Waiting for breakfast, Elaine ran her thick, rough fingers over the metal lunch pail. Her face, as Irene read it, was sulky. Elaine's was a tough face to begin with. Her lips were puffy and colorless, her neck short and thick. Still, it amused Irene, when she could think about her lover with something like irony, that Elaine's shoulders, beneath the faded blue work shirt, were narrow and even frail no matter how she hunched them to make them more masculine.
Elaine's fingers undid the metal clasp of the pail. "Irene, I can't begin to tell you how sick and tired I am of white bread. How many times…" she stopped herself, surprised at the stress on that word rather than any other… "have I asked you to get whole wheat, or rye, or anything, for God's sake?"
Irene did not realize at first that the question was more than rhetorical. Her fork weaved through the eggs she was scrambling for the three of them. By the time she looked up, Elaine's features were tightened with anger. "Well?" she asked again. Claude's stomach buckled with fatigue at yet another acrimonious episode.
"The wheat bread wasn't any too fresh, and they were out of rye, and you hate sourdough bread. So I thought you'd rather have white this time."
Having no reasonable response to Irene's explanation, Elaine seethed. Her nostrils twitched at the smell of tuna between the spongy white slices of bread. "This apple looks rotten," she said loud enough for Claude, just next to her, to hear, but too soft for Irene, whose fork scraped the bottom of the steel frying pan.
The three ate in silence, except for the rattling of silverware. Elaine scowled less after the first cup of coffee, and even less after the second. Irene's eyes were shifted downward, to the plate, to the end of her fork, and occasionally across the table to Claude. His body was tense with pretending there was no tension in the room.
Elaine left first. She bent down to graze Irene's cheek with a kiss. Irene instinctively moved her mouth against Elaine's, and Claude watched, fascinated, while their tongues slid back and forth over each other for a few seconds before Elaine reared back and announced again that she was off to work. She nodded to Claude. "Bye, Claudine," she laughed, and she turned before his expression could change.
She was out of the house by the time it did. When he heard the door slam, Claude cried out to his mother. "Must I always do what she says? I hate pretending to be a girl. If the kids at school ever found out…" He broke, a shiver in his throat.
"They won't, dear," Irene soothed, getting up and sitting down in the chair that had separated them, her arm curled around Claude's shoulders. She squeezed the beginning of his small chest with her fingertips. "I'll talk to Elaine, dear. She really likes you – you mustn't get the idea she doesn't. It's just that her ways of showing it are… strange, that's all," she said, seizing upon the word, rolling it on her tongue with pleasure, as though it solved the equation.
"When she makes me wear dresses and girl's clothing…" The child's voice was crushed in his throat, and unreleased tears glazed his eyes.
Irene squeezed his neck, and the boy rubbed against the palm of her hand with a catlike sigh. Like an unhappy wife, his mother was already comforting herself with memories of what she had lost. When Terry had gone… It was Terry she thought of as Claude's father, not the man who had planted the seed in her. He had been a mere device. It was Terry who suggested she let herself become pregnant with the child. "So we can raise it, darling," she had said. Now she knew that Terry had failed her, but then she was all bright hopes. They were all bright hopes and aspirations, both of them; both wanted a "family", children, Terry had fussed over her during pregnancy like a nervous father.
It was Claude's arrival that had made the difference. (Could it have been – she always dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, came persistently into her mind – because the child was a boy?)
The biological fact of motherhood had taken her, filled her. She had wanted the child because Terry had wanted her to have it, and Terry was her lover. But Claude – named for Terry's grandfather – was the center of her world now, even her body regulated to his timetable.
And Terry loved the child. And Terry, she knew, loved her. But "that wasn't the point," as her lover told her each time a new argument began. Half an hour or an hour later, Irene had backed her into a corner, and there was the new discovery that there was no point. Still, the right side of the argument made no difference; the earful concessions were Irene's, and her logic did not weaken Terry, because Terry was stronger than she was to begin with – end finally, at the end.
The point, such as it was, was this: Terry had become jealous of Claude, of the infant's power, of Irene's attention. She could not sense that there was no division, no redistribution of love, that more love had been created with the birth, that, as far as attention went, the baby pulled its mother's concern toward it like a magnet. Like a father, thought Irene, as she watched her lover drift away.
Terry had not even really known what to do with the child. Her jealousy was like that of the male parent, but her love was not. She had been disappointed almost immediately; she did not feel like a father, she did not feel like the head of a family.
