After straightening our clothes and cracking open the steamed-up windows, I realized I was in no shape to drive back.
Ace drove.
Back in the neighborhood, he dropped me off at the corner where I’d first met him. Now there’s something you don’t see every day, I thought, as I watched the car drive away. I could just hear “Walk Like a Man” fading into the distance.
SIGNS
Theda Hudson
“Do you want to see my tit?” Trish asks, just like she was asking, “Do you want to see my puppy?”
I look at her in the passenger seat of my old Subaru as we head toward the mountains and smile the way I do every time she asks. She knows I do. It’s just an opportunity to show it off and for her to practice being brash.
There’s also a deeper question about trust under it that I’m not sure I’m ready to answer or that I even completely believe she knows she’s asking.
So I answer the easy one. “Yes.”
“Which one?”
I pretend to ponder. It’s really a toss-up but I like to keep her off balance so I say, “The left one.”
She looks disappointed for just a sec and then lays the flat of her right hand in the center of chest. Such a closet hedonist. I know she’s enjoying the smoothness of her skin, teasing herself before she angles her fingertips so her hand dives across the front of her breast.
She loves her tits almost as much as I do. They’re beautifully shaped, round, large but not too large, with big, beautiful, responsive nipples that, surprisingly, she loves to have pinched.
She blushes to be doing this now, which makes me wonder why she does it, but it’s a good sign and I’ll give her a cookie to keep her coming back.
Trish pushes her bra off her tit and cups it in her hand. She pinches the nipple with her thumb and forefinger, but it’s not necessary; she may be embarrassed but it’s eager as all hell and stands up tall for me.
I reach out, taking my eyes off the road, and slide my hand across the tight flesh and let my fingers slip down. She moves her hand down to keep the bra in place while I touch her. I remember how smooth and slick it was last night when I slipped my cock up and down between them.
I smile at her as she watches me touch her. I love the way her boob feels in my hand, the heft of it, the way it’s salty sweet in my mouth, the way she lifts them for me, offering them like a gift. I love the way she squirms and the breath hisses between her teeth when I pinch that peg sharply. She looks at me and we smile at each other like idiots for a moment.
She looks out the windshield abruptly and says, “Take this exit.”
I pull my hand out and she pulls her bra back in place and—poof!—there’s the little English teacher again.
She slips her hand onto my thigh and lets it rest there lightly. Life is pretty good.
“Turn up there,” she says suddenly. Everything is “now” for her; there’s no segue or easy on. It drives me crazy, but I get that’s how she is, so I can go with it. That’s an interesting sign.
We’re driving right at the foothills now. They don’t really have any trees, just a covering of golden grass. The trees in the preserve on my left have started to turn. It’s not the brilliant purple, red and orange canvas of the East where I’m from, but all that gold with the bit of red thrown in for interest is beautiful in its own way.
It’s hot, so it’s a drag that the AC doesn’t work, but somebody in the houses on the ridge outside Trish’s window is mowing his lawn and the fresh-cut grass smell fills the car.
I can see a big parking lot with the white steeple of a church and a playground beyond it, and trees crowding a streambed. There are lots of cars. The sign says the maze closes at dusk. I look at the clock. It’s three. I find a place to park. Trish bounces out of the car and comes around. I open my arms to gather her in for a hug. I love to hug her. I do it every chance I get.
When I did it early on, she would tighten up if it was in public, and I can appreciate that, but it’s not like it is with me. So I give her a little warning and let her decide when it’s enough.
She’s short and fits into me exactly like she was a custom job and plump like I like with a nice ass and legs that taper nicely down to trim ankles. I like the way it feels when my arms go around her, full and small at the same time. She likes it too, and she sighs and stretches up on tippy toe. I take the opportunity to squeeze her ass. She blushes ’cause somebody might have seen, and I know that’s a new part of the pleasure. It’s another good sign too.
She pulls out this bottle of sunblock when I let her go and squeezes a big blop of it into one hand and then rubs both together. She reaches for me and I pull back. I hate the feel of it, the way it makes my skin sticky and holds in the heat. Luckily this doesn’t have a heavy scent, but I wrinkle my nose anyway, a little gesture of defiance. But I know that the sun is blazing, and I need it so I submit to her ministrations. She likes service, she says, and after my last relationship, it’s a cookie for me but more than a little scary.
It’s a big cookie because her tits jiggle nicely when she rubs my arms and I can look down her shirt. It’s low cut and the pale blue fabric lies softly against the mounds of her boobs. I can see the wrinkles of what will be her old-woman flesh in the cleft between them and the smooth purple of her bra where it hooks in the center.
She stoops and her skirt rides up around her thighs. I imagine I can see her panties through the slit in the front. She does my legs and that makes my heart jump into my mouth for a moment, and I’m filled with love for her. Not just because I like fucking her and she’s smart: it’s because she doesn’t have to and she does anyway. That’s a really good sign.
She stands up and does herself quickly, and I get another good view of her tits when she bends over to do her legs. Before she wasn’t thinking about it, but now she is, even though she pretends not to be. Everything now is calculated and positioned. She knows I know she knows, and she also knows I’m willing to maintain the fiction—at least right now, but no guarantees about the next time.
I put my arm around her, and we start walking toward the chapel. I let it drop because I don’t like the way our skin sticks together. We walk on and when we reach the bathrooms, she says, “I gotta go.”
I take the opportunity too. Who knows if there’ll be anything inside the maze. Inside it’s not bad for a wilderness john. Some kid has puked up his cotton candy along with what looks like his hot dog, next to the urinal.
The sugar and meat smells mix with the bile and bring back memories of my drunk days and make me realize all over again how nice it is to not puke every day.
I go out to smoke. She comes out of the women’s and reads a sign detailing the history of the preserve and the bear warnings while I smoke. I drop it on the ground and step on it. I know what’s coming. I try, but it’s so automatic.
She tsk-tsks and picks it up and drops it in the bear-proof bin. From where I am I can smell the fermenting trash in the metal trash bin.
“When I smoked I pinched the cherry and put the butt in my back pocket,” she says, just like always.
“I just flick’em. Flick, flick, flick. Everywhere,” I say, shooting imaginary butts in all directions with my middle finger because I know it drives her crazy.
But she smiles indulgently this time. That’s a really good sign, and I pull her into my arms, sunblock and all, and kiss her hard on the mouth, kind of rocking back and forth while we stare at each other. Her grin is big and I can see her teeth, not perfect, not brilliant white, with crooked incisors like mine. Everything else is mostly straight and little like the rest of her.
When I let her go, she pulls me past the playground, and I hear the EEEE-eee, EEEE-eee of the swings, the bump… bump of the teeter-totter and the Doppler effect of the kids as they scream in delight going round and round on the merry-go-round.