Chapter 29

Friday evening, March 27

“Mom...? Is this real?”

We’d invited Jon and Jodi for dinner Friday night, along with both our sets of parents, intending the big ‘reveal’, Dani’s movie contract. We hadn’t said anything to them, just that we’d met an old friend in Reno, who’d invited us to his home in Tampa for a couple days.

Our flight home Wednesday was so different than the flight to Tampa, first class is ... well, first-class! My only complaint was that there was no ‘Marcus’ for Dani to flirt with, and it was still long. We didn’t get home and in bed until nearly midnight, too late and too tired for any shenanigans.

Thursday was a busy day, we called the kids and our parents, asking them to dinner Friday, Jenny and Richard on Saturday. As close as Dani is to Jenny, she still insisted we tell our family about her acting contract first, and in-person with time for some degree of explanation.

Dani said she’d call Leslie at the bank to reschedule an appointment to discuss a loan for the new store in Pasco, for which we hadn’t abandoned the plan. “Why don’t you invite her to lunch or dinner, you know, to reminisce ... just to see what happens,” Dani said with that devious smile on her face, “I still think you-know-what would be fun ... and while I’m gone you might get lonesome.”

“Uhhh!” was my intelligent response.

Dani chuckled, “What, you thought I’d forgotten? I thought maybe you could get to know her, then when I’m home we could invite her over and maybe ... your dream...” batting her eyes at me, letting me know exactly what she was thinking.

“I ... uhh ... you know I can’t do that, not without you here,” I was stammering, groping.

“Well, I’m not suggesting you do THAT without me, just spend some time with her, get to know her, then after I get home, maybe ... that...”

“You know she was your friend in my dream, I didn’t even know who she was,” I told her.

“Now you do, though, all the better, just ask her to go to lunch, I’m guessing she’ll be thrilled.”

I sighed, I wasn’t going to win this argument ... except... “Okay, I will ... if you promise you’ll call Mark, make an appointment with him first chance you get, we’re going to need the financial help, anyway, and maybe...”

Dani rolled her eyes at me, “Fine, I’ll call Mark, he’ll want to know about the movie ... but I am NOT going to try and seduce him. He needs to find someone to love him, someone who can fill his emptiness.”

“You’re right, but don’t you think ... until he does...?”

“I’ll call him, I’m not sure when we’d be able to meet him, though.”

“Kinda like Leslie, then, I guess, just to get that ball rolling down the lane, huh,” I told her, hoping for an eventual strike.

“And Alan?” I asked, “sounds like you’re going to be spending a lot of time with him, maybe...?”

She shook her head, “That would be a definite no,” she said, “much as I know I might be tempted, I’m not going to go there.”

“But...”

“No, I’m going to have to work with him, what you’re suggesting could ruin everything,” she hesitated, looking straight at me, “and I mean ‘everything’. I’m not going to risk that.”

She seemed to mean what she said, not leaving any wiggle room in her tone.

“After the movie’s finished?”

She just glared at me in silence.

I thought about that night, Dani and Leslie in my dream, me tied to a chair, blindfolded, listening to their lovemaking, what a fucking experience that had been! Remembering, too, the night with Jenny and what Dani had said about her that night in Reno but I wasn’t going to mention it, that would be too weird. She’s Dani’s best friend, and she’d said that about Jenny during a time when neither of us was thinking too clearly ... if you know what I mean.

So, I guess it was settled, I was asking Leslie out on a ‘date’ and we’re going to eventually meet Mark, for what, exactly, other than financial, I had no idea. But that avenue didn’t seem nearly as closed as Alan Ryder. Now, all I had to do was work up some courage before that bank meeting with Leslie, next Tuesday, ten o’clock. A LOT of courage!

After that conversation, I suggested we get Dani’s trunk from her parents’ attic. We went to their house and struggled to bring it down the narrow pull-down stair. It’s big, and it’s heavy.

