The Brier Patch Blog #5 Two Amazing Women…Which To Choose? Part 2

Rebecca Z. of Destin, Florida was chosen last week’s $25 winner with the correct answer, OPEN.

Two Amazing Women…Which to Choose?

Part 2

Terry had just returned from China, and I picked her up at the airport. We drove straight to her house.

“I have a confession,” Terry said, sitting up in bed, the afternoon sun streaming through the window, seeming to ignite her strawberry-blonde hair.

Confessions are usually bad for the other person. I swallowed. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

“I don’t want you to get mad.”

I blinked. This was going to be bad. “I’ll do my best.”

“You have to promise.”

“Okay,” I told her. Whatever it took to hear the goddamn thing.

She looked me in the eye. “I had sex with someone.”

“You what!” My stomach knotted.

“It didn’t mean anything, and it was only once.”

I wasn’t expecting that kind of confession. Figured maybe she forgot to bring me a present. Chopsticks, or something.

“Okay,” I said, struggling to stay calm. “Who was he, some Chinese guy?”

“You’re mad. I knew it.”

I forced a smile. “Come on, just tell me.”

“He was white. An American.”

The knot tightened. “Uh ha. Someone in your tour group, I suppose.” Probably some tall bastard. She went for tall bastards.

She shook her head.

“Come on. Who?”

“This is hard for me. But it’s important we be honest with each other.”

I flashed on my affair with Susan, and the knot tightened. “Right right. Who was he?”

“Another flight passenger. We did it on the airplane.”

Airplane? I looked at my watch. “That was pretty goddamn recent. And where the hell’d you do it? In the fucking aisle?”

She smiled at my unintended joke. “In the restroom.”

Okay. I suppose he wasn’t that tall.

“And it wasn’t on the way home. It was on the flight out.”

“The fli—” I swallowed. “Holy crap! That was just hours after you were all teary-eyed about leaving me.”

“It was a long flight.”

I leaped from the bed. “Don’t be funny. Jesus!”

A year before, Terry had left a fifteen-year sexless marriage (not totally sexless—she had two sons), and was hell-bent on making up for lost time.

“Enough about me,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

I gulped and then said casually, “Not a heck of a lot.” I slipped into the bathroom for a glass of water. I hollered over my shoulder (like a coward), “Oh, remember that girl, Susan, from the party the night before you left?”

I leaned against the door jam and sipped my water. “She called me. You know, just to say hello.”

“Just to say hello!”

Ut oh!

She brushed past me into the bathroom. “I knew she had eyes on you. ‘Oh, Bill, that’s such an interesting story.’ She’s not even pretty. Wait a minute! Did you spend every day with that woman?”

“It wasn’t like, all day every day. Besides, it’s over now, so we’ll call it even.”

“Even!” she shouted. “We’re not even. We’re not even close to even. I had a ten-minute fling in a restroom the size of a phone booth with someone I had no feelings for and would never see again. But you”—she jabbed her finger at me—“you had a relationship with that … that dogface.”

“Come on,” I pleaded. “Let’s not split hairs.”

I don’t remember who got the last word, but everything smoothed out, and all future extra-curricular activities we did only together.

Which just goes to show you can have your cake and eat it too…as long as it’s shared.

 

Next week: Swinging at the Bonaventure Hotel.

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