Mike's wife is a flasher. Mike is my next door neighbor. His wife Liz has played this game with me since we first met. The first time they came over, just after we had moved into the neighborhood, she paid an unusual amount of attention to me. Whenever I glanced over at her, I saw that she was regarding me intently with her large, intelligent gray eyes. I can see her now, running her fingers through her short, wind-swept styled hair, catching my eye, and smiling. I began to wonder, "Does Mike know how his wife is staring at me?", but he and my wife both seemed not to notice. So I just let it pass.
I was instantly attracted to Liz. My wife Kathy is a bit on the round side, verging on dumpy. She's fun to be around, and we have a lot in common. I can't imagine giving her up as a companion. But frankly, she has let herself go. She just doesn't excite me any more, and I think the main reason is that she doesn't really want to. She likes the comfort of having a husband, not the excitement of having a man.
Liz, on the other hand, is a woman who cares a great deal about how she looks and how it affects others. She works out hard at the gym two or three times a week, running and doing aerobics. She cares about fashion and wears clothes that allure. The movements of her arms, the way she walks, her posture when sitting are all graceful, attractive, and premeditated. She adjusts the tone of her deep voice to make music with it. And there is always a suspicion of confident amusement in her eyes, as if she is waiting for you to catch the punch line of a terrific joke she has just told.
I didn't really feel worthy of attracting someone like Liz. I'm smart, athletic, and reasonably good-looking, but I am not smooth. I never know the right thing to say to someone like her β I just blush, stammer, and look awkward.
Anyway, at our first meeting, we sat in the living room making the usual chitchat about each other β "Where are you from? Where'd you go to school? Do you plan to have kids someday?" When I offered to get a round of drinks, Liz offered to help, and followed me to the kitchen. I popped two beers on the counter for Mike and me, poured the remaining half-glass of wine out of one bottle, and grabbed another chardonnay from the rack.
As I opened the bottle, I regarded Liz. She was keeping time to the tune on the radio by shifting weight from knee to knee. Leaning with her arms upon the counter top, she had arched her spine so that her behind stuck out. She was putting one knee forward, and then the other, in time to the music. This made her little round butt wag back and forth, and her breasts bobble along with it. Not that I could see them clearly; she was wearing a loose cotton top, but she obviously wasn't wearing a bra, and the movement of the fabric gave a clue about what was going on underneath.
I'm not a good poker player. I can see myself turning red, looking at her ass, looking at the wine, looking at her shirt, fumbling with the glasses, and shaking while I poured. Liz regarded me with her little amused look as if she was enjoying this feeling of control over me. When I had recorked the wine, I glanced up, and she flashed me for the first time. She stood up straight, winked, lifted her shirt, and thrust out her bare chest not three feet away from me! Just like that! She held it for about a second, then lowered her shirt, giggled triumphantly, grabbed the two glasses of wine, did an about-face, and marched out of the kitchen in time to the music, grinning and swinging her hips exaggeratedly while I stood there thunderstruck.
The next time it happened was when they invited us over. They were showing us around the house, and Liz and I were left alone for only a moment in the study as Mike and Kathy left the room ahead of us. Liz showed me only one boob this time; then marched out ahead of me talking to Mike as if nothing had happened. The next time, it was when I ran into them at the grocery store. I was shopping alone and met Mike and Liz. As I went on about my shopping, Liz hunted me down and flashed me right there in the aisle.
Liz liked to hug when we met. It just seemed to me that she went out of her way to contact me with her breasts. I wasn't sure, but I thought she wiggled a little, rubbing them just a little against my chest or arm. She hugged a fraction of a second longer than someone else would, just the right length of time to keep me uncertain.
You know how once you get waltzed into a lie, you can't get out? This was a bit like that. I couldn't tell Kathy, and I couldn't let on to Mike. It sounds strange to say it, but I couldn't even talk to Liz about it. For one thing, I was afraid that if I said something these little flashes would lose their magic. I might offend her and she would stop doing it, or maybe even tell Mike or Kathy about it. But mainly I was afraid I wouldn't look cool if I actually talked about it in my fumbling words. Besides, I told myself, it wasn't so much sexual as shocking and goofy. I even believed that for a while. Looking back now, I can't really say when things changed, and I don't know to this day whether Liz wanted things to turn out the way they did.
Over the next year things escalated. I remember the flashes like snapshots. At the parade with her standing next to me in a crowd, when she pulled the waist of her sweatpants open and thrust her pelvis toward me, giving a view down her pants at her bush. Flashing her tits from the back seat while I put gas in the car while sticking her tongue out. Pulling her pantleg wide so I could stare at her panties while talking to Mike across the table from her.
My mental photo album shows Liz leaning over the brick wall of their balcony shouting down at Mike while she mooned me. This time it wasn't a flash, actually, because it lasted a good long time. She looked over her shoulder to see me grinning and blushing, and did her little tail-wag. I think I could have just walked up and touched her tush, but I didn't know if she'd let me. She might be shocked, like when one person thinks something's a game but the other does something serious. Or like when two kids are play-wrestling and one of them accidentally hurts the other. I might offend her.