These conversations with Abby were wonderful in so many ways. It allowed us to grieve together, to laugh together, and to learn together. While it revealed to me (and to us) aspects of the lives we led before we met and before the accident, it also revealed the vast differences in life experiences that I drew upon and what Abby could draw upon. This was where the age differences between the two of us were so apparent, at least to me.

The separation of more than 2800 miles meant that we weren't physically together and that we couldn't be sexually active with each other. At one level, our lives were more complicated by the revealing of our sexual intimacy. At another level, it was "simpler" because it was out in the open though we weren't acting upon that openness. That's not to say that we didn't talk about it. We did and in very explicit and erotic terms. There was so much more that Abby wanted to experience with me and so much more that I wanted to share with her. And there were times in that spring of 1986 that I just wanted to fly to her, to be with her.

It was also equally clear to me at the time that I couldn't just substitute Abby (or anyone else associated with Catie) into the "role" that Catie had in my life. I didn't think of Abby in that way (as a possible substitute) and even now it's difficult to see how that would have worked as a practical matter. I had friends that, upon the ending of a relationship with one family member, had taken up another relationship with a sister or a brother and they never worked out because the previous relationship was always present or "in the way." As a thought exercise today, I can have a bit or erotic fun with the thoughts while ignoring the obvious challenges.

At the same time there was a developing relationship between the woman my coworker had introduced to me after I returned from Colorado. Unlike Catie and I, where we were in bed with each other the very first night on the train, this was a careful and slow moving relationship. There was enough interest by both of us to explore the possibilities. Yet, it was also challenging in ways that I wasn't sure we would or could get through. She was 39 years old, recently divorced, and had an eight year old daughter from that marriage. One thing that she didn't want in front of her daughter was to appearing to jump into bed with any guy who showed up at her doorstep.

I understood that and I let her lead the way sexually. It was clear to me, from the very start, that however this relationship developed, if at all, it probably wouldn't be as exciting or "wide open" as the relationship I had with Catie. We had gone out a number of times or I had been by her place for dinner several times but there was no sex and barely anything physically romantic until well into the month of March and even then it was quite limited. We were learning about each other's way of thinking and interacting (though I kept what happened in the previous months out of the conversation). It had been nearly eleven weeks since Catie died and nearly six weeks since we had met. And although I had been sexually involved with Catie's friends (Carol and Jody), this was the first person that I was involved with who had no relationship with Catie or Catie's family.

I had a business trip scheduled for the second week of March to Lake Charles, Louisiana to manage performance testing at a power plant. I was leaving on Monday to fly to Houston and then driving to Lake Charles. The day before I left (Sunday), my ex-wife and I did the "handoff" of my son after he had spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning with me. I packed my suitcase with the combination of my work clothes and safety equipment for the week as well as my street clothes. It was going to be a strange workweek because the testing was going to conducted at night for various technical reasons. I was the project manager and my supervisor was included for his additional experience in the sorts of tests we were conducting.

I was invited by this new woman in my life to come to the condo she was renting for dinner with her and her daughter. It was a both a work night and "school night," so it meant that her daughter would be going to bed early. I had been to her condo enough times that I wasn't an unfamiliar person to her daughter. In fact, her daughter took to me quite easily; something that was noticeable to this new woman and her friends.

We had a pleasant evening together and it seemed no different from other evenings that I had come over and spent some time with them (usually on weeknights when my son wasn't with me). After she had put her daughter to bed, we sat together in the living room and talked. I don't remember what the conversation was about. But, after she went to check to see if her daughter was asleep, she came back to the living room and invited me to get intimate with her. Just like I had always done at the beginning of any relationship, I hadn't pressed the issue of sexual intimacy. It was, as it is now, a matter of consent and, in this case, affirmative consent. She was waiting for "a move" by me that hadn't appeared and she was thinking might never come.

She made it clear that I wouldn't be spending the night with her (in other words, I wouldn't be around in the morning when her daughter got up and when she had to take her daughter to school and she had to go to work). I was fine with that. And so, she led me back to her bedroom where we undressed each other by candlelight and got into bed together. There was nothing fast about any of this and she got a taste of my well-developed oral sex skills as I explored every square millimeter in and around her vagina with my mouth and tongue. That initial oral session lasted for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and I don't know how many orgasms for her. She finally told me "enough!" because it was too intense and that she was ready for me to slide my cock inside her.

