When she crossed over I-80, Nancy snuggled her lean frame into the soft leather that was wrapped around the driver's seat and kicked off her heels. The countryside and farms blurred beside her and she day-dreamed as the car continued its course, almost on autopilot, down I-57 towards Champaign, Illinois.
She enjoyed these drives. They represented the only time during the week when she could shut down, block out the irritations of her life. No clients calling. No secretary disrupting her. No kids asking her for spring break money. These hours were hers and hers alone.
As she passed through Kankakee, Nancy considered her life. A single woman -- well, divorced, actually, but it soothed her ego to think of herself as single -- with two sons, one a junior in high school, the other a senior and just about to graduate.
Her husband had left her two years ago, but the divorce proceedings took about a year to conclude. He had filed for the divorce, the papers saying something about "irreconcilable differences." The truth was their differences weren't irreconcilable. Tom just wasn't willing to work at the marriage. He had given up. Or so she had thought at the time.
But then a month or so after the divorce was finalized, she learned of his real motivation: he had a little bimbo on the side. In the year since the divorce, Nancy had yet to meet or even see the woman. Not that she wanted to. She would surely have torn her throat out, given the opportunity.
At the thought of Tom and Bimbo sharing a condo together in the Gold Coast, Nancy's thumb absently rubbed the place where her wedding band used to rest
For all the pain the divorce had caused, for how it had upset the balance of her family, Nancy had weathered the storm fairly well. In his rush to get the divorce completed, Tom had given up any fight for the home in Winnetka and agreed to pay her $8,000 per month in alimony and child support. He also agreed to liquidate certain investments and to distribute a significant amount of the proceeds to her.
The divorce had also motivated her to improve her physical appearance. She was young and didn't want to spend the rest of her life alone. She'd spend an hour-and-a-half at the club around the corner from her office three days a week; two hours on Saturdays. She had her breasts, which had sagged somewhat after breast-feeding two children, lifted. Her dirty blonde hair was always done and she visited the manicurist once a week.
She also changed her wardrobe. Gone were the mid-calf-length work skirts and high-collared blouses. Now, all her work attire stopped just above the knee and was open at the neck, revealing the full swell of her marvelous breasts. Sundays around town were spent in tank tops and tight jeans instead of sweat pants and loose tee-shirts. She had filled a trash can full of flats, replacing them with three- and four-inch heels that, in the summer months, revealed her gleaming, cherry red toenails.
"What an asshole," she murmured to herself, recalling her ex-husband's statement to her a few months after the divorce was final.
'You know, Nancy, if you had dressed like this and taken care of yourself during our marriage, we might still be together.'
She shook her head at the memory, but then a sly smile parted her full, red lips, creating slight creases in the lightly made-up flesh surrounding her sensuous mouth. A few months after Tom's ill-advised comment, she sent him an e-mail.
'Thanks for sending me the check from the sale of the IBM stock. I bought a new BMW with it. I was sorry to see the mini-van go, though. I've had so many good times in the back of it in the last year or so. Ce la vie. I was a little embarrassed when Matt -- you remember Sean's friend? -- and I dropped the mini-van off, though. The guy who inspected it before giving me the check must have noticed Matt's cum stains on the floor because he gave me a knowing look. If I was thinking on my feet, I would have fucked him, too. Oh, well. Lesson learned. Thanks again.'
It wasn't true, of course. The part about buying a new car with the stock proceeds was true, but Nancy hadn't slept with her son's friend. But the thought of doing so began fueling her fantasies.
On the weekends, after Sean and Jay had left for the evenings with their friends, she'd slink up to her bedroom, undress, and crawl between the sheets. Soon, an engorged nipple would be trapped between two manicured nails while the fingers of her free hand danced across her inflamed clit, her eyes screwed tightly shut. The backs of her eyelids were movie screens and on them young men with pulsing cocks and sperm-laden balls were fucking older women and dropping their cum all over them. Well, one older woman in particular: Nancy was always the star in these movies.
Out of embarrassment, she refused to divulge her wicked desires to her therapist. She knew the diagnosis anyway. At the age of forty-four, newly divorced and facing the prospect of decades alone, she was reaching back for a snippet of youth. She wanted to feel young and fresh and desired.
Despite recognizing the source of her cravings, they persisted. They became more lurid. More explicit. And she began putting herself in situations where they might actually come to fruition.
When her sons' friends would hang around the house on the weekends, swimming in the pool, she would do yard work in her bathing suit and a pair of shorts. Nothing so daring as a skimpy bikini, mind you. Just a one-piece, but provocative enough that her breasts might bulge from the top or sides if she moved just right. Afterward, she would retreat to the sanctuary of her bedroom, lock the door, and stuff two or three fingers in her sopping, downy-covered vagina until her body shook and trembled with release.
Occasionally, Nancy would join friends for dinner or drinks downtown at places like Gibson's or Tavern-on-Rush. She always dressed well for the occasions, donning sexy but conservative clothing. She'd stand at the bar ordering a drink and close her eyes in lust as she felt the young-bodied men rubbing against her on their way to the bathroom or to their tables. Beneath her bra, her nipples would thicken and she'd rub her thighs together before returning to her staid friends.
But for several months, her fantasies remained just that. She could never imagine being so brazen as to seduce her sons' friends. She wasn't a slut and could not contemplate waving goodbye to her friends as she sauntered from some pick-up joint on the arm of one of the young studs that occupied her fantasies. And she never worked up the courage to jump in her car on a random Saturday night and go to Jilly's by herself, in search of a twenty-something to satisfy her lustful yearning.
In time, Nancy's fantasies began to consume her personal time. While at work, she was focused. But on the drive home? Forget it. She'd daydream about getting bent over her desk by the young kid who delivered the mail. At night, while watching television, a groan would escape from deep in her slender throat when she imagined her lithe body being ravaged by one of the fresh-from-the-academy crime scene investigators. Her fingers became her best friends as her mind created ever more audacious scenarios to quench her thirst for young men.
Then, about six months ago, she was packing for an overnight trip. As an auditor for a national accounting firm, she traveled often. Her business kept her mostly in the Midwest, in towns like Champaign, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin; Indianapolis, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio. Most of these places were college towns.
And then a thought occurred to her: colleges had bars and they had fraternities.
Then another: put a fraternity boy in a bar and . . .
Nancy abruptly stopped packing. She paced around her bedroom, gently chewing her lower lip. She went into her closet and surveyed her wardrobe. She put a short skirt and a tight blouse in her suitcase, and grabbed a pair of open-toed heels. She paced more and stopped before the sliding glass door that led to a terrace overlooking the manicured back yard. She was lost in thought, staring at her darkened image in the window.
Then she hurriedly turned and removed the inappropriate clothes from her suitcase and threw them back in her closet, chastising herself.
But then she retrieved them.
