Thirsty Pelican - Ch. 2 - 2017

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

Last Call at the Thirsty Pelican

Chapter Two

2017

By Royce F. Houton

The first of each year is depressing enough. The holidays are over. The coldest, deadest and darkest days of winter lay ahead. And the workload, at least in mortgage banking, always seems to be the heaviest given the need to calculate, complete and mail out several million IRS Form 1098s --mortgage interest statements that home borrowers need for their income taxes. True, it was a larger headache for Ron Casey and his tech team, but it was also a major distraction from our business of bringing in new home loan business, even if interest rates were near historic lows.

After my harrowing escape from Homewood Hannah on the mountain bike trail, my awkward first Christmas with my freshly splintered and dispersed family and the crush of work, it was easy to forget about digital dating.

I found reasons to get the hell out of Birmingham on Friday evenings. Several times I drove to Atlanta to see Butterbean and Neil as their romance blossomed. A few times, I made the short run to Tuscaloosa to see Perry and go with him to Bama basketball games. Another time I drove to Destin in the Florida Panhandle to take advantage of the cheap off-off-season rates just to listen to the surf, read and let my mind idle. And once, I hit U. S. 78 and drove up to Memphis to see Graceland, Beale Street, the Sun Records studio where Elvis cut his first records. And while it wasn't Boston Gardens, I went to FedEx Forum to see the basketball team that I had loved since the Larry Bird days, the Boston Celtics, lose to the Memphis Grizzlies.

In the spring, after the winter workload eased and the weather made shorts acceptable outdoors, did my attention turn to women. I gave online dating another shot.

Starting in April, I logged in to Match. com a time or two per week, just looking at the ladies the algorithms had selected for me. Only a few who were in my feed when I signed off in November were still there now. There was a reason I had not selected any of them then and that had not changed.

The first to intrigue me used the handle "BHM_Phyllis." She was 45 and divorced with a son who was on his first tour of duty in the Navy aboard an aircraft carrier assigned to the Mediterranean. Sorties attacking ISIS camps were being launched from the ship. Her ex, like mine, had a recurring zipper discipline problem and at least one flagrant affair. So, seven years ago, she divorced him and seemed to have done quite well in the settlement. Only after her son had graduated high school and chose the Navy over college did she feel the need to get back out there.

She and I met for coffee downtown the Monday before Memorial Day. It went well enough that we opted for dinner that Friday. After dinner at a downtown steakhouse, Phyllis and I strolled a few blocks to a park and sat for a few moments next to each other on a bench just as the sun set, ending a warm but not oppressive Alabama afternoon.

"Are you still angry?" she said.

"At my ex?"

"Yeah. Took me years before I stopped hoping I'd catch him walking across the street so I could run over him, then back up the pickup truck and run over him again," she said. "I think that's the most important thing for folks like us before going back out and dating -- making sure the past is really the past."

"I don't have the bandwidth for anger anymore," I said. "I burned out most of my anger leading up to the divorce. I had a mountain of evidence on her. By the time we settled, I was just empty inside, not feeling anything really."

I paused for a second to think, trying to answer Phyllis as honestly as I can.

"I will never be OK with what happened. It destroyed our family. Now, I guess I'm just glad it's behind me, glad I can look forward again."

Phyllis, a fit, powerfully built and compact woman whose black hair was streaked at her temples with gray, nodded and said nothing.

"Does that answer make sense?" I said. She looked toward me as if in deep thought.

"I guess no two people process things the same," she said. "I'm jealous of people who can feel the way you do because you're right: I spent way too much time and energy on anger. I still have some, but like you, it's too much work. It exhausts me lugging that around."

She looked into my eyes and her stern countenance softened.

"I don't know about you, but I'm sweating," I said. I considered Megs's advice but overrode her admonition. "Would you care for a nightcap in cooler environs?"

"Sure, where?"

"Two blocks that-a-way," I said, pointing my thumb backward over my shoulder, generally in the direction of the steakhouse.

"Back to the Cork & Cleaver?" she said.

"No. My condo." I said. "And that's not meant as a come-on."

Phyllis smiled and looked at me.

"Kirk, we're not sixteen. It's OK if it was a come-on," she said with a chuckle as she grasped my hand and rose from the bench.

