The First Ninety Days Ch. 04

"Nathan isn't getting married," said Mrs. Delaney sharply.

"No, he isn't," said Caitlyn, which was not technically a lie. "But he is still stepping out and becoming independent—and you've told me many times over the years that marriage was the first time you left Grammy and Grampy's house. So, how did they react when you did exactly what Nathan did: leave the house?"

"They... They seemed pleased," said Mrs. Delaney. Her voice was quiet. "I was so nervous about... About being on my own, and having to cook for Sam, and keep a clean house, and... And they just..."

Jon felt an unpleasant tingling, a wash of understanding.

"Linda... Did you think we..." Grandma Cassidy whispered.

"We... We were happy, becauseyou were so happy," Grandpa Cassidy murmured. "Ofcourse we were sad to lose you, but who wants to be burdened with a parent's worries on the day of her wedding, and you looked—we felt..."

"O Lord, hear our cries of grief and loss," said Pastor Pendleton, his voice quiet but strong. "Help us clear away the obscuring curtains of misunderstanding, and see clearly, and forgive clearly the wrongs that were done us, not of hatred, but of love."

Jon was starting to see the picture a little more clearly. He and Caitlyn had developed quite a few different hypotheses on what drove her mother's actions, but in lack of proof they'd never been able to separate the good ones from the wrong ones. One of those theories was that Mrs. Delaney might have gotten somehow suspended in childhood—obviously, she had grown up physically, and even borne children, but in her heart she was still a little girl, wanting nothing more or less than her parents' love and approval. This one, Jon saw, might have enough proof to start trusting in.

"So," said Caitlyn, gamely dragging the discussion back on-topic for the third time, "we've established that you may not have had any idea what Nathan was actually trying to accomplish. But how did you act?"

"EvenI can answer that," said Uncle Max. "She's always been an insufferable know-it-all. She acted like she had all the answers and that Nathan was totally wrong."

"Mom, you teach second grade," said Caitlyn. "Weren't you just telling me last week about that one kid, Davis, who annoys you and the kids so much because—"

"Allright!" said Mrs. Delaney.

Uncle Max chuckled. "That's our Lindy. Stubborn to the end."

"So why do you think Nathan might've decided to up and leave?" said Caitlyn. "Why do you think he might've done so without ever consulting with you? Why do you thinkI might've been so unhappy with the lifestyle you chose for me that I wanted to kill myself? Why do you thinkI might've upped and left without ever consulting you?

"Is it because we're all nuts? Is it because we're all crazy? Or is it because we knew you'd disagree, and you can't ever accept an idea you didn't have? Because you don't listen to people unless they're agreeing with you? Because you simply can't stand to be wrong?"

Mrs. Delaney was silent for a long moment, staring at her hands.

Then she said, "No," and at the fire in her voice Jon felt his heart drop.We were so close, so close...

"I know the voice of the Devil when I hear it," said Mrs. Delaney. "His lies are seductive, but they lead you down the path of sin, and the wages of sin are death. I know my heart. I know my truth. I know what the Lord calls me to do."

"The Lord calls you to lie to yourself," Uncle Max said, nonplussed.

"Andyou," she said, turning on them. "Howdare you come into this house, you who claim to be God-fearing people, and spew these untruths to me. Especiallyyou, Reverend! I trusted you! Well. You may think you are safe behind your special little title, but the Lord knows. And the Lord remembers."

"Mrs. Delaney," said Larry Pendleton, "I would not have come here if—"

"Out! All of you! Out, out, out!!" She pointed, imperious. "I never want to see any of your faces again!"

And Caitlyn stood, cold hatred on her face, and spit out the three simple words that (Jon would later find out) she knew would kill her mother's heart in her chest:

"Fine by me."

And Mrs. Delaney paled, but continued pointing, and that was the last they saw of her as they shut the door.

Then there was a profound, ugly silence as they stood on that profound, ugly yard, feeling as if for the first time the acid of the chill December air, and the biting wind on their faces, and the grotesqueries of the silver moonlight. Jon felt ill.

"Well," said Grandpa Cassidy eventually. "That turned out well."

"Will she ever forgive us," Grandma Cassidy murmured.

