Kim Collins sighed again as she looked at herself in the full-length wall mirror in their bedroom.
Her bedroom, she corrected herself. Roy had moved out to live with his assistant nearly a year ago. The divorce had been finalized three months ago.
He'd always said he liked short blondes, Kim thought. Unfortunately, it had also turned out that he liked younger, taller brunettes better.
Kim looked at herself again. 5 feet tall in bare feet, as she was now. Flat stomach. A slim waist. Large, firm breasts with light pink nipples the size of quarters, erect now because the room was a bit cool. A firm, round butt. Her pussy was hairless and smooth in preparation for summer sun-bathing and swimming. Her heart-shaped face was framed by shoulder-length, naturally blonde hair that she allowed sunlight and the occasional bit of lemon juice to lighten.
She turned around again. 100 pounds soaking wet, 34d-20-33, 28 years old, gainfully employed as a high school English teacher for the last seven years and the owner of her own house and car: what wasn't to love?
But the five dates she'd been on since Roy left had all been disasters. Her friends set her up with nice, unattached men. She found the men boring. Nice, nice, nice. Roy had been nice.
No, she thought, Roy had seemed to be nice.
Kim shrugged and decided to get dressed. On the bright side, school was out for summer. Here it was, a Monday, and she didn't have to do anything but go shopping.
Once dressed, she looked at herself in the mirror again as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. White t-shirt, white shorts, white sandals, white sports bra, white panties: she laughed as she realized that she, too, was a little too white. She needed to work on her tan at some point because right now she looked a bit like a vampire dressed up to play tennis.
A lot of senior citizens ambled around the grocery store along with a few young mothers with small children. Kim glanced at her watch: 11 a.m. Her grocery cart nearly full, Kim was lost in a trance in the coffee section when a hand patted her shoulder.
Someone with pleasant baritone voice said, "Mrs. Leonard?"
Kim jumped a bit and turned to see who had addressed her.
The speaker was a towering young African-American man in green shorts and a red t-shirt. She smiled as she recognized him.
"Tim, Tim Johnson. How are you? How's college?"
Tim smiled. "Good, good. Second-team All-American at linebacker this year, one more year to go to make first team. GPA's over 3.00, and English is my best subject. I've got you to thank for that."
When Tim had entered her Grade 12 English class, he'd been a bright kid who'd coasted by on intelligence and his status as a football star. She'd failed him on his first test, and when he'd come to see her after class she'd initially been intimidated by this heavily muscled, 6'6" jock. But he hadn't been angry, only amazed that someone had finally called him on his work habits. Over the course of the year, she'd tutored him and a couple of other students, and by the time he graduated, Tim was an 'A' student in English who enjoyed reading on his own. Seeing him sitting cross-legged on the school lawn as his last year wore down, reading glasses on and one paperback or another held in his giant hands, used to make Kim smile.
"You had the brains, Tim. You just had to put in the work."
"Thanks." He smiled again. He was, Kim realized, turning into a very handsome man of 21. She realized she was blushing a bit as she looked at him. Clearing her throat, she spoke.
"It's, um, Miss Collins now. My husband and I got divorced this year."
Tim frowned. "I'm sorry. Pardon me if I ask, but who left who?"
"He left me."
"Well, he's a fool. You look great, you're a nice woman, and you're smart. Your husband's an idiot."
Kim felt the heat in her face and across her chest. My God, she thought, if I blush anymore I'm going to look like I've got a sunburn.
Tim smiled again. He'd noticed, she thought. Well, of course he noticed. They locked eyes for what felt like hours. She realized that her nipples had hardened, and not from any chill in the air.
"Um," she said, "I'm not your teacher anymore. Why don't you call me Kim?"
Still smiling, he said, "OK, ma'am. I mean Kim." They both burst out laughing.
"So," Kim said, "what are you doing here?"
"I'm in town until tomorrow morning visiting the folks. Then it's off to help out at summer football camps for high school kids until our camp starts in August."
"Ah. I meant, why are you in the grocery store?"
"Right. I took a bus downtown and was bumming around in the old town for the day. Mom said we needed coffee, so I stopped off here before grabbing a bus to the Northland Mall." He reached across her front to grab a tin of coffee. His forearm lightly brushed her collarbone as he brought the tin back to cradle it in one arm like a football. She shivered a bit at the touch.
She smiled at him again, and again they looked into each other's eyes. Finally she broke eye contact, flicking a quick glance at Tim's muscled chest, wondering what it looked like under that tight t-shirt.
Well, she thought, why the hell not?
"Tim, I'm done here with shopping. If you could help me with the groceries to the car and then help me unpack them at the house, I could run you down to the mall. My house is on the way, anyway."
Tim smiled again. "No, that would be too much trouble."
"I insist."
They pulled into her garage fifteen minutes later, the electric garage door closing behind them. No one had been out in the streets, Kim thought. No one had seen her passenger.
Well, what if they had, she wondered. He was just helping her unload groceries.