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Stressed from her workweek, Helly goes to her favorite coffee shop early on Saturday morning, wrapped up in her winter coat. She takes off her scarf once she’s in line and folds it up to shove into her purse.
She’s hot around the collar, which is typical since she started menopause recently. She pulls her hair up into a high ponytail and sighs.
The man in front of her turns and takes her in, scanning her from head to toe and then back up again. He looks to be in his 60s, crow’s feet around his eyes and his long hair slate gray. He has a bit of a beard, gray like his hair, and he smiles warmly at her with his pretty brown eyes.
“Come here often?” he asks.
She raises her eyebrow at him. “‘Come here often?’ Really? Couldn’t do better than that?”
He squints at her, breaking character for a moment, then says, “How about ‘can I buy you a drink?’”
“That would be lovely, thank you…?”
“Mark,” he says, holding his hand out.
“Helena,” she says, accepting it.
When it’s their turn in line, Helly stands next to Mark and tries to be coy about waiting for him to ask what she wants.
The cashier says, “Hey Mr. and Mrs. Scout, what can I get for you?”
Mark and Helly look at each other and laugh. Mark then turns back to the girl and orders for both him and Helly. He adds, “How are you, Shelley? Just working here until school starts back?”
“Yeah. I’m home for the holidays and figured I’d pick up some hours,” Shelley says as she accepts Mark’s payment. “I just talked to Dolly the other day; she said she’s loving the Midwest.”
They only make small talk for about one more minute before the line becomes restless and they bid goodbye to Shelley. Absentmindedly, Mark and Helly’s hands find their way together as Mark leads Helly to a table by the window.
“Oh, shit,” Helly says, snatching her hand away from his. “God, we’re so bad at this.”
“Right. Jesus Christ, why didn’t we pick a place farther from home?” Mark asks as he sits across from Helly. “I didn’t know fucking Shelley worked here.”
“We can still salvage this, baby, come on,” Helly encourages.
“Right.” He clears his throat. “So, uh, do you want to get out of here?”
Helly kicks him under the table. “That’s not what you would say next.”
He grins at her. “Would it work on you, though, if I did?”
She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest, considering him. “Maybe,” she admits.
Preening, Mark asks, "So, Helena, what do you do for a living?”
Their coffee order is announced; Mark winks at Helly then gets up to retrieve their cups. Helly turns to watch his backside in his corduroys. Annoyingly, Mark has continued to get more attractive as he ages. He’s slender and graceful, still able to keep up with people half his age despite his worsening posture. The slight hunch in his back somehow makes him look distinguished instead of just old.
As Mark returns with their coffees, Helly says, “I’m an elementary school art teacher. You?”
“I’m retired. Elementary school, huh? You like chasing little kids around all day?”
“You’re retired? How old are you?”
Mark’s lips come together in adorable surprise. “You think I look younger than 65? Sweetheart, that’s so nice.”
“No, you just look too poor to have retired already. You look like a work-until-you’re-80 kind of guy.”
Mark frowns at her and drinks his coffee.
“How’s this going, you think? First-date-wise?” Helly asks.
“I mean, it’s hard to say because I’ve been married to you for, like, 20 years and we keep breaking character, but if a woman as pretty as you is that mean to me on a first date, I’m jerking off to thoughts of her for a week straight.”
“So, like, one time?”
Now Mark is kicking Helly under the table. Neither of them have the libido they once did, but they still have sex about once, sometimes twice a week. Sometimes they need medication to assist, and it certainly takes longer to come than it used to, but based on conversations Helly has with her kids’ friends’ moms, she and Mark have a way better and more active sex life than average.
Since they became empty nesters, though, they’ve decided to try new things to keep the romance alive. One of those things is doing all the stuff they never did when they first got together, on account of Mark’s dead wife and Helly getting pregnant right away.
They try to get back in character, asking questions about each other’s lives (“I have two kids,” “Oh, really? Me too.”) and drinking their coffee. They move closer to each other, both of them with their elbows on the table leaning toward one another, and somehow their legs get tangled together, too.
About an hour in, they’ve dropped the act altogether and are just talking about their kids and about their upcoming vacation plans and when Helly’s in the middle of telling Mark a story about Dolly, Mark interrupts her with,
“Do you want to get out of here?”