"You know Lindy," said Uncle Max, "she'll be back by tomorrow," but his normally jovial voice was quiet and tired.

"Well," said Larry Pendleton. "I don't mean to be an I-Told-You-So, but I did mention the dangers of choosing sides."

"You didn't have to come, you know," Jon shot back.

He was instantly sorry—Reverend Pendleton had indeed not had to come, but had chosen to out of the goodness of his own heart, and quite obviously now at some personal loss to himself. Thankfully, the minister was not offended. "I know," he said. "I chose to. My wife passed me a saying she found in a book in a book somewhere: 'Take what you want, and pay for it.' We all took what we wanted today: Mrs. Delaney took her pride, and Caitlyn took her vengeance, and I took the path my heart followed instead of my head. And now..." He sighed. "Now, we must all pay for what we took."

"What'sshe paying," Jon said, tossing his head at the closed door.

"Everything," said Larry Pendleton. "Did you see all those pictures, Jon? Her family—everywhere her family. The bond of blood iseverything to Linda Delaney—and she just alienated every single person who shares it with her. Eventually I think she will start to question if the cost was worth it."

"What will you do if she comes back to you," Jon asked.

Larry Pendleton made a bit of a grimace. "The hard thing: turn the other cheek."

Caitlyn kept it together, for the most part, as they drove back to Jon's parents' house, but she wasn't especially communicative, and when his parents came out to greet them, they needed only to look at her face to know how things had gone. It wasn't until they reached his room that the floodgates opened. Then she cried.

We seem to find ourselves meeting like this a little more frequently than is probably healthy, Jon thought. And though he once again held her in his arms, stroking her hair and whispering whatever assurances he could, he knew it would not be enough.

We failed. It was his last thought as he drifted off to sleep, Caitlyn's unhappy breath still in his ears and her tears drying on his shirt.We failed.

Day 6

When Caitlyn awoke the next morning, her first thought was,We failed.

It was a cold bleak morning. She had fallen asleep sprawled across him, and outside she could see the overcast wall of clouds. She had always loved this sort of weather, especially when the sun lit up the sky from the inside; Jon said that this was the clouds dissolving into silver linings. But there was no such light now, and all she saw was cold cadaver death.

We failed.

Just the mere thought of it threatened the tears again.We failed. And we were so close, so close... All it would have taken was that one final admission, that one ultimate concession of error, and they would have been done. But no: Mom had chosen her pride, or some such that she had vaguely heard Jon and Pastor Pendleton talking about through her daze, and maybe now she would pay for it. But Caitlyn didn't think so. Mom had won, after all; there was no way she could possibly be as miserable as Caitlyn was now.

But Caitlyn remembered what Jon had said: "In war, everybody loses."

She looked up at him.

She couldn't see much of his face, not at this angle, but he was squirming a little bit, fidgeting under her, and when she lifted herself up to look at him, his eyes snapped open, wide and terrified.

Then there was a moment of struggling panic until she realized that he wasn't attacking her, he had simply grabbed her and was now clinging to her with titanic force. "Oh God," he breathed, "Oh God, oh God. I dreamt that I lost you. Oh God."

And suddenly she realized that her mother had not entirely won. Caitlyn hadn't achieved that single devastating paradigm shift, but surely Mom had had her own goals as well—mostly consisting of convincing her idiotic, headstrong daughter from pursuing this foolish marriage idea. Caitlyn had nipped those in the bud. True, Caitlyn had lost... But so had her mother. Neither of them had ultimately achievedanything. And perhaps a stalemate was better than a total loss.

And besides: she still had Jon.

His mouth opened hungrily under hers, and his hand snaked behind her head. Another slid down across her back, caressing her buttock and then the leg beneath, and with a sudden jolt she realized just how long it had been since they had... Done it. Not all that long in aglobal sense—surely even married couples had abstained for longer than two full days—but when that was half the duration of your marriage...Not the way I ever envisioned spending my first week. EvenI figured we'd do it more than this.

"Caitlyn..." he breathed. "Caitlyn... I want..."

"Yes," she whispered.

