Chapter 1

Note: The actual story is around 8k words, so this is not the quickest get off story, but not a novel. It is intended to set up the premise and main characters for further exploration in a series. Not saying there isn’t sex, but understand that it takes some time to get there and there is less here than there will be in future chapters.

Everyone was dead. Mom, Dad, my grandparents, hell even my wife’s parents and grandparents. All dead. Lah tee dah. Life is great isn’t it? We get born with no say in the matter, at least not that I know of. Who you are born to means you could have an easy life full of luxury, fun, and anything you could ever dream of. Or maybe it means that life is a flat, greasy, fight for every hour trying to eke out some modicum of happy adjacent moments. I’m guessing you all see where this is going, welcome to my life as Tom Greenthalw.

You couldn’t have planned this better if it was a low budget high-schooler’s film project. Grey, rumbling clouds. A cold breeze that gusted abruptly, maliciously gleeful in its unpredictableness that ripped umbrellas aside and slapped loose wet clothes uncomfortably against you. And rain. Yes we couldn’t have this overly dramatic atmosphere without rain. Cold and hard, it felt taunting. Like there actually was some greater entity that was taking great delight in just adding insult to this already shitty world. Because why not shit on a funeral.

“I don’t think this preacher has enough hobbies”, I whispered to my wife Kendra.

She shushed me quietly while also nodding. The preacher in question had been asked to say a few words about my parents at the grave-side service. I expected the longer orations would have been done inside, out of the miserable rain, but apparently this guy didn’t agree.

My parents had been going to his church for as long as I knew, but in yet another of life’s great fuck-yous had never met him. You see their best friend, who had been the pastor, died last week. Two days after my parents. We had already arranged for him to conduct the funeral services, hell we might have been the last people that saw him alive. Next day we got a call from his secretary that he had died and would it be alright if “Pastor The Sermon Must Be Given Even If Everyone Is So Wet And Cold They Would Hypothetically Welcome Dying And Just Might Literally Catch Pneumonia” conducted the services? Fuck.

“Shit!”, I screamed. The vulgarity might have been out of place had it not been prompted by a crack of light that blinded us all and the immediate clap of thunder. Stunned, I grabbed Kendra’s hand as she tried to pick herself up from the tangled mess that was her and various guests having thrown themselves to the ground.

Helping her up from the mess we stared at the remains of the single lone tree not 20 feet away. Remains was honestly being generous. Lightning had struck the tallest object for half a mile in any direction, which thankfully was a tree and less thankfully wasn’t the preacher. What was left looked a lot more like a historical photo of no man’s land rather than something that had been happily living just seconds ago.

Kendra cleared her throat loudly, “Is everyone ok? Yes? Good. Thank you all for coming out today, but Carl was never a patient one.” A few chuckles greeted this remark about my late sperm donor currently in one of the two caskets. “Let’s take the rest of the remembrances to Joe’s tavern and get out of this damn storm.”

Genuine smiles fought valiantly against a fresh downpour and long rumbling thunder that almost seemed like one drawn-out, extremely bad tempered snicker. The preacher had also regained his feet and looked like he was considering re-launching his sermon from the start. Though he was quickly dissuaded as Kendra and I loudly thanked him while escorting our friends to the cars parked several hundred feet away.

Holding the car door for Kendra gained me a smile. Small, but what I wouldn’t give to keep her smiling. Made the whole damn ordeal in the rain worth it. She always could do that. A small upward quirk of her lips to the right and those eyes. Speckled green flames that I could get lost in and would gladly pay admission to admire. Warming my heart or burning morons to the ground, Kendra’s eyes were amazing.

Hurrying around the car I got into the driver’s seat. “Well the shitshow is over. I hope Joe’s has enough whiskey to warm me up. Feel like I could drink the stuff in pints tonight.”

Kendra gave me another smile, but the warmth was different. She knew I didn’t process grief healthily. Sarcasm and swearing were the only consistent things in life. So when things got bad I turned to what I knew.

“Carl never was patient, or much of anything else to you honey. Are you sure you want to go to Joe’s? Getting drunk isn’t really your thing.”

Twenty-three years of marriage ensured the words were kind and true I really didn’t like getting drunk. Also yeah dad, Carl as he was always called in my head, wasn’t much when he was alive. Wasn’t around, wasn’t a provider, wasn’t a role-model, wasn’t loving, or or or. The list could go on. It was a rant I had spent years perfecting. Long imagined arguments where I told him exactly everything wrong with him. Calming and helpful? Not in the least. But we all need hobbies, right?

“Carl wasn’t but mom deserves this. She deserved better than him. Better than all of this,” I said while gesturing broadly out the windshield. I thought it was apt that my gesture mainly encompassed a weed filled field that would eventually become part of the cemetery. “I’m not getting drunk for him, mostly because he always celebrated that way. I’m going to Joe’s, I’ll smile, laugh, and tell stories of her. One last drink for her.”

