Sweet Sorrows pt.2

Sweet Sorrows pt.2

Meanwhile, the people that had cycled earlier, made their hunger known, returning for seconds and even thirds. The beer and wine flowed, the cycling stories, both real, embellished, and imagined, passed back and forth and cell phone cameras clicked away. Dora snapped a few photos of me and Kelsey, standing arm in arm. She was leaving for Seattle the next day, she told me. "Which still gives us plenty of time to talk," she said as the party was winding down.

"Privately," she emphasized. Then she added, "By the way, do you still have that Honda Cross tour?"

I did, and it was parked directly in front of one of Bradley's garage doors. Bradley and Amelia either had no outside security lights or did not bother to turn them on. Whatever the case, it was pitch-black outside their house. No exaggeration, pitch-black, with no streetlights within a quarter mile or so. It was so dark that we had to wade zombie-like into the darkness for fear we would trip or bang into something as we groped our way to my car. Except for the few seconds of light from the car's roof when I opened the doors, darkness continued to envelop us as we sat on the front seats. "You wanted privacy, you got it here," I said.

"It's darker here than when we used to fool around on the parking lot after those evening rides," she said.

Darker and quieter, much quieter. That parking lot sat near an interstate highway, with only a row of hedges between it and the road. "Kelsey, I can still hear the sound of the cars whooshing by, mixed with the sound of our heavy breathing," I said.

"Oh my, yes," she said. "But you know, it kind of made things more exciting."

I began stroking her hair, her fine, silky hair that had not yet turned gray. Either that, or she did an excellent job in hiding it. Not that I was about to ask. I did ask this: "So, along those lines, wouldn't it be even more exciting if we fooled around here?"

She chuckled. "Well, maybe, you are naughty, daring boy, you. I mean, we're parked in someone's driveway." She paused, then said, "I missed you, Jon. I missed riding with you, talking with you, and yes, riding on top and underneath you."

"We had quite a ride together, Kelsey. On several levels."

"Yes, we did." She tucked her hands under my Ravens jersey and began playing with my chest. "Man, you're still solid as a rock."

"Thanks, I work at it."

"And it shows." She withdrew her hands and continued. "You didn't know I was a Seattle Seahawks fan. A minor detail, but there are other things about my life that aren't so minor, things that I never talked about with you."

"Okay." I did not ask, thinking it better to let this flow wherever she wanted to take it.

"You knew I had never been married," she continued. "But what you didn't know is that I was engaged years ago. Just a few weeks after our wedding date, Jim, my fiancé, contracted a deadly form of meningitis. And... that was it." She looked away, taking a moment to compose herself. "Anyway, so now you know."

I wanted so much to comfort her but was not sure how. It was one of those awkward situations where you want to say something that might help but hesitate for fear of saying the wrong thing. "I'm so sorry, Kelsey. Why didn't you..." I stopped there.

"Why didn't I tell you until now? I do not know; it was too personal. I mean, we were cycling buddies, albeit with benefits, but cycling buddies. And, you know, cycling buddies only get so close."

She was right. Cycling friends rarely get that close, forming the tight bond one does with close friends met years ago. Cycling relationships normally do not last beyond the bike, the strongest common denominator. There are exceptions--I can name quite a few--but that is how it goes. When one stops riding, their connection to those bike friends is usually severed.

I continued. "Yes, I know. So why are you telling me now?"

She brushed away a tear. "Maybe because I'm leaving, and I feel it's safe to tell you." She blinked her beautiful light blue eyes, then managed to smile. "I know what you're thinking. Same old Kelsey, right? Avoids getting close to people. A least now you know one of the reasons why."

I gave her a reassuring kiss. "I didn't judge you then and I won't now. Well, other than you're a Seahawks fan," I teased. "I mean, come on."

"Hey, I was a closet Ravens fan for the two or three years I was here," she said. "I wanted to keep it in the closet, at least it would get out to my friends back home. Bet you didn't know that either."

"You're right. You kept an air-tight closet on that one, too."
It was close to ten and the last few cars parked nearby were pulling out. "It's getting late," Kelsey said. I figured she was ready to call it a night, and she would drive away in her rented vehicle parked halfway on the grass a couple of tenths of a mile up the glorified driveway of a road that ran by the three properties in the cul-de-sac. But then she said, "Alone at last. Alone on this beautiful night in your big hatchback. Bradley and Amelia are cleaning up. They'll never see us in this kind of dark."

"Not to be presumptuous," I said, "but it sounds like you're okay with my fooling around the idea."

She put her arms around me. "I am on board, yes. Sounds like a splendid idea."

I pulled her as close as I could over the center console, enjoying the soft warmth of those tender lips I once knew so well. We necked for a full minute before I pulled away and said, "Just like old times."

She nodded, looked like she was about to cry again. "Ron, I never told you this either. Never told you that I fell in love with you at some point during our relationship."

"And I never told you because you never told me." We started to laugh. Then I asked, "So now what?"

"Now what? I say let us resume where we left off. And take it to another level. If you know what I mean. And I'm thinking you do."

We got back into it, heavier and more intense than before. The contours of her firm body, the sweet, sweaty scent of her, brought back fond memories. Her kisses were not so much sweeter than wine, as the song goes, but sweet like wine--Riesling if my taste buds were right. "You feel so good and smell so good," I whispered.

"And you take my breath away," she said, breathing as if she were climbing Piney Grove, one of the steeper hills on one of our cycling routes. She put her hand over my crotch. "I feel something."

"I'm sure you do, and it's been like that for the last ten minutes."

"And I've been wet for just as long, if not longer." She lifted her butt off the seat, tucked her hands under her dress, and slipped off her panties. "Make love to me, Ron."

It was risky business, fooling around while parked in someone's driveway, not to mention irreverent. If Bradley or Amelia came out and saw us...Well, I was not sure what they would do, though I doubted they would appreciate it. They were nice people. Even so, I did not think their graciousness extended to letting their guests make whoopee just steps from their door. But it was pitch-black, and they were in for the night. Besides, I could not resist.

Gingerly, I exited the car and folded down the seats. Just as gingerly, I slipped off my jeans, then climbed in back with Kelsey. Just like old times. Well, not just like it but close enough. She was the same old Kelsey safely, the way she kept herself, slim, trim, and healthy. But hey, I looked surprisingly good myself for age seventy. My washboard abdominal muscles rocked. I was not bald and, as I mentioned, vestiges of my youthful spirit remained, enough to give this middle-aged gal something to take back with her to Seattle.

There was enough room for good old missionary, for Kelsey to lift her dress to her waist, and then for me to take top and slip between her firm legs. She cried out, "Oh my, Ron, can you believe we're doing this?"

"Yes, but don't wake me up if I'm dreaming," I said.

There WAS a sense of surrealness to all this, meeting up with Kelsey after five years and then humping in my Honda while parked in the Davies’ driveway. It was something I had fantasized about over those five years (sans the driveway part) but never thought it would ever happen.

No longer did I have to only think about "the things we used to do," as that old Bobby Darin hit went. No sir, I was doing it--doing it and loving every part of it, from the sensuous feel of her smooth, youthful skin against mine, to her moans and heavy breathing, Risky business, to be sure, but when you slide into your seventies, your sense of mortality kicks in big time and you realize that there isn't a whole lot of time left.

"You only go around once, and you've got to grab all the gusto you can." Okay, I agree, it was a corny ad line, though I had bet that Schlitz sold lots of beer from that long-ago TV commercial. Besides, there was more than a grain of truth in it.

To be continued