Water and Stone

[Author's note: This is the first story I've managed to complete. Of course it turned out longer than I'd expected, but I hope you'll find it's as long as it needed to be. Thank you for reading!]

Lisa smiled that smile that always meant trouble, and stood up from the table. In a single motion, she unzipped her jeans and pulled everything down to her ankles. Whoa -- when had she shaved herself? In all our years of marriage she'd rarely bothered with more than a trim. I loved her wiry dark bush, but this was novel, and I couldn't wait to taste her, or plunge my dick into her without even a tickle of hair. All these years and she was still the hottest woman I could ever imagine.

What she wanted was clear enough. She turned and bent over, bracing herself against the wall. I tripped out of my own pants, my dick harder than I could ever remember. She'd been insane ever since we'd decided to have a baby, but this particularly direct gambit was a first. It felt unreal. I glided over to her in a daze, my dick feeling twice its usual size. She was impossibly wet, so tight. We both groaned as I entered her in a single deep thrust, and grabbed her hips to give her the fucking of her life.

I stared in awe at my dick vanishing into her shaved slit. Her ass was rounded so perfectly. I reached up to fondle her breasts, moaning her name.

"Shh!" she said. "Don't wake the baby."

What? No, that wasn't right. We were going to make that baby, tonight. I could feel it. My vision wavered. Lisa was crying out, but she was too far away. She was ...

I opened my eyes and the gray light of morning settled upon me. The coffee maker gurgled.

There wasn't any baby. That was the unsettling detail this time, the one I wouldn't really shake all day. The rest was just pain, so familiar it was its own sort of comfort.

I rolled over and turned off my alarm, two minutes before it would have gone off. Feet in slippers, off to the bathroom. A familiar routine. Hardly changed in the five years since cancer had taken Lisa from me.

I stared at myself in the mirror. A few graying hairs, maybe. All my aging had happened in those few short months, before time had frozen. Sometimes people didn't believe I was nearing forty, and congratulated me on my youth. Maybe I was an immortal, doomed to drift along while others lived and died.

Damn. This one had really gotten to me.

The sex I was used to. I would probably have dream sex with Lisa until the heat death of the universe, and that would be all right. But the baby. That was a future that didn't exist. That broke the deal I had with the part of me that would never heal properly.

I shook my head. I'd get through the day. Repeat anything enough and it acquires the force of physical law. I'd been getting through days for a long time. Time to feed the cat.

I checked my email on the train. As usual, nothing urgent. Just as well since the day wasn't looking to be very productive. No one really noticed my occasional days like this, anyway. I was competent, efficient, easy-going. Not ambitious, but reliable. People I'd worked with longer knew I didn't talk about my personal life, though it was generally known I'd moved here shortly after losing my wife.

A new start, I'd thought at the time. It was that, and I needed the distance. It turned out to be a mistake to move away from everyone I knew, but it was a mistake I'd grown used to. I was financially well off, my job was unstressful, and I had plenty of time to read. Lisa had been a voracious reader, and her books filled the walls of my study. Though I'd long since read all of them, the full shelves still comforted me: the only things of hers that had come with me. Aside from Santa Claws. Without him I don't think I would have survived the first few months. In the way of cats, he adapted well enough to the change in house and loss of a caretaker once he realized how much attention he would command.

Polite greetings from the security guard, and some smiles from the poor code monkeys jammed in cubicles. Beth was as cute as always. She was over ten years younger than me, a bundle of sarcastic energy who'd befriended me over a fantasy book I'd been absorbed in at lunchtime. Age difference or not, she'd obviously liked me, and that detached part of my brain had tried to imagine what it would be like with her. Black hair, a tattoo on her upper arm, maybe more where I couldn't see. A wicked smile not so different from Lisa's.

But nothing. Oh, the physical parts of my body still worked, and I could truly admire the way her shirt stretched across her chest. She clearly wanted me to notice. I liked her, even had a few nice fantasies about her, but something wasn't connected right. She sensed it soon enough, and joined the ranks of everyone else I'd met here: friendly. From a distance.

