Welcome to my latest series, mashing up a few more tropes. This one turned out to be a crazy ride, so get ready for something that ends quite unlike it begins.
One thing you can be sure of, even though this is Literotica, and this story could easy veer off into... THERE, it does not in fact, go THERE. So either don't fear, or don't get your hopes up, whichever your preference.
Lastly, as always, I am not going for deep truths or gritty realism. The aim for me is a plausibly ridiculous course of events.
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Guilty Pleasures - Nine
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Normalcy had broken out in my life. As summer's heat built, my life slid back into its usual easy rhythms.
Becca brought her friends over about once a week. When they came, I kept an eye on things, cooked cheap food for everybody, and guarded my booze fridge. Becca's Trinity of best friends all largely behaved themselves. This made me happy, and my dick sad.
Work went smoothly. Trevor and Thalia were getting along, our physical production line was spooling up nicely, and none of my urchins in my department made any entitled demands. Well, no excessively entitled demands. Thalia even went back, more often than not, to her boxy-cut suits.
I went to Bridge Night at Wanda and Yancey's on one Friday, then a cool event the next weekend at Ursula and Janet Talbot-Whitney's. Those two did not regularly host neighborhood events, but when they did step up, they usually produced extra cool evenings. That week was a fairly low-key, old-fashioned cocktail party where we were expected to get all dressed up, like it was 1957 or something. Walt, Nate, and a few other husbands grumbled about having to pop on a tie and were told repeatedly to shut up by their excitedly dressed up wives.
As promised, I flirted with Wanda outrageously.
I had no agenda, obviously. I was just indulging in humorous appreciation--appreciation that I could now comfortably have fun with. My teasing of her (and of Yancey--I made sure he was always right there to see me do it) was fairly low-key fun when it had been Bridge Night, as that kind of evening is mostly just clusters of people, not close-in crowds. During the Talbot-Whitney's standing cocktail party, there was a lot more mingling.
The second time I made Wanda snort with outraged laughter, I realized that I was getting a look or two, especially from some of the other wives, wondering what I was up to with her. Especially since Wanda was clearly flirting right back. I didn't want any dark suspicions running through our neighborhood, so I just expanded my net and flirted with many, if not most of the other wives. People quickly relaxed.
After I had, right in front of him, done the next best thing to hitting on his wife, who is fifty-eight, overweight, and an absolute dear, Walt leaned into my ear and said, "Good to see you starting to get your Game with the ladies in shape again, Howard! It's about time you started getting over Rebecca." His wife, who had good-naturedly fled my 'advances', laughed almost hysterically at something another spouse said, and Walt chuckled. "You are gonna do fine. Tina is still blushing."
I even flirted with both our hosts, to surprising effect. Ursula was amused. Janet practically leaned into it. I shook my head as I moved on from her. Janet was wearing one of the smallest cocktail dresses at the party, and her legs were on full display. And it was a damned nice display that I was unable to resist drinking in. But, recent, bizarre and unique circumstances not withstanding, Married was still very much a bright line for me.
The whole lesbian issue might have also presented a barrier... even if the Married thing wasn't in the way. But maybe it wouldn't have, considering the streak I was on lately. I sensed rather acutely that neither of these women were innocent of dick in their lifetimes, and Janet in particular did not seem terribly adverse to the concept...
Married. They were married.
There were a few of the women in my circle of friends with whom I intentionally did not flirt. Hannah and Beth Anne were both, well... repressed. I knew flirting would make either of them uncomfortable. Plus, I didn't have the time or inspiration to tease every woman anyway. I did also have a fair number of guys I wanted to have a conversation or two with. I like talking about sports, and business, and booze, and hunting, and I had a good time talking about all of them with various husbands, and some wives too.
And I carefully didn't flirt with Monica. She and Stan were mostly back to their old ways. He was a human tool, and she was a sweetie who treated hm inexplicably like a king. But even though there were no more public dustups between them, I could still sense some strain. Best not to roil those waters, much as I would have enjoyed fucking with Stan's head.
Also... Stan was large. I was not overly eager to go dancing with him.
I did enjoy watching a few other guests doing some humorous flirting as well. I wondered if that was a dynamic I had not noticed because of my own hangups, or if my newly relaxed behavior was rubbing off. We all used to be more flirtatious, back in the day. Maybe I was helping others get back to some youthful fun. We were a bunch of middle-aged farts. We needed some fun.
The only bad thing about all this was Stan apparently took the situation as an excuse to flirt a little himself. I narrowed my eyes as he tried to get a laugh out of one of the more attractive neighbors. I hated to admit that he could turn on the charm, but he indeed could. Too bad for him however, because she knew what a human waste dump he was at heart, and failed to be impressed.
My eyes slid across the room to Monica, who was ignoring her husband's antics. Or maybe she just didn't see. Whatever, I shook my head at how a woman as beautiful as she would stay with... My mind filled again with that damned fantasy of leading her into the kitchen, and making love to her on the kitchen counter. I'd kiss her softly, and hungrily, fill my hands with her lovely breasts, lifting them free of the neckline of that wrap-around dress she was wearing... And speaking of wrapping around, she'd lift one of those lovely legs up and around my back as I drove into her like a velvet piston, sending her to loudly appreciative orgasmic heights that would draw Stan in to see what was happening. I'd flip his ass off. She'd tell him to get a good look...