▼ ▼ ▼

By the time we got to the lobby of my condo building, I was as jittery as a high school kid picking up his first prom date. By the time we got into the elevator and I punched the button for the sixth floor, my mouth was dry and my palms were wet. When we got there, my fingers trembled as I fumbled with the door key.

"Here," she said reassuringly, "let me help with that."

I turned to hand her the key, and she reached to take it from my hand. We froze for an instant before our lips, seemingly of their own accord, moved slowly together. What began as a gentle kiss quickly turned hungry and searching. My key ring spilled to the floor as my arms encircled Phyllis's waist and hers entwined around my neck as our kiss gained in heat and intensity without regard for neighbors who might pass us in the hallway.

By the time we pulled apart and read the look in each other's eyes, my heart was hammering and my dick had hardened. Phyllis, pressed against me, felt the bulge growing in my slacks.

"Get that door open," she said in a low, breathy voice.

The key finally fit, the deadbolt retracted, and we almost tumbled together inside. Neither of us bothered with pleasantries. Phyllis went immediately for my belt, button and zipper, her skillful hands negotiating them all and causing my trousers to drop to my shoe tops in just seconds. At the same time, I had eased the zipper at the back of her dress beyond the small of her waist, reached down her thighs to grab its hem and pulled it over her head. My polo shirt came off next as we stepped out of our shoes and, wearing only our underwear, took each other in our arms again, our tongues wrestling as we groped each other. By the time we found our way into my bedroom without ever breaking our lewd embrace, her hand had thrust underneath the waistband of my boxers and I had unsnapped her bra and begun twirling her nipples and kneading her ample breasts.

I managed to toss aside the bedspread before we tumbled together onto sheets that I had not had the foresight to change, not anticipating that I would have my first sexual encounter with a woman not named Siobhan in about 30 years.

"I'm so damn wet," Phyllis groaned, "and you're so damn hard."

"Mmmm hmmm. Let's make the most of that," I said as I peeled her plain, pastel blue panties off her rounded ass, down her muscled legs, off her feet still encased in her knee-high nylons and tossed the garment into a chair near the bed. I gasped as her bald mound came into view with its puffy outer lips and prominent cleft with dusky inner lips peeking from it, glistening with her arousal.

Phyllis unceremoniously yanked my boxers down my legs and tossed them indiscriminately somewhere onto the floor. "I want that cock," she said, grasping it in her right hand and guiding the top third of it briefly into her mouth. She shoved me onto my back, lying transverse across my king sized bed, as she pumped my shaft with her hand and swirled her tongue around the flared head of my cock, now fully emerged from its foreskin sheath.

Once she deemed it stiffened to her satisfaction, Phyllis straddled my thighs and moved up them until the underside of my boner was pinned against my lower belly by her warm, dewy slit. Her hands seemed to shake as she nuzzled the purple helmet of my glans against her opening then, with a loud moan, sank down in a single motion until her backside was nestled against my scrotum.

"Oh... fuuuck, that's so good," she groaned as she took a moment to sit still atop me and savor what seemed to be a long-delayed feeling of having her womanhood filled by a real cock. Her eyes seemed to lose focus as raw lust possessed her and she began thrusting her pelvis forward and back, grinding her hooded nubbin into my pubic bone with every centimeter of my hardness stuffed inside her.

Age, gravity and the experience of long ago nursing a now-grown child had stolen little of the bounce and firmness from her tits and the sight of it fueled my arousal. Both jiggled and bobbed merrily with each of her thrusts as she rode me. Each breast was crowned with broad, dark areolae larger than a silver dollar, their nipples protruding from the stippled, swollen, mocha-colored flesh surrounding them. I had never before experienced breasts quite like them and I took as much of one, then the other into my mouth as I could suckle and tongue.

Sensing my fascination with them, Phyllis bent down from her classic cowgirl position to a more prone alignment, her lower belly pressed against me, allowing her to expose more of her sensitive nipples to my lips, teeth and tongue. Her hips a began a powerful twerking motion, simultaneously intensifying stimulation both to my wood and her clit.

"That's so damn hot," I whispered against her nipples as my hands cupped the powerful flexing globes of her ass as she began the sprint to her climax.

