Chapter 1

“Honey, no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

That’s the answer I’ve gotten for the last three months! I’d become obsessed with Daniella, my wife, telling me about her first lover. The only answer she’d give me has been, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I’ve asked her if it was painful? Was it bad? Good? Exciting? Dull? And I get, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

And she’d cut me off, change the subject to something else. Hell, we’ve been married twenty-eight years. It was a long time ago and I don’t understand why she wouldn’t even begin a discussion. All I know is that Dani wasn’t a virgin the first time we made love. I was. I hadn’t ever been with a woman before her. I’d been on dates, even had a girlfriend for a bit in college. We kissed, but that was the extent of my sexual baseball, a single, first base only. She’d been all the way around the bases and I was starved for details. It had become almost an fixation.

I even tried to let it drop and then dreamed about what might have been. The next morning, I told her about my dream. She giggled a little and said it wasn’t like that at all. That was the extent of her hints.

Dani was a cheerleader and the star point guard on our 3rd place state finalist basketball team. She was the smallest on the cheer team and was the one doing the gymnastic leaps off the other girls’ hands. Of course, neither of us knew the other existed at the time.

And she was the homecoming queen during football her senior year. I was gone that year, my first year of college. I’ve seen the picture of Dani and her boyfriend, a black guy football jock; the only black guy I’ve ever seen in our school. He was new at our school that year. I never knew him and she’d never even told me his name. But I wasn’t surprised that he’d be her boyfriend. I’ve learned over the last twenty-eight years that there’s not a prejudiced bone in Dani’s body. Besides, in the picture, he was a darn good-looking kid.

Why did it suddenly become an obsession with me? It stemmed from an evening that we were going through some old albums and I saw that picture of my beautiful wife in her gown that night of homecoming, her boyfriend kissing her on the cheek the night she was announced as the homecoming queen.

I saw the look in her eyes when we turned the album’s page and that 8x10 picture was on the next, kind of a ‘longing’ look. Or maybe not. I wondered if I was just imagining things and just blurted out, “Was he your first?”

She smiled at me and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

That was when it began. Dani was so beautiful and sexy in that picture being kissed by probably the best- looking guy in school, chocolate-brown complexion. Besides, I’d heard the rumors, you know about black guys.

After that, my obsession with knowing just grew, that picture in my brain. But she wouldn’t tell me anything; was she was dating the guy or was that just a ‘homecoming’ kiss?

Now, back to the beginning of the story, about three months after I’d first seen that picture. It was a normal Friday in October. We still lived in our home town. Dani had gone out that evening to visit a couple girlfriends she’s had since school and I stayed home alone. We had two kids; one in college and one married, working at the local RV manufacturing plant.

We were proud of both, our oldest was the youngest person the plant had ever promoted to a manager. The other, our daughter, was going to college to be a teacher, to follow in her mom’s footsteps (pretty sure Dani’s been the subject of many high school boys’ wet dreams).

None of that had anything to do with the strange happenings of that evening, though, except that it explains why I was home alone. After Dani left, I was pondering that little mystery of my wife and even had gotten the album out again with the picture of Dani and her ‘boyfriend’ to look at again. She had the little queen’s crown on her head and the kid was holding her hand and politely kissing her on the cheek.

Dani was wearing a pale blue dress with a beautiful corsage over her left breast. The dress was long, flowing with a slit up one side, bare shoulders with a deep ‘V’ showing her cleavage. Her auburn hair was curled under, just above her shoulders. She looked like a sweet, sexy, high school girl, her face beaming with the honor of being voted homecoming queen.

I sat, just staring at the picture, almost to the point of the picture putting me in a trance, wondering about later that night, the homecoming dance ... and after.

I hadn’t had dinner and decided to go buy myself a Pizza Hut dinner. I stepped outside, taking about four steps and stopping to gaze at my surroundings. I was thoroughly confused, my 2015 Accord was gone and my parents’ old black ‘63 Ford Fairlane was in the street where the Accord was supposed to be. That was the car I’d driven my first year of college, before they’d sold it the following summer and I bought a little pickup.

How the hell was it sitting in our street? In front of our house! I checked the keys in my pocket and there they were ... the keys for the Ford. Now, I was really confused. I knew damn good and well that I’d just picked up the keys for the Accord from the key rack beside the door.