His hands dove under her shirt, trying without much success to undo her bra and relieve her of her shirt at the same time. The bra did come off, and the shirt rucked up above her breasts. His hands found them, the palms rough and good against her skin, while she battled with pants and underwear—hers needed to come off, but she simply pulled his down, letting his erection spring free. Then she was over him, on him, mounting him, welcoming him home.

She wasn't sure how well the entry would go—at less than two minutes, this was by far the most rapid foreplay they had ever engaged in—but clearly her ardor had risen to match hers, because he sunk in to the root on his first stroke, and she almost exploded with the fullness inside her, and with the sudden wave of pleasure. She could not explain the sensations of his penetration—it was like her entire body was wrapped around him when he was inside her. Surely it was not that long, surely she wasn't that cavernous. But that was what it felt like.

They kissed as she rode him, his hands caressing her back, her waist, her hips, and she gloried at every sensation, but it was barely moments before he groaned and tensed and she felt the sudden warm burst of his seed inside her. It felt incredibly good... But then panic speared through her mind—The condom!!—and she lifted off of him, letting the next bursts arc out into the air and onto his stomach. Despite the ringing bells in her mind, she found herself strangely fascinated—she had never seen him shoot before, and had no idea that his penis possessed such... Range. The first one puddled up almost halfway up past his navel.

When he opened his eyes he looked from the semen on his chest to the panicked expression on his face and said, "Shit."

In the shower, she used the detachable shower head to thoroughly irrigate her nether parts. Jon said he wasn't entirely sure this was safe, but it was just water, surely it couldn't hurt that much. She did not use soap, as hewas sure that wasn't safe. "It should be enough," he said, "and we can always run and get a morning-after pill if we have to." Caitlyn didn't like that idea in the slightest, but... What was it she had heard Pastor Pendleton say? "Take what you want, and pay for it." She guessed they had.

Jon joined her in the shower after a few minutes of hurried Internet consultation. "Youcan use soap, if you want," he said, "but you run the risk of, number one, infection because the soap is probably anti-bacterial and will wipe out the harmless population of natives in your you-know-what, allowing less-savory characters to move in. Number two, you have to washreally carefully to make sure all of it getsout."

"I guess I'll have to take my chances," Caitlyn said, reaching for the shampoo.

Jon stood under the spray for a moment. "Well.That was quite a wake-up. Who needs coffee when you could have a pregnancy scare?"

"Yeah," said Caitlyn. "I'm really wishing we had a more reliable form of... Of birth control. One we didn't have toremember every time. I mean, we've had sex four times and used a condom only twice. That's not a very good ratio."

"Well, that at least would've been one of the convenient things about waiting for a few months before getting married," Jon said.

When they had emerged, scrubbed clean and feeling a bit more awake, Jon turned to her. "What do you wanna do? We've got a whole day ahead of us. Two whole days, actually."

"I have two services to play tomorrow," Caitlyn said. "I should probably call Mrs. Sellitz and tell her that I won't be ready—I haven't practiced at all this week. Except for a little bit at school yesterday. You have practice with your group. And I have finals next week..."

"Okay, so, not quite a whole weekend," Jon said.

"And even if I had practiced, it's not like the church has a harp I can borrow; we always brought mine. If I don't have it..."

"So much depends on that one piece of hardware."

"Yeah, no kidding," said Caitlyn. "Well... You brought your checkbook yesterday, but we kinda forgot to—"

"And the check might've bounced, since we technically closed my account and shifted all the assets into a joint one."

"But we don't have checks fromthat one yet either."

"Yeah, the lady at the bank said some time this coming week."

"Well... I'd better leave a phone call with my dad, or something. See what we can work up. What are we gonna do in the meantime?"

"Well... We could go back to bed and do it right this time."

Caitlyn felt her eyebrows jumping.

"It... It felt good, with you... Ejaculating... Inside me," she admitted, feeling her cheeks flame. "I wish..."

His arms circled around her. "Believe me, baby, it felt good for me too, but wecan't. It's just not safe."

"Yeah."

"And... I didn't get to... You didn't come. I should've..."

