The green corduroy jacket hung in the wardrobe in Sal's bedroom nestled between her own clothes. It was a strange intimacy with a piece of male clothing from a man she really did not know at all well. One thing if it belonged to a boyfriend or a lover, a husband even, but quite another for just a neighbour. Perhaps she should have hung it in one of the spare bedroom wardrobes not between two of her dresses. Once or twice she did take it out just before bed and even wore it again with nothing beneath looking at herself in her long mirror and wondering at how she had both been on a bus and walking through town like that. Certainly, her curls were hidden when she pulled the two sides together - just. Her fingers had felt within the jacket, touching her breasts and then her sex before she had settled herself on her bed and watched her fingers playing in her sex in that mirror whilst still wearing that jacket.
Sal's thoughts had wandered as she masturbated. Thoughts of men dressed in green corduroy suits, handsome men with crisp white shirts and colourful ties, men in brown brogues. Thoughts of large male hands slowly lowering the zips at the fronts of their trousers and releasing hard, strong penises - powerful masculinity sticking up out of the corduroy. Not one but several.
She thought too of when she would return the jacket to her neighbour. She thought of him standing there in his house waiting for her to come down the garden, waiting, probably dressed, whilst she came in through his French windows and took off the jacket revealing her nakedness. That appealed, it made her fingers move the faster.
And so it was, a few days later, that a newly showered but completely naked Sal stood in the dark of the evening at her back door, contemplating the night and her imminent revealing of herself once more to her neighbour. Her thoughts taking her back a whole week to the bus ride and walk through the early town. It was easier looking back than actually doing it - easier to enjoy the memory than experience the reality. It had been quite something to have placed so much trust in her neighbour, a man she did not really know very well at all. It had been trust. He had not forced her to go for a walk, even though the walk had turned the other way from her original plan. He had not forced her onto the bus and he had not forced her with Mr. Grant anymore than he was forcing her way of returning the corduroy jacket.
The grass was a little damp between her toes as she made her way down her garden. From her neighbour's house she could hear faint voices from the television - he was not, then, watching recordings of her in her garden and probably, she surmised if watching the news or some other programme, not naked.
He was not. Sal could see him through the window glass as she came down his garden, standing with a drink in hand in trousers and shirt - perhaps he was missing his jacket. Sal's excitement of the morning had returned, and she was intent on revealing herself, thinking of the shivering thrill of undoing the corduroy jacket's middle button and exposing herself. A tap at the glass door and she was seen. A smile from her neighbour as he opened the door and Sal stepped in. "Your jacket," she said, and that strange feeling came to her as she opened it and slipped it down her shoulders. Her breasts were pushed forward, and her curls were there to be seen. Sal rather hoped her neighbour might cup her sex as he had done in the green lane that morning.
It only then that she paid a little more attention to the television, perhaps because the voices had stopped as if it had suddenly been switched off. There was, though, no remote control in her neighbour's hand to enable him to turn the sound down and the television was not actually on - and nor was the radio. To Sal's surprise and horror her neighbour was not at all alone. He had visitors and Sal had just exposed herself to them. Worse, the jacket was half way down her back, its sleeves trapping her arms, so she could not pull it easily back on.
She turned to her neighbour and felt his hand pulling the jacket from her. He was grinning almost as if he knew Sal would come with the jacket and do what she had done.
"Evening Sal. Would you like a drink? These are my friends, Vince and Al."
Sal's mouth was opening and closing like a fish as her neighbour pressed a glass of wine into her hand. Vince stepped forward, holding out his hand. Sal had to swop the glass from her right to her left hand in order to shake the offered hand, conscious she was being inspected and unable with her one hand holding a glass and the other shaking the man's hand to do anything about covering herself up. She was unexpectedly exposed to men.
Her neighbour introduced his friends and she shook Al's hand as well. Three fully clothed men drinking wine and having the unexpected - if it was - pleasure of a naked woman standing with them. Sal had no illusions about how decorative men found naked women or the pleasure they took in their bodies. She was also under no illusion about the prospective danger of her situation - her predicament - men had penises and liked to use them. Against three she could have no defence and a very reasonable question might be why she had come around to her neighbour naked, indeed why had she walked out into the night naked in the first place. They sat. Sal and her neighbour on the settee, the other men in armchairs. Sal sat primly with her knees together as if she was wearing a skirt... only it was not simply a matter of not giving the men opposite a glimpse of knickers up her skirt - it was all rather more she would be showing.
She sipped her wine and the conversation flowed. Eyes remained upon her. She had no knowledge of whether three, two, one or no penises were raised. She, though, was conscious of wetness between her legs and a raised clitoris. What would happen? Would she simply bid the men 'goodnight,' thank her host for the wine and walk out into the night with three pairs of eyes watching the rising and falling of bottom cheeks? Would she hear laughter as she walked back down her own garden or would 'something' happen first?
"Sal is a keen photographer."
Al and Vince professed interest. Perhaps that was why they had been eyeing her body so carefully... or perhaps not.
"She is particularly interested in bird photography but also does nudes. Don't you Sal?"
Sal had to admit she did.