A story by XXscribbler
"Kristin Ann!"
The shout cut through the late afternoon heat and bustle and hubbub of Monterey's open-air street market. The attractive young blond woman in an Army Specialist's uniform spun about, searching. The voice was familiar enough to flip her belly.
The source was obvious -- striding tight-focused through the crowd in shorts and tee-shirt, just as brown and runner-lean as the last time she'd seen him some eight, maybe nine years ago. Her folks' best friend all her life.
"Mister Doctor Leroy" was her nickname for him. He had literally changed her diapers -- which fact he had been fond of telling bystanders when she was a kid. Leroy had for all intents and purposes been part of the family -- a sort of absentee uncle-confidant-brother-confessor, someone whose visits she eagerly awaited because she could talk with him about absolutely anything under the sun, no holds barred.
He'd lost touch with her only when the parentals had finally decided, years later than they should have, that a divorce was needed. No-fault, parents were still friends, but Kristin, brilliantly intelligent and wildly precocious, had never forgiven either of them, Daddy most particularly.
Leroy was thirty years her senior -- no, thirty two, less six days. He'd claimed she should have waited inside Mom until they could share a birthdate. She had carried the DAMNEDEST crush for him throughout her entire childhood -- and today's instantaneous wriggles deep in her belly said that just maybe it hadn't fully dissipated yet.
His face lit up when he saw that she recognized him instantly. She smiled at him and he almost died -- the gorgeous precocious 12-year-old was now 22 and simply stunning. A huge two-way bear-hug, family tradition, but very different now with her being a grown woman. Boobs changed hugs, as did a decade. And in-uniform or not, it was clear she wore no bra.
"What are you doing in Monterey, and in that UNIFORM?"
She countered: "What the hell are YOU doing in Monterey?"
He answered first. "Scientific conference. I'm staying in the Westin. I'll leave tomorrow about noon. What a hoot finding you here!"
She grinned broadly at him. "Me, I've just finished eighteen months of intensive language training at the Army's Language Institute -- I'm gonna be a SPY, against Korea, how about that! And I have to leave tomorrow, too -- shipping out for my very first real duty station. I'm just wandering about down here wasting time... my muster is at 0900 tomorrow, but I'm all packed up and ready to go."
They looked at one another, still largely disbelieving. It was hot out, and dry.
"Got some time to visit? Ever develop a taste for beer?" he asked.
"Eighteen months here with nobody to talk to, Mister Doctor Leroy, so YES, I could be persuaded!"
In the bar, they reminisced. Years of communal camping trips flowed past, the family dog, other trips and doings. Conversation with Leroy was just as she remembered it. Intense, funny, serious, wonderfully fast, a shared ability to express extraordinarily complex thoughts in an instant -- a millimeter of eyebrow and three words of a fourth-order pun to kill one line and open another. Topic after topic, wide-ranging, non-stop, usually with three or four levels at once. She knew she had missed this sort of repartee and the intense closeness and partnership it involved, but didn't understand how MUCH she missed it, how much it was built into her. Leroy had been part of her training in it from the day she was born.
It was glorious fun, this butting of her intellect against his, he being one of the few that could challenge her, and reciprocally she him - mental leapfrog, now her ahead, waiting milliseconds while he caught up, now the reverse, him grinning as she sorted through the tangled threads of an eight-word sentence. This conversation was like a draught of ice-water on a late-august Death Valley day. She was brilliantly aware of two important things -- first that she could still DO this, so her mind hadn't rusted shut. Second, Leroy was enjoying it every bit as much as she. Echoes and re-echoes.
Leroy looked at his watch -- it was suddenly seven, they'd talked for two hours. They were astonished at themselves. He had done his usual 10k run instead of lunch; Kristin had had a single taco at noon, and was ravenous. He told her, "You can't get out of having dinner with me, you know. My treat, too, of course. I'll bet I know how you take your steak." Her mother, his occasional (but intense) lover while Kristin grew from age six to twelve, ate beef only blood-rare -- bring her a steak with a warm center and it meant "send-it-back".
