We won the battle. Technically, we won the war since the enemy came over to our side. Linda moved in with Jack once they were married, and Jack built in a beauty salon for her that was twice as fancy as the one we had set up in the den. It had all that special equipment for facial massages, steam wraps, body waxing, skin treatments and heaven knows what else and there was talk about them building a sauna and hiring a masseur.

Zeke and Julia moved into her bedroom and wanted to take over the den for specialized physical therapy exercises. Briana also wanted the den for her own specialized therapy exercises. They finally compromised, due primarily to Zeke’s amazing fortitude. They closed in the back porch but left the entire upper half paned with windows. With a panoramic view of the garden, they had this sort of Zen Buddhist room, complete with India prints for drapes, rugs, blankets, and cushions on the floor and a cute little tea table that served more smokable remedies than liquid ones.

The den held hospital bed that cranked a dozen different ways, some low impact exercise equipment, some mats, different sized rubber balls and the best stereo equipment for rocking down as you roll. Briana and Julia hustled their clients between the two rooms as they saw fit.

It seems the ending should be that Lee and I got married, moved into his house and the whole neighborhood lived happily ever after. It didn’t turn out quite that way. Lee felt somewhat strange about having his ex-lover right next door, and I wasn’t ready to surrender command of my house; not just yet. Not until it was paid for.

We waited, but Briana didn’t. She married her airplane pilot at twelve thousand feet and afterward went to live with him on a Puget Sound island. He bought a small plane with water skis and used it for his transportation to work and back while Briana took up scuba diving.

The house liberated me for a second time with the last mortgage payment. It was mine. I could invest in it. I could rent it or sell it. I could make it anything I wanted, but I was the girl without a plan. I had no idea what I wanted to do next.

The house had changed. Although I still ran my kitchen, I had hired a couple of young, enterprising cooks to help me out. They were Millennials of the first order, always eager to try something new and different, looking at the future like it was their own exclusive ornament. It’s amazing how hard people will work when they’re following a dream.

Julia was still slightly out of tune as to what made people happy, but Zeke was a one-man band, actually a two-man band as Burke continued to stay on as a mechanic. Between them, they were able to draw in enough sexy young women to fill in the therapeutic spots my friends and I had left behind.

The neighborhood had changed. When you have elderly, eventually you begin losing them. It can’t be helped. Ralph had another stroke that left him permanently in hospice care, so Melanie moved into a Senior Citizen’s apartment to be close to him, renting out the house to a young gay couple. Liz began developing Alzheimer’s disease. Her daughter sold the house to a family with two kids. Several of the eighty-year-old’s died that year, and their houses were put on the market. The Millennials were moving in.

There was no reason not to marry Lee and move into his house, but that was just it. It was his house. It was a man-house, a doctor house. I wanted an “our” house. I brooded about this a lot and then one day I told him, “I have an idea. Sell your house.”

Lee was a little flabbergasted about this. “Why should I sell my house?”

“Because business is slow. Because, when I look in your eyes, I see a far-away expression and I know that you are thinking of somewhere without walls or fences. I know that your heart isn’t here. It’s somewhere else.”

“Unlike you, I still have five years of mortgage payments.”

“So what? You’ll still make a profit. It will take time, but if we’re married, we can live off the rent from my house and live anywhere we like.”

“Oh, you plotted this, did you?”

“We did have a plan. We were going to get married in a chapel and then…”

“And then what?”

“You were going to follow me wherever I go.”

“Is that what I said?”

“It was to that effect.”

He placed the house on the market, but finding a chapel for an unplanned wedding was a little more challenging. We began taking aimless drives out into the countryside, poking into unfamiliar territory searching for that something that would light up our vision. Lee was becoming skeptical of my philosophy of allowing things to fall into my lap, but I could feel in my bones it was going to happen.

It did. We were taking our afternoon drive one day when we discovered a very small town right on the edge between the lush, cool mountains, and the hotter, drier grasslands. The houses were all small and tidy, with manicured shrubbery lining up between each lot and cornering out at the sidewalk. Fruit and flower bearing trees shaded the wide, quiet road. At the far end of the road was a chapel set back at the far end of a landscaped lawn with several circular areas containing flower gardens.

The chapel had an arched wooden door trimmed with bricks and sporting a lattice work entry way covered with ivy. We parked the car and went inside. There was middle aged clergyman with a well-satisfied belly, and a wrinkled, yet beaming organist. “May I help you?” Asked the clergyman.

“We want to get married,” Lee explained. “Right here and now. In this church.”

“Is this a sudden decision?”

“Oh no,” I said. “We’ve been planning to get married for a long time. The church is the sudden decision. That’s what’s important.”

