Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.
You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.
Click here
Rather than the big things, it was the little things that made her happy now, such as a note she received in the mail from an old friend, a television show, or a movie that she looked forward to watching. After forty-five-years of working with the public in the library, she enjoyed going through a day without having to talk to anyone but to her husband, John. As if it was a rainy afternoon and she was sick in bed, not one for gossiping on the phone, she enjoyed spending every day reading instead of talking. Now with her having the time to work in her garden, she finally got to read all the books that she wanted to read.
Having built quite the personal library, she read J.K. Rowling, Ted Dekker, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Brad Meltzer, Nate Kenyon, Dennis Lehane, Steve Berry, Stephen King, Catherine Coulter, Gillian Flynn, Brian Keene, John Grisham, and Dean Koontz. She read all the classics of literature too. She read everything by Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, Austen, Tolstoy, Orwell, Melville, Chekhov, Christie, Conrad, Steinbeck, Morrison, Tolkien, Doyle, Eliot, James, Wilde, Verne, Hugo, Hawthorne, Shelley, Maugham, and Wharton, and dozens of other writers. Yet, romance novels were her favorite books to read. If only a time to pretend, romance novels moved her to where she wanted and needed to be to survive being married to John.
Only with her keeping her books to herself, as if every word was precious and expressly written just for her, cherishing every word, she didn't share what she read with her husband. Before he abandoned reading for watching TV, he used to ask her what she was reading but when she gave him evasive and non-descript answers, as if annoyed that he'd invade her privacy by asking, he stopped asking. Now, lost in her world of characters traveling the globe while having sexual affairs with mysterious men, she finally experienced all that she missed in her life by reading about it.
'Tick, tick, tick.'
To be continued...
As if your vote is my applause, please vote.
- COMMENTS
SusanJillParkerabout 7 years agoAuthor"...but the story seems never to progress much. OTH, we get to know the characters very well. In this story, SJP reveals some insightful secrets of long married couples. But it feels like I'm swimming in glue."
That's exactly right and my intention. Imagine two people, neither believing in divorce, staying together for 45-years. With one all about sex and wanting sex and with the other already having had her fill of sex, with a big part of their marriage over, they had nothing in common.
She'd rather read than watch TV and he'd rather watch TV than read. Swimming in glue, their marriage was going nowhere.
'Tick, tick, tick...'
Both were waiting to die.
Thanks for reading, for voting, and for taking the time to write a comment.
Susan
tennesseeredabout 7 years agoI don't profess to understand SJP's situation but I take it at face value as she (?) gives us to understand it. SJP is a good writer with well crafted sentences and paragraphs that explore the inner life of her characters...but the story seems never to progress much. OTH, we get to know the characters very well. In this story, SJP reveals some insightful secrets of long married couples. But it feels like I'm swimming in glue.
