The day was dark enough without the addition of the snowfall pelting the ground, blanketing the casket that now held my dear wife of some thirty-five years. I didn't feel the cold however, I was already numb emotionally as I stood there.

Standing by my side were my two daughters, Rachel and Kimberly, along with my son Pete home on emergency leave from the service. Hard enough on them burying their mother during a near blinding snow storm, each one of them berating themselves for not being there by her side when she passed. But Karen hadn't wanted it to be that way. Her last visit with the kids, well ... our daughters anyway, had been six weeks prior to all this. We'd gone home, home where I called it anyway, where the kids lived, not where we did. What I didn't know, and what Karen obviously did know, was that we were coming home for the last time. Time enough to say good-bye without saying it.

We had moved from Utah to Arizona almost six years ago. We did so for my wife's asthma more than anything, though at the time we had no idea she would soon be fighting an even greater problem than that. She had breast cancer, which turned out to be a rather aggressive form of it on top of everything else. At first, we kept it from the kids of course until such time as she began really radical treatments. We'd hoped with that, she'd be one of the lucky few and beat it. She wasn't. None of us were prepared for the rapidity of her decline. It felt like it happened overnight. One day she was her bright smiling self, full of "vim and vinegar" as I so often put it. The next, she was a darkened shell of her former self, and soon after she was gone.

I'd held her in my arms there at the hospital as she lay dying, barely strong enough to speak, and when she did, she shocked me. Surprised me to say the least.

"Jim, promise me something," she stated.

"What?"

"No, not until you promise me you'll grant my last request, no matter what you think or feel about it after I tell you what it is."

"Ok," I said fighting back the tears. "I promise." Though at the moment, I'd have promised her anything regardless of what it was, just to see the light shine in her eyes again the way it had over the past three and a half decades that I'd spent with her.

I saw her smile, for a moment she was twenty-six again, the age we had gotten married and began our life together.

"Don't live alone," she said weakly. "I'm not telling you to get married again if you don't want to. But ... promise me Jim, you won't live alone pining away for me either. Find someone, someone to have fun with, do things with. At least that much," she half begged me.

Of course I balked at her notion, the words forming even as I began to express them, but she held her fingers up to my lips effectively shushing me. "You promised," she said, and with that, took her very last breath and passed from this life into the next. Even as the alarm on her monitor sounded, I continued to hold her, oblivious to the sound it was making. Her final words still ringing in my ears as I sat there.

"Don't live alone ... promise me."

After everyone had left, friends and relatives I hadn't seen in years, I continued to stand there as they lowered my wife's casket into the cold hard ground. The kids as always standing by my side, finally pulling me away though my head stayed behind even though my body followed. I remember eating something later, without tasting it. I remember hushed whispers outside my room as they quietly left leaving me to sleep, though I remained wide awake for most of the night. All I wanted to do was follow after my wife, crazy thoughts whirling around inside my head, though each time I thought through some conclusion on how to accomplish all that, I saw the horrored looks in my children's faces as they stood looking down at me as they lowered my casket into the ground. No, it wasn't going to be quite that easy. The best I could hope for was that old age would speed up the process a little and do its thing in a reasonably short time without any real help from me. Though subconsciously perhaps, I'd already decided I wasn't going to do much of anything to prevent that from happening either. About the only thing I did immediately decide to do, was to sell the house in Phoenix and move back to Utah, find some sort of a nice, easy to maintain condominium or something, and then wait for the inevitable.

As much as I loved the kids, and they me. The last thing any of them wanted was for "grandpa" to end up moving in with them. Sunday dinners every other week was about as much as any of us really was willing to entertain as far as family gatherings go. After that, I was content to sit at home, watch TV, eat simply and wait for time and circumstance to catch up to me. My wife's words all but forgotten as I soon settled in to what became a very mundane way of life.

And just like the seasons change, so did my life, quite unexpectedly too. I certainly wasn't looking for it, if anything ... I was trying to avoid it. Even my kids had been pestering me to "get out" to do something, to "meet someone". Which was about the last thing I had any intention of ever doing, regardless of the promise I had made. So far I'd managed to come up with enough excuses to put them all off with. If it hadn't been for my craving for peanut butter, which lately had become one of my main staples, maybe things would have continued on the way they had been.

Funny how something so simple as that can change your entire life.

I stood there in the isle, a jar of Skippy smooth and creamy in one hand, and another jar of Skippy chunky style in the other. I actually found myself torn between which of the two I should buy when I heard a feminine voice speaking behind me.

"Live a little, buy both of them," she told me.

