Second Thoughts and Last Chances
By
Latikia
Edited by
The Old Fart
Copyright © 2007,
2008
Chapter 15
I sat there in the study for quite a while. How long I’m not sure, because the chair faces away from the only time piece in the room, an old style mariners clock that resides on my roll-top desk.
I held the glass of vodka in my left hand, my head in my right; staring out in the direction of the doorway yet seeing nothing but the swirling dissonance of my own thoughts. All the downstairs lights were off, the only illumination was a small nightlight plugged into an outlet halfway down the hallway that led to the staircase.
To say I was shaken would not have done my condition true justice. Shaken, not stirred. Fuck shaken…I’d been puréed, poured out and left to dry; the residue that was me was then swept up, gently deposited into a trendy lavender colored bottle, the cork lovingly inserted, sealed with wax and, with great precision, smashed to bits against a grubby brick wall.
What the hell just happened? I asked myself.
Nothing.
Not a peep.
Not a whisper.
Not a sound.
Nobody home.
Thanks for nothing! I shouted into the void.
I lifted my head, raised the glass and took a long slow swallow of the contents, concentrating on the burn as it clawed its way down my esophagus before coming to rest in the roiling, acid filled pit of my stomach.
My belly was on fire, my gullet was raw and probably inflamed, but at least my heart was silent.
I snarled at the half empty glass before my eyes, even briefly contemplated hurling it and it’s diminished contents thru the doorway and into the wall beyond.
While it might be momentarily satisfying, in the end I told myself sagely, it’d just be a waste of perfectly good vodka, and tossed back another mouthful.
Swallowing had become a chore. No, not a chore; more like a relentlessly painful obligation. Sort of like tattooing the Last Supper across your erect cock, just because you promised some pretty face you would.
Another swallow and there was less than half-a-half-a glass of vodka left. I thought about that thought for a second or two. I hate math. Hate arithmetic. Hate calculating, figuring, balancing, estimating…pretty much anything to do with numbers. Fractions suck of course, but they beat percentages all to hell in my estimation. Some folks, including a few I went to school with, swear that mathematics is the unifying language of the universe; the only true, accurate and precise way to define or describe anything.
They are, of course, out of their tiny fucking little minds.
Mathematics is nothing more or less than another human system devised to define, label and otherwise try and make some kind of sense out of our perceptions; an attempt at eliminating the weaknesses inherent in all other forms of human communication. What devotees of math fail to take into account is the simple fact that any and all human systems are flawed. Why? For the simple reason that humans are flawed, imperfect, self-absorbed, short-sighted…yada-yada-yada, so on and so forth. And we perceive the same things in different ways. They can try to describe the color yellow with ones and zeros, or lambdas and deltas, NOTs and NORs, but take away the perception and emotion factors and what’s left is hardly worth the effort. But that’s mathematicians for you.
Half-a-half-a glass of vodka. I knew how much that was. I could see it there, right in front of me. Made perfect sense really; eminently accurate and completely precise…in a ‘close-but-no-cigar’ kind of way.
Another swallow and the problems of mathematical description were dispensed with for the moment. No more contents, no more fractions or percentages, no more problem.
No more math problem. Unfortunately, I still had the one I’d come down there with in the first place. Couldn’t seem to drink that one away.
“Fuck it.” I groused and dropped the glass, which hit the floor and, miracle of miracles, completely failed to shatter into dozens of pieces, pushed up out of the chair and, aching knees and all, headed off towards the kitchen.
I’d just gotten out of the door and around the corner when I came chest to face with Lilly, who was wearing one of my long sleeve dress shirts, socks on her feet and holding a fresh bottle of peppered vodka, extended out towards me like an offering.
I gave her a lopsided grin, mumbled ‘Thanks’, took the bottle, spun on my heel and returned to the study. I launched myself into the chair, which creaked and groaned in protest, but eventually decided to remain upright and in one piece. I opened the bottle, threw the cap over my shoulder, put the mouth of the bottle to my lips and lifted.
