Triptych
Twenty-nine
KATE GRABBED MY HAND as soon as class was over and dragged me to the cafeteria to meet Melody. We’d spent the past two hours trying to draw without looking at the paper. It was one of Doc Henredon’s favorite exercises. The goal was to free our hands to follow the mind’s eye rather than what the physical eye saw. Mercifully, he used a still life setting as a model rather than a live model. We were all exhausted and in possession of another half dozen drawings that Doc never looked at and showed nothing about our artistry as far as I could tell. I had grown to have a lot of faith in Doc and knew he wouldn’t let us down. This was the only art class I’d have this term and I wanted to make the most of it.
We got to the cafeteria and had Cokes before Melody arrived. She rushed up to us and kissed us both. The college doesn’t actually have a policy regarding public displays of affection as I’ve heard some do. I’m pretty sure that if those kisses had gotten any hotter, though, someone would have reported us for something.
“I can’t wait to have you come over this weekend,” I said to Kate. “I feel like we were interrupted at a bad time.”
“Tony said a lot happened over the weekend, but he won’t tell us everything because he says most of it is your story to tell,” Melody added. “I’m dying to hear.”
“Oh. Well, about that,” Kate said. “I… um… won’t exactly be able to come over this weekend.”
“What? Why not?” I heard myself almost shout. Oh shit! That was totally inappropriate. What did I think was going on? Did I imagine I owned Kate’s weekends now that we’d had an intimate—if not profoundly sexual—weekend? “I’m sorry,” I stammered out. “That came out a lot different than I intended. It was just a surprise.”
“I want to be with you,” Kate mourned. “I really do. I’m bummed, too. But Saturday morning this week is my volunteer time at the Food Bank. We get all kinds of things in that have to be sorted and shelved. And with the holiday this week, things are going to be crazy as people restock what they can. Saturday afternoon is the Tent City coordinating team meeting. You’re going, aren’t you, Tony? On top of that I’ve got a huge project for my studio practicum that I wasn’t planning on. I expect all my paintings for the exhibition to come from that class and I can’t afford to mess up the first one. I’m sorry.” Kate was near tears and it was obvious she was as upset about not being with us this weekend as Melody and I were. We both scooted in on either side of her.
“It’s okay, Kitten,” I said. “We’re not mad about it. We’re just as disappointed as you are.”
“We’re all in school, after all,” Melody said. “I’ve got assignments due next week that I have to work on, too. I’m pretty sure that if you were with us for the whole weekend, I wouldn’t want to do any of my work.” She kissed Kate and hugged her tightly.
“I’d really rather be with you than anything else,” Kate said. “You know that, don’t you? You know I love you?”
“And we love you,” I said. “That’s why we’re disappointed when we can’t spend time with you. But we understand.”
Melody was biting her lower lip and I knew what she was feeling. I was hard as a rock and now our timing was all off. We weren’t going to have Kate with us this weekend. Somebody was likely to explode.
“Oh. About the following weekend,” I said. “It’s our birthday.”
“Not until Sunday,” Kate said.
“Well, I don’t want to wait until Sunday to celebrate when we’ve got the whole weekend, right? But I’ve got a portrait sitting with a new client that Clarice just got me. I need chaperones. I thought that since Lissa and Clarice went last time, maybe you two would like to be my chaperones this time,” I suggested.
“That’d be fun. Are you painting a sexy woman?” Melody asked.
“No. I have a lovely Indian family. You both have to be where at least one of you can see me at all times.”
“Okay,” said Melody.
“I’d be willing,” Kate said.
“You can’t imagine how much I wanted to hear that,” I grinned at her. She gave my arm a hug.
“Well, I have to get going in order to get as much time on my project as possible,” Kate said. We got up from the table.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “I offered our guest room to Wendy tonight. I saw her at lunch and she really looks exhausted. Says she doesn’t have a good sleeping situation at the moment. I don’t know where she’s staying, but I told her to just come over after work and get a good night’s sleep.”
