The following story is based, in part, on actual events, conversations and text messages. I'm leaving it up to you to figure out the difference between fantasy and reality. Enjoy.
YDW
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My name is Mark Jones and two weeks before I graduated from high school my dad Brandon walked in from work and announced that he had been transferred to Tennessee. He was excited because the transfer was part of a promotion and with it came a substantial pay-raise. I knew it was a large one because when he handed the offer letter to my mom she read it and then sat down looking as though she had seen a ghost.
I was fine with the move, although leaving the house I had grown up in was going to be a little sad. I was l leaving for college in September and not coming home to the only home I had known was going to seem strange. Ironically, I had enrolled at a small college only sixty miles from dad's new job location. I had played football as an outside linebacker, but my overall GPA wasn't high enough to play at the college level. My plan was to go to college for a year and then try out as a walk on my sophomore year. I tried to keep an upbeat attitude about the move; my baby sister on the other hand? Let's just say that didn't go too smoothly for my parents.
Jennifer had just finished up her junior year in high school. She is a real beauty and a cheerleader who also played on the girls' soccer team. She is a social butterfly who has more friends than she knows what to do with. She also has more male admirers than she knows what to do with and the only thing that kept them at bay was her snarling six-foot four inch, two hundred and forty pound big brother. I didn't want to think about what she was going to have to put up with once I was gone but she had to grow up sometime.
First, she argued that she could stay with our mom's sister and finish school in Atlanta. When that didn't work, she pouted. When that failed, she pitched a fit. When that bombed, she screamed "You hate me!" and stomped out of the living room; slamming the door so hard that my mother immediately leapt to her feet and followed her to her bedroom.
Dad and I just sat there in the living room watching the Brave's game and listening to the screeching and shrieking that was coming from upstairs. It lasted all of two minutes before it suddenly went silent and Mom reappeared with a very subdued Jennifer in tow. Jennifer tossed her head, sending her blonde hair flying and then looked at my dad and said, "Daddy, I'm sorry for acting like a spoiled brat."
"Anything else?" my dad responded dryly.
"Yes sir. I don't have to like it, but I have no choice. You and Mom are the adults and you make the decisions." Jennifer said softly.
That mantra had been repeated to us since we were babies and when we really screwed the pooch, mom would make us say it back to them. It was humiliating but just the threat of it often worked wonders on our attitudes, especially when we were out in public. I found out later, from Dad, that Mom had threatened to take away her phone, tablet and then she told Jennifer that any chances she had of getting a car when she turned eighteen in August, were toast.
The day after I graduated we loaded up in mom's Tahoe and headed north up I-75 to meet with the realtor they had chosen and to look at a few houses. (A few being the first ten that mom had seen on the internet.) The town we were moving to was small by any standard, but when the realtor mentioned that the girls' soccer team had made it to the state semi-finals last year Jennifer's eyes got wide and she seemed to settle down a bit.
We were on house number eight on the second day of the trip when mom absolutely found the house of her dreams. It was a one hundred and ten year old Victorian home that had three stories, five bedrooms, three baths, a living room, formal dining room, a parlor and five fireplaces. It also had central heat and air conditioning and my dad groaned when he thought about what the electricity bill was going to look like in June, July, and August.
I had picked the bedroom on the top floor as mine because Jennifer thought that it was too creepy up there and had settled for a room on the second floor. As I looked around I noticed the view from my bedroom window looked down on the back yard of the house next door, it was huge and there was a pool. "Who knows?" I said aloud, not realizing that my dad had entered the room, "Maybe they have a hot daughter."
Dad walked up beside me and glancing out the window he added "Or two, or three."
"Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?" I said smiling at him.
"Absolutely son, absolutely." He said with a knowing grin. "Just be careful, I don't want you back here next summer raising a grandchild in the house next door."
"Won't happen." I said, meaning every word of it.
"Cool, now let's go back downstairs and figure out how close to bankruptcy your mother is going to drive me fixing this place up." he said, seeming to resign himself to the fact that he was about to open a huge line of credit at the nearest hardware store.
