The chaos in my house during Thanksgiving dinner preparation had gotten to irritate me, and I felt like my offers to help were unappreciated. With that in mind, I decided, screw it, I'd go for a walk. I needed the air, and I seemed only to be in everyone else's way. It was a pleasant afternoon, temperature in the low 60's, a little warmer than average, but not uncommon here. I took off for a loop around my subdivision, about a mile. I could do it in about 15 minutes if I really hustled, but then, what's the hurry??
The area I live in is essentially a large cul de sac, one road in from the state highway, my road going past the house, then looping around through the neighborhood and coming back on itself. My house is at the corner where it returns to the entry road. After it crosses the entry, the road continues down to a dead end in about a quarter mile. The houses were built mostly in the early 1980's, and the developers, to their credit, left many of the trees, so it's an attractive area with large shade trees, and not the barren plains that some of the more recent subdivisions are.
As I turned the corner onto the back side of the subdivision, I saw ahead of me a blonde in bell bottom jeans walking in the same direction. Her hair was down over her shoulders, and she was wearing a St Louis Cardinals shirt. I recognized her immediately as Sandy, who lived down on the dead end across from me. We are friendly, but not close. She always has a smile and a wave for me when we pass driving in or out, but I hardly talk to her, just occasionally when she's walking past my house and I'm working in the yard, and then it's usually short. There's no animosity or ill will; we just don't have a lot of face to face contact, and haven't found that connection. I always think, someday we'll find the magic that opens the conversation. As I looked at her full, shapely ass walking in front of me, I thought maybe today is the day. If only I can catch up.
Sandy was apparently not in a hurry, either, and I caught her about a quarter mile on, just before the road went into a long dip as it passed through one of the several ravines it passed over. She must have heard me gaining on her, as she turned to look back as I got close.
"Hey, Sandy," I said as I came up close behind her.
"Hey, Tom!!" She said, a big smile coming over her.
"I guess I'm not the only one who had to get out of the house," I said, as she waited for me to get up to her.
Sandy laughed. "You too, huh??"
"Yeah. Too crazy, and I only seemed to be in the way. I offer to help with dinner, but it seems everything I do is either wrong, or I'm in the wrong place."
"You want to come over to my place?? I could use the help!! I have a husband and two college age kids, plus relatives, and I'm doing most of the work. I got so frustrated with the lack of cooperation I just walked out. I figured a few minutes away would help me cool off a little." She smiled and put her hand on my arm. "Trust me, I won't complain a bit. I won't even ask you to clean up after."
I laughed. "That's funny. I usually do the clean up. Maybe that's my strong point." I looked at Sandy. "I don't mind, especially if you're in the kitchen with me."
"Careful, I might take you up on that!!" We started walking, chatting as we went. I found that Sandy was easy to talk to, and we quickly developed a good comfort level with each other. It was getting late in the day, and the Christmas lights were coming on at some of the houses.
"Time for the light show," I said, noting the lit up houses. "It's amazing how early some people start their lights. We just put ours up, so to my mind the timing is good. I think before Thanksgiving is too early."
"You have nice lights at your place. I like the plain icicle look. They look good the way they follow your roof line."
"Thanks. Yours are good, too. I always like seeing the multi colors when I look over at your place. This isn't a good time of year for me, a lot of baggage from my youth, and even into my adulthood. I could just pass all this up and go right into January. But your lights are so festive. I really enjoy them."
"Thanks," said Sandy, her face lighting up. "I have to push Jeff into doing them, and it can be kind of a pain in the ass, but the result is pretty. Even he thinks so once he's done." Sandy got pensive a moment. "You really don't like Christmas??"
I thought a moment. "My parents split when I was 14. It was not amicable, to say the least. Holidays were stressful, not only for the obvious reasons, but because my mom saw it as an opportunity to ride me especially-I have two younger brothers-about asking my dad for a lot of stuff just to take it out of his hide. It got old about ten minutes into the first Christmas. It's gotten better, but I still get a few days of dread when I get to Thanksgiving, just a kind of panic sets in and I just want to run away, even all these years later. I mean, I'm past 60. You'd think I'd have gotten over it by now."
We had by this time moved along to the point where the road starts back toward our houses. As I mentioned earlier, it crosses a couple of ravines, the road dipping quite a bit as it goes through them. In one of the dips, someone had set up sort of a small park. We weren't sure who owned the open lot. It was not big enough to build on, and the creek that flowed through it intermittently would have posed issues anyway. There were houses adjacent, but the lot didn't seem to belong to either one. Perhaps the developer had set this up when he built the place. There was a bench and a picnic table there. We stopped to sit on the bench for a few moments.
Sandy looked at me as we sat. "That's pretty awful, that a parent would do that."
"Yeah, I was young and didn't always understand the politics of relationships, but I came to realize that my mom was just going to be like that. She went to her deathbed with a lot of anger toward my dad, even though they'd been divorced for over 35 years by then. There's other stuff, but another time. So, what's your holiday anxiety??"
Sandy chuckled a moment, but there was a sadness in her eyes. "It's not so much the holidays as it is every day. I feel a lot of the time like everyone is working against me. I realize the kids have a full plate, what with school and part time jobs. My husband is not always good with emotional support, though he does do a lot of the work on the lawn and the house and such."
"I have noticed things like you trimming the shrubbery, or taking the trash out. That really gets me-to see you come home from work at 7, and 15 minutes later, you're hauling a heavy can to the curb."
Sandy laughed. "Oh, stalking me, are you??"
I laughed at the idea. Actually, I'd been watching her for a couple of years. She's in her late 40's and built, and I did make an effort to catch a glimpse of her when I could. "No, but I can see your house straight across the road from me, down the dead end. It's hard to miss seeing you lugging that can when I'm sitting on my deck."
Sandy smiled again. "But I do think, with a couple of college age kids, one of them could do that. It's not a lot to ask to move that can the one day a week it needs to go to the curb."
Sandy's face lit up. "Right?? You'd think I wanted them to carry it on their backs to the dump." She got serious now. "But I do feel a lot of weight on my shoulders. I have a full time, and a part time job. It just feels like there's no relief, and nobody cares much. The holidays only seem to point that out even more."
I took her hand. "I know how you feel. Been there many times." Our eyes met, and we leaned to each other, hugging. As Sandy settled into my shoulder, I instinctively kissed the top of her head, then laid my face on her hair, then kissed her again. The third time, I turned my head to kiss her, and I was met with her soft lips, first tentatively, then more seriously as our impromptu passion suddenly heated up.
As we kissed, I felt Sandy's hand reach to the top of my left thigh-she was on my left-rubbing gently. I reached over to pull her to me, caressing her left breast. It seemed very soft through her t-shirt, as if she were braless underneath. Sandy's hand on my thigh got a little more assertive, and she was soon rubbing my growing cock through my jeans.
A moment later, she pulled her face away. "Fuck me," she said softly.