A pause…. “Yes”.
“After all this time? Even though I am 40?”
“And for a lot longer yet” I replied.
“I see,” she said, looking down at her own lap.
It is funny how the mind remembers things, sometimes at the right time, others at inopportune moments. I had had a Latin master who loved Julius Caesar. We had read Caesar’s diaries in Latin — Boy’s Own Paper type stuff. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar he writes: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” And I instantly knew that if I took this flood, I was going to have an affair with my cousin. And if I didn’t – there would be no second chance, no refloating the boat, just shallows and miseries.
I was across the room in a couple of strides, sitting next to her, putting my left arm around the back of her shoulder and drawing me to her. She was still looking down and so I kissed her gently, almost chastely, on her forehead. It was no more than two seconds.
All our life, Pauline has been able to demolish me in a few words; to be the older, mature one, and make me the childish, younger, immature one. She did it again. “After a 20 year crush, I was hoping for something more… passionate,” she said.
My right hand gently took her chin and tilted her head up and towards me. I kissed her, much longer this time, full on the lips. After a few seconds her lips parted, our tongues touched, caressed, twisted around each other, penetrating each other’s mouths. My left arm pressed her against me and my right hand used the back of my fingers to gently brush her neck. We finally came up for air. She smiled. “Getting warmer” she said.
At that railing, almost 20 years earlier, my right hand had grabbed clumsily at her right breast, from behind, under her arm. Now, this time, my right hand slid gently down her neck, the finger tips gently brushing the modest opening in the neck of her blouse, before sliding, oh so gently, over her blouse and on to her left breast. My thumb rubbed across her breast, feeling the top edge of the half-cup bra she was wearing. We kissed again. Our tongues danced again, the kiss went on long enough that my hand was able to caress her breast, rub the nipple and then start to undo the buttons of her blouse. It pulled her blouse apart, and explored her body — her tummy, her breasts, her neck. I pulled away and gently, with my eyes fixed on hers, removed her blouse completely. Somehow, I slid off the front of the couch, bringing her with me, and laid her on the thick rug in front of the sofa. She reached up and undid my shirt and I shrugged it off behind me.
Another kiss, this time with her nails teasing and scratching my back. I explored her bra. It fastened at the front! The type where you push the two sides of the catch towards each other, and then slide one part upwards. The type of catch designed for one-handed blind unfastening, and it turned out that I had not lost the knack.