After picking up the chest, Dani wanted to go on a little drive, out toward Moses Lake, and she directed me toward her grandparents’ old farm, “I’m kind of surprised I still even remember the way,” she told me after turning on several side roads, each one a little rougher than before, finally down a long gravel road to a driveway leading off to a very old barn with a sagging roof, shop, and house nestled amongst a grove of ancient-looking elm trees, all of which looked like it’d been abandoned for years, the corral outside the barn completely overgrown with weeds, and a rusted hulk of an old crawler tractor beside the barn. The driveway was protected by a padlocked gate at the entrance off the county road. “That’s it,” Dani said, pointing to the group of buildings.

“Can we just stop here a little while?” she asked, which is what we did. Dani stared, and I saw a tear rolling down her cheek, “It brings back so many memories,” she said, wiping her face. I was wishing I had some Kleenex, napkins, or anything. “Grandpa used to farm these fields,” she told me, pointing to the rolling hills of grass, “he grew wheat, looks like they haven’t for a long time.”

“I rode Taffy all over these hills, our neighbors didn’t care, we never even had fences between the properties, it was like one big happy family in those days. I used to climb those trees when I was a kid. My dad even built a little treehouse in one ... wonder if anything of it’s still there.”

Dani’s grandparents have been gone for many years, her granddad died of cancer before we started going together when he was way too young, and her grandmother lived in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s for several years after we married. We used to visit her a lot, but Dani had had never told me about the farm.

Seeing it for the first time brought forth a strong emotional reaction from me, too. This had been my wife’s childhood, many of her happiest memories from what she’d said, hidden away for all those years.

“How big was it?” I asked her.

She let out a little laugh, “Seemed pretty big to me when I was a kid,” she said, “couple hundred acres, I think. Guess that’s not so big, but to a kid...”

We sat there another several minutes until Dani directed me down some other roads, pointing out different things, an occasional house, telling me about the neighbors who used to live there. “Wonder if it might be for sale?” Dani asked, looking at me expectantly, “maybe...?”

I squeezed her hand, thinking that it might be the ultimate gift, both to her and to her mom and dad, especially her mom who’d grown up on the farm. It was a little hard to grasp the concept that within a few months we may even be able to afford to buy a farm. Between Dani’s teaching and my store we’ve made a pretty good living but not for that kind of expense. I saved the location in front of the house on my phone and made a note of the address marked on an old post just to help with a little research later.

We stopped for dinner at a tiny pizza café the ‘Time Out’, in the little town of Othello, a few miles from the farm. We’d seen the sign pointing toward the town many times, off the main highway about a mile, but had never stopped. Their pepperoni and sausage pizza with a crunchy, sourdough crust was to die for, so much better than the chains.

Once back home, we wiped the dust from the top of the trunk and carried it into our bedroom, then left it, watching one of our favorite shows, ‘Bull’, before we went to bed, figuring it would likely be more fun to explore what was in it at bedtime. I don’t know if Dani was feeling the anticipation like I was, but it was hard to concentrate on Bull’s legal troubles.

To be perfectly honest, the anticipation was driving me out of my mind knowing that trunk was in our bedroom, aching to know what might be in it. I knew that in my dream, it had been her homecoming dress, her prom dress, her cheer outfit, the New Year’s Eve outfit, prom pictures, and a few other odds and ends, most of which were figments of my dream, not real life, so I didn’t know what to expect from the real trunk.

I undressed and lay down on the bed, waiting for Dani to get ready for bed in the bathroom like she often does. This time turned out to be different, though, as the only thing she was wearing when she came back into the bedroom was her birthday suit, “There might be something I need to try on in there, this will make it that much easier,” she said, giving me a little pose of her naked body, a naked body that the entire world may be seeing in a few short months, one that I vowed to never, ever take for granted again like I had before my accident.

I got up and walked around to the end of the bed with Dani, in front of the trunk. Dani put a hand on one front corner of the lid and me the other. “I haven’t opened this since before we started going together, kind of forgot about it,” Dani said, looking up at me, “you ready?”