Fresh raw fire ate its welcome way down my throat. About a half-a-third of a half. When I lowered the bottle I saw Lilly standing, arms crossed beneath her breasts, before me, a miserably patient look on her face, compassion and sympathy in her eyes.
“What happened up there Ike?” she asked while I wiped my mouth with the back of the hand holding the bottle. Somehow I avoided spilling any of the liquor on either myself or the floor, but completely failed to avoid Lilly’s piercing gaze.
“Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”
Back went the bottle.
“You do know that you can’t lie for shit, right?”
I lowered the bottle, closed an eye and squinted at her with the one that remained open.
“Au contraire,” I said with a pathetic attempt at a French accent. “I happen to be one of the great liars of our time. I’m so damn good, even my oldest friends are convinced that I’ve never told a lie in my life.” I half lifted the bottle in a mock salute. “Or they would be, if I had any.”
“Okay, so you can lie. I stand corrected.” she said with just a taste of hurt in her tone.
I opened my closed eye and looked around owlishly.
“I’m sorry Lilly. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself?”
I nodded absently. “Something like that I suppose.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
I peered down at the bottle for a moment before returning my gaze to Lilly’s lovely features.
“Have I always been a clueless idiot, or is it a recent affliction?”
Her smile blazed brighter and hotter than the acid and alcohol in my stomach, drenching me with fondness and affection in equal measure.
“No, you’ve always been a clueless idiot. Less than most men I’ve known, but still…”
She stepped closer, took the bottle from my hand and set it down on the end table next to the chair. Then she plopped herself down on my knees and wiggled delightfully until she was comfortably snuggled up against me. I put my arms around her and sighed loudly.
“So what did happen between you and Izzy?” she asked at last.
I explained to her what had happened, what we’d said, what Izzy had done and how I’d responded…how she’d ended up across my knee and about my sudden chilling realization.
“Are you positive?” Lilly asked. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised by my revelation.
“Honey, I’ve been reading emotions almost constantly for eight years. I might have trouble making sense of my own at times, but I’ve gotten pretty damn good at breaking down and analyzing other people’s.”
“Okay.” She was thoughtfully quiet. “Explain to me why this upsets you so much.”
I tilted my head to look down at her. Was she serious?
“Sorry?” I said, perplexed.
She smiled patiently, tapping the fingers of one hand on my chest.
“Peggy loves you, right?”
“Right.”
“But she’s in love with Izzy.”
“That’s what she tells me.”
“Do you love her any less because of it?”
“No.”
“Does she love you any less?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Okay…I love Peggy and Izzy, but I’m in love with you.”
I had to smile. She said it as if it were so naturally obvious it hardly bore mentioning.
“Yes dear.” I replied dutifully. Her smile turned seductive, enticing and approving.
Her fingers wormed between the buttons of my shirt and began toying with my chest hair.
“That’s my good boy.” she chuckled. “Now, as I was saying, just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I love them any less.”
“And I don’t dispute a word you’ve said. But love isn’t the problem.”
“Isn’t it?” She twirled her finger, dragging her short nail lightly across the skin beneath the hair.
Her teasing had distracted my thoughts just enough that I had to back up and rethink my position.
“Izzy loves me.” I said, preparing to restate my argument.
“We all do.” Lilly said, trying to work her entire hand between the buttons of my shirt.
“But she doesn’t like me.” I pointed out.
“So what?”
I tried to keep my thoughts on track as her hand slid inside my shirt and began caressing my left nipple.
“How can you love a person if you don’t even like them?”
She pinched my nipple between her fingers and laughed.
“You tell me. From what little I know, you’ve loved Izzy all your life, but for about half that time you didn’t like her at all.”
I opened my mouth to dispute her assertion…and found that I couldn’t. She was right.
I shut my mouth slowly, before a fly could get in.
Clueless. Absolutely fuckin’ clueless.
I carefully opened my mouth. “Affection isn’t love.” I said slowly.
Lilly shook her head slightly. “Nope.”
