Rylee always wore a baseball cap and this day was no exception. It was a standard part of his maintenance uniform and kept the sun out of his eyes as he traversed between buildings fixing everything from busted pipes to plaster dings. He was six feet tall, naturally tanned by his work outdoors, and had incredible green eyes the color of a pine tree in a rainstorm. Along with his baseball cap, he wore a tan polo shirt with the logo of the apartment building emblazoned on the left breast pocket, long Carhartt's workpants, sturdy steel capped boots, and a belt much larger in circumference than his sinewy frame. He was one of those men who were not only naturally muscular for his small build but his muscles were also enhanced honest physical labor. Every time Moira saw him, she was mesmerized by the way he moved. He was tough and strong but also had a soft mouth and a fluid way of working with materials that suggested the care a lover would take in doing it right the first time.
The few times he had been in her apartment to work on fixing something, he looked at her with genuine interest and seemed lustful, not only of her sexy, large, curvy body necessarily, but of life in general and it carried over well into conversations. He was the kind of man who would tell you how he really was if you bothered to ask, who made a genuine attempt at conversation and truly engaging you. He did not seem like the gruff, goal-oriented, typical working-class men that had done maintenance in all of the other buildings Moira had lived in before. They were the kind that would grunt with the dissatisfaction of obligation of having to respond to you when you said good morning to them. Rylee was not like that, not in the slightest. Moira could sense that about him and felt drawn in by this aura of welcoming and interest. Whenever they would meet, her on her way to some gallery and Rylee on his way to some fix-it urgency, he would always take the time to ask her about her work as an artist and stop whatever he was doing to listen intently to her response. She loved that he understood art, not what she would expect from a maintenance man. In fact, nothing about him was what she expected. Especially after the conversation they had accidentally had a few months back.
Rylee had a habit of coming in the middle of the day to fix things, it seems, always when Moira was poised for a shower, unclothed, and then scrambling for clothing and running to the door. This particular day was no exception. It was hot and Moira had been painting all day with the heavy drapes closed so she could be naked and feel the fan blowing on her glistening skin. No matter what the weather, she preferred to be alone, nude, and cool (in no particular order) when she painted. Sometimes setting up lights on certain objects contributed a great deal of heat to the room so in the winter she would have to turn the heat off and in the summer, the fans on. Only this day it was so hot that she had all of the fans on full blast. Her husband had not mentioned that he had put in a work order in the office and she was not expecting anyone. Their kitchen sink had unexplainably lost water pressure, which was making rinsing the dishes and filling the water pitcher a wretched chore. And since Moira's husband did both of these chores on a regular basis, it was not surprising that he had put in the work order before Moira even had time to be sufficiently annoyed by the problem.
The fans created a noise just loud enough to drown out the sound of Rylee's knocking on the door. Moira had her long, naturally red hair pinned up in chopsticks as she moved about the living room, fans whispering on her freckled shoulders as she trained her cerulean blue eyes on a particularly pesky sunflower petal she was painting on a large canvas. Before she even knew he was there, Rylee had let himself in with the key, thinking no one home and had entered the long hallway to the living room. It was too late to cover up by the time she looked up and her blues met his greens. She threw down her paintbrush in haste and ran into the bedroom to wrap her nude body in a robe. Moira could not tell who was more shocked by the incident but when she came back out, Rylee had picked up her paint brush, mopped the azure paint off the beige carpet with his personal handkerchief, and was bashfully looking down at the detail of every last fiber of the carpet, his face the color of cherries in a still life. He was, after all, a full-blooded, first generation Irishman and he could grow a blush on his skin like a lake could grow sky on its shimmering surface. She was not sure what to say to him, they were both speechless, and she was wondering if they would never recover from the embarrassment.
They began feverishly at the same time.
"Look, I am really, really sorry about that ma'am. I knocked but..."
"It's not your fault! I couldn't hear the door..."
"I swear I knocked, I really did!" he blurted out.
"Honestly, Rylee, of course you did. I... I'm... so sorry."
"You aren't going to complain or anything are you? I should have really knocked again," he seemed remorseful.
He stared at her manicured toes, painted the naturally achievable color of his Irish face, partially hidden by his grimy baseball cap.
"Of course not. It's no one's fault... look, let's just forget it happened ok?"
