North Shore

"You kept slipping off the spot," I apologized.

"Worked for me, I guess. Maybe three times. It's hard to tell once you hit the peak and start riding it to say what's what, you know?"

I understood. It seemed like we always understood each other. That's how friends are supposed to be. I was ready to declare her my best friend in the world despite the fact we had met only hours ago. She slid her legs a bit, breaking contact between our pelvises, but in doing so our labia slid across the other's leg. She giggled at the touch. How beautiful. I wanted to cry out. I was so excited to have a best friend again.

A best friend.

A friend I could imagine kissing and touching and sharing my body with, but... a friend.

So that was the answer? That simple? I had desperately needed a friend other than my husband? My mother had said that me telling someone they were competent was my highest compliment. But I did have another way. I liked to thank people with my body. I had always had sex to show someone I cared about them, though for seven years now only Ken had been able to receive those thank yous. Had I gotten to the age of 33 without being able to tell someone how I felt about them without using sex? How strange?

Ken was still caressing me, staying close.

How did I tell him that I knew now, that if he still wanted me I needed no one else? Immediately I imagined mounting him. Then he would know. Oh my. I did have an issue.

Sara was stirring, running her fingers through her hair. I blew a kiss to her, which she elaborately caught and proceeded to apply multiple times to multiple parts of her body until I giggled. "Water," she explained, crawled off the bed, and disappeared down the stairs.

"Isn't she the most beautiful creature you've ever seen?" I asked Ken, wondering if she would understand when I told her what I finally knew. Ken didn't say anything to my question though. "No?" I asked.

"No."

I looked up to him, but he wasn't looking at my face. He was looking at a stretch mark on my thigh from when I had gained weight and then lost it again, at a small fold on my belly that I had never been able to get rid of, at my breasts which were just starting to sag a little, while Sara's smaller ones were still round and pert.

"No, she's not," he said again so quietly I could barely hear him.

I reached up to caress his cheek and felt a little prickly stubble. His beard grew so fast. How could I tell him? "Stay here," I instructed and got off the bed, looking around. There was the old foil wrapper from the first night's chocolate. I took it and rolled it up into a snake shape. The ends could be bent around to meet each other and I pressed them together. I took the ring back to the bed and descended to one knee in front of him.

"What-" Ken started before I put a finger to my lips.

"Kenji Misagi, I always want you with me for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"

He didn't answer for a moment and I looked down at the foil ring, wondering if it was too late, if I had asked too much of him. Then I felt a tear splash onto my hand. I looked back up to Ken. Ken didn't cry. Not in six years. And only one tear had escaped his amazing self-control. But it was a tear for me.

"I wasn't sure," he said.

"I didn't know what was happening to me," I tried to explain.

"What about all this?"

"Second best day of my life," I told him.

"The sale at Nordstrom's shoes?" he joked.

"The bus ride."

He nodded. "That was my best day, too. But maybe this is now it." He offered me his hands and lifted me up. "I do," he said with his deep baritone that made me tremble.

"As do I," I answered and kissed his hair.

"Sara's going to have to get back up here quick before we are a blubbering mess."

"I'm here," Sara responded, standing on the next to last stair.

I wanted to run to her, but I wasn't sure she'd still want that. From the red eyes adorning her face, she had clearly seen us.

"That's how it was supposed to end," Sara spoke, coming up the last step. "I didn't know how to get there, but that's what I wanted."

"You wanted this?" I asked.

"I'm a better person than I once was," she answered. "Is it time for me to go?"

"Please don't," Kenji replied quickly.

"I want you here with us until the last possible moment," I told her bluntly. "If you'd still want to stay."

She didn't think; she just nodded.

The three of us continued to make love for a long time after that. Most of the details have faded, but certain images stick in my mind, all that I now have of her. Some of them are tender; some of them deeply sexual; most of them both. I remember Sara and I in a sixty-nine with me on top, and then Ken entering me right above her head. He says that she would lick him as he slid out.

I remember Sara so happy and desperate, as she lay on me and took Ken inside. That was a moment I could never have imagined. He had entered so slowly and Sara and I held each other such that I felt her eyelashes flutter against my cheek. Then I felt his knees against my legs rocking back and forth as he slid in her. She smiled at me and kissed my forehead until the pace picked up. Then she had apologized to me, telling me it felt so good, as her pelvis slid back into Ken with each needless "sorry." But now Ken was doing the thing I loved most, sliding all the way until the tip barely remained inside and then sliding all the way home. Sara's eyes went wide and her mouth hung open, with moans and cries flying past my ears. As she clung to me moaning and laughing, my hand slid between her legs and found her delightful clit. Then all was squeals and digging fingernails and Ken's face contorting and groaning and the feel of Sara's tongue on my face and Ken's come on my fingertips as I caressed her lower back. I almost cried from watching her with Ken. I never knew I could share this part of my life with someone else. It was like watching myself.

I remember only feelings from when Ken was in my mouth and Sara's fingers were inside me, the feel of the thrusts from both sides.

