He slapped me on my ass while I was walking away. “Do that, you crazy fool!”
When I came back, dressed, he assumed we would be eating there. “I’m starving. Let’s go downstairs and grab a bite.”
“Ummm, excuse me, Mr. Reynard, but this is Mrs. Reynard’s night and Mrs. Reynard has other plans for dinner.”
“Well, excuse the hell out of me!” We both laughed and held hands all the way back to the parking lot.
Our next stop was a Japanese restaurant, the kind with private dining rooms concealed behind silk-screened, sliding doors. We ordered a pot of green tea after being escorted to our little private haven. Our shoes had to be taken off upon entry to the restaurant, and once again, we got to sit on pillows. Jason commented, “You know my back is going to be screwed up after all this, right, Boo?”
I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I’ll give you a nice back rub then.” He kissed me again, and I was thinking he hadn’t kissed me so many times in one day since way back. As an afterthought, I added, “Maybe you’ll let me rub something else too.”
I slid the tip of my tongue in his ear and then blew in it. “Be right back, baby. I have to tinkle.”
Was I lying again? Hell, yeah! Instead of the Japanese woman who had originally waited on us bringing the pot of tea in, I did it myself, dressed as a geisha with an oriental silk robe on and a big-ass black wig. “Zoe, you’re too damn much! Why are you buggin’?”
“Because I love to see you smile, and tonight you’re smiling a lot.” He laughed. I knelt down on the floor beside him because I couldn’t sit Indian-style with the long robe on. I looked him in his eyes and meant every word as I spoke them. “Jason, I would do anything
to make you happy. I love you, and this is forever.”
“Always has been! Always will be!”
We started tonguing the hell out of each other bigtime. When the regular waitress came in with our appetizer, Jason had my robe halfway open and was about to pop a tit out to suck on. I stayed in the robe and wig for the rest of the dinner and fed him with chopsticks, wiping his mouth and chin off every time a morsel of food accidentally missed its target.
“Okay, Zoe, I’m almost scared to ask what’s next. Crazy ass!”
We were standing outside the restaurant, waiting on the valet to retrieve the Rover. I walked up close to him, stood on my tippy-toes, and kissed him briefly. “What do you want to be next?”
“Hmmmm, well, if I recall right I tried to take the lead earlier this evening and was informed that this was Mrs. Reynard’s evening and Mrs. Reynard makes all the decisions.”
I pinched him gently on his arm. “Damn right, Mrs. Reynard makes all the decisions.”
He grabbed me and started tickling me. The other people waiting on their vehicles were looking at us and laughing. As we drove off to our next destination, I was so happy. For the first time in ages, Jason and I were having a genuinely romantic time together, just like when we were younger.
It was a warm, clear night, and I was glad, because the next stop on my agenda wouldn’t have worked out right if it hadn’t been. We took a long drive out to an observatory about an hour away from Atlanta. We had never been there, but it was one place I had always wanted to go. We got there just in time to catch a slide show in the planetarium, and then we went to the observation deck to look through the gigantic telescopes at the stars. I think I loved that part of the evening more than Jason did. Even though he listened to me rant and rave about the heavens all the time and had kept his promise by building me a home full of skylights so I could see the stars whenever I wanted, his appreciation of them wasn’t nearly as profound as mine.
Before we left, I did what I really came there to do and adopted a star. I adopted our star, the star Jason and I selected together the first night we kissed on my front stoop. The donated money went to help with the upkeep of the observatory. They gave us a framed certificate with the name of our star, “Ambrose,” which is Greek for immortal and undying just like our love, imprinted on it. Our names were also put on the certificate along with the words, Always has been! Always will be!
It was time to head to our final destination, which was a cozy bed-and-breakfast inn in the countryside. When we got to the Waterside Inn, we were shown to our room, which had a balcony overlooking the small lake on the property.
I had some chilled champagne delivered to our room and then asked Jason to take a hot bubble bath with me. I practically had a heart attack when he agreed. We took a long bath together in the old-fashioned bathtub. I sat behind him with my legs straddled around his waist. We had one of the most intimate, provocative talks of our marriage, and I was overwhelmed at how open he was being.
We made love on crisp, white sheets underneath a handmade quilt and it was beautiful. We engaged in much more foreplay than we had in a long time. Back when we were still virgins, we would make out for hours, but when the sex between us started, it seemed like the intimacy went away. In one night, I was getting both the intimacy and the sex, and I was loving every minute of it. Everything was great until . . .
. . . I tried to perform oral sex on him. He went ballistic.“Zoe, stop that shit! DAMN!”
“Jason, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You know I’m not into that.” He jumped up from the bed and put on one of the heavy terrycloth robes provided by the hotel.
“How can you not be into something you’ve never tried? I don’t get it.” I wanted to tell him how good the shit really was and how I was a pro at deep-throating a dick, but having him file for a divorce wasn’t part of my seduction plan, so I left that one alone. “Jason, come back to bed. We don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, baby.”
He came back to bed, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms. I just didn’t want the whole night to be ruined. I had put too much heart into it for it to end with an argument. I was just happy we were making some sort of improvement in our sex life, even if it was a far cry from what I really needed.
Way over in the morning, something happened to me. It was as if something snapped. I woke up, started crying, and ended up in the bathroom with the door shut, crouched down on the floor between the toilet and the bathtub. I didn’t want Jason to hear me wailing like a three-year-old, but I couldn’t hold it in. All I ever wanted was for one man to love me, and he does love me. He has loved me all my life. Whenever Jason and I make love, it is like winning the lottery to me, but at the same time, it almost feels like he is just doing me a fuckin’ favor.
chapter
twenty