She was on her back waiting for me to slide into her. She was cumming as soon as the head of my cock popped into her. Fortunately, she was quite wet and well lubricated from all the oral action and as her orgasm started, I continued to press my cock into her. My cock was bigger than she was accustomed to and the stretching fullness as she was being filled intensified the orgasm. When I felt "resistance" to further penetrating her, I stopped pressing and held still to allow her (and to allow me) to experience her first orgasm with me inside her. As I recall, it was as that orgasm subsided that she realized that she had "something" pretty large inside her {what she said later was she had "a good sized man" inside her). She was tight and wet and as her orgasm subsided, I began to stroke in and out of her.

Again, there was nothing fast about any of this. It wasn't a few dozen fast strokes into her on my part and then cumming in her. No, I took my time and savored every bit of it. It was much like my "first time" with any woman was where we were discovering our own "Joy of Sex" in discovering what we liked. And I also knew that if my orgasm happened quickly, in a few minutes, I could be hard again and picking up where I left off. I didn't stay in her all the time as I would pull out and bring my mouth to her pussy for more exploration before sliding mu cock back inside her. It was more than 20 minutes after I entered her when I was finally building towards the edge of my own orgasm. When I finally went over the edge, it was a big one. And although most of the spasms squirting my cum inside her were at the very beginning of the orgasm, I was still having the occasional spasm two minutes after I first started spurting inside her.

I laid on top of her while and after cumming inside her while she wrapped her arms and legs around me. I finally propped up on my elbows to see her smiling face and to lessen my weight pressing down upon her. I didn't soften very fast and her vagina had a tight grip on my cock like it wasn't going to let me go anywhere. There was sexy small talk as I finally slipped out of her about 10 minutes after cumming inside her. And there was quite a gush as my cum ran out of her. There wasn't a towel under her and she had me get up so she could get a towel to put under us and on the wet spot that was on the bed. Once we were back together in bed and were wrapped around each other, we enjoyed those sexual afterglow moments. Although I didn't explicitly offer to clean her, I eventually put her into position so I could lick her pussy and what cum was still running out of her. She had me stop saying something like "not being able to finish what we were starting."

We both had an early morning to face and so I finally got up, got dressed, and left around 12:30 AM. I didn't ask to stay and she wasn't ready to change her mind about it, yet. I drove the 45 minutes back to my home with a smile on my face as I thought about our sexual encounter. It had taken us a long time to get to this point and I wasn't sure about what was next. I was elated at one level and a little sad at a different level because this could mean my life was taking another (unexpected) turn.

I called her in the morning to see how she was doing. She was still processing her own sense of "WOW!" She was sore from the length of our session and the degree to which she had been stretched. That, and my cum was still dripping out of her. I was leaving for the airport shortly and I told her that I'd call her from Lake Charles and we could talk then. This was a big step for this relationship and we both knew it.

The flights to Houston Intercontinental Airport were unremarkable. I had flown into Houston via Hobby Field before. This was my first time flying into and out of this airport. There was no easy way to fly directly to Lake Charles at the time. We went to the rental car counter (Budget) to pick up the car I had reserved for the week. Budget gave me a white 1986 Camaro for the week. Physically, it wasn't much different from the one I had rented in 1983 to drive across the country and back. Once we got our gear loaded into the rental car, we set off for Lake Charles, Louisiana.

It was a bright, clear sunny day. It wasn't noticeably humid like it can be in Houston. We headed out of the airport, down the east side of Houston toward Interstate 10. Traffic around Houston was heavy (as normal) but once we got on I-10 the traffic let up and it was easy driving on the interstate highway. I don't recall stopping for lunch because I think we had eaten on the flight to Houston from Atlanta.

We reached Beaumont, Texas in less than two hours via I-10. It was around 1:30 in the afternoon (CST). Traffic wasn't heavy for this time of day. When I-10 reaches Beaumont, it turns north to run along the west side of the city before making this long sweeping turn to the east once north of the city. I mention this because visibility was good and I could see that traffic was backed up and stopped after the turn to the east and I could see it more than 1000 feet before I would be reaching it. There's a lot to be said for flat ground and straight highways. It seems the speed limit was 65 mph at that time for that stretch of road (in contrast to the 55 mph speed limit a few years before).

