Cleaning out the garage was not my idea of a fun way to spend what was promising to be a nice spring Saturday, but seeing as my daughter Jill was going to be at her Mom's this weekend, I had to take advantage of the parenting break to get things done around the house.
I was stacking up the newspapers in the recycling barrel when I saw Jill's friend Maria pedaling up the driveway. The skinny little Italian girl was almost the exact opposite of my daughter Jill, who was a bubbly blonde who had her mother's good looks and figure.
Little Maria was as quiet as a mouse, and while I thought she was cute, my tastes are strange. When my ex-wife still lived here she often commented that Jill hung around the mousy looking Maria to make her look better around the boys, much like she had when she was young.
That figured, I mused, because I had learned of my now ex-wife's somewhat cruel side too late. I hoped Jill wasn't like that, although I was too busy being Mom and Dad most of the time to dig too deep into their relationship.
I hardly recognized Maria, who usually dressed very modestly and rather drably in baggy t-shirts and jeans, and while what she was wearing was nothing compared to what a lot of girls wore these days, for Maria the very brief denim shorts and bright yellow blouse with very short sleeves was quite revealing.
The rest of Maria was normal for her; no make-up to speak of, and big round glasses that made her look like the bookworm she was. Behind the glasses were big brown eyes under bushy eyebrows that most girls would trim but I found attractive, along with the down that curled around her ears. Maria's hair was jet black and curly and in the hands of a talented stylist her lushly thick scalp might really turn some heads.
"Hi Mr. Carson," Maria said as she rode into the garage and nudged the kickstand of the bike down.
"Hello Maria," I said, looking up while wiping my brow with the back of my hand. "Jill's with her Mom this weekend."
"Oh yeah," Maria said, although her voice didn't seem to match the surprise she tried to convey. "Forgot."
"You look pretty today - especially pretty," I added, since I always told her that she looked pretty, even if she didn't fit anybodies idea of a raving beauty. "Nice outfit."
Maria gave me a crooked smile and shrugged her shoulders, and as she stood there I realized exactly how revealing Maria's outfit was, the shorts especially. I was trying to think of what they called those shorts - Dukes of Hazzard shorts, or Daisy Dukes? Whatever they were, they were brief.
I didn't remember seeing Maria's legs before, and the shorts certainly showed a lot of them. Her legs were slender and not all that shapely, but when you're near 50 and a divorced guy who hadn't been with anyone since his wife left, they got my attention, but nothing like what was happening above the waistband of the low riding shorts.
I tried not to look, but that was a losing battle the second I saw the trail of black hair that ran up to just below Maria's belly button, where her blouse ended. A treasure trail. I hadn't seen one in so long - my ex-wife used to have one but it was a very light brown and she had started getting it waxed not long after we married, like a lot of other things.
Maria shifted her weight to her other foot, which got me out of my trance and forced me to look away from her treasure trail for the time being. The problem was that I then looked at Maria's slender arms and the long black hairs that covered her forearms.
"Need help, Mr. Carson?" Maria offered, her voice sounding nervous, as I suspected she must have caught me leering at her.
"No thanks - besides, that's such a pretty outfit I's hate to see it get dirty," I said before adding, "Is that new?"
"Yeah," Maria said.
"It's a different look for you, that's for sure," I said as I looked approvingly at the fine down that covered her skinny arms up almost to her biceps. "You should wear things like that more often."
"No, I could never - not in public," Maria said, and while riding down here on her bike and standing in the garage was certainly public, I was too aroused to tell her so.
"The boys would like that," I suggested, but she shook her head no.
"No they wouldn't," Maria said, and it was then I noticed that she had taken a bag off of her handlebars and was holding it by her side.
"What's in the bag? Something for Jill?" I asked, but she shook her head and slowly took it out of the bag, and when I saw it was a DVD I was stunned at what I saw. "What in the world are you doing with something like that?"
"Um... it's yours,' Maria said, her voice shaking like the hand that was holding the disc. "I - uh - borrowed it."
My hand was not been shaking as much as Maria's but it wasn't steady either when I took it from her, and by the way my face burned I suspected I was turning beet red as a result of seeing what DVD she had "borrowed".
"Borrowed it?" I said, putting the DVD down behind some stuff, as if that would hide it. "Why did Jill..."
"Jill didn't give it to me," Maria said. "She probably doesn't even know you own it. She was taking a shower last weekend and I was waiting for her and kinda walked into your bedroom. I saw it stuck behind the DVD player. Sorry."
The DVD was one of those in the Rodney Moore Horny Hairy Girls series, and I knew that I never kept any of my modest porn collection out in plain sight, but the anger that this girl was snooping through my stuff paled by that time because I was rather embarrassed that my choice of entertainment was anywhere it could possibly be seen.
"Shouldn't have taken it," Maria mumbled after an awkward moment of silence. "I'm sorry. I was just - curious. Didn't know there were ladies like that."
"It's just a movie - don't know why I even got it to begin with," I mumbled, which was a lie of course.
"Oh. Don't you like ladies like that?" Maria asked, and all I could do was shrug my shoulders.
"I'm like that - kinda," Maria said, her thumbs in the belt loops of her shorts, and I don't know if was intentional or not but the shorts came down a bit, exposing the wide beginning of her treasure trail and the timberline of her bush. "The girls in gym class used to make fun of me when we would change. That among other things, obviously."
"Maria," I sighed. "We shouldn't be having this kind of conversation."
"Why?" Maria asked.
"For one thing, you're way too young for me to be..."
"I'm 18, Mr. Carson," Maria responded, and I guess that Maria saw where my eyes were focused