“I see,” he said, although he didn’t really look like he got it. The organist beamed twice as hard and burst into a little ditty that sounded like a cross between Beethoven and jazz.

It really didn’t take him long to put together the wedding. He called a few people who I suspect always dressed in their Sunday best, and politely filled the first two aisles. We said our vows with nothing remarkable thrown in and I threw the bouquet of flowers that a teenaged girl had given me for the ceremony. The organist caught it.

The wedding was exactly right. It was a special moment, so special, we didn’t make it back to Seattle. We found a motel with a broken light fixture, but a swimming pool out back, and sneaked in a skinny dip at midnight.

We ran back to our room buck naked and tumbled to the bed. We were already getting hot and steamy when I opened my eyes. We’d left the door wide open. “Wait! Wait!” I told him, trying to avoid his hands as they grabbed out at me.

Lee looked up to see what I was doing. “Eh, let them watch. I think someone was peaking while we were swimming.”

“I will not let them watch. This is about you and me and our private little honeymoon.”

I returned to the bed and pushed him against the pillows. He started to pull me down on top of him, but I stopped him. “Uh, uh. This time it’s my turn.”

I loved his body. I loved the taut skin, darkened by the water-splashed sunlight. I loved the sparse mat of curling hair spreading over his chest and growing more velvety as it traveled to his navel. I loved the taste of his body as I slid my tongue up over one of his flat breasts. It was salty, with an under taste of soap and sweat. His breast nipple prickled when I licked it.

My mouth traveled down until it found the prize jewel, stiffly erect and pulsing. I wrapped my hands around it, rubbing it gently, then began sucking and licking it. He didn’t try to control my actions. He didn’t start shoving my head up and down. He gripped the sides of the bed and let me do as I pleased, kissing and massaging it, exploring his whole body.

Finally, I made my way back up and guided his shaft into my pulsing and very impatient crotch.

“God yeeees!” I groaned, fill me up. “Fuck me like you mean it!”

He groaned as he pulled me down on top of him, pressing against the small of my back, and squeezing the flesh of my butt cheeks as he pumped over and over.

This time he wasn’t as rock hard and stay hard—he was so excited, so into me and obsessed with me, that he was eager to empty his balls inside of me. He was in love with me and desired me, sexually and spiritually. Our intimacy and fucking became the same substance. This time when he came hard and groaned deeper and louder, he felt it in his heart—all over his chest and stomach, his groin and his face.

Er, probably because I squirted so hard that I came on him! And feeling my gush only made him peak harder and with more volume. He muttered my name as he came again, completely emptying his nuts and filling me with babymaking batter.

We were both filthy but so eager to stay just like this-unwilling to move and ready for more and more sex!

He sighed and rolled over on his back. “What now?” He asked. “We’ve rented your house. We’ve put my house on the market. We got married in a chapel. Where do we go from here?”

“Let’s go to Hawaii!”

Lee wasn’t really sure he liked the suggestion at first. He still had very little use for hot climates, but then took into consideration that they were islands. Islands meant water and marine life.

It took us a while to find our place. It was a life style and culture neither one of us had truly experienced before, but we finally ended up on the big island. It suited us. Despite being the biggest of the islands, it had a low population, mainly a lot of small towns and villages. Once Lee’s house sold, we bought a house we’d had our eye on ever since we arrived.

The house wasn’t very large, but it included ten acres of property. We converted the front part of the house into Lee’s office, examination room and waiting room. We added a thatched and bamboo lean-to next to the kitchen and built a barbecue pit. It was a humble foundation, but we were in business as the doctor and the cook.

We probably would have become sedate. Lee developed a new hobby, volcanology, and bought a jeep so he could drive up the side of the volcano and poke around in lava. I can’t say I was quite as attracted, but I did like the amazing views. Sometimes, at night, the lava flow would light up the sky like fireworks.

We probably would have spent the rest of our lives forgetting to make each moment new and exciting. We had a routine. We weren’t making much money, but we had a roof over our heads. Then, one day, I received a text message from Briana. She and Kevin wanted to sell out and move to Hawaii.

I suppose it was inevitable. Once Briana and Kevin had made their move, Linda and Jack wanted to join us as well. More buildings went up on the property. They included a beauty salon, sauna and spa, and a meditation room that served double for sex therapy. Kevin learned the island chain and began giving tour flights. Jack Jones learned the island greenery and became a favorite go-between.

How did the locals take us? At first, they held back. At first, they were skeptical. After all, they’d seen it all; hippies and nudists, beach bunnies and surfers, the hopeful desperate, the capitalists and the entrepreneurs. Slowly, they blended in and we cheerfully blended in with them. After all, when you’re in the service department and your services are given with joy, and open heart and a touch of Southern hospitality, they are very difficult to resist.