She hadn't—in fact, she had barely gotten started—but somehow she didn't mind that. "It's okay," she said. "Jon, you always put me first. You always spend so much... So much time, and effort, and strength, and love on me. And I really like that. But this time we putyou first, and I like that too."

"I like it when we just put each other first," Jon said.

That did seem the smartest way to run a marriage, but... "Yes, but how do you do that, umm. In bed?"

"Haven't you ever heard of a sixty-nine?" he asked.

Now she wasdefinitely confused. "What?"

"Didn't you run across that on the Internet the other night?"

Did he see what I was looking at? "No."

Jon rolled his eyes. "Come on. We gotta finish your education."

When he sat down at the computer chair, totally naked, and gestured for her to join him, she knew what was going to happen. So she gave him a wink and said, "Just a second," and then darted over to the nightstand for a condom. "Just in case, you know. Something should come up."

He kissed her. "I have married a very smart girlfriend."

With the feeling of his penis (his cock?) under her leg, and his bare chest all down her side, it was a little hard to concentrate at times. But the things on the computer screen were so... Alluring. Instead of leaving her to the mercy of search engines, Jon called up one of the video files he had hidden away on his computer. It was a sort of tutorial, to judge by the narration and occasional bullet points, depicting all the various ways men and women could put themselves together (Hedid see what I was looking at). The sixty-nine was for oral sex, allowing the man and the woman to stimulate each other simultaneously; once she thought about the numbers, and how they would look together, she understood the allusion at once.

It was the intercourse positions that truly got her going, though. It wasn't just the actual positions, though she really liked the variations she saw on the things they'd tried already (missionary, woman-on-top, spooning). It was also the film. The video was accompanied by footage of various men and women acting out the positions, and while their genitals were rarely visible, it was also very clear just how much they were enjoying themselves and what they were doing. She had seen some of the other pictures of men and women at it—close-ups of private parts, sometimes so close she could barely make sense of what she was seeing. Those did not turn her on in the slightest; these, on the other hand, were far more arousing. It was not so much graphic as it was evocative; she could feel their passion as if it were her own.

She suddenly realized she was squirming on his leg, and that she was very wet. Each wiggle rubbed her pubis against his leg, sending gentle shocks of pleasure through her body. "Hmm," said Jon, a verbal smile. "Maybe we should try out one of these new combinations?"

She almost fell down in her haste to stand up, so that he could put the condom on himself. She saw once again how he did it, and thought she might be able to do it herself next time. Then, with his guidance, she straddled him and guided his fullness into herself. His lips were on her neck, his hands on her back, her breasts pressed against him, and she let her head fall back with a soundless gasp of joy as together they began to move him up and down inside her.

It was much longer this time, for a variety of reasons. Jon later explained to her the concept of endurance, and how he could last much longer since he had had one orgasm already. She also didn't have much leverage, until Jon noticed and lowered the chair: her legs just weren't long enough. On her end, she could feel her clit pressing against his body every time she moved down on him. And of course the condom helped—by making things worse, at least.It just isn't the same. If I had known, I would've waited. But, if I'd known, maybe I wouldn't have been able to wait. If I'd've known...

Soon, Jon's hand slipped between them, finding her clit, and things became much better. She wasn't sure how he fit it down there, with his lips still nibbling her ear and her breasts pressed against him for the added pleasure of his chest on her nipples, but he did. And soon she realized how well he had learned to read her, when she felt the first jolt of pleasure beneath her. Then her moans reached a crescendo as her pussy spasmed and clenched down on his cock—Oh, so good, so good, it's so much better with him inside—and then she was gone, overwhelmed, feeling only the rampant pleasure as her body tensed and jolted and shuddered, not noticing her own voice calling out his name, nor his groan of pleasure as he erupted up inside her, filling the condom with his seed.

When she could think, she was breathing hard, slumped onto him, his own breath rattling her hair. "Oh," he murmured. "Oh. Caitlyn."

My Lord. Lord Almighty. Twice in two hours. Twice in an hour! What would people think if they knew?

...Nothing, of course, because they'll never know. Why should it matter what goes on between us, in the privacy of our own... Company? No one will ever know. Unless I tell them. ...Or Jon tells them. Which he'd better not. I'll never sleep with him again if he does!