Memories and Possibilities Ch. 01

Matt appeared in the doorway, wearing his briefs, but otherwise as coated and odoriferous as I was. We smiled at each other. Neither of us said a word.

After I put the baby down for the night, I found Matt standing in my bedroom looking out the window. He looked at me sheepishly and asked, "Should I go?"

I slowly nodded and said, "Yes, at least tonight. I need to get my head around what just happened. I hope we didn't break anything tonight – I mean our friendship." I had to sort out how I was feeling. Time had telescoped around me. I went and hugged Matt and kissed him several times, then gave him space to dress and collect himself.

I walked him to the door. He said, "Should I take my computer? Will we work together tomorrow?" He knew the ice was thin where he stood. I secretly awarded him an 'A' for sensitivity.

"No, leave things set up in the living room. I'll see you about 8:30 or 9:00. The sitter will be here to take care of Jonathan while we work." I felt that I should clarify the landscape so there were no disappointments the next day. At that moment I wasn't sure where I stood either. I needed reflection time.

We kissed again, and then Matt left to go home.

I poured myself another liqueur and went out and sat on the front porch of my small home. At this hour of the night things were pretty quiet in the neighborhood, and I could think. I sipped the rich liquid and thought about the past year: quitting work, getting pregnant, loving Jonathan, losing and searching for my husband, giving up, grieving, more grieving, a partial return to sanity as the old feelings of desire came back to me, and now Matt – the nice guy that had been there all along.

Did I love Matt? My heart beat fast at the thought, and my body trembled. I even felt my vaginal muscles contract in memory of our evening, squeezing some of my retained fluid onto my outer lips. Yes! Matt reached every pore and cell in my body. I sat and held my knees to my chest, aware that I was exposing my pussy to the front yard and street, should anyone pass by. Although it was dark, I loved the feeling of being an exhibitionist, of being temporarily sated sexually, and of feeling loved by Matt. I rubbed my fingers in my sexual emissions and brought them to my nostrils; we smelled wonderful.

I did feel guilty. I was married – to Jonathan – not the baby, but my husband. But he'd disappeared. He and his airplane had vanished into thin air somewhere out over the Caribbean Sea. I went through the thoughts I'd had so often since he left: was his disappearance permanent, might he show up tomorrow, would he call, how long should I wait, would I ever fall in love again? Question after question. And that night, at least, I knew I'd fall in love again.

*

Baby Jonathan usually woke, ate breakfast and played a little, and then took a morning nap. I called the babysitter and asked her not to come until lunchtime.

Jonathan was back in his crib when Matt arrived – a little early, but the baby seemed to settle down for a morning nap without complaining.

Matt came into the house a little tentative and resigned to work through the day, as we'd done so often before. This time, however, as he came in I stood nude before him – sparkling clean and smelling of lilac.

I held my arms up to him and said, "Matthew, I love you. Now, please make love to me again."

He smiled, and soon we were again joined in coitus in my bed.

We worked in the afternoon until I had to take over from the sitter and play mother. Matt and I made love all evening long again. Lest we discover things about each other we didn't like after we were deeper in the relationship, we lay in bed and talked after round one of our lovemaking. I confessed my love affair with my vibrator, and what I thought was a near-nymphomaniac attraction for nearly anything sexual. I explained how Jonathan and I had just started to move into an arena where we wanted to experiment more with things sexual. I told Matt how I'd sat outside after he'd left the night before, scantily clad and exposing my pussy to the night air; I speculated that had someone walked by and even if it had been lighter, I probably wouldn't have changed my position on the porch chair.

Matt confessed his strong sexual drive including an attraction to masturbation, adult pornography, and sexy stories. He said he'd love to abet my exhibitionist desires, commenting that he thought he could be really creative about where I might safely expose myself. He told me he'd be happy to join me, fucking me in public – a concept that made my fluids gush with excitement and anticipation. He told me he relished the thought that I was oversexed and wanted to experiment. He said I was his wildest and wettest dream come true.

Then we fucked again, this time making up scenarios about where we'd make love and who might watch us or even be with us. In one, Matt brought another man into our coupling, having the two of them fuck me in every conceivable way. My vibrator became the 'other man.' Matt was hard and long and satisfying. I came over and over again, and I fell more deeply in love with Matt – and in lust with Matt. He stayed over that night.

He stayed over the next night too, and the night after that, and the night after that. At my urging, he soon moved in with us.

Matt was the kind of person everyone loved: neighbors, friends, my parents, and even Jonathan's parents when they found out I'd fallen in love with their son's former buddy and business partner. They too had moved on, and they so appreciated our including them in our family. After all, they were the baby's grandparents and I did love them too.

