She grasped his buttocks, firmly urging him to move faster. He was holding back, restraining himself, but she was eager, needful. It wasn’t long before they were slamming their bodies together, racing toward a fiery finale. His sweat-wet flesh slapped noisily against her own drenched skin as he ratcheted in and out of her womanly chasm. She raised her legs, held her feet to his buttocks, and urged him into even faster motions with her heels, pressing them into the tautened muscles of his butt.
A swift climax was inevitable. Kari would have liked to prolong the lovemaking, but she had no more will power for postponing the satisfaction she sought than she had will power for avoiding the foods that tempted her. And once she let go, her body stiffening in the rigid throes of the most spectacular fulfillment available to humankind, Max let go too and joined her in a loud, thrashing, straining, eye-rolling finish to their coupling.
Panting, she clung to him, ardently pressing her grateful lips to his. His lips pulled back from hers, and he kissed her nose. She purred. “Sweet Kari,” he said. “Thank you.” He rolled off her, draping one arm proprietarily across her waist. She nestled into the crook of his other arm, murmuring of inconsequential matters in an earnest tone. She had given herself to him fully now. She was his. She felt she had sealed their togetherness when his maleness slid into her sheath.
Max’s eyes kept closing. He struggled to stay awake, but he kept nodding off. “You’ve had a long day,” Kari soothed, “and a long drive. Maybe we should go to sleep now.”
“Sounds good,” Max mumbled, sitting up to make one last foray into the bathroom. He reached for the lamp to light his way in the unfamiliar house, knocking it over in the dark. Fortunately, nothing broke. Kari turned her lamp on. Swiftly slipping out of bed, she hurried into the guest room, found the nightlight she kept for guests who were unfamiliar with the house’s geography, and plugged it into a socket in her bedroom.
“Now, if you have to get up in the middle of the night, you won’t kill yourself,” she said. Max returned to bed, kissed Kari, and fell asleep almost before he was stretched out. In the glow of the nightlight, Kari propped herself up on one elbow and studied Max. He was here. He was in her house, her bedroom, her bed. He was in her life, really in her life, not just by email, but here, right here, in the flesh...and what wonderful flesh it was.
Somehow Kari, too, settled down into the bed without ever being conscious of lying down, and in a moment she, too, was asleep. But all through the night she kept waking up, feeling his form beside her, cuddling up to him. Each time she awakened, she draped an arm or a leg across him as if to ensure he wouldn’t slip away while she slept again.
She woke up early again the next morning with a feeling there was a reason to get up. At first, she didn’t remember what the reason was. They had rolled apart again, and she didn’t immediately realize she had company in the bed.
It wasn’t a workday, was it? Was she due in at Larrimore’s headquarters early? Kari struggled to wake up and grasp what the need was for getting up early. Then, Max stirred, and Kari felt the bed move. Instantly, she remembered, and her eyes flew open to behold the sleeping figure of the man...her man...in her bed.
Reaching over, she kissed him, not even caring what time it was or whether she was waking him needlessly early. He stirred, and she sat up, bent low, and kissed him on a part that had been asleep till she started kissing. It stirred, waking less sluggishly than Max himself, responding to her even while Max was still struggling to come to consciousness and recognize his surroundings.
Kari made long, sweet oral love to Max, and then he returned the favor. They curled up together and went back to sleep, and the sun rose long before they did. Kari made breakfast, though Max declined to eat half of what she put in front of him. “My god, that’s enough for a lunch...or a dinner!” he protested, despite her insistence that it was Saturday, and a special Saturday at that.
He was an amateur photographer—a fact she hadn’t known before this—and he brought along his camera when she took him for a drive. “I want you to know Jeffersonville as well as you know Elm Ridge,” she told him, driving him around and pointing out sites of local interest as well as sites with personal meaning for her. He took photos of picturesque spots, interesting people, and more than one dog. “Hey! Take some of me!” Kari squealed.
