“We got Frostine four years after we got married.”
“That’s right.” I smiled at Cairo. We’d decided we didn’t want children, but a pet would make our home complete. That weekend we’d gone to the pound and had fallen in love with Frostine. Two days later, we had brought her home.
“Well, she’s a beauty. Don’t blame me if I come over to pet her.” Merry scratched Frostine behind the ears, making her purr.
I didn’t blame the cat one bit. I wanted to purr, and he wasn’t touching me.
“Well, we should get back to unpacking,” Jim said. “But we’ll see you this weekend for dinner. It was nice to meet you.”
We waved at the couple and closed the door. I let Frostine down, and she sauntered away, bored with us now that her new friends were gone. Her haughty indifference always made me chuckle.
“Holy shit, is it just me, or are they…”
Cairo nodded. “They are. Do you see what I meant about Jim now?”
“Yeah. I can see why you find him attractive, and Merry is a babe. Ugh, those legs.”
Cairo cupped my face and smiled. “I feel so close to you right now, being able to talk to you about these things.”
I knew exactly what he meant. It hadn’t always been like this. It had taken us a while to feel this level of comfort with each other, to open up and talk about our desires.
“You think we’re ready?” I asked.
“I think so. We’re ready for our sex surrogate.”
“Okay. We’ll let the therapist know when we visit next week.”
“In the meantime, I believe we have unfinished business…”
2
CAIRO
“Hey, Cairo, wait up!”
I was halfway across the lobby of Finsac, the company where I worked in the paralegal department, when Jim called me. Distracted by Brandt’s earlier text that our meeting with our therapist had been moved up by an hour, I hadn’t eaten lunch with him today—the first time since we’d met two months ago. I’d eaten at my desk so I could leave an hour early to make my appointment.
“Jim, what’s up?”
He fell into step next to me when I walked out the door. How did he still smell so good when we’d been working the entire day?
“You’re in an awful hurry today. Everything all right?”
“Yeah, just have a meeting I don’t want to be late for.” No way would I tell him I was meeting with my relationship therapist. I’d done that to a few people in the beginning, but they got weird about it. At the first mention of a therapist, everyone automatically assumed my wedding was on the rocks. Hell, my mother hadn’t even wanted me to explain. She’d made it clearshe always knew our relationship wouldn’t work. She’d only acted bewildered when I’d told her we were stronger than ever but only exploring avenues of intimacy with other people. To her, that symbolized something was wrong with our relationship and was plain unnatural.
After several negative comments, I’d stopped mentioning it. It wasn’t my duty to get others to understand nontraditional relationships. I tried not to take the reactions personally. Brandt and I had also come a long way with ridding ourselves of the traditional values we grew up with and embracing our journey. Thanks to our therapist, we’d both realized the only opinion that mattered was ours, since we were the ones in the relationship.
That revelation had helped us to redefine our marriage, and we were better for it.
“Let me not keep you, then. Just letting you know Merry and I will have some guests over tonight. It shouldn’t go on for long, but the noise may a bit more than usual. We’ll ensure everyone will be out the door at a reasonable hour.”
“You guys having a party?”
“Something like that.”
And they hadn’t invited us? I frowned. Over the past month since they’d moved in, we’d spent a lot of time together. Especially on the weekends, lounging by their pool, since we didn’t have our own.
“We would have invited you, but we don’t think it’d be to your taste,” he said.