It was at that moment that I realized how really fucked I was. I lay and stared at the ceiling above my bed, at the spidery crack, in the yellowed plaster, that branched out in six different directions before inexplicably terminating at no particular point, and I wondered how long it would be before I was sitting in a jail cell, permanently separated from Sarah, waiting for my life, which seemed to be branching out in as many directions without any meaningful purpose, to come to an end.

* * *

It was after eight o’clock in the evening that same Saturday, long after Melanie had left, when I heard Amber, and smelled her scent in advance of her approach; she smelling like a bouquet of fresh roses, walked through the back door as though she lived there with me. I didn’t turn around because I was afraid my face would give away my guilt. I was frying a dinner of eggs and bacon (the only meal I was competent at cooking), giving Sarah a break from the kitchen, when Amber walked up behind me and reached her arms around me, and up under my shirt, scraping her nails across my bare flesh, “Hello lover” she whispered into my ear. Her very presence choked what little appetite I had managed to muster as I thought about the task at hand, but I turned and pecked her on the cheek as a husband would a wife and returned to cooking dinner.

“How would you like your eggs?” I asked. you.”

“Over hard,” She said, “just like I want

I smiled uneasily and glanced toward her, “We need to talk.”

She sat down on one of the wooden chairs to the new dinette set I had purchased (and assembled during that week) to replace the ancient tan vinyl covered chairs (and the white with gold speckled Formica table) that had adorned the kitchen previously. The table and chairs stood out awkwardly in its newness against the backdrop of the pasty yellows and oranges of the sixties kitchen. I heard Amber open and close her compact, checking to see that her makeup had not been disturbed, before crossing her legs.

“Sounds serious.” She said matter-of- factly, hissing her S’s.

“It is, sort of, but I can’t talk in front of

Sarah.” I spoke softly.

“We’ll have to eat fast, tuck Sarah in and we can let our bodies do the talking in the bedroom.” Amber’s words sounded as out of place as the kitchen dinette set looked. She normally reserved her sultry discourse for the privacy of the bedroom, the only place where there seemed to be no holds barred.

I smiled nervously as I slid the eggs from the skillet onto a plate. “You may not want to sleep with me afterwards. Maybe we should talk first.” My voice sounded jittery to my own ears.

“Nothing you could say could keep me from wanting you lover.” She whispered. She was seated directly across from where I was standing and she uncrossed her legs and lifted her skirt and smiled seductively before re- crossing her legs.

After dinner we watched an old movie until Sarah fell asleep. Then we retired to the bedroom where Amber had her clothes off before I could close and latch the door.

“Now tell me what’s so important that it can’t wait until after I fuck your brains out Mathew.” She laid down across the end of the bed with her head hanging down over the side and her hair dangling down touching the floor, the weight of her breasts flattening them to the sides so that they looked swollen in comparison to her areolas, and her tanned slender torso reached out across to the center of the bed where her lithe legs were divided by the accented “V” of her crotch, that with her legs crossed, concealed her more sensitive parts, and she pulled me to her, “You talk and I’ll play.” She said.

“I slept with Melanie.”

She let me slip slowly from her grasp and then she sat up abruptly and spun herself around until she was sitting Indian style with her legs open and her feet pressed together.

“You what?”

“I knew you’d be pissed.” I took a step backwards.

“Pissed! Darling I’m ecstatic! That’s wonderful.” She seemed genuinely pleased.

“Why is that wonderful? She’s your best friend. I’ve been feeling like shit all day.” “How was she?”

“She was okay.” I said cautiously trying to keep private the intimacy that Melanie had shared with me.

“Well she’s a little rusty you know. She hasn’t slept with a man in a few years, and that doesn’t really count unless you call being raped by her father as sleeping with a man.” She stood up and stepped toward me, empowered by her own brashness, and started to unbutton my shirt, “You have to tell me everything. How did she taste?” her tongue seemed to stick on the tail end of the word taste.

“What?”

She pulled me close to her by the collar of my tee-shirt so that our lips were almost touching, “How–did–she–taste?”

“Fine.” I whispered, feeling threatened. “Did she cum for you?”

“Yes. I mean I think so.” I still wasn’t sure if I was answering correctly. I felt as though I were confessing my sins to a priest. “She tastes wonderful doesn’t she?” she purred.

“Is shhhe the one?” I stuttered. I knew that Amber had had a female lover at one point and I thought it might have been Melanie, but she had never said so.

“Yes. And if you want in on a little secret,” she let loose my collar and pulled my shirt up over my head, “she’s like an ever- lasting-gob-stopper. You can eat her for hours.” I could tell that Amber was reliving the moment in her mind, “If you go down on me for five minutes I’d have to put you through a wall. I’m much too sensitive down there.”

“That explains a lot.”

“What does?” She seemed to misunderstand my meaning. She thought that I was referring to her sensitivity when I was still focused on what she had said about my being Melanie’s first lover. Amber unbuckled my trousers and pulled them to my ankles along with my boxers and she turned me around and shoved me backwards on the bed so that my feet were still touching the floor.

I hesitated, fearing that I was disclosing too much; exposing Melanie to Amber’s critical eyes, “She said that she wants exclusive rights.”

“To what?” she kneeled down on the floor in front of me and then leaned forward.

“Exclusive rights to me.” I cringed as I said this.

“You told her no, right?” then she raised herself up and leaned over me and wrapped her teeth around my penis and she bit down on me playfully, “Right?” she said the head of my prick suspended against the insides of her teeth.

“I sort of,” I gasped as she sank her teeth in a little deeper, “Yes!” I said and she loosened her teeth and consumed me and I felt the tickle of her uvula as she suspended me there in her throat, her teeth once again gouging my flesh, like a cat finishing a kill, until I was near my limit, then she slid her mouth from me. “There now, you’re ready.” She pushed me backwards onto the bed and then slid her long blond hair up over my body as she crawled atop me until we were nose-to-nose, “You tell her that I’ll share you with her, but that’s it.” She lowered herself ever-so-slowly, the iris’s of her eyes rising up into her head as if she were watching a movie on the inside of her eyelids, “She can even join us if she likes, ooohh.” She rocked softly, stirring herself like a martini, “But I’ll be damned if she’s going to keep you to herself.”

She rocked herself up and down upon me gently for a long while, finished with her verbal foreplay, undulating, losing herself in the bliss of our carnal act, and then, like a kitten playing with its prey, she held her pose buried deep against the throbbing epicenter of the storm, her face rippling with expression, until she fell upon my chest as though released from an invisible set of chains. She, like a man, was as prideful in the dispensation of pleasure as she was greedy in the reception of it.

After Amber had finished her slow dance of enchantment she fell back onto the bed, adjusting her body so that we were close but not touching.