Sophie and Josh were the couple who still whispered and kissed and made out in public long after everyone else had stopped. They kissed a lot. They always had. They groped each other in public. When they were near each other, they wanted to be physically close. They hugged while they walked. They kissed each other in the middle of conversations. They tried to sit beside each other in crowded rooms, and made other people move so they could.
After six years together, Josh still wanted Sophie. He wanted her like none of her friends were wanted. He chased her around the house if he saw her in her underwear, and he followed her into the shower when she was trying to get ready for work. Everywhere they went they were late, because one pulled the other back inside for a quickie on the way out the door. They had a lot of sex, so much that Sophie felt guilty and lied to anyone who asked. Two or three times a day, pretty much every day, even after six years. They had it often, and in stupid places too. They were always on the verge of being caught. He fingered her at the movies and she blew him in the car and they had sex in other people's bedrooms, at parties, just because they couldn't wait to get home. Neither of them could wait, once they got started. They both still ached for each other.
That was what Sophie was. No children, a dull job, mostly financially dependent on Josh. She hadn't much that other people would envy in her life, except the intensity of their relationship. It was a good relationship. It was solid. It was love as well as sex. They were close, and still talked, and were kind to each other as much as they could be.
Their friends pretended to be sick of them, but most, Sophie thought, secretly felt they were sweet. She and Josh were lucky. She didn't know why this had happened to them, why they'd ended up like this, but it had, and they were, and she was very glad.
*
Walking home from town one night, late, a little tipsy, Sophie started kissing Josh. Kissed, just to kiss him, then got distracted and started wanting more, because it was late and quiet and no-one else was around. And because that was just what they did.
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, so he had to stop too, pushed her hands up inside his shirt and opened her mouth and kissed him until he started trying to grope her back.
She'd worn jeans because it was almost winter and the nights were getting colder. He tried to get his hand down the front of them, but it didn't really work. The jeans were too tight. After this many years she should know better than to actually wear jeans, ever, but she still did.
Josh gave up and unzipped them, and got his fingers inside her pretty quickly. Sophie was used to being felt up fairly publically, but not so used to it she'd actually fuck on the side of the road. While Josh fingered her, she started looking around for some cover.
She'd got good at finding it, since they had been together. Overhanging trees, and bus shelters, and the dark hidden space between two parked cars. She'd had sex a lot of odd places, where she had to balance and lean and hold herself up, and by now she'd try almost anywhere except an actual public toilet, because that just seemed a bit grotty.
There were terrace houses all down the street. Bigger houses, with front gardens and fences, but all with their walls touching each other and no alleys or parks or laneways between them. There were cars all down the street to hide behind, but it was fairly open, and fairly brightly lit.
Sophie looked backwards. The house behind them had its lights off, and a hedge along the front path. That looked promising. It was two in the morning. Everyone would be asleep, and would stay that way, if Sophie and Josh were quiet.
"Hey," she said, and walked backwards, pulling Josh with her. Little shuffling steps with her mouth still on his, and his fingers still wetly deep inside her.
It was an older house, but tidy, done up with bright-colored paint. Someone had renovated it, Sophie thought. The garden was neat, so there wasn't anywhere much to hide. There was a covered porch, but going right up to the house and basically inside seemed a little much like trespassing.
There was a waist-high brick fence between the garden and the street, though, and the end nearest the path was shadowed from the streetlamps, secluded in beneath the hedge.
Sophie pulled Josh over, and leaned on the fence. Close against the hedge, where they shouldn't be seen. She undid her jeans some more, pulled them all the way open, and started kissing Josh again. "Just finger me," she whispered. "I'll blow you in a sec."
He did. He kissed her neck and breathed against her hair and rubbed her slippery wet as she perched on someone's fence. She was already quite close. They were good at this, had a lot of practice. Each knew how to do the other, and what to do to themselves to hurry it along. Josh could get her off in three or four minutes, and she could do him in two, and she was actually quite proud of that. They'd been doing this for years without embarrassing themselves, or anyone else.
He pushed his fingers against her, slid into her, rubbed gently, slippery over her lips. She undid his pants and started rubbing him too, because touching him when he was hard turned her on, and would make him quicker when it was her turn.
They could have just gone home and had actual sex, but Sophie liked not waiting. She liked that they couldn't control themselves, and wondered how many of her friends got finger-fucked by their partners, on the side of the road, on the way home, like they were still horny teenagers.
Sophie was almost there, wasn't really paying much attention to anything around her, when Josh's hand stopped and he said, "Wait, hold on."
Sophie moved her head, tried to breathe gently. Tried to listen, without pressing her ear to his chest.
Someone was coming down the road. She heard heels clicking on the asphalt, heard low voices, a second pair of feet. Another couple walking like she and Josh had been, she assumed.
"Wait," Josh whispered, his fingers still inside her, and she bit her lip and nodded.
The other couple walked closer. Sophie turned her face away, pressed it against Josh's chest. Josh looked past her head. They'd both learned long ago that other people noticed movement and they noticed faces and they didn't really see you otherwise, if you weren't moving or looking at them.
The other couple walked up the street, and then stopped beside their house. Stopped beside the path Sophie and Josh were standing in, and then the woman said, "Hi."
The owner of the heels, Sophie thought, without looking. Didn't look, because she felt embarrassed.
"Um," Sophie said, her face against Josh's chest. "Hi."
After all this time, doing things like this, they'd finally got caught and she was embarrassed.
"This is our house," the woman said.
"Yeah," Sophie said. "Shit. Of course it is."
Reluctantly, she turned towards them. She wasn't sure what else to do. Josh seemed to be embarrassed too. He looked like he'd been caught doing something terrible. Sophie tried push him away, but he held on. He seemed to be trying to hide his cock inside her hand.
"This is awkward," the woman said, but just kept standing there, which didn't really help. She sounded more like she thought it was funny.
"A bit," Sophie said. "Um. Sorry, by the way."
"It's fine," the woman said, still watching. "Happens more than you'd think, around here."
"I'm really sorry," Sophie said, and hit Josh to make him let her go. "We're stopping."
"You don't have to," the woman said.
Sophie stood there for a minute, not sure what to say.
"Seriously?" Sophie said.
The woman shrugged.
"You know what we're doing, right?" Sophie said.
"I can guess."
The woman was grinning. The guy beside her was smiling too.
Sophie stood there for a moment, startled and a little turned on. She looked at Josh and decided he wasn't horrified by the idea either.
"Dare you," the woman said.
"You dare me?"
"Yeah," the woman said. "I dare you. To finish what you're doing."
"And what, you'll owe me a dare back if I do?"
