It isn't necessary to read Part1...but it might help, it is a great story :)
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Helen was late! It was Saturday morning and Helen was late. It had occurred to me that she might not turn up at all. She had promised to come the previous weekend after three weeks of not hearing from her, not having any of my messages and phone calls returned. She had promised to be here that weekend and at the last minute had reneged.
"Something has come up," my answering machine had told me, "Sorry, will have to make it next weekend, see you then."
And there it was, the next weekend, 11 am, she had been due at 10 am.
I know it was a little... different, last time she was here. I know I had talked her into being taken by my husband from behind, without him knowing, and she had run off early the next morning, but she didn't need to be this awkward. I felt embarrassed and guilty enough for both of us, she didn't need to add to it. If only she would arrive and then we could sit down and talk about it, like adults, not teenagers. Ian would be away until Sunday afternoon, so it would be a perfect opportunity to clear the air, if she ever arrived.
I heard her car in the driveway and my heart skipped a beat. Why was I so nervous? Surely I wouldn't have been as nervous if Helen had just come back the following week or answered one of my calls or messages. Her avoidance had increased my own tension and there I was nervous as hell, not knowing what to say to my sister-in-law. But then a thought struck me. What do you say to your sister-in-law the very first time you see her after she has been secretly made love to by your own husband?
Before I could formulate an answer to that question, the doorbell had sounded and I had let her into the house. She glanced furtively at me but neither of us made eye contact for more than a fleeting portion of a second. We did the fresh air kiss, with our hands touching each other's arms and she was off rattling on about the traffic, and some last minute shopping and the 100 klms between our houses seeming to take longer and longer to cover these days.
I wanted to grab her an d shake her and talk about what had happened, but she obviously didn't and that made me a little uncertain, so we both discussed the small-talk subjects, the weather, the news, the traffic, until after about an hour of increasingly difficult mindless conversation, we had gone full circle and were talking about the weather again.
Helen was actually my husband Ian's brother-in law, having married and divorced his idiot brother, but I felt that she was my Sister-in-law, but more importantly she was my best friend, and the events of a month ago that should have brought us closer together, had actually had an unforeseen effect of driving an uncomfortable wedge between us, and I didn't like it. This was something else that had resulted from me not thinking things through properly. I was angry with myself, but I couldn't take any more.
"Helen, since when do we discuss the weather?"
"Well..." she stammered, "it's hot, I'm hot and bothered, shall we go and have a swim in the pool to cool down?"
She had changed the subject, firmly, so I felt even more anxious about raising the subject, but I had the need to talk to her, but right now she was making it really obvious that she didn't want to talk about it at all. Perhaps she was feeling guilty or embarrassed; perhaps she never wanted to mention it again. That made me more nervous about bringing it up. So I didn't.
I put on my navy coloured bikini and a wrap and strolled out to the pool area and climbed onto the double hammock that Ian had strung under the tree. Dappled shade flickered on the concrete pool surrounds. Helen arrived a few minutes later in her one piece swimsuit as usual, but wrapped in a large towel. Surprisingly, she didn't head into the pool, but rather she sank face first into a sun lounge near my hammock.
We lay in silence for a few minutes, and eventually I went inside to get the tray of sandwiches and a bottle of wine that I had been chilling. Helen turned to the sound of the glasses clinking as I walked back towards her with the tray. Her eyes were hard to see in the bright sunlight bouncing off the concrete, but it looked like she was looking me up and down, appraising me. As I got closer I noted that the towel was underneath her instead of wrapped around her, and the contours of her legs and bottom were fully on show. They looked as toned and as nicely shaped as they always had. Behind my sunglasses I was sure that she couldn't see me appraising her form in return as I walked towards her from the rear.
After a few sandwiches and a glass of wine, the air seemed a little less thick and we were discussing things that had happened during the week. Helen seemed to be more at ease and relaxing, either from the conversation or the wine, or perhaps a combination of both, but there was never a time when the conversation drifted towards the subject that I was sure was uppermost in both our minds. She was repeating a story one of her workmates had told her and we both thought it amazingly funny and both broke out laughing, easing the tension even further. Two more glasses of wine later, we were seemingly at ease and she was like her old self again; my friend was back... sort of.
In the large double hammock, I was actually higher up than she was and looked down at her along her body. Her head was at the other end of the sun lounge, near the foot end of my hammock, so I could see her feet and her legs close up, and the nice shape of her bottom as it stretched away from me. As my gaze made its way up her body, along her back to her smooth shoulders and finally to her head, I realized she had been watching me with a curious look on her face. She had looked like she was going to say something a few times, and each time my heart had gone to my mouth in fear. This was another time. She turned on to left side, facing me and looked me straight in the eye, uncertainty clearly visible in hers. She stopped, thought again, went to speak once more, that uncertainty wavering, but she persisted.
"Can I show you something?" she asked, to my great relief, "One of the reason I was a little late this morning? I had to go and pick it up, it was late arriving, and I haven't really had time to look at properly myself."
I nodded, more in relief than anything else, but she smiled a kind of embarrassed and sheepish smile, and that had me wondering. She got up and wrapped the towel around her, probably because she had caught me looking at her and didn't want me to do it again. She headed towards the house leaving me puzzled.
After what seemed like ages, she walked back towards the pool area still wrapped in her towel, and yet even more puzzling, she wasn't carrying anything. She must have seen the look on my face and looked even more sheepish.
"I didn't think I should show you," she started, explaining why I didn't see her with anything, "But then I thought, what the heck, so I did." The look of confusion on my face must have been evident, because she giggled and let the towel drop to the floor.
Had I been more observant I would have noticed that the straps of her swimwear that had been visible above the towel line were a different colour now to when she left, but what was before me made my jaw drop open and my eyes almost fall out of my skull!
Helen stood before me in the tiniest lime green bikini I had ever seen!