The Anniversary Gift (Re-Connections) (7 page)

T-Minus Two
Days to Anniversary…

The next day passes with a familiar routine of work, home, and sex that still feels sensual and deeply loving. On Wednesday morning, after sweet and tender lovemaking with my husband, I’m in the office with a smile still plastered ear-to-ear.

“I wish I was the one responsible for that look on your face,” says Brian, with a
smile that says he’s happy for me. He’s standing in my doorway, with a stack of storyboards in his hands.

I blush.

“I’m still so sorry,” I reply. “Sorry that I can’t be who you want me to be. But you have to know you are precious to me, and I value your friendship more than you’ll ever imagine.”

“I do realize that, and don’t apologize for being in love with your husband.
I hope that a woman loves me that much one day.”

“You’ll find her,” I promise.
And I mean it with all the sincerity inside of my heart. He’s a wonderful man, smart, handsome, successful and kind. An absolute catch for someone worthy enough to have him.

“Do you have a sister?” he jokes.

With that break of the ice, we get back to work and complete the editing of the video series. By lunchtime, we’re done. He’s on his way to a business lunch, and I grab my sandwich from the office fridge. With my lunch in one hand and the computer mouse in another, I jump as the text alert on my phone beeps loudly.

Looking down, I see
Ethan’s name and my stomach contracts while my heart picks up speed.

Ethan
:
Hi

Me:
Hi! Are you having a good day?

Ethan
:
Let’s see. It started with the most beautiful, amazing and wonderful woman I know making love to me. I’ve had a very very good day.

Me:
You sound like a lucky man.

Ethan
:
The luckiest.

Me:
I love…

I press send, with a grin on my face as I wait a few seconds before continuing.
And then my thumbs fly as I send multiple messages, one following the next.

Me:
How I feel when I’m with you.

How I feel when I’m not.

The buildup of excitement I have inside of me.

I love your touch.
Your caress. Your kiss.

I love how I affect you.

I love hearing about your day.

I love anticipating the future

I love…

You.

I pause and can see the three little dots that are the telltale sign that he is writing me back. I wait, with apprehension, for his response. It appears.

Ethan
:
I love you too. So much. A crazy amount. I want to kiss you, run my tongue over your lips. Pressed up against your body, holding you tightly against me. I want you so badly, I could burst inside right now.

Sexting
! Feeling like a teenager, I allow my thumbs to become a vehicle to my thoughts, typing out quickly the imaginings that come spilling through my mind.

Me:
Imagine me, between your legs, touching my tongue to you. Gently, softly, stroking.

I take you into my mouth and swirl my tongue around the tip, tasting you, loving you.

I move my head lower, taking all of you in. Up and down, sucking hard, hot, wet mouth eagerly consuming you.

Ethan
: Oh yes, I love that. I love what you do to my body, you drive me insane with wanting you, needing you, craving you.

Me:
As you pull my hair, I move up your body and lower myself onto you, easing down so slowly, your erection penetrating me, entering my warmth. You’re filling me up. I lean over and kiss you, and begin to move up and down to the rhythm of my mouth.

I rock back and forth, with you deep inside me. I pick up speed as I feel myself about to climax. I kiss you deeply and hold your hands in mine as my orgasm spills out of me and onto you.

I pick up speed again, rocking back and forth and then moving up and down, your body bucking beneath me.

I slow down the speed but pick up the pressure as I impale myself down hard onto your shaft. I come again, I can’t help it and my body simply won’t stop trembling.

Ethan: I love that about you, how your body shakes out of control, how you lose yourself in your climax.

Me:
You turn me over onto my back and lower your mouth onto me as I continue to shake from my orgasm. You lick my clitoris and then move down and stroke your tongue inside and out.

You enter me with your fingers. And lick me as you gently ease in and out.
In and out of me.

I need you inside me and pull on your shoulders, urging you up my body.