"Oh fuck," she breathed over and over as she heightened the tempo of her hips. "Oh fuck... oh fuck."

Phyllis stilled her motions briefly, her eyes looking glazed. She slowly resumed her movements and pressed her mouth onto mine, wantonly seeking my tongue and making whimpering sounds as nature seemed to seize control.

Her breathing took on a raspy quality and her torso began flexing and lunging in an irregular rhythm. Then in a high-pitched cry, "Fuck... fuck... cummmmingggg!"

She wailed loudly as her hips convulsed in climactic pleasure. Her pussy seemed to milk my cock -- hard and deep within her. A warm wetness coated my balls and inner thighs. Long after the height of her crisis had subsided, aftershocks rippled through her as my hardness luxuriated in her tight, wet warmth.

Phyllis rolled off me and onto her side to my right, her breathing gradually returning to normal. She looked at me with a naughty grin forming on her lips.

"That was so dirty and so good," she sighed. "That is the first time in almost nine years that I've had sex with a man and probably the first orgasm on a real cock in more than ten."

"Probably about four years for me," I said.

"Four years since you've come on a real cock?"

I laughed, tweaking her nipple and running a finger down her tummy to her brooding clit and her slick folds. "First time from sex with a woman."

"... and orgasm in a real pussy?" she said.

"Not yet," I said as the pad of my thumb massaged her mound. I nodded down to my dick, still jutting powerfully from my loins and briefly withdrew it from her, its head flared and angry, coated in her juices. "I've always had a high trigger threshold."

She gasped when she saw it, her hips already straining anew as my fingers aroused her. "I guess I came so hard that I just assumed you did, too. And I'd be worried about that now because I'm not guaranteed storkproof."

I shook my head, now grinning wickedly myself. "This dick still has a live round in the chamber."

Her eyes widened and she smiled. "Well I'll be fucked!"

"As you wish," I said, craning my neck to cover her mouth with mine in a lascivious kiss that fully reengaged the animal heat within her. I slid on top of Phyllis as she spread her legs wide and rocked her knees back almost parallel to her tits, exposing her pussy fully, obscenely to my erection. She pushed her crotch upward to optimize the sticky, gaping target for my cock.

I slid in quickly to the hilt and immediately began thrusting, bringing myself almost out of her on each out stroke then fully back in, getting maximum sensation along the way for both of us. On my knees, I cupped my hands beneath her ass to help her elevate it off the mattress as she matched my tempo with thrusts of her own, a coupling that yielded sticky, smacking sounds that echoed throughout the sparsely appointed condo. That, coupled with Phyllis's escalating moans and whimpers, created a sensual duet that had been denied to both of us for far too long.

Tiring of the positioning and eager to taste her mouth, her neck, her tits, I released Phyllis's athletic bottom and we slid into a classic missionary alignment, her ankles locked behind my ass, impelling me into her. Her breath quickened again and control again slipped away from her. She locked a free arm around my neck and into a kiss that was born of pure lust. She slid the hand of her free arm across her lower belly and teased her clit while I plunged mercilessly into and out of her, hastening her climax.

"Right there, Kirk... oh fuck yes, right there," she grunted, exhorting me onward. "Faster. Fuck me faster."

Covered in a fine sheen of perspiration and panting, I hammered into her wet center faster and soon felt the familiar tingle in my loins that told me I was at the point of my own climax.

I could feel Phyllis's thrusts gaining intensity.

"Cum with me. Pull out and cover my nipples," she wailed just before her hips slammed into mine, her torso seized as it had before. I held still and focused on holding my ejaculation until her crisis had largely passed, but she continued shuddering as the milking sensations on my cock continued. Finally, I could stand it no longer and withdrew as I felt my first contraction begin, spurting my first bolt of jizz directly onto her bare, shiny mound and clit. I was able to work my way up her torso and expel several ropes onto her chest and, as she asked, onto at least one of her nipples.

For more than a minute, I dribbled the rest of the cum, oozing from my wilting hardness, across her tits, a sensation that seemed to deepen her lust. She took my hands and placed them on her breasts and guided me in massaging my semen into them. It wasn't clear to me whether it was prolonging her actual orgasm or just fed her fantasies. Either way, her body writhed as she exhorted me in frank, explicit language how to handle her.