My position rated me an office, modest as it might be. I settled in to work, less distracted than I'd expected. I left the door open as usual, though no one was likely to visit.

Sometime later I looked up. Lunchtime. I was in a some pain: I'd stupidly forgotten to take my usual breaks. Distracted after all. I stretched, grabbed my book and my lunch, and headed out.

I might not look like I was aging, but my body was starting to feel it. My dad had looked young, too, and then he'd died of a heart attack at fifty-five. I'd finally started to make good on my intentions to add some more exercise. There was a surprisingly wild-feeling park tucked along the river a short distance from our building, and it made for a lovely walk. I didn't think I'd have trouble keeping up the habit.

A little warm from the exercise, I sat on a shaded bench to eat my lunch. An urban squirrel tried to look cute but I wasn't fooled, and kept my food close. I started reading my book, another of a long list of space operas I'd been devouring. My mind kept drifting. When I'd finished my food, I watched the river's slow current, the bugs skimming the surface, the squabbling of ducks. And I watched people drifting slowly along the path on the hot day.

An older woman and her daughter, comfortably arguing in Russian. A young mother and her stroller. Two teenagers in hoodies, that mixture of arrogance and furtiveness. Probably skipping school. I saluted them mentally. Two women probably from the local college, laughing. Far too young, but incredibly cute. All hail summer, and yoga pants. I watched appreciatively as the two shapely butts retreated.

A thin man walking much faster than everyone else. No, wait -- a tall, thin woman. Her legs ate up the ground with easy, loping strides. God, she was really tall. I couldn't remember ever knowing a woman that tall. Except --

"Alexa?!" I blurted it out as she got nearer. She stopped and looked over to me on the bench. No question now. As she walked towards me, she squinted a little in confusion, until I saw a hint of recognition.

"... Kevin?" she asked. I nodded and stood up to greet her.

I was pretty average height for a guy, maybe 5'11. She was easily six inches taller than me. Just as she'd been in high school, though she slouched then, creeping around the edges of things, never seeming convinced she belonged wherever it was she found herself. I hadn't seen her since graduation. We shook hands awkwardly and I motioned her to join me on the bench. After some hesitation, she sat.

"Wow, it's -- good to see you," she said. "Trying to wrap my head around the coincidence."

"Yeah," I said. High school had meant a quiet suburb. Across the country.

We hadn't known each other well, but Alexa had always seemed nice enough. I think the most time we'd spent together had been during a week of chemistry lab partnering. She was obviously smart, but so quiet. She seemed insecure about everything, not least the way she towered over nearly everyone in school.

She looked great, really. It was there in the way she walked. She was comfortable in her body now, and it made me happy. She looked back with a small smile as we struggled to come up with things to say.

She'd never been pretty. There was something slightly off with her face - eyes too far apart, and something asymmetric. I'd always found it interesting. Her blond hair was still cropped short, her face and arms covered with freckles. It looked like she spent a lot of time outdoors these days. She had new lines in her face, but of course so did I. She was as flat-chested as ever, legs almost too long even for her height, only the slightest hint of curves really. But she looked stronger. Tough.

She was a fragment of my life from -- before. High school had been happy enough. She stuck into my current life at an uncomfortable angle. I liked sitting by her on the bench, thinking about those times. I didn't like the thought of trying to summarize my life since then.

I realized I hadn't said anything. Even for me, this interaction was leaving something to be desired. I steeled myself to give the shortest version, just what I was up to now.

But Alexa looked perfectly relaxed. She'd turned from me to settle and watch the river, and I did the same.

Eventually she spoke. "Usually when I'm in town I'm too interested in getting done what I need to do. But there's a natural pulse to everything, even here."

I nodded and then started trying to say something deep about the river, the flies, the people. The feeling of content from sitting there. I got about half of it out and gave up. But she nodded as though it all made sense.

Another minute or two passed in silence. Eventually she turned to look apologetically. "I have to get back to a meeting. But I walk here a lot when I'm at the office. I'll be by a little earlier tomorrow, and probably most days this week."

I nodded. "Alexa," I said. "It's really great to see you." I meant it.