The way he says it, his voice low and his eyes big and intentional, sends a thrill to the center of Helly’s stomach. She nods at him. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Mark holds Helly's coat out for her to put it on, then he keeps a hand at the small of her back as they leave the store, and both of them turn to say bye to Shelley before the door shuts behind them.
Outside, Mark moves his arm to sling it around Helly’s shoulders, tugging her closer to him so he can kiss the side of her face. She stumbles and puts her hand on his chest to steady herself as they walk to the car, both of them laughing.
At the car, Helly pushes Mark against the driver’s side door and kisses him soundly. He slouches down against the side of the car and holds her by the hips, making himself slightly shorter than her.
Mark pulls away from the kiss first and holds Helly’s face in his hand, rubbing her cheek with his thumb. He smiles softly at her, and Helly returns it.
“What?” she asks, clutching him by the lapels of his coat.
He shrugs. “Just thinking how you’re as beautiful as the day I met you.”
“You mean today? A few minutes ago, in the coffee shop?”
Mark nods and leans in to kiss her as he says, “Yeah, absolutely.”
“You know, this is really personal, but, um, I feel really comfortable around you, so…” Helly starts, avoiding eye contact with him to milk it. “My husband kicked me out today, you know, for my repeated infidelities. Our relationship’s been on the rocks for a while, and I really needed this. A distraction.”
Mark furrows his eyebrows at her and keeps rubbing his thumb along her cheek. “Can I admit something?”
She nods.
“I’m married. My wife’s out of town on vacation with one of our kids.”
“So, is this going to be a problem for you?”
“No.”
They giggle their way into another kiss. Helly feels giddy and just a little bit goofy about their charade. They’ve never tried something like this before, and even though they are doing a terrible job of it, it’s still fun.
They don’t stop kissing until someone walks out of the coffee shop and loudly clears their throat as they pass Mark and Helly.
They break apart and Mark makes a “yikes” face and Helly laughs at how boyish he’s still capable of looking. Mark is 70, and yet ever since Helly stopped dyeing her hair and just let it go gray, everyone assumes they are around the same age. It’s infuriating.
But also, what’s she going to do about it? Complain that her handsome husband looks a lot younger than he is?
In the car, Mark leans over the center console and grabs Helly by the back of the head, hauling her forward to kiss her again. Helly sighs into his mouth and matches the rhythm of his tongue, her hand finding his thigh.
The thing about being with someone for so long, at some point you start feeling like roommates. They decided years ago that it was imperative to find new ways to love each other.
“I want your cock in my mouth,” Helly whispers against his lips.
Mark bites down on her lip and groans. “On a first date? Really? Will you marry me?”
“I half-expected you to call me too loose and be a gentleman.”
Mark fumbles with the fly of his pants.
“Jesus, not here,” Helly says. “We don’t want a repeat of the Tweed Incident of 2028.”
“I don’t know what that is. We just met in the coffee shop, remember?”
Helly rolls her eyes and puts her hand over top of Mark’s, stopping him from undoing his fly. “Not in public, hon. Not when one of our daughter’s friends could catch us.”
“Right, yeah, I forgot about that. Hm.” Mark shifts in his seat and stares at Helly. He tucks a stray hair behind her ear and says, “You wouldn’t call me ‘hon’ the first time we meet, either.”
“God, Mark, you’re killing the mood. If you think I’m doing such a bad job roleplaying, then drive me home where I can suck you off in the comfort of our own bed.”
“Yes ma’am,” Mark replies, sounding only a little bit smug about it.
They drop the act completely as Mark drives, and Helly is in the middle of complaining about something trivial when Mark makes a wrong turn and interrupts her with, “Actually, I forgot my wife gets home today. We can’t go back to my place.”
“Oh,” Helly says, a little mockingly. “Where are you taking me, then?”
He pulls into the parking lot of a movie theater.
At the kiosk inside, Mark buys tickets for a random movie that has the nearest start time. It’s a matinee and he’s a senior, so they get a major discount.
In the theater, Mark drags Helly by the hand up to the last row and pops his knee before sitting. Helly knows, logically, that whenever Mark’s body does something old and creaky that’s not a good thing because it means she is one day closer to being a widow, but she still can’t help herself that it’s kind of hot the way he rubs the arthritic pain out of his leg.
“Are we really doing this?” Helly whispers.
Mark lifts his hips and undoes his fly. “I didn’t dry swallow Cialis in the car when you weren’t looking for nothing.” He yanks up the armrest between them and scoots closer to Helly.