I turned around to go back in and see if they were still there ... and my eyes widened ... there was no house! I was staring at the empty lot that Dani and I had bought six years ago. What the hell? I looked down at my feet and I was standing on bare dirt, not our concrete sidewalk. When I turned back around again, the old Fairlane wasn’t on a street, just the dirt road that was there before the subdivision was put in.

The first thing that went through my mind was the old TV show, ‘The Twilight Zone’. I half expected to hear that mystical music and Rod Serling’s voice, “This is the dimension of Imagination...” But no, it couldn’t be ... the only logical explanation was that I’d gone to sleep, probably while looking at the picture, and this was nothing but a dream, so I pinched the back of my hand to wake myself up.

It didn’t work, so I pinched harder, so that it actually hurt. The empty lot didn’t go away. The Ford was still parked on the dirt road. I didn’t know whether to be afraid or just go with the damned dream. I glanced down at my Fitbit. It showed October 25, 1987. I did just a bit of mental gymnastics, in my sleep obviously, and deduced that was the year Dani had been a senior in high school. I’d graduated in May of ‘87.

But this was the most unbelievably real dream I’d ever had! It was a chilly evening and I was cold. Wouldn’t that normally wake a guy up? Then I remembered that that day had been unseasonably warm, in the sixties and when Dani left to go with her friends, it was still almost sixty outside. So, why was it so damned cold? Thankfully, at least, I was wearing a reasonably warm shirt, but still shivering.

Up and down the ‘street’, there was nothing but an empty field with one, lonely, dirt road through the bare field toward the highway where a few minutes earlier it had been a housing development; streets, houses, trees, landscaping.

I got in the old Ford and started it up. It was running on seven cylinders, just like it had been when I was a freshman in college. And messy inside, just like I’d always kept it. And, there in the back seat, was my old red plaid wool jacket, the one I loved before it shrunk to about an eight-year-old size when I accidentally washed it in hot water. I’d given it to the Salvation Army long before Dani and I married then never saw it again.

When I put it on, it fit me the same as it did when my brother gave it to me for Christmas. Maybe a little tight because I’d gained a few pounds. But it did fit. I had to laugh, the ‘bullet hole’ was still there. It was a drop of battery acid that had burned a little hole in it right at my chest and I’d affectionately called it my bullet hole. I was one tough cookie to survive that one.

It was only about a half-mile into town and everything was like I remembered from back in the eighties: cars and pickups, eighties and earlier; the old service station that had been torn down for a new one was there; town was exactly like it had been when I graduated high school.

I had a thought ... my cell phone. I got it out to call Dani to see if she was having the same experience as I was. When I looked at it, no service. Duhh!

This dream was completely out of hand!

I drove up past the high school. In the early nineties, the outside had been remodeled, adding a roof and enclosed access between the junior high and high school buildings. Naturally, the remodel wasn’t there. It was still set up so that there was a driveway between the two buildings.

One thing I saw from ‘High School Hill’ was that the lights were on at the football field, down at the elementary school.

If this was a dream, it was more real life than anything I’d ever experienced before! I thought again about The Twilight Zone. That was more like what this seemed, like I’d stepped through a worm-hole, back in time. I know when I had been looking at Dani’s picture, it was October 25th, 2019. I looked at my watch again; it still showed Oct 25, 1987.

I drove through town again to the football field. But, before I did, I looked in the rear-view mirror, at myself. I wondered, if I’d gone back in time, had my age changed? No, I was still the same fifty-year-old Robert.

At the football field, I parked and walked to the bleachers overlooking the field. It was like I wasn’t even there, no one seemed to notice me at all.

There, on the side of the field, in front of the bleachers, was my Dani, in her short cheerleader skirt and top. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, she looked so young and pretty, like the high school senior she would have been that year.

I glanced at the scoreboard on the end of the field, two minutes-fourteen seconds left in the first quarter. Score: home-fourteen, visitor-eight.

My eyes went back to my ‘wife’, the seventeen-year-old Daniella, jumping and yelling into the mouthpiece of her cone-shaped cheer phone. Occasionally, the girls would do a little acrobatic routine, with Dani always one of the two doing the flips.

