Eating a doughnut and making it look like you're doing nothing more than just that is surprisingly harder than it looks. Or then again, maybe it just seems that way because you're trying not to look suspicious, which of course makes you think that you're doing exactly that, even though, I mean come on, you're just eating a doughnut, for Christ's sakes. I was peeling back the flap on the plastic lid on my coffee when headlights flashed past in the street. I looked up in time to see that it was just a minivan, nobody I needed to care about, but right behind it was the ratty old pickup truck with Delilah at the wheel, staring myopically straight ahead, her thick glasses and bright orange hair reflecting the pinkish light from the lampposts lining the narrow strip of lawn and sidewalk between the parking lot and the street. I raised my cup as she drove by, but she didn't give any sign of noticing or of recognizing me -- unless she was directly involved in a conversation, Delilah was usually off in her own world. A little batty, to get right to it. Which explained, probably, why she was the best writer of the bunch of us.
I checked the time -- 10:17. Twelve minutes since we'd called an end to the meeting, eight minutes since I'd left Gloria's place, the first to go as usual while Delilah and Colleen lingered to chat with Gloria, gathering up their papers and pens, the minor workplace gossip that they tried to avoid during the meeting so we could concentrate instead on the writing that was the reason we got together every month. It had been eight months since I had joined the writers' group at Colleen's invitation, after one of the original members had stopped showing up; the three girls, they had been getting together for a lot longer, a couple of years now on the first Monday of every month. The meetings usually followed a routine: 10 or 15 minutes of chatty catching up, followed by little writing exercises, then discussions about one another's work samples. These tended to be shallow and polite - no one wanted to lay a real beating on anyone else's work, no matter how well deserved, because then it's your turn to get crapped on and god knows your month's worth of drivel deserves a good beating as much as anyone else's. And as the only guy, there's no way I could compete with three women if things ever took a turn towards the bitchy.
And anyways, after eight months we'd all gotten used to one another and we all knew how everyone else wrote, what each other's weaknesses (many) and strengths (few) as writers were. For the past eight months we'd all been avoiding stepping on toes and managing for the most part to avoid any hard feelings.
And for the past six months, Gloria and I had been fucking more or less regularly. Colleen and Delilah didn't know about this, which lent a certain degree of drama to the monthly meetings beyond the obligatory discussions about character development and verb tenses.
The secrecy wasn't something we had ever explicitly discussed, but from the very beginning it just seemed natural that we would keep our carryings-on to ourselves. The girls all worked together at the university and from Gloria's point of view, this kind of affair just seemed better kept quiet; Delilah, in particular, was a devout Catholic and would no doubt have looked down her nose at Gloria (me, it's hard to say what Delilah would have looked down - she had never been married and as far as I knew had never mentioned any men in her life, or women, for that matter. But then every now and then when I talked to her she'd blush and giggle, so who's to say ...)
As far as I was concerned, Colleen was my closest friend, male or female, and had been since college. So it's not like she didn't know about any of my affairs or relationships and I had no reason to think that she would be particularly shocked or appalled by this one. But it just seemed, what with the dynamics of the group, yada yada, that this was something best kept quiet - a hand grenade that neither Gloria or I saw the need to toss onto the table.
I finished the doughnut and was halfway through the coffee when Colleen's little dark-blue Civic drove by. She gave me a puzzled look, shrugged and waved. She slowed down and for a second I thought she was going to turn into the parking lot but then she kept going, looking back over her shoulder. I smiled and waved back and watched her turn at the next corner toward home. I waited another couple of minutes during which I finished my coffee. When the clock on the CD player said 10:30, I headed back to Gloria's place.
The light was still on in the living room window as I pulled into the driveway and parked around back out of view of the street. Gloria's place was a converted carriage house that belonged to the university; her job in the alumni office allowed her to pull some strings when it came up for rental. I didn't know for a fact, but she had hinted to me once that some of those strings had included one or two well-placed blowjobs. If true, then that could partly explain her desire for secrecy about our own affair; once you reach a certain level of any corporate hierarchy, there's nothing like a reputation for being the office skank to put a kink in your further career prospects.
The door wasn't locked, so I let myself in without knocking and locked it behind me. The only light is from the tiny kitchen, where Gloria is standing at the sink washing up the wine glasses, coffee cups and cheese tray from the meeting. Inside, the place still looks like a carriage house -- one large pine-panelled room divided by half-walls and strategic placement of furniture into entryway, living room, kitchen and dining room; only the bathroom was completely separate from the rest of the house. Even the bedroom was open, a platform up in the loft that looked down onto the living room and kitchen and was reached by a narrow staircase in one corner that barely qualified better than a ladder.
I hung my leather jacket on a hook next to the door and kicked off my shoes, leaving them on the rustic straw mat and padding to the kitchen in my socks. Gloria was running water over the soapy dishes in the sink as I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in the side of her neck.
"Hey baby," I said, kissing the soft skin of her neck. She smelled of shampoo and the morning's perfume. Her dark hair was short, boyish, and I moved up to her exposed ear, nibbling on her lobe.
"Hey yourself," she said. She leaned back against me and sighed contentedly as I nuzzled her neck. I slipped my hand underneath her sweater and rubbed her flat tummy. She was pretty proud of that tummy, the product of religious gym-going and a semi-strict vegetarian diet.
Of course, she fucked like a champion, too. That surely didn't hurt either.
I moved my hand up her tummy to her tits. Her tits were small, maybe half a handful, and there were many days when she didn't bother wearing a bra. This was one of those days and I cupped her left tit in my hand and was starting to work on the nipple when she pushed my back with her ass.
"Let me finish these dishes," she said. Reluctantly, I took my hand out from under her sweater.
