Elizabeth Ann - my wife, affectionately known to friends and associates as Bess, is every bit the people-person I am not. We hadn’t spoken all evening, which was strange for her. Bess stood with her back to me, pouring a glass of wine. I leaned against the kitchen counter, lost in thought. Guests were gone, and servers were tidying the house before they left.

‘Bess will be thrilled,’ Lindsey had said. But she had refused to tell me what she meant.

Bess glanced my way, on her way out of the kitchen, but said nothing. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. I caught the scent of my wife’s shower gel and opened my eyes to Lindsey walking into the room wearing Bess's robe.

“Oh,” she said, seeing that I was alone. “Bess?”

“Great-room,” I said, motioning with my head.

“Ah,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Just finishing,” I said, nodding at the second pot.

Lind made her way around the bar, careful not to touch me. I left her there, setting my mug on the bar and went for my turn in the shower, still trying to process how life had changed in the last few hours.

After showering, I wandered into the yard to survey the damage after the storm. The sun had long set, and the moon was climbing into the sky, bathing the yard in pale light. It didn’t look too bad. The tent was still up, but some of the chairs and tables had blown around. Small branches littered the yard, leaves and flower petals floated in the pool.

At the sound of the sliding door, I looked up. Bess came out to stand beside me.

“Not too bad?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” I said.

“Might need to add chlorine to the pool.”

“Probably.”

When she stopped talking, the silence grew between us like a real, tangible thing. We stood for perhaps ten minutes, neither saying a word.

“Will you say something, please?” she asked. As she was talking, her phone chirped. She took it out and glanced at it.

“It’s Cathy,” she said. “Her roommate’s mother is visiting the country next month. She wants them to stay the night.”

“Does she speak English?” I asked. Cathy's roommate was Japanese.

“I assume so,” she said.

She dashed off a quick text and put her phone away. Our daughter, Cathy, was a college student who lived about an hour away. She spent many weekends here studying when she wasn’t waiting tables.

I sighed. Did Bess know about Lindsey and me? Is that why she was like this?

“Are Lindsey and Kayla still here?” I asked.

“Yes, they’re putting the dishes away. They might stay the night. Reg is on a late flight to Denver, you know.”

Reg, our son, frequently traveled for his job. His wife Kayla worked with Lindsey and Bess. She managed social media, answered mail, and generally helped keep the writing machine running. She’s smart and pleasant to have around, but Bess and I needed to talk.

“Christ, Elizabeth, it seems like there’s always someone staying over.”

And it was true. If it wasn’t Lindsey, who had stayed too late and didn’t want to drive home in the dark, it was Kayla, who didn’t like staying in an empty house when Reg was away. And Bess didn’t like making love if anyone else was staying over.

She started to say something but stopped. She turned to gaze into the woods and then walked into the yard to view the fields to the east.

“You’re right,” she murmured at last. I kept my silence, waiting for her to go on. “What I mean is,” she said, her voice no longer steady. “I…I know you’ve been...naughty, but I’m afraid I’m so much worse,” she whispered.

A wave of nausea swooped through my belly, but I didn’t move. Despite my recent infidelity, I was poised to explode in anger.

“Tell me,” I said, my voice shaking. Best to get it all out in the open.

“Oh, Greg. I’m so sorry. Once Lind and I started, I just couldn’t get enough. I always thought that I must be bisexual, which was a huge, huge thing for me.”

Not nausea now, but vertigo overtook me. I held up a hand to stop her, wishing that I was sitting down.

“Wait… wait. What? Bisexual? You and Lindsey?”

“Yes, that’s why I sent her out there to you this afternoon. I thought that maybe you wouldn’t hate me so much,” she said. “But, no, honey. I’m not bisexual.”

“What? How can that be?” I asked. “If you’re fucking Lind, then yeah, you are.”

Which, truthfully, wouldn’t have bothered me all that much. I always thought that Bess could cheat on me with all the women she wanted, and I wouldn’t care. I just didn’t want her sleeping with other men. What does that say about me? Am I insecure? Maybe. I just never thought it would bother me.

She walked away a couple of steps then turned back, tears rolling down her face.

“No, sweetheart. I’m not bisexual.” She put a hand on my chest and broke down completely. “I…I…I’m gay!” she wailed, finally collapsing in sobs on my chest. I held her as she cried uncontrollably.

Gay? A lesbian? I thought. What the fuck?

After several minutes I cleared my throat.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked. We had moved to the patio table and were sitting in relatively dry chairs.

“That’s a good question,” she said, wiping her eyes and nose with a tissue she produced as if by magic. “Before we get to that, you need to know something else.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I said, my voice rising.

