Chaperone Fail:
The Bonfire
All characters depicted in this story are legal adults.
This story is fiction; it's cobbled together from my deranged imagination and some salacious rumors that ran around my home town many years ago.
This story contains depictions of sexual acts between an older woman and college-age people, group sex, and fully-consensual incestuous relations.
Don't try any of this at home.
I do not intend to write a direct sequel to this story. I'm not saying I won't, I'm just saying that I don't intend to. Sequels are never as good as the originals, and anything the reader's imagination comes up with regarding the future adventures of these characters is likely to be better than what I could produce.
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When you live out in the country, there's always an excuse for a bonfire party on a warm summer night. After the last one, though, when my two sons had gotten stupid drunk and had to be deposited on our doorstep by the police, I was leery of letting them attend another. Matt was 19, and his brother Tom was 20; neither were legal to drink, and I impressed upon them just how much trouble they could have been in if this community weren't small enough that the cops were also family friends.
"Come on, mom," Matt begged. "It's the last one of the summer!"
"It'll be next year before everyone's back in town together!" Tom added.
"And you promise me there won't be any alcohol?" I asked, my eyes narrowing. Neither boy met my eyes. "Yeah, that's what I thought. The answer is no."
"What if we could promise there'd be an adult there this time?" Matt asked. I looked at him skeptically; his deep brown eyes radiated honesty and truthfulness, which made me even more suspicious.
"What adult?" I asked. "Let me guess, your old wrestling coach from high school. Who will totally be supervising you and absolutely not trying to sneak off into the bushes with some girl."
Matt looked away, and Tom piped up. "How about my old football coach, then?" He asked. "I could get him to come."
Tom's idea sounded better, and I softened a little bit. There hadn't been any scandalous rumors around town about Coach Tagget, but I still wasn't sure. Neither of my boys, as handsome and as smart as they were, seemed to really grasp just what kind of consequences could follow them home from a gathering like this.
"The only way I'm going to allow this is if I'm there personally to chaperone," I said finally. Both boys groaned, and I figured the matter was solved. There's no way they'd take their mom to a bonfire, and there was no way I'd let them go without supervision I could trust.
"What about dad instead?" Tom asked. I laughed.
"Sure, if you can find him and drag him out of whatever rehab he's in this time, be my guest. Better get started real quick; I haven't kept track of him since the divorce was final, so I can't even tell you where to start looking."
Tom and Matt looked at each other, and some silent conversation passed between them. That was a normal thing, I'd discovered. I was an only child, so I never got to experience that kind of wordless connection that siblings apparently learned very early. Finally Matt nodded. "Ok, mom. You win. We'll take you with us and you can chaperone."
I was surprised. "You don't think I'm going to ruin your party?"
"You might," Tom said slowly, "But we don't want to miss this chance to hang out with everyone."
I hadn't really expected to be invited, but in spite of my misgivings, the idea didn't sound as bad as it had when I'd first suggested it. Marshmallows, hot dogs, and a few beers around a country bonfire sounded pretty relaxing, and I figured that my presence alone would forestall any serious drama.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"It's in the Glicut's woodlot," Matt replied, and I nodded. Kids had been fooling around out in the Gilcut's back forty since I was a kid. The woodlot was a five- or six-acre stand of trees back behind a row of hay fields, accessible only by a half-mile-long packed-dirt service road. It only saw regular use about once a year, when a selection of trees were harvested and turned into firewood. It wasn't the first choice of party spot, since it was harder to get to than most, but its seclusion had been attracting young people for at least my whole life.
"I know the spot," I said. "When are we leaving?"
Matt looked at his watch. "About an hour, I guess, so we can be there and get set up before it gets too dark."
"Then I'd better get ready," I replied, heading towards my bedroom.
***
I took a quick shower and did my makeup like I was going out for a night on the town. I was forty years old, and had spent the year since my divorce taking better care of myself. I wasn't quite ripped yet by any means, but my waistline was more defined than it had been in years, my curves had a nice shape to them, and I wasn't too far off from having at least a couple visible abs.
All that effort sometimes felt like it had been wasted; I hadn't been on a date yet, mostly because confidence takes longer to build than muscle. I looked at myself in the mirror as I squeezed into a pair of tight cutoff jean shorts and threw on a cream-colored sleeveless short top, and impishly decided that this little event would be a great test run. If I could turn the heads of a bunch of high school seniors and college freshmen, I could certainly compete in the world of older adult dating. I quickly brushed my back-length black hair, and went back downstairs with just minutes to spare.
My boys met me at the front door, and couldn't hide their surprise at how much work I'd put into my appearance for the night.
"What's up with this?" Tom asked, gesturing at my outfit.
"I figured you didn't want some old woman bringing down the vibe," I said with a smile.
"You're going to show up everyone's girlfriends," Matt laughed.
I smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "Is that any way to talk about your mother?" I teased.
"Only if my mother is hot," Matt grinned back. I couldn't hide a blush.
We piled into Tom's pickup truck; as I was shorter and narrower than either of them, I ended up in the middle seat. I was acutely aware of how the bare skin of my freshly-shaved legs felt rubbing against the denim of their jeans with every bump we passed, and I chided myself for having such inappropriate thoughts. It was probably natural, after having deprived myself of male attention for so long, that I would be hyper-aware of the young, athletic men around me, but I was a grown woman above my baser nature. Even with that thought firmly in mind, however, I couldn't help but be flattered by the furtive glances both boys stole of my thighs and my cleavage.
We arrived at the bonfire site as the daylight began to fade. The kids had picked one of the most recent clearings in towards the middle of the woodlot for their fire, to be even less visible from the road. We weren't the first to arrive; Tom's girlfriend Andrea was already there. Andrea was a short, cheerful 19-year-old brunette who had been Tom's high school sweetheart. She spent more time at our house over the years than she did at her own, and I felt proud of myself that I had helped to raise such a bright young girl alongside my own sons.
She greeted me happily as I unfolded myself from the truck. "Hi Ms. Turner!" she said as she arranged big rocks in a rough circle around the growing pile of dead wood. "Are you going to keep us out of trouble tonight?"
"You can call me April, Andrea," I said with a smile. "And I plan on trying my best to."
"Does that mean no drinking?" Andrea asked sadly.
"You and the boys can do a little bit of drinking," I said guardedly.
"What about our friends?" Matt asked.
"I'll think about it," I said.
We began to unload the lawn chairs and extra firewood from the back of Tom's truck as another pickup pulled off the road. Matt's friends David and Jim got out, waving and smiling.
"There's the beer now!" Matt grinned as he went over to greet them. David and Jim were both freshly-graduated seniors from the high school, and were headed off to college on track and field scholarships. They were tall and well-muscled, both with short-cropped blonde hair and laughing eyes that looked me over as if they were seeing me for the first time. I felt myself blushing again; these two young men had spent just about every weekend at my house since they were kids, and it was intensely flattering to have caught their attention now that they were technically adults.
"Hi Ms Turner!" David called out as he pulled a cooler from the bed of the truck. Jim grabbed ahold of a second cooler and both boys walked towards the fire pit.
"Call me April, David," I repeated. "We're all adults now. Set those coolers down over on the far side of the fire." I followed them over and set my chair down in front of the coolers, then opened them up to take a look inside. One was filled with cans of cheap beer, and the other was full of wine coolers. I looked back at the truck and saw there were two more coolers yet to be unloaded.
"That's a lot of booze, David," I said as I inspected the contents. "How many people are you expecting to be here?"
"Ten or twelve?" David said.
I raised my eyebrow. "That's still a lot of booze."