She counted down from three and together, we pulled the top open.

There, on top, was a carefully folded garment bag. I could see Dani’s hands shaking as she picked it up, carefully laying it on the bed, beginning to unzip it. Inside was a beautiful, baby-blue dress, almost turquoise, but not quite. She took it out of the bag and held it up in front of her, “I haven’t worn this since Homecoming night,” she said, “I put it in the garment bag in my closet that night and never took it out until I put it in the trunk. I haven’t even looked at it again until now.”

“Try it on?” I asked her

She giggled, “You think it’ll fit? My boobs have gotten quite a bit bigger since then, I’ve gained some weight, too.”

I laughed at that, “Yeah, maybe five pounds,” I told her. And she was right, much of that was probably in her tits, only making her sexier. It’d probably been ten pounds, too, that she’d gained, not bad for thirty-some years and two kids. “You said you were going to try some things on, pretty sure you meant the dress, so...”

She stepped back from the bed to give herself a little more room and unzipped the dress, slipping it on over her head. I hadn’t even realized it but was holding my breath. She turned around, her back to me, “Zip me?” she asked. I did and she took a couple steps then turned around and ... wow! I let my breath exhale.

It was a little tight, which only added to the allure, spaghetti straps over her bare shoulders, a gentle ‘V’ between her breasts, and that slit – even higher than I remembered in the picture. Dani looked down at herself, “I was wearing a bra that night, panties, too,” she said.

“Too bad, their loss,” I told her. That night of the ‘party’ before I awoke from the coma, she’d been wearing this dress. “Hon,” I began to tell her, “you’re wrong, you wore this another time, too ... that night I woke up ... there was a party, you wore this dress ... you were so beautiful that night, no bra that night, either ... and you’d taken your panties off during the party.”

“A party? You never told me.” She sat down on the bed pulling me down beside her, and I felt how soft her dress was against her skin. “Tell me about that night,” she asked.

I let my hand wander ... that slit ... I couldn’t resist, my hand pushing it aside, “There were six of us: You and Alan Ryder were together; Jenny and Richard, Jenny was wearing her homecoming dress, too; me and...” I realized that I’d never told Dani about Betty.

“And? Who?” Dani asked.

I took a breath, looking at Dani, “And ... Betty ... from the store...”

Dani’s let out a little, “Ohh,” then, “Betty? Frumpy Betty?”

I looked at Dani, neither of us had ever said those words together before, it’s what I’d thought before that night, the exact words in my head. I nodded, “Yeah, but ‘frumpy’ she wasn’t.” Betty’s the store’s part-time bookkeeper, who wears nothing except sweats, top and bottom, hair in a bun. “She was ... uhh ... gorgeous, a tight satin dress, hair down, no glasses, makeup. I thought, when she came in ... that it had been her ... that night, not Leslie until she told us it hadn’t been.”

Dani sat quietly, letting that soak in, “Betty ... so you and her...” She gripped my leg, squeezing, sliding her hand up my groin, “So, you and Betty ... what exactly did you and Betty do?” she asked.

“We were playing a game, all six of us, one you said you’d played with Alan Ryder on your graduation night, a sex game.” I took a breath, it was time to tell her, “You’d kissed Richard, a long kiss, you made it clear that eventually that night you were going to fuck him.”

“Richard? And Jenny was going to be okay with that?” Dani sounded shocked.

I nodded, “Uhuh, pretty sure it was eventually going to turn into a sex free-for-all ... you’d made some marijuana brownies, Alan’s recipe ... we were all horny.”

I pressed a finger inside Dani, then another, finding where I knew her g-spot to be. She did a sharp intake of breath followed by a loud, “Oh!” her hips thrusting into my fingers.

“Betty and I kissed, long and hot,” pressing my fingers inside her to the knuckles, flexing them, rubbing.

“And then it was your turn to turn a card, a jack ... you could tell anyone to do whatever. You said ... Betty ... you wanted her ... naked ... and me to ... suck her tits...”

