Triptych
Thirty-one
GEORGE AND NICOLE were hot—both as a couple and as competitors. They’d played racquetball as a team for the past five years and knew each other’s moves as well as their own. They’d probably make a good showing at Opens if they decided to go.
But they were no match for Lissa and me this time.
Doubles has a specific playing order. Either player on the first serving team can serve and when that player loses a rally, the serve goes to the other team. From that point on, though, each player on the team serves until out. Then the serve goes back to the other team. Once the ball is served, either player on the opposing team can return the ball.
It all sounds very orderly, but in a 20-foot by 40-foot enclosed room with four people moving after or out of the way of a ball flying at 40 to 110 miles per hour, it can feel like total chaos.
George served first in the first match and was out on the first rally. Lissa and I never even discussed who would take the first serve, but we were in perfect synch when I put the first lob serve across the short line. She took Nicole’s return off the back wall and sent it past George just an inch off the floor. We were up one-nothing and that marked the direction the match went from there on. I was living in Lissa’s skin and always knew where my partner would be as well as where the ball would be. She moved as if she was an extension of my right arm. What an incredible feeling! We took two straight games and then played the third anyway and won it by six points.
“You two are on fire!” Nicole exclaimed as we left the court. “I can’t believe you’ve improved so much in such a short time. Didn’t we just beat you two weeks ago?”
“It was such a high! I can’t believe we played like that,” Lissa said.
“I’ve sent out a blanket challenge for any mixed doubles team in the area to play you before Opens,” John said. Our trainer was standing outside the door of the court with a clipboard in hand.
“You should expand that,” George said. “We should send Jay and Dan, our top men’s team, to play them. Tony and Lissa need a higher level of competition than they’ll find among mixed doubles here in Seattle. Although, you might send an invitation to the Elliotts in the Tri-Cities. They won last year’s State competition and I’m pretty sure they’re headed to Opens.”
“Great idea on both counts,” John said. “Four weeks from now, I want to hear about these two on the podium in Minneapolis.”
“Is it really that soon?” I asked. “We should probably register.”
“I have all the forms. You’ll play in Open Division even though you are unranked in doubles. You are both Elite players,” John said. “Wish I was going with you two.”
“I think we’ll have quite an entourage as it is,” Lissa laughed. She looked at me and I raised an eyebrow. John had turned toward George and Nicole so Lissa mouthed at me, “I want to fuck now!” I laughed and we all headed for the showers.
Of course, we weren’t going to be able to fuck right away. We had boys arriving at home just after we got there. We made dinner and played with them. It had been the first week of school and both wanted to talk about everything that had happened. With Damon in second grade and Drew in kindergarten, it was a different story than when they’d told us about their days last spring. Damon was enthralled with the class gecko and described exactly what happened every time they put a cricket in the cage. I really didn’t want to hear about the leg hanging out of the gecko’s mouth still twitching, but Damon had already declared he was going to be a scientist like Mrs. Alton. Drew proudly showed Melody an entire page of alphabet letters copied over and over.
Reading progressed, too. Damon brought a book about a dog and cat coming to an agreement about who owned the house and he proudly read it to Drew and me. When it was my turn to read, we started on one of my favorite series, The Berenstain Bears. Poor Jack. I could tell right away this was going to be an obsession like Dr. Seuss.
Finally, the boys were in bed. I came out of their room to find Melody and Lissa locked in a tight embrace and could see that clothing was already being loosened. I lifted Melody’s sweatshirt over her head, getting her to part from Lissa’s lips just long enough to let the shirt pass. There was nothing under the sweatshirt but Melody. She was just as horny as Lissa and me. She already had Lissa’s pants shoved down her butt and was fingering our lover.
Not sure exactly how, but I managed to maneuver them into the bedroom before they were both completely naked. I picked up discarded bits of clothing as we went.
As much as we’d all been teasing each other this week, we were on a hair-trigger. I slid into Melody as Lissa settled on her face and a few seconds later we were moaning out orgasms while trying hard not to be so noisy the boys would hear. We didn’t even take a break before I was planted in Lissa and Melody rode her face to another satisfying conclusion. I wasn’t sure we’d ever stop.
It was the doorbell that brought us to our senses.
At first we thought perhaps Kate had decided to come over after all, but she has a key. Then we suddenly realized that none of us had heard from Wendy since she left before lunch. I pulled on my sweats and rushed for the door to catch her just as she was turning away to leave. Wow! It was 10:00 p.m. already.
