HAPPILY EVER AFTER NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN

Horse town Clarence, Georgia, the old apple orchards on Miller’s farm

5 July 2018 (or, if you like, 5 July 1918)

I had courted Mary-Beth for one sweet year and three months. When my mother died, she made me promise to marry a girl with a clean heart and straight eyes. There aren’t too many of those around these days, but Mary-Beth had a heart so pure I think even my momma would have approved. She had worn my mother’s old ring round a string on her neck for one sweet year and three months, and the time was coming where I’d make an honest woman of her before God and in the eyes of our humble community.

The thing was, Mary-Beth could be a little …foolish sometimes. Now, she was young, I was ready to give her that, and came up in a family that had thought nothing of buying her a new silk bonnet every month. Bless her heart, it’s not that I could fault her a thing, only that she seemed to have a very girlish notion of what married life would entail for us both. She had a clean heart, and straight eyes, and I suppose if an angel were to ever land on this earth it would look like Mary-Beth, and be just about as foolish with money, I’m sure.

Meet me at the apple orchard’s on miller’s farm at 3pm

I looked down at the familiar curlicues of her handwriting. It was 3pm. Not only was her grammar adorably poor, she was also late, as usual.

I stared up at the towering, billowing white columns of clouds overhead, travelling slowly to the east like great ghostly ships on a very thin sea. The day was warm and lazy, and even the bumblebees seemed to be slacking in their work. She knew that I was hesitant about the respectability of meeting alone like this, but I didn’t have the heart to argue with her. We were engaged to be married in a mere two weeks, and I couldn’t begrudge her any childlike excitement as the day of our betrothal grew nearer.

I paced the old worn path a few times, cutting the long, yellowed grass with my boot with each step, and tried not to dwell too closely on daydreams about the nape of her neck.

“William.”

The voice was one and the same with the wind. I turned to see her there, lace skirts swaying in the breeze, smiling broadly.

“You little devil you, you’re late again, you know,” I said, walked over to her and knelt before her. She giggled.

“William, why on earth are you on the ground?”

“All the better to kiss your little paw, my dear,” I said, and did so.

She flopped down with a laugh and the big lace skirts flounced out around her. She instantly plucked a few blades of grass and began furiously knotting and braiding them in her little cherub fingers, prattling all the while. Her blond hair had been pulled loosely back and looped with flowers, a schoolgirl habit she had stubbornly held onto.

“Father was ghastly this morning, I think the maids have made a wager on when he’ll give himself a conniption. Oh and Aunt Marie said her ship was delayed after all and sends her regrets for our wedding. And I’ve decided – Montgomery,” she said, all the words running into one another.

“Montgomery…?” I said, wondering whether I should trail my hand to the edge of her knee and touch her there.

“Yes, dear. Montgomery for a boy. Clara for a girl, don’t you remember?” she said and lifted big, black eyes at me.

“Of course, darling. How could I forget?”

She nervously dropped her eyes away from mine again.

“Mother gave me something interesting this morning, you know.”

“Did she?”

“The ‘Young Bride’s Companion’ by Meredith Brown,” she said and raised her eyebrows at me. “You simply wouldn’t believe the things I read in there,” she said and then nervously scanned my face for my reaction. I plucked my own grass stem, bit the end and idly placed my hand on her knee, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Did you really? Those books are just old wives’ nonsense, you know.”

“They are?”

“Of course. Marriage is a piece of pie. Nothing we can’t figure out ourselves, I’m sure,” I said and gave her a cheeky wink. The peals of laughter she broke into warmed my heart. I squeezed her knee.

“Darling, I made it clear to you before. Your happiness is my ultimate concern now, and I want to know about all your apprehensions and worries. Do you understand? You’re to hide nothing from me,” I said and tried to catch her eye. But she was coloring deeply.

“William… I am…”

“Yes?”

“Well of course I’m nervous. It’s just that Nanny the other day was saying that when it’s time, the man will usually—”

“Nanny? Oh for heaven’s sake has she been pouring poison in your ear? What does an old goat like her know about a thing?”

“So you don’t think it will hurt?”

It was the most frank we had ever been with one another. I cleared my throat. The mere thought that she had been alone, wracked with doubt and anticipation about our wedding night was having a strong effect on me indeed. I took her hand in mine and kissed the fingertips over and over again.

“Mary-Beth, I could never hurt you… never,” I said and we caught one another’s eyes. It was a curious kind of foolishness she had. The kind that made you desperately want to participate and be foolish right along with her. I didn’t want to risk tongues wagging should our little rendezvous be discovered, but sitting with her here out under the apple trees …well, if the afterlife were denied me after all, this moment would have gone some way to compensating.

“In fact, it’s perfectly natural for many women to grow to enjoy the experience,” I said. She pulled her hands away and blushed madly.

“My dear, forgive me, I’m speaking too freely, I—”

“No it’s all right,” she said. “I just wish… I only want to please you. I wish this wasn’t all so overwhelming. My whole life feels like it’s changing…”

“And it is! Into something wonderful.”

