"You know you have exactly the same body parts as I do?" She giggled but didn't move, didn't push my hand away.
We lay in her bed facing each other, the bed sheet only coming up to our thighs. My fingers had been slowly caressing all the grooves and curves of her body – her breasts, her stomach, her thighs – for several minutes. I didn't think I would ever tire of touching her.
"They're better on you," I said.
"I don't think so. I love them on you, Mrs. Thomas." She arched closer and kissed me. That was another thing that would never get old. When she kissed me I felt like all the bad in the world disappeared.
We'd been like this for an hour or more, I'd lost track of time. Not saying much, just happy touching and kissing.
"What's put that smile on your face?" she asked.
"You, of course. I'm happy." It was such a simple thing to say but it meant so much, more than she would ever know. Saying it only made me realize how unhappy I'd been all those years. It had taken one night – albeit an amazing, mind-blowing one – with a woman to show me that.
"So am I."
"You were happy before you met me though. That's the difference."
"I was content before I met you. What I'm feeling now, that's something else." She sounded so sure, so convinced of this, that I didn't want to argue with her. But her constantly happy persona was one of the things that attracted me to her...along with everything else, of course. She was like a breath of fresh air in my miserable, mundane life. Getting through another day living under the same roof as Dominic was made infinitely easier knowing that I would get to see her.
"I hope I'm not dreaming," I said, still tracing my fingers along her flesh. I loved looking at her naked form; perfect in every way, but mostly because I got to enjoy it, and I continued to enjoy it.
"You're not dreaming," she whispered. "This is real. We're real."
I didn't know what that last bit meant, but it made me smile to hear it.
But I knew it all had to come to an end. Because there was another reality that I had to get back to: my son, my marriage, my home.
I intertwined my fingers with hers. She smiled back at me. It had been a long time since someone had looked at me like that.
"It's so late already. I'll have to leave soon."
"I know. You have a life to get back to. I hate letting you go."
This honesty was so new to me. She didn't feel the need to hold back, suppress her true feelings. Was it always this easy to be open with female lovers? I'd been missing out big style.
"I don't feel good about going."
"I wish you were coming with me to Bolivia."
"I can't, Ava."
"I know. Will you promise me one thing?"
I was ready to promise her anything, no matter what it was. Those blue eyes made me want to do her bidding.
"What?"
"Will you think about me while I'm away?"
I gave a little laugh. "Every day." Didn't she know I would be unable to think of little else? Almost two weeks with the memory of our love-making. The wait for her return would be agonizing.
"These are going to be the longest two weeks of my life." I hesitated for a moment before I said my next line, aware how awful it would sound if it came out wrong. But we were being so honest, I wanted her to know exactly how I felt. "Please don't hate me for saying this, but I'm kind of hoping you hate it out there so you don't stay there for good. I have this fear that once you get there, you won't want to come back. With all those beautiful Latina women walking around you..."
She laughed, and without asking climbed on top of me. It was amazing how used to the feel of a naked woman between my thighs, against my flesh, I had gotten; but more surprising still, how much I craved that feeling. She was so soft, her touches so gentle.
She peppered my face with light kisses. "Why on earth would you think that?"
"Because I'm too happy, and I don't think it will last." I had to swallow back the tears that were threatening to erupt from me, tears I hadn't realized I'd been holding in. I didn't know whether I was tearful due to my happiness, or the thought of losing it.
"What has he done to you?" she said, her face registering her ire. "He's made you think you don't deserve to be happy."
She kissed me, kissed all my pain away, and said nothing more about Dominic.
"I'm coming back, I promise. There's so much to come back for."
I hoped I was one of those things.
"And while I'm gone," she started, pinning my arms down and sinking her chest lower onto mine so that our breasts met, "I want you to think about all the naughty things you want me to do to you when I return."
I giggled giddily as she kissed my face and neck. "That's a given."
The kisses inevitably led her down south once more, where she gobbled up my sex all over again, this orgasm much more paralyzing than the last. I didn't leave her house until three in the morning, and grinned all the way home in the car.
I tried to make as little noise as possible when I let myself in that morning, and crept upstairs in darkness. I started across the landing to my room when I heard giggling and whispering coming from Dominic's room. Two voices, one distinctly female.
I froze in my tracks, a cold sensation spreading over my body.
In our house, while our son was sleeping! And knowing I would be home eventually. He'd gone too far. He truly was a scumbag of the highest order. Disrespectful, tactless, vile.