"That's it, baby, rub all your white, hot cock juice into mama's titties, into those nipples. Drain those fuckin' balls and dribble all of it out of that rock-hard dick," she hissed. "And when you're done, I want you to suck all your sweet cum off my big, sensitive nipples."

It took her about five minutes, I suppose, loaded with kissing and sucking and squeezing before her body finally relinquished its extended, lascivious high. And when she did, we were both drained and drowsy lying beside each other, arms and legs loosely entangled. Had either of us worried that our sexual prowess diminished over our years of chaste divorce, those doubts were allayed. It was certainly the most athletic round of fucking in my life.

"You know you've got to wash these sheets, right," Phyllis said with a lazy smile.

"I knew that right after you came the first time and something warm and liquid covered my junk," I said. "Or I could just donate this sheet to medical science."

She chuckled and slapped me playfully on my sticky, limp cock.

I walked to the bathroom, wet a clean washrag and returned to mop our sweat and drying sex fluids off of ourselves. I lifted each breast gently and wiped beneath them after cleaning any remaining cum residue off her nipple. I gently dabbed her outer and inner labia before mopping up the balance of my sperm from her belly. Then I handed her the rag as she dabbed her juices off my shaft and my scrotum.

"You definitely know your way around a pussy, Kirk. Somebody trained you well," she said.

I shrugged. "And you're an absolute tigress," I said. "It's like riding a bicycle, I guess. Just took us both a while to get back on one."

"I hope we can do this again sometime, but that worries me a little," Phyllis said. "I don't want any long-term romance, and when people do this, especially the way we just did it, you tend to form attachments after a while."

I nodded. "As great as this was, it seems neither of us are ready to start building a new life around it."

"Can we just maybe be, you know, special friends?"

"You mean friends with benefits?"

"Yeah. That. We meet at my place or yours every so often and help each other take the edge off," she said. "But we don't sleep over and we don't leave toothbrushes and a change of underwear or shampoos of framed photos at the other's place. We just... bust a nut, right?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Sounds right to me. We date other people if we feel like it, right?"

"I think so. Yeah," she said. "But we'd need to be honest with each other about that. I didn't live this long to catch my first case of chlamydia. And if at any point this seems wrong, either one can just call it off. No strings."

"Let's give it a try," I said.

"Deal," she said, switching the clean-up rag from her right hand to her left and extending her right hand toward me to shake on our indecent proposal.

As she did, my cock began to stir anew, still drooping but gaining mass in the early stages of tumescence.

"Oh no, Jack. Miss Jill is already going to be sore for a while from the workout she got tonight," Phyllis said, again playfully slapping my man meat. "Besides, I've got to get home and let Pluto out before he pisses on the carpet."

"It's got a head all its own, Phyllis," I said, laughing at her response. "You sure you don't want to hop in the shower and freshen up for your drive back? It's not like I'm going to see something I haven't."

Phyllis was already putting her bra back on and hunting for the panties I had flung randomly behind me. Her dress lay rumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"I'm good. My pussy needs a little R&R. I'll drop a bath bomb in my soaker tub, stay in there til my fingers wrinkle and then dry off, slip into my night shirt and sleep like a log tonight," she said, "... with a big ol' satisfied smile on my face like I haven't had in ages."

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Phyllis and I were back in bed fucking with the fresh urgency of teenagers, this time at her house the Saturday before July the Fourth. Independence Day this year was a Tuesday. We had both took the day off Monday to effectively stretch it into a four-day weekend or, if you prefer, an unofficial short vacation. I had arrived on Sunday afternoon with an overnight bag, breaching one of our ground rules. We lounged by her backyard swimming pool, sipping Margaritas until dark. Then we shed our swimwear along with our inhibitions and spent the rest of the night skinny dipping and making out in the shallow end of the pool, on chaise lounges beside it and in the sauna that was part of the pool house.

We lost count of her orgasms by the time we exhausted ourselves and crawled naked into bed together. I had blown my load twice -- first in the pool and then in her poolside cabana. I hadn't done that in decades, and it made me wonder whether I'd have anything in reserve for the next day.

