When We Were Two
by Sommer Marsden

“This is the story of how we begin to remember,” Steve said and locked the front door.

“What are you talking about?”

My mother drove off. She beeped three times and I saw a flock of hands waving from the car windows. Her exhaust pipe plumed in the cold air as she took my children for four long days.

“How we begin to remember what it is to be Steve and Laurie.”

I folded the throws scattered around the living room. I fluffed pillows, glanced back out the window, looked for something to keep me busy. With a house full of kids: fourteen, twelve, nine, and seven, it’s never hard to be busy. Now it was quiet. Silent. Eerie. I wanted to whip out my cell phone and call my mother. I wanted to demand my busy, chaotic house back.

Stephen read my face. He took my hands and kissed me. It took the edge off the anxiety but not entirely. “What do we do?” I asked. And sadly, it was a sincere question.

“Relax and enjoy it. I know it’s odd. It seems entirely new. Like we have never, ever been alone before,” he laughed. “But close your eyes and think way back. Way back when. Once upon a time, we were two. Not mom and dad. Steve and Laurie.”

I closed my eyes and found it hard to breathe. My ears kept straining for the sounds of siblings fighting or something being broken. The sounds of a shower running or a too loud stereo or someone on the phone demanding that the caller, “Shut up … Noooo … oh, shut up!”

“That was a really long time ago. I don’t think my memory goes back that far,” I laughed. But it was a nervous, high laugh. A dead giveaway that I was telling the truth. Spitting out a fact disguised as humour. “I can’t remember what it was like before they filled the house up with noise and kids and chaos.”

And it was true.

“I seem to recall that you liked this,” my husband said and dropped to his knees. His jeans made a whispery sound on the hardwood floor and he peeled my leggings down like he was unwrapping a present. My black Danskin leggings that were so much easier to put on than a fancy outfit. Even faster than jeans when it came to a hectic schedule.

Instinct took over. Anyone could walk in. I pressed my thighs together and twisted away from his face. Contorted in the opposite direction despite the fact that his face being near me, his breath on my plain cotton panties, made me wet between the legs. Made my heart speed up from something besides anxiety.

Steve put his hands on my hips. Hips that has supported four pregnancies and were definitely wider than when we started our marital adventure. “Shh now, Laurie. No one here but us. Now just let me. Come on, let me.”

I did. I let him peel down my panties in the bright sunny living room. Let him touch his tongue to my clit. I let him slide his fingers into me and probe against those sweet wet spots that made me clutch at his big shoulders. I let out a little cry as he slid his fingers free of me. When he latched his lips over my clit and started to lick more of those lazy circles, I felt tears leak from the corners of my eyes. It felt so good to let go. He felt good. I let my thighs fall open in invitation. He could finish that or he could slide into me. I was happy either way.

How quickly I had changed my mind. It was starting to come back to me in bits and pieces. Like a dream that you only recall hours later when you sit quietly with a cup of coffee.

“Not yet,” he said and continued his languid tour of my cunt. “We used to take our time. Remember?”

“Not always.” More of it came flooding back to me. The time when we were two. Sometimes we were hurried. In a frenzy of clothes and hormones and I could barely breathe until he slipped his cock inside of me and fucked me. “Sometimes we were like crazed animals,” I laughed. This laugh was lower. More sultry. Not nervous at all.

Stephen kissed the jut of my hip bones and the swell of my belly. Little silver stretch marks tattooed that skin. I hated them for the most part, but when he kissed them they seemed important. Meaningful. He drew his tongue over the surge of flesh that were my hips, the little landslide of freckles that I loathed and he loved. He kissed my ribcage below my breasts. He did all of this slowly. As if we had all the time in the world. And we did, or so it seemed.

His tongue wrapped the very tip of my nipple and an invisible cord of pleasure inside of me was tugged. I felt the warm sensation of want shoot from my nipple to my pussy. I spread my legs wide and wormed my hand between us to find his erection. He skittered away from me, “Not yet, not yet,” he scolded.

“You are stubborn.”

“I am remembering. I am recapturing the time long ago. Now we constantly wait for the knock on the door or the sick kid or the fight that interrupts. Or we have to wait until the middle of the night and then we’re both tired. This is nice right now. This is what it used to be for us. This is what we are going to make it again. Starting now. A new leaf.”

His mouth came down on me again. Hot and wet and very welcome. I arched back, into his embrace. Calming myself. There was time to be frenzied later. Four days. Four days of … whatever we wanted.

A little breathless at the thought, I pushed him away. He argued but then his eyes found mine and he let me go. His curiosity won over his desire to keep his mouth on me. “I seem to remember,” I said, climbing slowly to my feet. I stifled a small groan. The wooden floor was unforgiving and I was no longer twenty, “that you liked when I danced for you.”

A ribbon of unease unrolled in my belly. Could I pull this off at forty-something? Could I be the sexy dancing siren? He smiled up at me. His face a mess of dark stubble peppered with grey. More lines around his big blue eyes. His jaw line a bit softer than it was back in the day. Gorgeous. He smiled wider and I had my answer. I could.

I touched my toe to the stereo button and our station came on. Something classic, something slow. I moved to the music as best I could. Focused on his eyes on me. Of how his mouth had felt on my skin. I closed my eyes and let that feeling take over my motions. I let my hands peel off my plain mom bra that Stephen had bunched down under my breasts. I tossed it over my shoulder with attitude, as if it were the most expensive black lace lingerie.

My husband growled low in his throat and I forgot my self-doubt.

“There she is,” he said and reached up between my legs to touch me.

I let my head fall back. Let his touch and the music move me. Push me and pull me. “Who?”

“The Laurie I fell in love with. She’s always been here but I haven’t seen her so clearly for a long time.”

Me either, I wanted to say. I didn’t. I swallowed the words and focused on how I felt.

“You are more beautiful now than ever.”

“After four babies?” I laughed, swaying my more generous hips. I squeezed my breasts and swayed to the music.

“Absolutely. More beautiful after every one. Most beautiful now,” he said. Then he was on his knees again, his head pressed against my lower belly as I moved. I slid down to join him, pushing him back.

“If memory serves, this is something else you like,” I said and kissed my way over his chest. I trailed my tongue down his belly and the muscles fluttered just under his skin. His breath caught, a sound that never fails to make me wet, to turn me on. The sound of stealing a man’s breath is amazing. The fact that I still could, even more so. I smiled and captured his cock in my mouth, sliding the length into my throat. I had memorized his taste and texture long ago but this time seemed new. New flesh. New meaning.

His hands went into my hair. Immediately and forcefully. I sucked him harder. I worked my tongue over every ridge and dip and swell until I felt light-headed.

“Come on. Now, Laurie. We’ve been patient enough,” he laughed and I laughed with him.

“And we have the rest of today and then three whole days after,” I agreed.

“Yes, yes, we can have dinner and go for an encore,” he said and tugged my hand. Pulling me up to him.

I straddled his hips and ever so slowly lowered myself onto him. I stared him right in the eye. My husband. My friend. My gaze never left his and that itself brought a huge power with it. A renewed connection.

“Baby,” he said. Nothing more. Just the one word.

I came. My body squeezing around him as he lost his patient rhythm and thrust up under me, his hips beating an erratic tattoo against the scuffed but polished hardwood floor.

“Baby,” I said back and watched his face when he came. I had seen it more times than I could count but it seemed like the first.

When I kissed him and he pinched my nipple, I laughed. I felt grateful. Grateful for our family and what we had built, but grateful that for just a few days, we could be two again. To be adventurous again. To have sex on the floor in the sunshine.

“Do you remember?” he asked.

“I do.”