“Affection isn’t even liking.” I proposed softly as her fingers stroked and caressed the skin beneath my pocket.
“Not really. There’ve been lots of times when I didn’t like either Izzy or Peggy. But I never stopped loving them. There’s even been a time or two when I didn’t like you much.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Have you always liked me?”
I had to think about that one. If I were to be completely honest about it…
“With the exception of a few days last week, yes, I’ve pretty much always liked you.”
Lilly laid her head against my right breast. “You’re a sweet boy.” she sighed.
What had I been so upset about? Why had realizing Izzy didn’t like me set me off the way it did? Maybe because I was still hyper-sensitive about the cheating. Maybe because I couldn’t help but link liking with love. And maybe it had something to do with the after-effects of tying us all together. Or…no, damnit! That possibility didn’t bear thinking about.
“It’s my professional opinion that psychologists know fuck-all about bugger-all.” I eventually confessed.
“Mmm-hmm.” Lilly agreed. “But I love you anyway.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
Laughing softly to herself, Lilly’s body shook rather pleasantly within my arm’s embrace.
“What can I say…I’m a sucker for a pretty face.” she smirked, obviously well pleased with herself. I squeezed her tightly, trying to express warmth, affection, and love along with just a hint of aggravated sexual frustration in one prolonged, bone crushing bear hug. Eventually she squealed and squeaked…and then she bit me again.
We tussled briefly, kissed for a time, each took a couple of drinks from the neglected vodka bottle on the end table and returned to simple snuggling, her small hand inside my shirt, my big one inside the shirt she had on, cupping and fondling the soft, warm breast I’d exposed to view by the simple expedient of undoing two pearl buttons.
“You have an ass fetish, don’t you?” she suddenly asked out of the blue.
I was busily swimming around in the depths of her eyes and practicing my digital manipulation skills on her silken tit, so was pretty much ignoring everything else right then. She recaptured my attention by reaching down between her thighs and clamping one small hand firmly around my balls.
My ears pricked right up.
Lilly repeated her question. I glared at her.
“I was a heartbeat away from discovering the answer to one of the world’s most interesting and perplexing philosophical questions and you just had to go and break my concentration.” I complained with a wince.
“Oh yeah? What question?”
“Can Lilly Blacktower orgasm just by having her breast played with?”
“That’s your idea of an interesting and perplexing question? Not the Grand Unification Theory, or some unsolvable math problem? Not world peace or a workable flat tax?”
“Nope.” I assured her. “Those are problems for lesser minds. I only bother with real mind benders.”
Lilly snorted, sounding like me as she did it.
“Answer my question, dumb-ass.” she insisted, gently squeezing my balls.
“Sorry, wasn’t paying attention…what was it again?”
“I was asking if you have an ass fetish?” she said for the third time, but unlike the other two times Lilly was blushing ever so slightly.
I raised an eyebrow.
“I guess you could call it that. I find women’s bottoms, well shaped ones anyway, highly arousing. I’m not sure why…just do.”
Lilly nodded. “We’ve noticed. So, having owned up to your special perversion, would you please explain to me what you find so damn fascinating about my boobs?”
I grinned like a cat who’d stumbled onto a lake of cream.
“…let me count the ways…” I said with reverence. Lilly sighed, shuddered and chuckled as my fingers continued their ministrations. “As much as I enjoy admiring a well formed and well maintained posterior, the winking walk and the sexy saunter, and believe me when I say that you lack for nothing in that department…there is just something about your breasts that I find absolutely entrancing. I don’t know if it’s the shape, or the feel, the taste, the weight or texture, the coolness or the heat, the soft swelling or the temptingly taunting nipples with their haughty come-hither hardness and flexibility. But whatever it is that makes boobs attractive to me, yours have got it all, and then some. Pleasant to look at, thrilling to touch and an absolute delight to taste and tease.”
“They’re not very big.” she pointed out, as if that were an important factor I’d overlooked.
I was back to staring in her eyes, but my fingers remained busily engaged.