I tried to keep my eyes locked with hers, but after a few seconds I looked away. We both knew that was a lot of a lie and most of the rest was me avoiding the real issue.

“Ok. To Joe’s. For Mary,” she said.

I woke up and immediately knew Tom was gone. I didn’t have to move to feel the bulk of him wasn’t there or listen for the small barely there snore. Some things you can just feel. You always know when your other half is missing. I also could cheat because while I loved snuggling into blankets I was a restless sleeper, but this morning the blankets had been pulled into a warm snuggly cocoon tucked under my chin. I smiled, Tom’s way of taking care of me.

Twenty-three years last spring he had been my other half. We got married young, I was barely twenty. A child with no idea who she was or what I wanted from the world. How we stayed together I’m not sure. But we matured, we changed, we learned about ourselves, each other, and what the world actually is. Somehow through all of that we always kept that one thing in common, neither of us was complete without the other. Best friends, confidants, lovers, the person who was always honest with you, who knew you well enough that they could always make you smile, that you lived to see laugh, you would do anything for them and never doubted they would do that for you even when you didn’t want them to. It was marriage and it was... BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I sighed. Of course the alarm would go off. I had promised Tom I wouldn’t need it, after all who needs an alarm to wake-up at 9:00am. I was going to let him know that I didn’t need his damn alarm afterall, I was perfectly awake BEFORE it went off. It did, however, make staying in the warm bed less appealing while listening to a screech that had probably originally been developed by the CIA for torture.

Bracing myself I forced the blankets away from me. In my head at least the bed never wanted me to leave it. I began the normal morning routine, bathroom, weigh-in, berate myself in front of the mirror. That last one wasn’t helpful, but it was always part of my day. Looking at myself naked I always saw a 5’7” brunette in her 40s that the world would call fat. But let’s be honest here, if men are the ones giving the title they call anything that looks less than their juvenile wet-dream perfect, fat. If it didn’t have 17 filters, photoshop, a director picking perfect camera angles that hid any hint of a real body’s curves, and looked ready to walk down the red carpet alongside A-list celebrities then it was fat.

Sighing to myself and telling myself to move on from the mental flagellation, I tried to look again. 5’ 7”, brunette, and not the curves I wanted. I loved a strong face and delicate collar bone, but mine were hidden now by pudge. Shoulders and arms were hunched, beaten down by life. Hell, even my breasts drooped, the extra pounds seeming to push them closer to my belly-button rather than doing me even the small favor of making them fuller. Saying that I had love handles would be kind and my thighs were flabby cellulite. So for all my rants that the world unfairly criticized women’s bodies while ignoring men’s beer guts, I hated that I didn’t disagree.

Tom did. Vehemently. Passionately. He told me daily to stop this. Kissed me like I still had the rock-climber’s body of my twenties. Made love to every inch and spent all of his attention trying to get me out of my own head. I appreciated it, I loved him for it. But it wasn’t enough. Oh well, not like I was going to fix it today.

Yesterday Tom had finally gotten the last of the legal gooble-de-gook that transferred ownership of his parent’s store to him. He had gone there early this morning to start taking inventory on what could be liquidated before closing everything down. He had no interest in taking over the family business. I had promised I would meet him at 10:00am to help, after he had a little time to himself.

With yet another sigh, I moved away from the mirror to actually get ready for the day. Shower, protein shake, blow dry my hair and pull it into a functional ponytail, light make-up, then clothes. This was always depressing. Again I felt fat and my clothes didn’t help, even if I knew the reality was that while I could lose 40lbs I wasn’t actually obese. More sighs. Sports bra to strap everything down for what would be a physical day, long-sleeve teal work-out top, and fleece lined yoga pants because who said functional can’t also feel amazingly comfortable.

Fifteen minutes later I was parked outside the shop. Carl and Mary’s Antique Extras. I snorted, twice. The original shop had been Mary’s. Antiques sure, but also thrift items, and anything else that caught her eye. It was eclectic to say the least and that was before Carl. He felt like they weren’t making enough money. So he added on his “extras”. Those extras being a sex shop and not the classy kind. It wasn’t bad enough to have video booths in the back, but everything else was loud and abrasive sex. No veneer of sophistication or love, this was crass and tacky. I didn’t blame Tom for wanting to sell it. If it were my inheritance I probably wouldn’t have set foot in it, just sold it as is to the first buyer.