“Is it still okay if I sleep here?” she asked. “If you don’t want me, I understand. I’m okay.”
“Wendy! Of course we want you. You left in such a hurry we didn’t give you a key this morning,” I said.
“Is that Wendy, darling?” Lissa called from the direction of the kitchen.
“Yes,” I called. “I didn’t give her a key this morning.”
“Are you hungry? I’m just fixing us a bedtime snack,” Lissa called.
“I ate dinner at the restaurant a few hours ago,” Wendy said as we walked into the kitchen, “but I wouldn’t mind a little snack.”
Lissa was wearing a robe and I could see by the things she’d pulled out of the fridge that we were in for more than a little snack. I just love her! Melody came from the bedroom in a matching robe and I wondered when they’d managed to get those.
“Hi, Wendy!” Melody chirped. “I was just getting my jammies on before our snack.”
She hugged Wendy and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Wendy kissed her back, then wrinkled her nose and sniffed. Her eyes got wide.
“Oh my god! I interrupted you. I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot. I’ll leave.”
“Hell, you will,” I said. “You didn’t really interrupt anything. We were kind of ready for an intermission. And don’t be embarrassed. Just sit down and relax.”
“Yes, Tony,” she said, sitting on the barstool immediately. “May I take a quick shower before we eat?”
“Of course,” I answered. “But be quick about it. I’m starving!”
“I will.”
She ran down the hall and I turned to look at my lovers.
“She is so insecure,” I said. “Did I handle that okay?”
“Yeah,” Lissa said. “I don’t think it’s just insecurity, though.”
“She obeyed you,” Melody said.
“Naw. I was just comforting her and getting her to relax a little.”
“Didn’t you hear her? You said, ‘sit down and relax,’ and she couldn’t get on that stool fast enough. Then she asked your permission to shower. Oh my god,” Lissa sighed.
“Just be really careful what you tell her to do,” Melody said. “I think that relationship she was in was worse than we thought.”
I met up with Kate at the Tent City meeting Saturday afternoon. I was feeling pretty good after my Pilates session with Lissa this morning. It really gets your blood flowing and makes you feel like you could reach the stars. With Tent City moving onto the campus at SCU in just three weeks, there was a lot of work to be done.
Kate and I sat and absorbed the incredible amount of detail that was described. For her part, she’d already organized a student committee at PCAD to assemble first-aid backpacks and had a dozen under construction. She also reported that several downtown churches had coordinated efforts with the Northwest Harvest food shelf to provide meals or supplies. A lot of the infrastructure was already in place since Seattle had had tent cities for several years now, but there were always a lot of details to work out in getting the new host area set up.
I’d be spending part of the weekend prior to the move-in date working on the site. We’d be putting boardwalk avenues through the encampment space so that when it rained—which it would continuously from October through December—people wouldn’t create muddy trenches between the tents. It would help the site drain as well. We’d also erect a canvas barrier around the site so that the residents would have some degree of privacy from the campus traffic that would pass by the city every day. I wondered if we were giving them privacy, or erecting an excuse not to think about them.
We toured the sports field in front of the athletic pavilion where the encampment would be. It was currently a lush green field on which a number of people were kicking a soccer ball without real purpose. There were few students around as classes were still a week away, but freshman orientation started Tuesday and there seemed to be a lot of activity on the grounds preparing for the start of the school year.
When the meeting was over, I was surprised to find Bree approaching us. It wasn’t me, but Kate that she gave a warm hug to. She turned to me a little more demurely, as if still ashamed of what happened the last time we met. Well, that couldn’t go on. I swept her into a hug. Bygones.
“Thank you, Tony,” she said. “Kate, you wouldn’t believe what happened. We went away last week, just like you suggested. It wasn’t for recruiting or anything. We actually took a vacation and just went to the mountains. And we talked. Thank you so much for pushing me. I can’t say everything is better, but we talked. I almost feel like I have him back. Thank you.”
I wasn’t sure what that was all about.
“Who did you go on vacation with?” I asked.
“Dad,” Bree said. “Kate convinced me that I had to ask him to go away for a while so we could talk without the whole school and athletics thing getting in the way. It was so good.”
Somehow I thought I’d suggested that, but at the moment Bree was all over Kate for helping her. Well, even if I had suggested it, I knew for a fact I wouldn’t have been in that position if Kate hadn’t begged me to make up with Bree. This was, frankly, the happiest I could ever remember seeing her.