As we completed the long turn, I began to slow down as I approached the last vehicle in the line of stopped traffic. We were in the left lane next to the left shoulder when we came to a stop. I had my foot on the brake and about two car lengths of space between me and the white Toyota that was stopped in front of me. I didn't know why the traffic was stopped; just that it was. I looked up in the rearview mirror through that long, rear fastback glass window to see that a white Ford pickup truck was coming up to the rear of the Camaro and he wasn't stopping or going to be able to stop. I had only enough time to say "We're about to be hit!" before impact with the rear of the car.

I let up the pressure on the brakes ever so slightly so the car would move slightly with the impact. At the last moment, I saw the guy driving the pickup truck try to veer to the left and he never hit his brakes before impact. He slammed into the back of the Camaro at 65 mph and drove us forward towards the Toyota in front of us. What I remember seeing was the last second veer, the rear window going from clear to "white" as the glass shattered into thousands of pieces, a moment of darkness as I heard the sound of the impact and my head driven back into the headrest of the bucket seat, then seeing the right side of the truck in the air over my left shoulder as he went by us. Although he had driven us towards the car in front of us, he was going so much faster than us (with the spacing between us) that he bounced off the concrete Jersey barricade between the east and westbound lanes, and into the rear of the Toyota in front of us, driving him forward into the car in front of him. His front wheels were still turned to the left after he had bounced off the barricade and he careened back against the barricade where he slid to a stop against a steel guardrail attachment to the concrete barricade.

I realized that we were "okay." The force of impact has caused the back of the right seat to bend where my coworker was sitting. I put the transmission in Park and turned off the ignition. Vehicles were now stopping behind us, flashers on. I walked up to the car in front of us and asked the driver if he was okay. He indicated he was. I walked up to the door of the car he had hit and the woman in the car rolled down the window. I asked if she was okay and she said she thought she was. I walked up to the Ford pickup truck. The left front tire had blown out on impact with the barricade and had raised the right rear wheel off the concrete pavement. The engine was still running at a high rpm and the right rear wheel was spinning in the air driven by the transmission. I didn't know what I'd see in the truck.

The right door was unlocked and I opened it. The guy driving the truck had broken the steering wheel on impact and was "pinned" between the steering column and the left door. There was a young woman who was in the middle who was thrown against him , apparently during impact with the barricade and then under the steering wheel and on the floor of the truck. Neither of them were belted into the seats by seatbelts. I reached across to the ignition and turned the engine off. I expected to see much worse given the circumstances. But the glancing blows off my car, the car in front of me and the barricade wall meant that they didn't come to an instantaneous stop and probably saved both of them. I asked them if they were okay. They were both pretty stunned because of the impact but indicated that they thought they were. My guess was that she was playing with his cock while they were driving down the interstate. Whether she was sucking his cock on impact or just before, I cannot say for certain. I stepped away from the vehicle and allowed them to extract themselves from the vehicle while I walked back and looked at all the damage.

My coworker was out of the car looking at the damage. Since there was an exit right there, he safely crossed the lanes and called 911 and came back. Given the damage to the rental car, I wasn't sure it was even drivable. Fortunately, the gas tank in the Camaro was positioned above the rear differential and hadn't been punctured by the impact. The Beaumont Police arrived pretty quickly and blocked the left lane while she made a quick assessment of the situation. I had to drawn out the way the accident took place because it wasn't immediately clear to her what had happened. After she understood the sequence of impact and she took a couple of pictures of the vehicles. She asked if we could move our vehicles. The truck certainly wasn't drivable. The two cars in front of me were even though the Toyota in front of me had damage to the left rear and the front of his vehicle. I told the officer I wasn't sure whether the Camaro could move as it depended upon whether the drivetrain was damaged. I pulled my car over to the shoulder of the road while she took statements and filled out reports.