“Will you kiss me, William?”

The apple boughs groaned and swayed above our heads in the slow wind.

“Mary-Beth, we’ve spoken about this before.”

“Our wedding is in two weeks. My heart is already yours, what does it matter now?”

I sighed.

“I couldn’t do that to you, darling.”

“Just a kiss. I swear William, I feel like I’m going crazy, like I’m out at sea and the only thing that’s solid in the whole world is you, and the only thing that I could anchor to right now would be your kiss…”

I was stunned.

“Woah, that was …impressively cheesy,” I giggled and gave her a goofy look.

“Shh! Stay in character.”

“Right.”

“Be kind, William, and have mercy on me, since you always say I’m silly. Then indulge a silly girl. Unless I don’t have your heart after all?” She tilted her head and batted her eyelashes.

God I loved this woman.

“Come here,” I said.

She shifted closer to me, slowly, and hovered her lips before mine. Our knees touched, and the grass whispered secretly around us. Grass and trees are always grass and trees. The sky is always the sky. And two nervous young lovers would always play these sweet, tender games, just like this. It could have really been 1918 for all we knew.

She rose onto her haunches and pressed her lips to mine, then waited. She savored me gently, carefully, like a person feeling something new in the dark. It was electrifying. She wasn’t Nora just then, but a gloriously innocent damsel, her cheeks flush with lust, her modesty tucked away under long layers of lace and cotton, bunched up around her like a marshmallow. I placed a nervous hand at the nape of her neck and held her there, us two balancing on the precipice – up ahead of us, the future; behind us, all our childhood days forgotten. I had known Mary-Beth since she was as tall as this grass, and now she was a woman, and soon she would be my wife.

Unable to hold back I pulled her firmly to me and showed her what to do with her tongue, showed her not to be afraid, to taste this moment fully and surrender to it, even though it was as immoral as it was wonderful. To my surprise her artful little tongue responded in earnest, and she leant forward, each of her hands on my knees to balance as she fell forward into a hungry kiss.

“Mary-Beth, please,” I said, and pulled back, smiling. As her future husband, the onus was on me to set the most honorable tone of our engagement, to guide her and deter her from moments of weakness…

To my surprised delight, she had hopped up onto my lap.

“You said I could kiss you, and now I’m kissing you,” she breathed and kissed me all over my cheeks, my jaw, my neck. I feared that she would any moment discover the physical consequences of her little moment of indecency on me, but in a heartbeat she was pressed firmly into my lap, against my manhood, and seemed not the least bit perplexed by it. In fact, she only pulled back, readjusted her skirts around me to tent us both, and caught my eye again.

“So that’s what Nanny was talking about,” she said, and dear Lord in heaven I saw the devil himself flicker across her pretty face.

When she kissed me again I admit I had to kiss back. It was my weakness. I loved to see her like this. Not fearful and timid, but boisterous and naughty and full of life. Still, she was dangerously close.

“I didn’t think it would be that big,” she cooed, coming up for breath.

“Mary-Beth!”

“Are you cross with me now?” she purred and teased, still planting a shower of little kisses all over me, all the while not doing a thing to stop what might have been making me ‘cross’. I admit that my hands couldn’t resist finding their way to her dainty waist, which I had noticed earlier with some interest she hadn’t corseted very tightly at all. And then, only the apple trees and the great, blue sky above witnessed what we did next. I swear on all that’s holy that I was about to grab her gently, pull her down from my lap, kiss her and tell her that although she was an impatient little fox, she would have her virtue intact on our wedding day. I swear that I intended it with all my heart.

Nevertheless, the fates had a different plan for us, and to my horror and likely hers, I felt the entire length of my shaft come into perfect contact with the warm, wet folds of what I had for one sweet year and three months piously held off from even thinking about. Hidden under those piles of now useless flouncy fabric, our sexes met and then directly afterwards our eyes did too, and thus linked we froze together, wondering what we had done.

How could something so beautiful be a sin? How could this young woman, as curious as a puppy and as fresh and sweet as a blossom, this woman who loved me, how could anything we did under an old apple tree in the sun ever be wrong? But ah, the devil squeezes in, and soon, I felt her move in my arms, and pleasure herself against that new, hidden part of my anatomy that had occupied her mind for so long.

I couldn’t resist her. The epic battles raging inside me melted and flowed away like they were nothing.

“Here it is,” she said, so quietly it was though the words were trying to escape her. “Here is where my love for you is. This is our wedding night, right now,” she said, and her face was a picture of a saint in rapture. Or a little strumpet, tempting her lover, I didn’t know which.

“You aren’t afraid, dear?” How could I disappoint such a fair creature? How could I ruin her in anyway?

“Not in the least,” she said and we both looked down to confirm that it was actually happening and that yes, her hips were now moving a little more urgently.

“Your maidenhead,” I said, still wrestling internally.

“Fuck my maidenhead,” she snapped.

