Cider With Rosie
Copyright© 2026 by Capt Stan
Chapter 1
Romance Sex Story: Chapter 1 - Laurie is invited to a school reunion, driving five hours to his childhood village to meet people he has not seen for forty years. A homage to Laurie Lee's eponymous book, where the real Slad becomes a fictitious Crawedon. When life is ruptured and swings in a new direction, can one ever go back?
Caution: This Romance Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Heterosexual Fiction Cheating Petting
I picked up my phone, pressed my thumb on the sensor, and waited for the screen to unlock. My glance showed one text, six WhatsApp messages, and ten emails. I tapped open the text.
“Hey, love,” I called out, “I’ve had a message from Harry.”
She turned from the kitchen sink, drying her hands on a tea towel.
“Harry, Laurence?”
“Yeah. I haven’t heard from him since Christmas, perhaps longer. He’s inviting me to a class reunion at Crawedon.”
“Oh—that Harry!”
I smiled. “Could be interesting ... seeing faces I haven’t seen in over forty years.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you can count me out. That’s all yours.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
Later, I sat in the lounge with my tablet balanced on my knees, the news queued up but unread. My thoughts had drifted elsewhere—back to a different place and time. It struck me then, with sudden surprise, that after twenty-five years of marriage, my wife still didn’t know the story of my final year at primary school in the village.
Our teacher, Mr Marsh, believed he was working with a class full of promise. From that first September, he pushed us hard, convinced we could rise above expectations. By June, we were sitting the entrance exam for Crawebridge Grammar. His instincts proved right—fourteen of us passed. Nearly half the class. A record for the school.
That autumn, we began boarding a green double-decker bus each morning for the eight-mile ride into town. Well—I did, for three terms. Then, my dad landed a new job, and we moved from Sussex to Northumberland. Suddenly, my whole life—everything I had ever known—was three hundred miles behind me.
At first, I kept in touch. I wrote regular letters to Harry, my best friend. But the months stretched, and the letters thinned. Eventually, they settled into a single exchange each Christmas. Then slowly, that became the odd email around the holidays.
And there was something else I left behind.
We had lived on what you might call a posh road—a cul-de-sac of big, imposing detached houses. Ours, though detached, stood out. Only three bedrooms, whereas the others had four or five. Peeling paint, overgrown borders. You could practically feel the disapproval as neighbours walked past.
Across the road lived Rosemary, one of my classmates, in a handsome redbrick house with symmetrical windows and a polished oak front door. We did not speak at school or on the street, but I enjoyed watching her. I thought about her more than I ever admitted, even to myself. I suppose I imagined her as my girlfriend. Truthfully, I barely understood what that meant back then. It was a child on my cheek’s yearning, no more, no less.
The daily bus ride to grammar school changed everything. One morning, by chance, Rosemary and I sat next to each other. We talked the whole way there—and again on the ride home. From that day forward, we were inseparable.
I have never forgotten that, one blazing hot afternoon in late July, just before my parents dropped their bombshell. We decided to walk out into the fields, the wheat swaying around us, up to our chests. My school satchel was bulging with sandwiches she had made and a bottle of cider I’d quietly lifted from the larder.
Halfway across the four-acre field, we found shade beneath an old farm wagon and settled in for a feast. We passed the cider bottle between us, laughing, our conversation mostly silly gossip—poking fun at villagers, adults and children alike. It was childish nonsense, but it felt like our own little world.
By then, Rosemary had become Rosie.
As we packed up to leave, she turned to me, leaned forward, and kissed me lightly on my cheek.
“Thank you, Laurie,” she said. “You’re a super friend.”
It was the gentlest thing—and it became etched deep in my memory. A few days later, everything changed. My world fell apart, and whatever might have grown from that kiss never had the chance.
Harry sent a steady stream of messages about the reunion, and using the details I pieced together, I began to shape a rough itinerary.
My childhood home was in Lower Crawedon, between the village shop and the old school. The original village of Crawedon, perched on the Down, reached only by a steep, narrow lane that wound up from the vale before giving way to a rutted track. The church, parsonage, and pub huddled close together among scattered flint-walled cottages, their thatched roofs a reminder of centuries past. Only the church wore slate.