I actually laughed at that without turning around. Funny how the simplest of things can strike you when you least expect them. I'd forgotten the last time I had actually heard myself laugh, which is when I turned to address the woman who had urged me to buy them both.

"Maybe you're right ... maybe I..." The last word stuck in my throat. There was something familiar about her, something about her eyes that told me in an instant that I knew her, though her name escaped me for a moment. And then she smiled, and then I knew who she was. That same smile now added to those eyes that had somehow remained the same after all these years. "Oh my God! Carol, is that really you?"

Now, don't get me wrong here. Ever since the day that Karen and I had gotten married I had loved her with all my heart. And not that we didn't have a few bumps in the road along the way either, because we did. I called those my stupid times. Karen had another word for it, but she forgave me for it anyway. As I later did with her. Like I said, our marriage wasn't perfect, but we truly did love one another, and eventually started acting like it ... right up until the end. But Karen wasn't the first woman I had ever loved either. Though back then, being the young teenage kid that I was, I wasn't supposed to be in love, or even know what that really was. Though secretly I had told myself that I was ... in love with Carol very early on. But there was another problem with that too ... I was five years older than Carol at the time, and being twenty one, infatuated with a young woman of just sixteen years of age, not only wasn't very feasible, it wasn't very damn likely that anything would ever come of it either. We ran in different circles, different peer groups and friends. Though fate always seemed to have a way of throwing the two of us together in the most unlikely of circumstances, just as it had done now.

"Sorry to hear about Karen," she told me, her smile softening, her eyes pooling quite unexpectedly. I wasn't even aware of the touch of her hand on my arm as she stood there supporting herself on her shopping cart as she stood next to me. Which is when I noticed she was missing a limb. Not that she wasn't standing quite naturally, but to my surprise, she was wearing a pair of shorts, her metal leg, which for the briefest of moments reminded me of the skeletal monster in "The terminator" flashed inside my head. I silently berated myself for the thought and looked back up into her eyes. Eyes that had already spoken without words as they did. But she was smiling again.

"Car accident, ten years ago," she informed me simply. "I lost Dave in the accident, thankfully, the twins were home with a sitter when it happened," she added.

It's not like we had kept in touch or anything, because we hadn't. I had heard when she had gotten married to Dave of course, a year after I had gotten married to Karen. I had also heard about the birth of her twin sons, though I didn't even know their names. And I had heard about the accident too, though I hadn't heard about her losing her leg, or that Dave had eventually succumbed to his own injuries months later, never coming out of his coma. Something Carol would tell me all about later, though not here.

"I'm sorry," I said in response as we both stood there smiling at one another, words now failing the two of us as we stood there.

"Listen, I'm still a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, and one thing I hate doing is cooking for one. I don't know of a single decent recipe for a single person without having a week's worth of leftovers remaining behind because of it. How about you come over and join me for dinner at my place tonight?" She asked.

I hesitated, my thoughts suddenly a jumble of emotion, the past rushing by, the recent present hurtling head on towards it. She saw the mix of emotions in my face, but rather than allow me to come up with some sort of excuse not to, she somehow managed to convince me into agreeing to it.

"You bring the wine ... dinners at eight," She hurriedly scribbled down her address handing it to me, and then wheeled off back down the aisle, not even looking back once towards me as she did. Only then did I glance down at her note reading it, and realized, she'd not given me her phone number either. Only the place where she lived. If I were to cancel the dinner date, then I'd damn well have to show up and do it in person, and not over the phone. Once again I heard myself chuckle, still holding onto my two jars of peanut butter. It felt strange hearing myself do that. Stranger still as I headed off towards the checkout counter carrying my two jars, whistling as I did.

Carol had been the first girl whose boobs I had ever played with. Though a lot if firsts happened that night we were together, short of actually having intercourse, something I would later come to regret. It hadn't been her either ... it had been me. Though she became the first girl whose pussy I had ever fingered, and whose hand had ever stroked and played with my cock. We never did have sex, even later, though we had done just about everything else during the brief time we saw one another, losing my virginity to yet another girl a year before I had actually met Karen. A regret I had always harbored in not having given it to at least one or the other of them, and not in losing it the way that I had, at a party to a woman whose face even now I could no longer see, let alone in remembering her name.

So much for remembering the first time you lose your virginity. I could barely recall that I had.

Carol on the other hand, well that was something else entirely. Even as I made my way out to the car, scanning the parking lot briefly, wondering if I would spot her, or even toying with the idea of sitting there hoping to see her come out. I decided against doing that however. I might just be stupid enough to walk up and cancel our dinner date for the evening.

The problem was, it was just a little over six months since I'd lost my wife. Wasn't it too soon to be seeing anyone? Wasn't I supposed to at least wait a year or something? And then my wife's words suddenly filling my head as though she were there speaking them to me just as clearly as she'd done there in her bed.

