As she sat in quiet contemplation memories came cascading back, hanging all about her like humidity on a hot summer day. She gave in, letting herself ...rift back to that night six years ago."Grebs wait up," she heard her best friend Kersen Tennery, yell over to her."Well hurry up slow poke," she laughingly replied.Kersen, had been her best friend and buddy since his family had moved into the farm across the road from her family when they were both six. 'Grebs' was his very private nickname for. .. sure. I masturbate, and I don’t feel guilty about it any more. Do you?”“Um, yeah, I certainly do it. And don’t feel too guilty ... mostly.”“Yeah, me too. But the stuff comes out, of course.”“Think of it this way ... spilling your seed is a sin, but putting it inside a woman -- that’s blessed -- the holy sexual act!”“Yeah, but --”“Stop thinking so much.”He felt Melissa reach down and find his penis. It was already half hard, and her touch finished the job.“And if you’ve already sinned once,. "No, if I go back," I argued with myself, "it'll just be the two of us walking on eggshells until things blow up again, and one or the other ... or BOTH of us will feel like shit. This past month was just about the worst of our..." I stopped to do some math. "Oh, shit. It would've been seventeen years..."That left me reliving those long years of happiness."No. Look, okay," I said, bargaining with myself. "Tell you what, I'll flip a coin." I grabbed one from the toll stock in the glove-box door.. And everybody pays me exactly the same.”Always in a hurry this one, she thought. His ruddy, perfumed hands testified to his soft life, but he did bear the telltale callous of a riding crop. The mark of a perpetual horseman, but one who rode too hard and too fast and winded the beast early. He’d do the same to a wife, she was sure, but that was none of Branwen’s business either. “Did your father really tell you to come here then?” she continued.“Oh no. He told me all about you so that I’d stay.