Welcome to Miami [1/2] (MF anal) "Whoooo. Go Vols!" Shouted a girl sitting next to me at the bar. She was watching the highlights from the University of Tennessee football game on Sportscenter. "Big fan of the Volunteers?" I asked. She blushed. "Yeah. I went to college there." She had some sort of mid-western accent, somewhat out of place either here in South Florida or in Tennessee. "They're having a nice season. If Tee Martin were playing better, they'd be a shoe-in for the national championship." "Tell me about it. The Florida loss was a real killer. Oh well." She smiled cheerfully at me and then turned back to her companions as I rejoined my friends' debate about the pros and cons of women with breast implants. Oy. The subjects that come up in a bar. I didn't feel as if I could add anything to the scholarly discourse that my friends were engaged in, so I turned away, had another sip of my drink and glanced again at the girl next to me. With dirty blonde shoulder-length hair, and pretty, pleasant features she had the wholesome look of the girl next door; perky, happy, maybe even a bit naive. Not that she was even remotely interested in me -- which was fine, since I was in Miami on a mini-vacation with my friends and I really wasn't looking for female companionship. In fact, women weren't at the top of my list of favorite people lately. Since my divorce three months earlier, this was my first time away from home not related to work and all I was looking to do this weekend was to get drunk, see my Buffalo Bills play the Dolphins and hopefully kick their ass, get drunk, make sexist comments with my friends, get drunk, maybe go to the track and bet on a few horses, and, oh yes, get drunk. The complication of women, and all of their inherent trouble, didn't even figure in my equation; the only thing I was planning to wake up with was a hangover. I took another sip of my scotch and soda and turned my head to watch the Georgia Tech - University of Virginia football highlights. My friend Danny made a comment about the relative merits of Joe Hamilton versus Ron Dayne for the Heisman trophy and just as I was about to proffer my opinion I heard the clink of a glass which immediately preceded the feeling of a cold, wet liquid spilling onto my lap. "Oh shit!" Cute-as-a-button exclaimed. I looked in my lap and then looked with disgust in the direction of the expletive. Girl-next-door scrambled to get a towel from the bartender and began wiping up the puddle that she had inadvertently deposited on my jeans. "Oh God, I'm *so* sorry." She tried to be careful where she was wiping, although by that time, the denim had absorbed most of the drink. She sheepishly caught my glance and truly looked mortified. Her innocent looking face was knotted in embarrassment and tinged in shades of red that even Crayola hadn't yet invented. "I feel so terrible about this." I chuckled and that seemed to ease her a bit. It was actually kind of funny. If it hadn't happened to me, I would have thought it was hilarious -- and judging from the laughter of my friends, and the ribbing she was getting from hers, my observation wasn't an inaccurate one. However, it *did* happen to me, so that served to temper how laughable I could find it. "Don't worry about it. That's not the first drink I've had spilled on me in a bar, and it probably won't be the last, either." I smiled to try to ease her discomfort, and I could see the tension drain from her face as the corners of her mouth curled up in a shy smile. "I'm usually not that clumsy, but the drink just slipped out of my hand. I feel like such a klutz." She laughed at herself and her hair bobbed off her shoulders. She was really adorable -- I could think of no better way of describing her. She wasn't beautiful in the classic sense -- I'd instead describe her as pretty and, yes, cute-as-a-button. I suppose it was her innocent features that made her look so appealing. She had a wide-eyed expression that overtly displayed all of her emotions on her face. When she spilled the drink on my lap, her remorse was so genuinely expressed that I couldn't possibly get upset with her. There are some girls whose faces are just so full of life that their personalities lift all of those around them, and she seemed like one of those people. I tried to usher all of those thoughts from my mind though, admonishing myself that in addition to wanting no involvement with any women, setting my ego up for rejection was not the thing I needed to be doing on this vacation. "Don't worry about it." I replied. "My name's Kelly," she extended her hand just as I was turning back toward my friends. "Mike." I smiled and shook it, and for the briefest of instances the contact sent shivers up and down my arm. "Let me buy you a drink. What are you drinking?" "Oh, that's not necessary." "Please, I insist. It's the least I can do," she smiled warmly