“One little thing,” she said. “Okay, one big thing. One kind of relatively huge thing.”

“Goddammit, spit it out,” I grumbled.

“You know how Lindsey and Kayla are good friends?”

“Yes.”

“And you know how Reg spends so much time away?”

Oh god.

“Yes.”

“Well, they’re really good friends.”

“Are you fucking with me right now? Is that it? Is this some kind of emotional payback?”

“No, darli…”

“Don’t “darling” me!” I growled. “If there’s something more, spit it out.”

Speaking in a low, quick monotone, she said, “Kayla came over one day to work on something and found Lindsey and me swimming naked. She joined us, and then she and Lind started fooling around. One thing led to another, and I got pulled in, too.”

“Christ on a crutch woman! Are you telling me that you cheated on me with our daughter-in-law?”

“Kind of,” she said. “They have a semi-open marriage, so she doesn’t think of it as cheating.”

That was news. “Semi-open? What does that mean?” I asked, intrigued in spite of myself.

“They won’t have ongoing affairs, but if one is away, they don’t mind a little fun on the side.”

“Lucky bastard,” I said, thinking of my son, Reg.

“Lucky you, you mean,” she said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you and me. Kayla and Lindsey. I’m talking about being gay and...and I’m really sorry about this...not wanting to have sex with you anymore.”

“What? You want a divorce?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “At least I don’t think so. Not if we can work it out. I still love you, and hopefully, we’ll be grandparents someday. But I’m just not attracted to you that way. I’m not sure I ever was.”

That was one hell of a blow to the ego, let me tell you.

“So, how is this a good thing?” I asked.

“It’s a good thing because both Lindsey and Kayla want to… er, take over for me.”

“Take over? For you?”

“That’s right.” She picked up her phone.

“Sorry. Hang on.”

She answered a text and set the phone back on the table.

“Yes,” she repeated. “They’re willing to take care of your physical needs if you want. Of course, if you would rather divorce and find someone else…” Her voice trailed away, and tears rolled down her face again.

The patio door slid open, and Kayla and Lindsey walked out.

“Anyone still want coffee?” Kayla asked, leaning down and kissing my wife on the cheek.

“Hi, Greg,” Lindsey said her face scarlet.

I didn’t feel like talking. Or looking at anyone. Or getting up and walking away. So I sulked at the table.

“There’s still half a pot,” Kayla said. “But it’s getting kind of late.”

Kayla sat beside me, and Lindsey sat across the table.

“So, have you gotten to all the good parts?” Kayla asked.

“Just about,” Bess said.

I looked over sharply, and she held up a hand.

“Just one little thing,” Bess said. “Kayla and Reg are trying to have a baby. They’re having trouble.”

“Oh. I’m…well, I’m sorry,” I said.

The oddness of the conversation suddenly struck me.

"Sorry, how is that relevant to the…situation?” I asked.

“It’s relevant because you might be called on to help things along,” Bess said.

“But I had a vasectomy years ago. I can’t help,” I said.

“No, but there are reversal surgeries.”

“We’re still trying,” Kayla said. “It might not be an issue.”

I was way over my limit for talking in a single day. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.

“So, let me see if I can get this in a nutshell,” I said. “Bess and Lindsey became lovers. Then you decided to involve Kayla, your god damned daughter-in-law, in the mix. You’re all having lesbian threesomes, and you decide that you don’t want to have sex with me, your husband, anymore, but your lesbian lovers will be happy to have sex with me whenever I want. Oh, and I might need to have microsurgery so that I can impregnate one of them at some future point. Does that cover it?”

“Sounds about right,” Kayla said.

“Kayla and I were together a long time before…” Lindsey started but trailed away when she saw the look on my face. “Yeah, that’s about it,” she said.

“I’m the lesbian, not them,” Bess said. “But I love you and want to stay married if you can open your mind and broaden your definition of marriage.”

***

I wore a robe over swim trunks as I headed down to the pool the next morning. I needed physical activity to clear my mind. I didn’t know what to make of the situation. And, given that situation, I decided to swim with my trunks on today. It was cool and sunny, quite a contrast to the day before.

I had swum nearly twenty laps before I began to feel fatigued. I kept pushing another fifteen or so before I took a break and sat on the edge. When I did, I saw Kayla seated on the other side of the pool, watching me. I leaned my head back, letting the sun hit my face and tried to ignore her as I caught my breath.

“This is the way things are now,” she said. “You’re going to have to make the best of the situation.

”You’re not wrong,” I said after nearly a minute.

“Are you angry?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“So? What then?”

