I shook my head, denying it, a lump growing in my throat so I couldn’t say the words.
“Hey…” Her voice was soft and kind, as it always had been, just like I’d remembered it. “It’s me…you can talk to me…”
I shook my head again, blinking back tears. “No…Mrs. B… I…”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, can’t you finally call me Carrie?” Startled, I looked up at her, meeting her eyes. They were teasing, but serious, too. I laughed, I couldn’t help it, and she laughed with me.
“I mean, come on…” She smiled, cocking her head again. “We’re both big girls, now, right?”
“Right.” I laughed again, shaking my head. “Okay…Carrie…” Her name felt odd in my mouth, but somehow it was right. “I’m fine. Really.” We looked at each other and both burst out laughing at once, knowing it was the biggest lie in the world. And before I knew it, I was crying instead of laughing, tears streaming down my face, and Mrs. B-Carrie-was leaning into the tub to hug me.
“Oh sweetheart, it’s okay,” she murmured, stroking my hair. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”
“No it’s not!” I sobbed, clinging. Her skin was slick with oil and my hands slipped on her shoulders, but I grabbed onto the strings of her suit. She did her best to comfort me, but I was crying hard, now, all the fear and emotion I’d kept inside for weeks pouring out over poor Mrs. B’s shoulders.
“Yes, it will, I promise,” she whispered, letting me pull her closer, so she was leaning half over the tub. “It’ll be okay.”
“You don’t understand!” I croaked. “TJ wants to have an open marriage and I don’t know what to do!”
She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes soft with understanding.
Cupping my face in her hands, she kissed my tear-stained cheek, shaking her head. “Oh sweetie… yes… yes, I do understand.”
“No!” I cried, feeling the desperation crawling up my throat with the words.
“Carrie, I feel so caught! I’m scared to death of losing him if I do it and I’m scared to death of losing him if I don’t-I don’t know what to do!”
“I know.” She nodded, sliding the rest of the way into the big tub, suit and all, and putting her arms around me. “Oh sweetie, trust me, I do know. I know just what you’re feeling.”
I curled myself against her, the water churning around us, and she rocked me, stroked me, cuddled me against her breasts and let me cry until my breath
was hitching in my throat like Beth’s did whenever she had a long tantrum and couldn’t stop. When it finally ebbed, she pressed her mouth to my ear and whispered, “Ask me anything you want.”
I looked at her, startled. It had occurred to me earlier that Mrs. B-god, I was going to have a hard time calling her “Carrie”-was perhaps the one person in the world who might really have a solution to my problem. But the first question out of my mouth wasn’t about TJ or my marriage. It was something I’d wanted to know, something that had haunted me for years.
“Did you plan it?”
“Yes.” She knew what I was asking, and she answered honestly. I sighed, feeling something in me shrinking. “But not in the way you think.” Puzzled, I looked at her.
“We loved you, Ronnie.” Her fingers pushed my hair behind my ears, her eyes soft as they looked at me. “We still love you.” Her words made tears come again and they fell silently into the bath water. “You were like part of our family, you’d been with us for so long. And yes, both of us… we were attracted to you.
I’m not going to deny that.”
“But inviting me here…”
“Yes.” She nodded, touching my cheek. “We hoped…but if it hadn’t happened…Ronnie, that would have been okay, too. We would have still kept loving you anyway.” She smiled and then bit her lip. “Just… differently.”
I didn’t know if it was the truth, or if she was just saying what I wanted to hear, but it was important for me to know, especially because what I was about to ask her would affect me and my marriage for the rest of my life.
“Did you have it all planned out?” I asked, feeling a lump in my throat. “Did you talk about how… how you were going to…”
“No!” Her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “God, no! Of course not! We just… we just let nature take its course. And, thankfully… it did.” My feelings were a little assuaged. “Was I the first?”
“The first woman we were ever with, together?” she asked. I nodded. “No.
We’d been to a few parties… we had a few… professionals. But you were the first… real person. The first one we’d ever cared for… aside from the physical.”
“Really?” I blinked at her, surprised. I’d been sure, somehow, that I was just one in a long line of seduced babysitters along the way.
“And now we have Gretchen.” She smiled, her eyes warm. “Who we also love very much.”
I sighed, resting my head under her chin. “It’s hard not to love Gretchen.” She chuckled. “True.”
“Who wanted it first?”
After a moment, she said, “He did.”
“What did you do when he told you?” I was remembering TJ telling me, my shock, my fear. “What did you say?”
“I was hurt,” she admitted with a sigh. Her hand massaged my shoulder.
“Confused… but the thought was exciting. We’d fantasized about it a lot, having another woman in our bed.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “We have, too.”
“But you’re afraid the fantasy is better than the reality?”
“Isn’t it always?” I sighed.
“Was it with us?” I felt her lips brush the top of my head and smiled.
“No.”
“I think it depends on the people involved.” Her fingers moved through my hair, stroking, petting, and I felt my body melting against hers, finally relaxing. “I think it can be a big mess, or it can be an amazing experience.”
“I don’t want to clean up a mess.”
She laughed. “I don’t blame you.”
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“I know.” She kissed my temple. “It’s okay to be scared. I’d worry if you weren’t.”
I shook my head, feeling tears stinging my eyes again as I choked out the words. “I love him so much.”
“I know.” She cupped my face in her hands, her eyes searching mine.
“And that’s what you need to trust.”
“What do you mean?” I felt that desperation rising again.
“When it came right down to it, I had to trust that my love for Doc, and his love for me, was stronger than anything else.” Her words were sweet, so sweet I could almost taste them.
“Was it?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “It still is.”
“Carrie…” I whispered her name and I knew my eyes were a question.
Hers answered them, soft and bright and open.
Her voice was thick, like honey, like the color of her hair falling wet over her shoulders. “I like hearing you say my name…”
“Carrie…” I whispered again, leaning in to capture her mouth. She made a soft sound in her throat at the touch. “Carrie… Carrie… Carrie…” I whispered her name as I kissed my way down her throat, pressing myself between her thighs, feeling them open.
“Yes…” she whispered back, her hands moving down my sides, over my hips, pulling me between her legs. It was like coming home, and she welcomed me with open arms. I rubbed my face against the slickness of her breasts swelling over her bikini top. Her breasts were as bronze as the rest of her, and when I undid the straps and pulled them down, I found her dark-tipped nipples hard in spite of the warmth of the water.
“Oh god, Veronica,” she moaned as I sucked one of them into my mouth.