They drove past Larrimore’s headquarters. A couple of the volunteers she knew were out front. She waved as she passed, but they were talking animatedly and didn’t notice her. She wondered if something had happened that she’d want to know about, like another load of flyers gone missing, or somebody figuring out what had happened to the previous ones, or the speech. She was still sure of Jeff’s innocence, despite his admission of flawed honesty.
She and Max had lunch in a restaurant, then caught a matinee at the movie theatre. “Let’s have dinner early,” he said when they emerged from the theatre at 3:30. This raised the prospect in her mind of a long evening of lovemaking, so she eagerly assented and pointed the car toward home.
They prepared dinner together. She made beef stroganoff—so sinful, with its sour cream, but so good. He made string beans dijonnaise and a salad. Kari threw some noodles into water when the stroganoff was nearly ready.
Dinner was delicious. This time, there was more conversation, though Kari noticed she was doing most of the talking. Again, Max helped clear and offered to help with the dishes, and again, Kari declined, saying that with the dishwasher, she was fine. Max left the room, and she thought she heard him treading up the stairs. She smiled, supposing he was showering for her.
When she finished in the kitchen, she walked around the corner into the living room. Max was sitting on the sofa, his coat beside him, his suitcase by the door. Kari stopped, cemented to the spot where she stood. “What—why...? Are you leaving? Don’t go!” As soon as she said it, she regretted it. “Are you leaving?” was a stupid question with his suitcase and coat in evidence, and the “Don’t go!” had sounded like begging.
“I think it’s better this way,” Max said in a low, sincere, insistent voice.
“What’s the problem?” Kari asked.
“This just isn’t right,” Max said. And then, when he saw she wouldn’t be content with that gloss of an answer, “I’m not comfortable with...you weren’t honest with me. If you’d hide your weight problem, pretend you didn’t have one, then I don’t know what else you’d be dishonest about. I’m not...I’m not comfortable. Honesty is important to me.”
No it isn’t. But my weight is.
She didn’t say it aloud, but it was as obvious to her as the stomach that protruded in front of her eyes when she looked down.
Max kissed her chastely—and quickly—on the forehead. “Goodbye, Kari. Thanks for...everything.” Then, he took his suitcase in hand and walked out without looking back.
Kari watched forlornly as the headlights receded down the driveway. It was only 6:30. She drifted over to the computer, turned away again at the memory of all the email that had led to...this, then pivoted once again and returned to the machine. She wasn’t going to let Max drive her away from her other email friends.
Logging on, she found a letter from a woman named Bobbi, one of her newest pen pals. Kari had met Bobbi after answering an inquiry Bobbi had posted about a recipe. They were newish friends, but Bobbi’s was the only letter waiting for Kari, and the incident with Max was burning Kari’s consciousness, so Bobbi got to hear the whole story.
As she poured it out at the keyboard, Kari veered around from desolate to angry. The more she wrote to Bobbi of what had happened, the angrier she became till she had built up a solid wall of passionate anger to protect herself from loneliness and an aching heart.
When she logged off, it was still early. She turned on the TV, but she couldn’t find anything engrossing on any channel, so she turned it off again and locked up downstairs, then went upstairs in search of a good book. She took an as-yet-unread mystery from her bookshelf, curled up in bed, and read. But as the book’s mystery deepened, it made her think more and more of the hanky-panky at Larrimore’s headquarters. Now
there
was a mystery! Finally, Kari put the book aside, turned out the light, and just lay in bed trying to puzzle out who might be behind all the goings-on, and why.
Now her mind kept slipping gears, jumping from one situation to another. The dark of night is when problems are most bothersome, and Kari’s bedside lamp did little to dispel her personal demons. Her thoughts drifted from Jeff to Max to Steve and back to Max again.
The central problems seemed to be sex and her weight. If not for her weight, Max would be here in her bed right now. If not for Marcy’s weight, Jeff would have dated Marcy...and not fallen several notches down the ladder of Kari’s esteem.