“I think I’m sad, and horny, and angry, and excited, all at the same time.”

Kayla was slender; her skin pale in the early summer sun. She stood, tall in her bikini, and walked around the pool to sit beside me.

“Anything else?” she asked.

I sighed heavily.

“I don’t want to lose my wife.”

She leaned in and kissed me. I allowed it, wrapping my hand in her hair, connecting with her in that first kiss in a way that I never had with my wife. Kayla, my daughter-in-law, half my age, moaned into my mouth and wrapped her long arms around my neck. My cock was growing, and I laid back on the concrete, pulling her with me.

Struck by the thought of Reg, I pulled away.

“Wait, are you sure Reg would be okay with this?” I asked. “Don’t you guys have rules or something?”

“Kind of,” she said. “If he knew it was you, he might be pissed. But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

She slid a hand across my chest and circled a nipple lazily.

“Surely he’ll find out eventually,” I said, gazing down at her modest breasts. Her bikini top had loosened in our brief engagement, and I could see the edge of one dark nipple peeking over the edge. I felt flutters in my stomach.

“Maybe,” she said, following my gaze and running a finger along her bikini top. “Can you help me with this?” She pulled her hair up in the back, exposing the string tie. I pulled the knot, first in the bottom string, then in the top, allowing the scraps of cloth to fall away.

“Better,” she said. “Thank you.”

I took in the sight of her breasts, exposed to me for the first time. I slid a hand from her hip up over her back and into her hair. I felt her shiver and pulled her to me for another kiss. With my other hand, I slid from her belly up and over first one breast, then the other, causing her nipples to harden against my hand.

“Oh! That’s so nice,” she said. “Here, kiss them, please!”

She pulled my head down to her sensitive nubs, and let me work them until I was satisfied. She kept shivering and crying out in the cutest voice I had ever heard.

“Do you want to continue out here or go inside?” I asked.

“Which chair did you take Lindsey in?” she asked.

I snorted, and stood, taking her hand in mine and leading her to the same one. Along the way, I pulled the strings on her bikini bottoms and took them from her. I led her, nude, to the lounge and tried to lay her down.

“No,” she said. “You need something first. Lie down for me. Please?”

I let her have her way and lay on the chaise after sliding out of my wet trunks.

“So nice!” she said, taking my cock in her hand. Suddenly, she glanced up.

“Do you want to know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

She cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “Whose is bigger, of course!”

“Oh. No. No, I don’t.”

Whether it was thinking of my son or the fact that I knew she was comparing me to him, I began to lose my erection.

“Oh, we can’t have that!” Kayla said.

She leaned over and took me into her mouth, bringing me back to full hardness instantly.

“Oh, god!” I said. “Oh my god, that is good!”

“Mmm,” she said, looking up at me. Taking me from her mouth, she smiled a devilish smile.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Okay doesn’t even begin…” I said. “Keep going, please.”

“My pleasure,” she said, lowering her head again.

The things that girl did to me, I can’t even begin to describe. She used her tongue in ways that my darling Bess never had or would. In an embarrassingly short time, she was pumping semen out onto my belly, kissing the sensitive frenulum the entire time I came. I held her head gently, allowing her to go at her pace, but maintaining contact.

“Kayla, that was… indescribable,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Just the first installment, Pop,” she said. “I owe you a bunch more for all the ones Bess has given me.”

The gate clanged, and Lindsey came into the enclosure, smiling when she saw us.

“Hi, guys! Whatcha doing?” she asked.

“Just finishing up,” Kayla said, wiping her hand on her leg and grinning at me again. Lindsey gave her a quick peck on the mouth, then leaned in to kiss me. Again, I felt a deep connection with this girl.

Lind looked down at my soft cock and frowned.

“Too bad. Boys take so long to recover.”

“Girls on the other hand,” Kayla said, reaching out and taking her hand.

“Mmm,” Lindsey said. “Girls are always ready.”

I scooted over, and Lindsey sat beside me, locked in an embrace with Kayla. As I watched them, my dick began stirring. I pushed Kayla’s hair out of her eyes. Lindsey broke their kiss and moved to take her hard nipple in her mouth.

“Oh my,” Kayla said. She held Lindsey’s head to her chest. “That’s it! Just like that! Oh, god, Lind, I love that.”

She looked at me, lust burning in her gaze. One hand held Lindsey to her breast, the other reached out to me, pulling me into a kiss. I wrapped an arm around her waist for balance, and another around Lindsey just for the fun of it. I stroked both their hips and backs while kissing my sexy daughter-in-law.

Life is about change. How we respond to that change says a lot about us as people. I was beginning to think that I was going to be okay with it.