and I melted. If a cute girl in her 20s wanted to buy me a drink, who was I to argue? I may have not wanted anything to do with women, but accepting free alcohol certainly had to be an exception to that rule. "Well, if that's the least you can do, what's the most you'll do?" Yes, when I drink, I can be a shameless flirt -- despite my feelings about women at that point some things like flirting were just automatic. I regretted having said it the minute it escaped my lips. "I'll never tell," Kelly blushed and giggled as she turned to the bartender to order drinks for each of us. When the drinks came, I thanked her, and she apologized again. "So, do you live here in Miami?" I really didn't care all that much, I just felt as if I should continue the conversation. She did, after all, buy me a drink. "Yes, I moved here after college. I got a job with a local TV station as a production assistant. I love it. No snow. No cold. After growing up just outside of Cleveland, it's a real pleasure not to have to bundle up for three or four months a year." I smiled and took another sip of my drink as the strains of Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" blared from the jukebox -- or whatever it was that they call jukeboxes nowadays. As I sipped my Chivas and soda, I ruminated that this conversation with Kelly was one of the most relaxed I'd ever had in a bar with a woman. There was no pressure on either one of us at all. I wasn't interested in trying to get her into bed -- not that she wasn't a lovely girl and someone I'd consider having sex with; she was, but I wasn't interested in sleeping with anyone at that point. Only three months removed from the finalization of my divorce, many of my wounds were still raw and very open. She obviously wasn't interested in getting to know me intimately, either. She was, most likely, talking to me out of guilt for having spilled her drink on me. Not that I wasn't a brilliant conversationalist. Well, I could speak in coherent and complete sentences, which, in a bar, qualified me as one. "So you started out in Cleveland, went to school in Tennessee, and now live in Miami. You just keep trying moving south, don't you?" She chuckled. "I guess so. Not too many places left that I can escape to. I think Key West is my only option left for this country...So do you live in the area?" "No, I live in Mt. Vernon, New York. Right outside of Buffalo on Lake Erie. We're just down here for the Bills-Dolphins game. A nice excuse to escape the cold for a few days." "I certainly can sympathize with you there. I don't miss the cold at all." "How long have you been here in Miami?" "A little over three years. I got the job at the station right after I graduated from Tennessee." A little quick arithmetic told me that she was no older than 25. I was eleven years her senior. Damn, I'm getting old, I thought ruefully. "So what do you do at the station?" "Now, I'm a segment producer. Eventually I'd like to get a network job," she beamed. Kelly proceeded to tell me all about the details and intricacies of her job and what some of her career goals were. She was obviously very intelligent; and she had an entrancing way that her face lit up whenever she made a point about something. I thought that if I were interested in finding a girl, Kelly would be the type I was looking for. Pretty, bright, witty, with an amazing smile and an innocent countenance that contrasted her spectacularly from the ultra-made-up, ultra-primped, utlra-silliconed women that seemed so prevalent these days -- not to mention that she was a twenty-five year old with killer legs, my prurient side added. "What do you do?" she thankfully interrupted my musings. "I'm a writer, well, a journalist." "Really, that's neat. Do you write for a newspaper?" she asked, still somewhat disinterestedly. We were still just talking out of boredom and a lack of desire to join the conversations of our respective companions. "No. I worked for the Buffalo News after I got out of college, but for the past eight years I've been a writer for Travel and Leisure." "Oh that's cool. I'll bet you get to travel a lot. I love to travel." I told her about some of the different places I had journeyed to while on assignment. She listened with more interest as I rattled off a litany of locations I'd been to. I really enjoyed my job and I could talk about the places I'd traveled with passion. She marveled as I described to her the mating rituals of some sub Saharan tribes, or the quaint charm of the towns along Germany's Romantic Road, and the splendor of striding atop the Great Wall of China. "Wow, that all sounds so fun." "It's a blast. It's amazing to think that they actually pay me to do all of that, too. I've got the greatest job in the world -- it's just not easy on marriages." I really didn't want to mention my failed marriage, but the conversation with Kelly was just