The reunion would be at the King’s Head. It hadn’t changed. There was still no car park. Villagers from Lower Crawedon had always walked the few hundred metres up the Down and then, after last orders, made the less graceful journey home.
Taking Harry’s advice, I decided to follow the old tradition—park at the school and walk. For my two nights away, I booked a room at the Crawebridge Hotel, just a short stroll from the grammar school gates.
Five hours after leaving home, I crested the last hill into Crawebridge and my chest tightened. It wasn’t excitement. It was that peculiar in-between, the moment before a page turns.
I hadn’t set foot near Lower Crawedon in decades. The roads were familiar but unfamiliar at the same time. The traditional Sussex road signs away from the highways stirred something in me—echoes from my past. My thoughts drifted to Rosie, Harry, and the others I hadn’t seen since their lives drifted in opposite directions. Would they recognise me?
I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as the grammar school’s redbrick outline came into view, framed by trees that were saplings in my memory. The past was suddenly not behind me—it would be waiting the next day, just past the old church, under the roof of the King’s Head.
And I wasn’t sure if I was ready—but I was here.
It was a fine, warm summer Saturday morning when I parked beside the school. The area was bare—no teachers’ cars, no chatter—just the quietness of the weekend. From there, I began the walk uphill to the pub.
Curiosity overcame me, and I turned into the close where I had once lived. The house stood transformed—twice the size I remembered—and the old orchard, once alive with apple, pear and plum trees, had vanished beneath new brickwork. I turned to Rosie’s place across the way. Not a tile out of place. It stood unchanged, wrapped in my memory, exactly as it had been forty years ago.
I wandered along the sunken lane, carved deep into the earth by centuries of passing carts, shaded by everlasting yews. As I walked, doubts stirred. Why had I come all this way? To see people I barely remembered?
Outside the King’s Head, I hesitated. Then I pushed open the door.
A wave of heat and voices hit me like a wall—two dozen bodies packed into the bar. I scanned the room, nerves jangling. Then I saw Harry. His grin broke wide, and he reached out, pulling me into a one-armed hug.
“What’s your poison, Laurie?
I chose a pint of draught cider, chilled from the cellar, something cold to counter the thick summer heat.
“Right,” Harry said, placing a hand on my back. “There’s someone I think you’ll want to see. Come on.”
He led me through the bar and out into the garden, where the swelter softened beneath the dappled shade of a great oak. Beneath its branches, seated on a weathered bench, was a woman I recognised instantly
“Rosemary”, Harry called, “He’s here.”
She looked up. And my heart—long dormant in that particular way—stirred. Rosie had been pretty at twelve. Now, she was luminous.
Her shoulder-length blonde hair shimmered in the light. Gold earrings peeked beneath the curls. She wore a pale pink blouse, sheer enough that a darker underlayer hinted at her softness beneath. A matching skirt fell gracefully to her knees, her hands resting gently in the folds. On one finger, a gold wedding band. I tried not to stare, but I could not help wondering who the man was and what kind of life she had built.
I sat beside her and placed my hand lightly over hers.
“Rosie.”
“Laurie.”
And just like that, the years folded away. We stayed together the entire day. She sipped chilled white wine, and I worked my way through a few pints, and between trips to the buffet and people drifting in and out of conversations, we found our way back to that bench under the oak again and again.
I don’t recall much of what we said. I was utterly, helplessly besotted. It was as if the forty years that passed were no more than a pause between sentences.
As the afternoon passed, Rosie tucked her knees beneath her on the bench, a wine glass cradled between both hands. Her smile had softened—not the polite one she’d worn earlier, but something quieter, more reflective.
“You haven’t changed much,” she said, tilting her head. “Still do that funny thing when you’re trying to listen.”
I laughed, caught off guard. “And you still remember far too much.”
She didn’t waver. “Not everything. But enough.”