Dad's company paid the closing costs on the house so that sped the process up and moving day arrived a month later. On July 2
nd
my family found ourselves standing in the font yard waiting on the movers to show up and Jennifer was in another huff because she had made plans with her friends to go to Stone Mountain and watch the fireworks display.
Once the truck showed up we all went to work with mom pointing and yelling like a tiny German Field Marshall at anyone moving anything into her new nest. Dad and I had wrestled the washer and dryer off the truck and they were sitting by the front porch. Around eleven or so we were discussing how to best move them into the house when a black Camaro pulled into the driveway of the house next door.
The driver's door opened, and a tall, lithesome brunette slid out. She was wearing a tight cream-colored pencil skirt, a black short sleeved blouse that was stretched to its limit across her chest, dark sunglasses and black stiletto heels. Two boys looking to be between nine and eleven hopped out of the passenger side door and raced into the house laughing. She stared at us for a minute and then smiled, waved and walked toward her front door.
"Damn!" I muttered softly as dad and I stood there gawking at her.
"Umm, yup. I do believe that is what they call a MILF." Dad said almost whispering.
"No hot daughter though." I said, feigning sadness and praying to God above that MILF I was gawking at loved her pool. Who needed a hot daughter with a woman like that living next door?
"Good thing too, at least I don't have to worry about the grandkids living next door now."
I didn't plan it, but it couldn't have worked out better if I had. Dad had gone inside to ask mom if she was ready to bring the washer and dryer in, when the lady next door came out and walked toward her mailbox. Dad yelled out for me to bring the dryer in, so I squatted and getting a good grip on it, I picked it up carried it up the steps.
Walking back to the washer I did the same thing and when I stopped to grab the dolly to finish the move from the porch to the laundry room, I looked over to see her standing in her driveway staring at me. She had pulled her sunglasses down her nose and was standing completely still. I waved and as I started to turn my attention back to the task at hand, she pushed her glasses back up, spun on her heels and walked quickly into her house; leaving me with a great view of her ass moving under the tight confines of her skirt while she scurried away.
Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the front door and when Dad opened it our new neighbor was standing there. She had changed and was wearing a white t-shirt, cutoff blue jean shorts that showed off her long legs and tennis shoes. She smiled and said brightly, "Hi! I'm your new neighbor and I just wanted to drop in for a minute to introduce myself."
Mom walked over and holding out her hand said "Michelle Jones; this is my husband Brandon. Please come in but the place is a chaotic wreck right now."
"That ok, I understand." She said laughing and stepping across the threshold, "my name is Lauren, Lauren North, it is nice to meet you Michelle."
Jennifer had popped into the room to see what was going on and mom introduced both of us. Lauren looked at me and smiling said, "That was quiet the display you put on in the yard a little while ago."
Smiling and probably blushing a little, I said, "Thank you, but it was just a washer and dryer."
Mom looked at us perplexed and then Lauren said "Your son carried a washer up the steps by himself. When I got my new one last month, it took all the delivery guys could manage to get it onto the porch without hurting themselves."
"Oh, that." Dad said laughing, "Yeah he is a tank alright. He benched twenty-five reps of two twenty-five at a combine this past spring."
"Very impressive!" she said glancing toward me.
I stood there silently and eventually sat down on the couch as her and mom started talking about things that women talk about. Where the nearest grocery store was, the salons in town, where to get a mani-pedi and then Lauren asked Jennifer, who was listening intently, "Do you babysit?"
"Sometimes. I'm good with kids."
"I go out occasionally and I might need a babysitter soon. Mine just got married and her new husband is in the Navy. They are moving to Guam in at the middle of the month. I'll pay you ten dollars an hour."
"Ten bucks an hour?" I piped up. "Who does your lawn?"
Laughing she said, "I have a service that comes over twice a month to do that."
"It never hurts to ask." I said.
"Do you know how to take care of a swimming pool?" she asked me.
"No, but I can Google it!" I said laughing.