I woke just after 9 Sunday morning spooned against Phyllis from behind with my morning wood nestled squarely in the valley of her generous but taut bottom. I moved slightly and she sensed it, snugging her ass even tighter against me. Unsure whether she was awake, I interpreted it as a tacit sign of interest on her part and softly rocked my erection against her. She wiggled her butt slightly and I decided to go even bolder. I pulled slightly backward and ran the tip of my cock along her slit, finding it creamy and warm. I used my fingers for more refined reconnaissance, insinuating my middle finger along her inner lips as far forward as her clitoral hood and all the way back to her opening, evoking a soft, sleepy but lustful moan from Phyllis.

I substituted the tip of my hardness for my finger at the vestibule of her vagina and moved my hand, glistening with her musky excitement, around her to her puffy nipples, drawing an even louder, more appreciative moan from her. She parted her legs slightly and pushed her bottom backward, inching my hardness into her as she slowly rolled her clit beneath her fingers. I did the rest and pushed myself well into her.

"Aaahhh, yeeeesss. Own that pussy," she sighed. Then she guided my hand freshly coated in her excitement from its work on her slick, bloated nipple to her mouth, sucking her arousal off each of my digits, one by one.

That threw me into overdrive, hardening me fully and as my hips thrust into her with abandon. She widened her legs more, inviting me to bury myself deeply into her.

This was Phyllis's best position. I don't know whether it was the angle at which my penis, entering from behind, pushed into her G-spot on her vagina's ventral surface just inside her entrance or the feel of me thrusting against her ass, but she registered her first orgasm not two minutes after I entered her and then drifted from one crest to the next, each seemingly stronger than the previous. Over the more than half an hour before I finally shot my load onto her wetness, her sheets -- like mine the Friday before Memorial Day -- were mottled with our passion fluids. We smelled of sex, and relished it.

"What have we become," she asked in a post-coital daze as she wafted down from her final orgasm of this morning session. "We're fucking like animals."

"Clearly," I said, languishing in the mellow afterglow of my most powerful climax yet with Phyllis. "Literally. I've heard of responsive, multi-orgasmic women, but you're the first I've ever known... firsthand. And me? I don't recall cumming three times in 24 hours, not even in college. And this one just now? Wow."

"You realize we've already broken one of our rules, the one against sleepovers," she said, looking at me with mock ruefulness.

"Indeed. I could blame last night's Margaritas for leaving me in no condition to drive, but they did nothing to impair our libidos. Or I could be more truthful and say there was no way I was turning down more time with you."

She groaned.

"See. There you go with sweet talk like that and that lazy finger of yours getting my coochie all worked up again, making it almost impossible to shoo you away from here," she said as she guided my face to hers and her tongue sought out mine. Again. With her free hand, she guided my fingers back into her semen-soaked folds as her thighs widened, inviting deeper access.

OK, I'll go along with this. No way I'm getting another nut this soon, but maybe I can bring her off with my fingers or possibly even stiffen enough to finish up with some more good ol'-fashioned coitus, I reasoned to myself.

Phyllis was certainly back into it, her pelvis rising with increasing force and tempo against the pressure of my fingers and my palm, beckoning me to lavish her passion bean, to invade her gaping flower and seek out her special place just inside. My mouth sought out her bloated nipples and areolae.

What I had was every straight man's dream: an attractive, vibrant woman lost to her single-minded pursuit of carnal pleasure, now on course for her umpteenth orgasm of this Sunday morning. It was so arousing that I felt my own sex stiffen. So did Phyllis when it jutted into her waist.

"Oh my God," she said, taking it in her hand, coated with our mingled secretions from her pussy, and stroked it to nearly full hardness. Minutes later, she had climbed astraddle of me and impaled herself on my cock yet again. She began riding me but, after a while, stopped.

"Honey, I think I've had all I can handle inside there for the time being," she said. "I've got an idea."

Before I knew it, I was on my back with her pussy pressing against the tip of my nose and her lips and tongue were circling the head of my cock. This was also new territory. I had never performed oral sex on a pussy that had been covered in my own cum. Another first.

I buried my tongue into her, threading it between her tangy, slightly salty inner folds and our mingled fluids and then back before thrusting it into her vagina. Her enthusiastic response to my oral ministrations made it especially gratifying and erotically supercharged.

