“Because I love him so very much,” I thought to myself as I watched my husband of 18 years begin to give our daughter’s best friend a back rub on the day bed in our living room.

After she had relinquished her place on the daybed to Rhiannon, our daughter cuddled into me in the corner of the couch across the room, her knees bent against my right thigh, her legs trailing down the couch. As I gently rubbed our daughter’s crown resting on my right shoulder, I let my mind drift back, back the sixteen and a half years to when I became pregnant with her, then back further to when I met her father in my sophomore year in college. My eyes shut as I continued to pet my daughter’s head as we lounged together in our comfortable home.

I considered the once-shy guy I had just met then, giggled inwardly to myself as he had peeked through his eyelashes to look at me and then, almost in embarrassment at me catching him looking at me, dropped his eyes again. There in our living room, I nearly giggled in remembering our meeting; how shy he was, but, also, how interested he seemed. When I could see his green eyes looking into mine, it was like the sun streaming unchecked on a cold day through a nook window, warming my soul. He managed to talk to me, but ... haltingly, and with frequent glances at his feet. While I know he was quite attractive, even then, those eyes captivated me, so ... striking, so ... warm, so ... mesmerizing.

Our courtship seemed to take forever, but each day passed far, far too quickly for me. He was determined not to affront, and I was ... perhaps ... too willing to let him set the pace. Slowly, oh so ever slowly, our relationship advanced through soft touches on my hand, eventually to quick pecks on my cheek. I didn’t hurry him, despite my need for him that built higher every day I spent with him. I was so afraid of frightening him away that I let him lead, let him make the advances, never refusing one of them.

I returned to the present still stroking my daughter’s hair, still watching the man of our life giving Rhiannon a backrub, an activity not common in our house, but not all that rare. Thinking that sent me back in time once again, to the day nearly two years ago when our daughter introduced Rhiannon, a girl on her lacrosse team, that she had brought home with her. Even then, there was a ... seriousness, a ... focus that I find rare in people that age. She and our daughter were at once so very different, but also surprisingly compatible. Somehow, Rhiannon always brought to mind that old, beautiful song. Not the specifics, more like the ... mystery presented by the lyrics. And, too, that she noticed ... everything, saw ... everything.

I looked down at Aerona and, not for the first time, wondered how two girls, both of whose families were many generations American, both with Welsh names related to goddesses, could not only have lived in the same small city but met on the rare girls’ lacrosse team. It was like destiny, though I did not at all believe in such. Those two, though, got me wondering. They nearly immediately became as thick as thieves, with either as likely to spend the night in the other’s bedroom as her own. That is, until Rhiannon’s father died in a senseless shooting, the bullet not even intended for him. We almost lost Rhiannon, then, but my dear husband stepped up, as he so often does. Saving Rhiannon, who had loved her father dearly, took many months before she was more than just a shadow of what she had been. She fell behind in school, and lost interest in most of her life, but clung tenaciously to her best friend, our daughter, and to our daughter’s father.

He ... and Aerona and I told her many times in many ways that he could not replace her father, that he was a friend that could help support her, but could ... and should never replace the part of her heart where her father dwelt.

Rhiannon’s mother had difficulty coping, and I convinced her to allow her daughter to split time in our two houses, to send her to us when Rhiannon’s striking resemblance to her father set that poor woman’s mind back to that horrible time. The bullet had passed right in front of her and that was the part that she seemed never to get over.

Rhiannon spent more and more time sleeping in Aerona’s bed. We offered to get a second bed for the room, as it was certainly large enough, but both objected strenuously, one because she seemed to need someone nearby when the memories came, the other because she was dedicated to her friend and her friend’s need of comfort at those times. Eventually, we stopped asking and the two girls became thicker than thieves.

I moved my focus from my mind’s eye to my physical eyes and looked down at my daughter in her sports bra and gym short, the usual loafing attire of the two girls. Again, I looked for obvious signs of either of her parents’ genetics but could find little of such. The slight wave in her hair was like his, some aspects of her face may have been mine. I realized once again while I was searching that she was her own person, and the corners of my mouth turned up. She was a teenaged girl who, unlike most these days it seems, was apparently both happy and comfortable with her parents. She had asked for the back rub from her father and had curled into me of her own volition. I smiled internally at the homey scene, both Aerona tucked into me and Rhiannon enjoying her turn at the hands of the giver of the world’s best back rubs.

That sent me back in time again, to that first back rub I received from those magical hands. It was, at once, both incredibly relaxing and, at least to me who had a strong sexual interest in him nearly from the start, incredibly arousing. It was the first time he had put his hands on my bare back, and I got a metaphysical shock at the very first touch. With the back of my T pulled over my head but my arms still in the sleeves, I wished that I had taken the damned shirt off. I wanted him ... in all ways ... right then, but I was still concerned about scaring him off if I were too forward. I did not know then where lay the line between forward and too forward, but I now know that it was very far ahead of us, virtually out of sight. I try not to regret the two months lost in which I could have been making love with him, and the effort becomes easier as those two months become a smaller and smaller portion of our lives together. Mostly, now, it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to channeling my then-self.

