husband, but if you ever doubt that you’re loved by a man, I want you to know I will always,” Garin said, daring to test Lyrou further.
Lindsey’s voice was thick with emotion. “Garin, me too.” Her eyes were welling up with unshed tears. “I never knew it could be like this.”
“Like what, Lindz?” Garin smiled, wanting to hear more.
“Like… this. The way you two love each other so fiercely that you’re willing to share it. It’s… it’s just so… I don’t have words for it because I’ve never imagined it.” Lindsey looked to Lyrou and then back to Garin.
“What was it that caused your divorce?” Garin locked hands with Lyrou over Lindsey’s soft belly.
Lindsey’s smile was bittersweet. “It was a lot of things. But ultimately, Travis and I just grew apart, an effacement of our rock by a hundred thousand storm droplets.”
“There must be more to it,” Garin pressed.
Lindsey’s eyes on the ceiling, lost in thought, “I’m too… too… too ashamed to say all that went wrong. Everything went wrong. I couldn’t give my one life to live so wrong. I had to take myself back, for me.”
A knowing look in Lyrou’s gaze. “That is human and perhaps neither of you were wrong,” she said, turning to Garin, “We all have our stories. It’s what makes us who we are.”
“In the morning, I’ll make you both breakfast.” Garin offered, suddenly, a consolation. Lindsey’s eyes drifted to the streetlight peeking through the curtains as they blew slightly in the breeze. Their clothing lay about as remnants of their evening, scattered around. “What an insane night.” The three drifted to sleep, and as promised, Garin woke them the next morning with the smell and sizzling of bacon, egg, sausage, biscuits, and gravy, with milk.
⚜