She smiled at him genuinely and he allowed his gaze to drift up her body wrapped loosely in a pale pink kimono, accenting every enormous, round curve of her lush body. It was that look again, that earnest once over that told her exactly what he thought of her beauty, so unlike his own wife's, waifish, mousy, plain, and petite. Moira was tall, strong, and self confident about her presentation. Her long red hair, pinned up in black, enameled chopsticks detailed with tiny cherry blossoms, and her in a Kimono made him think of an Irish Geisha, though such a thing did not really exist. When he met her eyes, he could not help but think he saw the same look of interest in her as she sculpted his muscles with her eyes under his short sleeves, picturing his hard abs, paid for with sweat and hard work. They were very different and she was nothing like anyone he had ever been attracted to before but he had always wondered what it would be like to be with a big woman, having her generous flesh yield under his touch, not meeting him with cold, flat hardness like his wife's did. Moira looked warm and inviting and everything about her was attractive to him. Even the way she did her eye makeup was different and drew him in.
She was not sure what else to say so she plainly asked why he was there. What came out sounded a bit like a schoolboy caught with a dirty magazine and he mumbled under his breath something about a work order.
"Oh, right! This sink! Here, in the kitchen. It totally slipped my mind!"
He made his way to the dinky kitchen, familiar with the layout, as it was one of those complexes where each apartment was identical to the next. Without another word he began to fiddle with the sink, his experienced hands beginning that skilled dance of discovery on the knobs. Something about his mannerisms in this sent a jolt through her body as she imagined those calloused, expert hands on her pierced nipples, running down her ample curves, pushing their way through soft, pale thighs to find her wet. It was almost too much for her. She wanted to make small talk to ease the tension.
"So, thanks so much for coming, I am not sure what is going on with the sink"
Suddenly, she felt parched, a lump forming in her throat. "Do you mind?" She reached above him to get a pint glass out of the cupboard above where he was working his magic. Her arm brushed against his and the kimono sleeve slid up her arm to reveal a gorgeous, blood red rose on her inner left arm. The electricity, when softly she slipped her arm against his was almost too much for him to bear. He wanted desperately to rip the kimono right off her body and devour her then and there.
But just as quickly, she turned away and opened the refrigerator to get the water pitcher out. In her mind she went back to the last time he had been there, digging unmentionable guck out of their shower drain as he explained to her how, ever since the invention of shower gel, everyone got clogged shower drains now. Somehow he managed to transition from shower gel to discussing his wife's semi-addiction to beauty products and eventually to his relationship with his wife in general and how much he struggled with monogamy. Maybe it was the easy way Moira had with her body that put him in a state of conversation but she had confessed at that moment that she had struggled with the monogamy too. They bonded over their inability to commit to monogamy in the past though he stated hat he had been faithful to his wife for the last eight years they had been together. Moira congratulated him and asked him how he had managed. He said he had been tempted once, when they had been having trouble and that he embossed on his wife's heart that he loved her immensely but that if any beautiful woman had ever thrown herself at him, he could only resist so much. When he said that, suddenly, the institutionally white bathroom grew tiny and cramped with temptation. Moira had changed the subject before the conversation had become any more personal. The heat between them was speech and breath.
Moira was instantly snapped back from this daydream as the water pitcher sipped from her hands. She had not been paying attention. She had tuned out to her juicy daydream, that moment in time she had replayed in her head a million times as she fantasized a different outcome, one that had her in his arms that day in the bathroom. How ironic that she was about to be in his arms, but not of her own choosing. The water gushed out of the pitcher as it hit the floor, splashing back up on her kimono and leaving an ice-cold puddle of water all around her. There she was, an island in a storm and as she tried to step out of the water with her bare feet, she slipped and went flying backwards, her kimono flipping above her waist and falling open. She remembered only the wet thud of her body hitting the linoleum, the water soaking her entire naked back, and then quiet.
It was dark, cold, and breezy. She fluttered her eyes, coming to as Rylee leaned over her on the wet floor. He had dragged a fan over to where she was and was gently shaking her shoulders and telling her to wake up.
"Moira? Moira? Can you hear me?" he sounded distant at first.
She opened her eyes to see he had his face only inches from hers. He smelled of sweat, spackle, pine tar, and cheap paint. She focused in on his concerned expression and dignified lips, the kind she knew would only kiss with meaning.