You’re on top of me now, your sex at mine, so very close to entering me. You kiss me and I wrap my arms and legs around you trying desperately to get you inside.

As you continue to kiss me, our bod
ies align, and you slip inside me just a bit. The feeling is incredible and you barely move in and out.

I thrust my hips up just as you thrust your hip down and you are inside me completely, hitting the very core of my being.

Ethan: I remember the very first time I was inside you. It amazed me then, and amazes me still how well we fit together.

Me:
You move out and then back in hard, so hard that the pleasure pain threshold is crossed and my body aches with it all.

In and out of me you move.
Hard, soft, slow, fast. I never know what to expect and I wrap my arms around your neck even tighter. Another thrust and I come again. Hard. The intensity of the orgasm takes my breath.

You don’t stop, you continue to move inside of me, picking up rhythm.
In and out. Your kisses become more forceful, penetrating my mouth just as you are penetrating my body.

You call out my name and I feel you thicken. I feel you stiffen and a last thrust sends me over the edge. I hold onto you tightly and you spill inside of me, breathing hard against my neck.

We whisper love words to each other. And mean them with every cell of our body.

Ethan
:
Oh baby, I want to make love to you. I want to tell you I love you as I enter you.I want to tell you how much you mean to me as I move in and out.

Me:
I feel everything with you.

Ethan:
I want to taste you so badly. I want to lick you, suck your clit. I want to force my tongue inside of you. I want you to explode in my mouth as I gently nibble on you. As I trace the outline of you with my tongue

Me:
Oh, please!

Ethan:
I love that. I love the taste of you. I love how you move and arch and how your legs shake when you get close to your climax. I love how I do that to you, with you.

Me:
Oh. Yes. I need that so badly. I love what you do with your tongue, how each sensation feels like an emotion and each emotion feels like a spiritual experience. I need you now, with an intensity that is painful and pleasurable at the same time.

I’m burning.
As I hit the “send” button, I’m clenching deep inside and my back arches from my chair, as if I’m raising myself beneath him. The feeling is so totally and completely real, it is as if I truly feel him inside of me.

Ethan
:
Meet me, I promise not to be late.

Me:
Where? When?

Ethan
:
At six, at the park, let’s climb to the waterfall and eat dinner on a blanket, watch the sun set. I’ll bring everything. Will you meet me?

Thinking quickly, I decide that yes, I can meet him.
Nothing would stand in my way from meeting him at six.

Me:
Yes, I will be there.

Ethan
:
I’m so glad. See you soon.

Laying down my phone, I take a qu
ick drink of water. Sexting is so erotic, an ultimate flirting device. I’m so turned on, I feel a dampness between my legs and simply can’t wait for this evening to begin.

Finally!
It’s five, and I can leave without raising questions with the staff. I’m usually the last to leave, because there was nothing to go home to, but now I’m finding myself the first to run out the door.

“
You’re alive again
,” says my Inner Goddess. And I couldn’t agree more. I feel breathtakingly, glowingly, gloriously, alive. I wish this feeling on every person on the planet.

Running home, I change clothes quickly and grab my neglected hiking boots from the closet.
I begin to gather a blanket and other necessities but then stop myself as I remember his, “I’ll bring everything.” I wonder if he really will.

“
Bitch
,” says the Bitch in My Head, rather ironically, as my doubts of Ethan’s ability to follow through surface in my mind.

“Do you trust me?”
That soft question crowds out the Bitch, and I decide that yes, I do and yes, I will. If we end up eating on the grass with our fingers, that’s perfectly ok with me. I place the blanket back in the closet, deciding to trust and be open to whatever happens.

“Lower your expectations and increase your appreciation,” is a quote I heard someone say.
At the time, I thought it was stupid. Why in the world would I ever want to lower my expectations, those things I want and desire? But I’m beginning to understand it now.

