Trudy took the cup of coffee from the barista with a smile as false as her desire to drink it.
Sill not Kristy.
She sighed and fished out a handful of bills from her purse to place on the table next to the untouched drink. "She's not coming back here. Four months of throwing money away is enough to get through even my stupid, stupid head."
"You could order something else, you know. You hate coffee, I get it, but they do have a bit of a menu beyond that."
Trudy looked up at her tablemate and gave a small, rueful grin. "Kristy was the coffee maestro here. I don't...
didn't
... want to take the chance that she wouldn't make an appearance if I didn't order..." She shrugged. "Fine. You're right. I didn't call myself
stupid
for no reason, you know."
"Hmph. I still say you're too hard on yourself... but then again, I'm biased." The look in Ava's eyes shifted subtly then, morphing from sympathetic to simmering in a blink, and she began running one finger along the low neck of her thin, pink and white sundress. "And if you are stupid, then it's a good thing I find dunce caps sexy as all hell."
"Dunce caps?" Trudy forgot her doldrums for a heartbeat and actually gave an honest grin. "No fair. You know I have a weakness for bad humor."
"Yeah? How weak?"
Without warning, Ava hooked her finger over the edge of her dress and pulled, freeing one of her olive-hued breasts. It was made easy because she was braless, but then again, she was always braless. That bit of undergarment wasn't exactly necessary for a woman of Ava's... streamlined form. Still, the beauty on display wasn't diminished in the slightest by a lack of excess flesh, if Trudy's suddenly dry mouth was any indication.
Perfect... just perfect.
An inward evaluation which was contrasted by the outward response of, "Jesus! Babe... what the fuck?"
Ava's mischievous smile became downright evil then. "If you're giving up on your quest for your first lesbian lover... then, before you call it quits on the place, how 'bout you give the full tour to your second?"
"Full tour?"
"
Full.
"
The door to the back-hall lavatory crashed open for what had to have been the thousandth time in its existence as the two women plowed into it, lips feasting on each other and hands tearing at buttons and zippers like they were suffering from heat stroke. Trudy, even after all these weeks, still couldn't stifle the wave of guilt that washed over her, but that didn't stop her from running her hand up her neighbor's bare thigh and under her short skirt. Gasping with delight into the petite woman's mouth, she expressed her appreciation that Ava had decided to forego
both
forms of underwear that day, and proceeded to plunge no less than three fingers into the gushing, easily accessed vagina.
"Yes, yessss..." Ava shuddered and latched her mouth tight to the skin of her blonde lover's neck, sucking hard enough to leave a hickey. The woman enjoyed that, the marking of her friend, so much so that Trudy was beginning to get a reputation at her office for having an unhealthy obsession with turtlenecks. Right then, it was a reputation that Trudy didn't care a whit for as long as she could have moments like this; the unfettered freedom of lust and abandon that lit a fire in her like she'd never known.
"Come for me, you little slut." The busty blonde used her free hand to shove Ava's head down, pressing it to the boob that Ava, at some point, had managed to free from both her top and her bra. "Come for me like a good bitch." She curled the fingers down below even while pressing her mate's face harder into her swaying breast-meat.
"Mmm... mmmph...!" Ava, always quick to jump on the climax express, was muffling her screams with her friend's tit while she suckled like there was no tomorrow. After a second of this, though, she pulled back and looked her lover in the eyes. "I'm gonna ride you like a goddamned—"
"Not a fucking chance."
Both women turned to stare in abject mortification at the kid in the doorway, who was staring right back without an ounce of embarrassment. Trudy was the first to recover, laughing lightly like it was all a big joke. "Wow, uh... heh. We... we like to, um, switch clothes sometimes. Because we're friends, and friends..."
"Friends do that. Sure thing. Hell, just today my buddy came in and swiped my panties because she was cold." The bistro employee—the one who'd brought Trudy her coffee, no less—tapped her foot impatiently. "Ladies, put all of
this,
" she waved a hand up and down their half-bared bodies, "away. And just so you know, starting tomorrow, people are gonna need a key from the counter to get in here." She shook her head. "The boss finally listened to me about what a magnet this room is for perverts."
Really nothing to say to that, so neither woman tried. Instead, they, with ten times the sheepishness either had ever experienced, stuffed all their bits back and shuffled away from the restroom, both so beet-red that they looked like walking bonfires on their way out. Escorted by their twenty-something warden, of course.
Near the door, the young woman who'd caught them suddenly chuckled to herself like she'd heard a joke. "Gotta tell Kris she was right when she called the place
Cougar-nip.
"
"Kris?" Trudy whirled around and took the kid's shoulders in both hands, levelling as serious a gaze as she could muster. "You mean Kristy? You know where she is?"
"Uh..."
"You have to give her a message from me. Tell her that I... that Trudy..." She paused, ordering her thoughts. "Tell her that I need to speak with her. That... that I'm begging." She closed her eyes. "Tell her she did nothing wrong. Tell her it was all me. Every last bit." She squeezed her eyes shut, and her voice lost all vim. "Please."
