Sally Rides Double

  Chapter One: We Just Had Sex

“I love you so much, Sally,” Bill whispered in my ear, as he entered me on the circular beach lounger on his patio. The convertible top partially blocked the sun, but we were dripping with sweat, slipping and sliding against each other on this hotter than usual day in Florida’s temperate winter climate.

“I love you too,” I said, which was true, but it was doubtful I’d ever love again like I had when I married Lance.

Bill smiled down at me with those adoring eyes as he did his best to please me, his stroke, deep, even, and massage-like. He’s a hopeless romantic and likes to take his time making love, which is nice, but at odds with my personality. I love sex, but it shouldn’t take an hour to paddle up Coochie Creek. I prefer to wedge a quick bang into the day when I need it, kinda like a coffee break.

And that’s why I’m here.

I tightened my legs around Bill’s back, swinging my hips up to meet his momentum. He felt my urgency and anchored his arms under my legs, raising my hips, maneuvering us into go-time position.

“That’s it right there,” I cooed, tingling with anticipation. Teetering on the edge as I was, just hearing and feeling Bill release, could catapult me to climax, and he knew it.

“OK baby,” Bill purred, his face buried in my soft blonde curls, his hot breath on my ear. Then he inhaled sharply and began his sprint to the finish line, committing himself completely to satisfying my outsized libido. He gasped then slowed his stroke, squeezing and flexing into me, groaning out the ecstasy as it filled him. I lost myself in the melody of his euphoria, joining his joyous expression, as the divine convulsion lit up my entirety with indescribable pleasure.

Ahhhh . . . what a perfect eight minutes.

Bill cuddled up beside me on the lounger and we relaxed in silence, listening to the surf pound the shore. In a few weeks, the final flock of Canadian snowbirds would migrate south. They typically left Canada the day after Christmas, on Boxing Day. I understand the desire to celebrate Christmas up north with snow on the ground, presents under a real fir tree, and a blazing fire in the hearth; it never quite feels like Christmas in Florida. Point is, once they got here, the condos on both sides of Bill’s would be occupied, and there would be no more pressing dangly parts on the patio.

I’d miss it.

I stepped through the open sliders into the recently upstyled living area, fixing the flimsy fabric of my skimpy teddy over my double whammies. More than once, I had considered surgery to reduce, reshape, and refirm them, but when I read the procedure, which requires cutting out and reattaching the nipples, and with no guarantee sensation would be restored, I said hell no to that. I wasn’t taking any chances. And besides, I knew at least two men who liked big soft Betty and Wilmas.

I filled a glass of water and gazed out at Bill curled up naked on the lounger. He looked like a cherub–his muscular frame and bald head smooth and copper-colored. Just a few months ago when we began dating, Bill had been a never-nude like me. He was still a very modest man though. He’d have his boxers on shortly.

 ******

The guest suite was the only part of Bill’s condo that hadn’t been remodeled to reflect his style: just this side of ultra modern. It had been left as is after Bill’s interior decorator terminated their business relationship, which not surprisingly, followed immediately after Bill terminated their personal relationship. The contractors had managed to cut in the wall edges with arctic white paint but that’s as far as they got, and the effect of the outlining was to overemphasize the drab, pale yellow walls and faded brown carpet still exposed. Every so often Bill would bounce design ideas off me in an attempt to elicit some sort of commitment to the space. It was, after all, where I kept some things for the nights I slept over, which were few and far between, and almost always on a Saturday–our day. But I lived in a colorful beach bungalow crowded with inherited antiques that I’d reupholstered or re-imagined to echo an eclectic tropical vibe. I couldn’t relate to the masculine, sterile medium Bill had embraced, so I declined to offer my opinion. Plus putting my stamp on his homestead was a relationship bridge too far for me. I suspect that’s why he kept prompting me to do it.

I rinsed off in the tired old, gold 3-piece ensuite bathroom, then took measure of myself in the desilvering mirror. I’d put on a few pesky pounds since being crowned “Bill’s new girlfriend,” and I knew the strappy black sundress would put up a fight, but I managed to mold myself beneath the flexible custody of the Spandex. I really needed the height from my spiky black stilettos, but I couldn’t pull off that Miami Vice vibe – not at my age and at four in the afternoon on the Space Coast, so I opted for bejeweled flip flops. Then, having rifled through the various unused and half-used cosmetics I’d brought over to free up space in my own bathroom, I settled on what I always settle on: pale pink lipstick and a little mascara. 