going so smoothly that once the sack was open, the potatoes just couldn't help but fall out. "Oh, are you divorced?" Kelly's look of empathy was genuine. "Yeah, for about three months now. My being away from home was really tough on Susie." "Wasn't there a way that she could have traveled with you?" Kelly said and then looked down at the bar before continuing quietly. "Not that it's any of my business...I'm sorry." "Don't be," I smiled reassuringly. "Actually the magazine is pretty good about paying for spouses to go with the writers on extended assignments, but Susie just really didn't like to travel. She came on a couple of trips with me, but she was much more comfortable back at home. Unfortunately I love to travel and she didn't. It worked out well when I was a reporter for the News, but when I got hired for the magazine, it was my dream job -- and probably her nightmare." "What did she think when you got the job at the magazine?" "She was excited about it." I leaned in closer and shocked myself as I realized how remarkably comfortable I was telling Kelly some of the most personal things in my life. "For one thing, it was a lot more money for us. For another, she was excited about the prospect of travel when I first got hired. She just discovered after a while -- not too long either -- that she really didn't like traveling." She nodded her head in compassion. "Unfortunately, I loved it even more than I initially thought I would, always looking forward to the my next assignment, the more distant and exotic, the better... But that's not the only problem we had. If that were it, we'd probably still be together. But we were trying to have a baby and there were some other problems. Well, you know..." My voice trailed off as I recalled some of the more painful aspects of my marriage. "That's too bad," Kelly was sympathetic. "So do you only write for the magazine now? With all of your travel experience it seems like you could write a novel." "Yeah, I've been thinking about a novel, I *do* write a little fiction." "Oh, really? What kind of fiction?" "I write erotica." The instant I said it, I knew it was a mistake. Not even my closest friends knew that I wrote sex stories. I don't know whether it was the scotch or the relaxed nature of my chat with Kelly, but it came out and there was no taking it back now. If a few potatoes had fallen before, the whole damn bushel just emptied itself on the floor. She snorted before raising her eyebrows and grinning mischievously. "Really?" It was my turn to blush a little. Kelly was the first person I'd ever told this secret to, other than my ex-wife -- and Susie was not thrilled to find out that I wrote smut, either. "Yeah, I do." I grimaced and could feel my face burn red at my admission. "That's *so* cool," she gushed and spun on her stool to face me. "What do you write for?" "Well," I took a more relaxed breath at her acceptance, "there are a couple of men's magazines that I do stuff for, under a pen name. And I've written a couple of screenplays for some of the soft core stuff that plays on cable TV late at night. I have a website that I keep some stories archived at." "That's amazing. I love some of those movies," Kelly turned crimson at her confession. "This is so cool. I never thought I'd meet someone who actually writes dirty...uh, erotic stories." She whispered the word erotic, as if saying it aloud would cause her mother to show up at that instant and wash her mouth out with soap. The embarrassment of this innocent looking girl was just adorable. I chuckled slightly at the fact that she was worried about the semantics of my hobby. "Kelly, they *are* dirty stories. It doesn't matter to me what you call them. You can call them erotica, smut, or porn. Some people get offended -- me, I don't care either way." She grinned broadly and in a whispered, husky voice she asked, "What...uh, what types of stories do you write?" "Nothing too wild. It's pretty much called vanilla. Basic male/female romantic stories. Sappy stuff, I guess." I was ill at ease talking about the type of porn I wrote, especially with a virtual stranger. It amazed me that I was able to write so openly and cavalierly about sex, yet was so embarrassed describing what I wrote, as if that was opening some theretofore hidden entrance to my soul. "Ooh. I *love* romantic stories." Kelly took one more sip of her drink before she got off her stool and smoothed out her black skirt. "Excuse me, I have to go to the little girl's room. I'll be right back." "I was going to have to go to the bathroom too, but apparently I've already wet my pants here at the bar." I gestured to my lap where Kelly had deposited her drink. She laughed heartily and playfully slapped my shoulder, letting her hand slide down my arm for a few seconds. "I'll be right back, wise guy." I watched her walk to the ladies room and I couldn't help but be