My fingers were still inside Dani, but still, her squeezing her legs together. “And you...?”

“We all went upstairs to our bedroom, Betty was bashful, wanted the guys all blindfolded. She undressed, then ... told us to take off our blindfolds, okay to open our eyes ... I opened mine ... and was in the hospital room ... you and Jenny sitting by the bed.”

Dani let out a gasp, much more pronounced than the fingers had generated. “So...”

I nodded, “It was Betty ... she told me to open my eyes ... to wake up.”

Dani wrapped her arms around me, and her tears started flowing, “I love you so much!” she blubbered, kissing me. “That day ... I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was. I heard your voice, thought I’d been hearing things, then you asked where we were, and I couldn’t believe it ... you were awake! I’ll never forget those few seconds.”

We kissed, we hugged, Dani cried, and it was contagious, I cried, thanking God that this woman was my wife!

She pulled away, wiping her eyes. This time, I wasn’t so helpless, I jumped up and found one of her hankies, bringing it to her. She smiled at me, wiping her eyes and cheeks, “I think we have a trunk to look through,” she said.

Dani and I stood for a moment, just looking at each other, feeling our love flowing back and forth.

She moved to the trunk, breaking the spell, but not the emotion.

Dani held up her old cheer costume, barely there, “I can’t believe they let high school girls wear these,” she said with a giggle.

“Put it on,” I told her, “I want to see.”

She held it in front of her, another giggle, then turned her back to me, “Guess you better unzip, then,” stepping back, directly in front of me.

“Guess I better, but first...” I reached around her, her breasts in the palm of my hands, and kissed her neck.

“Mmm, they like that,” she said, cocking her head to the side giving me access to her neck at the same time as tweaking her nipples through her thin dress like I’d imagined Alan Ryder would have done before he took the same dress off the eighteen-year-old Daniella that Homecoming night.

She turned her head toward me and our lips met once again our tongues pressing together, my hands still on her braless breasts. “I think,” she said, pulling her lips barely away from mine, “you’d better pull that zipper down.”

I reluctantly released her breasts and backed away just enough to get my hands between us, pulling down the offending zipper, letting Dani’s dress fall to the floor. She picked it up and carefully put it back inside the garment bag, driving me mad with her deliberate slowness. My dick was in serious need inside my boxers.

When the dress was finally safely hanging in her closet, Dani picked up the cheer costume and pulled it up her naked body, “Usually wore a bra with this, too,” she said.

“Usually?” I asked, wondering if that was just a misused word or if she’d meant what she said.

She giggled once again, it seemed there were a lot of giggles that night, “Uhuh, ‘usually’, probably a good thing cheer coach didn’t know, huh ... or Mom and Dad.”

The thought of Dani, the real Dani, not my ‘dream-world’ Dani, not wearing a bra with the costume, in front of hundreds of horny high school boys was another immense turn-on. Especially when I saw what she looked like in it, sans bra. Oh my! I know her boobs were a bit smaller then but still...

I wasn’t sure how much longer my dick could take this! “Let’s see what else is in the trunk,” Dani said, clearly not oblivious to my condition, as it was rather obvious. Those little built-in panties were barely covering her private part ... and that little ‘pretend’ skirt sure as hell not hiding the panties. Like she’d said, how could they have let a high school girl wear that!

There were some knick-knacks that Dani had accumulated back in school, then that picture, an 8x10 of Homecoming night, the kiss on the cheek from Alan Ryder that had started my quest, the impetus for all my dreams, “I think this is the one you liked,” Dani said, stating the obvious, both of us staring at it for a few moments.

She set it down on the edge of the bed, then looked through the trunk again, pulling out another 8x10, the second picture, the one that didn’t exist other than in my dream, Dani’s face turned toward Alan Ryder, him kissing her on the lips, “I don’t even remember this one,” she said, her face blushing.