She had not known that that last night was the end, though she must have known that it was one of the last times. Her mind could summon, was summoning now, still photograph I in sequence. Some of them were of the scene as she'd known it; all there was of her was a smudge of pink nose, the rims of her reading glasses when she had them on to took closer into Terry's eyes.
The smell could easily be re-created. Beer and vodka alternated throughout the evening Terry had spent in the gay bar. Then the alcohol scent mixed with the mustiness of the room, even with the air that came in through cracks around the window's wood frame.
"Please," she hushed, "Claude is sleeping."
A wave of sadness passed over Terry's eyes, a wave of sad fatigue. "Sorry," She hiccupped and laughed.
She was in bra and panties. The full white cotton of the underpants that came almost to her navel could not conceal the round swell of her hips. Though the white blocked out the color of her pubic hair, Terry's bush was thick, and the tangle pushed up against the crotch. A few long strands snaked out from the insides of her legs.
The legs were strong. The thighs were hard with exercise though the calves were thin, not much more than the long bone. She was breathing heavily now; with difficulty, it seemed, and her big breasts, coming not to points but curving bends, heaved with each sigh. The tits were enormous red circles, larger than proportion would have allowed, and Irene could read their color even through the starchy white of the brassiere. Her knee bones rolled against the tight skin as she bent to draw the panties down her legs. She tightened her fingers around the discarded garment, and Irene sniffed involuntarily, thinking about the odor that would adhere to the cotton crotch. Terry always removed her pants first, as though to indicate her part was that of a male. The undressing of her breasts was an afterthought almost.
They drooped, heavy, even the nipples pointing downward, sagging toward the belly as if disappointed. She arched her shoulder as she reached down to scratch the surface of her belly, and the inside of her forearm covered the scarlet tit. The boobs bounced without grace as she moved across the room. Her steps were unsteady. She paused, her finger on the light switch. (Why did she want me to see her face when she asked me the question? Irene had wondered a thousand times.) "Can you, tonight?"
There was something impressive about the weariness in Terry's eyes, in the muscles of her face, in her voice. It was sexless and ageless. "Yes," said Irene, folding the top sheet inside her fingers as they flexed. "I want you."
Claude had not burnt out the drive. She was not sure whether it was the time without sex or something about giving birth, but she looked forward to bed more each night. She had even begun to masturbate in the daytime, when Terry was away at work, something she'd never done before.
Still, the new excitement she felt could not make itself known to her lover. Terry's touch was sad, this night especially so, as if she were stroking and fondling a memory.
When her hand reached hungrily for Irene's cunt, grown now to a bristle months after Claude's delivery, Irene held the wrist tight with the flesh of her suddenly muscular thighs. Steadily Terry's fingers stretched the labia, stroked the furrows, dipped inside and wiped the fluid over the raw-pink tissue. Terry's index pushed inside, and the walls, too, were tight around it as the nail rolled against the moistened muscle. Terry's thumb rolled over the clit until it was like a small frozen bubble, purple and puffy. Her pubic hair was greasy now with her lubrication, and she smelled herself, smelled the odor Terry's fingers had drawn from her.
She held Terry's large breast in her hand; rather, she balanced it, pushing the large tit into the billowing flesh until the aureole was the texture of tapioca pudding, tiny beads erected into hard granules. She squeezed the boob until Terry groaned and moved back, out of her reach.
Terry had spread her legs wide. Her knees were even with Irene's, planted outside Irene's already sprawled legs as she kneeled. Her legs folded. She pushed up and her breasts moved a moment after she did, like conclusions to a wave. She sat down, and her soft buttocks brushed Irene's upper legs, and her pubic tuft was no more than an inch away from Irene's lighter down.
At first her hand was selfish. Her fingers rubbed her own stomach until the shapes of fingertips were blush marks on the paleness of her belly. She started to gather the flesh, and she was rougher, rougher with herself than she had ever been with Irene. She scratched the flesh and her tongue poured from between her lips, coating them and moving as slippery as an eel. She hit into her lower lip and the lip discolored just as she pushed forward and rolled her pubic hair against Irene's sopping cunt. She reached under her own leg and found the entrance to the cavity, stretched by Claude's birth. Two fingers wiggled as they made their way inside; the movement seemed playful to Irene, and it surprised and saddened her to see that her lover was not smiling.