Occasional breezes stirred the garden, rustling the leaves overhead. The pub door swung open now and then with bursts of loud conversations or laughter, but they felt distant to whatever had quietly settled between us.
“Laurie”, she said tentatively, “Why today? Why come back now?”
I paused. There was no neat answer. The words I offered were incomplete. “Because I never stopped thinking about this place. About you.”
She looked away, a flush rising to her cheeks. “I used to hope you’d come back.”
And just like that, the moment gathered weight. I reached for Rosie’s hand, and she didn’t let go.
We didn’t speak for a while after that. We didn’t need to.
“Rosie”, I asked gently, “Will you walk back with me? Across the four-acre field, like we used to?”
We didn’t bother with the bar but slipped out the garden gate, crossed the lane, and stepped through the old kissing gate. I let her go first; when she was inside the tiny space, she turned and gave me a quick peck on the lips.
The field was fallow, wildflowers and grasses up to our hips as we walked carefully along the worn path hand in hand, side by side.
I glanced at a towering cumulonimbus, realising the summer heat was stirring up late showers.
Rosie tugged at my hand and smiled. “Do you remember our picnic here?”
“Yes. We sat beneath an old hay cart to stay out of the sun.”
She grinned mischievously. “It was over there, by the barn. Let’s go and see.”
We left the path and pushed through tall grass and weeds. As the barn emerged, I spotted a pile of old timber nearby—a broken cartwheel half-buried in the mess.
We stood together with shared memories. Rosie wrapped her arm around my waist and leaned into me, her head resting on my shoulder.
“Nothing lasts forever.” The words felt sad, as if she spoke about something only she could see.
A raindrop touched my nose, pulling me from my thoughts. I looked up again. “Rosie, we need to get inside. It’s going to rain.”
I tugged gently on her hand, and she followed, casting one last glance at the broken cart. I squeezed between the barn doors, nudging them wide enough for her to slip through.
Inside, the air was warm with straw. She perched on a half-stacked bale while I leaned against another, watching her.
Rosie, in pink, was a vision made real.
The barn clattered with the percussion of rain drumming on the rusty tin roof, something familiar from my half-remembered childhood.
Rosie sighed—barely audible, but something about it made me glance her way.
“Do you ever think how life might have gone if you had never left?”
There it was again—that ache for a deep longing. I sat alongside her and shifted closer, my knee nearly touching hers.
“Sometimes. More than I’d admit to most people.”
She looked up then, her eyes catching mine.
“And now that you’re here?”
“I’m wondering why I ever stayed away.”
She smiled at that. And then her gaze drifted past me, toward the barn doors cracked just enough to show the falling rain.
“It’s different now, full of newcomers. Our old life is no more.”
I reached across and held her hand again, curling my fingers through hers. “Then leave the world out there for a while.”
Rosie leant against me, and I lifted my arm, resting it across her warm shoulders, fingers rubbing the soft material of her sleeve. She sighed, then slipped down, half lying on the bale, with her head in my lap.
We stayed like that, two old friends wrapped together in memories. And deep in us, something stirred—unspoken needs.
The rain intensified, pounding against the barn’s corrugated roof in a steady, rhythmic torrent.
I looked down at Rosie, her head resting gently against my tummy. Her blonde hair revealed threads of grey at the roots, which struck me much deeper than expected. Time had passed, and life had happened, but here she was, with me.
I touched her shoulder, fingers brushing over the ridge of bone beneath her blouse. Slowly, I bent forward and pressed my lips on the side of her head, breathing her in—the scent of warm skin mingled with the faintest trace of her perfume.
She tilted her face up toward mine, and our eyes met. In that pause, everything softened. I moved—barely—just a few millimetres to close the distance. But she reached first, her hand threading into my hair and pulling me down with sudden urgency. Our lips met, parted, and the kiss deepened, slow at first, then passionately, trying to bridge the years we had let slip past.
Our lips pressed together with the hunger that only absence can build. Rosie leaned into me, her arms curling around my neck, drawing me closer. Her fingers moved in slow circles across my back, my shirt unable to dull the warmth of her touch.