“I didn’t even do this in high school.”
“Me neither.”
Helly hits him in the chest.
Mark laughs as he says, “Ow. Fine, I did this a lot in high school. Sue me.”
“Did you at least reciprocate?”
“Yes, Helly, I got caught more than once kneeling on the back row of a movie theater with my head under a girl’s skirt. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Maybe that’s why you have knee problems now.”
Mark pouts at her.
The lights dim and the previews begin. Mark slouches down in his chair and pulls his dick out, all seven and a half inches of it. In the 20 years they’ve been together, Helly has come to know Mark’s dick fairly well. It hasn’t changed much as he’s aged, just hangs lower, his balls saggier, less pubic hair at his pelvis. One of the veins stands out more than it used to, and the skin at the head is tougher to pull back to get to his slit. Still, it’s gorgeous. Helly considers all of this as she shoves her hand into the waistband of her own pants.
“Hey,” Mark says, annoyed. “What are you doing?”
After a few seconds, Helly pulls her now wet hand out and reaches over to grab Mark’s shaft.
He hisses at the contact and tenses his hips, lets his head drop against the back of the seat.
“Oh my god,” Mark says. “Oh my god, my wife just used her own arousal as lube to give me a handjob. I’ve died, right? I somehow made it into heaven?”
“Shut up, you dork.”
Mark obeys, sliding his hips down lower as Helly works him. After a minute, he says, “It was the same girl. Both times I got caught in the movie theater, it was the same girl.”
“That girl you dated for, like, all of high school? What was her name? Jenna?”
“Jenny. Good job pretending like you don’t remember, though. Like you don’t care.”
“I don’t care.” She slides her thumb along his tip. “I’m not jealous of the idea of being with you when you were inexperienced and didn’t know about hair product and you weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet.”
“Sounds like you’re a little jealous.”
“Of course I’m jealous, Mark. You looked ridiculously cute and awkward when you were young.”
“Now, if I said something like that about you, I’d be a creep.”
“You’re saying I’m not a creep?” Helly moves her hand faster. “I’m fantasizing about my old-ass husband being in high school.”
Mark laughs deep in his throat and then, without looking over at Helly, he grabs her by the back of her head and pulls her face down toward his crotch.
It’s a move that took them a while to perfect, because Mark thinks it’s degrading to Helly and had to be coaxed into it the first several times. Now, he saves it for special occasions, only doing it once or twice a year, sometimes over the console of one of their cars or on their couch at home when the kids are away.
Doing it in public, though, is a whole new thrill. The idea that they could get caught at any moment, that the person sitting three rows ahead of them could turn and see, or some employee come and kick them out for indecency in their old age.
Helly bobs up and down on his cock, and she presses a hand to his thigh and digs her fingers in while she works. She’s given him innumerable blowjobs in their lives, and yet he still makes the same pathetic little noises every time. It drives her wild. Every time.
Mark’s arm finds its way around Helly’s back and up the hem of her shirt, his fingers playing with her hip and the dimple in her lower back while she works.
“I don’t understand how you’ve gotten so much better at this when you were already so good at it to begin with,” Mark says quietly, his voice wrecked.
Helly wants to tell him that of course she’s better at it, dumbass, that’s what happens when you do something a million times in your life. He’s better at eating her out, isn’t he?
When they got together, Helly was young and naive and had no idea the kind of pleasure one could experience from being with the same person for so long. Learning each other so completely that Helly’s pretty sure she knows how to handle Mark’s dick better than he knows it himself.
After another couple of minutes, Helly can tell Mark is close. She moves her lips up so she’s only holding the tip in her mouth, then she works her hand into his pants and fondles his balls. She gently coaxes them out until they are fully visible in his lap, her hand cupping them as she works her mouth down his shaft. She puts her other hand at the base of his cock and applies pressure, just on the right side of too much, and Mark bites back a gasp and digs his fingers into her skin as he comes down her throat.
Helly sucks him dry, swallowing the familiar taste of him. She then presses a kiss to the tip of his dick, causing his hips to jerk before she gently tucks him away.
Mark breathes heavily and tightens his arm around Helly’s waist, and Helly settles against his side and puts a hand on his chest.
“What’s this movie about?” she asks.
“What movie?” Mark replies.
Helly laughs and turns to press a kiss to the base of his neck. “I’ll let you return the favor when we get home.”
Mark hums and says, “Hell of a first date.”