This is the eighth in a series of stories about a middle-aged couple trying to adjust to changes in their life brought on by events beyond their control.
Hi. My name is Sharon. My husband of more than twenty years, Rich, and I are in our early forties living in a small town in California's Central Valley.
A couple of years ago we became empty nesters with our children now working at their own careers on the East Coast. Rich who previously traveled five days a week for work has now retired following a very lucrative buyout of his company. These changes brought us a great deal of free time and more money than we ever expected. Just like anyone else in our circumstances our first reaction was to spend more time at the gym, improve our golf game, learn new cooking skills, etc. But the big changes have been the improvements to our sex life described in detail in prior chapters of this story.
The latest major change in our life began, as with a number of others, with a phone call. This time it was from a former neighbor, Jill Ferguson. Jill and her husband Cam had lived next door to us when our children and theirs were quite small and we had been close friends. Unfortunately about the time our children reached school age both we and the Fergusons moved away from the small Sacramento subdivision in which we then lived—the Fergusons to a new job Cam had accepted on the East Coast and Rich and I to our current home which had become available when Rich's parents passed away. Since then our relationship with the Fergusons had dwindled to only slightly more than an annual exchange of Christmas cards.
Once we had exchanged greetings Jill said, "Sharon, Cam and I are making big changes in our lives. Our kids are grown and moved out and Cam has recently retired. We are at loose ends on how to deal with these changes but the one decision we have made is that we want to move back to California."
"Retirement brings a lot of change," I told her. "Rich and I have recently gone through a similar process."
"I know," she said. "You mentioned in your last Christmas card that you and Rich were going through life changes arising from what sounded like circumstances similar to ours. We are going to be in California house hunting in a couple of weeks and we would like to stop by and see you. Perhaps you can give us some tips on how to make the transition."
"Oh we would love to. It has been ages since we have seen the two of you." As I spoke I was thinking that it might be more than a little difficult to brief the Fergusons on the changes we had made to spice up our sex life. When we lived next door to each other so many years before we were very close friends but we had not had 'that kind of relationship.' But no matter, they had been close friends and I wanted to see them again and help them with their transition so we made plans to get together for dinner at our home in two weeks' time. After the call I was pleased that the Fergusons were coming to visit and might be in our life again. I remembered how Jill and I had gotten together regularly for coffee in the mornings and shared all our problems and successes with new marriage, new children, traveling husbands and all the other issues young wives have.
A few days before the Fergusons were due to arrive another change occurred. A for sale sign appeared on the lawn of the property next door. We were not terribly close to the owners who spent most of their time at another home they owned in Silicon Valley, although they had been instrumental in the beginning of Rich's and my efforts to broaden our sex life.
We had dinner with the Fergusons, drinking a substantial quantity of wine while we relived our long ago lives as next-door neighbors and gave and received quick updates from each other about the intervening twenty years. At some point the issue of the house next door being up for sale came up and Jill got very excited. "Wouldn't it be great to live next door again," she gushed. Later when Rich and I talked we agreed it would be great to have the Fergusons next door again, even though it would impair our ability to walk around naked and have sex in our back yard. That home was the only one near ours, the remainder of the land around us being still committed to farming.
Ultimately Jill got her way. Two months later the Fergusons were our new next-door neighbors and Rich and I Iimited our recreational nudity and sex to indoors. That wasn't that big a problem and our relationship with the Fergusons picked up almost without a hitch. They joined our country club, Rich and Cam became regular golf partners, and Jill joined me in my regular work outs at the gym.
Jill was determined to lose some of the weight that twenty years had put on her. Sure she weighed a bit more than she had twenty years ago, but she was still a very attractive woman. She was about five-six or so with good legs, nice round hips (too big she thought, but not in Rich's view that he shared with me), a still narrow waist (not like it used to be according to Jill), and breasts which, like mine, had grown much larger and softer than they had been before we had children. Rich thought my breasts and Jill's looked just fine, but of course I couldn't share that assessment with Jill. Besides my horndog husband thought almost any woman's breasts looked just fine. Her smiling face and sparkling blue eyes hadn't changed and her slightly curled dishwater blonde hair grew down to her shoulders in a thick mane that looked pretty much as it had all those years ago. I thought she looked great and I told her so.
The other activity that resumed promptly was our tradition of sharing a morning cup of coffee. It became so regular that Jill and I insisted that Cam and Rich install a gate in the fence so Jill and I could each cut through the other's back yard for our coffee. With help from Rich and Cam, I altered our garden a bit and installed a series of steppingstones leading from the new gate in the fence to our patio They provided a border between the lawn and a flower garden.
It was just about nine on a Tuesday morning. I had been up since six and had just finished my morning's gardening. Rich and Cam were out of town, Cam to tie up some loose ends of his retirement in New York (retirements from major jobs are not always clean and neat), Rich to visit his slut (Lisa) in Oregon. I knew all about Lisa and I talked to her regularly by phone. She was a significant part of our broadened sex life. In conversations with others we called his trips to Oregon 'consulting'. I brewed up some coffee and called Jill to invite her over.
"Just got out of the shower," she said. "Let me throw something on and I will be right over."
"No need to dress up. I just finished my gardening. I'll be in shorts and a T-shirt on the back patio with our coffees."
"Got it."
When I had called Jill I hadn't thought about the fact that my gardening clothes this morning were a loose pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I hadn't bothered with a bra. Sometimes I do that when I am gardening. I just like the feel of the T-shirt on my low hanging boobs as I crawl about pulling weeds. Oh well, I thought. Jill knows I have breasts.
A few minutes later I heard the new gate between our yards open and close. I looked up to see Jill walking toward me. Her clothing was pretty much like mine, T-shirt and shorts and it appeared to me that she hadn't bothered with a bra either. As I watched her walking towards me I could see her boobs swinging beneath the T-shirt. There were still damp places on the T-shirt where her hurried toweling had been a bit inadequate.