Terry's breathing, however, signaled passion. It was like the scraping of satin against silk. Her tongue was as loose as if it had been severed from her throat. She was pushing Irene's clitoris down against the bed of thick, coarse hair. She took the tiny bead between her thumb and forefinger and teased it until the fire began in Irene's groin.
Irene stretched her arms and pressed her fingers into Terry's broad shoulders. She had let the hair grow beneath her arms. Irene loved the touch of the long hair, moist with perspiration. The smell that stayed on her fingertips did not give a clue to sex; it was a nameless sweat. Irene felt her throat go dry just as, somehow, her lips seemed most moist. "Kiss me, please," she whispered, though there was no need to whisper – the baby slept soundly in the next room. "Kiss me," and the words were stopped by the stroking of a wet tongue against her lips. Their tongues moved against each other until Irene was overwhelmed with the soft force of Terry's mouth, which seemed to invade and overpower her own.
Her fingers traveled from the armpits to the massive breasts, and Terry clenched her eyelids and tightened her ups as Irene's hands molded and remolded the flesh with the wonder that filled her each time she took them into her hand. They seemed gigantic, like mountains, and yet they were so soft. And though they were soft, they responded so well to her touch. Irene was conscious of her power. "You love me so good." Terry sighed, her breasts moving against Irene's smaller tits.
Irene noticed the tears that escaped Terry's eyes. Catching her breath, she lifted Terry's face with her hands. Her thumbs were hooked under the girl's jaw and her longer fingers framed the face as they stroked the high cheekbones. "What's wrong?"
"I just love you so much, that's all," and choking on the last two words, Terry moved down her body until she felt a sweet wetness on her mound. The large tongue drenched her pubic hair with saliva and battered the clit into fresh erection. Terry's thumbs were pulling at the sides of her hole, drawing the tissue apart just as it tried to press together to obscure the cavity. Her tongue dipped inside and wagged against the first inch of the walls, already covered with a thin veneer of juice. Her upper lip twisted and turned against the hair and the labia and the button, swelling and burning her deep into her stomach.
"Touch me… touch me there…" Irene sighed, but Terry teased her. The long, thick fingers played with the hollows of her thighs, moved to her belly, stretched the skin of her waist tight, dug into the curve of the pelvic bones. Then they were under her, squeezing the buttocks. Irene arched her spine and offered her cunt in spasms of movement. She felt Terry's teeth scrape the exposed flesh, and Terry's breath rustled through the hair.
Her fingers combed frantically through Terry's hair, rubbing the perspiring scalp. She tried to pull her legs even farther apart, and her ass left the bed as she attempted to jam the whole of her cunt into. Terry's mouth. Terry was breathing hard, and her tongue worked like a whip over the hairy surface. Her finger wiggled inside while the tip of her tongue concentrated on the button. Her index poked between the ass cheeks until she felt Irene's warm hole. The nail pushed open the sphincter, and she buried her finger inside to the first two joints. The walls of the rectum were dry and tense.
Irene knew that Terry liked it when she raised her legs and rested them on her shoulders. Her thighs pressed against her lover's neck, and Terry's thumbs jabbed the center of each cheek as she lifted Irene's ass from the bed, sucking her. The taste of Irene's cunt was like bitter salt, a tangy sweat. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth, wetting the flaps with spit that cooled the surface of the hole just as the lining became hotter and hotter.
Wet with perspiration, Terry's palms slid up Irene's body until they closed in on her breasts. The tits became rigid against the center of the hand, and the fingers twisted the creamy flesh until it seemed to Irene that she was swelling with pleasure. The walls of her cunt opened in a convulsive spasm, contracting just as quickly and just as violently. Irene reached under her ass as she arched her spine and dug her heels into the mattress. She separated her ass cheeks as she left the bed and came closer against the other woman's mouth. Terry turned her head and sucked the labia between her front teeth, rolling her tongue over the tissue, gentle with the edges of her teeth. Her thumbs pressed against the insides of the globes as they joined, and she felt Irene's wrist push down on her, forcing her to slide with her wet mouth to her asshole. Irene had drawn her legs up, and she was rocking anxiously. "Suck me, suck me… Fuck… Oh, yeah, fuck me…"
The flat flesh of Terry's tongue was nevertheless like a moistened dart as it grazed the soft, almost pouting circumference of the rectal hole. The small cavity radiated fiery heat. Terry's nose jammed into the underside of the pubic bonework just as she forced her stiffened tongue inside the ass.