My blood boiled while I stood there. It was all part of his game to be as disrespectful as he could, in his goal to hurt me. Whatever remaining respect I had for him disappeared that night, never to be seen again.
The woman of choice didn't matter. Nor did the length and extent of their affair. As far as I was concerned, he could stick his disgusting manhood in anything, as long as he kept it away from me and our family. Up until then he'd managed to adhere to that. My being out so late, on what he assumed was a date, must have really eaten at him. Driven him crazy to imagine his wife with another man. He probably had built an image in his head of what this tall, dark and handsome stranger looked like, just as I used to when his affairs bothered me.
That was the thought that settled me that night, stopped me storming into his room and exposing them both – him and his current whore of choice. In my outrage I'd almost forgotten the amazing night I'd just had, with the most amazing human being I'd met in a long time.
I carried on to my room, calmed down. What did I care that he was so blatantly screwing another woman in our home? Who was really coming out ahead between the two of us? Whatever he had with these other women would never be as pure or real as what Ava and I shared.
As I lay down to sleep that night, my body still tingled from her touch. It was magical. When I shut my eyes I could remember the intense way she looked at me as we made love. It wasn't merely slotting pieces in and only caring about her own release. No, she was a considerate lover, taking her time, making sure that we connected on multiple levels. The sort of sex I could only have dreamed of.
Except, she wasn't a dream. She was one hundred percent real, and she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
Dominic came out of the bathroom just as I was going in. It was just after seven, and I'd been woken by my hyperactive son bounding into my room and demanding his breakfast.
"I didn't hear you come in last night," my husband said.
I rolled my eyes. "No? What about the woman in your bed? Did she hear me?" Of course he'd heard. He'd probably prompted her to laugh especially so that I could hear.
His poker face needed work. "There you go again, Danielle, making things up. What must it look like in that head of yours?"
"Whatever, Dominic." I went in and slammed the door in his face, because it looked as though he wanted to come in with me. Those days were long gone.
But he was still hovering outside when I finished.
I sighed heavily. "Don't you have anything better to do? Some stocks to buy? Women to hound?"
He laughed. "I don't hound women. If anything it's the other way around. I mean, come on, you should know better than anyone how it goes. You stalked me for months until I knocked you up and you forced me to marry you."
I narrowed my eyes at him. If looks could kill the slimy worm would have been dead years ago. This wasn't the first time he'd said something like this, and I was sure it wouldn't be the last. He liked to remind me, whilst embellishing, that I had been the one to pursue him. But I resented his making it out that I'd somehow tricked him into getting me pregnant, and marrying me. Yes, I'd been foolish, naive, head over heels in love with a bad boy, having convinced myself I would be the one to change him. So many women had, my story wasn't unique. But he'd taken advantage of my naivety. It had given me my son, and for that I would always be grateful, but it didn't change the fact that I'd screwed up.
And now I was suffering heavily for it. Though that suffering, thanks to Ava's entry into my life, had been made all the more bearable.
"Just get out of my way," I said, shoving past him.
"Who were you with? That teacher again?"
"What's it to you?"
"I don't know if I'm comfortable with you spending so much time with her. I don't want her putting any ideas into your head. This coming home late nonsense, when you have a young son. She's obviously a bad influence on you. I might have to have a word with her."
"Don't you dare! What I do with her has nothing to do with you," I hissed. I could have clawed his eyes out. So typical, trying to take away this wonderful thing from me.
He laughed wickedly. "Wow, you need this friendship more than I thought. You know that once she's found friends her own age, hot young women who haven't started going gray, and whose bodies aren't forever tarnished by childbirth, she'll ditch you, don't you?"
He always knew how to get to me. Knew all the right buttons to push in order to sink my confidence into the ground.
"You're the worst human being I've ever met," I said to him and dashed to my room. My attempts at suppressing the tears were in vain, and they dropped quietly while I tried to regain my composure.
It was all so ridiculous. Okay, so my body wasn't as svelte as it once was, but it was in no way disgusting. And the gray hair he'd spoken of, I'd found only a couple, that was it. No big deal. I knew all of this deep down, yet I still let him get to me. Only a few hours earlier I'd been in bed with a woman who'd told me I was beautiful all night, and had kissed me everywhere, touched me everywhere, and wanted more. I should have known better.
It would take time to get him completely out of my head. Something I had to work on. Something Ava would help me with.
I just had to survive the next two weeks.