I slipped a silver backpack over my shoulders and walked back out to the patio, knowing my next exchange with Bill would be far less pleasurable.

 ******

“Hey old man, wake up,” I said, teasing. At 52, Bill was hardly old, and at 55, I was older.

He rolled on his back and smiled up at me, then feeling the sun on his wiener, realized he was buck naked. He scrambled for his underwear lying on the cement deck, and I giggled watching him race to get them on.

“Where are you going, Sally?” he asked, looking confused. “I’m making dinner: baked macaroni and cheese.”

“Macaroni and cheese?” I asked, incredulously. “Why would you make that? You know mine is the best. Unless you’re making my grandmother’s recipe, you’re wasting your time.”

I headed for the door. It would be the first of several attempts to get through it. Bill passed me on the left and cut me off at the kitchen.

“Yours is great, Sally, but I want to try out Mom’s recipe on you. It has a bacon and tomato crust on the top.”

“Hmmmm, well that actually does sound pretty good, but I have to leave. Brian and Craig are meeting Laura and I at Bunky’s in about an hour.”

Bill frowned and crossed his meaty forearms then leaned back casually against the door: his signature pose. Unfortunately, it was the refrigerator door, and by the wince on his face that followed immediately thereafter, I guessed the stainless steel had given his bare sun-baked back an icy reception, causing him to snap to attention.

He’s quite the accidental comedian.

“Don’t look so disappointed honey,” I said, stifling a grin, “We’ll see each other Saturday; we’ll have your macaroni and cheese then.”

Bill shot me a gloomy glance as he opened the refrigerator and pulled a Corona Light from it. He wasn’t typically a day drinker and he never drank alone, so I knew he had no intention of opening it. He set the beer directly on the newly-inaugurated concrete countertop before thinking better of it and placing a coaster under it.

“Wait!” he said, a flash of awareness brightening his Caribbean blue eyes, “It’s Thursday. Your happy hour is tomorrow!”

Bill looked relieved as he wrapped me in a big bear hug and nuzzled my neck.

“It’s Thirsty Thursday,” I said, tapping his nose with my index finger, “and it’s a special occasion.”

Abruptly, Bill released me from his commanding embrace and looked at me with a quizzical expression.

“Since when are Brian and Craig invited to happy hour?” he asked, “I thought that was girls-only.”

“I want to tell them the good news in person,” I said, rising on tippy toes and kissing the bottom of his chin.

“So you’re sure you got the Ops Manager job.”

“Quite sure,” I said.

Bill and I worked for the SouthEast Atlantic Engineering and Telecommunications Corporation in Sydney, Florida, although in different locations and capacities. Bill was a senior manager, while I had been thrust back into the workforce after an embarrassing divorce, and was struggling to rise to middle management.

“You’ve only been at SEA for a little over a year,” he reminded me unnecessarily, “and you’ve already been promoted once.”

“So what?” I said, “Mark says that’s long enough, especially since no one beats me on paper. He’s confident the job is mine, and he should know; he’s my boss.”

“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” Bill said, cautiously, picking up the beer bottle and pretending to examine it. “Hmmmm, only 105 calories.”

“Do you know something I don’t, Bill?”

He gave me a What who me? look.

“No Sally. I just know how things work.”

Oh you sure as hell do.

“Have you forgotten my not-so-secret advantage?” I turned and wagged my tail at him. “Mark didn’t bring that up of course, but you know as well as I do, being a woman is an advantage in the engineering world.”

Bill chuckled. “In a fair world, everyone would rise through the ranks based solely on merit.”

“That’s rich coming from you!” I blurted. “And besides, if they’re dumb enough to give me extra points because I’m an XX instead of an XY, I’m not going to compound their faulty logic by refusing the offer.”

“Why can’t you tell Brian and Craig tomorrow at work,” Bill said, returning to his obvious displeasure with the modified happy hour date and invitation list.

“That’ll be too late. Mark says they’ll probably announce it first thing tomorrow morning, plus I’m thinking Laura and Brian might hit it off,” I said.  

Bill furrowed his eyebrows.

“I thought you didn’t like mixing business with pleasure.”

“Brian and Craig are more than my supervisees, Bill, you know that. I tell them everything.”

Bill jerked backwards at the in-coming I had just hurled in his direction.

“Everything?” he asked, hands on hips. “I hope you don’t entertain them with your provocative memoirs.”