The bell chimed softly as I opened the door. Thankfully the entrance was on the antique side and not the sex shop side. I was greeted by old clocks, scratched and battered desks, and jewelry rather than dildos. While Mary had often tried to keep the light low to hide scratches and tears, today all the lights were bright. It made for a bit of a shining refuge from yet another rainstorm outside, but it also highlighted the massive amount of dust in the air. It swirled and danced in currents created by the AC system. The sight would have been pretty if the dust also wasn’t so thick that I could taste it in the back of my throat.

“Tom”, I called. While the shop was not large I did not immediately see or hear him. Maybe he had succumbed to dust poisoning? Is that a thing? I cracked a morbid smile as a news headline flashed in my head, “Husband and Wife dead in first ever case of dust poisoning. Authorities baffled.”

“Kendra”, came a muffled, maybe shout. “Thank god you are here, this is worse than I thought possible.”

I carefully wound my way towards the voice. Take a left at the stack of typewriters, three steps past what looked like it was meant to be a polished display of pocket watches, and then finally step carefully past the cigarette lighters that definitely were not more than 20 years old to arrive at the cash register was my mental narration. I hadn’t been here much at all before and honestly I can’t say that I was missing out on anything.

As I got near the counter I saw what was probably the only genuine antique in the entire store, the cash register. Tom stood behind the counter, a baffled expression on his face.

“Watch this”, he muttered as I got close.

With a move that told me he had done it many times before he pulled the lever on the handle of what looked like a wood cash register. With an audible screech of wood on wood that has been forced together a drawer popped out, presumably where cash went. But the drawer stopped when the opening was barely half an inch wide. At the same time Tom suddenly had a feather quill in his empty hand, poised above a book that now lay open on the counter.

“What am I supposed to be watching Tom? A broken cash register? Everything in this store looks like it is either broken, barely older than us, or both.”

He gestured at the cash register lever. “Pull it but watch my hand and the book.”

“Pull the lever Kronk”, I snarked. Ignoring his glare and the fact that I wasn’t sure if I just called myself Kronk, I did as he asked. The lever had remained pulled down away from me so I had to squish belly-up to the counter in order to pull it. I leaned forward to grab the lever putting my face fairly close to the top of the cash register. Looking down at it I noticed that it was extremely ornate. Everything except the lever was wood, including six buttons. The buttons rather than being plain circles or squares were all different shapes. Hard to tell looking at it backwards, but they looked shaped like animals maybe? The rest of the register was carved with silver and gold inlays, swirls mostly. But in between there were small paintings of incredible detail.

Enough. I pulled the lever. Well actually I tried to jerk the hell out of it and startle Tom. What actually happened was a smooth, though resisted, pull. The nearest I could think of was that it felt the same as pedaling a stationary bike that used magnets for the resistance. But as soon as the lever was pointing straight up again the wood screeched closed.

“See, what the fuck is going on Kendra?”

I looked at Tom and noticed the book and quill were gone. I had gotten a little distracted by the cash register, the unexpected feel of the lever and had forgotten to keep my eyes on him when pulling the lever. “Ok, so ... are you trying to get into magic? Because I’m not sure a disappearing pen is going to get us to Vegas.”

“I’m not doing the magic”, Tom said in a way that was both exasperated and yet he seemed truthful? Like this wasn’t a joke. “Came in and thought I would see if they had left any cash in the register. Thing looks amazing right? Pulled the lever while sneezing and suddenly book and pen. Been yanking on it all morning and I can’t figure it out.”

“You’ve been yanking things all morning,” I couldn’t keep the juvenile innuendo back. “That makes me feel like a bad wife. I thought you knew you just had to ask if it was a dry spell.”

The look Tom gave me was exactly what I wanted. A perfect combination of annoyance that I wasn’t intrigued, frustrated that I implied he had been jerking off to a cash register, and proud for the quick retort. “You know the dangers of doing that dry right? Did you at least get some lotion from the otherside of the shop first?”

“And people say I’m the degenerate,” he gruffed. Pointing his finger threateningly at me he said, “Maybe we should try out some lube next door. I’ve heard there’s some great butt plugs and alien shaped dildos too. Might be time to expand your horizons don’t you think?”

I held my hand up half covering my mouth and put on my best shocked face. “Tom, I’m learning all kinds of things today. Are you finally admitting you are man enough to take it up the backdoor?”

I cackled at his face. I knew he had zero issues with his masculinity and while we played with my ass occasionally neither of us felt any desire to play with his. But deciding that it was time to move on before I crossed a line, I dropped the pretence. “I don’t know what’s going on with the book honey. It’s weird, I agree. But honestly I think I can feel my lungs filling up with dust the longer I’m in here. What can I help with so that we can get the hell out of here?”I said, making sure I kept my voice serious but warm so he knew that I was attempting to be magnanimous in victory.

