Many thanks to my editor for helping me to be a better writer.
*****
Two hundred thousand leaves. A mature maple tree has roughly that many, and in the part of the world where Marla lives, they all end up on the ground in October. She couldn't believe it when she read the number. "I've got over a million leaves in my yard!" she said. There was no one there to hear her but her cat, and Twinkles was unimpressed. "I've got to hire some help!"
She was looking out her window at the colorful carpet of fallen leaves on the lawn of her big back yard, out behind the little house she'd moved into a few months before. It was nice quiet country property, her reward to herself for surviving a messy divorce from a man she'd despised for the past few years. Her life had been a tangled mess for a while, but it had finally sorted itself out. She was looking forward to peace and quiet, and maybe a man now and then for some carnal pleasures but nothing more. A friend with benefits. She loved that idea.
Marla was forty-nine, dreading the coming birthday with the five and the zero, angry at herself for spending the best years of her life with a jackass. She hated the anger. Her two best friends were divorced and quite bitter about it, so she'd reluctantly cut back on the amount of time she spent with them. More alone time meant more quiet time with Twinkles, and she found it was just what she needed; lots of meditative peace and quiet.
She found her fun at weekly auctions that offered estate sale items and antiques. It was an enjoyable way to slowly fill her house with treasures, most of them inexpensive, with the occasional splurge on a wonderful mid-century couch, dresser, or chair.
Getting a job was on her agenda but it wasn't a priority. The divorce settlement was sizable, enough to keep her going long term if she was wise about her spending, but she thought a job at an antique store might be fun. There was always the University if she needed a more serious job, her alma mater, looming on a hill just six miles or so from her quiet home. She knew they liked to hire alumni, and with the town being relatively small she thought she might have a good chance at a job up there.
University Hill. It was a campus full of memories for Marla. She studied biology when she was a student there, went to all the sporting events and concerts, and lost her virginity in a cute boy's dorm room when she was a freshman. She ended up dating him for a year, and then another boy when she was a junior, virtually living with him in a dingy apartment just off campus. They were formative years in the best kind of way, freewheeling and full of laughter and good times. A year after graduation she met the man she'd marry, and it was all downhill from there.
A million leaves on her backyard lawn was definitely a step in the right direction. It was
her
lawn, and they were
her
leaves, and she could do whatever she wanted about the situation. Let them rot, rake them up, or hire some help.
"What do you think, Twink?" she asked her purring cat as she scrolled through Craigslist ads. "Here's a college boy looking for yard work. Should we take the chance?"
Marla replied to the ad and texting ensued. The boy, Jesse Summers, corresponded quite maturely, so Marla threw caution to the wind and gave him her address. She lived on the bus route between the campus and the next town to the East, so transportation wasn't a problem. Jesse said he'd have to use her tools, so Marla went and bought a rake. While she was at the store she bought some hedge clippers, and a shovel, and a pruning saw. If the boy did a good job with the leaves she had some other projects for him.
—
Jesse arrived right on time and first impressions were made, as they usually are. Marla, standing just outside her front door, saw a confident looking nineteen-year-old walking up her driveway. It was hard to judge his height but he was shorter than she expected, with dark brown hair styled trim and neat. Long, baggy shorts hung to his knees and he wore bright white sneakers that she feared were going to get dirty.
As Jesse approached the house he saw a woman his mother's age, or maybe a few years older, taller than he expected. Her hair was sandy brown, close to blonde but not quite, hanging thick and slightly wavy down just past her shoulders. Feathery bangs concealed her forehead, with just a hint of eyebrows peeking through. Her black jeans were tight and her t-shirt loose. She looked leggier and leggier the closer Jesse got.
"You must be Jesse," she said as he approached. "I'm Marla."
Her suspicions were confirmed when she reached for Jesse's hand for a handshake — he was a good three inches shorter than her stately five-foot eleven-inch height, and he was a very handsome young man overall. Jesse's first impression was also correct — his new employer's legs, shown off nicely in her tight jeans, were kind of awesome. One of his mother's friends has a very nice older ass, and he was pretty sure he was going to enjoy looking at Marla's. She had a nice face, too, kind and welcoming, with crinkles around her eyes when she smiled, just like his mom.
"Are you ready to rake a million leaves?" Marla asked.
"Sure," Jesse said.
Marla walked him around the house and the scope of the big project came into view. "I realize it's going to take you a while. Just work steady, and ten dollars an hour should add up pretty good. When you get some piles made I'll help you get them onto an old sheet and we can drag them way out back."
Marla got Jesse started, and then she went in the house. She sat at her kitchen table, sipping coffee, watching him work. He raked like he'd done it before, probably at home, she thought, or maybe other folks had hired him for the same task.
It wasn't long before he took his shirt off, tossing it casually onto freshly raked grass. Marla sat up straighter in her chair when he did it, and thoughts of the lamp she missed out on at the auction the night before disappeared from her mind like a puff of smoke. It was the first attraction she'd felt for the boy; a pleasant, full-body jolt that made her fingertips tingle a little.
"What do you think, Twinkles?" she said to her purring companion. "Cute, huh? If you and me were back in college..."