I grinned at Bill’s colorful description of the collection of short stories I was writing. It had started out as journaling, a way to deal with the divorce, a sort of therapy without the therapist. But it had quickly escalated into a passion for storytelling, and in the absence of any decent material, I’d been known to create the conditions for a memorable yarn myself.

“That stuff you write is so personal, Sally,” Bill added, “Some of it is downright pornographic.”

Bill air quoted the word pornographic with his expressive fingers as if it needed emphasis. He’d picked up that banal body language habit from me and tended to use it most inappropriately and almost always when he was irritated. I liked to make fun of him, and often we’d get into an air quote battle until someone would laugh and lose the game. By then, whatever had set him off was long forgotten.

“Let’s see,” I said, feigning loss of memory, “Brian and Craig . . . hmmmm . . . I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever told them anything involving pole varnishing . . . or oyster shucking . . . or making the beast with two backs . . . or taking ol’ one-eye to the optometrist or-“

“I’m not joking, Sally,” he said. “I’ve only met Brian and Craig once and that was at Rogers Park before you and I got together.”

“Dirty Dancing,” I said, reminding him of the story I crafted after the company picnic, “and I didn’t really have to tell them that one. They were there for most of it.”

“That was just a kiss,” Bill said, air quoting the word kiss.

“They didn’t see the kiss. They saw the feel,” I said, air quoting feel.

I smiled to myself as I recalled the very bad behavior I’d gotten away with that evening.

“I’m serious Sally. If I thought you told them The Orlando Schtupp or that time in my bedroom at Mom’s.”

“Two-Story or Ranch,” I said.

“Yeah that one . . . I couldn’t look them in the eyes,” he said.

“No worries, honey,” I said, as I pressed myself up against his toasty torso and ran my hand up his rippled right arm. “The smokin’ hot stuff is for ladies only.”

I gave his bulging bicep a little love bite.

“Ouch!” he yelped, rubbing the spot where my teeth had left a faint impression, “Don’t be so rough!”

“I’m sorry darlin’.” I chuckled as Bill jerked his arm from me.

“Laura’s so much older than Brian,” he said, “Doesn’t that bother you? I mean . . . considering your history.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and he returned my expression, realizing he had just opened that legendary can of worms.

And I took the bait.

“It only bothers me, Bill, when it’s the MAN who’s much older, and that MAN is married to someone else, and that someone else is ME!”

Bill averted my eyes and looked at the neglected beer bottle which had begun to weep. He reached for a tee towel and wiped it dry. I opened the cutlery drawer, pulled out a bottle opener, and passed it to him.

“Frankly, Bill, I’m surprised you’re bringing this up, considering YOUR history,” I said, reminding him of the dinky tickling with the criminally youthful interior decorator.

He frowned, then raised the bottle opener high in the air, then pointed it at me and lunged.

En garde!

“You know that’s not fair, Sally,” he said, the bottle opener two inches from my nose. I swatted it away.

“Do me a favor, Bill,” I said, “Put that damn beer back in the fridge or open it, stick a lime in it, and hand it to me. I’ll down it on my way out.”

Bill returned the beer to the fridge and wiped the counter. I took advantage of that distraction to tiptoe to the front door. I got my hand on the knob, but Bill pressed his palm firmly against the door to prevent me from opening it.

I turned towards him.

“Bill, PLEASE! I need to go!”

“I’m asking you not to,” he said, crossing his arms over his barreled chest, and leaning back on the door.

Aware that vinegar rarely persuades a man, I reached my arms around his neck, pulled him down to me, and kissed him thick and sweet as Florida honey.

“Why don’t you come over a little early on Saturday. Pop one of those little blue pills,” I teased, placing my hand tenderly on his cheek, “You can wow me again with your Woodrow Wilson.”

I expected him to succumb to my wishes and open the door, but he morphed into Count Fuckula instead.

“I can wow you again right now, baby,” he said, licking his lips, foreshadowing his proposed methodology.

Before I could say, “We just had sex,” Bill reeled me to him by the strap of my backpack like a helpless fish on a hook, then he squatted on his beefy haunches and hoisted me on to his lap. Instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he rolling-pinned me against the door until I was pressed like a panini between it and his chiseled chassis.  

“Bill, put me down! You’re squishing me!” I said impatiently, but I have to admit, I felt a sudden desire to jump the turnstile one more time.

Bill relaxed his hips just enough to allow my legs to ease to the floor. Then he planted his palms against the door and moved his feet back to lower his stature 11 inches so he could penetrate my green eyes with his hypnotic blue ones, and begin to exert his influence.