transfixed by the methodical undulations of her tight ass. With each step half her ass would rise and half would fall in erotic tantalization like some sort of a flesh pendulum. I noticed earlier that she had great legs, now I was amazed at what a terrific ass she had. I found myself raptly watching every step that Kelly took to the rest room, mesmerized by her tight 25 year old body, and I was seriously questioning my "no women" stance. Something had happened since I told her that I wrote sex stories -- she was definitely more interested in me, and I was internally debating whether or not I wanted to pursue anything with her. "Hey, Mikey." My friend Dave's bellow snapped me out of my preoccupation with Kelly's body. "What the fuck you doing? Robbing the cradle?" "No. You fucking neanderthal," I laughed as I turned back to my friends. "We're just talking." They snickered at my slight discomfort. "Did they check her ID when she came in here?" Dan asked. "You should talk, Danny," I countered. "Anyway, she's like 25 or so." "So what happened to the whole "women are evil" thing, huh?" "Maybe that's only the ones who marry me." I joked and then turned back toward Kelly approaching the bar. I motioned for the bartender to buy us two more drinks, and they arrived just as she was sitting down. "Thanks Mike." "You're welcome. I haven't had anything spilled on me in at least a half hour, and I wanted to make sure you were loaded with ammunition." I teased. Kelly giggled and placed her left hand briefly on the back of my right. Then she took a deep breath as she removed it. "So, in your stories...where do get the ideas for them...are they, uh, autobiographical?" She obviously had to work the courage up to ask the question, but seemed very curious about the nature of my adult writing. I decided to have a little fun with her. "Well, The magazine prefers if I write about the places they send me, rather than what I do there." She turned beet red and I couldn't suppress my smile any longer. "I'm sorry, I was just teasing. A couple of stories of mine are based on some real life experiences, but they're mostly fictional. I just can't write too much about myself, that way. It would seem too personal, I guess." "Yeah, that make sense," she paused again, taking a big sip from her tequila sunrise, obviously gearing up for another question. "So, what types of things do your characters do?" "You mean like with the dogs and the sheep?" She was starting to get accustomed to my offbeat sense of humor and she just laughed while giving me a frolicsome shove. "Ewww. Are there really stories like that?" "Yeah, some. But nothing that I write." "Well, what do *your* characters do?" she tilted her head and was twirling her blonde hair with her fingers. I thought I could notice that she inched a bit closer on her stool. Things between us were definitely getting more intense and I could feel the conflict between my licentious side and my conscience begin to build within me. I was still unsure what I was doing discussing all of this with Kelly. I was rationally trying to tell myself that I didn't want to continue this any further than it had already gone -- which was too far already -- but my ego was commandeered by the fact that a pretty girl in her 20s was interested in me. My ego was winning. I continued. "It's a lot of straight sex, mainly. In a lot of different positions. Plus," here was my turn to whisper and lean closer, "blowjobs and cunnilingus, too. I guess I'm a very oral person. A few other things too. Every once in a while the characters will have a threesome." "Really? Wow." Kelly was practically on the edge of her seat as her throaty whisper returned. Our faces were about ten inches from each other when it happened. Kelly caught my eyes -- and held my gaze -- and I knew at that point there would be no going back. No matter what anybody says about pickup lines, the greatest one of all is unspoken. Anthropologists call it the copulatory gaze. Extended eye contact -- as when Kelly had locked eyes with mine, with all of her wide-eyed seductive innocence -- formed a stronger connection between two people than any words that could be spoken. Kelly had locked in on mine and I couldn't turn away if I had wanted to. No amount of rational thought was going to save me tonight. I knew that I was hers and she was mine -- at least for the rest of the evening. "You know, I'd really like to read some of your stories sometime," she tilted her head while twirling the swizzle stick in her drink. I was truly amazed at how aroused her body language was making me. And as sexy as she was looking, I was even more astonished that she was able to retain her basic look of innocence. She was like a fantasy woman -- half angel, half devil. "I have a computer at home, maybe you could show them to me." "That sounds like a nice idea, but I have to meet up with my friends