My face must have turned white, “I remember,” I told her, “I saw it in my dream, the second picture, the exact picture, his dimple, and everything.” I looked up at Dani, “And you think this guy didn’t have a crush on you? Look at that face, eyes closed, the look of lust covering every square inch of his face.” Dani’s face just looked shocked that he’d kissed her like that in front of the whole school.

Dani’s hands were trembling, holding the picture, “I think ... I need you inside me ... now!” she growled.

I was thinking the same fucking thing!

Dani frantically pulled off her sexy cheer costume, and I pushed down my shorts, both of us standing in front of her chest, naked, trembling in anticipation. I turned her around, pushing her down, leaning over the chest, arms outstretched, supporting herself on the still-open top.

She spread her legs apart, and I lined my cock up with her pussy, pressing inside her, “Ohhh,” she groaned as I entered her, thrusting into her from behind.

“Fuckkk!” came out of my mouth, feeling her hot, slickness engulfing me. My hands on her hips, I thrust in and out, Dani pressing herself back with each thrust.

After three or four hard thrusts, I paused deep inside her, “Tell me,” I panted, “that you don’t want Alan Ryder doing this to you!” I told her.

Dani just let out a loud groan, more a wail, “You do ... you want him ... don’t you?”

She let out another groan, her body shuddering.

“Don’t you ... say it ... you want him!” I punctuated that with a full withdrawal and hard plunge back into her, her body shaking.

“Yesss!” she screamed, “I want him!”

I couldn’t take it any longer, I plunged into her twice more and exploded deep inside her, Dani’s pussy convulsing, her screaming to awaken the neighbors.

“I said I wouldn’t and I meant it, much as I might want to when I’m there,” Dani told me after we’d recovered and were snuggled together in our bed.

We lay together a long time, arms wrapped around each other. “What else?” Dani asked me

I looked at her, “What else? What do you mean?”

“Your dreams, what else happened in your dreams?” Dani asked again.

I shuddered, pulling her closer, feeling her breasts pressing against me. “So much, I’ve barely touched the surface. We were there a full week, you with him, every night something new...”

She put her finger on my lips, hushed me, “Shhh, no, start at the beginning. I know you told me about that night, the night of your accident, what happened after? How did I come to be with him?”

I closed my eyes, remembering, those days, the confusion, “You were home when I got there, worried about me, you’d been waiting since getting home from your dinner with Jenny. I told you all about it, we didn’t understand, thought it had to have been a dream, until next morning ... my old wool jacket from way back then was hanging by the front door, acid hole and all, right where I’d hung it the night before ... and then later we discovered the video from your parents’ security camera; when I left their house after ... watching ... it was back to the present, I was recorded on their camera leaving ... not arriving, because we’d all gotten there in 1987.

“I started asking you about him, you fed me little bits and pieces, you knew how much your stories about you and him turned me on. He had a cousin, Tevin, same age as you, but Alan told you how shy he was. He ... you ... inaugurated him into the pleasure of the fairer sex ... you gave me all the details how you seduced him ... how you fucked him ... and you enjoyed reliving it ... kind of like tonight.”

She giggled, “Guess I was quite a wanton girl, huh,” and I felt her fingers working their way over my thigh to my dick that was already getting hard again, “and you liked it, didn’t you, that your wifey was that kind of girl before we met?”

I nodded, there was no way to deny it, “Then, New Year’s Eve, at midnight we kissed and I commented that you’d probably kissed Alan on New Year’s Eve way back then, too. Your answer, and I quote, ‘We did a lot more than kiss’.”

“And did I tell you about what ‘more’ we did?”

I shook my head, “No, you left it there, just to tease and let my imagination run rampant.” I let out a laugh, “When you finally told me later, about the outfit you’d worn, and the games you’d played with all the guys, then what you and Alan did when you were back at his house, I realized that my imagination hadn’t gone NEARLY far enough.”

“But that was when I started teasing you back, that you still had the hots for him but wouldn’t be brave enough to track him down. Matter of fact, I double-dog-dared you to find him and contact him.”