I lied.
In the e-mail I told Allison that I had accidentally stumbled across her on the Internet while searching for someone else. Truth was, the only person I had been searching for was her.
Twenty-five years ago we had been engaged. We had a fight. She broke it off. Life moved on but I carried my memories of her with me. I may have married someone else, but I lived with constant thoughts of Allison, wondering about what could have been.
The night I sent the e-mail I held out little hope that I would hear back at all. When I saw her response in my inbox the next morning, I just sat and stared at it while building the courage to click on the open button. The timestamp indicated she had answered almost as soon as she had received it the previous evening, a little after midnight. Was the quick reply a good sign or a bad sign? It wouldn't take her long to tell me to go to hell (again) and stay out of her life (again). A positive response would have taken a while to put together. I took a deep breath and opened it.
She was glad to hear from me. Flattered that I would still think of her after all this time. Surprised that I didn't hate her.
I had explained in the email that her town was part of my sales territory (true) and that only by chance had I found her (a lie) while putting together new leads in her area for my business trip down there next week. And I told her that the only purpose of the email was to say hello (another lie).
And then came her surprise. If I wanted, she could meet me for lunch or supper while I was in town and we could get caught up on things. If I wanted.
So now I was sitting alone in a room on the third floor of the Best Western hotel just outside of the small South Carolina town where Allison lived with her husband, waiting to meet her for drinks and dinner when she got off work. It was early-afternoon, a 100-degree-plus July day. My afternoon appointment had fallen through.
Anxious about the evening, I was already nervous with sweat when I reached the room and the temperature outside wasn't helping. With four hours to go before meeting Allison, I stripped all my clothes off and tossed them on one of the two double beds in the room, pulled out a pair of old, comfortable jeans and slid them on over my naked body, then plopped on the second bed and turned on the TV. The Braves were playing an afternoon game and it was a perfect, mindless way to kill time.
A knock on the door woke me up sometime later. Startled to realize I had fallen asleep, I quickly glanced at the clock radio beside the bed and breathed a sigh of relief. I still had an hour-and-a-half before I had to meet Allison. Who was at my door?
By the time I got to the door I was fully awake. As I flung it open I remembered that all I had on was the pair of jeans.
Allison and I both gasped as we saw each other for the first time in twenty-five years. We stood there and stared at one another and I wondered if I looked as good to her as she did to me. Her red hair was still shoulder length. She had managed to keep the same figure she had had when we were engaged and the sundress she was wearing did a poor job of concealing her petite, bra-less breasts or the nipples that were announcing their presence. My eyes scanned the rest of her body, my mind briefly wondering if she was wearing any panties, before moving down her smooth, silky legs to her sandal-clad feet. I took a deep breath and looked back up into her green eyes, which were smiling and taunting me. She had obviously not worn this outfit to work today at the church daycare she managed.
Her eyes were travelling the length of my body now in much the same way mine had explored hers. They stopped momentarily at the involuntarily growing bulge in my jeans and the smile on her face got bigger. Her eyes came back to mine as she took a half-step forward and stood in the doorway.
"You look so good, Andy!" she exclaimed.
"Not as good as you. Still Playboy material," I told her, referring to the dream of becoming a centerfold model that she had held when we dated.
"Well, that dream died, along with a lot of others," she said, a touch of sadness now creeping into her voice. She quickly recovered and asked, "Can I come in?"
I stepped aside and closed the door behind us as she entered, my eyes following her inside and across the room before locking on her butt. I couldn't see any panty lines under the sundress. Surely my luck couldn't be this good. Was she totally nude under the dress?
"The Braves are losing," she announced as she turned to face me, her right arm pointing at the television. Still smiling, she sat on the corner of the bed where my clothes were laying. "Are you going to stay over there?" she asked.
Realizing that I was still standing in the shadows at the door, I smiled and shook my head. "No," I answered as I made my way over to the small refrigerator that occupied space on the floor across from the bed where she was sitting. I opened the fridge and pulled out two cold beers from the case I had placed in there when I checked in. "Want a beer?" I asked as I handed one to her.
"I'm sorry I'm early," she said as she took the bottle from me, opened it and took a long swallow. "I've been thinking so much about us – I mean about you – since last week and getting so excited about seeing you again that I took the afternoon off. I didn't know if you'd be here this early or not but I took a chance."
I glanced at the clock next to the bed again. "We weren't supposed to meet in the hotel lobby until a little over an hour from now. How'd you find out what room I was in? They don't randomly hand out that information at the front desk."
Allison brought the bottle back to her mouth and took another slow swallow from it. When she moved the bottle from her lips, she ran her tongue around the opening then looked at me and smiled. "I'm good at persuading people," she said with a smile. "Is it too early to go to the bar?"
"No, we can go now if you'd like," I said. I leaned down and picked up my clothes that were on the bed beside her and headed for the bathroom.
"Where are you going?" She sounded a little surprised.
I stopped and turned back around. "To the bathroom. To change clothes."
"I've seen you nude before," Allison reminded me. "We dated for a long time. And we were engaged."
I could feel myself turning red. She was rapidly seizing control of our situation. "Well, I . . . that is, we're . . . ," I stammered.
Allison was staring now at the raging bulge in my jeans. "Over there," she said. She pointed to the open area in front of the room's window. "Change over there."
I took a deep breath and walked over to the window. With my free hand I reached out to close the blinds.
"Leave those open," she ordered.
I immediately objected. "But somebody might see."
"Leave them open," she slowly repeated. It wasn't a request. It was a demand.
With another sigh and my back to Allison, I laid the clothes that were in my other hand on the table beside the window, and began to unbutton my jeans.
"Nope. Turn around," she instructed. "I want to watch the little guy when he springs free."
Growing both more embarrassed and aroused by the minute, I slowly did as she ordered. Facing her, I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, slid them to floor, and stepped out of them. There I stood in front of her, totally nude, wearing nothing but a smile, my arms by my side.
"Mmm," she softly uttered. "Just as gorgeous a cock as I remembered. And you're shaved, now. I like that. A girl should be able to see what she's getting."
