chapter 1: a not-so-everyday conversation

“Everything’s all settled in, sweetheart? You’re sure, now? Yea- well, I have a right to be worried- O-Okay sweetie. Okay but you know you can call us any time. Okay bye, honey. Call me soon!”

Mark paced avidly around his kitchen floor, working up a nervous sweat despite the thermostat being turned down to a reasonable 68. It was justified; his youngest child and only daughter had finally settled in to her dorm room, all the way across the country at that, and this phone call was about all the contact he might have with her all the way until the summer! For someone who was just a bit of a control freak, it was a lot to take in.

“She’ll be fine, Marky,” he heard off to his left on the other side of the kitchen. He put his phone back in his pocket and looked over to the speaker. “You need to just relax, she’s an adult. We’re all adults.”

Mark sighed and stopped pacing. The adult in question was his wife, Anne. Certainly his better half and certainly the more lax of the two, he normally relied on her to reign him in and keep the worse parts of his neurosis in check. He walked over to the kitchen table where she was seated and sat down across from her, looking at her for calmness and reassurance.

And boy, was she a looker.

Just a hair over 46, she was the absolute embodiment of the phrase “aged like fine wine”.

She was a plush but shapely woman, having been quite a bit larger when she and Mark had first met before slimming down significantly as their relationship had taken off in their mid-twenty’s. One of the advantages of having a personal trainer as a husband, one could suppose. She had also been blessed in the looks department; age had weathered her face only somewhat slightly but had also added to her allure as she grew older. The surest tell was the ever-so-slightest trace of crow’s feet under her sparkling brown eyes, but they only served to make her look more wisened, inquisitive, experienced. Her gaze was locked with Mark’s from across the wooden round table, and, even almost two and a half decades later, her husband could only look back, captivated. Her plush, rosy cheeks were still plump and full and only accentuated her strikingly white smile whenever she flashed her husband a seductive grin. Like now.

Anne reached across the table, still looking her husband softly in the eyes and gently interlocking her fingers with his.

“The kids are gone, hon,” she smiled sweetly.

“The kids are gone,” he mirrored back.

“It’s just us, now,” her smile widened.

“It is just us now,” he grinned, thinking that he knew where this conversation was going. After all, what else were two lovers of 22 years supposed to do with a house all to themselves?

“So, babe,” she cooed. She hadn’t called him “babe” since their anniversary about half a year prior. She was being coy, but she was beaming at this point, grinning from ear to ear. She was gazing at him with a lust and intensity he’d only seen a handful of times before, times long since past.

“So, babe,” his smile widened to match hers. He was practically drooling with anticipation.

“What about our little agreement?”

His smile vanished in an instant.

Anne only chuckled, knowing full well that, despite the sudden change in his facial expression, she had him ensnared.

“Okay,” he gulped, having dreaded this day for years but knowing that the conversation was now officially unavoidable, “let’s talk.”

~~
Anne Silvey had always been a curvy, very attractive woman. When she was much younger she’d often get mistaken for an actress or a model, or at least approached by people asking why she wasn’t one. She would only chuckle and smile, twirl her cascading brown tresses and thank the friend or stranger for the compliment with a wave of dismissal. No, Anne had no passing interest in the silver screen and even she had to admit that she was just a little too thick for a modeling career. No, where Anne had always shined was in the gymnasium.

Anne’s mother, growing up, had been a nationally ranked gymnast. Both of her aunts on her mother’s side had been gymnasts. Her older sister, Ashley, had also been, you guessed it, a competitive gymnast. Anne had been introduced to the sport at a very early age, having known the ups and downs of the mat ever since she was three years old. Her parents had often joked that she had learned to somersault before she could walk. And, for what its worth, Anne was quite a gifted gymnast; it was in her blood after all.

But Anne, much to her mother’s dismay, had never taken her skills to the professional circuit. Not that her mother hadn’t tried… Hannah Sheridan-Silvey was the epitome of a “smother” in every sense of the word. She had insisted that her daughter get the most attention in classes, had made sure all of Anne’s private teachers were just the right mix of top-notch but subservient to her oftentimes entitled whims, made sure that Anne had spent almost all of her spare time up until her teenaged years in the gym, honing the “family talent”. And, as much resentment as Anne might have had for her mother during her adolescent years, she relented. She attended practices, sure, but Anne had never had her heart in athletics.

Until, that is, she had found her real passion.