"Find someone, someone to have fun with, do things with. At least that much," her ghostly words reminded me. "Promise me."

It was after all only dinner. It wasn't like we were suddenly dating or anything. Just two old friends getting together for a simple evening together, reminiscing about old times perhaps, our lives, what we'd accomplished, what we hadn't. I was curious about her after all. Curious to learn more about her life, how she was doing now after her own loss. I certainly had no expectations. I wasn't even entertaining such notions. My once very active libido had become virtually non-existent. I couldn't even remember the last time I had actually had an orgasm, let alone an erection. Stupid having one now as I sat there in my car driving home, struggling with the guilt of my wife's face inside my head, and the image of Carol's boobs competing with that as I struggled with the memory of an earlier time.

Even at sixteen, Carol had fairly large tits, at least a C cup as I recalled, though there in the store I had purposely averted my gaze from trying to size her up again, though I am sure my eyes had registered on her chest briefly.

But as I drove home sporting a woody, something I hardly expected to be doing, I was taken back to that moment in time when I had unexpectedly bumped into Carol there in a somewhat darkened hallway at school during homecoming. Having graduated two years earlier, I was back to watch the high school basketball game, especially as they were doing so well and soon headed to the state play offs. I'd headed off to use the restroom, running as I did, slamming into Carol just as she came out of the girl's room. I had literally bowled her over as well as myself, slamming into the wall, the two of us sitting there somewhat stunned on the floor looking at one another.

"Well, hi Jim," she giggled brushing herself off as she prepared to stand, to which I hurriedly stood up myself, helping her to do so. "I guess this would be the part where I would say it's nice running into you again, except for the fact, it was you who actually ran into me."

"How've you been?" I asked, seeing that she was all right, and there were no serious injuries, except to my own pride perhaps. Which is when I realized I had somehow torn her blouse in the collision, one button at least being severed and God knows where, another undone, hanging by a mere thread as she followed my gaze looking down at herself where most of one bra clad boob was completely bare where her shirt was torn and now hanging away from it. What surprised me about that was, she didn't freak out, or try to cover herself up suddenly either, actually laughing about it as she looked down.

"You know Jim, if you wanted to cop a feel, all you ever had to do was ask," she told me. "Now ... it might look a little odd, going back inside the gym looking like this," she added, still smiling.

"God Carol, I'm so sorry!" I told her feeling embarrassed, and more than a bit surprised at her comment. Especially as I had harbored thoughts and feelings about her for quite some time now, without ever once acting on them under the circumstances. Something I had thought had finally gone away in time since it had been a while since I'd seen her last. Now ... seeing her again after all this time, they came rushing back even faster than I had accidentally rushed into her.

"It's ok," she said once again, still not bothering to cover herself up, though I had now averted my eyes from her luscious bra covered tits. "Though you could do me a big favor in taking me home so I can change blouses," she added. "And then bringing me back."

"Sure! You bet!" I said eagerly hoping to indeed somehow make it up to her. We had then gone outside to my car where I quickly drove her home. To her delight however, her parents had gone out for the evening, living her a note to that effect, alerting her that they'd be home late.

"Make yourself comfortable while I change," she had told me. I had sat down on the couch watching as she ascended the stairs up to her bedroom. I sat there patiently waiting for her return. Five minutes, and then ten. Now anxious, I stood up calling out to her.

"Carol?"

I moved over to stand at the landing at the bottom of the stairs, once again calling up to her.

"Carol? You ready yet?"

Still no response. Now nervous without any real reason to be, I hurriedly climbed up the stairs myself. The only light coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall, the door partially open. I quickly approached it, once again calling out, intending to knock, which I did, which further caused the door to open even more fully. Carol stood in front of her closet, only then turning around, she was completely topless, no longer even wearing a bra. I know I stood there with my mouth hanging open as she turned to face me, acting oblivious to the fact that I could very well see her boobs.

"Couldn't decide on what blouse to wear," she said lamely. "Nothing seems to go with this skirt either," she then added stepping out of it entirely. Now standing in front of me wearing nothing more than a white pair of cotton panties. An image that remained with me for years every time I looked back on that very moment.

Before I knew it, the two of us were lying on her bed, naked, touching one another in ways I had only dreamed of up until then. And ... bad enough admitting to her that I was indeed still a virgin, especially at the ripe old age of twenty, but I wasn't about to admit that I was a titty-virgin too.

"Have you been with a lot of other girls?" she had asked as I lay there next to her, caressing her pert young breasts, dreamily so, fascinated by the sensation of actually doing that, though lying through my teeth as I answered.

