Free Trying the Knot by Todd Erickson

attention.
    They had spent the past couple hours in Ginny
Norris’s guest bedroom, surrounded by Laura Ashley floral patterns
tangling their way across the walls and drapes. The whole house was
decorated in such an overly done boudoir fashion it almost made him
blush with embarrassment.
    The Norris’ had divorced so amicably Ginny
retained the house and restaurant. She had encouraged her husband
to build The Lounge on a lark, but folks speculated it was part of
her strategically planned scheme to ditch him. Nick was doubtful
the flighty, carefree and sexy middle-aged woman could have
possibly been so deliberate and calculating – that was more her
daughter’s style. Chelsea was indeed her mother’s Doppelganger.
    Ben once confessed to Nick that Ms. Norris
employed his services to satisfy her most intimate needs. The only
time Nick was ever jealous of his oldest friend had been during
Ben’s detailed descriptions of his endless sexual encounters with
his employer. They joked Chelsea would cardiac arrest if she ever
learned a quarter of her mother’s frisky exploits with the lounge
bar tender. Nick wondered how such a fun-loving, healthy woman
could have given birth to a daughter so frigid and uncompromising.
Lying in the guest-bedroom, Nick imagined what it would be like to
have a simultaneous encounter with both mother and daughter. Sexual
fantasies stimulated his interest only for so long, before he
became frustrated by even their remotest possibility and the
challenge to consummate his desires grew too overpowering.
    As he stroked Kate’s luxurious hair, he
noticed a trickling pool of drool winding its way over the florid
pillow. He spent the entire morning by her side, and he mulled over
the innards of their seemingly perfect relationship. He and Kate
had experienced so many soap opera twists and turns on the way to
the altar, it was almost unbelievable they were to be married
tomorrow.
    After dating on and off throughout high
school, they broke up their senior year when she became wise to his
philandering ways. Four years of constant make-ups just to
break-up, compounded by her fiercely guarded virginity, was more
than his teenaged patience could withstand. Nick subsequently dated
her best friend Chelsea for a while, and he hoped Kate would hate
him with such passion she would never again entertain the notion of
being his girlfriend. To his dismay, coupling with Chelsea only
succeeded in making her more competitive and even more determined
to win him back; it was not until Evangelica seduced him at a
senior year Christmas party that he successfully broke Kate’s
heart. Curiously, it was not until Nick simultaneously “cheated” on
Kate while dating her best friend that she took ultimate
offense.
    By graduation, their circle of friends had
become too incestuously peculiar, and Nick hoped never to see the
any of them ever again. But of course fate would have it otherwise.
He and Kate happened to bump into one another around a bonfire
during the annual Portnorth Limestone Festival during their junior
year in college. He walked her home, and they sat in the Little
League Baseball dugouts until dawn talking. Once again, they found
themselves together and were an item ever since. Initially it was
strange because during their prolonged separation, they both
matured into adults, and he had never known her to be so
adventurous and forthcoming.
    Although Kate never really severed ties with
Chelsea, her rift with Evangelica only grew deeper over the years,
as their lives traversed dissimilar paths, even after they became
stepsisters. Nick suspected the real reason Kate begrudged Vange
was because she had openly slept with him, whereas Chelsea never
staked that claim out loud. He could not understand this feminine
over-sensitivity. It made no sense to hold a grudge over anything
as mysterious and natural as intercourse. Petty jealousy was just
one of the things he found unnecessarily attractive about the
female