“That’s nice,” Melody said. “Let’s stay up and make sure she’s eaten.”
“Oh, Tony!” Kate said. She wrapped her arms around my neck and planted a wild kiss on my lips. I was staggered. “You are so thoughtful. Thank you for taking care of her. Things have been really rough lately.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Like you say, that’s her story to tell and not mine,” Kate said. “But I know this will mean a lot to her.”
“We’ll do our best.”
“Oh, Melody, I’ve got something for Lissa. Would you give it to her?” Kate asked sweetly.
“Sure, baby. What is it?”
Without any warning, Kate laid a kiss on Melody that was every bit as toe-curling as the one she’d just given me. I edged between them and the line-of-sight from the doorway. She pulled away from Melody and grabbed her portfolio.
“I have to give that away to Lissa?” Melody complained. “What about me?”
“Don’t be cross, honey,” Kate said. “I’ll have yours with me tomorrow. ’Bye!”
“She’s what?” Lissa’s voice was plaintive, not angry.
“She said she had a big project and couldn’t come over this weekend, but I’ll see her at the Tent City meeting on Saturday.”
“I miss her!”
“I know,” I said. Not only did we both want to be cuddling with Kate, we’d spent the week teasing each other and holding back our orgasms to the point that we were all about to pop. Now Lissa and I were entering the racquetball court and we were both frustrated. “Just wait till Melody gives you your present.”
“Can we just go home now?”
“Let’s do our workout. It will take our minds off things.”
It started a little slowly, but in about five minutes, Lissa and I had worked up a steady rhythm of batting the ball back and forth. Within ten minutes, the ball was flying at an incredible velocity as our rally went on and on. We were reading each other like lovers, watching for every twitch of every muscle that would clue us in on what to do next.
I took my serve and the ball was in flight again. The walls of the court ceased to exist. There was only the ball and where it would be. There was the stretch and contraction of muscles that would place it exactly where we wanted it. There was the solid reverberation up the grip of the racquet when we made contact. There was spin and position—a dance that we took to a new level.
It’s not that we never missed a shot, but we found it harder and harder to put one past. A deadly shot into the crotch of the back wall was fired back off three walls and then picked up again. A lob serve was returned at a zillion miles an hour, barely clearing the floor at the front wall and never making it to the short line before it was returned again.
Ba-da-dum. Ba-da-dum. Ba-da-da-dum. Ba-dum.
The noise of racquet on ball on wall was a kind of music and it took me into my zone, fueled by the power I felt surging through my body. We were dancing. We were playing. We were making love.
A pounding on the door of the court brought us out of our zone together and we collapsed against each other as we turned. John was standing outside the court with the next players who had it reserved. My god! An hour was already gone? It seemed like a few minutes. I wanted to keep going, but my legs were suddenly rubbery. Lissa and I supported each other as we left the court and the next players entered.
“If you two play like that at Opens, no one is going to stand a chance, in either doubles or singles,” John said. “That was amazing. Especially the rally where the ball never touched the floor.”
“When was that?” I asked. John looked at me curiously.
I realized that I had no concrete play-by-play memory of the match. Usually when I finish a match I can go through it in my mind—remember specific plays and what I felt when I missed a shot or correctly read a play. This time, I remembered playing—feeling exhilarated soaking up the impact of each shot—but had no play-by-play memory.
“You had a rally where the two of you just kept picking up each other’s shots directly off the wall at an incredible speed. Don’t you remember it?” John asked.
“We did that?” Lissa asked. “Doesn’t seem possible.” It was apparent that she had no firmer memory of the match than I did.
“I invited George and Nicole over to play with you tomorrow,” John said. “I hope you can play like this when you are facing others.”
We headed toward the showers, but just before we parted to our separate locker rooms I groaned. Lissa looked at me.
“You know what that means?” I asked. Lissa’s face showed the breaking dawn of enlightenment.
“More sexual frustration,” she whispered. “Is this worth it?”
“We’d better go talk to Melody.”
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
