2. Cairo
“Hey, Cairo, wait up!”
I was halfway across the lobby of Finsac, the company where I worked in the paralegal department, when Jim called me. Distracted by Brandt’s earlier text that our meeting with our therapist had been moved up by an hour, I hadn’t eaten lunch with him today—the first time since we’d met two months ago. I’d eaten at my desk so I could leave an hour early to make my appointment.
“Jim, what’s up?”
He fell into step next to me when I walked out the door. How did he still smell so good when we’d been working the entire day?
“You’re in an awful hurry today. Everything all right?”
“Yeah, just have a meeting I don’t want to be late for.” No way would I tell him I was meeting with my relationship therapist. I’d done that to a few people in the beginning, and they got weird about it. At the first mention of a therapist, everyone automatically assumed my marriage was on the rocks. Hell, my mother hadn’t even wanted me to explain. She’d made it clear she always knew our relationship wouldn’t work. She’d only acted bewildered when I’d told her we were stronger than ever but only exploring avenues of intimacy with other people. To her, that symbolized something was wrong with our relationship and was plain unnatural.
After several negative comments, I’d stopped mentioning it. It wasn’t my duty to get others to understand nontraditional relationships. I tried not to take the reactions personally. Brandt and I had also come a long way with ridding ourselves of the traditional values we grew up with and embracing our journey. Thanks to our therapist, we’d both realized the only opinion that mattered was ours, since we were the ones in the relationship.
That revelation had helped us to redefine our marriage, and we were better for it.
“Let me not keep you, then. Just letting you know Merry and I will have some guests over tonight. It shouldn’t go on for long, but the noise may be a bit more than usual. We’ll ensure everyone will be out the door at a reasonable hour.”
“You guys having a party?”
“Something like that.”
And they hadn’t invited us? I frowned. Over the past month since they’d moved in, we’d spent a lot of time together. Especially on the weekends, lounging by their pool, since we didn’t have our own.
“We would have invited you, but we don’t think it’d be to your taste,” he said.
“It’s okay, Jim. I understand.” I forced a smile. Before he became our neighbor, I’d gravitated to him at work. He was an easygoing man, eight years older than me, and seemed so worldly. He and Merry had traveled quite a bit before settling down in Atlanta in a neighborhood close to the airport where Merry was based as a flight attendant.
“Anyway, hope your appointment goes well. Give Brandt my love.”
“I will, thank you.”
Jim headed back inside. I watched him, the ache in my heart unrelenting. Brandt and I were attracted to him and Merry. We’d talked openly about our attraction, even with our therapist. Since this was our first time looking to engage with anyone else outside our marriage and we were such good friends with them, we didn’t want to ruin things by making our feelings clear. We’d decided to take the route of surrogate partner therapy by way of a couple for us to explore. Our way to opening our hearts and bodies to another couple could have happened in so many ways, but we’d chosen this option as right for us. Dr. Lively had agreed that for us this was a good opportunity to explore intimacy with others.
On the drive to the therapist’s office, I mused about Jim not inviting Brandt and me to his party. What kind of party could it be that he felt wasn’t our sort of thing?
The secretary waved me in with a distracted smile while talking on the phone.
I knocked once at the door, then entered. “Sorry I’m late. The traffic was a beast.”
“That’s okay, Cairo. We haven’t begun.”
“Thank you.” Along with our joint sessions, we also had one-on-one sessions with her, but I preferred for our joint sessions to actually have both of us present before information flowed. I kissed Brandt and sat next to him on the loveseat, close enough to have our bodies touching. Support and comfort radiated from that contact, settling my fluttering nerves.
Dr. Lively, a middle-aged woman with a soothing voice and a motherly demeanor, smiled at us. “Now that we’re all here, we can get started.” She handed us both a folder. “Those are the two couples the surrogate locator has matched with you. Why don’t you go through them and decide which couple you would like to go with? You don’t have to choose now. You can meet with both and make your decision after.”
The first couple was married like us and had been in the program for two years. They’d worked with three other couples since, and the feedback from those clients was glowing. They were both in their twenties and had a healthy, open perspective on relationships that shone through in their written responses.
“What do you think?” I asked Brandt.
Brandt chuckled. “Truly? I was thinking if only we both had been as self-aware, open, and confident at such a young age, we would be pros at this by now.”
“At least we’re there now. That’s the important thing, right?”
“True.”
The second couple had a bit of an age gap that I found interesting. They reminded me of Jim and Merry. What was more interesting was that they had been a part of the program as a couple for four years, but the older man had acted as a surrogate partner for ten years.
Brandt and I shared a glance, our eyes silently communicating as we usually did. I knew he liked the second couple. We returned our attention to the folders, flipping through the pages meticulously. Much of the information was about their views on sex and relationships. We’d asked for information such as jobs and hobbies to be omitted because we felt we stood a better chance at building a rapport if we asked them directly.
“What’s going through your minds?” Dr. Lively asked.
“We prefer the second couple with the age gap,” Brandt replied.
“But we’re also not sure if that’s because they remind us of another couple.”
“Your neighbors.”
“Right.”
“You can meet with them both.”
Brandt and I looked at each other and nodded.
“I think we will,” I said. “We’re ready for this.”
“I think so too.” Dr. Lively smiled.
“Do you think we’re being too cautious about being with another couple?” Brandt worried his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Is that what you think?” she asked.
“If we were both ready, we would just take the plunge. People do this all the time without having a therapist as a mediator.”
“They do, but you’re not other people. You are Brandt and Cairo, and you’ve been together since you were sixteen. You both come from conservative families where you’ve had to learn to let go of certain notions that were making you feel guilty. Also, you’ve never been with anyone else intimately apart from each other, so your hesitancy is understandable. You’ve chosen the path that works for you, and that’s all that matters.”
I squeezed Brandt’s hand to let him know I would support him through this transition. “If you’re not ready, we can wait. I’m not in a hurry. This only works if we are both on the same page.”
“No, I’m ready.” He squeezed back. “I know I am.”
“All right, then, let’s talk about expectations…”