“How big is big enough? They’re big enough for me…and bigger than either Izzy or Peggy’s.”
“You like small breasts?”
“You’ve only just figured that out? After all this time?” I clicked my tongue, tsk…tsk…tsk.
“Ike, we all have our insecurities.” she pointed out. I nodded my agreement.
“Yeah, I suppose we do. Peggy has a real problem with growing older. You worry about being plain and ordinary. Neither of you has anything to be concerned about. You’re both very beautiful, sexy, smart and far too good for me.”
“True, but we love you anyway.” she smirked. I gave her hard elastic nipple a pinch and tug. Lilly grunted and growled, giving me a glimpse of the sharp, bloodied teeth behind her enchanting smile.
“What about Izzy?” she asked, tightening her fingers around my balls. “What kind of insecurities does she have?”
I blinked my eyes and turned my head away. “Too many for me to deal with. Plus I’m too close to her to be objective. I think it might be a good idea if we asked Evan or Janis for help.”
“Do you think Izzy would agree to that?”
“I don’t know anymore.” I frowned at nothing and everything as my hand drifted away from Lilly’s chest. “It’s bad enough that she doesn’t like me. It would have been bad even if I hadn’t agreed to tie us all together. But the way things stand now…if she were to shift to actively disliking…or if I thought she didn’t love me…that could be worse than bad.”
“I don’t think she dislikes you honey. I mean, it was her idea that we all be linked together in the first place. It was her idea that we share you.”
I looked up, and I know my face betrayed the pain that was once again building in my chest.
“I’ve never understood what motivated her to do that. I’ve never understood why you and Peggy went along with her.”
Lilly pulled my face around so that our eyes met. “I know why she said she did it. What I don’t know is if that was her real reason. I can guess why Peggy agreed. But there’s no doubt in my mind why I did.”
I blinked once, very slowly, very deliberately and then nodded my head.
“I see.”
“Yeah?”
I linked to Lilly and exposed my heart, soul, feelings and emotions, fully and completely for the first time in my life.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t force any feelings on her, didn’t try to impose or impress, amplify, suppress or mitigate. It was all there for her to explore and poke thru as she chose, if she chose.
Her smile exploded in my mind, rendering me incoherent, as her feelings reached across the link like questing vines in search of a place to take root.
I shivered, shook and was afraid. Terrified. Petrified.
What if she found something in me that repulsed, disgusted or offended her?
Have a little faith… a very faint, almost imagined, whisper drifted across my thoughts.
Do gods have faith? And if so, what in? Certainly not themselves…not if they’ve got even half-a-half an ounce of common sense.
Have a little faith…in
her.
This time the voice as clear and firm. And cold. Logical. Adamant.
It wasn’t the darkness talking to me. It wasn’t one of the many voices I’d argued with over the years. But it was familiar. I’d heard it once in my dreams. It was me, but not me. Sorta-kinda.
Have a little faith. Not the easiest thing to do, especially after recent events.
Then, have a little
love…
Lilly’s smile went super-nova and I exploded into component atomic fragments, freeing the tiny flame at my center which exploded right along with me; reaching out, mingling, co-joining and merging until I couldn’t tell where her smile ended and my flame began…or was it the other way around?
I came like a fire hose. Lilly shrieked like a banshee as her body started twitching. I bellowed like an enraged bull elephant and attempted to buck my hips but couldn’t, because my mind had done a total disconnect from my body. Lilly screamed again, so loud and long and at such a high pitch that I was pretty sure my ear drums had ruptured. I saw stars. An infinity of winking, blinking, eternally flashing diamonds set in the impossible velvet canopy that was now my emotional universe. I came again. Lilly screamed twice more, but there was less power in her voice this time, but much more emotion and passion. Either that or the damage to my hearing was worse than I thought. Her voice ran up a full octave and a half, from contralto to soprano, tried to reach high C but failed, due more to a lack of energy than anything else. Eventually she gave up as her body surrendered the last of its remaining strength in an effort to meld us into a single physical being. At which point I came a third time…and I think my balls crawled up inside my body looking for a place to hide.
