WWAAnthology Still by Nia Forrester

'STILL' by Nia Forrester

(Mature Woman)

In her life, there had been three lovers. Leslie didn't lament the meager number, she only truly mourned the second one.

The first was her husband, Everly. They had married too young, and in haste. Leslie was only nineteen, and about to enter her sophomore year at Bryn Mawr when he proposed. They were high school sweethearts and Everly said he was eager to have things "settled" between them before she became even more "distracted" by her studies. The words 'settled' and 'distracted' should have been a clue about how he viewed her station in life, and in their relationship. Her attending college was to Everly a way for her to pass the time until she learned how to be a proper wife and mother. The proposal, earlier than they discussed, was his way of bringing her back to heel when it appeared she might instead decide to be neither.

That way of looking at her and at their relationship followed them into the bedroom. He seemed unsettled that she enjoyed sex as much as she did. Even the first time, though there had been pain, Leslie was also thrilled and aroused. She had an orgasm, and Everly was affronted by that, as though it was somehow ... unladylike of her to come. Over the remaining ten years of their marriage, Leslie gradually learned to lie still, and be quiet while he labored above her. If she got too excited, he could not perform, and after he came, he covered her chest and looked away, ashamed to have enjoyed it as much as he did. And soon, because she wasn’t allowed to be a participant so much as a spectator, Leslie didn’t enjoy it at all.

Everly died in a car accident just weeks after their tenth anniversary. She had loved him, after a fashion, and been a good wife but had not become a mother. Several months after the funeral, she met Fleming. He was a laborer she'd hired to do odd jobs around the house now that she no longer had a man. One day he caught her crying on her own in the kitchen and put his arms about her, and Leslie had practically attacked him, overwhelmed by the scent and feel of a man after so long. 

She and Fleming were lovers for almost a decade after that, on and off. Leslie was responsible for the "off" times. The Bryn Mawr Girl in her couldn't accept that the man who made her mind, her body and her heart sing only had a sixth grade education. Finally, during one of the "off's", Fleming found someone else and Leslie was alone. It took her a year to recognize that she was heartbroken, and another to admit to herself that she had been in love with Fleming all along. But by then he was irretrievable. Two years of celibacy followed, during which Leslie considered, but never acted on the urge to find a man just for sex.
Now, at 49, she had her third lover. He made neither her mind nor her heart sing. And he was only barely competent in pleasing her body. But he was a "proper" gentleman, and had courted her for months before broaching the subject of physical intimacy. His name was Anthony, and he needed extraordinary assistance before every erection, and to reach completion. Lying beneath him, her third and probably last lover, Leslie often squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and turned away from Anthony's hot breath on her face. If she concentrated really hard she could summon the scent, the taste, the feel and the bittersweet memory of Fleming, the second one.

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