In the meantime, my coworker/supervisor had called our office and our corporate headquarters to let them know that we had been in an accident. At one level, immediately after the accident, I had gone into an automatic mode of checking on everyone after I had determined that I was not externally hurt. It didn't occur to me, until I was waiting at the scene of the accident for the processing of the accident report, that I had survived an incredible impact in an accident where Catie had not. I was shaken by that thought and tried to press it down and even brush it aside. But I also knew that the accident she was in was far less survivable than what I had just experienced. Finally, the police officer told me I was free to go if my car was drivable. I told her that I was going to try to get off the interstate at the next exit and find out what the rental car company wanted me to do. She and the other officers at the scene stopped traffic so I could leave and I drove to the next exit where I could get to a pay phone to find out what to do next. In driving away, I could tell the car's frame had been bent by the impact.

I called Budget Rental Car and told them the situation and gave them the information they required. While I was on the phone with them, they were trying to see if a car was available for me at the Beaumont Regional Airport south of the city. The Budget office was an off-airport site and they gave me directions on how to get there from my location. I was asked if the car was drivable. I told them I wasn't sure. The rear window was gone (all over the inside of the car), the left rear of the car was crushed with no tail lights remaining. The clearance between the left rear tire and the rear fender was close. They told me to drive it if I could but if there were problems, get to somewhere safe and they'd come tow it in.

As we drove down the road with our rear window air conditioning and the broken right seat, I could tell the car was trying to crab walk across the road and drive slightly sideways. The rear differential wasn't happy about either but didn't make a horrible noise as we drove the 12 -13 miles down to the airport. In those days, the main road to the airport was a two lane road with a traffic light at the entrance to the airport. Opposite of the entrance was the Budget Rental Car trailer that was the offsite rental office. The car they were going to give me had already been pulled out of their parking area and was sitting in front of the trailer. One of the rental agents was looking out the window as I turned left off the main road and into their lot. I could read her lips as she said "Oh, my God!" I pulled the wrecked car over to the side of the grassy area that was their parking lot, parked it, grabbed the rental contract and the keys and went inside.

"You probably shouldn't have driven here. You probably should have let us tow you in," the rental agent said to me. I told her that we saved some time by driving the car in and we got some really interesting looks as we drove down the road to the airport. Anyway, they had already prefilled the new transfer contract and they closed out the contract for the wrecked vehicle. As I finished signing all the documents and was told what I needed to do when the accident report became available, the rental agent asked me if I knew that I was or had been bleeding? I was totally unaware.

I was wearing a pair of Ray Ban gold-framed, mirrored dark amber Shooter glasses that were equipped with a plastic impact guard across the area above the bridge of my nose. It was a cut over my the left inside of my eye and the blood had been running down the left side of my nose before it dried. I went into the bathroom to wash my face and wipe off the blood. The police officer and other people hadn't said anything about bleeding and my coworker couldn't see it from the passenger seat. The impact was so great that the acceleration of my head/face forward at impact drove me into the frame of the glasses and cut the area at the eye socket. It wasn't a big cut. But it could bleed a lot if it had been a bigger cut. Once I was cleaned up, we walked out to the wrecked Camaro. We couldn't open the rear window deck. But we could reach down through missing window and extract our suitcases. My briefcase and my camera bag were behind my seat. Over the next few weeks, I found the remnants of the rear window in my camera bag and my briefcase. With everything transferred over to a new sedan, we said goodbye and drove back to I-10 to continue our journey to Lake Charles.

Once we arrived at the hotel in Lake Charles, it was time to make calls first to company personnel to provide the requisite reporting and to get the paperwork started associated with the accident.

"Did you or do you want to go to a hospital to be checked?" I was asked. I thought the seatback had done its job and I wasn't concerned about whiplash. At that time, I thought I was fine. So did my coworker, even though his seat broke on impact (he was a bigger, heavier guy and the company HR personnel were worried about possible back strain as a result of the impact and broken seat). Once those calls were completed, the next call was to my ex-wife at work to let her know that I had been in an accident, that I thought I was fine (that I had been able to walk away from it) and that I would call later in the evening to talk to our son.

