Athena's Story Ch 5

“OK, I’m taking it off. Jeez.” Athena puts the phone facedown on the coffee table and opens her robe, then frees her arms. Covering the camera, she brings the phone back to her face. “OK. I’m naked now.”

“I don’t believe you. Show me naughty bits.”

“Can you be a grownup?”

“Bits!” Sal lowers her voice and does her guttural goblin impression: “Boobs!”

“So attractive,” Athena says, rolling her eyes.

“At least tell me about the MILFs.”

“I didn’t know that was a thing for you.”

“I can make anything a thing if you’re involved, babe.”

“They’re a lot of fun. And they’re sweet. I’m not gonna be weird about them.”

“I can’t wait to come back and be your doubles partner. And to get some action. I kind of think Dulcita’s blueballing me on purpose.”

Athena bristles. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t know if it’s just how she rolls, but she’s been—I don’t know. I mean, she’s married to a dude. A pretty hot dude, actually. She doesn’t flirt with me or anything.” Sal looks thoughtful. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know if she likes me staring at her, or if she likes everyone staring at her.”

“If you sleep with your boss, I will kill her, then you, then myself,” Athena promises.

“The hazards of marrying the president of the **** sorority. Hey.”

“What?” Athena asks grumpily.

“Do you know why when I put the strap on, I like for you to get on top and ride it?”

Athena’s eyebrows rise. “Um…”

“It’s because I like watching you.”

“Oh jeez,” Athena says, smiling like a moron. “Is this rizz? Are you trying to rizz right now? That is how you use that word, right?”

“I feel like sometimes you don’t know how sexy you are. You look pretty cute right now. But I want to see you cum.”

“Well, I want to see Hadestown.”

“I have to buy Broadway tickets to get sexual favors?”

“Bitch, I’m unemployed. You’re buying everything.”

Sal laughs. “Whatever you want, babe.”

“OK, you’re so stoked to do nudity on camera, you show me something.”

“Shit, I thought you’d never ask.” The camera spins wildly as Sal props it up against something. The small screen doesn’t do the view justice. Sal is bottomless, and Athena sees her from the side. The way Sal’s wrist moves makes Athena bite her lip.

She reaches between her legs and starts to tease.

“Babe, if I was there right now, I would go down on you until the weather service issued a flood alert,” Sal says.

Athena grins, rubbing slowly around her clit. “Most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”

“Actually, I want to tie up your hands and blindfold you and do the vibrator thing.”

Goosebumps rise. Embarrassed, Athena gathers a little moisture and rubs around her hood. Her lips part.

“Oh yeah,” Sal says eagerly. “Cum for me.”

“Give me a fucking minute,” Athena mutters, although she sounds short of breath now.

“I want to touch you so bad.”

Athena wants it too, but she can’t say it out loud. Instead, she rubs furiously, back and forth across the top of her hood. A whine escapes her. Sal is breathing hard.

“Oh!” Athena spreads wide as it runs through her from head to toe, putting her palm over her mound and holding on tight. “Mmmm.”

“Hell yeah,” Sal says breathlessly. She rolls onto her belly, and the view brings Athena out of her blissful state. This almost PG-13 view of her wife’s bare ass shouldn’t be this stimulating. Pressing her face into a pillow, Sal brings herself off with a big smile and a shiver.

ATHENA

“I do feel a little better,” Athena admits. She’s in Piper’s office again, a mug of mint tea in her hand. “Maybe all I needed was to get laid?”

“If only it were that simple. Did you tell your wife everything?”

“Of course not. But I did kind of go outside my comfort zone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t that TMI?”

“Try me.”

“It was FaceTime sex. I have a hard time getting naked in front of a phone.”

Piper smiles. “That’s fair. And wise. You didn’t tell your wife what’s really going on, but were you yourself? Were you honest with her in the moment?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s called intimacy, which requires us to be ****. And that’s probably why you feel better. Our egos can get in the way of us being authentic with ourselves and with other people. What we don’t realize is that faking it, whatever that might be, if I’m an autistic person masking or a queer person passing myself off as something I’m not, that creates stress that has to be expressd somehow. You think there’s power in maintaining this façade, but the real power is in letting it go. Even dropping the act during one moment of intimacy was enough to give you a little boost. Imagine the possibilities.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Simple. Not easy.” Piper snorts. “That’s wrong. It’s not simple. Or it’s only simple on the surface. I can tell you to stop being fake, but you can’t stop being fake unless you understand the things that make you want to be fake in the first place, and that’s not something that we figure out overnight. But it looks like you’re getting off to a good start.”

“The girls want to set me up with a partner.”

“Are you liking pickleball?”

“I kind of love it. But I’m worried that it’ll cause problems when Sal comes home.”

“When is that?”

“We don’t know,” Athena admits with a scowl.

“There’s some fakeness there. How does that make you feel?”

“She has to do what she has to do. She’s the breadwinner now.”

“Bullshit. The fact that she hasn’t hammered down at the very least some ballpark guess at when you can expect her home is living proof that she’s either not thinking about your needs or not prioritizing them. You know it, and it pisses you off and hurts your feelings. You resent her for it.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t just say it like that,” Athena snaps.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not what people do!”

Piper shrugs and glances out the window. “Look how that’s working out. What’re you gonna do?”

Should Athena get a pickleball partner?

Or stay a loner?

[ Open ]