Kristin responded oddly - "Lean forward so I can see the top of your head, please." Totally puzzled, Leroy complied. She patted the crown gently and said "Very nice! Great hair, just like you've always had. Women envy you still, I'll bet! I think I'll accept the invitation."
He straightened and said "What the hell...?"
Her cat-and-canary expression let him know he'd just been somewhat had. "I was checking for a bald spot. You're over fifty now!"
Leroy shook his head: "I know there isn't one. And I'm in better shape than when I was your age. But if you'd found one, then what?"
Kristin told him "I don't usually go out to dinner with their owners -- balding generally means they're aging too fast."
Leroy caught the humor: "So -- if you'd found a bald-spot, it'd have been NO DINNER?"
She actually laughed gently at him, dazzling, wide, advertisement-perfect teeth, Clara-Bow lips, translucent skin, all haloed with dark blond hair, sticking her tongue-tip out at him briefly as she always had done as a little kid. If there were a sexual signal between them back then, that was it -- it drove him nuts even now, maybe more so than ever.
"Nope, of course not. Instead, I'd have said that it was a GOOD thing, that I go to dinner ONLY with men who have some balding, because it CAN mean that they're overloaded with testosterone -- which if properly channeled can be good, not bad. Usually bad, though. So the full answer is 'Accepted'. Now then, exactly where are we going?"
His hotel was three blocks away, there was a fine beef restaurant next door. She took his proffered arm as they walked. It was very comfortable being together. Completely so. This scenario could have fitted almost too nicely into some of her preadolescent daydreams -- it made her armpits damp, something the company of most men simply didn't produce.
He insisted on some semblance of privacy, got them a corner rear table sans immediate neighbors. He had been right -- "KC strip, please, blood-rare, seared with a cold center, baked potato loaded, Caesar. Thanks!" He doubled the order, asked about wine. She looked doubtful, he insisted. Between his knowledge and the sommelier's help with the cellar, they located a perfect dark chewy merlot, which she found extraordinarily likeable.
The conversation continued unabated: it was like a drug, she had missed it so thoroughly that she had denied the fact itself. If this was what she required in a relationship, then it was no wonder her world had been so unsatisfying -- it was obviously a rare artifact, and she'd been brought up to regard it as the norm, a necessity, an expectation. Unfair!
In that upbringing, Leroy had played a major part as a steady source of delightful, always-unexpected gifts -- books on all sorts of topics and people, strange collections of puzzles, thought-provoking musings.
Most importantly though, he once sat her down in an extended private moment when she was about eight and gave the gift of absolute freedom to discuss anything whatever with him. No holds or topics barred, no chance of it getting to her parents if she didn't want it. She had of course tested, found he was utterly serious and dependable. She used the gift extensively -- he had even extended it to letting her call him collect at any time she thought it important.
"How the HELL did I ever let that slip away?" she asked herself. It had something to do with the parental divorce, she supposed. At least the lapse coincided with it. She'd been an idiot, hadn't she?
Leroy excused himself for the bathroom. She watched him go -- tight legs beneath his shorts, back-musculature visible through the tee-shirt, anything but a 50+ year old body. He had a great ass, she thought, better than any of her pass-through boyfriends, and they were 30 years his junior! Or even more! She remembered how she had been drenched for years in unrequited (and not well understood) lust for him both mind and body -- most agonizingly when watching him emerge from the family pool with his single-layer Speedo bikini plastered to some critical underlying anatomy. Not to mention the time she had 'accidentally' been in his bathroom when he stepped naked from the shower.
She sorted through things mentally, asked herself a whole flock of questions most of which had no real answer, drew down her wine level by another half inch, and set free the top two buttons of her blouse. Her breasts were crinkly-hard all over, nipples nearly aflame where they slid against the lightly-starched and therefore scratchy uniform fabric.
Leroy settled back into his seat. There was something subtly different about Kristin, her body language had softened, her eyes seemed changed. It took almost exactly ten seconds before he noticed the buttons. She saw the examining eye-flicker, evaluated it, liked the results.
