Rachel Gibson: True Love and Other Disasters

Ty lowered the bottle and glanced over at his gym bag. He guessed some of the guys already knew. He set his beer on the coffee table and moved across the room. Looking at her photos wasn’t something he would have gone out of his way to do, but they were sitting right there and he was a man. He reached into the bag and pulled out the five-year-old magazine with some woman he didn’t recognize on the cover all painted up like Uncle Sam. As he moved back toward the sofa, he flipped to the pictorial in the middle. His feet stopped as he stared down at Faith Duffy standing in a field of wildflowers wearing a sheer yellow dress. The light was behind her and she was nude beneath the loose material. In the next photo, her back was to the camera. Her green eyes looked over one shoulder, and the dress was pulled up her long legs and past her smooth behind.

Ty turned the page and this time she was on her hands and knees on a blanket laid out on a deep green lawn. She wore a pair of pink spike heels, white thigh-high stockings, and a pair of tiny white panties that tied at her hips. Her back was arched and her breasts thrust forward in a thin white bra. Heavy. Round. Perfect. It must have been cold that day. Her nipples puckered against the thin lace. Her wild hair curled about her shoulders and a slight smile curved her pink lips. He flipped to the next photo of her kneeling on the blanket next to a picnic basket, her thumb hooked in one side of her panties, pulling them down one thigh. He tilted his head to the side and a brow lifted up his forehead. She was as bald as a little peach.

He turned to the next photo. “Holy shit,” he whispered as he eyed the centerfold. Faith lay on the blanket, completely naked except for those thigh-highs and a long strand of pearls looped around her left breast. One of her knees was bent, her back arched off the ground and her skin glowed. Her eyes looked into the camera from beneath heavy lids, and her lips were parted as if she wanted to make love.

What a shame, he thought as he looked at her smooth, round breasts. What a shame that she’d wasted that body on an old man. Because no matter what anyone said, Viagra couldn’t turn back time fifty years and give an eighty-one-year-old man what it took to please a thirty-year-old woman.

He flipped to her Playmate Profile and read that she’d been born in Reno, Nevada, and was five foot six. She’d weighed 125 pounds and her measurements were 34D-25-32. He thought of her in that black dress the day of Virgil’s funeral and figured she hadn’t changed much. Her ambition was to “be a goodwill ambassador and help orphans in third-world countries.”

Rich laughter poured from Ty’s lips. Her ambition should have read, “I want to be a gold digger who ends up with more money than a third-world country.” He supposed Playboy wouldn’t have printed something like that, but at least it would have been more accurate, and he would have respected her honesty.

Her favorite food was crème brûlée. Her least favorite: hot dogs. Her favorite movie: Sweet Home Alabama . She hated social injustice and rude people.

Ty chuckled and flipped back to the centerfold. He knew the photos had been airbrushed, and she really wasn’t his type of woman, but damn, she was something. Her hard nipples were perfect little pink berries in the center of her breasts and there wasn’t a mole or mark anywhere on her. A woman who looked like that should have at least one love bite somewhere on her perfect body.

He thought of her curled along the side her old husband. He’d liked Virgil, but the mental image made him a little queasy. Maybe it was just him, but he tended to think he wasn’t alone in his belief that an eighty-one-year-old man just didn’t have the jump in his junk to keep a thirty-year-old happy in the sack. Virgil might have had decades of practice, and more money than God, but it took more than that. It took a healthy stamina to satisfy a woman like that.

He closed the magazine and thought of the phone call he’d overheard the day of Virgil’s wake. Virgil might have had enough money to keep his young wife happy, but he’d bet there’d been someone else putting a satisfied smile on his young wife’s face.

From twenty-six stories above the city, Faith looked out the two-story wall of glass at the lights of Seattle and the thick fog covering the waters of Elliott Bay. Through the soupy night, she could almost pinpoint the exact location of Virgil’s estate. Not that she could see it, but she’d lived there for five years and knew it well.

She thought of the first time Virgil had brought her to his home after their quickie wedding in Vegas a month after they’d met. She’d taken one look at the big house out on the island and just about had heart failure, wondering if she’d get lost in the big, rambling mansion.

She thought of the first time she’d seen Virgil at a Playboy party she’d helped host at the Palms. That night he’d made her an offer she’d refused. He’d made it again after the Playmate of the Year ceremony at the Playboy Mansion. He’d told her he’d show her the world and everything in it, and all she had to do was pretend that she loved him for more than his money. He’d promised her a million dollars for every year that she stayed married to him and she’d said yes.

In the beginning, she’d figured she’d stay married to him for a few years and get out. But after a short time, they became best friends. He’d shown her kindness and respect, and for the first time in her life, she’d known what it felt like to be safe and secure and not have to worry about anything. By the end of the first twelve months, she loved him. Not like a father, but like a man who deserved her love and respect.

He’d been good to his word, and during the first few years of their marriage, they’d traveled all over the world. Hit every continent, and stayed in exclusive hotels. They’d toured the Mediterranean in yachts, gambled in Monte Carlo, and lounged on the white sands of Belize. But shortly after their second year together, Virgil suffered a massive heart attack and they didn’t travel out of the country after that. They’d stayed in Seattle and socialized with Virgil’s friends, but mostly they stayed at home in the big house on the island. Faith hadn’t really minded. She’d cared for him and loved taking care of him.

But they’d never actually made love.

All the money and surgeries and miracle pills in the world hadn’t prevented Virgil’s old age and diabetes from interfering with and robbing him of the one thing that made him feel like a vital man. Long before he’d met Faith, he hadn’t been able to have and sustain an erection. Nothing had worked for him, and his enormous pride and gigantic ego insisted that he settle for the next best thing. The appearance of sex with a much younger woman. A centerfold.

If she were totally honest, she would admit that she hadn’t minded. Not just because he was fifty-one years older than herself, although that had been a part of it-especially in the beginning. But mostly Faith just didn’t like the uncertainty of sex. You could never tell by looking at a man if he was good in bed or not. There was never any way of knowing until it was too late and your panties were missing.

Before Virgil, she’d had a lot of boyfriends and a lot of sex. Sometimes it had been really good. Sometimes it had been really bad. To her, sex was like a box of chocolates-and yeah, she’d sort of stolen that from Forest Gump-she never knew what she was going to get. Faith didn’t like anything that wasn’t a sure thing, and there was nothing worse than craving something wonderful and yummy but getting a horrible orange jelly.

She hadn’t had sex since she’d married Virgil. At first it had been difficult, especially since she was young and she’d been fairly active, but after a few years of going without, she really didn’t miss it anymore. Now that Virgil was gone, she doubted her sex drive would suddenly come back to slap her in the head. And she just couldn’t see herself with another man.