Jesus!
I shook my head, and went to get a refill on my whiskey, which I slugged down far too quickly. My diseased brain was not back to completely normal, obviously. I shivered and slipped off to the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror.
In the last couple of months, Clark, you have had more sex than any man should, with way,
way
more women than he should, I told my reflection sternly. Cut out the dark fantasies.
I washed my hands and returned to the party, where I joined several others in goading Walt and Tina into dancing. A good bit of alcohol had been consumed by all by that point, enough for Tina not to save her husband from our taunts. Walt should never dance in public...
*
Over all, life was good.
Of course, I found that now that my 'Dry Spell' had been broken, I was a bit more consciously aware of my need to find some kind of dating life. Hopefully with some lady or ladies who were actually appropriate to apply my game to.
Easier said than done when you are in your mid-forties, and you live in a suburban neighborhood where everyone except Peter is married. I mean, Pete's a good guy, but I wasn't asking him to dinner and a movie any time soon.
The only real echo of the sexual chaos my life had become at the beginning of the summer was Becca's friend Stephanie. Now that she had decided that I was to be flirted with, she took to doing it more and longer each time she came by with Becca.
"Hey, Mister Howard," the blonde said, draping herself down in the large chair next to where I was working. It was a very hot day, and most of the kids who were there that day were in the pool, staying cool. Stephanie was staying cool by not wearing much in the way of a bikini. It was a new one. Even if I had been able to not keep careful track of Stephanie's bathing suit choices over the course of the summer, I would have known this one was new.
Her smooth, firm flesh had accumulated an excruciatingly deep, gorgeous tan over the summer so far, and the fact that this was a new and smaller suit was loudly attested to by the presence of pale hints of tan-lines exposed here or there where the bikini covered even less than its predecessors had.
I found my eyes making the evaluation a bit more openly, and more extensively, than was good for me, and I yanked my eyes back to my laptop. "Hello Stephanie," I replied, as if distracted. "Good to see you again."
"Mmmm," she murmured, damned well aware at how closely I had just been checking her out. "I'm thirsty, what flavor are you going to give me today?"
Oh, this was new, I reflected. I had always let her help herself, since she became twenty-one, to a White Claw or two from my beer fridge. It wasn't a big deal. There were two other kids, boys, who were twenty-one as well. They usually cadged a beer.
But as of today, I was now apparently expected to lean over to the fridge, which was closer to Stephanie than it was to me, given where we were sitting, and get a hard seltzer for her. I needed to nip this new gambit in the bud!
But I didn't. I popped out of my chair and leaned over to open the fridge. This brought me closer to my new nemesis, who stretched a little in satisfaction (and display) at seeing me cave to her new ploy. I chose a lime-flavored can, knowing by now that she liked lime, but it was scarcely her favorite. There were three cans of black cherry in there, and I had to reach past them to get the lime.
I presented the can to her with widely sarcastic servility. "Shall I open it for you, lest you break an elegant nail?"
"Oh, would you? That would be great! Thank you!" she said, with a wide-eyed, enthusiastic innocence that was not fooling me.
Nip it in the bud, Clark!
I sighed, and cracked open the can, handing it to her as I sank back into my seat.
She took a long, loud pull, and I swear, even the way she held the thin, tall can was slightly suggestive. "Ahh! I love lime. Thanks, Howie! You are the best," she chirped, slid to her bare feet, and popped off to join her friends in the pool, making very sure that her cute little butt danced for me as she moved away.
Her flirting was definitely escalating. But Becca assured me it was just that, and I guessed that I could live with it. That I could still feel creeped out by enjoying ogling a college cheerleader, after everything that had happened with Carol, Mary, and Anne, who were all talking to boys in the pool at the moment, made me feel at least a little better about myself. I thought.
*
Among the best returns to normalcy was the way Yancey and I were back to regular happy hour after work on Wednesdays, like we had done years before--back before he fucked my wife and felt too guilty about it to hang out with me all the time. He had not felt so guilty that he had confessed. Nor so guilty that he didn't hang out with me at all. But his guilt had marred things for us. Now that I had a matching amount of, admittedly unregretted, sin on my ledger, it was good to relax with each other again.
"Tar Heels are going to suck this fall," Yancey grumped into his tall draft Blue Moon.
"It is ACC football," I said in basic agreement. "Most teams suck all the time. And all the teams suck most of the time. Wait for Winter. Basketball with be back this season, you'll see."
We wrangled for a little while over the details of my assertion, but since we both agreed in principal, it was more pro-forma bullshitting than actual debate.
Mostly we talked about work. For once it was Yancey's company where the feces was hitting the rotary impeller, and he was having great fun telling me about it. He was having fun with the situation because the shit-show was not imperiling the company meaningfully, and because none of it was his responsibility.
Our waitress came by with our second round. We always had two. No more, no less. As the short little girl walked away, we both sipped in silence. And yes, we both took few a moments to appreciate the view. It was a good one, after all.