My next call was to my new lover to let her know about the accident and that I thought I was okay. I probably downplayed how serious the accident really was by not telling her everything about how we got rear-ended at the back of the line of stopped traffic. After those calls, we met one of our power plant contacts and had dinner at a Cajun restaurant that he liked that was known for its crawdads. He suggested that we go to the hospital after dinner just in case but we declined. After dinner and once back in the hotel room, I called my son to talk to him. He had the concern of a 5 year old for his dad being in an accident (to the extent that he could process that) and I told him that sometimes things like this happen even when it isn't you fault. I hadn't really told him much about Catie's death from a car accident and I was glad I hadn't because I thought it would cause him to worry about me. Otherwise, we had a typical call like we always had when I was travelling.

After hanging up with him, I made the hardest call of all; the call to Abby. It wasn't a call to report on my new sex partner. It was a call to report about the accident and to let her know that I was okay. Waiting to tell her at some later date didn't seem to be the thing to do. And although I didn't give her all the details like I have here, I did tell her that I thought the guy was busy getting his cock and balls fondled or his cock sucked just before he ran into us. I told her that if I was ever tempted to do something like that (again), that this was quite a lesson to dissuade me from such conduct in the future.

That night, I didn't call my mom, dad, or my brother to let them know I had been in an accident. That would come later. I thought all the most important people in my life had been notified and I would tell them later.

When I awoke in the morning, I was feeling the aches from the muscle shock of the impact of the accident. It really hadn't occurred to me how hard we had gotten hit. After breakfast, we drove to the power plant to have our planning meeting for the first day of testing. Since all the testing would be done at night, we adjourned for the afternoon to meet after dinner. So, it would go for each day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night.

My call to my new lover on Tuesday evening didn't focus on the accident. Rather, the call focused more on what we did on Sunday night. She had her own soreness from Sunday. But it was a "good sore." She commented on how much cum and how deeply I must have shot it into her "places where she didn't know she had places." She told me that my cum was still dripping out of her most of Monday (but we didn't talk about it on Monday because of the accident). I had heard that before; just not from her. And we were looking forward to the next time we could/would get together.

By Wednesday evening, a plan was cumming together. I had just done a walk-through precheck for the testing when I discovered a problem that would delay the test for several hours. I called her from the power plant just to chat. When I told her about walking along the catwalk (with open gratings) 250 feet in the air, she asked me how I was able to deal with the heights like that. I told her that it was something that I had become accustomed with because it was part of my job. That conversation revealed her fear of heights and high bridges. Then our conversation turned to us getting back together.

Her daughter was going to spend the night with a friend on Friday night and we could have the whole evening together as well as most of Saturday morning before she had to pick up her daughter (and I had to pick up my son). Of course, I was flying back on Friday evening from Houston and the plan we came up with was her meeting me at the RDU airport and then following me to my house in Raleigh. We would have a late dinner and then spend the rest of the night at my house.

This felt "familiar" in that this was the sort of thing that Catie and I would have done...the reason why Catie had the keys to my car and my house. But, it gave me something more to look forward to while distracting me from the muscle aches that were finally diminishing towards the end of the week. The testing wrapped up early on Friday morning and after a few hours of sleep, we had our post-testing meeting before leaving for Houston. Although I was dressed "business casual" for the meeting and the flights home, underneath my clothing, I was dressed for her.

After the close out meeting. my coworker and I left the power plant and headed west on I-10 towards Houston. Our first stop was the Beaumont Police Department to pick up a copy of the police accident report to be filed with Budget Rental Car and with our insurance providers. The trip back to the airport proved uneventful and after filling out MORE paperwork I finally arrived at the gate for the plane to Atlanta. We were flying Eastern Airlines and, as I recall, it was an Airbus aircraft we were flying in from Houston to Atlanta. That part of the air travel went fine and we arrived on time. When I reached the gate area in Atlanta, I was off to the pay phones to let my new lover that I was in Atlanta and I was looking forward to seeing her at the airport.

The next flight was the evening flight from Atlanta to RDU on a Boeing 727. And that's where things started to go wrong. We were there, our plane wasn't. It was delayed on its flight to Atlanta. All any of us could do was wait to see what was going to happen. There were a couple of friends of mine also scheduled for this flight and we sat there at the gate area on the concourse while it got later and later. The plane arrived at Atlanta about 90 minutes after we were supposed to be landing in RDU. There was no way for me to call my new lover to let her know. However, if she was at the airport waiting for me, she would already know the plane was delayed.

