This is a follow up to Customer Profiling, published on December 6
th
, 2024. As in that example, this part is SEXY, I think, but it's relatively light on genital-on-genital contact. The emphasis is on our heroine's emerging, unfulfilled desires. The ball keeps rolling in this installation - as for future installations? Well, who knows! Please read the tags for some light spoilers, in case you'd like to know what you're in for. As always, I'd love comments and critiques!
Eggs were on the table at 7 a.m. sharp on the first Monday after the holiday break. Amy, clad in black leggings and a flannel button-down shirt, with her orange hair tied back in a loose, damp ponytail, called up the stairs.
"Boys!" She said. "Get down here and eat some breakfast!"
Brian and Brendan trampled down the stairs like a pack of elephants, creating noise far in excess of their weight. At 10 and 8 years old, respectively, they had no business creating such a racket with their little footsteps alone, but somehow, they found a way. At least they were old enough to dress themselves, now. Amy washed the pan as they took up their seats at the table, gorging themselves on scrambled eggs and buttered toast. Amy didn't know how elephants ate their food, but she assumed it was more dignified than whatever her sons were doing.
"So," Amy said, scrubbing bits of egg off the stainless steel. "Are you excited to go back to school?"
"No," Brian said, bits of egg flying from his mouth.
"Don't talk with your mouth full, mister."
The pan washed, Amy pulled her phone from her shirt pocket. Her husband hadn't yet responded to the 6:30 a.m. "I love you" she had sent. He typically caught the 5:45 a.m. train to the city, a half hour before Amy usually woke up, and he might still be making his way to the office. She closed the text, and scrolled down past all the New Years' wishes she'd gotten from friends and family to the text marked "S Tutoring."
Sarah.
Shielding the phone, she scrolled back through the messages they'd exchanged around Christmas. The picture of Amy in the bustier. The picture of Sarah's legs in the bath tub.
"The things I would do to you."
Amy put the phone away when she heard the silverware clatter on the table.
"Go brush your teeth," Amy commanded, "And then let's get your coats and shoes on!"
Amy shepherded her boys to the bus stop on the corner, looking at each house they passed. Oyster Bay was a relatively affluent town on Long Island. The schools were good. The homes were nice, especially on Hilltop Road, where they had just moved into the smallest house on the block in the past year, stretching their budget and using most of the last several years' worth of bonuses that Sean had earned.
Amy hated it.
She hated the cold atmosphere of the new block, the houses sitting like fortresses behind huge, immaculate lawns and curving driveways. She hated the monotony her lifestyle. She hated the routine of making breakfast, getting the kids to school, keeping the house clean until it was time to retrieve them from the bus stop, supervising the homework, making the dinner. And for what? A kiss on the forehead when Sean came home, an hour of television in the evenings before bed. A 6:30 a.m. alarm, an empty bed and another trip around the sun on the same terms.
Meeting Sarah had taken a sledgehammer to all that. She had been sleepwalking, Amy thought, and now she was awake. There could be so much more to life than this, she knew. She just had to make it happen.
"Happy new year!" Her neighbor Melinda called out from the corner, waving a gloved hand. Melinda and her husband Peter lived a few doors down from Amy on Hilltop Road in a much larger house. They had three children about Brian and Brendan's age, and had all gotten know each other somewhat during the last several months.
"Happy new year!" Amy said, waving back to the other mother and smiling broadly.
Brian and Brendan ran ahead to chat with Melinda's brood, just in time for the bus to roll up to the corner.
Amy and Melinda waved goodbye to the school bus and turned toward their homes, their rubber boots slapping the slushy puddles on the sidewalk as they walked and chatted.
"Good break?" Melinda asked.
"Pretty good," Amy said. "We stayed local this year. Flights just got too expensive. Waited too long. How about you guys?"
"Tell me about it. Cost us nearly three grand just to visit my parents in Boca Raton. I don't know how people do it."
Both of their husbands worked in finance. Money was rarely an issue for either family. But it was polite to pretend, while the headlines spoke of the struggles most people faced this time of year. They felt guilty, Amy supposed, and acted like they understood.
Pretending was a survival mechanism.
"Get anything good for Christmas?" Melinda asked with a smile, putting the poverty roleplaying to the side for a moment.
"I got this," Amy said, drawing attention to the cream-colored Pashmina draped around her neck and tucked into her coat. Melinda reached out and felt it.
"Ooh, I love!"
Amy thought about the other gifts she had gotten. The bustier and the teddy. The late-night text exchanges with Sarah. The browsing and bookmarking of Ravir's online catalogue. She wanted more. And she wanted someone besides Sean to share them with. Someone who would appreciate them, desire them, who would take the time to admire their details. To admire her. To truly admire her. Who wouldn't just see them as disposable kindling for a fire that burned all too quickly. She was desperate for the attention Sarah had showed her in the dressing room. She was desperate to recreate it.
"And I got a little something for myself..."
Melinda smiled conspiratorially.
"Jewelry?"