Our business succeeded and grew. I worried incessantly when Matt went on the road to sign up new clients. His flights were with commercial air carriers, and at least that took the edge off my fears. Nonetheless, I always breathed easier when he was home with us.

Matt and I fed each other's fantasies: by that, I mean we shared all our fantasies and sexual imaginings with each other, and then tried to make some of them happen. We'd occasionally go out and allow ourselves to be seen fucking in the car or in some parking lot. We had a favorite cocktail lounge we'd go to when we went out to dinner; I'd end the evening by flashing the waiter or some tired businessman. Well rehearsed, these situations always looked so natural and spontaneous. The exhibitionism really turned me on.

Matt took me on the hood of the car one night while two other couples watched. He fingered me to orgasm in a XXX theater as we watched pornography. He made videos of us making love and then edited them into one hell of an amateur porn film. We made love in every room in the house, and then in every corner of the yard. He fucked me on the front porch one evening, even when a couple of cars drove by. We were keyed up, and playing out our sexuality. We were so evenly matched I couldn't believe it.

The baby grew, and then so did I. I got pregnant again. We planned it. As Jonathan turned three, Beth arrived. She was our love child, born of the love and care Matthew and I had for each other. In every way except marriage, we were a family.

A year later, I got a surprise call one afternoon from David Crowley, the family lawyer. He told me the court had again reviewed our petition for death certificate, and had said they would rule on it before the end of the year. He sounded optimistic.

I told Matt, and he hugged me to him with unusual ferocity, and then bolted from the room.

Oddly enough, for the years we'd spent together we'd never talked about marriage or what life after the court decision would be. It had always hung out there as something that might happen some day, but we didn't look beyond it, at least in so far as our own status was concerned.

Matt disappeared into our bedroom, and came back a moment later. He kneeled in front of me and held my hand. "Allison, will you marry me? Will you be my wife as well as the mother of our children?" He presented me with a rather large diamond engagement ring.

I pulled him up and hugged him. The four-year old and eighteen-month old toddlers looked on with great interest at what Mommy and Daddy were doing, although we had been affectionate in front of them frequently before. This time, however, Mommy was screaming, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

I'd taken to not wearing any wedding jewelry since Jonathan's disappearance. Now, I proudly sported 'The Rock' from Matt. We were engaged. Of course, we already lived together, but that was beside the point.

The court awarded Jonathan's death certificate almost six years after our original petition.

Matt and I wed a month later. We had an informal wedding but a large assembly of relatives – three sets: Matthew's, Jonathan's, and mine. We even had several readings that Jon's brother; Matt and I did commemorating Jon's life and friendship. Then we wed, our son, Jonathan, served as a ring bearer as well as escort for his nearly two-year-old sister. The kids provided some comic relief to an otherwise serious ceremony of life, love, and moving on.

Our life did move on. I finally collected the insurance money we were owed on Jonathan's death. We also got an offer to buy our websites from one of the largest travel agencies in the world, and we took it. There were few strings. It was basically a 'take the cash and run' deal. They'd take over managing the sites and our clients. Suddenly, we were rich beyond our wildest imaginations.

We talked about what we'd like to do next now that we were suddenly out of the Internet business. Of course, that was what we knew best. We both had worried that things were getting over-hyped and that the prices some of the Internet companies were fetching as they were acquired were out of line with their true worth – ours included, but we did take the money.

The 'dot-com bust' came only months later in 2000, but by then we were in cash. By year's end, we stepped in near the bottom of the market and nurtured a couple of companies we thought should survive, and they did, complicated a year later by the '9-11' terrorist attacks. Overall, we made even more money.

Matt and I leased office space and started an Internet incubator for local entrepreneurs we thought had good ideas that needed some support to get off the ground. Our daytime activities were spent coaching and even providing some technical support. Increasingly, though we looked for investors or additional support for these burgeoning efforts. We liked playing venture capitalists as well as mentors to the small startups.

We moved the family to a much larger home on a large lake in a suburb outside Boston. We were the stereotypical upwardly mobile American family ... at least until one summer day a year after our wedding.

Matt and I were home alone. The kids were staying with my parents about a half an hour away. We'd just finished dinner, when the doorbell rang – an unusual occurrence in our life. No one ever came to the door in our neighborhood; New Englanders always called ahead.

I answered the door, and there stood Jonathan – my Jonathan, my husband, my former husband. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God ..."

I fainted.

To be continued