at some point." Was it that I was simply an idiot, or was I just in need of a remedial class for picking up signals? "That's ok. I can drop you off tomorrow." It apparently wasn't a question. She looked at me apprehensively while blushing slightly and stood to say a few things to her friends. So much for my "no women" stance. This decision was apparently already made -- the rest of me was simply going along for the ride. I turned to my friend Steve and whispered, "Hey man, I'll meet up with you guys tomorrow, I'm going to take off now." In the background I could hear muffled cries of "Oh my God... Kelly, are you serious....I hope you know what you're doing...how old..." "Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Steve warned me. "Oh that's comforting," I retorted. "You fucked your sister-in-law, what wouldn't you do?" "You've got a good point. Have fun, then." I said quick goodbyes to the rest of my friends and walked over to Kelly amidst the judging eyes of her friends. She quickly introduced me before we left to get her car. The ride through Miami was quiet, with just the sounds of some pop station on the radio breaking the silence. I chuckled to myself at our age difference as I realized that I didn't recognize any of the songs that were playing. After a few minutes Kelly looked over at me at a red light and gave me a wary smile. "I don't want you to be mad but are you sure you're divorced?" I laughed, knowing that the divorced story is one of the favorites of married men everywhere, and Kelly's face knotted in distress. I placed my left hand -- sans ring -- on Kelly's right leg to comfort her. Part of my hand was on her skirt and part was on her bare thigh. God, her skin was smooth. It was all I could do not to run my hand all the way up beneath her skirt. "Trust me, I'm divorced. In fact the clothes I'm wearing are about the only things she didn't get in the settlement. I may have been a bad husband, but I never fooled around on Susie. There's a big difference between being a bad husband and a bad person." Kelly smiled and seemed to relax as the light turned green. "You know, Mike. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. I don't go to bars looking to pick up guys. I don't want you to think I do this all the time. I was going out with a guy for a couple of years until we broke up this spring, and I haven't been with anybody since." I smiled to comfort her, but her statement made me ask myself why I was doing this too. Like Kelly, I wasn't one to pick someone up in a bar either. Before I was married, it was a very rare occasion in which I would do something like this, yet here I was, having known Kelly for all of an hour, heading to her apartment. Was this what the experts called the "rebound" phase, that period after a divorce during which anyone and everyone -- out of the ego starved need to prove to yourself that someone still finds you lovable -- becomes fair game for meaningless sexual encounters? I wanted to think that I was above all that, but felt ill at ease with that denial. I mean, what did we have in common other than a spilled drink and the fascination with sex stories? Despite all of my doubts and misgivings, I was very attracted to Kelly, and I knew I wanted this to happen, regardless of the underlying reasons. I reached over for her hand and held it for the remaining five minutes until we got to her apartment complex. The warm breeze from the Atlantic washed over us as we headed upstairs hand in hand. The sexual tension was palpable between us as we headed into Kelly's apartment. "Would you like a drink? Maybe a glass of wine?" she offered. "Make yourself at home" Make myself at home? Did she really want me to act as if I were home? I didn't think that belching, farting, peeing on the toilet seat, and making a mess was what she had in mind. Instead, I sat down politely in her living room. "Yeah, a glass of wine would be nice. Thanks.... I really like your place." In fact I did. It was furnished brightly in the airy, tropical style and the walls were decorated with dozens of beautiful landscape prints that I assumed to have been taken by Kelly. Being something of an amateur photographer myself, I was engrossed by the variety of the pictures and the obvious skill which went into the taking of them. On the mantle were a couple of trophies that she collected in field hockey and swimming from high school and the University of Tennessee. I was always attracted to athletic girls. I guess I just find something wholesome about them. In fact, Susie and I had met in our junior year at Syracuse when I was on the baseball team and she was on the track team. I watched her run day after day for about three weeks before I mustered the courage to ask her out. I laughed as I remembered how it only took her two weeks after that to finally agree. "Come here, Mike," Kelly called from a room off