At the end of the first quarter, she disappeared, going to the lockers. It came to me, was this the homecoming game? My heart rate doubled, thinking about the possibilities.

It was so weird, sitting there, with no one even acknowledging me, almost like I was invisible. Either that or just that I was a stranger that no one knew. I recognized several of the ‘kids’ that I had gone to school with so long ago. Some of the parents, too. Dani’s parents were there, even younger than my Dani had been when she’d left the house earlier that evening. And her little brother. Her parents are in their seventies, but that night, closer to forty, which they would have been in 1987.

The second quarter of the game dragged by, seemingly taking forever to get to halftime. Our team lost their lead, giving up two touchdowns. Not that I was too worried about the score of the game.

After the halftime horn blared, I was anxiously waiting, nervous about what was going to happen. It was only half a minute later when the brand new-looking Mustang convertible began the drive onto the track around the field, carrying three girls sitting up on the back of the back seat. They drove all the way around the track, then parked in front of the home grandstands.

Three guys were waiting, two in suits and one in his football uniform – the black kid, to accompany the girls in front of the bleachers. I’d seen this play out at the homecoming games when I was in school, but watching now, knowing that my ‘high school’ Dani was one of the girls, was doing a number to the swarm of butterflies in my tummy.

And then it hit me. I knew damned good and well that I’d wake up right before...

But I didn’t wake up. At least not yet.

The three guys escorted the three girls, the football player offering Dani his hand to help her out of the car. Dani was wearing the blue dress in the picture and looked even better than in the picture. A lot better. The slit in her dress was there in the picture, but when she walked, it swished open and closed, offering those glimpses of her pretty leg, nearly up to her thigh.

When they announced the name of ‘Princess’ Ann, then ‘Princess’ Jenny, the one remaining girl, Dani, covered her mouth with her hand, realizing that the other two girls were princesses, leaving one last girl as queen, herself. When her name was announced as ‘Queen’ Daniella, the look of excitement on her face was palpable. Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes wide and then her grin ... that grin that I’d seen so many times. I remember it the first time we’d been told that she was pregnant.

And then her ‘jock’, standing behind her, placed the queen’s crown on her head, and I saw a flash from a camera. Then he moved to her side and kissed her on the cheek, another flash going off. The picture, the one in her album!

Then one that isn’t in the album, that I didn’t know existed; Dani turned her head and the next kiss was on the lips. Short, but most definitely meaningful, with another flash. Where is that picture?

The three girls were escorted back to the Mustang and made another round before disappearing at the far end of the field. Pretty sure they were a bit anxious to get into warmth after wearing those gowns out in the cold.

It was halfway through the third quarter before Dani, the cheerleader, made her appearance back in front of the bleachers. This time, not thinking ahead to halftime, I paid a little more attention to how she looked in her cheer costume.

I’d noticed before how short it was, but not how gorgeous her legs were with the tight leggings she wore underneath her skirt.

I thought back to our first time. Dani was nervous and I was scared and excited. I had barely entered her. It felt so good and was my first time. I’d pushed all the way inside her and felt the orgasm rising almost instantly. We hadn’t had a condom and I knew she didn’t want to get pregnant so I pulled out of her and exploded all over her pubic hairs. There was no way I could control myself. I’d masturbated before, but this was so different, her body was so hot and slippery inside her.

I was embarrassed, felt like I’d let her down, but she wrapped her arms around me and told me it had been wonderful for her, too. I actually believed her at the time, and the one thing I never thought of until years later was that there was no hymen blocking her. I obviously didn’t know what to expect, but I’d read about sex with a virgin. It just didn’t occur to me until so much later.

Our next time and the times after that were much better, and, well, she did marry me.

It never bothered me, because we’d been married for several years by the time that I did realize she’d had a lover before because by then we were one with each other, madly in love and in a very happy marriage. It wasn’t until that night looking through her album and seeing the picture for the first time that I had really started to wonder about her first time ... and, you already know, she wouldn’t talk to me about it.

A moment before the end of the game, during a home-team timeout, the game’s announcer made an announcement, “Dance afterward, students only, high school gym. Visitors, you’re invited.”

The homecoming court would most certainly be at the dance. I looked around, wondering. It was like I wasn’t even there, not a word had been spoken to me, not a head had turned my way, like I was invisible. Students only. Could I?