Women, it seem
s, are born with a bubble over our head of how love should look like from the moment we are born. Being doted on by Daddy, watching love stories by Disney and then reading Harlequin romances through the night sets us up for disappointment in the real world.

As amazing as my climaxes are with
Ethan, I’ve only recently felt the “fireworks” described in those novels. I wonder how many women ever get that experience.

I’ve yet to read about how
a chronically-late husband can throw water on any flame. How the day-to-day routine of working and keeping a home can make all the best of intentions go astray. It really is no wonder the divorce rate is so high. There are no “how to stick with it” love stories… that is found only in the self-help sections it seems.

“Marriage changes the dynamics of a relationship,” a
smart friend told me once. “When you are dating, people go above and beyond because the other person can so easily walk away from the relationship. Once married, the degree of difficulty in abandoning the relationship increases, and they don’t need to work so hard to stay together.”

At the time, I thought that was very jaded thinking, but I
see now how true it is.

Maybe I will write
a book someday, not a love story with a rich man meeting a struggling maiden, rescuing her from disaster. Not two young people falling in love for the first time. But of a couple moving through the obstacles of a relationship, balancing the give and take of life. A couple overcoming their comfort zone, the rut of busyness, the chasm of doing-ness.

A couple like
us.

A couple hurting and falling out of hope who re-connect by their own design and intention.
Would it include the indecent proposal of a threesome? Maybe, maybe not. It’s my story to write, my ending to create, my imagination and experiences to move it forward.

I remember a sweet couple in a restaurant I found myself gazing at not long ago.
You could tell they had been married forever. But they held hands, both hands, while they waited for their food. They talked and smiled at each other the entire time. He was attentive to her needs and passed her the salt without her asking. She wiped his mouth with her napkin. It was precious to watch. That kind of love and longevity is possible; I was able to witness it there. I'm sure they had struggles, and fights, and nights they wanted to give up. But here they were. Still together and in love.

And I remember Grandma from The Goddess Shop and the love she still has for her hus
band half a century later. I find my heart stirring at the possibility that that type of love could be available to me too.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end. ~Benjamin Disraeli

It takes a willingness to trust, to ask for what you want, to give more than you think you have to offer. And to become deeply aware that you deserve nothing less. And that the person you love deserves just as much.

Such selfish creatures we can become.
Focusing on the bad, instead of honoring and giving attention to the good. Creating love games and having people we care for jump through hoops to prove themselves and their love to us. And continue to have them jump, and jump, and jump until they are unwilling to jump another time.

And then we blame them for not trying harder.

Insensitive creatures, withholding the benefit of the doubt for others, while justifying our own behavior time and time again.

Merciful creatures.
Even as I’m thinking of the unkindness of our race, my mind flows to the ways in which we are also merciful. The ways in which we hold each other when we cry, bring forth healing laughter when that is needed too. Merciful in forgiving the pasts of others, of understanding their mistakes. And our own.

The words of Sarah McLachlan’s
Answer
breeze through my mind:

If it takes a whole life I won’t break I won’t bend
It’ll all be worth it, worth it in the end
'Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
And when the stars have all burned out
You’ll still be burning so bright.

And the final line…

Cast me gently into morning for the night has been unkind.

I realize in a flash of clarity that she speaks not of the night in its usual reference, but of the darkness of our mind, the unkindness we can hold there, unforgi
ving, the lack of mercy.

Cast me gently.
Yes, I’m being cast gently into the glory of a new morning for my marriage and for my life. I realize this isn’t about Ethan. This is about me, living life fully, following my instincts, asking the right questions, not afraid of being wrong. It’s up to me now to be happy, to own and be responsible for the happiness I help inspire in others. But not own or feel responsible for their outcomes.

With a deep sigh of release
that these realizations bring, I glance down at my watch and to my horror notice the time. I’m going to be
late
! Grabbing up my boots, I run for the door, wondering if I’ll still be the first to arrive and not really caring one way or the other.