"A few ... not many, but a few," I had told her. The last thing I wanted her to know was how inexperienced I really was, though the reasoning behind that now escaped me. Back then, it seemed important for some reason.

"So ... do you like my breasts?" she had asked.

"Oh yeah ... very much so," I said teasing her rock hard nipples, fascinated with just doing that at the moment. Though we were both naked, laying there side-by-side on the bed, we hadn't as yet ventured into the land of genitalia fondling as yet.

"Are they as nice as some of the others you have seen or played with?"

"Nicer," I told her. At least back then I wasn't so dumb as to say anything else, nor would I have done. Not only where they nice, I mean really nice ... perky, full and so wonderfully soft, that for me at least, even the few girls who's tits I'd seen in a few men's magazines didn't even compare. But I'm also sure that had something to do with actually fondling them there on her bed, something up until that very moment I'd only fantasized about doing.

We had slowly ... ever so slowly, graduated from tit fondling to tit kissing, licking and then sucking. Which is about the time I felt Carol's hand suddenly reach out and wrap itself around my hard swollen cock. After that, we pretty much headed into mutual masturbation without a whole lot of fanfare the moment she did that.

We spent the remainder of that year secretly dating and seeing one another. She had early on made the mistake of bringing my name up in conversation. Her father immediately put the end of any idea of the two of us dating after she did that, threatening to have me put in prison or something. A point I found weirdly ironic, as he was perfectly ok with her dating other guys her own age, most of which he had to have known would be out for the same things he assumed I would be. And yet, that didn't seem to bother him nearly as much as his daughter seeing someone five years older than she was. Needless to say, we kept our relationship a deep dark secret. Even going so far as for her to enlist the help of one of her "guy" friends into acting like he was the one dating her. Picking her up at the door, and then driving her to wherever it was I was at, waiting for her. We'd later meet up again, and then he'd drive her home after "their" date.

Carol and I might have actually eventually gotten married. But then we got careless. It was a weekend when her folks were supposed to be out late. Something they had done before. I had waited in my car down the street until they had left, only then sneaking into her house through the back door, and then heading upstairs to her bedroom. Talk about fate. We'd been talking about "it" for quite some time now, and had finally decided that this was to be the night. I'd even gotten several condoms in preparation for it. I was down between her legs, doing what I'd come to love doing, eating her out when suddenly her bedroom door was thrown open, and there stood her father. How and when he had gotten suspicious, we never really knew. Though Carol did tell me she figured out her "guy friend" had eventually gotten jealous, having a thing for her himself, and eventually spilled the beans on us to her father.

I was given the choice of entering the service, or going to jail. Back then, I didn't see there being any other options, so I enlisted, though Carol promised she'd wait for me. We wrote for a while, but then I learned my letters never reached her.

Surprise, surprise. So I quit writing, and eventually met my future wife. The rest as they say, is history.

Promptly at eight I showed up at Carol's door, a bottle of white in one hand, a bottle of red in the other. I laughed openly at the similarities I'd been facing earlier in the day, unsure of which one she'd prefer, so I had gotten both. That and a nice bouquet of spring flowers. I'd purposely refrained from buying anything too intimate, or too personal like roses. After all, this wasn't a date. Just two old friends spending a quiet evening together catching up on old times.

Carol met me at the door with a brief hug and a kiss, surprised at the flowers, laughing at my selection of wines, or rather having brought one of each. I wondered briefly if she was remembering the peanut butter.

I admired her small little apartment, sparsely furnished, yet tastefully so, looking more homey and comfortable more than anything. I followed her through the main sitting room towards the kitchen, only then realizing as I did, she was wearing a pair of nice fitting Levi jeans. If I hadn't known earlier seeing her at the store, I wouldn't have known anything now. Though she had a bit of a gimp as she walked, it was barely noticeable. But I found myself staring at her still shapely ass as she moved off into the kitchen, the smell of pasta cooking immediately assailing my senses.

No, Carol was no longer the sixteen year old teenage girl I had first been in love with. She wore her hair a lot shorter now, though shoulder length, and had done very little to hide the few strands of grey that had begun to highlight her dark hair. Like any woman her age, she had matured, put on a few more pounds than she would have liked perhaps, sagged in a few more places as well, but then again, hadn't we all? The fact was, she might have been fifty-six, but she still looked like that same young girl in my eyes as I stood there sampling a spoonful of sauce which she held up for me to taste.

"How's that?"

"It's good!" I said licking my lips, because it was. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually had home cooked spaghetti. But what surprised me the most, was standing here with Carol again after all these years and feeling like hardly any time had even passed since we'd last been together.

