It’s late, and I am late getting this posted, and I am not even sure if the story makes sense, nor how “erotic” it really is. But it came to me all of a whole, vomiting out of me in a rush this past hour, so I figured what the heck. Following is my submission to Wank Wednesday‘s writing prompt: journal.
I hope you enjoy!
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Maya paused in the act of pushing the box aside into the “trash” pile and looked closer at the papers stacked in the bottom. Old bills, receipts, and magazines, she’d thought. The detritus of a world, a life, long gone. One she was finally putting behind her with the sale of the house.
She found the journal under the papers. It had been the edge of it that had caught her eye, that specific and particular shade of robin’s egg blue that she remembered, even now, almost ten years later. Hand on the book’s binding, she hesitated.
Better to leave it, let it go, discard it with the rest.
Her hand closed around it and she drew it out of the box.
She stared at it, wondering what she would find there; knowing what she would find there. The ramblings of a young woman wildly in love–with someone other than her husband.
How had she allowed this evidence to exist? How had she not destroyed it? Clutching the book to her chest, she left the box and other trash where she’d piled it and backed out of the trap door and down the stairs from the attic.
In her old bedroom, the bedroom she’d shared with Matt, she sat down in the tatty lounger in its corner of the room. It was sunny in that corner at this time of the afternoon, and in the past it had been a favorite place for her to curl up with a book. Matt had despised the chair, but she’d loved it, with her memories of reading in it when she was 10 or 12, and then making out in it in her father’s living room when she was 15. She’d lost her virginity in that chair, too, though she’d never told Matt that.
And later, at twenty-two, two years into her marriage to Matt, she’d made love to Henry for the first time there. Somehow, making love in that chair had seemed a lesser betrayal than if she had taken Henry to the bed she shared with Matt.
Now, settling into the chair, memories tumbled over themselves in their eagerness for her attention. Henry’s dark eyes and quick, easy smile. His hands, so much larger and rougher than Matt’s surgeon’s hands, and yet, so much gentler, holding her, touching her far more delicately than Matt’s ever had. His hands had discovered her, comprehending her body afresh, every time he touched her.
She remembered his soft gasp of pleasure the first time he had touched her breasts, right there in that chair, on just such an afternoon. The warmth of his mouth, suckling first one large, dark nipple and then the other. How she had looked down at the crown of his head, shining in the filtered light, and thought that they would never part. That she had made a mistake in her marriage to Matt, but that it could be undone. It could be fixed. Yes, it would hurt, but Matt was still young. He would find someone to love him better than she ever had.
She remembered how Henry had pushed her back and undressed her, slowly, savoring every bit of her that his hands revealed, his mouth soft and warm, quick or slow, kissing, licking and nibbling every inch of skin as it was revealed. She remembered the hardness of his shoulders, so broad, the muscles of his biceps ropey and thick, his lovely olive skin and the wonderful thick pelt of dark hair on his arms and chest, so unlike Matt’s slender frame and pale, nearly hairless skin.
And when, finally, she had lain naked before him and he had gazed down at her, there was a reverence in his eyes that Matt had never shown. To Matt, she was just another piece of the life he was supposed to have. The wife, the house, the career. Soon, the children. Or so they had hoped. To Henry, she was everything he had dreamed of, hoped for, desired.
Maya’s hand stroked the arms of the chair. She could still feel the roughness of the wool plaid beneath her back as Henry had thrust into her, pushing her against it. She could still feel her body opening to him, accepting him into her, wet and eager for him, as it had never been for Matt. She heard their mutual cries of pleasure, smelled the musky odor of their arousal, felt the heat once again, in her belly, between her legs.
Clutching the journal tighter to her chest, she rocked back and forth, so caught up in those memories that she didn’t hear the sound of footsteps until she felt the hand on her shoulder.
“Mom?”
Maya started and opened her eyes. Her seven year old daughter, Hannah, stood next to her chair, a concerned look in her dark eyes. One hand nervously twisted a strand of long, dark hair. “Are you okay?”
Maya smiled quickly and brushed hand over her eyes. “Of course, sweetheart,” she said. “I was just…remembering.”
Hannah nodded solemnly. She hadn’t been old enough to remember Matt before he had succumbed to the lung cancer that had come on so suddenly, taking him when she was barely two years old, but she had been the joy of his life. A joy that Maya would never have taken from him, no matter how wrong it had been to lie to him, to Henry, and to Hannah herself.
But now…
Maya looked down at the journal in her hands.
Perhaps the past could not be so easily thrown away as all that.
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See the rest of the Wank Wednesday story submissions here:
WOW..What an awesome piece of literature!! Love the “curve ball” at the end when you find out that Matt is no longer here. I’m sure everyone has those “i wonder how things would have turned out except for…” kind of thoughts.
Thanks for sharing.
Strathburn.
This was touching, thank you for sharing it
Jade,
That is such a beautiful and touching story. You are one of my favorite writers and can definitely tell a story, and not just an erotic one. Thank you for sharing.
Kim
Thank you both so much for your kind comments! I really enjoyed the way this story poured forth from the prompt. Nearly all of my writing here is just about my real life experiences, and so at times I have a hard time actually writing *fiction.* So having this some so easily, and all of piece, was an encouraging experience.