I remember a lot of sweat. Then later her taste again for a long, slow while, savoring the experience one last time in my life.

Some time after Ken's fourth orgasm he fell asleep, leaving Sara and I to ourselves. We wanted to talk the hours away, sharing ever secret. We wanted to make love until our bodies could take no more. But more than any of that we just wanted to be together for our one night, not letting a moment go. As we lay curled together on the bed, I could still imagine another me in which I had met Sara first and we were one. But it was just an alternate me, and I wished that other woman well in her other life. The little film clips laying about the room flew together, united into a new story, and passed out of the window into the night.

Sara started to say something but stopped.

"What?" I asked as I brushed a hair from her forehead, our bosoms pressed together.

"It's a stupid thought."

"Tell it to me."

"It's so stupid. I was just thinking that one regret I have is that I don't have any of my toys. I have a double dildo that I would have loved to share with you."

"Is that your favorite?"

"Sometimes. I would lie on you and it would be in both of us at once. Isn't that the stupidest thing to say? But I'm sad that it won't be one of our memories."

"I wish we could have had that, too."

We were silent for a while until Sara spoke again. "I'll also miss picking you up at work. I think it would have been nice to do that. I want to pick someone up at work." I kissed her cheeks. That did sound lovely.

"I'm a horrible cook, though," I told her. "You didn't miss out there."

"I can't cook either," she said quietly. "I can iron."

I kissed her eyes this time and we were silent again.

As the sun crept through the room, Sara's breathing had changed and she was sleeping against me. I continued holding her as I watched the golden day rising over the city of sin.

---

I awoke to a slight jingle of keys. My eyes opened, and I sat up to find Sara below, collecting her things. She had a new pair of shorts on with her maroon top, and she moved about almost silently. I stood as she walked towards the door. She heard it, turned, and mouthed a word to me, "Note," and pointed at a small envelope on the coffee table.

"Thank you," I mouthed back to her, not sure what to say to a love I would never see again. She looked at me for a moment longer, patted her bosom to indicate her heart was racing, and ran out the door.

I stood silently watching the space she had left. If she felt anything like I felt, I was ripping her insides out.

I caught her in the hallway waiting for the elevator, my body draped in a red and gold comforter.

"Ashleigh!" she exclaimed seeing my semi-nude body running to her.

"I'll be quick," I told her. She looked around but quickly forgot to worry about other people coming out.

"We can't stay together, Ashleigh. You know that. I can't shut it off around you."

I nodded, still short of breath. "I just wanted to tell you that you've changed my life. If I can ever, ever help you, call me. This weekend does not have to be only about me. I am always there for you."

"It's not necessary."

"I know. But... I'm always there if you can't do it alone."

She seemed a bit shaken as the elevator door opened.

"Good bye, Ashleigh."

"Good bye, Sara," I said and soon the elevator doors closed, taking her away.

Curling up on a silk sofa with my comforter, I opened the note she had left in the room.

"Thank you for this time. Now I know what I am looking for."

---

It was after Ken and I had blown the last of our tab on silly appetizers and wine that we decided to step outside of the hotel for some fresh air and a little people watching. Over at the MGM Grand, I slapped Ken's arm and did my best not to point at a cowboy crawling down from a huge pickup covered in flames. He handed a wad of cash to the valet, just because he could it seemed, and reached back up for his date. She came out all leg, legs almost as nice as Sara's, I had to admit. The legs were attached to a Dragon Queen – a mane of black hair to her ass, a tiny dress of red and gold dragons, 4" heels, and green fingernails almost as long. Heads turned and watched as she strutted her legs and cleavage across the driveway towards the hotel entrance.

I was about to pull Kenji out to the street when the Dragon Queen sighed and rolled her eyes to face me. And there, under a layer of pink glitter eye shadow and an inch of mascara was Sara. Or Gui-Feng. Or somebody.

"I am what you desire. One night only." That was her ad.

She had been exactly that. Everything I had wanted and dreamed of. And now, tonight, she was being what this man wanted. Did I know the real Sara and this was a fake one, or was it the other way around? Or were both of them roles she could play? How much of our night had been written beforehand?

Sara noticed me and quickly glanced at the cowboy to make sure he wasn't looking. Then for just a moment, she stopped chewing her gum, her face cleared, and her hand raised just slightly at her hip to wave to me. As my smile just began to touch my lips, her cowboy was off, and she sacheted right through the doors, making half the men in the area watch her ass as she went.

---

It took two years for me to find the song that Sara and I had danced to that night at GirlBar. Now, the first Sunday of each month, when I've gotten back from the dance studio and checked that Ken got our little Kimmy safely asleep, I will put the track on repeat and sit on the floor, my back against the sofa, to think of Vegas, offering my thoughts and silence to the woman I won't have. Sara hasn't called yet, and I don't expect she never will. As the beat slides into my heart, I wonder where life has taken her. Is she still waiting for her long lost love who will never return, or is she sitting with her hand wrapped in her partner's on the bus to the North Shore?