As Lilly tried weakly yet frantically to press her skin thru mine, to burrow her way inside and join me, I thought I should be laughing like a damn fool. And I might have, if I weren’t already half convinced that my body had ceased to exist. I willed myself back into being, trying with my last remaining thought to do a Descartes.
“Shhhhh…” I heard the soothing sound emerge from somewhere in the vicinity of where my head used to be. “ ‘S alright…calm down…relax.” I heard my voice say off in the distance, which is where it felt like my head was now.
Her feverish flailing diminished as I felt our emotions parting from one another, pulled away by the indifferent laws of an uncaring universe. Gradually we went from emotional and spiritual integration to lonely segregated isolation.
Evidently our bodies were driven to surrender by exhaustion;
a necessary limitation to ensure self-preservation, in much the same way they
coped with the demands and pleasures of sex.
Without those limitations the species would likely never have survived,
wiped out early on by predators with a taste for flagrante delicious.
If the two of us, right then, had been our ancestors, mankind would have been toast.
I could barely lift the arm Lilly wasn’t sagging back against. I was having a hard time even feeling my arms. I was just beginning to be able to tell that there was a head on my shoulders.
Lilly quivered and whimpered, the fingers of one hand
clutching desperately at my shirt. She
was shaking like someone who’d just come out of a
I pulled her even closer, and did my best to warm her shaking body with my own. As the glaciers retreated and the permafrost thawed, our over-extended physical forms began to calm down. Lilly’s eyelids blinked a few times as she appeared to regain some control over her neck muscles, raising her head up and peering around.
“Wh…at…?” Lilly croaked. She coughed twice, turned her head and spat a pinkish wad of phlegm on the floor. “What the hell was that?” she demanded hoarsely.
I took a hugely deep breath and held it in for a count of five before releasing it. The feeling gradually returned to my arms and legs. It was like my entire body had fallen asleep and was just now waking up. It hurt like hell, but the still sweltering memory of what we’d shared helped me to stoically endure my suffering in dignified silence.
I was sweating like a horse that’d just run two Kentucky Derbies. Lilly was soaked and my shirt clung to her body like a second skin. My eyes devoured the sight of her drenched upper body. Her hair was plastered against her head like a helmet, and her skin was mottled with patches of pale interspersed with red blotches. Her exposed nipple was still hard as a rock, drawing my eye like a magnet.
She’d never looked more beautiful.
I cleared my throat and swallowed hard.
“Lilly?”
“What the fuck was that?” she asked again.
“Lilly?”
“What?”
“Will you marry me?”
I could feel the ache in her muscles as she turned her head to look up at me. Her body was completely drained and it took the last vestiges of energy she possessed to speak.
“Silly boy…we are married.”
“No. I mean for real. Will you marry me for real?”
She gawped, her lips moving but no sounds emerged. Then…
“Why?”
“Because I love you and I want us to be together for as long as we live. Because I need you, and I want you. And I get the feeling that you need and want me too. Because no one can make me feel the way you do and I never want to lose that.”
“Oh.”
Then she smiled that brilliant, loving, passion inspiring smile at me. And passed out cold.
I held her limp form tenderly in my arms and chuckled gently as she began to snore like a cat.
That was how Peggy and Izzy found us, ten minutes later, when they stumbled together thru the study doorway.
I’d had ten minutes to think. Ten minutes to wonder how I was going to explain to them that I intended to marry Lilly. Ten minutes to imagine what their reactions would be.
Ten minutes can be an unremitting eternity. An eternity of indecision and uncertainty.
Unless of course you’d already made up your mind and had no doubts, in which case ten minutes is simply ten minutes.
I finally knew what I wanted and I was determined to have it, come heaven, hell or high water.
Of course, coming to a decision generally means that you almost immediately run head first into the wall of reality, which as a rule of thumb has previously decided, without being indecisive or uncertain in any way, that there’s no way in hell you’re going to get what you want without a fight to the death.
