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Privacy and cookie detailsShe wants him for herself. He is her son's trusted friend.
At sixty-two, Tressa wants a life that includes desire. The man she wants is her adult son's trusted friend.
Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 19m
SteamyIntense chemistry. Sensual intimacy.Heat guideYearning · Tender
Discussion of divorce, Adult family conflict
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Dear Maeve,
I asked Elian to come swimming and left my son’s name out of the invitation. Selwyn had just driven away. I had been keeping Elian in the kitchen with an account of the dishwasher which would not have survived a second question.
Tressa Kershaw has her own house, her own pension and seven years of solitary swims behind her. At sixty-two, the retired optician is accustomed to being called patient. Elian Nancarrow is the man who notices she isn't. When she asks him to the late session at the lido, she leaves her son's name out of the invitation. Elian is forty-nine, a parks gardener with a home and a life of his own. He is also her adult son Selwyn's trusted friend. Tressa met him only fourteen months ago, as an independent adult, at Selwyn's house. Now there are bad cups of tea, arguments about sea views and a hand she wants to keep holding. Elian wants her company without having to make himself useful. She wants to believe his desire is for the woman she is. But a friend is someone Selwyn can tell things he doesn't tell his mother. Wanting Elian brings Tressa close to a private life that isn't hers to enter, and keeping everyone comfortable is a habit she knows too well. As an invitation becomes something she can no longer call harmless company, she must decide how much room she is willing to ask for in her own life.
I am sixty-two. I can invite a man to a public swimming pool without assistance. Apparently I cannot do it without moving the pepper mill.
Elian is forty-nine, and he is Selwyn’s friend. I met him fourteen months ago at my son’s house. He had an opinion about the chair he’d been given. I liked the opinion. Since then I have found rather too many reasons to remember it.
At the pool he told me I didn’t seem very patient. Maeve, people have been praising my patience for years. It was a pleasure to be correctly accused. Then he asked which way I would go if nobody needed collecting at the other end, and I discovered I had an answer.
We drank terrible tea. We walked farther than we needed to. On Sunday I put lipstick in a bag with two apples and a waterproof, as though I might require it in an emergency.
There was something less easy on that walk. I asked whether Selwyn had told him why he seemed tired. Elian wouldn’t answer. He said he couldn’t know which things would feel private to my son. I was embarrassed, then grateful, then embarrassed by how long it had taken me to be grateful.
He is allowed to be Selwyn’s friend. I don’t want to borrow that friendship to get closer to either of them.
I asked Elian to my house after our next swim. I put two mugs out before I left, then hid them in the cupboard. When we got home, I asked him to kiss me. Then I asked him again.
Afterwards I wanted the big kitchen light on. I didn’t want to be reassured that I looked younger. I wanted to be there as I was, with the man I had invited. He put the light on without making a speech about it.
I have had a full life since my marriage ended. I like my house when it is quiet. I like going places alone. I would also like Elian’s hand at my back, and I am tired of trying to make that sound like a sensible use of my time.
Selwyn doesn’t know yet. He deserves to hear something true from me. I would prefer to tell him without first inventing a version in which nobody has any reason to be uncomfortable. That may require more practice than the swimming.
From What We Keep for Ourselves
Read this if you want a woman in her sixties to choose desire without treating her family as an enemy.
Read this if you want later-life desire with room for family, humour and a life of her own.
Enemies, rivals and forbidden love
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