Page 17 of Opening It Up
Leopold grinned again, his teeth bright and white.
“It’s a deal. Name the day, Lily-Mae. Whenever you’re free, I’ll clear my schedule.”
He took two more steps toward me as my heart pounded and offered up his business card.
“I don’t have much free time,” I parried, looking at how big his hands were, the handsome square-cut nails, and the way the massive diamond cufflinks gleamed.
“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Leopold said in a low voice. “I mean it. Any day. Any time. I’ll be there.”
I reached out my hand for the card, feeling a little jolt of heat as our fingers brushed.
For the first time in 17 years, I felt new butterflies in my stomach.
Was I really going to do this?
Yes, yes I was.
CHAPTER 7
Harley
That afternoon I distracted myself from worrying how angry my wife was by making a dating profile and checking out my matches.
It was hard to find good pictures of me, though. The professional ones looked kind of stuffy, and any pictures of me without Lily-Mae in them didn’t look very good either, my mouth downturned or a frown line perpetually between my eyes. The ones with my wife were the best, where I looked happy and relaxed, but of course I couldn’t use those.
But once I finally started chatting with my matches, my depression only grew.
One woman messaged me excitedly and wanted to know if we could have sex while her husband and several of his golfer buddies watched.
I politely declined, but the rest of my interactions didn’t go much better.
A few women recognized me and immediately sent snaps of their breasts, but when I asked if they liked board games or old movies, they did not, and I couldn’t sustain any interest in the conversations.
What was wrong with me? Did I need more iron? Because these breasts were doing nothing for me.
Oh well. At least tonight I could look forward to a relaxing evening in with my wife.
Tuesday night we always watched our shows together, cooked popcorn and ate cut up fruit with tajin seasoning.
When we got home, I took Teagan and Rowan outside to play.
Was I doing enough to help out Lily-Mae? Shehadbeen looking tired lately. Therewerea few days I had spent a little longer at work, gotten home abitlater than I wanted, just to catch Makayla as she left the office.
That way it wasn’t weird. . .we just both were grabbing an evening chai tea from the café, so there had been nothing sinister in sitting and talking. . .nothing at all.
Of course, there had been a few dirty thoughts that had popped into my head. Things I wanted to do under her bustier, up her silk stockings. . . the hot sex we could have had. . .
Of course, now I had been up those silk stockings and found them shockingly uninteresting.
In fact, I was thinking way more about having sex with Lily-Mae than I was with anyone else. It had been several days. Maybe a week? More? I’d just been so occupied thinking about opening up my marriage. And maybe, if I was honest, I’d been a little too preoccupied with Makayla.
Well, now I would do better. I would be more present for my wife.
But after dinner when I brought the bowl of popcorn up to bed, I found her sitting at the mirror putting on hoop earrings and wearing a little pink dress she had bought for her dad’s most recent wedding.
“Honey,whatare you doing?”
My wife was scrunching up her curls and I hadn’t realized how long they had gotten, falling in strawberry blonde ringlets all down her back.