"That's so good," her lover exclaimed. Irene felt helpless now. She could not direct her senses, she could not control her body. Her arms flailed irregularly at her sides. Her upper body twisted and turned just as she tried to staple her cunt to Terry's face and her asshole to Terry's mouth. She pushed her hands, palms down, into the mattress, and she raised herself up, watching Terry's head as the woman sucked her off. A burning sensation went all the way up the rectal hole, and her cunt was itching for want of the attention that had been diverted to the anus.
Terry solved the problem by rolling her mouth, half-closed, the tongue hanging now limply from between her lips, up and down, touching in one second the primary hole and in the next the almost hairless tighter cavity.
Irene's fingers curled her hair and pulled at it until Terry gasped with the pain. Irene wiggled under the assault of her mouth, drooling uncontrollably. Saliva poured from the insides of her cheeks, but her throat was dry, and her lungs were sore from the air she was breathing in so excitedly.
Irene started to rub her breasts with her own hands. The moist palms massaged the aureoles until the nipples pointed up like needles, sharp and dangerous. She grabbed the breast flesh, squeezing it. Her muscles were taut as stretched rubber bands, and she was waiting for the release that only Terry's tongue could give her.
One hand moved down to her crotch, which a mixture of cunt oil and spittle had made soft and damp. She pulled the labia apart and dared Terry to enter with her tongue. The sides of her cunt closed on the tongue when it came, and Terry pushed the knuckle of her index finger down hard on the erect clitoris.
Irene bit into her lower lip, hard and painfully, just as she started to deliver. Two of Terry's fingers had grabbed the clit and were pulling at it, teasing it, while her tongue moved side to side against the walls, glistening with fluid.
Irene's hips still propelled the orgasm, but it was building toward an even greater one, and this was only the first of a wave of violent cumings. Terry's mouth went wild with her passion for the taste of the cunt, and the tip of the tongue spread the sweet-scented juice all over the hair and onto the skin of her belly, the insides of the thighs – until Irene, pumping frantically, moaned for her to drill her with her tongue, mash her, drown her in the spit, make her cum, cum, cum, until the climax had emptied her body of every emotion, of every tremor of excitement.
When she was done, though, her muscles were filled not with calm, but with a strange anxiety, as though no series of climaxes could really satisfy her. And Terry did not stop; she only moved slower, her tongue running over the cunt and between the ass cheeks, over the rectum, like the ghost of the previous pleasure.
Irene stirred. She forced her stomach harder against Terry's mouth and chin. She wished the two fingers that were circling over the globe of her butt would force their way inside the cunt. Her walls, in the aftermath of the climax, clamped shut.
They drew open again, like flabby wet muscle. Terry's lips puckered, and Irene groaned as her lover blew cool wind from between them to chill the lining. Her thumbs massaged the moist, fuzzy armpits and she tried to pull Terry on top of her.
Terry mounted her, but only after making her wait. She rubbed her cunt over Irene's slicked-down, matted pubic hair. Irene felt the stirring, the tension, working up from her heels through her limbs, spreading out like arrows of intense tingling through her ass cheeks. "Make love to me," she whimpered. "Don't just fuck me, please… make love to me… Show me you mean it…"
Terry's eyes widened as she watched the tears streak over the other woman's cheekbones. Softly she kneaded Irene's belly with the inside of her sweaty hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered into Irene's ear, and a pang of sympathy touched her, making her blood rush as Irene smiled, her lips parting as she breathed through her mouth.
"I like it when you do that," Irene said, her voice gentle and even childlike when Terry's hand rested over the mound of her breast. Blood seemed to swirl inside the hillock, making the tit freeze solid. Only the point of the nipple grazed the palm, but pinpricks of erection surrounded it. She squeezed her legs together, and her thighs touched as the bristle of her sexual hair curled into a tighter mop. She stretched her legs and felt a chill in the base of her spine as her lover moved from kissing her neck with her tongue down to her breast, where she forced the whole of the tit inside her mouth. The edges of her teeth moved gingerly against the pale flesh, while the aureole scraped the dry roof of her mouth.
Terry pushed down on the breast with her full hand, drawing her mouth away. The soft tissue and muscle compacted against the breastbone, making it smaller, flatter. She ran her tongue around it, then made designs of saliva on her skin with the tip of her tongue. Her fingertips prodded the muscle when she drew her head away. Irene, impatient for friction in her groin, raised her right leg off the bed and curled it around Terry's left.
