Free Open Marriage Open House by Polly Vann Page B

the warmth of Eloria and Charles’s.
    “S’up,” came a youthful voice. Eloria looked
up to see a tall, thin frame draped in a young man’s ill-fitting
clothes bending low to retrieve the cups and flatware from the
tables. He smiled at her from a face punctuated by a sandy shock of
hair and a scruffy chin.
    “Hello, Ryan,” she greeted the barista.
    “Shit, Miss Eloria,” he elucidated, “If I
didn’t know better, I’d suggest you were up to no good!”
    “And whatever do you mean by that?” she
countered, smiling.
    “Well ... every couple weeks, I see you in
here with Mister Farro,” he said, referring to Jack. “And you two
sit, you know, mighty close. I don’t know ... isn’t here a Mister
Solis?”
    “Ivery. It’s Mister Ivery,” she said with a
firm smile, not breaking eye contact with the young barista. “I
didn’t take his name when we married ... back when you were, oh ...
eight, maybe?”
    “So tell me ... Is Mister Ivery, you know,
cool with you and Mister Farro?”
    “What about me and Mister Forrow? Are you
assuming there’s ... something there?”
    He stood, open-mouthed, bus tray held to his
hip. The smile stayed on his scruffy face, and his eyes darted to
the ceiling and back.
    “Let’s just say that when you’ve been married
as long as I have, Ryan, there are subtleties. We should probably
leave it at that.” She clenched her shoulders forward against her
low-cut blouse, and leaned forward ever so slightly. Ryan stayed
rooted in place.
    “Hey, Ryan,” said Jack, returning with his
pair of cappuccinos. “Mahmoud said he was looking for you.” Jack
sat with his back to Ryan, facing Eloria.
    Keeping her hands on her knees, Eloria tipped
forward a little further to tease Jack, a gesture not lost on the
young barista behind him. “And just how have you been? How’s
Sally?” she asked the older man, aware of his attention, and also
that of the younger man stretching upward to keep his eyes on her.
“Ryan,” she reminded, “Mahmoud!” More afraid of the steely eyed
Beehive owner than of missing the opportunity to flirt with Eloria,
Ryan scampered away.
    “Sally? Fine. Fine, I suppose,” said Jack, no
more aware of Ryan’s departure than he’d really been of his
presence. “She’s busy workshopping in the house, whatever
that is. I come home to find our place full of crying women more
than I’d strictly like. How’s Charles?”
    Charles and Jack had met a handful of times,
and cordially enjoyed one another’s company at parent gatherings
and the like; but the couples didn’t spend time as friends, mainly
because of Sally’s particular nature. Charles was fully aware of
Eloria’s coffees with Jack, and, in fact, encouraged them.
    “He’s well,” she responded. “He says hello.”
She stirred the grainy sugar cube into the coffee with a small
spoon.
    “And he doesn’t mind us meeting like
this?”
    “No, not at all,” she said, truthfully. “In
fact, he benefits from it, you might say,” she added with a
blush.
    He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Oh?”
    “Yeah ... let’s say, you have .... well,
something of an effect on me.”
    Jack took a quiet sip of his cappuccino. “And
how about my little giftie, from the last time we met?”
    She withdrew the spoon from the coffee,
placed it on the tabletop, and slid it with a finger toward Jack,
until it fell from the table to his feet. “Oops ...” she
smiled.
    After a pause, Jack slid his chair back and
reached to retrieve the spoon. He allowed himself a quick tour of
her smooth, full legs on the way down, and, on the way up, enjoyed
a flash of red silk as she unwound, briefly spread, and then
re-crossed her legs.
    His wolf’s eyes, creased with smile lines,
appeared from beneath the tabletop.
    He sat erect. “You’re wearing them.”
    “Mmm hmmm ...” she blushed. “I don’t know how
I feel about you buying me things, especially things like these.”
Eloria closed her legs on the rose-petal-soft