Unburdening

Previous Chapter: Thorns and Hangovers

We’ve been working together as a team for a while now and things are going fairly smoothly in that department. Isabel is in her element, though Tessa sometimes seems like she’s waiting for instructions. A holdover, I guess, from her time at the agency.

A job shows up on the board that looks like a nice, simple, single person one, so after getting the funds transferred, I go out to take care of this one myself. I arrange to travel with Jim this time. Though commercial would have worked nicely, I’m looking for something else. Once in the air and, Jim can relax his focus, I start to dump on him:

“You’ve had lots of relationships, right?” I ask.

He nods, though with a suspicious look in his eye, “Why, what’s happened so soon?”

Lost in my own thoughts, I’m not paying attention to his question, “I don’t get this relationship thing. Isn’t sex supposed to be a regular part of one?”

Jim nods again. “The beginning of any romance is the best time; I think that’s why I’ve had so many girlfriends. When things are fresh and new, uglies bumping galore! However, it seems like once we move in together, the sex goes down-hill. Even with my current girlfriend, things took a massive dip once we set up housekeeping, but she has so many other things going for her, instead of just moving on, we worked things out.”

“How? My life was so much simpler before they moved in.”

Jim looks at me, “They? Only one rode back with me.”

“Oh, I guess we’ve never talked like this before. The woman you met was Isabel, the other is Tessa. Tessa is an unbelievably fit blonde. We recently finished a job where, I kid you not, she took out thirty or more drug dealers, barehanded, all at once. I’ve known her about a decade, and we usually hook up in-person a time or two a year, and in all that time I have never been able to beat her sparring. Now I understand why.

“Anyway, Tessa and Isabel were co-workers down in Rio and Isabel had been pissing off other coworkers being too good at her job in internal affairs, so they kidnapped and tortured her for her access credentials. Working with Tessa, I was able to recover her. Oh, speaking of that, Tessa went on a revenge fest afterwards and killed a bunch of those responsible. She cut their dicks off and shoved them in their mouths! She said she ‘donned her avenging angel suit.’ Tessa and Isabel have been a casual couple, or friends-with-benefits, for a long time, maybe two decades, though for some reason Tessa felt that Isabel and I were ‘made for each other’ and kept pushing us together.”

“Wait, they’re lovers?”

“Yep, let me tell you as good as my fantasies were they didn’t stack up to the real thing!”

“Dude! Two beautiful women at the same time!?”

“Sure. It's happened a few times with others in the past, but these times were by far the best.”

“Time_z_? I can’t believe you’re sitting here complaining about the sex, I’m getting blue balls just hearing about it!”

“I know what a lucky guy I am, but it all came to a crashing halt a while ago. Five or six weeks of the best hedonistic pleasures I’ve ever experienced in a lifetime of seeking hedonistic pleasures, then nothing. I thought I was done with Rosie Palmer, but she’s moved back in again, with a vengeance! What the heck happened?”

“How well do you know these women?”

“Not well, I guess. I’ve known Isabel for about a decade, Tessa a year or so less. I’ve actually spent more time with Tessa; we both love watching movies and talking about them, so that’s mostly what we do when we hook up. Isabel and I have met just a handful of times over the decade, usually just a week or so at a time, but the sex has been unbelievable. As you saw, she is gorgeous. She has it all: brains, deadly reflexes, the body and fantastic in bed.”

“Deadly reflexes? I’m not sure I’d add that to my list of perfect attributes! She’s a babe, that’s for sure, even beat up like she was when I saw her. Brains are OK in a woman, though I didn’t think so until I wound up with my current girlfriend.

“You know,“ Jim says thoughtfully, “perhaps they’re not the sex machines you thought. What if when you made love with them was the only time? Maybe they saved it all up for you?”

“Hmm, that bears thought in Isabel’s case. Tessa, though, I doubt. We’ve had enough conversations where I feel sure she has an even stronger sex drive than I have. In any case, a couple of weeks after the sudden break, Tessa and I started hooking up again, though she’s rather abrupt. Very little foreplay with Tessa. One of the things I like so much about Isabel is how she builds things up. For Isabel, though, that might fit. I recall, in conversations over the years, that she never really got much satisfaction in love making with men. She started as a sex lure and complained she hated that job, and claims, until our happy meeting, she’d sworn off men as being unable to get the job done. Even when she talked about other women, my impression was that she didn’t do it often.”

“There you go, you just used her up is all. She just needs to recharge. Give her some time.”

I fall silent, thinking about this. Jim has a plane to operate, so is fine with me just sitting there. After a while of replaying our conversation, I realized I missed some stuff.

“You said something about your current girlfriend having brains and working things out. What’s going on with that?”

“I guess I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking about settling down. In the past, when the sex dropped off, I started taking more work just to be away. The reunion would perk things up for a while, but it never seemed to last. I never talk about work with my girlfriends, and I think they tended to resent my being away so much. I’m sure some thought I was cheating. Like that headache would be worth the effort!”

I think to myself that I didn’t understand this “cheating” business until fairly recently, but then again I never really had anyone I thought of as a girlfriend until recently.

“My current girl, though, she doesn’t give me any flack, and there are none of the old accusations about sleeping around. I suspect she has an idea of what I do, but never pries. There was this one time I had to leave her on a Caribbean beach for a sudden job I couldn’t pass up, but she patiently waited until I got back and we finished our vacation like nothing had happened. It makes me think that I might not be alone as I grow old. It also makes me more forgiving and more willing to compromise. It’s funny how priorities change as we age.”

“Don’t you have a child now?”

“Yep. I don’t think we were being careless, though we really didn’t discuss anything. I used to use protection and I always checked to make sure my girlfriends were using something, but, without really talking about it, I stopped using mine and she stopped using hers and the inevitable happened. I kind of like it. Changing diapers wasn’t as disgusting as the stories made out, and watching my little boy learn to walk and talk has been a joy.”

“I’m not sure about this diaper changing business. And the horror stories I hear about being awake all night and getting puked on!”

“I did get puked on a time or two, and it’s gross, but everything has pluses and minuses. On balance, I’m very happy to be a dad. We haven’t been bothering with protection since, and will leave any other children in the hands of the fates.”

Our conversation drifts further off into irrelevancies as we wing across the Atlantic.

At my destination, much closer than if I took commercial, I thank Jim and wish him luck. I’ll take commercial on the way back so he can take another job. It worked out very well for both of us, no “deadheading” for him and I got a chance to unload.