Terry knew what she wanted. She knew the slight smile, the willing glance, that told her how much Irene wanted it – it being what she always called sex, having an aversion even to euphemisms. Gently Terry flexed her right leg and jabbed the knee against the cunt while Irene writhed against the pressure, as if set in motion by an electric shock. She brought her right hand to Irene's thigh, and her fingers poked into the hollow below the cunt hair. She rolled the tip of her finger over Irene's clit until it was harder and even larger. Terry winced as Irene, kicking her leg out involuntarily with the excitement that was filling her, hit her hipbone. She felt Irene's open mouth swirl around her neck, and her own breasts heaved as the warm breath enveloped her shoulders.
She was not as excited as Irene seemed to be, and she wondered why. Was it the guilt she felt? As she was trying to understand, she felt Irene's hand rubbing her cunt and she was drawn into the movement. A small amount of lubricating fluid was released from the tight walls of her cunt. She brought her right knee closer into the fork between Irene's legs, and she drew her other leg up the side of Irene's body until she was crouched over her lover, kneeling, with her torso curled over Irene, their tits almost touching. She rammed her pussy up against Irene's hand. She had taught Irene most of what the other knew about making love to a woman. And now Irene's fingers were as expert as her own. It was the way she liked to be touched. She had trained a lover for herself, and now she was leaving her creation…
The fingers, bending at the knuckles in quick spasms, pushed inside the cunt and poked the wet meat until both were slippery. Irene pulled out and smeared the glossy sweat over the cunt's surface. The remaining moisture she wiped off on the rims of the buttock cheeks.
"Let me do it to you," Irene whispered, and Terry knew what this ft was. She pushed up on her hands and waited on her knees while Terry squirmed from under her. In a moment, Irene was at her side, and in another second she was behind Terry, pushing her toward the bed. Terry's legs were limp, and she did not pull them apart. Instead she waited for Irene's hands to push her thighs out so that her sex was exposed. Irene's fingertips swirled lightly through the network of pubic hair, though her fingers did not touch the delicate skin itself. Suddenly Terry felt the pressure of fingertips on the raw-pink labial flesh, and she felt the lips drawn open. She closed her eyes and waited for the wetness of Irene's tongue.
Irene pressed her lip to the clit. It grew larger, like a soft pearl. Her finger slipped inside the cunt and wiggled against the walls until they opened in a convulsive spasm, only to slam shut again, the wet skin forcing itself into one tight muscle. Irene's tongue waved over the exterior flesh of the pussy until the tongue tip touched the first inch of salty tissue inside.
Terry sat up in bed. Her ass moved under her, but Irene's mouth followed her cunt with her lips and tongue. Terry's hands slipped from the other woman's shoulders to the small of Irene's back, where she pressed on the base of her spine. Irene's breathing grew faster as one finger moved inside the crevice between her ass cheeks. She could not pry apart the tiny muscles of the sphincter, but Irene's hips pumped out a quick rhythm in response to the mere probing. Terry's finger traveled up between the hillocks and rubbed the place where the butt separated, just beneath the spine. She leaned forward; her breasts ramming into Irene's face and neck, and started to bite and lick the folds of her neck and shoulders. She spread her legs and brought them in tight around Irene's body, while her own cunt squirmed against Irene's mouth.
Irene was squeezing one butt inside her hand, twisting her fingers around the flabby meat and tearing her nails into the cheek, while the other hand was playing with Terry's wet cunt, separating the sides so that her tongue could fall inside easily and caress the walls, oiled with fluid.
Exhausted, Terry lay back and let her limbs fly apart, opening the space between her legs wider so that Irene could move her face up and down, side to side, more wildly. Terry's fingernails dug into the mattress. Her hips bucked and she slipped her sex out of Irene's mouth, moaning as Irene's tongue rolled over her soft naked belly rather than the thirsty clitoris. But Irene's lips pressed down inside the matting of hair, and she found the button again, while her two fingers smashed inside and rubbed the walls, gooey with female sweat.
Her shoulders twisted against the bed linen, her head snapped from side to side, and her jaw flexed like the mouth of a marionette. Her tongue slid over the rims of her lips and made the deep pink shine with moisture. A low moan escaped from her throat like the rustle of wind.
In a moment Irene's body had straightened, and she was on top of her lover, kissing her, stroking her lips with her tongue. Terry tasted her own juices in Irene's mouth, and her lips twisted, sliding to the cheeks, to the neck, while she squeezed Irene's breast, bloated by motherhood, until the tit was diamond-hard again.
