“How old is he, exactly?” Frankie asked, sounding zero percent judgmental, and one hundred percent fascinated.

I’d met Frankie first.  She had her own reality show, and I’d been shooting her for a spread in a magazine that featured said show.

We’d hit it off right away, but that was just how Frankie was.  I’d been going through a rough time, and we’d bonded, fast and deep.  She’d quickly invited me to a girls’ night and introduced me to the others.

I’d been impressed with her right away.  She was uniquely beautiful and wildly unconventional, in her looks and lifestyle, and the way she handled it never stopped impressing me.  She had so much acceptance for herself and who she was, but also of her friends.  It was hard not to adore someone who was that loving of both herself and others.

I had a serious girl crush on her, but it was purely platonic. A. Because I wasn’t gay.  And B. Because I was pretty sure her wife, Estella, would claw anyone’s eyes out that tried to come between them.

I grimaced.  “Twenty-five.”

Her smoking hot wife, Estella, whooped, high-fiving the air.  “You go, hot mama!  It’s about time.”

“Hell yeah,” Danika said succinctly.  She was one of my favorites.  A sarcastic soul after my own heart.  She was extravagantly gorgeous, a striking, exotic woman of some mixed Eurasian heritage.  Her face and body were flawless, aside from a slight limp when she walked, but I didn’t think that detracted from any of it.

I’d started attending these get-togethers just after she’d gotten married to a great heaping hunk of a man that put on one of the most successful magic acts on the strip.

“He’s not much older than my children,” I said, eyes swinging to Lucy, the therapist and voice of reason of the group.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” said Danika.  “He’s twenty-five.  Hardly a child.”

Easy for her to say, I thought, as she was sitting somewhere in her late twenties.

“I don’t honestly think I’d have done it,” I said, words still aimed at Lucy, “if I’d had a clue he was that young before we hooked up.  Unfortunately, I only asked him his age after.”  I knew that was likely bullshit.  My lust had been too overwhelming to be stopped at the word twenty-five.  I was trying to save face, though I didn’t actually need to, not in front of this group.

“Stop that,” Lucy said gently.  “Don’t beat yourself up.  You didn’t commit a crime.”

“What’s the lowdown on a cougar relationship happening, doc?” another one of the ladies, Candy, spoke up, asking a question I didn’t have the balls to.

Lucy held up her hands in a sort of c’est la vie gesture.  “It just depends on the individuals involved.  I don’t hand out verdicts for relationships.  You know this.”

“But what is the usual pattern for a thing like this playing out?” I asked her.  I knew better than to accept her pat answer.  She had all the likely scenarios, all the usual dysfunctional relationship patterns memorized.

Ugh, I’d thought the word relationship about a guy I’d only met twice.  I was so old school.

I’ve been out of the dating pool too long, I thought.

Lucy looked amused.  “What, you want me to cite off the statistics for you?”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing them,” I mused.

“I’m not going to do that.  You are a responsible woman.  A good woman.  As long as no one is being exploited, and no one is feeling used, I say do as you like.  How’s that for a lowdown?”

Less than satisfactory, I thought.  But I’d take it.  At least she wasn’t outright cautioning me against it.

“I’m encouraged, frankly,” she continued.  “I see it as a good sign that you’re finally willing to enter the dating world again.”

“Don’t sound like dating to me,” Candy muttered, but there was nothing catty in the way she grinned at me.

I couldn’t argue with her.  “It definitely wasn’t a date.”

“You should never give it up that fast, sweetie,” Sarah, another lady in the group, one well into her sixties, told me.  “I’m not judging you.  It’s just, well, men never come back when you give it up that fast.  Any chance at a relationship flew out the window when it resorted to sex that quickly.”

She wasn’t wrong.  I opened my mouth, mostly to say, rather defensively, something like, oh I don’t know, ‘Who said I was looking for a relationship?’ but I never got the chance.

Bianca, one of the quieter members of the group, shocked us all by butting in.  “That’s just not true.”

Every single one of us looked at her.  She was a woman that stood out in a crowd, no matter how exceptional her company.  She was beautiful, tall, with pale blonde hair and abundant curves.  She had just the sort of eye-catching beauty that one expected to see in the wife of a famous billionaire, and it just so happened that she was one.

Her expression was calm, her face angelic, both in its beauty and peacefulness.     There was something so suppressed about her manner, as though she’d learned to avoid making much noise in a very profound way.  She participated in the group, but she rarely added in her two cents like this.  That role was usually reserved for the louder voices.  And when she did pipe in, I noticed that everyone usually took it to heart.