It was 9:30 and we watched people get off the plane, the clean up crew get on the plane, and things were looking hopeful that maybe we would be onboard and pushing away from the gate by 10:15 (maybe?). The plane was clean and ready to be boarded when the next problem cropped up. The flight crew that was supposed to be taking us to Raleigh would exceed their allowable daily flight hours and they could not fly us to Raleigh per FAA regulations. So, now we had a plane with no flight crew. This was getting better and better. It was really looking like this flight was going to be cancelled and I'd be spending the night in Atlanta rather than in bed with my new lover.

Eastern Airlines hadn't yet given up on getting this plane to Raleigh as they worked to get another flight crew to fly us to Raleigh so the plane (at least) was in the correct location the next morning. The flight crew arrived at 11:30 PM and we boarded the aircraft. One small problem. The aircraft had not been fueled and the ground crews that did aircraft refueling had gone home for the night since there were no more planned aircraft refuelings for the night. So now we had an aircraft full of people but without enough fuel to fly to Raleigh. I was figuring that by the time we left Atlanta, there would be no one waiting for me at the airport. We waited another hour while the airport authority could get someone out to the aircraft and fuel it. We finally pushed back from the gate just before 1:00 AM.

The good news was there was no waiting for other air traffic at that hour of the morning and we had a straight-in flight to RDU. Finally, we had arrived at RDU and was only 1:45 AM. We were nearly six hours late on "the world's largest unscheduled airlines" as we sometimes called Eastern Airlines. When I emerged from the jetway, there she was. She had come to the airport knowing of the original delay and then waited as the delay stretched ever longer. So much for dinner plans, I noted. After I recovered my luggage, we arranged where to meet at the exit of the parking area and she followed me home.

Because I had been gone all week, I didn't have much food to offer beyond a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or maybe some eggs. But here she was, a new woman and a new lover, in my house. It had been more than 4 months since Catie had been here. I was excited and conflicted. I had to remind myself that Catie was dead and that she would want me to move forward with my life.

We didn't stay downstairs for very long. I turned on my stereo and set the volume to a moderately low level before we climbed the stairs to my bedroom. She saw my "famous brass waterbed," referencing how I had decorated the bed's brass frame during Christmas. She had heard about it from the coworker who introduced us. I lit some candles and turned off the lights. We knew what we were here to do and in the dim and flickering candlelight, we began to undress each other. We had clearly dressed for this undressing. When I removed her outer garments , she was wearing a light blue satin camisole and tap pants set. She had removed my shirt and slid her hands down inside my trousers to find my exposed buttocks because I was wearing a thong. It wasn't a thong that Catie bought me, it was one that I had bought previously. She nearly melted at being able to feel my buttocks in her hands. We didn't race to undress each other. We savored the undressing until we were both naked and I pulled back the covers on the waterbed.

Not much was said between us. There was nothing that needed to be said. She rolled into the waterbed and got herself positioned in the middle of the bed. I joined her and then began to explore every inch of her body that was accessible to me. With just us in the house, she could be far more vocal than she could be in her condo and her daughter in the bedroom next door. Over the next three plus hours, it was a continuous lovemaking session with multiple positions and multiple orgasms. And although I didn't have her sit on my face to drain my cum out of her into my mouth, she found out that I wasn't deterred from oral sex after cumming inside her. We drifted off to sleep in each other's arms around 6:00 AM.

We awoke about 10:00 AM. And although we were ready to be sexual again, her poor pussy was sore from the pounding it had taken just a few hours before. I told her that was okay and we just laid in bed talking for a little while. She had never experienced anything like what she had experienced with anyone like me. She finally asked me how many times I came inside her. I told her it was six times of distinct orgasms. She asked me if I did the same thing with my wife or any one else. I told her yes, if we had the time for such play. She had much the same reaction as Catie had..."your wife gave this up?"

We showered and I fixed us a continental breakfast before we got dressed. She had to leave to go pick up her daughter. Similarly, I had to leave to pick up my son. Before she left, I invited her and her daughter back over to my house for dinner that night and the four of us would have dinner together. It would give her and her daughter a chance to meet my son and for us to be together for the first time.

She accepted.