Irene was in control this time; Terry was too hot. Irene sat and curled her legs around Terry, folding them behind and forcing her heels into the girl's buttocks. She prodded the underside of Terry's knees with her thumbs, and Terry lifted her limbs off the bed and curled them around Irene until they faced each other, their breasts sliding against one another with each new straining breath. The muffs almost touched. When Irene stuck her hand between the two nearly joined crotches, Terry was not sure until she felt the pressure of moving fingertips that the gesture was directed at her. For a moment she arched her spine and rested her weight on her hands, thrusting her pubic region up and into Irene's anxious hand. But now she came forward and found the pouting flesh around Irene's hole. Her fingers bent and straightened until two fingers made their way inside the cavity, which was dry now. The muscles were tight, and Irene groaned.
"Jesus, I don't know," she sighed. "…I don't know what happened…" Her hand went to the crotch; her eyes were apologetic. She was graceful, but Terry knew what she was doing. She pressed the clitoris down, and down again, and then she drew her hand relaxed a little. It now was covered with a thin veneer of away, leading Terry's hand to the opening, which had dampness.
One of Irene's hands was in her hole, but the other hand was playing with the slight layer of flesh that covered her back, kneading the un-muscled, tissue against the spine. This brought her breast closer, and Terry gasped as her own hard tit was caressed – as if accidentally – by Irene's aureole, hard as stone. Her hand moved from the girl's diaphragm to the breast itself, and she held the palm open, scooping the boob up in her hand before she squeezed down and pressed the loose flesh together.
Terry jammed her ass down into the mattress, and the bed squeaked. Irene was writhing under the slow, circular rubbing of her mound. Her eyes were shut, and her ups were drawn inside her mouth, discolored by the pressure Irene brought to bear as she tensed her body for the coming climax.
Terry forced the tit against her own, rubbing them together until both were stiffer. She let go of the breast, and then her arms tightened around Irene until both were locked in embrace. Both tried to force their cunts together, imitating coital friction, but the clits did not touch, lost inside the nestle of pubic hair.
Irene felt Terry's knuckles press into the back of her hand, and in another second she felt three fingers force her cunt wide as they rammed almost to the womb, straining the wet skin around the outside of the hole, already stretched from childbirth.
Her own fingers dipped deep inside Terry's cunt, which began to vibrate with orgasm. The large girl's ass began to bump the bed. The mattress springs moaned out a swift rhythm, a squalling wheeze, overwhelmed only by their own breathing, like waves of the same incredible force. "Oh, yeah… oh, yes, oh… oh…" Terry's voice was an agonized plea for each stroke. With each new jab some incomprehensible syllable was forced from her mouth, her throat dry and rasping. Irene was silent. Her own vagina was so wet that Terry's fingering made a low, gushing sound.
When it was over, Terry leaned back. Her body was so sensitive in the aftermath of orgasm that she felt every wrinkle in the sheet that touched her back. She shivered with delight, and her spine curved as she dug her rear into the bed, separating the cheeks slightly with her movement. She felt wet all over, not just in her cunt, but under her arms, even in her asshole.
Irene was so tired that she could not even move. Her legs were still parted, and she was still sitting on her butt. She leaned a little to the right, and her palm, drilled to the bed, supported most of her weight. She was stiff, as if posing. Her body, though, was moving with her stilt heavy breathing. Her eyes were closed, and she felt half asleep already.
Terry moved off of the bed. She stood behind Irene and pushed her gently down on the bed, then covered her with the sheet and blanket. She fluffed the pillow under the young mother's bead.
When she came back from the bathroom, Irene was asleep. She sat at the desk for the next hour, composing the note.
When Irene woke the next morning, she realized intuitively that Terry was gone, that she had not even spent the night after the two had made love. Her eyes darted around the room. She did not know what she was looking for until she saw the long envelope on the desk.
Irene
It just is not good anymore. You know that, don't you? Last night I realized again how much I cared for you. I love you. I've never told another woman that. But all the time we're not making love, I feel jealous. I feel annoyed. And, I guess, I feel guilt, because I was the one who made you have Claude. You don't need me now. You need him, and he needs you. I'm even a little jealous I didn't have the baby.
I'm trying to make sense out of this, I really am. And I know I'm not succeeding. Forgive me. I know I'll want to see you again, but don't wait for me. You have a new life now, whether either of us planned it that way or not.
I love you, Irene. Please believe that.
Terry
And she had never seen Terry again.