It's one thing to see an excited, energized cunt mashing into a hand or a cock, driven by writhing hips. It's quite another to have that response against my lips, tongue, chin and nose as her loins strove to cash in on every shred of sexual tension coursing through her. Inhaling and exhaling became a trick of timing as I serviced her grinding vulva while her mouth and tongue worked to pry what little semen I might still possess from my hard dick.

Her climax was imminent. Mine was a feat biology that age could not quite accommodate, but I remained proudly hard. Hers hit like a thunderclap. Her hips seized and mashed her clit into my chin as my tongue lapped at her clenching sex.

When her crisis eased, we collapsed and lay silent except for our labored breathing. After a while, she drifted into sleep. I would have, too, were it not for the imperative to piss, the long-deferred need that, nearly two hours earlier, had hardened my manhood and started this Sunday morning sexcapade.

▼ ▼ ▼

"No coffee?" Phyllis said as we sat down for a late Sunday brunch just before 1 p. m.

"I don't think so," I said. "I need to rehydrate in the worst way."

"The Gatorade we got at the 7-Eleven didn't do the trick?"

I knew what dehydration felt like from my days in high school and college doing summer work baling hay on a farm and once working on an asphalt repair road crew. Cramps. Light-headedness. Shortness of breath. The cocktails I drank and hours of aerobic sex with Phyllis since this time the day before had drained me. Literally.

I took another gulp of water, drained the glass, asked the waitress for a refill and let Phyllis's inquiry pass.

"So... what do we make of the past 24 hours?" she said.

I shook my head in amazement. "I have nothing in my whole experience to compare it too."

She nodded. "Same."

"Are we trying to prove something to ourselves? After doing without for so long?"

"Maybe. Or are we just that horny?" she said, louder than I expected.

I cringed slightly and placed my finger to my lips in a shushing motion. There were people in the booths just to the front and back of us. She lowered her voice.

"Hey, we're grown-ups and so are they," she said with less volume. "People do reproduce."

I nodded again. "They do. They just don't need to hear about it over their Eggs Benedict and mimosas."

Phyllis rolled her eyes. I continued on.

"As I said, I don't know how to take this. Even in my college years before or after I met Siobhan, I never had experiences anything close to this. Not only have I done things I never attempted or even considered before, I'm doing it more in a shorter period of time than I imagined possible."

"I'm flattered," Phyllis said. "I think we both learned a lot about ourselves that surprised us. I'm not ashamed of it."

"Me either."

I let the silence hang for a moment as I carefully formed the next question, the one that mattered.

"Phyllis, are we developing feelings for each other?"

She pursed her lips and cast her eyes briefly at the ceiling, either weighing the question or considering a tactful way to deliver the answer. Maybe both.

"I can't say that I have... yet," she said, looking me in the eye. "At least not romantic, falling-for-someone feelings. But I think that's a danger if we keep doing what we're doing at the pace we're doing it."

"Exactly," I said. "And maybe that answers the next question before we ask it."

She was nodding her agreement even as the grimace on her face showed her sadness over it. "At a minimum, we've got to slow this down."

"Agreed. Reluctantly," I said. "But let's not cut off the possibility of resuming it."

She nodded, and we both felt a certain melancholy over the grown-up decision we had just made. We both knew it was the right one. It wasn't that we weren't right for each other. It was timing. The unaligned trajectories of our lives meant neither of us were ready to find out.

Our brunch arrived and we welcomed the conversational hiatus as we sated growling stomachs we had neglected since the previous afternoon. When we finished, she looked at me with a serene smile on her face. We leaned in close to resume our private talk.

"We stay friends, pause the 'benefits' part, and stay in touch, right?"

"I'd like that. You're a great woman and delightful to be around, and not just when we're horizontal and naked."

Her chortle came out as a snort as she extended her hand. "Let's shake on it."

We did. And with that, I grabbed the check from the server.

"Let's split it," she said.

"No. You supplied the hospitality -- the pool, the booze, the lodgings," I said. "It's the gentlemanly thing to do for a friend."

She nodded and took a look at her watch. "You know... I think I'll Uber home."