"It made my day, Kevin." She flashed a toothy grin at me and then was up and disappearing before I knew it, a water-strider flicking among and around the slower pedestrians.

Eventually I joined the slow pedestrians and headed back to the office. I nodded at Beth on the way in, holding my current book up. She smiled and gave a thumbs up. For the book, I thought. She liked this author. I still liked it when she smiled at me.

On the train home, I looked out the window, thinking of Alexa. The older I got, the more beautiful everyone looked to me. Still, there was something arresting about her, something not part of those scattered memories from half a lifetime ago. A steadiness, a beauty of solidity. As though everything else wasn't quite real in comparison.

I didn't know what she was doing with herself, what her life had been in all these years. And she hadn't asked me, had seemed almost instinctively to understand that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Or maybe she just never learned to do small talk the way other people did. Back then we'd hardly talked tried to talk about anything except our lab procedures.

* * *

Santa greeted me at the door, voicing his usual satisfaction at my return and his weary disappointment at an empty dish. Some minutes later he was settled happily with his food, gloriously reassured this evening would be just like every other.

I sat down at the dining room table, with a glass of wine and a pretty good dish of leftovers. Clean living, I thought with a little smile. I was glad I'd always liked to cook. Maybe eating right was how I'd gotten by these last couple years with so little exercise; my little walks to and from the train stations hardly counted. I was going to have to pick it up if I wanted to keep up with Alexa.

Huh, that was an unexpected thought.

I chewed my vegetables. No, I didn't mind the idea of getting to know her better. Even though I'd surely have to talk eventually about Lisa.

Lisa, against the wall, shockingly hairless mound. Dripping with need, shoving herself back onto me. Her pussy pulsing around me as she worked up to a corker of an orgasm ...

That particular scene had never happened, though it probably would have sometime. In the year after we'd decided to try to have the baby, our sex life had unexpectedly blossomed. We hadn't been really worried yet. We'd had a couple nervous talks, the gist of which was that we needed to be fucking more often. It could have become a chore, or the focus of our worries. Instead we were forced out of our complacency, experimenting in all sorts of directions to keep things exciting.

A few more months of this, we'd said, and then we'd go to the doctors. Of course we didn't get those months.

I finished my second glass of wine. No more for me tonight, not with those thoughts. But they'd held off pretty well for the day. It could only have been Alexa's doing. I headed off for my usual evening, curled up in the chair with my book. Santa joined me, wedging himself between my arm and the chair, immediately conking out. A perfectly comfortable evening. When I finally caught myself napping, I closed the book, dislodged the cat, and headed to sleep myself.

* * *

Lisa lay forward on the bed, totally, gloriously naked. She'd gotten a head start, with two fingers exploring the folds of her pussy, taking her time until I joined her.

I was somehow hard already, and she begged me, waggling her ass towards my face. ­I gave her a good slap, and she groaned, plunging her fingers into her hairy bush and working herself more seriously. Then I was inside her, luxuriating in the rightness of it all, covering myself in her lubrication.

I pulled out, and re-positioned as she cried in frustration. Slowly the head of my dick pushed against her asshole, and Lisa bucked in surprise.

"Horny idiot, that's not how babies happen." But she settled against me, and soon I pressed further into her. She was willing to try almost everything, and it looked like we might add this to the rotation. Half of my dick was inside of her, and her breathing quickened as her orgasm approached. I couldn't be far off either. Just a little more --

My alarm went off and I swore. Santa hit the floor heavily from his frequent spot at the foot of the bed, and I lay there a little longer, trying to collect the strands of that dream. This time, pretty close to a real memory. Oh, that had been a nice afternoon. And evening.

Well, I thought. Two nights in a row is a little more than usual. Maybe I was just going into one of those phases.

Getting myself off was usually a haphazard, meaningless thing. Not so much at times like these, but that's life. Trying to ignore my physical needs was worse. As I neared my climax, I tried to let the water in the shower draw away my tension. I could almost feel Lisa behind me, reaching to stroke and help me, hugging me tight. Her hair tickled me, and she scraped her teeth along my back. I cried out in need, and began to come. Briefly I caught a vision of Beth, smiling in a soaked T-shirt, reaching to remove it ...

