Rachel returns

The first sign of trouble came when Elizabeth had mentioned that Talia was being a lot more affectionate than normal. There was a lot more hand holding on shopping trips, with more outward kissing and teasing. Once or twice Talia got Elizabeth so worked up they had to get each other off in the changing rooms. Neither of us had a problem with this, in fact after my party we both thoroughly encouraged it. But something felt off about the increased frequency of it. Elizabeth could also swear she caught Talia crying when she thought Elizabeth wasn't looking. When asked about it Talia just smiled and said she was just having a rough week. "Even Stephanie can't get her to open up and those two never keep secrets from each other."

The only thing I could think to do was the cliché coffee invite. However, I wanted it to just be Talia and myself so I told Elizabeth my suspicions and why I thought this the best idea. She agreed, which any husband will tell you that your wife agreeing with you is an odd feeling you are not sure you want occurring too often for fear of the end times.

I don't know if Talia was just ready to talk about it or if it was something that I had done but the result was more than a little surprising.

She sat in our living room in a more conservative blouse than the one she wore at the reunion but it still clung to her figure with a deep enough neck line to cause a descent amount of distraction and "pleasant discomfort." She had let her hair grow out a little more but had kept the burgundy color. The years had not touched her beauty and I was convinced she would still look as hot well into her fifties. I handed her a drink as I thought this, my eyes lingering a little too long over her body leading to a playful clearing of Talia's throat to snap me back to attention.

"I know why you've asked me over Ian," she said still smiling; the expresion not reaching as high as it normally would. "I've been a bit of an emotional train wreck this past week and I think it is only fair that you are the first to know why."

"Rachel," I said almost without thinking. It seemed so obvious at the time when hours before I would of been clueless but when she mentioned that I should be the first to know, everything seemed to click into place.

"She came back stateside a week ago and looked me up. We had a very... 'interesting' chat," Talia's voice was breaking slightly as her words appear to cause her some internal pain. "You remember when we broke up?"

"You said it was mutual; that the two of you had just grown apart."

"I lied, Ian. I lied and it broke my heart even more to do so."

I move to sit next to her and pull Talia into a hug as the tears became too much to hold back. She rested her head against me as she let herself be enveloped by my embrace. I sensed she wished she could melt into me and and share the hurting as one being so she didn't have to endure the words and the memories.

Talia had begun to tell me how their relationship was far from perfect and Rachel had always known about Talia's bisexuality but she didn't realise how tightly her former lover had held on to her own orientation. Being bisexual was not something Rachel actually believed in. Her view was that you were either one or the other and anything else was just a person lying to themselves and/or being out right selfish.

When the acceptance letter from Oxford came through, Rachel had their lives planned out. She and Talia would go to the United Kingdom, finish their studies and wait for the gay rights movement to finally get same sex marriage pushed through so they could get married. True there were places in the US they could have gone but the point was to get Talia away from me. All Talia would apparently talk about night and day was me and how she wanted them to have a repeat of their threesome. Rachel's reply to this was to call Talia a cock drunk whore on the night she left. The memory was made even more uncomfortable by the fact that even after ten years, she could not get the thought of Rachel out of her head. "I would have gone through all of it. The moving, the waiting to get married. I would have said yes to it all but I still loved you and the others. The thought of leaving was too much."

"But why?" I asked, half guessing the answer given Elizabeth's own feeling of late. "You could have just moved back later on the way Elizabeth and I did."

"Because I wanted children...sigh...and I wanted you to be the father."

The first part I had already guessed but the second floored me, to the point I almost fell off the couch, nearly dragging Talia with me. My reaction must of cheered her up slightly because Talia let out a tear sniffed giggle. "Don't be so surprised Ian. All the girls feel the same way. Amy's biggest regret is that you're not Adam's father. And the reason I didn't tell you any of this before was because I didn't want you thinking our break up was your fault."

I had to admit that the thought of going from stuck in the friend zone in high school to being the preferred potential progenitor for the same five women was a even more of an ego boost then just having sex with them all.

Shaking myself out of my delusions of grandeur, I looked back at Talia, still puzzled by something. "So what happened between you and Rachel when you met back up? Whatever it was seemed to get you really rattled."

Talia suddenly went quiet, her head turned away as if ashamed but what she still had left to say. What could be worse than recounting such a rough break up, I couldn't imagine.