the kitchen, interrupting my reverie. "I need to check my e-mail, and I figure I can bookmark your web address while I'm at it." She handed me my wine and gave me a quick, shy kiss as the computer booted up. She input my website's address into her bookmarks and then began looking through her mailbox. As she scrolled through her e-mail, I stood over her, breathing in her delicate fragrance. There was even something wholesome to that, too -- it was a fresh smell, clean with a hint of a flower, a lilac perhaps. Leaning closer, I brushed her hair with my cheek and placed a soft kiss on the nape of her neck. Hearing a soft sigh escape from her lips, I kissed her neck longer, working my way up to her earlobe. Kelly turned in her chair and met my eyes with her own steamy gaze. My eyes bored into her, thoroughly enraptured by her wholesome seductiveness. She got a devilish look in her eye and tugged at my shirt, yanking me down to her level. Kneeling in front of her, I moved in close for a deep kiss, as she parted her legs to allow my torso to get as close to the chair as possible. She opened her lips to accept my tongue, hungrily sucking it into her mouth. Our tongues wrestled as we used our hands to explore each other's body. I let one hand slide up her bare thigh, caressing her hip while I brought my other hand to her braless tit, squeezing the small mammary and flicking my finger over the ever-hardening nipple. Kelly broke the kiss and said throatily, "Let's go into the bedroom." With no more encouragement needed than that, I stood and picked up Kelly's lithe frame in my arms. She giggled and looked deeply into my eyes as I carried her to the bedroom. She grabbed a handful of my hair and brought my head down for a deep kiss. We kissed insatiably on the entire walk down the hall to her bedroom before I placed her gently on the bed. Insistently pulling me down on top of her, she started tearing away at my clothes, removing them at a feverish pace. We exchanged lusty kisses as she slid my jeans down my legs. I reached under her skirt and grabbed at her panties to remove them. She was dripping wet and, although I wanted to go down on this girl, I really needed to fuck her. Hiking her skirt up to her waist, I parted her thick golden brown bush with the head of my swollen cock, making contact with the entrance to her moist treasure. "Fuck me Mike," my not so innocent angel begged in a throaty growl. "Shove your cock in me." Always one to follow orders, I complied. I pressed myself slowly into Kelly's tight pussy, luxuriating in the feeling of her silky walls clamping onto my erection. Kelly grunted with each thrust of my cock into her. After so many years of making love to the same woman, the feelings of being with Kelly were almost overwhelming. She was untamed territory to be prospected by a miner who for too many years had been relegated to one vein. I pumped into her, my new unexplored country, as if this were my first fuck. I growled -- actually growled -- at the feelings that Kelly's tight cunt were giving me. We kissed deeply while Kelly pierced my eyes with her own and I lost myself in her. She nudged me over onto my back and straddled me. Lifting herself up, she impaled herself on my rock hard shaft and I took each of her breasts in my hands as she galloped on me. I marveled at how perfectly they fit -- two handfuls that were seemingly designed for my hands. She moaned in delight as I flicked my thumbs over her nipples while she rode me with abandon. Within a couple of minutes my cowgirl was bucking uncontrollably and collapsed on my chest in orgasm. I brushed the hair out of her eyes and grabbed her incredibly firm ass in my hands, thrusting up into her, seeking my own release. Sensing what I needed, she squeezed her vaginal muscles around my cock and lifted her hips, fucking up and down on my shaft until I boiled over into her wonderfully tight hole. I fell asleep for a few minutes and was awakened by the feeling of light kisses on my face and neck. She was still lying atop me and I thought that despite all of the amazing and exotic places I'd been in the world, there was no place I'd rather be than right where I was. "Hi sleepy," her eyes sparkled playfully. "Hi, sorry I fell asleep." I answered sheepishly. "Don't be. I enjoyed watching you. You're eyelids are cute the way they flutter when you're sleeping." I smiled and kissed the tip of her nose, all the while unable -- and unwilling -- to look anywhere but into her steel blue eyes. "What are you thinking?" she asked. "That I must have done something very good at some point in my life to end up here." As much as this sounded like a line, it actually wasn't. I was really starting to fall for Kelly. Dammit, what was happening to me? I had sworn off women and here I was beginning to get feelings for a girl I'd only known a few hours. She grinned broadly and