If not for Steve’s sexual hunger, Kari’s best friend’s husband would never have made a pass at her. And had her own sexual hunger clouded Kari’s judgment or colored her opinion of Max? Was her sexual appetite, like her stomach’s appetite, one that overwhelmed logic and clouded reason? Had her attraction to Max been too heavily based on physical need?
She rolled over, as if facing the other direction would get her away from her problems. Indeed, as she flopped around in the bed, she managed to momentarily dispel thoughts of Max. But the void they left was quickly occupied by the mystery again. Not the one in the novel she’d put down, but the very real life mystery of the skullduggery at the election headquarters.
When she finally fell asleep, she had converted her pain to anger at Max. Her anger at Steve had revived. And the disappointment she’d felt at Jeff’s refusal to date Marcy had returned to haunt her, along with a nagging worry about his elliptical admission of dishonesty.
Jeff wasn’t really the culprit, was he?
And if he wasn’t,
who was?
Chapter 16
You can play it either of two ways when your dreams have crashed. You can sit home, stewing in self-pity, or you can do something constructive to take your mind off your problems.
Sunday morning, Kari opted for the first course of action. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but she didn’t feel up to doing anything positive...or, for that matter, much of anything at all. Max was gone, and her dream with him. Kari remained closeted at home all that day, seeking solace in a novel, switching back to last night’s mystery when the new novel failed to keep her brain from racing down the Max track, turning on the TV when she gave up on books for the day, and finally, disconsolately, cleaning the house from top to bottom again.
All that week, Kari came straight home from work at night. She wasn’t up to seeing the gang at Larrimore headquarters. She didn’t even feel like seeing any of her friends. And she especially didn’t want to answer any questions about Max...questions that would have been inevitable had she spent time with anyone she knew.
The weekend thereafter—it was just one week since the debacle—she remained home all weekend, leaving the house only to go to the grocery store and for one emergency bakery run.
For a week now, she’d shunned the computer—too many unpleasant associations. That weekend she turned it on again for the first time since Max’s unexpected departure the weekend before. There were letters galore from her email friends, all wondering why she’d dropped out of communication and whether all was all right. And all asked how the weekend had gone.
Conspicuous by his absence was Max. Not that she’d expected—or wanted—to hear from him. Yet a part of her had wondered if there’d be an explanation or apology from him. There was nothing of the sort. There was nothing at all.
But writing to her friends, recounting the disaster, helped her work through it. By the end of the second week, she was ready to do something constructive to take her mind away from the unpleasantness with Max, and so Friday night she made plans to return to Larrimore headquarters on Saturday.
Her anger had given way to sadness. She cried for the lost dream. She wasn’t quite so sure, in retrospect, that Max would have been The One, but she certainly would have liked a chance to find out, would have liked a chance to have been judged on her personality, her temperament, something other than her girth.
And she would have liked a chance to judge him, to decide for herself if
he
was truly what
she
wanted. The more she thought about him, the more things she could find that didn’t suit her...but then, wasn’t she just being a “Monday morning quarterback?” If he had stuck around, mightn’t she have found that they were little things, things that didn’t matter? Or would she have ultimately decided Max wasn’t the man for her? Now, of course, she’d never know.
The election was imminent. There wasn’t much more time for Kari to work at the storefront and do her bit to make a difference. She had now missed two weekends of volunteering. Maybe getting out and working for the campaign would be even more helpful to her than it would be to Larrimore. Besides, she was curious whether anyone had got to the bottom of the hanky-panky. And last of all—though perhaps not last in importance—she missed talking to Jeff.
She hadn’t spoken to Lylah in ages—they’d been going off in different directions in life even before the incident with Steve. And none of her other friends was nearly as close to her as Lylah had been. All this made Jeff’s absence from her life that much more intolerable.