We had ridden to brunch in my car. "It's only 10 minutes and not really out of the way. No sense doing that. Let me take you home."

She looked at me the way a tutor looks at a pupil who had just forgotten everything he had been taught.

"And what happens when we pull into my driveway. We kiss goodbye? One of those really long, great kisses. Maybe I ask you to come inside? Maybe you do? Maybe we wind up with you between my legs again?"

"I see your point," I said. "So... see you later?"

"Yeah," she said. "As good a way to leave things as I can think of."

I leaned forward, kissed her briefly on the lips, then opened my car door. "Don't forget... keep in touch."

She waved, turned in the other direction, focused on her phone as I backed my car from its slot and drove off. I felt a twinge of emptiness, but it was time to slow things down, figure out who I am and where I want to go.

▼ ▼ ▼

The oppressive Alabama swelter was in its full fury.

The summer of 2017 was still in its first month with most of July and all of August ahead. All of which made it even easier for me to stay indoors, inside my condo. And why not? No lawn to water or mow. No patio to clean off. No outdoor barbecue grill to fire up and tend to. No gutters to unclog.

Except to go to work, take an occasional jaunt into the suburbs where all the supermarkets are, or head to the Pelican for a ballgame and beer, my lifestyle was almost reclusive. I became a voracious reader -- crime thrillers by Baldacci and Grisham and a novel about change in the deep South by Kathryn Stockett; a few nonfiction books by southerner authors Tom Wolfe, John Berendt and Michael Lewis; I even read as much as I could of erotic poems by Anais Nin before giving them to a secondhand bookstore for fear my Phyllis sex addiction might relapse.

For a time, I wondered if my cold-turkey withdrawal from her had forced me into hermitry or something damn near it. It was clear that I could not continue these sexual Olympics without accruing feelings and the complications that come with them somewhere down the line. But I missed her as a friend.

I was walking to lunch one cool Wednesday with my work pal, Ron Casey from the IT department, and updating him about my newfound proficiency with Match and mentioned that I'd used Match and had a few dates, avoiding specifics, but was taking a break now.

"Hey, you took a first step and that's what matters. It's good to back away from time to time, I would think. How long you plan to stay dark before you log in to Match again?"

"Who knows," I said. "Could be a week. Could be a month. Could be next year... or five or 10 years. I'm in no huge hurry. There's kind-of a lot to like about being single, my time being my own."

We ordered: a grilled chicken wrap for me; the French Dip for Ron.

"Who knows," Ron said. "While you're hitting the pause button on Match, the love of your life could walk into the room and sit down right beside you. What do they say about life: it's what happens to us in between the plans we make?"

"Well ain't you the philosopher king today?"

Ron smiled, his countenance one of knowing benevolence.

"Oh... you'll come off the sidelines eventually, Kirk," he said, finishing his sandwich and pushing his plate to the side. "Just call me the Nostradamus of Birmingham."

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How have u been?

The text from Phyllis was the first communication we'd had since our Independence Day weekend sex-a-thon. It was now late October, I had been in dry dock for nearly four months, and it had been all I could do not to surrender to my libido and invite her over to make a mess of my bedsheets again. Maybe she was the first to cry "Uncle!"

OK, Phyllis. U?

Pretty good actually. And that's why I need to txt you. I've met a guy and we're kinda exclusive.

So much for crying "Uncle!" Didn't see that coming. Not from someone so determined not to get serious, to just let sex be sex; a release and nothing more. I read those three sentences three times, making sure I didn't misunderstand it.

I didn't love knowing that the source of some of the most spectacular sex of my life was off the market and that getting laid was no longer just a phone call away. But I never felt good about sex that cheap, either.

Wow! Congratulations, Phyllis! I texted back. And I sort of meant it. This would force me to be more intentional and reserved in my social interactions with women prospectively. I wasn't ruling out casual sex, but I was determined not to enter another open-ended friends-with-benefits arrangement.

Lucky guy! I wish y'all happiness, I texted.

She texted back a smiley face emoji. Thank you. Met him a few weeks after our last meeting. Connection was instant. Wishing you the best on your journey, too.

I texted back a thumbs-up and that was that. And for now, that was just fine.

Next Chapter:

2018-Scandal