🌹 Twice Told (4/4) 🌹

Carrots & Sugar Plums

[ Index | Prev ]

---

I had never been so aroused in all of my life. But I don’t mean that in the physical sense (although there was certainly some of that). I mean it in the deepest level of my soul, the dark place where things try to hide. It was like he had held that part of me with gentle hands and loved the dark part of me in a way that no one ever had.

The whole thing confused me.

At first, I was frustrated that he didn’t come inside and join me. At other times I saw the great wisdom of his restraint. At still other times, I wondered if it was because he just no longer desired me. I mean I was forty now. I wasn’t a spring chicken anymore.

Rationally, I knew he’d never seen those parts of me at seventeen that weren’t as pert at forty as they had been then. Women know they aren’t as beautiful as they once were. We have to face that.

Not that I ever had thought of myself as beautiful. Mostly, I had thought of myself as a vessel to be used.

That’s a screwed up thing to say, and I shouldn’t dwell on that. It leads to nothing good, so I pushed it from my mind and spent the next day and most of the afternoon touching my lips. Remembering the single kiss and then trying like mad to remember the hundred kisses we had shared on the beach, but try as I might, those feelings and memories were lost somewhere in that hidden place in my soul.

So much shame for so long. Logically, I knew none of it was my fault, but that doesn’t change what your heart feels. You can try to dictate with your head, but your heart thinks it knows the truth.

For years, I found physical arousal grotesque because it happens to your body even if you don’t want it to happen. Even if you fight it. Your body still betrays you. It’s what makes you filthy. That’s why, no matter how hot the shower or how much soap you use, your never get the inside clean again.

But last night, there had been a moment when, my heart was beating so fast, I had felt like a young woman again, being kissed for the first time, and feeling things that felt both exciting and right. I honestly could not remember ever feeling that in my whole life.

I was forty years old, but had never been aroused without feeling shame. Ever.

I yearned to remember those beach kisses. Maybe I had felt it then. I hoped I had felt it then, but I could not remember.

I know you cannot recapture your youth, but Ethan had been there in the before time and he knew the before me and, if he ever loved me, it was the before version of me that he had loved.

But—”Oh, damn,” I said out loud.

Ethan had taken me to the prom, and loved me on the beach, and touched me in the shack—but he never knew it was the after me. He didn’t even know there was an after me.

He never knew. He was never trying to treat me like a vessel.

Ethan had loved me.

And I did not really understand that until today.

When Ethan’s car pulled into my driveway, I felt the rush again.

I met him at the door, threw my arms around him, and kissed him.

He did not resist me. He picked me up and spun me around. I felt the wind in my hair and reveled in the moment.

How did I not know he was so strong? And more to the point, why did his strength not scare me?

“I was going to invite you to breakfast, but that kiss was a whole meal!” he said.

“You goof!” I said. Then I smiled shyly. “I can feed you all day if that’s how you feel.”

“That sounds delightful,” he said. “But we don’t have time for that right now. I’m going to need you to get changed into your worst clothes.”

“My worst clothes? Whatever are you up to, Mister?”

“We’re going back to the house.”

“Need to do some painting or deconstruction or something?”

“Something,” he said, giving me no hints.

Now, I did not put on my worst clothes, let’s be real. I put on something that made me feel good, look good, and I wouldn’t mind getting some dirt on.

Ethan held my hand all the way to the house. He opened the car door for me, offered his hand, and helped me out.

I was surprised to see four different work trucks there. Electrical, plumbing, construction, roofing.

“Ooh, do we get to climb on the roof?” I asked.

“Nothing so grand,” he said.

He took me by the hand, walked me behind the house, and down the hill where two large bowls sat along the edge of unruly blackberry bushes absolutely laden with ripe fruit.

And he didn’t even notice me wipe a tear from my eye.

Later, after our hands and faces and tongues were stained purple, we walked down to the garden. It was too early for most of the vegetables, but I knew exactly what we were doing as soon as I spotted them.

The carrots needed thinning. So, we plucked baby carrots and munched on them, just as we had done when we were six and seven years old, in the same garden with the same boy, feeling much the same as we had when we were kids.

But I drew the line at climbing the old rickety apple trees to forage for crab apples.

“You’re on your own for that,” I said.

He laughed at me. A hearty laugh, and walked me along the edge of the road, where we found sugar plums by the handful, and then he plucked a single wild pink rose with the yellow center and placed it above my left ear.

“What are you doing, Mister? Are you trying to make me look pretty despite my stained mouth?”

“Nope. I’m trying to make the flower look more beautiful.”

And I felt it again. A little tiny muscle, unused for so long, spasmed without notice.

And I felt joy from it for the first time in my life.

---

[ Index | Prev ]

---

Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.

---