JustThisOnce by L.E. Chamberlin Page B

planned. Not at all as planned.
    I felt him take my hand in his and squeeze it. When I turned
to look at him he gave me a crooked smile and pressed my fingers to his lips.
“I don’t know what we can do. But we have to do something. Okay? We’ll do
something. Whatever it takes.” And he tucked my hand up inside his jacket, over
his heart, and held it there for the next twenty miles to the church. I felt
his warmth, the solidity of his chest, that familiar thumping of his heart, and
I ached for what we had lost and couldn’t seem to get back.

Chapter Two
     
    Jenny and Christopher’s wedding was a massive affair. Both
sides of both families were huge, so distant cousins and friends of friends had
all been invited. We rolled into the parking lot of St. Joseph’s and through a
sea of well-dressed groups, all squealing and clutching on to one another,
since some of them hadn’t seen each other since the last big family affair. As
a college roommate of the bride I was thankful for the number of relatives
because it meant I was off the hook as a bridesmaid. They had a wedding party
of twenty and it was an overwhelming concept to us. Jason and I had only
invited a hundred guests to our own wedding. This wedding was reported to have
nearly five hundred, and as I looked at the throngs I wondered how Jenny and
Chris would even get to say hello to all these people let alone interact with
them in any meaningful way. Jason and I exchanged glances as we got out of the
car. I was surprised, too, when he took my hand again, though I figured he
didn’t want us to appear unhappy in front of other people.
    The ceremony was surprisingly intimate despite the massive
audience, and perhaps since I was especially sensitive from the car ride over I
misted up right along with every other woman there. Try as I did to remain
composed, I had always been a terrible sap for weddings, so by the time Jenny’s
father lifted her veil from her beaming face I was doomed. It was especially
difficult to sit next to my husband—with whom I had made the same joyful vows
only ten years earlier—and acknowledge that we had failed to live up to our
promises. But because he knew how weepy weddings made me, Jason kept his hand on
my knee and automatically handed me his handkerchief as soon as the music
began. I was grateful for his remembering and even more grateful for the warmth
of his hand on me. It was an unexpected comfort.
    It was even more unexpected that he kept looking over at me
in a way he hadn’t done in ages. A couple times I even caught him peeking at my
cleavage. And once I met his eyes and he looked…hungry. It was surprising and
exciting and the only thing I could chalk it up to was the dress.
    It was a great dress, a blue stretch satin sheath that clung
to my curves but still managed to look classy. I hadn’t thought for a second my
husband would even notice it. Jason seemed so disinterested all the times I
walked around in the nude that I hardly thought a dress would turn his head.
No, I’d been hoping for a response from some of the younger men. I was a bit
more lushly padded than I was in my twenties but I still looked pretty good for
thirty-six, and weddings—particularly this one—were full of young, virile men
looking to score with single bridesmaids and lusty cougars. Though I was
technically neither, I hoped I might at least attract the attention of one of
the young guys and flirt with him a bit that night, perhaps regain some of my
lost confidence. I had no real intentions of doing anything but I thought it
would be a tremendous ego boost to attract the attention of another man.
    And I wasn’t acting out against my husband—technically I was
doing exactly what he wanted me to do. When we first started dating he’d confessed
to me shyly one night that his biggest fantasy was to watch me with another
guy. He wanted to watch the whole thing—the pickup, the foreplay, the sex. For
some reason he was obsessed with the idea.