Marla watched Jesse rake. He was a little ways away but she could see his muscles flexing, arms and chest working in harmony, with assistance from a flat stomach that was perfectly adorned with a happy looking bellybutton. She sipped her coffee and hardly blinked at all.
—
"I guess I should have bought two rakes," Marla said. She stood next to an old bed sheet that she'd spread out on the grass, watching as Jesse flicked rakefuls of colorful maple leaves onto it. It was a new kind of thrill being close to him while he worked, her eyes darting around nervously, trying to glean the close-up details of his topless body without him seeing her doing it. His muscled arms and chest were just as smooth and perfect up close as they were from a distance; even more so, with more twitching, flexing life in them. His skin had a subtle sheen of perspiration that looked like satin paint in the most perfect shade of 'flesh' imaginable. The sheet filled up quickly with leaves. "Wow, this is going to take awhile, isn't it," she said. "I'll drag and you rake. How about that?"
"Okay," Jesse said.
Marla smiled. "You're a man of few words, huh?" she said.
Jesse blushed and smiled shyly. Marla was amazed at the shift in skin tone — his entire upper body, neck and face turning a pinker shade of that luxurious looking satin. She gathered the corners of the big flat sheet and dragged the huge, bulbous mass of leaves away. It was Jesse's turn to watch without being seen, his eyes on the middle-aged woman's ass, tightly packed in her jeans; an ass that's a little big but nicely proportioned for her statuesque, long-legged body. It was definitely worthy of a thumbs-up, if a friend had been there to give one to.
He kept one eye on his work and one eye on Marla, watching as she dragged the leaves out through a gap in an old hedgerow at the back of her property. She was out of sight for a half a minute and then she returned, walking toward him with the empty sheet in one hand. The front of her was more of a mystery than the back of her, the loose t-shirt she had on hiding her true shape. There was definitely some shape there, though. Quite a bit of it, nicely proportioned, it seemed, just like the rest of her. Breathing harder when she returned, she snapped the sheet with a quick flick of her wrists and let it settle to the ground like a dirty white parachute, right next to one of Jesse's neatly raked piles.
After another round of muscle-watching as Jesse raked and ass-watching as Marla dragged, she parachuted the empty sheet into position again, and then she took off her t-shirt. Another top was under it, a smaller one of ribbed cotton that fit tighter to her body. Cut straight at the top, with little spaghetti straps holding it up, it wasn't a garment that showed off her cleavage in a deep V kind of way, but it did show the tops of her nice breasts, smooth skinned ones that were firm enough that she got away without a bra most days at home, always with a tight shirt under a looser one. Stripping down to just the inner layer wasn't something she'd thought through; it was the oddly humid day and the sweat of work that had made her do it. Once the quick, thoughtless movement had been made she realized her predicament. She'd given Jesse a peek at her bellybutton, a happy-looking one much like his, and she was shocked that her body was giving away her arousal, complete with goosebumpy arms and nippley breasts that hadn't come to life in front of the opposite sex in years. A few things to say crossed Marla's mind, but she decided on silence, standing there more titty than she wanted to be, watching Jesse scoop another pile of leaves onto the sheet.
When she bent to gather the corners the next conundrum was immediately apparent: her weighty breasts overloaded the little shirt's ability to support them. It was a barely acceptable 'bra' when she was upright and it was under another shirt, but when worn alone it was no match for gravity.
The bend for the first corner was the eye opener, Marla's eyes
and
Jesse's. When she straightened back up there was only two or three seconds for her to decide how to handle the situation — squat at the remaining corners, or bend at the waist each time and give the nice boy a show. Squatting seemed ridiculous. She knew he'd know why she was doing it, and that would be just as embarrassing, so she did a bit of a squat and bend combination. Jesse liked it. Tight black jeans pulled even tighter on her nice thighs, crotch and ass, and a healthy dose of healthy breasts on display with each bend. He was suddenly really happy Marla had hired him. As she gathered the four corners of the old sheet together, twisting them together so she could get a solid hold of it, her breasts wiggled and jiggled and looked even more aroused than before, the out-of-control nippleyness threatening to turn the work session into a soft-core porn. All that was needed was a beer pitcher full of ice water to pour on her little shirt and it'd be Girls Gone Wild.
Marla was glad to be heading away from the situation, pulling the big awkward satchel behind her. She'd noticed how Jesse had looked at her, his young eyes taking in all of her womanliness, and she wondered if he was still looking at her as she dragged the leaves away, watching her ass as she made her way to the hedgerow. She looked back to see if she was losing any leaves and sure enough, Jesse had been watching. His head swiveled back to his raking, but not before she'd caught him looking.
Out behind the hedgerow, where he couldn't see her, she quietly scolded herself and pulled the front of her shirt out to have a look at things. Her nipples were more aroused than she could ever remember and she didn't know what to do about it. She couldn't slap them into submission, and she couldn't just hide there for five minutes. She realized she was stuck looking like a horny old broad in front of a nice young college boy. She had to roll with it and hopefully have a laugh about it with Twinkles over a glass of wine later that evening.