The girl just nodded, unable to quickly process the complete one-eighty that the mature exhibitionist had undergone. Satisfied enough by that, Trudy nodded herself and then left with Ava, the two women walking hand-in-hand, hanging on to each other in place of their vanished dignity.
It was a long drive home.
__________
"Trude... I think..." Ava leaned forward in the passenger seat of Trudy's little coup, eyes narrowed. "I swear I saw someone moving around in your house."
"Kristy!" Trudy gasped out the name, elated. "Her friend must have called her, and she was nearby!" She threw the car into park in Ava's driveway, as she'd done countless times recently since she now lived there in all ways but on paper.
"Trudy..." Ava looked wary. "That doesn't make sense. I don't think... wait!"
The blonde heard almost none of that last bit, as she was out of the car and jogging over to her home—her abandoned home in nearly every sense of the word—with the overweening tunnel vision of someone desperate for at least a fraction of the forgiveness she yearned for.
I can fix it with Kristy. I can. I can make it better, even if she's the only one I can find...
Trudy was through the door and into the house before she managed to speak. "Kris? Kristy! Is that you? Look, I meant what I said to your friend, meant it from the bottom of my heart. I'm so, so sorry for... oh." Trudy stopped dead as a figure emerged from the back corridor leading to the bedrooms. "Oh holy shit."
"Hey." Jon scratched at his new, short beard awkwardly, his voice flat and emotionless. "Thought we'd be gone without you spotting...
ooph!
"
Jon's grunt of surprise, even his words, registered with Trudy as little as Ava's warning had a minute before. All she knew was that her husband—the man who disappeared so thoroughly that not even his mother and brother knew where he'd gone—was back. He was back, and he was in her arms again.
"Jon... Jon... oh my god, oh my god... you, you're here..." Her arms went even tighter as she soaked his shirt, the tears streaming from her having nowhere else to go with her face pressed so hard into his broad chest. "I can't believe... you were... you didn't..."
"Gertrude. You're hurting me."
Reality hit Trudy then, and it hit
hard.
The woman, wife, cheater, liar, stepped back, eyes wide. In all her imaginings, all her envisioning of how this moment would go when...
if...
she ever saw her husband again, she never even considered that he would be dealing with her like she was a... a... casual acquaintance. Someone who, by the tone of his voice, meant
nothing
to him any longer.
"Fuck. Fuck. You... you know." Not a question, and Trudy saw the confirmation immediately in his haunted stare. "Oh god, you
saw
." That was it. That one, singular look from him brought home everything she'd been refusing to acknowledge for months. Every fairytale she'd been telling herself; that he was more messed up by Kristy than he'd let on... that he just needed time... it was all torn away in a second.
The next second? That was the one Trudy used to get the hell out of there.
__________
Jon didn't want this. He'd never wanted any of this. After...
that day...
he'd given up. He wasn't proud of that in the slightest, but all that had been in him in that moment was a compulsion—burning need, in truth—to get out. To leave that place and the woman who'd, apparently, been playing pretend with him all his adult life.
He'd never planned on coming back to this house, but, to be fair, he really hadn't planned on much of anything, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that this one fell through, forcing him back to the scene of the worst moment he could remember. Well, next door to the scene, to be nitpicky. Close enough.
Close enough that Jon's wife—legally speaking—could find him quickly... and just as quickly turn tail and run because he couldn't hide that he wasn't the same man she had known, thereby revealing that she had been quite obviously been playing pretend with
herself
too. He'd expected pretty much that, which was why he'd tried to be as clandestine as possible in coming back here for what he needed. In and out without anyone the wiser. If he was being honest with himself, he at least half-expected he'd be failing there too... and the blonde streak retreating from him illustrated his predictive skills.
What he didn't expect was the brunette streak coming from the bedrooms behind him, chasing after the blonde with a wordless cry.
Before Jon could make a peep, though, he was caught up in the next confrontation he'd been dreading. Ava had finally made her own appearance seconds before Trudy had blown past her at Mach Ten, barely avoiding her
friend's
body blow by lurching to the side in a panic. That panic was what saved her from the second female comet flying past, which left her with an expression of utter befuddlement as she watched them go... which changed to wide-eyed astonishment when she turned back towards the house's interior to behold the man standing there in all his gawking glory.
"Jon."
"Ava, I don't want...
ooph!
"
This time, the boa constrictor that'd decided to squeeze the life out of him opted to use her legs too, and Jon found himself in the utterly batshit situation of supporting the body weight of the diminutive wife-stealer he had once considered a buddy.
Standing there, having absolutely no idea how to handle the situation, Jon just sighed as well as he could with his compressed lungs and looked down at the little woman with the big grip. "Oh Christ... are you gonna be my consolation pussy too?"
"Not a chance on the planet." Ava mumbled her answer into his shirt. "Now hug me, you beautiful man. Pretend you don't hate my guts."