Amy looked at her neighbor. Melinda was about a year older than she was, with wavy black hair she had blow-dried and styled for the bus stop walk, and pale skin, made paler by the concealer she used to hide the bags that spoiled her bright green eyes. She hid her body under a black wool pea coat, much like Amy's own, with the requisite standard issue black leggings and Hunter boots rounding out the ensemble. Their outfits were so similar. Their lifestyles were so similar. They were friends, Amy thought. She guessed you could say that. But beyond the basics - where she lived (three doors down), where she had gone to college (Fairfield), what her kids' names were (Dylan, Cody and Paige) - Amy didn't know all that much about her.
"Lingerie," Amy said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly, framing it like a question, as if to ask "if you know what I mean?"
"Ooh," Melinda replied in a sing song voice, but her eyes darted back to the sidewalk, Amy noticed. Had she misjudged their friendship? Was this too intimate a conversation topic? Amy stiffened, and fixed her own eyes down the street, thinking quickly for a new subject to --
"What kind?"
Amy looked back to Melinda, whose face told the story of idle curiosity. A little too idle, Amy thought, like she didn't want to seem too interested. She thought she'd perhaps caught a live one.
"Oh, nothing too racy," Amy said, taking her time. "A bustier and a babydoll. I got them from a little place called Ravir, in the city."
"I think I've heard of them," Melinda said, nodding thoughtfully, her breath steaming in the cold January air. "They were on some year-end thing I read somewhere."
They approached Amy's house. Ordinarily, this is where the two said their goodbyes, before Melinda marched on to her larger Tudor-style home down the street. Amy didn't have anywhere else to be, anything else to do - she didn't, most school days - and thought she might like to talk to Melinda some more.
"Want to come in for some tea or coffee?" Amy asked. "I could show you what I got..."
Melinda opened her mouth to respond, looking back and forth between Amy, Amy's brick colonial and her own house down the street.
"Uh, ok!" Melinda said. "Sure. I've got some time."
The kettle had just begun to whine when Amy returned to the kitchen with her intimates on two sets of hangers. She hooked them onto the overhead cabinets and brought down two mugs.
"Take any milk or sugar with your coffee?" Amy asked.
"I'm fine," Melinda said, craning her neck to get a better look at the garments while Amy poured the coffee. They each blew on the mugs, thawing their hands and feeling the warmth radiate through the porcelain.
"So... are you going to show me?"
Amy placed her mug on the table and retrieved the hangers from the cabinets. She held them up in front of her, holding her hands steady and letting Melinda get a good look at each of the pieces. Amy watched as Melinda's eyes went wide, moving back and forth between the pieces. Melinda stood up and walked over, feeling the fabrics between her fingertips.
"I love the roses on this one," Melinda said, touching the embroidered red roses on the black bustier. "And this one is sheer! That's very naughty, Amy..."
Amy beamed. The smile faded when she remembered the night she had worn the sheer babydoll for Sean. It was a few nights after Christmas, the boys had gone to sleep, and Sean was watching a hockey game in the living room. Amy wore the babydoll over a white pair of panties. She wished that she had had something a little more revealing in the front, and cursed her insecurities for leaving her underwear drawer devoid of thongs, G-strings and other such unmentionables. But she liked the way they looked. She enjoyed the contrast of bright white under the soft lavender, and hoped Sean would, too.
She tiptoed down the stairs, her fingers dancing on the banister, as she put herself in the mind of the seductress. She pictured Sean's face when he saw her. He would turn off the TV, she thought, carry her upstairs, and ravage her like he used to, in their 20s, dating in New York City and keeping their roommates up with the sounds of their fucking. The fantasy made her wet, and she felt the sheer fabric covering her torso, felt her breasts and her hair. She felt like a woman. But her man couldn't do his part.
"New pajamas?" He had asked, before turning back to the game.
"No," Amy said, surprised she would need to explain herself. Maybe her choice of underwear hadn't made her intentions clear. "It's called a babydoll. I thought we could, you know..."
"Oh... Okay." Sean said, taking a sip of his beer bottle. "Give me, like, ten minutes. It's the third period and they're down one. The boys are totally collapsing. I don't get it."
Amy didn't get it, either. But she would be sure to be asleep before ten minutes had elapsed.
"Did I say something wrong?" Melinda asked.
Amy snapped out of her reverie, searching her memory for the last thing she'd heard Melinda say.
"No!" Amy said, shaking the lingerie. "Sorry. It's just. Well. I don't know how much I should say."
Melinda sat back down and sipped her coffee.
"Spill it," she said. "I don't have anywhere to be for a couple of hours."
Amy draped the lingerie on the kitchen table and sat down. She had never talked to anyone besides her priest about her marital frustrations, and even her priest hadn't heard anything in months. What was the point? Amy said. Each time, she got the same advice. Love your husband, the priest said. Focus on your children. Asking a Catholic priest for help in the bedroom was like asking an artist for help in creating the universe. They could get guess at the broad strokes needed, but they weren't exactly an expert.
"Well, I got them to sort of spice things up. You know how it is."
