West Coast trip shatters taboos for young Virginia woman
The flight from Richmond to Los Angeles had been a late-arriving one, and, although it wasn't that late in California terms when Stacy picked Charlotte up at LAX international airport, Charlotte had turned down any barhopping and most conversation. All she wanted to do was to sleep the sleep of the dead. They could talk about the wedding, Ian, and Stacy's airline stewardess job in the morning. Luckily, Stacy's apartment was within blocks of LAX, or Charlotte might have gone to sleep in the car, and Stacy would have had to haul her up twenty-two flights on a dolly.
Charlotte was still on Richmond time in the morning, so she woke up in the dark in Stacy's two-bedroom high-rise apartment. It took her several minutes to acclimate herself. She had no recollection of having arrived at the apartment at all, other than registering surprise that Stacy could afford such a snazzy place high up in an apartment tower, with its own extensive terrace overlooking an LAX runway.
Charlotte was fully awake now, though. Looking at the clock, she saw that it barely was 6:00 a.m. She'd put off talking about Stacy's wedding to Ian last evening—and not altogether because she had been dead tired. That they were getting married was still a shock to her. That they'd hooked up again out here California surprised her. Both were party animals and sex shoppers; neither was the faithful kind. She had tried to beg off being Stacy's maid of honor, but Stacy would have none of that. They had been college best friends, certainly, back at Sweet Briar, in Virginia, but Stacy had moved West and had gone into the airline industry as soon as she'd graduated college and Charlotte had gone home to Richmond to work in her father's travel agency. They hadn't really connected much in the two years since then.
The main reason—at least from Charlotte's side—that they hadn't maintained close ties was Ian. Charlotte wasn't sure even now if Stacy knew that Charlotte had gone with—and slept with—Ian before Ian and Stacy got together. Ian had been at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville when he started dating Charlotte. His father was some sort of cigarette manufacturing tycoon. Charlotte was somewhat surprised there still was a fortune to be made in tobacco, but apparently there was in Virginia. Either that or Ian's family had diversified and stashed it away. When Stacy had talked to her on the phone, she made no bones about liking Ian's money.
Charlotte had dated Ian only briefly and that was primarily because of his sexual kink, which Charlotte had grown to accept—and to rise too liking even, at least from Ian—but it was a social taboo Charlotte never quite was comfortable with. Since Ian, Charlotte had gone with other men—she was no prude—and Ian had gone through a succession of coeds before he latched onto Stacy, so there was no reason for resentment all around on that score.
When Stacy went West, so did Ian, and where Stacy became an air hostess, Ian became a pilot in the same airline. So, it probably was inevitable that they would continue hooking up. The marriage announcement had been a surprise, though. Charlotte didn't think of either one of them as the marrying kind.
Charlotte did wonder if Ian still had that kink and if Stacy enjoyed that. And she wondered why Stacy had reached back to her for a wedding attendant. Didn't she have other airline stewardesses as best friends now? But maybe not. Stacy had never gotten along with other women very well. She kept stealing their boyfriends—not intentionally. It was just something Stacy was naturally good at. It was a miracle she and Charlotte had hit it off and that was mainly due to Charlotte's forbearance.
In the end, Charlotte had just decided to grin and bear it. The wedding wasn't to be a large one, and it gave her a short vacation to the West Coast. She assumed that Ian would be cool about what they had once had. It was before Stacy ever knew him.
Charlotte, dressed just in a flimsy nighty, rose from bed and padded out into the bedroom hallway, deciding she had to have juice or something. She hadn't eaten for several hours and she realized that breakfast for Stacy would be past Charlotte's lunchtime. As she remembered, Stacy was a late sleeper. Charlotte didn't really want to think of the experimentation she and Stacy had done at night in the Sweet Briar dorm. However, she distinctly remembered how hard it was to wake Stacy up in time for class the next morning.
But Stacy wasn't sleeping at the moment. The door to the master bedroom was ajar, and Charlotte could hear them. She also could see them, covered to above the waist with a sheet, Stacy on her back underneath him, sheet bulging up where her raised knees would be. He was lying on top of her between her knees. The rise and fall of the sheeting covering his buttocks left no doubt what they were doing—what he was doing to her.
Charlotte just shrugged and continued on down the corridor. It was no surprise that the two of them had sex before marriage. They'd probably been having sex for more than two years. The surprise was that they were going to risk a marriage. She moved on into the kitchen, where she was pleased to see that coffee had been put on a timer and was already perked. Filling a cup, she decided to go out onto the terrace and watch the sunrise light up the LAX runway.
In the sliding glass door to the terrace, she was caught up short and almost spilled her coffee in shock.
"Hello, Char," Ian said. "Welcome to California."
He was sitting at a patio table, dressed only in dark-blue silk sleeping shorts. He was in magnificent shape. And he was a blond. Charlotte's first, nonsensical thought, was that she should have remembered that. The hair of the man fucking Stacy in the master bedroom was auburn, and whereas Ian's build was on the thin side, the man covering Stacy's body was athletic and broad backed.
"Ian," was all she could think of saying.
"Come sit with me for the sunrise," Ian said, patting a patio chair next to him. "I see you managed to find the coffee."
She went out on the terrace and sat, still not able to think of anything to say.
"It was good of you to come. Stacy so much wanted you here—and, no, I've never told her you and I had been together once. I assume you never told her either. But then, knowing Stacy, she probably knew and didn't care."
"No, I didn't tell her," Charlotte answered.
"Do you hold a grudge—for either of us?"
"No, of course not. You and I had drifted apart before you met Stacy. You didn't meet her through me."
"Protecting her from me, were you?"
"No, of course not."
"So, it wasn't traumatic for you? Have you done it that way with another man since me."
"No," Charlotte answered softly.
"I've missed you—that way. Have you . . .?"
He let that float in the air, and Charlotte didn't answer. She didn't quite know what to answer. It had been a taboo kink. But she had grown to enjoy it. And maybe to miss it too. Just maybe. She'd tried not to think about it—to try to appreciate each lover she'd had since Ian from what that lover brought to the bed—which never was that. Instead, she changed the subject.