beamed. "What are *you* thinking?" I asked. "Well, I was thinking that your eyes are really pretty," she paused and they took on a playful countenance, "...and that you're a great fuck." I chortled at her forwardness as I rolled her over onto her back. Starting at her forehead, I kissed my way down her body, stopping for extended periods at her lips, breasts, and belly button before ending up at my final destination -- her wonderfully pouty pussy. Lowering my mouth to Kelly's sex, I lost myself in the wonderfully musky aroma that filled my senses. Unable to hold myself back, my tongue darted out and attacked Kelly's still sopping pussy. I drank in the combination of my come and her sweet nectar and I was lost in some perverted version of heaven. She grabbed my head tightly, seemingly trying to swallow it with her pussy, and began to moan loudly. I concentrated my attentions on attacking her clit and before too long she was writhing and bucking underneath me. Convulsing spastically after several minutes of my lingual attention, Kelly came powerfully, eventually clamping her legs shut, tapping me to stop. "Oh God, that was intense," she was still twitching. "Oh! My skin's so sensitive now, just hold me tightly." She turned her back to me and we lay in the spoon position. I gathered up the comforter over us and wrapped my arms around her. After a couple of minutes, her breathing returned to normal. She started tenderly rubbing my forearm, idly playing with the little hairs, and I realized that we'd reached the most awkward time of these dates. We'd reached the point after sex and before sleep, and I struggled to think about something -- anything -- to talk about. Then I remembered the pictures. "Did you take all of those pictures on the walls?" "Yeah. I love to take pictures. Did you like them?" She said excitedly as she squeezed my arm slightly and rolled over to look at me. "Yeah, they were great," I gushed. "I love landscapes and I really liked your composition." I told her about my own photographic hobby -- that I usually take anywhere from five to twenty rolls of slide film with me on my assignments from the magazine. We talked for perhaps a half hour about photography; where we'd been, our favorite subjects, processing techniques. Then the subject changed to work. We were both, in a way, journalists -- she in TV and me in print -- and we talked about some of the different experiences that we'd had. Everything felt so right. We were just so relaxed with each other, it was as if we'd been together for years and all of the expected discomfort was missing. And for the first time in months, I was happy. "Mike, can I ask you a question?" Kelly changed the subject. "Sure." "You said earlier that you hate the cold. Why do you still live in Buffalo? I would think now you could move wherever you want." "After the divorce I really didn't think about it much. When I moved out of the house, I just got an apartment nearby. There was so much going on in my life, I couldn't handle much more stress. Plus, my friends were nearby. It was just easier. But I have given some thought to moving some place warmer. I like San Diego... you can't argue with 77 degrees 365 days a year." "That sounds nice... I wasn't prying," she stammered. "I was just wondering if you still had feelings for your ex-wife." I laughed and realized Kelly might have thought it was at her. I took her hand in mine and squeezed it gently. "No. We really hadn't been getting along very well for the last couple of years. The last two years we were just going through the motions. Neither of us was happy." We talked about my marriage -- the high points, the low points and everything in between. Kelly was the first person I'd ever told a lot of it to, and I was astounded at how freely I was able to open up with her. There was just something so sincere about her that made me feel relaxed -- and safe -- enough to share things with her that I hadn't been able to share with anybody else. She then proceeded to tell me about a couple of her past relationships and the different things that she wanted out of her life. We'd known each other for only a few hours and we were sharing things as if we were lifelong friends. I hadn't felt this comfortable with another woman since about the third or fourth year of my marriage. After a while, I started brushing Kelly's cheek with my hand and we came together in a tender kiss. Our lips met softly, delicately pressing themselves together, and our bodies molded themselves together in a loving embrace. I started getting aroused, and judging from her movements, Kelly did too, but all we did was kiss. It was all very unspoken and loving. This was one of those moments that you look back on and truly treasure. Kelly made me feel something that I hadn't felt in months -- maybe a couple of years -- and actually had wondered if I'd ever feel again. Alive.