"Why don't you open the wine?" She told me taking off her apron and coming around the counter to join me back in the living room. "Figure another half hour or so for the sauce to cook, and then we can eat," she informed me. I poured us both a wine, and then sat down across from her in the living room.

"So ... tell me what you've been doing all these years," she asked. "But give me the Readers Digest condensed version, and I'll do the same. No sense boring one another with trivial facts. As long as we fill in a few pieces in catching up, I think that should take us until dinners ready. After that, what's say we make a pact and just deal with the now, how's that sound?"

"It sounds perfect," I told her, and then we did just that, filling in just enough details to fit all the pieces together of our respective lives before sitting down to eat. After helping her clear away the table, though she refused my help in doing the dishes which she said she'd save for later, we ventured back out into the living room.

"Go ahead Jim, ask me. I know you've been wanting to all evening."

"Ask you what?" I said curiously, though there was one thing I was interested in asking her about, though I'd purposely refrained from doing so.

"Why I never got married again."

"Probably for the same reason I won't either," I responded. "Too set in my ways for one thing, and not enough energy, or inclination to break someone new in," I said making her laugh. "But you're younger than I am, and obviously living alone and single for a lot longer too ... how come you never did?"

She slapped her leg, startling me a little. "Believe it or not Jim, part of it had to do with this. You'd be surprised at the number of men that this turned off. Though some found it a curious "kink" too. But those I usually managed to weed out before it ever got to that point. After a while, I gave up trying to find someone else. And besides, I discovered I wasn't in all that big of a hurry to find anyone either. No different than your thinking at the moment, am I right?"

I smiled at that, nodding my head. A committed relationship with anyone else was about the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. Let alone anything else. I'd even managed to let my earlier erection wither away on the vine so to speak without giving it another thought. A brief momentary aberration that no longer had a place in my life at the moment. Or so I thought anyway.

"Do you miss it?" I now asked. "Being with someone I mean."

"Do I miss not being with a man? Yes ... I suppose I do, but I still have my battery-operated friend to keep me company when I need it. So as far as sex goes, I'm satisfied for the moment at least with things being the way they are. How about you?"

That wasn't exactly what I had meant when I asked the question, but I didn't make any attempt to clarify that either, then answering hers.

I missed Karen, and told her so, though I didn't elaborate further on any sexual desires. Truth was, I didn't have any, not counting the very brief moment driving home from the store and the quick trip down memory lane. That was, and had been the extent of my entire sex-life up until this very moment.

We chatted briefly for a while longer until it became evident she was in a bit of discomfort. "Would you mind terribly if I made myself a little more comfortable?" she asked. "I know what that sounds like," she giggled, "but the truth is, after having this on all day, it does start to get a little sore," she told me.

"No, go right ahead," I responded, and then sat back watching her as she headed back down the small hallway to where her bedroom obviously was. Once again, I was taken back in time briefly, sitting there watching her head off back to her bedroom and had to smile at that. Unlike the previous time however, she soon reappeared, though I heard her coming a mile away as she was hopping as she did so.

I was surprised she was just as agile and nimble on one foot, as she had been on two, or rather one and her prosthesis. But what I wasn't prepared for was seeing her hop, and reemerge back into the living room. She had indeed changed, taking off her artificial leg, now wearing what appeared to be a pair of cut off sweat pants, her one good, still shapely leg now bare. But what caught my immediate eye, was the bounce of her still very full breasts as she came into the room. God forgive me for thinking it, but damn that looked sexy. And I was surprised, amazed, even ashamed at myself for sitting there thinking that. It was only too obvious she had removed her bra.

"That's pretty good!" I told her.

"What? That I can still get around on one leg as well as I do? Or where you commenting on the way my tits bounce up and down whenever I do that."

All I could do was sit there and shake my head. Carol was indeed still Carol. Maybe a lot of years had passed between us, and God knows what she herself had been through, but the fact of the matter was, she still had that same happy go lucky attitude she'd always had. Even with the loss of her own husband, not to mention her leg, it was obvious she had found comfort and peace with herself. It would have been far too easy to look on at life with a chip on her shoulder, or a pessimistic outlook on life. She had every reason to do so, and I found myself wishing I felt more like she obviously did.

"What can I say Carol? It's been a while since I've even seen a woman's breasts, and then you come in here bouncing away, sort of hard not to notice," I grinned at her trying to make light of the subject without wanting to sound like I was coming on to her either.

She did laugh at that however as she retook her seat there in front of me, her good leg quickly disappearing beneath her ass, which for a moment was a bit disconcerting as she sat there looking like she had no legs at all.