Enter Peggy and Izzy.
They stumbled in the open door, looking as though they’d just walked thru a car wash, their hair damp and clinging to their faces and necks, robes askew and barely covering their sweaty bodies, eyes alight with suspicion and condemnation.
Izzy’s eyes locked on me right away, narrowing to aggressive slits.
“What the hell did you do?”
I lifted a finger and pulled several lank strands of Lilly’s hair away from her eyes, tucking them carefully behind her ear.
After Lilly had passed out I’d cut our link, and interestingly enough my exhaustion started fading away, so by the time my sister and Peggy burst in I was actually feeling quite a bit stronger and much more in control of myself.
I slid my free arm under Lilly’s knees, curled the arm around her back into a more secure position, and stood up. When I was convinced that my muscles were up to the job, I started walking. Izzy and Peggy split, moving to opposite sides to make way for me and my sleeping bundle.
Out the door, turn and move down the hallway, out into the entrance hall then up the stairs, past the landing and into our bedroom.
Peggy and Izzy trailed along behind in total silence, shutting the bedroom door behind us.
I set Lilly down on the bed, taking note of the fact that the bed clothes were in serious disarray. I took a couple of quick sniffs and couldn’t help but smile. Apparently Lilly and I weren’t the only ones affected by our little emotional meltdown.
I started unbuttoning Lilly’s soaked shirt. Peggy stepped up next to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Is she alright?”
“Just tired.” I assured her.
“Ike?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened?” she asked very timidly. Even in her little girl mode, Peggy was never timid.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“It felt like a nuclear orgasm.”
“Did it?” I finished undoing all the buttons, slipped my arm under her arm and put the flat of my hand across her back and sat her upright. With my other hand I peeled the shirt off her shoulders and arms, tossing it into a distant corner. Then I pulled her socks off and they followed the shirt into the corner. Laying Lilly back down on the bed I stood upright and began undressing. “I’ve felt a few orgasms in my time. This wasn’t just an orgasm. Besides which, we weren’t even having sex. Just talking.”
“Ike, we felt it too.”
“I don’t think so. What you guys felt was nothing more than an echo.”
“Honey, I came six times.”
My shirt and t-shirt went into the corner with the one Lilly had been wearing, followed by my pants and cum stained shorts. I smiled down at Peggy.
“I came three times myself.”
I scooped Lilly up off the bed and carried her in to the bathroom. Turned on the shower, adjusted the water temperature, stepped in and shut the door.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes in a shower isn’t very long at all. Enough time to wash the sweat and stink from two bodies. Enough time for Lilly to wake up and kiss me as thoroughly as I’d ever been kissed before in my life. But not enough time for me to even start doing what I would have liked to have done.
She smiled her understanding. She smiled her thanks, her gratitude, affection, fondness, satisfaction and love.
It was long enough.
We got out, dried off and went back into the bedroom. Izzy and Peggy were sitting on Izzy’s side of the bed, whispering to one another.
I escorted Lilly around to her side, pulled back and straightened the bed clothes and crawled in to the center of the mattress. Lilly got in after me, pulled the sheets up over us and curled up next to me under my arm with her head resting on my shoulder.
I felt her fall asleep just moments before I did.
Things were oddly quiet and restrained the next morning, which I fully expected. Izzy and Peggy were going out of their way to ignore my very existence and when I mentioned it to Lilly she just smiled, patted my cheek, gave me a very sweet kiss and told me not to worry.
I shrugged and left for work, good-byes from the kids ringing in my ears.
There was a message waiting for me when I arrived.
I dialed the number on the encrypted line in my office. Coburn and McMurphy had picked up Harold Roberts, raided his home and covertly had the contents of his office moved to a secure location.
I was out of the office like a shot, on my way to the parking lot and happily anticipating a little old fashioned interviewing. Mr. Roberts didn’t know it, but he was about to become the key that would unlock the governmental collar around my neck.
This junk-yard dog wanted out of the yard.