“See you in class next week, Tony,” she said as she left.
“Do you have time to sit and talk a while?” I asked Kate.
“I’d be a terrible girlfriend if I couldn’t spend any time with my boyfriend,” she smiled. “And… I hope by talk you mean make out.”
We walked out onto the sports field and just surveyed the area that Tent City would occupy in just a few weeks.
“I wanted to let you know that Wendy is going to be staying at our house for a while,” I said after I’d kissed her.
I don’t know what response I was expecting, but having Kate plaster herself to me with her legs wrapped around my waist and her mouth sucking the breath out of mine was not it. Still, I wasn’t going to complain and did my best to drag out the event as long as possible.
God! Just holding her to me and kissing… just feeling her breath on my cheek and her arms around my neck… I never want to let her go. Never. If I had taken the time to get to know Kate last year when we were both alone and lonely, I might never have gotten together with Melody and Lissa. That thought shocked me, but I recognized it as true. I also recognized that if Melody had gotten to know Kate during that same period, I would surely still be a virgin, probably in class in Lincoln, Nebraska right now. All things in the right season, as Dad used to say. And in this season—right now—I just wanted to hold Kate and keep kissing her.
Alas, she eventually pulled away and put her feet back on the ground, though she didn’t attempt to remove my hands from her butt where I’d been holding her up. Oh, my fucking…
“How is she adapting?” Kate asked.
Oh yeah. We were talking about Wendy.
“Okay, I guess. I’ve got to tell you, Kate—I’ve already told Lissa and Melody—she scared the hell out of me yesterday morning. She came to me and… I guess she offered herself to me to pay for the room.”
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Kate asked. I smoothed the crease in her brow with a kiss.
“Not on your life, Kitten. But… I don’t think this is betraying a confidence… when she took off her robe, she was covered with bruises. She went back to her boyfriend this week for some unknown reason. When I told her we expected her to stay with us until her housing improves after classes start at the U, she looked at the floor and said, ‘Yes, Tony.’ It was downright freaky,” I said.
“Oh dear. Can I use your phone to call her, please? Right now?”
“Kate, are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean…”
“Yes. It’s the right thing. I’ve grown close to Wendy this summer.”
I handed her my cell phone and she punched in the number without even looking in my directory. I watched and listened.
“—Stop, Wendy. It’s Kate.— Yes, I’m calling on Tony’s phone. You’re staying at his house now, right?— I’m glad you’re safe.— Wendy, Tony isn’t your… um… boss. He’s your friend.— Don’t say that.— With kindness and respect.— Yes, Melody and Lissa, too. They want you there.— No, you don’t have to pay them. Just be helpful and responsible. You know how that worked.— Oh. You know I can’t come over this weekend. Even though I want to.— Yes. It’s coming along well, but I’ve got so much to do!— How about if I stop by and we go for a little walk while you’re on break between lunch and dinner tomorrow?— Okay. Be good.— ’Bye.”
Kate smiled and handed me back the phone.
“You shouldn’t have any problems with Wendy.”
“Is there anything I should know about what just went on?”
“She’s in a really rough spot right now and just doesn’t know how to respond to people,” Kate said. “She’ll get better. We’ve talked a lot in the past month or so.”
“She said she stayed with you for a while.”
“Most of the month of August,” Kate said. “My new roommate arrived while we were in Oregon last weekend and Wendy just moved out. I’ve been worried about her. I’m so glad she’s staying with you.”
“You are so unbelievably sensitive to other people, Kate,” I said. “She had to pretty much shock me with her bruises before I realized anything was wrong. I’d still like to get my hands on that ex-boyfriend.”
“Now, now, Tony. Remember what Grandpa Ken said?”
“Yeah. I know fighting’s not a good answer. But seeing someone abused makes me really angry,” I said.
“And it’s one of the reasons I love you,” Kate said.
She reached up to kiss me but then shied away. Then she moved forward to touch my lips lightly with hers. She left them there and just brushed them against me as my eyelids drifted closed. I was transported back to the first time Kate kissed me, back at our posing party in May. That shy, tentative exploration of my lips with hers… the tickle of her tongue tasting me. The hope and promise of things to come.
“I need to get back to work, Tony,” she whispered as her lips gently tugged at my earlobe. “I’ll see you in class Tuesday, and I’ll miss you every second until then.” She kissed me softly again. “Can you share that one with my other two loves?” she asked.
“I promise.”
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