I returned to the present when Rhiannon gave out the grunt that signals that my life’s love has gotten into the stage of the back rub in which he leans heavily on the back, whether mine or either of the two girls’, and twists his hands across the skin. I also looked up at them to see the girl’s face turned toward us, her eyes closed, her face looking somewhat dreamy. All three of us loved these back rubs, and all three of us probably loved this portion of them the most.

As if she were reading my mind, Aerona quietly said, “I love that part. Oh, it’s all great, but that part is more greaterer.”

I snickered quietly at the modified adjective, a thing the girls have taken to recently. She looked up at me at the snicker and smiled briefly at me, then turned her head back to watching her dad give her best friend the back rub that all three of us loved.

Quietly, she added, “I’ll bet you fell in love with him at the first back rub.”

“I already loved him, but that did cement the feeling. It was another two months before we became intimate, but with that first glorious back rub, I knew that we would be intimate.”

My mind sped back to that first time. I was more experienced than he, his shyness with girls having kept him from all but the most undemonstrative expressions of care and interest. He had interest, oh, my, yes, but no real experience, and that was a good thing. I got to teach him what any young woman would want her lover to know and do. He was embarrassed by the books, The Joy of Sex, the Kama Sutra, but thirsted for the knowledge. When he realized that the latter was about more than simply sex, he read it avidly, took much of it to heart, and practiced the knowledge on me.

When I returned to the here and now, I thought, “It might be time for Aerona ... and perhaps Rhiannon to have copies of their own. I’m sure they’re mentally mature enough to deal with the subject matter with seriousness and an open mind.”

I looked across the room, again, noting that he was in the finger-drizzling portion of the back rub, the part in which he lightly ran his fingertips all over the back.

I pondered that for a few moments, then had my mind sidetrack to other aspects of the back rubs, then, finally, after some unknown time, whispered, with a bit of intent thrown in, “I’m off to bed.”

Aerona looked up at me, gazed into my eyes, then responded, “Me, too.”

Although we did not at all disguise our movements as we stood from the couch, neither of the two on the daybed looked up. In fact, he was dragging his hair softly across Rhiannon’s back as he held himself above her on his hands and knees.

“Definitely time for bed,” I thought to myself.

I was a little surprised when Aerona followed me to our room and mostly closed the door.

“What’s happening,” she asked quietly.

I stared into my daughter’s hazel eyes which were probably a result of my husband’s genetic contribution, then softly answered, “Courtship.”

Her eyes went wide, and she asked, “By Dad?” When I shook my head, she looked stupefied, then stated, “Surely not by Rhiannon.”

I looked straight across into those eyes again and asked, “Are you sure?”

“B-b-but, I know she ... is interested in him, b-but she’s just ... lying there.”

I gazed at her for many seconds until her face began looking antsy, then asked her, “Must courtship always be active? I hope you don’t think that.” When she looked at me in confusion, I asked her, “How long has that back rub gone on?”

She looked up at the clock on our bedroom wall and her eyes went huge.

I answered for her, “It’s been over 45 minutes.”

“B-b-but he’s n-never given me one that lasted that long.”

I cocked my head at her and asked, “Are you sure?”

She furrowed her brow and thought hard, then responded, “I know I’ve fallen asleep a few times and ... I guess he did give me a pretty long one last week.

“Were you courting him?”

Her face contorted a bit and she quietly, but vehemently, stated, “I haven’t courted ... your husband.”

“Are you sure of that? Think, Honey.” When her face went pink, I smiled gently at her and told her, “I don’t mind. I married an incredible and wonderful guy. We have what I think is an incredible and wonderful daughter. However, like most teenagers, that daughter does not truly understand that her parents are smart, too, have working brains, too, can imagine some crazy things, too.”

Her face warmed to red, and she opened her mouth to retort but closed it, thought some more, opened it, then closed it again.

Looking somewhat indignant, she asked, “Have you been listening in on our conversations?”

“No, Dear. You two are just not that practiced in the art of ... courtship, of seduction.”

When she looked confused, I asked her, “Did you notice that when you refuted my suggestion that you were courting him, you changed your statement so that it didn’t refer to your dad but to my husband? Did you know that when you two whisper and giggle, then look up at my husband, you’re giving something away? Something in the way you think about him? Sweetie, I don’t mind, not at all. In fact, I think of it as a compliment for my choice of man, my choice of husband.

“Now, think back to last month. Do you recall the time he let his hair run over your back?”

“Oh, god.” She closed her eyes, opened them, then asked, “Are you saying that ... I asked for that?”

“Didn’t you?” Before she could get flustered, I asked, “Do you not know how long that back rub lasted?” When she shook her head, I answered, “An hour-and-a-half.”

“Oh, god. No wonder I couldn’t stand up. I had no idea. I just knew that he ... that it made me feel so ... incredible, but so ... lethargic that I wanted him to carry me to bed like he...”

“Like he does me occasionally?”

She allowed her head to drift backward and down until it impacted slightly on the door and caused it to snick shut.

She looked at me for quite a while and I returned the gaze until she asked, “How long? How long have you known what she and I ... have discussed ... many times?”