As my orgasm faded, Lisa whispered in my ear. "Find someone. Do all the things we didn't have time for. You're going to make someone incredibly happy, just as you did for me."

She'd said that to me just a few days before the end. I collapsed, in the shower, crying. "I remember, " I told her. "I just can't do it."

* * *

I still caught my train. Even these difficult days had their patterns, and I wasn't really surprised by much. Crying was a rare enough thing for me, but I welcomed it when it happened. It had to be healthy, I'd come to think. The memory of those first few utterly blank months still scared me.

So, another morning. Wave to the cubicles, smile a little at Beth. Into the office. No worse than yesterday. I remembered my breaks this time, but I still set up a reminder on my computer. Forgetting could turn into its own habit.

Lunch arrived, and I realized I'd been avoiding thinking ahead. I couldn't really make sense of yesterday's chance meeting. How had we been able to just sit there like that? Did she even live here? Was she just visiting?

I was a little late, I realized. She'd phrased things with no pressure, that she'd be around anyway for a while. But I hated the idea of missing her by mistake. I didn't even have a way to get in touch.

I hustled to the bench, and this time it really felt like a workout. I should find some lighter clothes if I was going to be doing this as it got hotter. Thank god I'd dropped a bottle of cold water into my lunch bag. I wolfed down my lunch, and then tried to relax and cool off.

There she was. Obvious as soon as she came around the curve. She saw me and easily quickened her pace, gliding over to me with a smile. She sat down before I had a chance to invite her, this time with her own lunch. She seemed immune to the heat.

We smiled at each other, and I felt as flummoxed as yesterday, as though this were what passed for a date in high school. Maybe that was it. Regressing to those old social patterns, our last shared experiences? Awkward, confused as we all were then.

"Hi, " I said.

"Hi again, " she grinned. We settled next to each other and she started on her lunch.

After some time she pointed at some gravel across the river. "A lot of the river banks around here have been bulldozed, levees put up, channels straightened, you know. The whole history of flood control. But somehow that bar escaped. See, take a look at the soil over there at the edge ..."

It was incredible. She could read an amazing amount from the small signs, things I would have walked past without ever understanding. Events hundreds of miles away, things from the deep past, recent human engineering -- she was a natural storyteller. After a few minutes she trailed off, embarrassed.

"Sorry. You probably can tell I'm a geologist. Can't really turn it off once you start looking at things that way."

"I love it, " I said. "That was the most beautiful story, better than anything I've read. We used to go hiking sometimes, and we had one guide with a lot of geology ..." I stumbled. Why had that popped out?

Alexa just smiled and nodded, and we had some more companionable silence.

"So, do you spend a lot of time outside then?" I eventually asked her.

"As much as I can, " she said emphatically. "Technically I tell the state things about making their dams and water supplies safe. In practice our office is happy to support you in your own research, as long as it's vaguely related. But the office is here, and the official reports are certainly important enough, so I do have to spend a lot of my time in the city. These walks are my way of staying sane. And now here you are, making the city not look so bad after all."

I took the plunge. I'd rehearsed versions of it enough after all. "Yeah, I've been commuting in here a couple years, doing some software project management. Uh, so basically I tell the people lower on the food chain when I think they should be able to get stuff done, then they tell me why it's impossible, and I try to placate the people above me."

Alexa laughed, an odd throaty sound I immediately found endearing. I was pretty sure I'd never heard that in school.

"Ugh, people, " she said. "I bet you're great at it. I seem to have gone to great lengths to find jobs that let me work alone most of the time."

"Um, thanks, Alexa, that's really kind. But -- why did you think I'd be good at it? I can't say I ever thought about things like managing back in high school."

She sighed, and didn't respond for a while. Eventually she began. "I don't know how well you remember me from then, but I remember you just fine. You were so nice to me, treated me like I was just another kid. And when we worked, we could just sit and do the work, no need to talk. Somehow you knew that was what I needed."

She looked away. "I was miserable, you know. I hate thinking about all those years."

I nodded sympathetically, and we turned back to the river.