My cock twitched hard against her. It was the first time I had ever heard her be anything less than a well-bred young lady. She was still perfectly buttoned up, as was I, but underneath I had slipped free of my own trousers and neatly into her frilly drawers, and now we nestled there together, teasing and stroking on the edge of decency, nakedness against nakedness, our little game hidden from the innocent summer’s day. But I could see it in her eyes. A heady mix of anticipation, and terror, and delight. Or was that just me?

She was warm and juicy and soft and slippery and perfect in every way. I grew so stiff I felt ready to explode there and then. I kissed her but she fell back in my arms, letting her head hang. The ribbons of her bonnet whipped in the wind as she closed her eyes and went off far away. But her hips kept moving.

We’d stop this foolishness any second now, she’d come to her senses and we’d pull ourselves back together, walk back to town and carry on with the day’s duties. Except that’s not what we did. When she leaned forward to give me another set of dainty kisses, her hips swiveled just enough to allow me to penetrate her slightly, and all at once, to our shock, I was inside her. Just like that. Could it really be so easy?

Her expression was like a grey cloud temporarily passing over the sun. She winced a little, paused, then parted her lips to say something.

“Is that… have we…?”

I gulped and held her there in my lap. Yes. We had gone this far, and I couldn’t turn back now. I needed more than anything for her to stay with me, stay on this delicious wayward path.

“Are you ok? Mary-Beth, say something.”

“It’s… not what I expected,” she whispered. My heart beat madly in my chest. I was to be her husband. Her protector and provider. Had I already failed in my first duty?

“It’s better…” she said, and the grey cloud floated off to reveal an even broader smile.

We fumbled together like this, each hot inch a revelation to us, like Adam and Eve fumbling in a garden entirely new to the both of us. I pressed into her gently, and she was fiery hot inside, slick and tight and yet welcoming, and with each gliding advance deeper inside, I paused, kissed her, watched to read all the fluttering signs of her body. Her light breath. The way her lips seemed to be muttering to themselves, the way her eyes focused and unfocused on the same spot.

The line marking off virtue is not a line at all, it turned out, but a long, syrupy, sinewy, delicious descent, a slow, halting journey into a strange land, where the flesh is at once eager but unfamiliar. Nothing but the wind in the leaves spoke as we moved together, me inside her, her wrapped around me, so slowly we were all but melting into one another. She was right, of course. Our marriage was here and now, and it was a strange, secret marriage of the flesh.

When I had buried myself fully into her adoring little body, and when she had began to relax her full weight into my lap, she leaned forward and let me just hold her. I will never forget the moment for as long as I live. In due time I would put a ring on her finger and establish her as the queen of my hearth and we’d raise children. But it would be this day, this moment, that would mark the real beginning of our lives together.

We didn’t know where to go from there. But we had our whole lives to figure it out. It was bliss enough to cradle her there in my arms and feel her, as deeply and exquisitely as I ever had. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Nothing but loving her, holding her, there in my arms.

The rest of our encounter was a little more awkward. She seemed embarrassed and surprised by my inevitable emission, which I assured her over and over again was no cause for concern. We fumbled together to stand, to kiss again, the sensation of not being locked together now suddenly feeling like nakedness. I kissed her and told her I loved her, I wove her a crown of daisies and she absentmindedly placed it on her head, a charming pink flush still in her cheeks.

She was full of questions on the walk back to the village. Was it possible to conceive a child now? Would I be able to do what I had just done again, even within the same day? Had I liked it? Did married people do this only on their wedding nights or at other times, too? I answered her as best I could, enjoying her newfound enthusiasm. When we reached the fork in the road I clasped her hands and bid her adieu.

“I would put you on a pedestal, my dear, only up there I could never touch you.”

“Then put me down in the grass, in a field instead,” she said with a smile that I fancied was a little more womanly somehow, a little more knowing. With her crown of daisies she looked the part of the empress of the field, it was true. I could worship at that altar forever and be happy.

“Good day my love. Soon we are to be married.”

She nodded, bowed deeply and we parted ways.

I stood there in the breeze and contemplated the threshold I had just crossed. The day was indifferent, sunny as ever. In a minute she was walking back to me.

“Nora,” I said, both greeting and summoning her.

“Dean,” she said in acknowledgment.

“Holy fuck, why was that so hot?”

We turned to walk the rest of the way down the dirt road and back to the guest house.

“Is it because you’re wearing three petticoats and a crinoline?” I teased. She laughed.

“Maybe. But god, why haven’t we done something like this before?”

“Dunno. Guess we never thought of it.”

“Well, thanks for thinking of it. You’re always a surprise to me, you know that?” she said and clasped my hand.

“Surprise? What? You can’t imagine me as a brooding young lover from the olden days?” I said and pulled proudly at my lapels.

“Well, I certainly can now.”

“It was so sweet. And hot. But still sweet. Let’s do it again.”

I gave her a stern look.

“Now as the future man of this household I’ll not say it again you little minx, you’ll wait for your wedding night and you won’t get a moment’s indulgence before then.”

She beamed and we walked on.

Some happily ever afters are short and sweet, I guess.