For the next several hours we shifted through piles of crap. Honestly I’m not surprised this stuff hadn’t sold. Even as a broke-ass college student I had nicer stuff than a lot of these “antiques”. Painted jewelry, furniture that looked like a toddler designed and assembled it then gave it to a college frat who tied it to their truck and used it to “surf” down main street, all of this was worthless.

My pile of absolute garbage grew much faster than the maybe this is worth trying to sell pile. Looking over at Tom periodically I could see that he was in a similar plight. I also took the opportunity to admire my husband. Mid-forties or not the man was still nice to look at. Especially that ass. Look I may not want to lick it or stick a finger up it, strap-on sure if he was interested, but that didn’t mean I didn’t admire it. Put that with a body toned from outdoor labor and a scar running on his jawline from a childhood injury, and he was sexy. My sexy Tom.

Jokes earlier aside, the funeral had put a bit of a damper on our sex life. Not that he was drowning in grief over his parents, but it meant a lot of extra things that had to be taken care of. I may not always feel sexy in my body, but I loved Tom and the intimate time we spent together. Maybe tonight would be a good time to get reacquainted with him, afterall I was in half a sex shop.

I started making my way towards the open doorway that led to the sex shop part. My hopes weren’t high that I would find anything great. I prefer sexy over trashy, but who knows maybe there would be something we could have fun with.

As I moved through the antique shop I made a detour to the ladies clothing section. Couldn’t hurt to walk through it right? Glancing around, something caught my eye despite it looking like it had been hastily stuffed in a corner. It was a corset. It was a gorgeous overbust corset. Shimmery cream silk, intricate black lace, it was the only thing in the shop I had seen that had absolutely no dust on it. My hand reached out to touch it and I almost drew my hand back. It was cold. But real. I rubbed my fingers across the lace embroidery and felt a tingle in my fingers.

I didn’t notice it at the time but as soon as I picked it up the cold vanished and the garment was pleasantly warm. I had corsets at home, but they were cheaply made, meant more for show and ease of getting off in sex. This was elegant and screamed expensive. The stitching around the boning was so small and fine that it was almost invisible. The whole garment was out of place.

Holding it up to myself I did a rough wrap around and realized it might fit. Even if it was too small, maybe this was motivation to lose a few pounds. I couldn’t say why but I really needed to wear it. Holding it out in front of me I looked for a tag, less concerned about price and more interested in who made this exquisite beauty. All I found was some stitching on the inside running parallel to the busk, “Desires Body.”

“Tom”, I said while turning and putting the garment behind my back. This sexy corset was going to be a surprise.

“Yeah”, came the half-strangled grunt.

“It’s getting late. How about I head home and start making us some dinner. I really think we have done enough for today. Also I was thinking I could grab some merlot on the way home?”

“Oh. Oh uhh yeah. Guess I got carried away”, Tom said sheepishly. “I’ll finish up here, lock up, and then see you at home.” His raised eyebrow was asking a question much louder than what he said.

You see neither of us drink much, nothing against it but it can get expensive quickly and we don’t love the feeling of actually being drunk. But wine, well when I said I wanted wine with dinner that had become code over the years for “I’m horny and want to be fucked.”

I answered his unspoken question with my own wink and made sure to swing my hips as I walked out of the store. I might not like how I look, but Tom did. I was tempted to check if he watched, but I decided to let him have the view free of embarrassment or interruption.

As soon as I got in the house I rushed to my bedroom. Throwing shoes and all my clothes in a heap was something I never did. Except apparently when I’m really excited to try on lingerie. I’m not sure what I was thinking, I had promised to make dinner. You know that thing to help with the gurgling noises my stomach was making. I certainly didn’t need a corset to cook in. Maybe I could be a sexy chef? Or at least I should make sure this looks good on me before getting Tom in bed.

The hooks in front were as ornate as the rest. No simple hook here, but intricate lions in various poses. Each one biting or clawing something when each hook was closed. Ok deep breath, always a bad idea in a corset but I needed a second. Then forcing my eyes up I looked in the mirror.

Damn. Lighting or my mood or something was different but I was hot. I’d definitely fuck me. Of course I was standing in front of the mirror posing in just a corset, so maybe I was biased.

Giggling, I spent another minute checking myself out. It was still me, but better. I guess quality lingerie really can make a difference. But even my bare ass looked better, no way a corset was doing that. Shrugging, I decided not to question my happiness.

I didn’t think Tom would be far behind me so I reluctantly left the mirror to grab some panties. Thong? Yeah tonight felt like a sexy thong night.

“Kendra”, Tom’s voice echoed from downstairs.

I tried to be sultry. “In here babe.”

Trying to leap onto a bed while not making noise and get into a sexy pose quickly is not something they teach you in school. Some girls might have learned it in college, but two decades of marriage had dulled any skills I once had.